Life in Bashir Compound - Jumoke

After Baba Kanmi stole my memory, I left home and went to live in building number nine in Bashir compound. It was a house with twelve small rooms divided by a very narrow passage into six on each side. The structure of my house and the others like it were known as ‘Face-me-I-face-you,’ because the doors of the rooms were directly opposite each other. Each face-me-I-face-you was expected to have a communal toilet and bathroom, which all the rooms in the house shared, but we had no toilet or bathroom in Bashir Compound. We bathed in a stall made from corrugated iron sheets carefully arranged into a box. The box leaned against an abandoned building that stank always because it was used as a garbage dump and a burial yard for some malnourished children and the aborted babies of teenage girls. When the Sanitation Officers demolished our toilet, we started throwing our shit in the abandoned building, too.

The day the Sanitation Officers came, after demolishing the toilet, they locked building number nine with a big Diamond padlock. Our landlords disappeared for fear of being mobbed by their tenants, and in their absence, we wasted our frustration on cursing and sighing. We camped in different corners of the compound like refugees expecting relief, sleeping under the trees because the inhabitants of the other houses in the compound were unwilling to take anyone into their already overcrowded rooms. Those who could not find a place under a tree leaned against the wall of the house in frustration. Others leaned against the gravestones of Bashir ancestors. We battled mosquitoes and soldier ants, which bit unusually hard that night. It was as if they had trained for the task of sucking us dry of our blood. Parents of little children didn’t sleep, staying up to brush ants and mosquitoes from their children’s skin.

I couldn’t sleep. I spent the night listening to the snores of the others and driving mosquitoes away from a little boy whose mother, Ramota, had an amputated arm. The next day, when it was already past noon, our landlords came with a key and opened the house. No one fought with them. We were too tired to start anything. Quietly, we entered our rooms and slept with heavy hearts. Our landlords had been able to collect the key from the Sanitation Officers by giving them a payoff, then promising to build a hygienic toilet by the end of that month.

All the houses in Bashir Compound were built with mud. They were like boxes made from clay and covered with a zinc lid. The houses were so closely together neighbours could hear the conversations being held in the next house without listening too hard. Sometimes, they threw greetings to one another without leaving their rooms. The wall of every house in the compound was pasted with cement. Several years of this treatment had given the walls a blend of auburns and dull whites. Some houses in the compound wore thin coats of paint, but this did little to cover the poor plastering or the scrawling made with charcoal by little children learning to write. The roofs, made of second-hand rusty iron sheets, had so many holes in them that the sun shone through and dotted the floors. The landlords replaced the roofs only if the holes were big enough for rats to pass through. These landlords were great-grandchildren of Amidu Bashir, an Aso-Oke fabric merchant settler who died several years back.

.

The residents of Bashir compound were mainly rural migrants looking for work, illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries, or students who couldn’t afford better accommodation. Bashir compound was strategically buried deep in the heart of Lagos. Only the poor in search of their buried dreams knew how to find their way there.
***

An orange tree stood outside my room. Many people gathered under its shade during the day, but at night, only some men who lived in the compound occupied the tree. Women, children, and newcomers kept their distance, except for the woman, Sikira, who sold local gin mixed with roots to the men as they talked. The men gathered under the tree as they returned from work in the evenings and argued about politics, football, money, sex, women, and the events that took place in the compound during their absence. It was under this tree that they pronounced judgements and analysed hearsays.

Other women, like Angela and her friends, sometimes came to the men and cracked sensual jokes, the men laughing their appreciation. She and her friends blew kisses to the men, and walked around showing off parts of their breasts or stretch-marked hips in loosely never-buttoned waist-length shirts. The rest of the women, the wives and the hoping-to-marry, sat at a distance, engrossed in their own versions of how the day had gone, or heaping curses at Angela for butterflying around their husbands and boyfriends. Under-aged lovers hid in dark areas where the light from the moon mingled with the shadows and turned their bodies into one.
Most nights, Ngozi, who was considered the most beautiful girl in the compound, and her mother split the night with their raging voices as they fought furiously in Igbo over something no one had ever understood. Each night they quarrelled long into the night, and each night Ngozi’s mother cursed her loudly for something no one knew. The rumour was that Ngozi’s mother was beating her mixed-blood daughter for having an Onyibo father. After the fights at night, sometimes, when the men had gone into their rooms, Ngozi sat under the tree sobbing quietly until her mother came to drive her into the house.

There was hardly ever power in the area, usually because termites had again eaten the electric pole and it had fallen across the road, or the service transformers had blown up. On such days, I turned the wick of my kerosene lamp low and lay on the mattress

One night I lay on my bed, tired from the overtime I had put in at work. The Super Eagles of Nigeria were playing against the Lions of Cameroon in the African Cup of Nations final. The men had gathered behind my window, bantering with one another, while the woman who sold them gin arranged her bottles and roots on a makeshift table. There was power that night and the flood of an electric bulb lit up their meeting place. A 20′ television was connected to an extension cord running from one of the rooms, placed under the tree so they could all watch the match and place bets on the outcome, and listen to Albert talk.

