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Pages from a Suicide Note

By Isaac Attah Ogezi (Nigeria)

Pages from a Suicide Note

By

Isaac Attah Ogezi

    Three hours later, the faculty was gradually coming awake with the arrival of smartly dressed students. The sun had slowly come up, stripping the faculty building of the veil of mist. Samson watched as the students arrived, clutching books. The rich ones among them arrived in their expensive cars for the morning lectures. If his brother was alive, he’d have been one of these students but that was not to be as his body lay in the mortuary of the University Teaching Hospital for onward transmission to their hometown.  Yesterday, he was at the office of the Dean of Students Affairs to arrange the details of how to convey his remains home. When a final decision could not be reached, he was referred to the Dean of the Faculty of Law for further information concerning his brother’s death. By the time he arrived at the Faculty of Law, he was told the Dean had closed for the day. Stranded and financially incapacitated, Samson checked into the cheapest hotel around, directly opposite the University gates, just a walking distance across the road. After a fitful night, he was here again this morning to see the Dean.

    The Dean’s office was as large as a volley-ball field, with an array of three-seater sofas well-arranged round the three sides of the rectangular shape except for the Secretary’s corner. Hung on the walls were portraits of scholars and world-renowned legal luminaries. The only name that struck a cord in Samson’s mind was Lord Alfred Denning, a name very popular even beyond the confines of the legal community like William Shakespeare. How many times had he not heard his brother Adoka mention that name to flesh his arguments with his colleagues during holidays at Keffi?

    A glance at the wall-clock indicated some few minutes to 11 a.m. He had now been here for more than two hours. The Dean had come in at about 9 a.m. with a large retinue of friends and students and made straight for his inner office. There had been some entrances and exits by visitors and students alike but nobody seemed to remember him. Presently, the intercom on the Secretary’s desk came alive. The Secretary quickly picked it up and after a minute or two of exchange, said: ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir’ and signaled Samson to the inner door. ‘You may go in now. He’s free to see you.’

    Samson’s feet suddenly felt weak like a condemned prisoner on a death row informed that he had to be transferred to another prison, a journey he knew would end in his being catapulted to eternity. What would the Dean say to him? He trembled at the thought of any statement that would make his grief more unbearable. He fiddled at the door handle and just when he was about to call for the help of the Secretary, the door opened inwards. The Dean lifted his eyes from the laptop he was working on and gestured him to an upholstered chair opposite him. He was a short, burly man with a small, balding bullet-shaped head. When he turned on his swivel chair, a habit he had developed since his assumption of office as the Dean, his pot-belly always heaved as if the life kicking within was provoked.

    ‘I understand you were here yesterday?’ he stated rather than asked.

    ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Samson lamely. He felt intimidated before the presence of this important man of learning.

    ‘It’s all right.’ A pause. ‘It’s rather unfortunate about your brother Adoka. Accept our heart-felt sympathies. In fact, nobody could understand why he had to do that. So was I until I was able to read this,’ he said, patting a bulky sheaf of papers fastened together with a clip. ‘This was found in the room where he took his life. It was addressed directly to you but we had to use our discretion to invade his privacy. What’s more, he was our student, and we stood in a better position as his loco parentis to know anything that threatened his life. I hope you don’t begrudge us that liberty?’

    ‘Not at all, sir,’ Samson answered, shaking his head emphatically even when the word ‘begrudge’ was as strange to him as snow in London.

    ‘That was kind of you. Thanks,’ said the Dean. ‘I’ll let you have it now. And by the time you’re through with it and are here tomorrow, I’ll acquaint you on how far we have gone with the arrangements to convey his remains home. Arrangements are at the concluding stages now.’

    ‘I’m very grateful, sir.’

    ‘Don’t mention it. It’s our responsibility.’ There was a pause. ‘I didn’t know him personally but from what I’ve been able to glean from his teachers and his fellow students, he was indeed a character, a rather queer fellow.’

    ‘Yes, sir.’

    ‘See you tomorrow then,’ said the Dean with an air of finality.  ‘Once again accept our condolences,’ he said, extending his right hand for a handshake which Samson rose obsequiously to shake before going out, closing the door gingerly after him.

