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Ahmad Adedimeji Amobi: The Stories We Carry With Us
I woke up to wet window nets, wet bed sheets and sprinkles of rain on the floor beside my bed. Overnight, it rained. But I was so dead that a touch of cold water couldn’t jiggle me out of the dreamscape. Last night, I slept with my phone perched on my ears and the last words I said were ‘Good night, talk to you tomorrow’ – as though tomorrow is promised. The wetness everywhere made me ruminate on the concept of sleep before rising to observe Subhi. How dead are we sometimes when we sleep? Do our souls rise from our bodies, far from us, up there, staring at the body it escaped from? My mum told me – and I read about it – that jinns live while we sleep and sleep while we live; like the intersection of day and night. At night, they prey on those whose beliefs are light like the thread of a cobweb. I believe I am safe when I sleep because I pray before sleeping. I am a believer.
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I hopped into Korope with my heart rising like a steep on the highway. I battle with anxiety and panic every time I set out to do something out of the ordinary. But when I get to its end, my anxiety becomes nothing. As the Korope conveyed me to where I’d take the bus to Ilorin, I was shuffling a lot of thoughts in my mind. First, I didn’t have cash. And it’s Sunday; POS agents don’t open. Yet, I was determined to get to Ilorin that day. Second, I didn’t know if travelling that day was a good idea. I hate it when I make decisions at the last minute. Whenever I’m travelling, I love to plan what clothes I’d wear, things I’d do, and what amount of money I’d spend for each day of my stay. Sometimes, plans fail but I like to think that I am an arranger of my life, a little bit in control, even though everything is in the hands of God. But I got money from a POS agent who decided to open on Sundays. God bless him. I was already on the bus, there was no going back now.
I have tried to desist from taking soólè (roadside) buses but what difference does it make? Park or not, Nigerian roads are riddled with danger. But that’s simply one of the reasons. In soólè busses, there are stories I carry with me until I cannot shoulder them anymore. There are stories that teach me about tolerance, life, living and about what living without living really means.
When the bus got to Omupo, the bus stopped to carry a man and two women. One of the women was fair, her eyes were distant and she carried her body as if it no longer belonged to her. As she was about to sit, she held out an arm and that was when I saw her wrist, bandaged with plaster and wool, blood sneaking out underneath. She sat and the other woman held her arm around her shoulder so she could lean on her. As the other woman and the man exchanged words, the fair woman did not say a word. She was just there, absent.
Seeing her plastered wrist reminded me of my sister. A while back, my sister gave birth. When it was time to go home, she held unto me weakly as a nurse untied the plaster and wool from her wrist. My sister told me she felt free.
This fair woman did not just give birth because I didn’t see a child, but her body expression was similar to my sister’s. When they got to a place after Ajase-Ipo, they alighted and that was when I saw her bump. Did she go for a test? Was she having delayed labour? Antenatal? Is she alright? My mind kept asking. And as we revved on, they simply faded from sight and left a part of themselves in my heart.
I have always looked forward to the day I’d have a family of my own. But experiences of women around me have made me tuck that thought away, hiding it in the recesses of my mind.
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A foot forward and I was trudging down the road that led to the gym. It has become a weekend ritual; walking to the gym with songs conveying me into a realm of thoughts. At the same time, I was conscious of my surroundings because I am too young to let my life on the loose or let a car scoop me off the floor. And it helps me notice everything around me: a trader hawking a tray full of wrapped raw pap, a car coming out of a white building, poking its mouth to allow the tyres to screech on the asphalt, a bunch of birds flying from here to there, some mouth-picking on the floor. It’s not a calm morning.
I envied them, the birds, for being free to fly under the expanse of the sky without limits. I wondered if they worry about life and what it has in store for them. If they carry burdens or shoulder certain responsibilities. I wondered if humans can be this free too; flying without limits. Maybe we can. Maybe not. Maybe we were not created to be free. Maybe we were created to carry stories and burdens in our minds. Birds were created to fly and eat. We were created for more.
I link every experience I encounter to myself: waking to the thoughts of jinns and remembering my mum; encountering a pregnant woman on a bus and remembering my sister; how walking to the gym plunges me into deep thoughts. I have become an embodiment of stories.
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