Albert was rumoured to be an undergraduate in some university. Sometimes he was called ‘gra’, short for graduate, as if he had completed his degree. Mornings met him in his room. In the afternoons he took long strolls to unknown places, although he claimed he was going to the campus. Some nights when he sat with the men under the tree, an audience of fascinated women gathered close by, because of his newsy political stories. Somehow, Albert had managed to convince the men under the tree, and some members of building number nine, that he was more enlightened in matters of the government. He knew all the words that were spoken on radio. It was easy to agree because he had many fat books in his room. A well-arranged stack of books took up one corner of the room like a presiding idol.
Sometimes, I thought he was deliberately showing off his books too when he lifted his curtains up over the door on the pretext that the heat in the room was much. Occasionally, when the men argued under the tree, he brought one or two of the books out to cement his points.
As the men watched the soccer match, Albert, who had bet in favour of Nigeria, said of the Lions, ‘Those people can’t come and disgrace us here now!’ He collected bets from interested parties. There was tension in the air. The men fanned it with alcohol and invectives even as their anxiety grew at the bets they had made. The woman selling the liquor was doing good business.
Baba Rasaki, known by many as a do-nothing, was one of those who had placed a bet. He had an irritatingly coarse voice that stood out from the rest. He talked as if his brain was hopping around inside his skull, contributing little sense to the discussions. His gentle face contrasted with his voice and personality, which, when he’d had too much Paraga gin, became agitated and mean-spirited. He would curse everyone he came across when he was drunk, but usually, it was one or all of his three sons who bore the weight of his drunkenness.

Baba Rasaki stole from his sons, who had long been forced to fend for themselves doing odd jobs. When they challenged him, he would curse loudly and lengthily in Yoruba, ‘God finish your mother’s cunt! You, this bloody, motherless boy. You think you have a mother; what you have is a murderer. And that murderer of yours is in Aro mental home with roaches in her buttocks!’

The night of the match, Baba Rasaki and the other men waited impatiently for the game to end. While they waited, Rasaki, his eldest son, returned from work. He went straight into his room, ignoring the neighbours who greeted him as he entered the compound. Rasaki rushed out barely five minutes later, demented, and clutching an axe in his right hand. At first the people outside, still nursing the unruly slight Rasaki had given them upon his arrival, stared at him in confusion. Then they saw his eyes, which were dirty with fury, and concluded that he had gone mad.

Rasaki ran wildly to the centre of the yard, screaming, ‘Somebody will die today! Ha! Nobody should hold me!’ He waved the axe at the gathering crowd, ignoring the bewildered looks and the questions some of the neighbours were asking in an effort to quell his anger, ‘What is it? Are you alright?’

Then Rasaki sighted Saka, his younger brother who was trying to hide under a small table. Rasaki dragged him out forcefully, the crowd of observers glued to the spectacle as he swung the axe around dangerously, the glimmer of the blade blending with the wrath in his eyes. He ran into the crowd, which dispersed as he dragged his brother along.

‘Rasaki, what it is it?’ they asked, from a safe distance. ‘What happened?’

‘Broda Rasaki is mad!’ A neighbour who had just missed being hit with Rasaki’s swinging axe shouted, skittering to safety. More people came out of their rooms to watch the drama, but no one moved to take the axe from Rasaki’s grasp. When he dragged Saka in my direction, I hastily moved out of the way and people, who had come out of their houses to watch what was amiss, scattered in different directions like leaves blown by an ill-wind, and gathered again at a distance like a dutiful gardener had raked the leaves together. We joined the observers who had bunched in a corner that was not too far to watch the incident, yet very far from getting hurt.

Rasaki continued to drag his brother on the ground. The boy’s buttocks left a trough in the sandy ground as he was dragged along defencelessly. Rasaki waved his axe ferociously and dared anyone to stop him.

‘Who took my money? Who stole my sweat?’ he demanded of Saka, who struggled to lessen Rasaki’s asphyxiating hold around his neck. The boy stuttered between whimpers and harsh sobs, ‘Ask Ba-ba-ba, he entered the…’ but Rasaki didn’t listen to the rest. He pushed Saka to the ground, where the boy lay coiled and shivering.

Baba Rasaki seemed oblivious to the scene his son was making. He sat on a wooden bench under the tree, sipping the Paraga gin he had just bought. He had heard the results of the game on his friend’s portable radio, and his team had lost. Chin-in-hand, he pleaded for a refund or part-payment from the man with whom he had bet.

‘If you had won,’ the winner of the bet asked him, ‘would you have given me my money back?’ The argument was still going on when Rasaki sighted him and rushed up with an axe in his right hand. The winner of the bet flung the cup of Paraga he was drinking away and scampered to safety with the others.

‘Baba Osi! You, this useless never-do-well. You go die today!’
Rasaki slapped and kicked his father, who out of guilt and lack of strength from constant drunkenness remained on the ground, begging his first son for forgiveness.
It was a day when the devil was invited for a drink. Everyone watched with a barbaric curiosity as a tempest unveiled before them.