    The first thing Samson did when he unlocked the door of the hotel room and entered was to let down the blinds on the windows to shield from the brightness of the sun. The sun would only come in-between him and the dialogue he was about to have with his dead brother. Luckily, there was no power outage at the moment. He dropped the bulky sheaf of papers on the desk at the foot of the large-sized bed and rushed to the bathroom to splash some water on his face. He consciously avoided the wall-mirror above the bathroom-cum-toilet sink. The water felt warm on his face, almost therapeutic. He toweled his face quickly and returned to the room. He switched off the lights and sat at the desk to read what his brother had penned down at the last moments of his anguished soul. He turned on the reading-table lamp and braced himself for the revelation ahead. He could imagine his dead brother sitting in like manner to write so long a note. Though they were birthed by the same parents, they had different passions. While Samson was an extrovert and took delight in taking hemp as well as breaking women’s hearts, his brother was an ascetic, always reading and writing, and a great lover at heart in the mould of Romeo. Apart from some facial resemblance that some people often mistook them for twin brothers despite the four-year gap between them, their lifestyles were so dissimilar. While Samson was full-fleshed and had a jovial face of a person without a care in the world, his brother was frail-looking and perpetually sad-faced like a person who carried the entire pains of the world on his face.  Sometimes, he could go for weeks without his unkempt beard. For him that was the emblem of a true writer. A diehard Marxist.

    The first few pages of Adoka’s note read like the opening paragraphs of a letter to his brother. Samson read on, enraptured by the free-flowing prose of his brother:

    By the time you’re reading this, brother, I’d have sloughed off the mortal coil called flesh to join her. She who so selflessly forsook all, including her precious life, for our sake. No love had a woman for a man than to lay down her life for him. Please don’t cry for me, brother, for I’ve gone to consummate the love your cruel world felt it was an anathema, a haram as the Muslims would call it. Save your tears for the living who are more dead than the dead.

    Am I so selfish by taking this action? Why would a final-year law student do this? These are some of the questions that will trail my exit. Questions that only the living who are condemned to their seemingly endless purgatory are bound to ask while the answers shall always elude them. In the next few minutes when I’ll join my Binta and be immune to all the questions of the accursed inhabitants of your cruel world, my heart shall only grieve for you, our old mother at Keffi, and our younger siblings. You’ve a great responsibility to break the news to her. Poor mother, I know the news will break her frail, old heart, and like Christ, I say: ‘Mother, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.’ Please do take good care of her, brother. I journey to the unknown land of no return, a journey borne out of necessity to meet the love of my life. She, who forsook her life for my sake. Any minute longer smacks of the greatest selfishness, and I cannot imagine myself keeping her waiting for me in the moor beyond. I can see her now as I’m writing this, beckoning me to come away with her to the world free of self-styled gods that decide the destinies of many.

    Why am I writing all this to you when I know that you’ve never approved of my love for Binta? You’ll only grimace and say: ‘Ehen, I knew it would always come to this. I’ve always advised my brother against this foolish love for this Muslim girl. I guessed as much. I’ve always said that she’d be the death of him.’ I’m confiding in you in spite of your reservations against my love for her because after Binta, you’re the next closest mortal to me. We’ve passed through so much together that I cannot help but feel duty-bound to pen you a few lines as a farewell. Apart from you, great brother mine, I owe the world no explanation. In fact, I’m happier that if it could rob me of my Binta, let it do without my talents. Yes, I’d rather die than benefit such a world. Let base humanity wriggle helplessly in the quagmire without my intervention. Let the world that refuses to live and let live, perish!

    It may be so strange to you what you’re going to read here. I’m not surprised for in all your life you’ve never experienced the true love of a woman. Your pitiable life has always been jumping from one woman’s bed to another in the name of youthful exuberance. No life can be so miserable when bereft of the passion that goes with true love. Brother, it’s quite amazing how love can provoke great deeds in life. Some of the greatest feats in life were not achieved as a result of the triumph of the human spirit against all odds but by love. And when I say love, I mean the love between a man and a woman. Romantic love. Eros. Poet Lord Byron was once quoted to have said that he never wrote anything worthwhile until when he was in love. Love, brother, is the tiny fire in the backyard that could ignite a whole city. It’s the grain of mustard seed that could move mountains like faith! It’s indeed ironic that the greatest of God’s creation is not the visible but the invisible which love happens to be at the very top. For how could one possibly explain the chemistry that occurs when a man meets the woman he loves? Today, I’m in my fifth year as a law student not because of any nonsense called dint of hard work or the triumph of the human spirit against all odds but because of my love for Binta. And it’s because of that same love that your cruel world snatched away from me that I’m ending it all. If I couldn’t have the love of Binta, then the world is not fit to have mine. Quod erat demonstrandum, QED for short, as the mathematicians would say after proving a theory.

