***Reader’s Note:
I was informed that I should complete the ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY series before moving on to the next series, THE RETURN.
I will therefore return to the ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, and continue with Part Thirty-six. To refresh the memory of our readers, I have placed parts Thirty-five and Thirty-four at the end of Part Thirty-six.
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.
HOW MUCH? Èrò Ni Ọkọ Dídó
Check the naira amount in your pocket or the bottom line in your bank account.
Has that transfer gone through?
But what does a fellow do with money that rapidly gets useless?
What do you do when a piece of paper loses its promisedvalue?
It still says One thousand Naira, but it only buys One hundred Naira worth of garri.
In the year 2019 when I left Nigeria, I brought with me some naira currency notes, stacked in one-thousand denominations.
About 50 villages, mostly located in Ogun States, have been abandoned by Yoruba farmers and their families, but now occupied by Fulani invaders who drove out these villagers.
This morning I saw videos of the officers of the Nigerian Customs and Excises raiding the shops of poor market women, removing items that these women bought for sale to their customers.
This is a two-prong attack: the villagers driven out of their villages are unable to farm and provide food supplies for the people in towns and cities.
The most central building on our school campus was also the building that gave me claustrophobia. It was the school chapel.
Right in front of the building was a stone monument. Within the monument was a plaque, with the inscription, “STUDY TO SHEW THYSELF APPROVED UNTO GOD. 2 Timothy, 2:15”
That, certainly, was not good English, I concluded. Even at age eleven, I felt they needed a copyeditor.
The secondary school rusticated me for being part of a riot that the students organized and carried out with meticulous sagacity.
Flabbergasted, I traveled to Ile Ife where we lived, from Oyo, where I schooled.
My father was amused that they rusticated me.
“Did you really participate in the riot?” my father asked.
“I did not,” I answered.
My friend called me from Dallas last night and asked “Are you watching the trial of Derek Chauvin?”
I said no.
She continued, saying, “One must be careful not to spend too much time listening to the ongoing trial of the former police officer accused of murdering George Floyd, or you will become an expert in forensic pathology.”
“I don’t stand that risk,” I said.
“Unfortunately,” she replied, “I am becoming an expert in forensic pathology.”
I was three years old. He just bought a bicycle and I asked him to give me a ride. It was already night.
He placed me on the top tube of his bicycle. Excited, I leaned forward and held the handles. He also held the handles with the left hand, and the saddle with the other, while walking and pushing the bicycle. I imagined that I was riding the bicycle. I looked up and saw the moon.
My father told me the story of three thieves. He was a fiction writer, so I never knew if it was something he made up, or read up.
But let me tell you the tale if you got one minute:
Three thieves received info that a miner kept a large bundle of gold in his house. They decided they should go and relieve the guy of his treasure. “After all,” argued one thief, “he dug up this stone from the ground that God gave all of us.”
I ran into one of my childhood friends in Ile Ife two years ago. He is now a university professor.
We decided to go and get a drink and as we started drinking, we discussed the pleasures of living together in the same house as children for many years.
We all lived together as one family in that house.
He was the son of Baba Alhaji, the landlord.
If you got up early enough, you would catch Anti Toyosi bathing at the back of the Face-Me-I-Face-You building in which I grew up in Ile Ife. Her husband, a sign-writer, would still be fast asleep.
But Anti Toyosi always got up early to prepare rice that she sold to school students as breakfast before they went to school.
I met Antonia at a wedding party in Akure in 2011.
The wedding party was inside a high-end hotel, where the big politicians and rich people stay when in Akure.
My friend who was a commissioner had given me a room in the hotel, because I was writing an exhibition catalog, and needed a place with good internet service and constant power supply.