Baba Rasaki made his feet and tried to run, but he did not go far before Rasaki intercepted him. Balancing like a baseball batter, Rasaki swung the axe at his father’s left arm, which cracked like the branch of a tree.

The act seemed to sober Rasaki. A shockwave rippled through the now growing crowd, everyone staring at Baba Rasaki’s dangling arm, his tissues, muscles, and tendons dripping with blood. Just a thin strip of flesh held the arm from falling off. Baba Rasaki collapsed, his blood flowing out onto ground as from a water tap. There was a grave silence, and then the air suddenly shattered as the carnal display registered in the people’s minds.

Rasaki stood still. Some in the crowd wanted to lynch him. Many stood in groups, debating what should be done. A few didn’t join in the argument but concerned themselves with carrying Baba Rasaki to the nearby clinic, and two men held the boy to prevent him from escaping, although he remained calm, his eyes showing grief but not regret.

The story went round in the crowd that Baba Rasaki had stolen Rasaki’s money for the bet he’d made, thinking that if he won, he’d return the money and earn some, too. Rasaki had been saving in the kolo box under his bed for his university fees.
Later, when they dragged Rasaki to the police station, he cried, ‘Let me cut off all his limbs. A father who decides he has no use for his hands should be left with none. Let me cut that indolent man’s arms off!’

That night, the men did not converge behind my window. It was Ngozi who sat behind my window, singing tuneless songs in a car-screech voice, of how the world before her would crumble if she continued to have her mother around her, and some other things about wanting to marry for love. I was still wondering why she chose the back of my room to sing about heart-break when I heard a continuous rap, and her scream. Her mother was beating her again.

II

Some mornings, I woke early to go to the biscuit factory where I worked. I left at about 4am before other tenants in Building number nine did. If it was during Harmattan and the power was off the dew settled on the other side of the compound. I could not see the houses on the other side clearly; they appeared like the outline of an unfinished landscape painting. On these mornings, I bathed out in the open air and didn’t enter the bathing-cum-toilet shack. It was usually cold at this time of the morning, but it was the best time to bath without fear of being seen. These mornings I was usually alone, except for some chickens and one or two early risers from other houses going to fetch water at the communal well. Most members of building nine were late risers but sometimes one of them would come out to pee or to pour out the contents of their potty. Many times, if there had been a power outage the previous night, Albert slept out in the open air, under the tree where the men gathered. His makeshift bed was a wooden bench with a broken leg which formed a sloping chute perfect for reclining. His snoring flowed into the stillness of the morning like a faulty truck that failed to start. Sometimes, he woke early and tiptoed inside to his room in the house. The creaking and scratching of the wood against the cement floor as he opened the main door usually gave him away, and helped to wake me on those days when I slept more deeply than usual. What actually exposed him whenever he was trying to get in unnoticed were his shuffling feet. Albert walked liked a duck waddling. He never lifted his feet off the ground.

Sometimes, if he woke while I was having my bath he would shout in his quack-quack voice from afar.

‘Sista, Good Morning, how you dey?’

Struggling not to get any soap into my mouth, I’d respond, ‘I dey?’ Our greeting followed the same pattern each time. It was always the same words. He called out; I answered, and he’d walk into the house to resume his sleep.
One morning, not long after the incident with Rasaki and the axe, I heard feet running towards the stall.
‘Albert. Albert. I dey here o! Albert I dey bafo!’
The running persisted. I scooped some water over my body from a bucket, washed soap off my body, and ran into the bathing shacks, stepping on what felt like shit. In a swoop, I dragged my towel from the edge of a block where I had placed it and wrapped it around my waist; trying to wipe off the shit off my feet on a stone, only for the running feet to stop after all my effort. I watched for a few minutes, waiting for someone to appear from somewhere, but no one came. There was a brief quiet which gave me time to wonder if I really had heard running feet. A stuttering shout shattered my thoughts.

‘Wa’allahi…. Mallam, W’allahi….I no do. I no do again. I tire.’

The feet ran towards me, again.
‘Mallam please. Please. I no go do am again.’

Ramota’s Hausa-embroidered English broke my apprehension. Her voice rang into the morning like someone about to be pushed down a cliff. She switched from her English into what was like a surge of pleas, in straight Hausa. The lashing sound of a whip filled the air, between her shouting and sobbing. Instinctively, I cleared my sponge case, and poured the rest of the water in the bucket on my feet, then stepped into the shack, my leg hitting the corrugated iron covering as I rushed outside to see what was happening.

Ramota was standing in front of building number nine, swinging from side to side like a trapeze when I came out of the shack. Under the electric lights, her left hand was clasped over her stomach; directly under her watermelon breasts which swooped sideways as if they were going to jump off her chest. Two large welt strokes crossed her right breast and lengthened over her shoulder. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. It was the first time I was seeing breasts that big and round. It seemed like the most threatened part of her. Her amputated arm was raised as if she was trying to place it over her head. It seemed she had forgotten that it could not reach over her head. It stood parallel, on the right side of her head, like someone had placed a yam tuber across her face.

