The shrill sound of my phone roused me from a
deep, dreamless sleep. For a moment, I felt dazed and disoriented and couldn't
for the life of me figure out where I was or why. My head felt heavy and woozy
and I imagined this was how an over-ripe water melon felt. I reached for the
phone, or at least attempted to. The dull ache in my neck and my rubbery arms
confirmed my suspicions that I'd fallen asleep at my desk.
"Hello!" I croaked
into the phone just as the person at the other end rang off. In that split
moment before the line went dead, I thought I'd caught the sound of a voice. I
didn't know if it had all been my imagination or the ripe fruit waiting to
burst out of my head, but I couldn't help feeling that if only I'd been a
fraction of a second earlier, I would have just caught the voice and somewhere
just out of reach of my subconscious was the speaker's identity. I was going to
return the call but the caller had withheld the number. Just great!
I got up from my desk feeling stiff in the
clothes I'd had on yesterday. I decided to take a bath and get on with the day
even though it was just a few minutes shy of 4 am but of course there was no
running water yet again. Knowing it was still too early for the meruwa to
be pushing their water charts about, I resigned myself to starting the day with
the sickly sweet smell of stale sweat. I pushed the windows open all the way
and the netting too, ignoring the mosquitoes that immediately swarmed around my
head, their love songs buzzing in my ears. I pulled myself up onto the window
seat and stared down at the streets of Igbosere. In the darkness, it all looked
peaceful, beautiful even. It was hard to believe that in just a couple of
hours, these same streets would be transformed into the chaotic entity the
world thought it knew. At that moment, it was all quite, shrouded in the
seeming solemnity that bellies the madness that is Lagos. It brought back
memories of another morning like this one, me, up well before dawn and having
absolute no idea what the day would bring: another dull day of lectures and
papers to hand in, or news that would change your life forever. Somewhere in
the darkness, someone started to belt out some drunken tune, fracturing the
serene picture. I sighed. So much for my little daydream, or rather dawn-dream.
My drunk companion seemed to be weaving his way towards my building because his
voice started to get loud enough for me to hear. Or should I say her. I
really am not sure but what I'd taken as a drunk's voice actually turned out to
be probably the most hauntingly beautiful sound I've ever heard. I had no idea
what song it was, I couldn't even make out the words but the voice was soothing
and for a few seconds, I was able to forget everything, past and present, and I
let it wrap me up in its cocoon. As slowly as it had drawn close to me, it
faded into the pre-dawn gloom and the world was silent again for a moment or
two before a bus conductor's voice shattered it. Lagos had come to life.
When I finally got my act together and set out
for work, I felt a tad better. At least, my neck didn’t ache so bad if I was
mindful not to move it and I’d managed to cover up the mosquito bites on my
arms with a long sleeved shirt despite the temperature being somewhere in the
forties. Just the way random and totally unrelated thoughts can sometimes
interfere with your thought process, I remembered the sun beating down fiercely
on me that Wednesday morning a million years ago and how numb and ethereal I’d
felt. While waiting at the bus stop, my phone rang and the call that woke me up
came to mind. I fished the phone out of my bag, my fingers starting to tingle,
not with pins and needles this time but with anticipation, you know, that
feeling you get when you’re so sure you’re close to unravelling some mystery.
My bus rocked up just then and I made a dash for it along with what seemed like
half of Lagos. I snagged a seat by the window and hit the green button
desperately hoping I wasn’t too late again this time.
“Hello!” I gasped as the woman who’d wrestled her way onto the bus after me
squashed me into the side of the bus.
“Hey, you there?!” And just like that, my bubble burst and I felt the crushing
weight of disappointment even though I’d really had no idea what I’d been
hoping for.
“Mr Ahmed?!” I said as the very generously proportioned woman
beside me forced what little air I had left in my lungs out.
“Are you on your way in yet?” He asked.
“Yes…” I choked.
“Something’s come up on site. You need to head there now.”
“What? Why?! I’ve got a meeting with…”
“I’ll take care of the meeting. Head straight to site and sort out whatever the
issue is.” He replied curtly.
“But…”
The line went dead and it was all I could do not
to scream in frustration. In all fairness, I really didn’t have any air left in
my lungs for a scream, but a girl is allowed her theatrics right? Trust my
colleague-from-hell to pull rank on me and dump me in the deep end. Never mind
that the only “rank” he had on me was a six month head start at the company and
maybe six odd years in age. That was his style and I didn’t expect any better
from him, but still, it made me spitting mad that he always made me do
all the dirty work and he took all the credit. I imagined my generously
proportioned neighbour wrapping her beefy hands around his scrawny neck and
giving him a good shake!
Typical of Lagos weather, the temperature that
had been threatening to boil us all alive less than twenty minutes before,
dropped suddenly and it actually started to rain. I sighed in resignation. On
top of everything else, I was going to get drenched as well. I heaved my
biggest poor-me-everything-is-so-unfair sigh and stared out the window absently
as the bus crawled through rush-hour traffic. Across the road from me were two
little kids, no more than about three or four years old. They had probably
slipped out of home when their mum wasn’t looking, and they ran out into the
rain with their arms flung out and screaming in glee. I watched them jump and
splash in rain puddles like it was the very best thing in the entire world. One
of them raised his face to the sky like he wanted to kiss the rain and I could
see the sheer delight on his little face. I could almost feel each individual
rain drop hit his face, feel the exciting shock of cold water-balls on soft
skin, feel the rivulets they formed as they charted their course down his face,
slipping into the cracks between his eyelids, streaming down the slopes of his
cheeks, into the hollows of his ears, falling onto his little pink tongue. I
felt suspended in time even as the boy disappeared from my line of sight and in
that moment, I forgot all about my anger and frustration and self-pity and the
fight went out of me. There really is nothing as humbling as a three year old
raining on your pity party, pun intended, and that gave me quite a bit to chew
on.
At my stop, I got off the bus using my hand bag
as a make-shift umbrella. Literarily two seconds later, a jeep zoomed by and
covered me from head to toe in muddy rain water. That definitely wiped
every last image of magical rain drops from my mind! I gasped in shock and
disbelief and then quickly spat out as some of the filthy water got in my
mouth. Then another vehicle passed by and I got a second, more thorough
dousing. I had absolutely no idea whether to laugh or cry or scream or tear my
hair out. If there had been anything child-like about me right then, it
definitely had nothing to do with the simplicity and innocence I’d seen no more
than ten minutes earlier, I desperately wanted to stamp my feet and throw a
mighty tantrum! I angrily wiped the muddy water from my face, gritting my
teeth, and it was then that I saw it. Just pushing its way out of the dark,
angry clouds was the faint outline of a rainbow. I stood there on the side of
the road, shivering and dripping from head to toe like a drowned chicken,
staring in wonder at the rainbow and all I could think was that life had never
felt as beautiful as it did right then.
Looking back now on the events of today,
I realize it doesn’t always matter how bleak and dreary life might seem. All it
takes is a voice at the other end of the line or a beautiful song at dawn,
dancing in the rain or a rainbow after a storm to bring out the beauty and to
turn those shades of grey into splashes of vibrant colours. And that was how
you lived, in full colour, no matter what. You always saw the cup as full,
regardless of what filled it, whether it was air, water, a little bit of
both, or even coke (I remember you always did love coke!) and that is how I
remember you, always seeing the silver lining, not just the storm. Love you
babes, still miss you like crazy…