    Once upon a time, specifically nine years ago, there lived a seventeen-year-old boy in the land of Keffi. He lived with his peasant parents in an 18th-century mud-house which had seen better days. Seven years to the end of the 19th century, it was the oldest house at the Angwan Mada district of Keffi town. Its base had worn thin by weathering like a giant with skeletal legs, giving it an imposing figure above the ground-level. It was the only house in this area without the luxury of electric lights because its occupants could not afford it in addition to the rent. Owing to the distance of the floor above the ground, climbing the steps was as dangerous as climbing a high, slippery mountain without climbing-ropes after a torrential rainfall. Many crawling babies had rolled down from the floor unto the uneven, stony ground, saved only by the infinite mercy of God.

    Our young character, right from his early years, knew the kind of hostile world he was born into. His father was a retired soldier who extended his military life to his family like a dictator in a banana republic. A four-wife polygamist, each wife fended for her children and yet remained answerable to the overlord. A strict disciplinarian, almost a Christian fanatic, he never allowed his children to make friends outside the family circle, nor did he allow them to play any games as ‘only idle children indulged in any of such pastimes.’ Every morning, just before the first cockcrow, he’d wake up the family to sing praise and worship songs, which normally climaxed with his usual evangelical sermon full of such words as the last days, eternal damnation, and hell-fire. Nothing disgusted this young boy like having his sleep rudely interrupted in order to worship a god that never kept the wolf away from the door. How many times had he gone without food anytime he failed to go to church on Sundays? He had either of two choices to make any day he came home late in the night with his elder brothers from the cinema – to either submit to the merciless whipping of his father or sleep outside. Oftentimes, because of his dread of the night and the ill-comforts of sleeping in uncompleted buildings with his elder brothers, he’d opt for the former. How many times had his poor mother’s pleas on his behalf gone unheeded by his father? The boy has already obeyed you, my lord, she’d plead ineffectively. Won’t you have mercy on him? After all, he’s your son, Papa Ododo. She could as well be talking to a deaf King Kong bent on wreaking his vengeance. Was it not with a sigh of relief when his father died one day of cholera, throwing floodgates of freedom for him and his brothers?

    It was at the age of seventeen that he fell in love for the very first time.  It was like a fairy-tale. A little distance away from the ancient house where he lived with his family, along the untarred street that ran in front of the house, stood a palatial house belonging to one Alhaji Bakare, one of the richest men in the town. Every evening just when the sun was a reddish glow in the western horizon, a young girl of about his age, veiled like a woman in purdah would glide her way past. She was a beautiful, chocolate-coloured damsel with a little mole on the left side of her nose. This always happened exactly when he was through with his preparation for his finals for the day and was reclining in a wooden chair on the varendah. He always watched, stupefied, as the girl curtseyed to greet a Hausa neighbour in the house and then turned her attention to where she was going without as much as casting him a glance. After a few days, it became a daily ritual and exactly when the sun was down, he’d be outside to watch her walk past. This gradually developed into a mania to the extent that every night when it was dark enough to stroll incognito, he’d walk round her father’s mansion several times in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Luckily enough, he was able to discover where her room was located in the house and from his house he could watch the daily opening and closing of the window to her room. A white, linen curtain draped the window and when parted during the heat, his eyes could make out her bed and other paraphernalia of a woman’s room. On many occasions, he’d witnessed her shut the window before the pilgrimage in the front of his house. Days coalesced into weeks and weeks into months without any attempt to approach her. He always heaped the blame on the betrayal of his body, for immediately he saw her, he’d instantly be struck with speechless, frozen into immobility, save for the heart that would palpitate at unusual rate like a dog straining the leash.