A man was at the door that led into the house. He leaned against the doorframe, and his eyes were fixed on Ramota. I had never seen him in the house before that day. Ramota was a single mother who lived alone with her son, Musa. Ramota once told us that she was born with full limbs. She said her hand was cut off her, after she was charged with stealing her in-law’s meat. They took her to the Sharia Court and cut off her hand before she could explain that she saw a rat eating it, and had thrown it away to prevent her in-law from sharing a meal with a rodent. After this incident in her home state, her husband brought her to Lagos, and visited her once in six months. He had stopped visiting three years ago. No one disbelieved her, but we had never seen her husband.

‘Good morning.’ The man didn’t look at me as I greeted. His face was fixed on Ramota, and it was tidied up from showing any emotion. I looked towards Ramota, now on the floor, her breasts looking less threatened. She held her clothing with her amputated arm, by pressing it to her side. I waited, for a while, not sure if I could ask questions about the cause of the fight.

‘Good morning.’ My feet shuffled back and forth. I wanted to move closer to the unfamiliar man, who seemed familiar enough to Ramota, and I wanted to remain close to Ramota, like I could protect her from this man, whose Jalamia gown stopped at his ankle. His head was higher than the lintel of the house.

‘Good morning.’ I repeated. The man raised his head up, like he finally noticed that someone was there. He nodded, but didn’t say a word. He could as well have simply changed the position of his head.
‘Abeg.’ I said for no reason. He looked at me this time, and raised the whip in the air. I stepped back. I knew if this man decided to beat me, he would do so unchecked.
‘Abeg what? Do you know what she has done?’ He spoke in very clean Yoruba. I was expecting him to speak in Ramota’s kind of pidgin laced Hausa or her sing-song Yoruba. His face remained on Ramota as he spoke.
‘Abeg.’ I couldn’t say anything else.
He ignored me, and moved towards Ramota. She had changed her position on the ground and now her head was buried in the cave of her legs as if she was checking something between her thighs. He helped her up, and said something in Hausa as he dusted away the sand on her body. They both walked past me into the house, like I had not been there. ‘Wetin happen?’ Albert asked wiping a side of his mouth from spittle, while moving towards me. He had been sleeping through the incident on his bench, or pretending to. I didn’t know what to think. Baba Nuru, one of the landlords, came out just as Ramota and the man who I later understood to be her husband went inside the house.
‘Albert na you dey fight aunti?’ Asked the landlord.
I looked at Albert and the landlord and went to my room without saying a word.

Later that night, the men returned from work and gathered under the tree. They discussed Ramota, but they avoided mentioning her name because she was close by with the other women. Her husband sat a distance where he could watch her; his distance was obviously intentional, he didn’t want to be called a woman-wrapper by onlookers. It seemed like he was avoiding being too close to the men too. He seemed to have noticed that they were discussing him. Occasionally, he stole long glances at the men, like he wished to join them but had bigger business to worry about.

I had just returned from work, and sat some metres away from the men under the tree. That night, the darkness hid the shadows except on Sikira’s gin table, where the lights from the few kerosene lamps, made from used milk tins, reflected against her bottles of paraga local gin; a reminder for the men to lighten up their talk with frequent drinking.

The men sometimes made audible references to Ramota’s husband, as if daring him to speak against them. The blend of their conversation made it difficult to know specific speakers, except when a name was mentioned, or someone with a distinctive voice spoke.
‘What kind of man is that? After three years, you come back to your wife and you begin to beat her.’
‘You cannot judge.’
‘Who says you cannot judge, what responsible man would leave a woman alone for three years, in the cold harmattan nights…all those rainy season… and the first thing you do when you meet her is beat her.’
‘Who told you he was beating her?’
‘What else can make a woman cry that loud?’
‘A big prick; a very long prick will make a woman cry through the night.’
‘Haaaaaa!’ Loud laughter followed, and jumbled bantering over the sizes of penis and the havoc it could cause if it was too big.
‘Is she just realising that it is too big? Hasn’t he always been her husband? Is he not the one that gave her her son?’ Another queried.
‘I think the husband thinks she is kicking someone else’s ball behind his back.’
‘Of course, three years is enough to kick ball with someone else.’
‘But the woman was shouting “it is enough” in Hausa now.’
‘Is that the meaning of what she was saying?’
‘Then that means the man found out that she is having an affair, and he decided to give her three years fucking! That is the best punishment for an unfaithful woman. Her legs will ache so much she will never go near another man.’
‘Who say? The man wants to die be that, don’t you know woman is made not to get tired?’ Sikira interjected the speaker, clapping her hands together in excitement as she spoke.

