THE RETURN

Here is a work of fiction titled THE RETURN

Total fiction.

It is set in today.

This is part One.

I will serialize it until we get to the end.

THE RETURN (PART 1)

He was flying back home for the first time in his life.

At thirty-six, he felt that he had waited a little too long.

But better late than never: this is the moment he had been waiting for all his life.

He peeped out through the window of the aircraft as it descended toward their landing, with the building, vehicles and roads becoming bigger and bigger as the plane drew nearer the landing ground.

He did not pull down the window screen as the flight attendant asked him. He wanted to see the approach to Lagos from the air.

Gradually, he saw the city of Lagos, a little blurry at first, and then more clearly he watched the scenery spreading out below him.

This was not quite what I was expecting, he said to himself, softly. The view from the aircraft gave him only a partial view of Lagos, he was sure, but what a terrific view.

But already he liked what he was seeing.

Certainly, what he saw below him was not a scene from the movie Black Panther.

“Remember, LPD,” his mom, Jade Lapade, told him repeatedly, “this isn’t Black Panther. It’s not a movie. This is Nigeria.”

“I know mom,” he said, “you already told….”

“No, you don’t know nothing, LPD,” Jade Lapade insisted. “Nigeria is the largest Black country in the world. Can you imagine that? The capital of all the Black people in the whole entire wide world.”

“I can imagine it,” LPD told his mother. “Going in there to see for myself. I have no expectations. Sure, it would be cool if it looked like Black Panther. But it’s better that it doesn’t look like a Marvel comic.“

“Far from it,” his mom said. “You have seen all the movies and read all the books on Nigeria already, so you have an idea what it really looks like.”

“I’ve not covered every single item on Nigeria,” LPD replied. “Every single history book of any significance, yes. And I watched all the Nollywood films ever made.”

“I hate those,” Jade Lapade grimaced. She was trying really hard to forget Nigeria. And here was her son trying hard to return to Nigeria. ”They should invest more money in the productions. Sometimes the characters….”

“You don’t get it,” LPD said. “the idea is not to produce a Hollywood thriller. It’s the language that I really love.”

“I understand,” Jade responded, looking more relaxed. “You do language training with the video.”

“Exactly,” LPD agreed.

“None but me could tell you speak with an accent,” Jade said. “Because I knew the moment you started speaking and where you stand right now.”

“That’s cheating, mom,” LPD replied. “Everybody says my Yoruba is perfect.”

“Yes,” your Yoruba is impressive,” Jade said, “but you have to work on the proverbs so you could speak it perfectly….”

“Like my father did,” LPD completed the thought for her. He didn’t know he actually spoke the four words, but he could see the reaction of his mother.

She immediately got up and hurriedly said she was going to bed.

He watched her leave abruptly for her room, leaning forward, her steps unsteady, almost as if she was in a trance.

He knew he should not have mentioned his father on such an eventful night, on the eve of his return to Nigeria.

Sometimes, the mention of his father’s name brought joyous responses.

But that night, the response from Jade was a total replay of the episode in her head.

Jade Lapade gently closed the door behind her and sunk into the bed.

The room was dark and cool, the central air conditioner humming in the background.

The moment her head hit the pillow, she felt and relived the explosion again.

It was not so much a feeling, as it was becoming.

A vivid flashback.

She became the same with the explosion which lifted her up the air, and threw her across the room, only for her to land with a thud in the soft sofa.

She felt dazed.

Her head sank into the soft sides of the sofa.

There was no sound in the entire world. But the silence had a deafening depth.

She gradually realized that her hearing was blasted out with the explosion.

What she heard was an echoing bell that reverberated endlessly down a tunnel inside her brain.

The room was spinning round and round and she could still remember Lapade’s final words, repeated like a terse dictation, syllable by syllable. The words were hypnotic.

“Take the bag and leave immediately for Abeokuta,” Lapade said urgently, the moment she entered the sitting room. He looked like he was preparing to go somewhere. “I’m going to Lagos now. The security officers want to have a chat with me.”

“Again,” Jade asked him. “Didn’t they invite you for a chat two weeks ago?”

“They know I have some information that they don’t have,” Lapade said. “They didn’t believe me the last time. This time they will take it up a notch, I’m afraid. The order is not from the Ibadan office here. No, it’s beyond Inspector Audu Karimu. The order is straight from Lagos. I doubt Audu even knows about this one.”

“How would Audu not know?” Jade asked. “Audu heads all the cops in the whole of Oyo State.”

“This is why I’m asking you to grab this bag and run with it now,” Lapade said. “It contains documents that could incriminate many top military officers and their dealings in hard drugs from the Far East. This may get as high as Maradonna himself, from what I see here. Hard evidence.”

“They are dealing in hard drugs?” Jade couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“When you get to Abeokuta tonight, look for Amos Akinola. You will find his address in this envelop. There’s enough money for your travels in the envelope. Once you get to Abeokuta, Amos will arrange your trip to New York, once you give him this bag.”

“New York?” Jade asked, flabbergasted. “You mention New York City in the United States, just like that?”

“Yes,” Lapade said quickly. “This one is serious. We won’t be safe in Nigeria until they flush out these top dealers. Don’t worry. I will join you, say in two weeks. I just have to take care of some urgent business here. Amos will make sure you are fine and arrange your flight out of the country.”

There were two bags on the table. They looked identical. He carried one of them with both hands, and extended the bag to Jade, saying, “Go now. Don’t wait for anything. Give the bag to nobody but Amos. You know Amos very well. He came here several times. The one you called The Vulture because of his bald head and crooked nose.”

Jade smiled, and Lapade laughed heartily.

As Jade extended her hand to receive the bag, the baby inside her stomach kicked, and she gave an audible gasp.

“What was that?” Lapade asked her, concerned.

“Our baby,” Jade replied.

“Take good care of him. I’ll see you in about two weeks. Three at the maximum. In New York.”

Lapade reached up and patted her on the stomach.

“How do you know it’s a boy,” Jade asked. She seized his hand and rubbed it on her stomach a few more times before letting go.

“I have a feeling it’s a boy,” he said, smiling.

She took the bag from him and turned for the door.

Lapade sank back into his seat.

Then he grabbed the bag that looked identical to the one he gave Jade.

He ripped off the masking tape across the pocket of the bag.

That was when the loud bang sounded.

And then silence followed.

For how long she was unconscious she didn’t know.

When she came to, she found herself in the seat into which the explosion threw her, clutching the bag Lapade gave her.

She immediately got up and looked where Lapade’s seat was located. The entire thing was blown into smithereens. Lapade’s body was in pieces.

In shock, she realized that she had only moments before people came to find her there.

She would have a lot of explaining to do to the authorities, to convince them that she knew nothing about the important bag she carried in her hands.

She knew there was nothing she could do for Lapade, who was clearly lifeless.

Her only hope was to find Amos Akinola.

She somehow dragged herself up. Her baby kicked again as she walked out of the room, not looking back, determined to get away, to save her baby.

She instinctively checked her wristwatch as she rose from the table. Her head made sense of the time and exact date.

It was 11:54, January 16, 1985, in the late morning.

LPD looked down at Lagos.

He took a shot with his phone. The time was 5:34 on the evening of January 16, 2021.

He was the baby inside Jade, his mother, that fateful morning in Ibadan, thirty-six years ago.

He was born that same day as the aircraft landed in New York’s JFK Airport on January 16, 1985.

And he was returning to Nigeria for the first time.