    You must have guessed by now, brother, that the young boy in the story was me. The young girl in question was Binta. I saw the yawning gulf that stood between her and me but I was blinded by my passion for her. On about three occasions or so, when she was returning, one particular young man would accompany her to the backyard entrance to the house and after the usual lovers’ tête-à-tête, they’d bid each other good night. My eyes never left them from where I stood, watching them with a heavy heart. I’d go to bed very bitter and sullen. This continued until I couldn’t bear it any longer. In the afternoons, I’d walk past her father’s house several times, where I’d see her always working on her crocheting machine during holidays, but courage often failed me on how to make the overtures to her. Where I was bold enough, I’d greet her in passing and she’d answer noncommittally with a mumble. And then I’d pass quietly by as if I hadn’t intended to have a heart-to-heart discussion with her. In the night, I’d haunt the place like a ghost, hanging out in dark surroundings in the hope that I’d catch a glimpse of her or that she’d come out on an errand to buy something. I was so obsessed with this girl, brother, that anytime I walked the streets, my eyes were on the lookout for her behind any woman’s veil.

    One day, however, I braved the odds and went to see her. We had then about two months in our school to our finals. Her thoughts so possessed me at school that when I returned home, I tossed my schoolbag unto the bed and made straight for her parents’ house in my school uniform. I was ready for the worst and vowed that nothing on earth would stop me from giving her some inkling of my feelings for her. The sun had gone down behind the Maloney Hills, leaving in its stead remnants of reddish streaks in the horizon. When I got to the frontage of their house, she was seated on a wooden bench in a blue gown at the verandah, watching the goings-on on the major street in the front of their house. I greeted her and as usual a mumble answered me. Instantaneously, my strength failed me and I moved on as if I was going on an errand across the street. No sooner had I left her than my mind began to taunt me with cowardice. I battled the temptation to turn back and demand to see her. Besides, there could be no better opportunity than this. Involuntarily, I stopped, stock-still in my tracks and turned to go and see her. She was still seated with a deadpan expression on her face; a queen surveying her domain, aloft from her high pedestal. I greeted her again and she answered me with a twinge of suspicion.

    ‘Can I have a word with you, Binta?’ I requested in my finest tone of voice. ‘I’ve a message for you from Peter,’ I added. Our half-brother, Peter, was her classmate at Government Day Secondary School, Keffi, and they were on best of terms. I didn’t know what happened to me, but suddenly something like a fish-bone got stuck in my throat and I found myself breathing hard like a man at the point of death, with the cold hands of death freezing the blood in his veins.

    ‘Really?’ she asked, as she got up to meet me.

    ‘Yes’ replied I boldly.

    When she came up to me, I told her that it was not any special message but that I should extend his regards to her to which she asked if he was doing well and I answered in the affirmative. I cannot possibly recall all that we discussed that day except that we talked casually at length. The more we talked, the more I felt irresistibly drawn to her helplessly like a metallic object to a powerful magnet. I discovered that besides her looks, she had brains. A rare combination in our women, wouldn’t you say, brother? Her facial expressions changed according to the mood of our discussion at a particular time like lights on stage. She knew exactly when to say ‘aya-a’ in a low, sympathetic voice and when to laugh infectiously when a joke was cracked. Her voice morphed from one tone of voice to another in tandem with what she was saying. She knew when to sound motherly, sisterly or like a lover. I was simply enraptured and imagined the kind of a wife she’d make for me. Yes, I told myself that I’d like to live with the owner of this voice. We talked on as if we shouldn’t stop until my fear of her being quarreled by her parents if I didn’t let her go, took the better of me and we parted most reluctantly. I went home in a great state of euphoria.