The men laughed loudly, and this time they seemed to attract the attention of others in the compound who peered over to see what they were missing. Some moved closer to find out, and seeing that the men were having their usual conversation, backed away.
‘Me that I stay at the extreme of the compound heard the beating as if it was by my mat. If I had come out. Ha! I will have finished the man. You don’t beat a good woman like that.’ I knew that one to be Bidemi’s voice. His trombone voice belied his look of an underfed fifteen years old.
When I moved into the compound three years before , I had once asked him to fetch water for me at the well, offering him 20 Naira for his service. He had stood looking at me speechless; it was Iya Garri, my landlady, who told me in Yoruba,
‘If you look closely at his face, you will see the days on his head are far.’
Bidemi was known to say everything he wouldn’t do. The rumour was that he was having a relationship with Ramota. The men sniggered as he spoke, understanding that he seemed uncomfortable with the talk. One of them seemed to have been looking for an opportunity to insult him, and said,
‘But Bidemi you beat your wife sometimes….I am looking forward to the day that girl would become bigger than you, she will be sitting on your head like Baba Ghana. You know she be Yoruba woman, and our women they grow big immediately they drop one child. Your beating will be more regularly than Baba Ghana’s own. She will return all the beatings you have given her in the past years.’
Bidemi looked at Baba Ghana to say something. Baba Ghana looked away. He was smaller than Bidemi, his arms were halved, and ended up at his waist. He had a quick mouth, and he was always beaten by his very big wife who came visiting on weekends. She lived on the other side of town with his children, and came on weekends to collect feeding allowance. But his mouth never eased him; his friends under the tree always said God had given him the tongue that would abuse a dead man so much that he would in anger, rise for a fight.
‘You know, Bidemi knows himself, so he chose someone he can deal with for a wife.’ Albert said.
Bidemi continued to stare at Baba Ghana, who seemed less bothered with the remarks, remaining unusually silent. Seeing that Baba Ghana was not in a talking mood, he faced Albert and said,
‘Na love I take marry my wife. And I don’t beat her. That one is different. My wife is….don’t worry sha, you people won’t understand what it means to have Simbi as a wife. She is simply trouble.’ He then turned to Albert, ‘Gra, you were there this morning now. What happened?’
‘Abeg leave those ones jare. I got there when they had finished their madness….na fuck carry dem com outside…’
‘They did it outside?’ No one answered Baba Ghana, who recovered his voice at what appeared to him a perversion.
‘But that woman is trying o.’ Titus got up, ‘you mean she has been three years without it,’ jerking his waist as he spoke.
‘So? Is it food?’ Sikira poured some Palaga gin into a cup and passed it to Baba Ghana while looking at Bidemi, as if daring him to respond. Albert chose the silence to begin another discussion.
‘The one we are talking is sweet self; compared to the fact that government wants to increase the price of petrol.’
‘They are not well. How can?’ I asked.
‘How can’t what? Why are you asking this kind of question? How can’t they increase the pump price? Is this the first time?’
Some children ran into the gathering screaming and throwing themselves onto the ground. One of them lifted sands onto our bodies and hurriedly scuttled away. Albert yelled.
‘If you come here again, I will break your heads!’ But they kept running around. A little boy with a protruding head ran between my legs as he avoided a slap from Bidemi; he stepped on my toes, and ran off as I swung my hand to hit him, falling down with feigned exhaustion at a distance. His friends laughed at him.

‘If I handle one of these children, their mamas no go know dem again.’ Pastor shouted in a mix of Yoruba and pidgin. He had been very quiet this night.

Albert cleared his voice and continued.

‘Some men came to that place yesterday.’ He pointed his fingers to a part of the compound where children sometimes went to play. There were big, round metal pipes at that end. It had never bothered me, and I guess anyone in the compound.
‘Gra, what are those things self?’
‘I think it is water pipe; see water pipe passing our compound and we don’t have water.’
‘Who tell you? It is petrol…’
‘Petrol? You think if there is petrol here, government will not have trowey us from here?’
The men argued amongst themselves for a while, and when the argument seemed not to have a head, they became silent, waiting for Albert, who had generated the debate and always seemed to know more about these things.

None of the men said a word. Their silence seemed to balance the screams and trailing laughter of women and children gathered in different corners of the compound. Suddenly, Albert stood up. He walked towards the uncompleted building that served as a dump.
‘How can we accept living like a-a-a…like a what-I-don’t-know? Don’t you know we need a toilet?’
He looked around at the bewildered faces shaded by the dim of the night’s moon. There were mutterings of ‘I told you so’, like it was only a matter of time, before he would be certified officially mad.
‘We can make them build one for us!
‘You want to build toilet for us in Bashir compound?’ Do-good asked. He rarely
talked.
‘What is toilet got to do with Pipe now? Albert you well?’ His Yoruba was violent.
‘Do you know what those big pipes are for?’ He asked, pointing his fingers to a part of the compound no one ever went to. ‘Petrol! They carry petrol to every place in Lagos. One day, one day…’
‘Who? The landlords? For where Albert please don’t tell us that kind of story, the landlords have not repaired your leaking roof, how will they give you a toilet? That place…’ he said pointing to the dump, ‘…never full. With the kin things wey we dey throw inside, you think toilet go fit contain am.’ He chortled like a bird. One of the landlords who sat in the gathering had remained silent, but when the argument became heated he voiced his anger.
‘If we build toilet, will you people be able to throw all those nonsense inside?’
‘Which nonsense?’
‘The babies you abort!’ The dispute became one between the landlord and Albert. The rest of us listened.
‘Soon the tenants fight you.’ Albert poked his finger at the landlord’s face and began another topic.

