The Courageous |
by Tubal Cain |
|
...It
is good to have money to buy things that money can buy, but its better
not to lose things that money cannot buy.
——George Horace Lorimer
A
mild drama took place inside the commercial Bus Ahmed entered on
his way home from work one Thursday afternoon. It was the large recklessly
driven type of rowdy yellow Bus popularly
referred to as ‘Molue’ which is common on Lagos
Highways.
Ahmed
sat between two men at the back-row thinking deeply. His thought lingered on
the financial problems facing his family. His three kids were to leave for
School in three days and there was no money for their School fees. The
plastic wares shop he had opened for the wife was not bringing much and the
rent was due at the end of the month. The landlady was already threatening
them with quit notice, and he was barely able to feed his family. His monthly
income from the Bakery where he worked was too small. From past experience,
Ahmed knew no one would lend him money even if he tried. Still thinking, he
slept off completely oblivious of everything going on
around him within the Bus.
A
short bald fellow gripping a leather sack had entered the Bus at the
same time with Ahmed. He had gone to a seat in front of Ahmed’s row and
squeezed himself between two elderly men quietly. As he tried to drop
the sack in front of the row, the man sitting by his left protested
rudely saying the sack was resting on his leg. The bald fellow shifted the
sack to right, the man sitting by his right complained loudly saying he
should hold his sack. The short fellow just dropped the sack and relaxed
backwards pressing his hostile neighbours further backwards on to the backrest
behind the seat. Provoked by the bald fellow’s action, the man by his right
grabbed the sack and pushed it directly on his legs. The fellow returned the
sack to its former position while asking the man on his right to respect
himself, the man instead pushed the sack further. It led to a struggle
between the three men till the bag got torn. A live Cobra’s head emerged from the torn spot
causing pandemonium within the Bus.
The hostile fellows along with the owner of the sack left the seat running,
other passengers rushed to the front of the Bus and pleaded with the driver
to stop while Ahmed sat there sleeping. The driver stopped the Bus on a
kerb at the side of the road while the passengers scampered down
through the front door.
The
snake slithered out of the sack. It coiled up raising its head facing Ahmed
directly, its darting fangs were on the same level but a few feet away from
Ahmed’s face. It was the noise from other passengers that were watching
through the doors and windows of the bus that woke Ahmed. On seeing the
snake and its darting fangs so close to his face, Ahmed passed-out
wetting his trousers.
Promptly,
one of the passengers got in through the rear-door and killed the snake.
Ahmed was taken to a nearby hospital by one of the passengers. It was
the identity card which was found in his pocket that enabled them
to trace his office from where his family was contacted.
Ahmed regained consciousness that night but acted very strangely. The Doctors
at the hospital initially felt he was bitten by the snake but thought
otherwise when they couldn’t find the spot and he had woken up
without any of the symptoms. Ahmed stayed in bed refusing to talk to anyone
for three weeks. He was placed on Dextrose in normal Saline
intra-venous drips having refused to eat solid food throughout the
period.
Ahmed’s financial problems overwhelmed him, he decided to feign a strange
illness and remain at the hospital till his problems solved themselves. The
strategy worked, the kid’s school fees, the rent and hospital
expenses were paid by the bakery before he left the Hospital. He agreed
he was well enough to leave the hospital speaking for the first time after
three weeks when he overheard the Doctors telling his wife that he will be
discharged the following day.
ii
Ahmed
lived in bondage generally. It was not that he enjoyed such a lifestyle. He
had unconsciously inflicted this condition upon himself years earlier. It was
not the common kind of bondage involving the relationship
between a master and his slave. His own kind of bondage was domestic in
nature. His problem had arisen from an inner conflict between the wish to
live a recklessly banal lifestyle and the desire to conform completely with
societal standards in attempt to please and maintain a harmonious
relationship with everyone. The conflict manifested in the contrasting
pursuits he made since his childhood days. As a young man fending for himself,
Ahmed found out that people were not willing to help him whenever he was in
difficulty or had problems. Despite his amiable disposition, he had to
trick or coerce people into cooperating with him whenever he was in
need. He had lost his parents in an accident at the age of fifteen,
difficulties associated with growing-up without parental love and care
hardened him. Ahmed became cruel and callous even before he reached the age
of twenty.