    Brother, I’ve never felt so happy and on top of the world like on that day. I remember our mother asked me what was making me so happy and I told her nothing. I believe that one of the ways to express our fundamental rights to life is to let loose our emotions, uninhibited. It’s only slaves that cannot love openly and not freeborn. That night, I slept like a baby without a care in the world. I contemplated the possibility of her and me getting married and all of a sudden I was saddened by the obstacles that would dog our way. The first would be our class difference – her father was a millionaire by every standard and one of the lords of the town while we were counted among the wretched of the earth. Secondly, we hailed from different ethnic backgrounds. She was Yoruba, whereas I was Idoma. And you know how we view the people of her tribe to be very tribalistic. Most importantly, was the issue of faith.  Her father was a mallam whose house was where little children and young adults congregated to be taught how to recite the Quran on wooden slates twice every week in the night. On the other hand, I was a grudging Sunday-Sunday Christian until our father died and I called it quits with going to church entirely. In the end, I pushed this mind-blowing, leg-crippling fear behind me as Christ would rebuke Peter: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ I vowed to see this budding love blossom to full maturity at all costs. For if you think of what a dog does, you won’t eat its meat, goes the wisdom of our ancestors. In the same vein, if you think of the price you will pay for any venture in life, you won’t hazard any risk in your life. Satisfied with my line of reasoning, I drifted off to the dreamland, highly contended.

    The following day, I controlled the ravaging impulse to go and see her. I’ve read somewhere that the heart grows fonder when there is a little absence or distance and I reined my emotions. My exploits the previous day gave me some confidence such that I went about life with a new gaiety.

    Two days later, at about the same hour of the day, I was at her place to see her again. And there she was seated on the long bench, obviously waiting for me or so I thought. As soon as she saw me, she left her seat and came up to me, albeit with a less cheerful countenance. What could be wrong today? I thought with a little trepidation. Didn’t she miss me or something?

    ‘I thought I should come and say hello to you,’ I began after the usual exchange of pleasantries.

    ‘You did well. Unfortunately, my parents don’t normally allow me to see men at home,’ she warned. My heart sank a little with a gall of bitterness.

    ‘So what shall we do?’ I asked with bated breath.  I couldn’t believe that my new-found happiness could be so suddenly threatened by her parents. Of course, she’d love us to meet again even if it meant in a kind of a rendezvous which I’d normally find more romantic than in her parents’ house.

    ‘I don’t know,’ she replied noncommittally, fiddling with her head-tie which had nearly come undone. My heart missed a beat at the shock of her jet-black hair that tumbled down her face when she eventually removed the head-tie to retie it firmly. I dreamt of running my fingers caressingly through it when our relationship became more intimate. Besides the facial and curvaceous beauty of a woman, two other things matter so much to me – the sensuous shape of her hips and her hair which must be silken to the touch! You must learn to forgive my prurient and evil mind, brother. I’ve a touch of the poet in me which revolts against such rubbish called the establishment, the status quo, decent way of life. Convention, my gaping arse!

    Where did I stop? Yes, where she removed and retied her head-tie. She seemed to read what was going on in my mind as she regarded me rather suspiciously for a while after retying the head-tie. We stared at each other for a few minutes without words. What was on her mind? Was her answer a ploy to prove hard to get? Women can be so unpredictable when it comes to the affairs of the heart, you know.

    ‘Binta, I want to see you again!’ I blurted out rather emotionally in a voice that was hardly mine, choked with all the feelings I had for her.

    ‘I’m afraid, its better we don’t see again,’ she stabbed heartlessly, and I recoiled with intense pain. Was this beautiful girl the same lady that gave me so such joy only two days ago? How could she be so callous and blind to my feelings for her?

    ‘Binta, you can’t be serious,’ I pleaded. ‘I mean, how do you expect me to …’

    ‘Please, go now,’ she interrupted. ‘My father is at home,’ she further warned, casting quick glances at the Mercedes Benz parked outside the house. That decided it all. I wouldn’t want her father to quarrel her on my account. With sunken heart and a downcast face, I bade her good night and left.

    That night was one of the most terrible nights I’ve ever lived through in my life. I tossed and tossed on the bed, restless and highly agitated. Sleepless and unsettled. Why would Binta do this to me? Brother, I’ve found love the most mysterious of all God’s creations. For how could one explain that the thing that gives one the greatest joy could turn round to make one the most miserable creature here on earth?

    How I managed to survive that night, only God knows. At one point, my thoughts turned suicidal. I was tempted to use the available metal, press it hard into my throat until I bled profusely to death like a slain pig. The fear of what she’d think of me after I’d gone was what gave me some strength to pull some restraint on myself. In real life, people know me as a rather serious, too formal and unemotional a person, but deep down me, I know I dam within myself a roaring river of high-voltage emotion which could only find escape outlet in the realm of creative imagination, that is, whenever I’m writing or when in love. That’s only when I could let loose my emotion, unbridled, and let it flow freely and boundlessly. Love is meant to be expressed, uninhibited, and damn the consequences it could inflict on you from an ignorant and loveless world of lesser mortals.