III

The men who gather under the tree in Bashir Compound at times remind me of my father and his friends in the village. There was a tree in front of our house too; a big mango tree, where the village men gathered as they returned from the farms carrying gourds of palm wine, with their hoes slung over their shoulders. They would sit under the tree, discussing their farm produce while the women — their wives and daughters– prepared food for them in the houses. When food was ready in one woman’s house, and she came to call her husband, all the men followed him. All of them would go to the man’s house and eat his food, and then they would leave for another man’s house to eat, and it went round like that until they had gone round the village. They never went to Baba Kanmi’s house because he did not have a wife.
When I was younger, I was the one only one who sat close to my father’s feet under the tree, listening to the men as they talked about things I could not understand. My brothers were not allowed to do this. My father was pleased with me because I was doing well in school at the time.
My heart pulled itself. I really wished to go home to the village. But I was not sure I could go home without opening a can of worms. I wished to see my parents again; and explain to them what happened that night, that I did not bring disgrace upon them. Only I know it was Baba Kanmi that brought it upon me. Till this day, I cannot say what happened between me him and I.

Papa and I had just returned from one of the men’s houses where we had gone after we left the gathering under the tree.
‘I think Enitan is getting too old for this sitting down under the tree business o!’
My mother was complaining to him, and my father, not wishing for me to hear the rest of her argument, remembered that he had forgotten to give Baba Kanmi some kola nut. I was asked to rush over to his place. ‘Enitan is not a boy; you seem to forget that a lot. She is not a man. How…’ My father nudged me to leave. I walked out of the compound. The night had walked into homes that could not afford to light their kerosene lantern, so people gathered in front of their houses. I greeted them as I walked past.

Baba Kanmi’s house was close to the road that led out of the village, and it rested on the hills so that he could see everything in the village. Sometimes the villagers teased that he was our guardian, appointed by the gods.
I met Baba Kanmi sitting at the doorstep, eating eko. He talked like someone who had lost his front teeth.
‘Where is your father?’
‘He sent me to bring this to you.’
I handed him some kola nuts wrapped in leaves. He took them, asked me to sit inside. I used to wonder why Baba Kanmi didn’t have a wife like the other men who came to sit under the tree until Baba told me that his wife died in childbirth many years before I was born, and his only son, Kanmi now lived in Lagos with his uncle, the elder brother of his mother. The brother’s wife had insisted that it was the only way she could be consoled over the death of his sister.
‘His wife family didn’t think that he needed any consolation, because they believed he killed his wife.’
‘How did they think he killed his wife?’
‘I can’t answer that question now,Enitan., I think Baba Kanmi may have his problems, but he is a good man. If I die today, I would like him to take care of my family, because he shares the ideals I have.’
That was many months before the day he sent me to Baba Kanmi’s house. An owl hooted in the distance. I still remember the sombreness of listening to it as I wondered if it was in pain. It hooted at intervals.
‘Sit there I am coming. I also want to give your father something.’ Baba Kanmi entered the house, and I stood by the door, waiting for him. There was an oil lamp, made from clay that had been moulded like a woman. The wick came out of her open mouth. Baba Kanmi rustled through some things at the back of the door.
‘Come and help me, inside here, I think my eyes are getting weak. You still have the eyes of an eagle.’
I went in laughing. The only piece of furniture in the room was a mat. He had laid it on the ground, close to the wall. Some clothes hung over a nail on the wall.
‘Your father tells me that you are going to the next stage of your teacher training. You are doing well at a very young age. Will you come back to the village after your schooling in the city?’
I nodded, but the room was dark and he didn’t notice I had answered his question.
‘Aren’t you listening to me?’
‘I am sir.’
‘Ok. Take this and give….’
That was the last thing I remembered. Blankness swallowed me, and I left myself. Mama insists that Baba Kanmi had used Juju on me. When I came to myself, my clothes were rumpled in a heap on one side of the room. I was on the mat with Baba Kanmi. His trousers were half-way down his legs. My thighs ached. My head ached.
‘You are a woman now. I just made you a woman.’
I knew what he had done to me, but I didn’t know how he had done it. He placed his hands on my shoulder.
‘My daughter….You can come here…’ I burst into a loud wail.
‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!’ I tried standing up from the mat in a hurry, and my legs slipped to the ground.
‘Enitan! Enitan!’
I hurriedly picked up my clothes from the corner. Baba Kanmi was struggling into his trousers, as my father’s voice drew closer. He knocked on the door; the lights from the oil lamp had been switched off. It was a slice of the moon’s light lit an angle of the room, but not where we laid. One could only see if their eyes were accustomed to the dark. Baba Kanmi’s hands were placed on my mouth, so I could not shout. Papa came into the house, talking loudly to himself, about the carefree nature of Baba Kanmi, who left his doors open, mindless that snakes could crawl into the place.
‘But, where did this girl go to? I think I should heed her mother, and stop sending her out like a man…anyway I will drop…’
His legs kicked my side.
‘Baba Kanmi? He didn’t answer to his name.
Papa must have bent down to feel, or perhaps his eyes, like mine, had become accustomed to the darkness in the room. When I had heard his voice before, I had seen death, but when I saw him walk out of the room speechless, I didn’t know what to think. I burst into tears, with the thought that my father had been part of it. It was later that I realised that he had been stunned, and had left in a daze. There was visible shock on his face, and that was only time I had seen Papa have to control his anger.
Baba Kanmi stood up quickly from my side;
“I will marry her. I want to marry her.”
He ran after Papa but stopped when he got to the steep of the hill. With my cloth gathered in my hand, I ran as far as the coverings from the house could take me. Then I walked back to a side of the house and put my clothes back on as my body convulsed with tears. Later that night when I got home, there was no one outside. I felt like what I had done was already known. But Papa didn’t tell anyone, it was God who did. I became pregnant.