An
indigene of Maiduguri in Borno state, he first sold off his father’s
landed property within his village and travelled widely before settling down
in Niamey. He secured a job working as an Interpreter and a Bilingual Editor
for “Succour for the Needy,“ a Philanthropic organization floated by
an association of religious groups with a regional office in Niamey the
capital of Niger Republic. Ahmed’s job was threatened when he stubbornly
allowed the publication of a defamatory article on the front page of the
organization’s monthly magazine. The article had criticised the
authorities of the organization for desperately soliciting for and obtaining
food aid from various sources which they sold to the less privileged
enriching themselves in the process. While the article caused an
internal crises in the organization, there was a world-wide reaction to
it from different religious groups.
A
Christian organization reacted by questioning the sources and moral
justification behind some of the organization’s food distribution programmes.
It accused the organization of feeding some of the less
privileged Christians with what it described as “Forbidden Mutton,“
food that it alleged was against their faith. The Christian
organization documented the fact that the philanthropic firm was regularly
sending remains of meat sacrificed to strange deities during
pilgrimages to Christians within the African
continent.
Ahmed was queried
for allowing the article on the monthly Magazine. He left the
firm without resigning after the query. He started off as a
white-slaver in the southern part of Niger Republic after leaving the
job. He had posed as a wealthy businessman trying to help some of the
less privileged families in his village. It was after selling out the
remaining part of his father’s landed properties in neighbouring
villages despite the uncle’s warnings that he schemed out the dubious
idea. He approached some families with generous financial gifts
asking for the consent to take their teenage daughters abroad. He claimed he
had secured several factory jobs for them outside the country. Most of the
families approached obliged him. He conveyed the girls by road to Birnin-Koni
through the porous Illela border route in Sokoto state. He then coerced
the girls into prostitution after seizing their travelling documents and
starving them for several days. He lived extravagantly on the proceeds
from the girls’ labours.
Ahmed’s
line of trade which was popularly called the ‘connection business’ in Niger
Republic thrived profitably in the late nineties. His set-up near
the popular KADO - HOTEL was very lucrative since he could speak
both French and Arabic languages, he had many friends among the
influential indigenes. Ahmed ran one of the most sophisticated hospitality
brokerage institutions in Niger Republic at the time. He also hired several
mud-brick apartments from the indigenes which he rented out to other
non-nationals at very exorbitant rates.
Ahmed
became a wanted man in his village after one of his captives, or rather one
of his ‘connections’ had escaped to tell the story of his exploits at home.
With threats from parents of the ’connections’ coming from his
village, Ahmed sought for an easy way out of Niger Republic . He
hastily fell in love with the lurid skills of one of his connections and
married her.
Thalatu,
the skilled ‘connection’ was light-fingered. She successfully drugged
one of her customers, an unsuspecting French tourist and stole his
briefcase while he was still sleeping.
She had confided in Ahmed who suggested that they should escape after he had
discovered that the brief case held a large sum of money in various
currencies that night. They travelled to Lagos and hired an apartment
at the Ilaje water-front near Bariga within the Lagos mainland.
It
was a week after settling down in Lagos that they both discovered that a
greater portion of the money within the briefcase were counterfeited notes.
It led to a serious misunderstanding between them as Thalatu accused Ahmed of
replacing the notes with counterfeits in attempt to cheat and
abandon her. She took to drinking and seized the remaining
part of the money squandering it on gambling sprees till it was exhausted.
Ahmed
could not return to Niger Republic nor his village as he had been declared
wanted in both places. Stuck in Lagos with an erratic wife and no money, he
took to surviving on menial jobs.
With
time, they raised three kids. Thalatu became very difficult over the
years, she had an insatiable craving for stimulants and constantly threatened
to inform the police about the crimes they committed together over the
years. Afraid of going to jail, Ahmed was helpless and lived in total
submission to the whims of his wife.
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The Courageous by Tubal Cain
© Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be duplicated or copied without the expressed written consent of the author.