    It was with the greatest strength of will-power that I allowed three days to pass by without going to see her. Those three days were my most emotion-wrought days in my life. I always woke up with the thought of Binta in my mind and before sleep, my mind would be preoccupied with her. But how would I see her? She’d placed me in an uncertain and precarious circumstance when she said that her parents didn’t normally allow her to receive men at home. Or was she proving hard to get? No, I was confused. I went about my studies and other activities disinterestedly. Concentration is too difficult to achieve to an emotionally disturbed mind. I’d stand for hours on end to watch the daily opening and closing of her window from our house. I resumed my nightly prowl of her father’s house to see if I could steal some glances at her. I was so obsessed with this girl, brother, that I was gradually losing interest in living. Many of you wondered at my queer lifestyle but were in the dark as to the reason behind it until much later when I made the mistake to confide in you. I carried the cross of my love bravely and silently without complaining to anybody. When it became impossible to withhold my feelings any longer, I dared her wrath and went to see her. That was the fourth day since I last saw her.

    She was not seated on the long bench at the varendah as usual today. I saw two little children, a boy and a girl playing outside the house, most probably her siblings. They said yes, she was at home when I asked them of her and sent them to tell her that somebody came to see her. After what seemed a quarter of an hour of waiting, I could hear her asking the little boy ‘Where is he?’ From where I stood, anybody coming from the house could not immediately see me until such a person came out fully from the building. The question was hardly out of her mouth when she saw me and stopped short as if she’d seen a ghost. Disappointment was visibly written on her face as if I was the least person she’d expected to see. Three or four minutes dragged by as we stared at each other wordlessly before she lowered her gaze and was gone, vamoosed into the house. Maybe she’d gone to change into something more presentable, I tried to console myself. So I waited. One minute … two minutes … ten minutes … thirty minutes … forty minutes … and yet she was not back to see me. Gradually, I was getting unsettled and restless. Would she still come back? When it was one whole hour and she was not back, I left, dejected and rejected, for home.

    I was so crestfallen when I got home. Binta had not treated me well. I wondered at the unpredictable nature of women. One would wonder if it was not the same Binta that I had discussed with some days ago as if we shouldn’t part that evening. And come to think of it, this was the same girl that had walked out on me without any explanation. At least she should have granted me an audience to know what I wanted from her. What was more, all she could do was to say yes or no before resorting to this funny behaviour of hers. As I mused over my predicament, an idea occurred to me. Yes, I must do something to at least let down the steam of emotion bottled up in me. If she wouldn’t let me express my deep feelings to her directly, well, I’d no choice than to do it the other way round – by writing a long passionate letter to her, telling her how much she meant to me. I wasted no time in carrying that out. I drew the low table to the bed where I was sitting and began to pour my heart out to her under the bush lamp. I’d rather good at expressing my feelings on paper than orally as you well know, brother. In the letter, I told her how much I loved her, how I’d come to develop my feelings for her, praised her exquisite beauty to the skies and how I wished I were the mole that dotted the left side of her nose! I tried to convince her not to allow our differences in religion, tribe and class to come in-between us. After all, true love was made in heaven! When I finished the letter, I included a love poem I’d written for her some months ago as at the time courage failed me in making overtures to her. I folded it neatly into an envelope and rushed to deliver it to her in her parents’ house.

    It was about 8 p.m. in the night when I got there. The Quranic class was in progress at the varendah of her father’s house. From where I stood in the dark, I could see how the mallam conducted his class. The little children recited in Arabic in a sing-song manner verses from the Quran from their wooden slates. Every now and then, the cow-hide whip, popularly called dorina, would suddenly descend on a recalcitrant pupil, fiam-fiam! mercilessly. After I had waited for more than an hour with no possibility of sending her the letter, I returned home to look for our younger half-sister, Ene. Her mother told me that she was asleep when I demanded to see her. I went in and woke her up, took her aside to explain the nature of the errand I had for her.