One night, when the men under the tree had gone into their rooms, I lingered outside for a while, watching the quiet of the compound. Ngozi and her mother had just had their usual quarrel, and she had ran out of the compound, as her mother shouted at her not to come back to her house until she decided to be submissive.
From time to time, a child’s cry split the fake calm that was descending slowly. Once it was morning I knew that things would again go back to normal. Fighting spouses, cursing mothers, idle fathers getting drunk on Monkeytail or Palaga gin as early as 7 am.
I finally walked into my room after a while. I used to share the room with Rebecca, but she travelled to Libya with her boyfriend, who had promised to take her to Spain. They went through the deserts, and I had not heard from her since she left. I walked into the room, deep in thought, flashing my torch around the room. After the day someone saw a snake in his room, I had bought a torch.

My torch rested on Ngozi. She was crouched in a corner behind the door. Her hands were clasped over her knees and she was asleep. A scarf lay by her feet. I tapped her gently, and as if she had been waiting for me to come in all the while, she placed her index finger lightly on her lips, and with begging eyes, asked me not to scream. I walked towards her with careful steps, wondering what could have brought her into my room of all places. The magnetism of her beauty, which I had always admired from far, pulled me to her, and made me heed the pleas in her eyes. I sank on my knees by her, and waited, wondering what her story was.

IV

Deep into the night, the shrill voice of Ngozi’s mother pierced the compound, cutting my sleep short. I tapped Ngozi lightly on her shoulder. She stirred, mumbling some incoherent things. The dull lights of the half-current electricity made her shadow grotesque. Her mother called out again. Her voice seemed close, like she was on my doorstep.
‘Ngozi, come out now.’
Later, at about 2.15 am, her voice shook with doubt and fear.
‘Ngozi, we will talk well. Biko nu. Come out please.’
Her voice had lost its initial aggression, and given way to uncertainty. She rambled between English and Igbo. Then there was quiet, like her mother had given up on her coming back to the room.
‘What was she saying?’
‘She said I should come back, that she would overlook my actions.’ And with a shrug she said, ‘but she still wants me to marry that man.’
‘Which man?’ She was silent. My eyes remained on the door.
‘My mother wants me to marry one of those men who bring tankers here every night. They have given her plenty money. She is even building house, but the man said he will collect the house if she does not bring me to him.’

I sat up on the mattress, stretched my legs so that blood could flow through.
‘Which man…? What tanker?’
That night, we didn’t sleep, as she told me of what I did not know, and what many people in the compound did not know either. Every night, some men came with big tankers to the pipelines at the extreme of the compound, and they pumped petrol into it.
‘Why will they come to….are they government people?’
‘It is petrol.’ She was making herself believe.
‘My brother says it is petrol.’ And as if it dawned on her that the thing being pumped was not the issue, she said in a crying voice;
‘Aunty I don’t want to marry that man. He smells of garlic.’
‘If he didn’t smell of garlic, will you marry him?’
She didn’t talk. She sunk her chin onto her chest, and sat up almost immediately too, although there was no reason to change her sitting position.
‘How come your mother wants you to marry the man?’
‘He said he liked me…I don’t know what happened between them, but I just know that, me o! I don’t want to marry that garlic-man.’
We talked about other things into the night. At 4.30am, I began getting ready for work.
‘Aunty I am sorry o.’
‘Why?’
‘You will go to work, and I didn’t allow you to sleep.’
‘Actually, I will cope. What I am thinking about now is how we will get you out of this room without suspicion.’
‘I will go now now. And stay by the door, so she will think that I slept out in the open.’
I stared at her for a long time, and then buying her suggestion, moved over to a corner where my toiletries were, and left the room without saying a word, only to meet Iyabo screaming at the top of her voice.
‘Come out! And claim your rights! It is time for justice - toilet is a necessity.’
Some tenants peeped out from their doors, and came out only when they saw others trickling out in ones, twos, threes to join the protest. It was three days after the toilet issue had been discussed under the tree. Albert walked from one door to another banging the wooden doors, asking people to come out. He walked in and out of houses, patting the shoulders of loyal tenants. He murmured indecipherable words of comfort to every one that came out pronto, as if he was a general giving his soldiers a much needed morale boost. One by one, sleepy occupants walked out of their rooms like puppets being drawn for a performance.
‘What is it?’ Pastor asked sleepily.
‘We want to do toilet riot.’ Ramota said heartedly. She raised her bad arm up. ‘Today is the day!’

One after the other, the tenants in house nine gathered under the tree, waiting. Several excited side-talks started. Murmuring escalated into disturbance. Some voices called out from the other houses for us to lower our voices, but the excitement of the revolting voices didn’t heed the pleas.
‘Craze house, you people have started. You didn’t even wait for daylight before you resumed your day madness. Please leave us alone let us sleep o!’ A hoarse voice laced with sleep screamed from the next house.
‘Are we holding your sleep? If you get sense you suppose to come out here and join us.’ Iyabo, a woman with a hilly behind reiterated. Her sleep-clear voice contrasted that of the man’s drowsiness. She stood akimbo. Her eyes roved to and fro as she broiled for a fight. She was fond of boasting of her popularity in the area.
‘If you are finding me just ask for the woman with the back-with-load.’ Her Yoruba was foggy with motor park slang. All her talks ended with a long deep breathe and a sound of surprise.
‘May you people not see sleep oh!’ The man hollered. He opened his window a crack and rendered more curses in Yoruba.
‘Your family won’t know sleep. The-owner-of-bad-head!’ Iyabo cursed back. She removed her head-scarf and tied it around her waist, adjusting the wrapper - as she gestured for a fight. The other tenants who were not involved in the exchange of words booed the man. Now infuriated and resigned to the madness of the morning, he drew his curtain down, all the while raining loud curses.

Albert came out of the house with some cardboard papers under his armpit. He moved towards the waiting agitators.
‘We will soon start, please be patient.’
It was beginning to seem like the agitation was never going to take place. Many people rested their tired bodies against the headstones of the graves in the compound while waiting for what was to come after. A few people sat on the sandy floor dozing, and stirring only when Albert’s voice rose in an unusual tempo, or when a coarse laugh reached the ear.
‘Aliu nko?’
‘Aliu what? You want Aliu to come and join us? Abeg, let’s start Jare! At least people that are normal are out already. Leave those whose heads are not correct in the house!’ Iyabo said.
All the tenants came out except Aliu. He was a half-sane drummer who made drums out of everything. He drummed on the walls with sticks. At other times it was buckets. There were times when his insanity leaped beyond the bounds of inanimate objects and he made his music from the buttocks of any woman bended over a chore - usually, washing clothes or plates. Many of the women in Bashir compound rarely squat; they bend over in half, with their heads down and buttocks up in the air. Aliu would tap the buttocks like a drum, thrumming until the woman - who was usually too shocked at first to do anything drove him away, cursing. On normal days when he seemed stable, he earned his living, by drumming at open-air parties and in the marketplace. Rumour had it that his parents had abandoned him in Lagos as a baby; because he had two penises. It was said that he took his bath at midnight because no one had seen him enter the shack to take his bath. Others said he went to the public bathroom, on the other side of town to take his bath, so he would not be seen. Another rumour had it that he was not really mad and was pretending for some shady business he did.

Grumblings and murmurings rose gradually amongst the tenants as the wait continued. The smell of human carcass, shit and rotten food wafted into our midst. Saliva swiftly travelled from different tongues to the ground. I let out a stream of gathered spit.
‘You want to bath me in your spit?’ Someone said. Without looking behind me to see who it was I waved my hand in apology.
‘No vex.’
Wiping a side of my mouth with my cloth. Saliva rolled down to my right cheek. Albert moved to us and silenced the blabbing of the person I spat on.
‘Just wait. Please. We need everyone to be involved, let me get the others.’ He cleared his throat and spat phlegm onto the ground as he walked into the house. When he returned he passed out cardboards that had some things scrawled on it to some of us.
‘You have to give everybody card to carry.’ Pastor said.
Many of us who had come out at his first knocking leaned wearily on the several headstones in the compound. There were several graves of dead family members of Amidu Bashir. They dotted the compound. The graves were conspicuous enough to be noticed. It was one of the things any newcomer noticed when he entered the compound. The dead lived next to the living. The headstones were vertical slabs of cement with words impressed on them with - most likely - nails. If there were no houses in Bashir Compound, it could easily have passed as a cemetery converted into a home by desperadoes. Once a visitor became a regular on the compound, it was easy to see less of the several slabs noticed on the first day.
It was what led the tenants’ in house number nine to unanimously agree to Albert’s toilet demonstration.