    ‘When you get to the Alhaji’s house, knock at the side entrance at the backyard. Do you understand?’ I asked.

    ‘Yes, brother,’ came her laconic reply, nodding her head sleepily.

    ‘If the side entrance is not open, come back home,’ I warned. ‘For no reason must you go through the general entrance at the front of the house, you hear?’ She nodded again.

    ‘It’s all right.’ I said after a contemplative pause and slipped the letter to her with a five-naira-note tip and bade her keep the transaction of this night secret. I made her to swear and she slouched off.

    I returned to the room but still very restless. I sat down several times on the bed only to get up again until I went out to await her return. I waited and waited for her return for what seemed an eternity before she came back with the news of her success. Yes, she’d delivered my letter directly to her. How was she? What was she wearing? What was her reaction when she received my letter? I bombarded her with questions until I saw the fatigue on her face. I thanked her profusely and she left to go and resume her interrupted sleep. That night I dreamt that I took Binta out on a date to watch the gulls at the streamside.

    I woke up the following day, very relieved. I was so excited that I’d made my feelings known to her. There is nothing I hate like surreptitious, corner-corner love, where a man or woman will be pining away in love without the courage to express it to the other party. I’d rather express it and damn the consequences than to suffer in silence. The ball was now in her court, as they say. I’d done my own manly part. It was left for her to reply my letter; to reject me or to accept me as her lover.

    The waiting game dragged on endlessly without any reply from her. I’d call my sister Ene again to cross-examine her to establish if truly she’d given Binta my letter to which she would say yes and that she knew her very well and couldn’t have made a mistake. Then what could be the matter? Maybe she’d rather I went and met her for her oral response instead of waiting for a written reply. Days dragged into weeks until my impatience got the better of me.

    The little girl I sent to tell Binta that somebody wanted to see her outside had been gone for more than thirty minutes now. Her father’s house seemed deserted this late afternoon as if there was nobody at home. Just when I was about to give up all hopes of her coming, the sound of shuffling feet could be heard from within. Presently, Binta emerged, a queen, resplendent in all her glory. The blood in my veins quickened in rebellion at the sight of so great a beauty, with my heart palpitating unevenly like a schoolboy’s first in love. When she eventually came out within a couple of footsteps from where I stood, transfixed like a cockroach under the influence of Otapiapia, she sized me up from the head to the toe in a most derogatory manner, and spat significantly on the floor and walked back into the house! I remained rooted to the ground, dazed and devastated, unable to move a muscle. When at last I came to, I walked home, very distraught.

    The few weeks that followed were hectic for me. I had to prepare for my final national examinations at school. Despite the shabby treatment meted out to me by Binta, I put my best to pass the exams. If my dream of winning her love and eventually marrying her must come true, I’d have to distinguish myself to go to the university. I couldn’t imagine marrying her for her to come and grovel in the poverty of our family. No, not with the kind of family she hailed from. I must distinguish myself for her, for the sake of my love for her. For many were the exploits and heights in life attained only as a result of an inner motivation called love. Today, brother, I give credit to Binta for my outstanding performance in my finals and the university matriculation examinations that followed. But that would be jumping ahead of my story.

    On the last day of our finals, my friend Cletus was in our house to celebrate with me. He knew all about my unrequited passion for Binta and had always advised me to forget about her even when he was pretty close to her family especially her mother. Fortunately, his reservations about her didn’t create any cracks on the walls of our friendship. We were still bosom friends in spite of the fact that we didn’t always see eye to eye on every issue of life. Shortly after his arrival, one of my ex-classmates, Thomas, arrived to join us in the celebrations. In the course of our jollity, the issue of women cropped up which suddenly brought Binta into my mind. The last time I called at her place was about three weeks ago because of our exams.

    ‘Come to think of it, I believe that since you’re here, it’s meet I introduce you to my babe,’ I blurted out before I knew the mistake I was about to make, just to impress this braggart ex-classmate of mine who had held up captive with the diatribe of his conquest of the opposite sex.

    ‘Your babe, Adoka?’ he asked in his insultingly incredulous manner. ‘Why, you’ve never told us that you had a girl.’

    ‘A man who has one doesn’t need to broadcast it on the rooftops for the world to know like a small boy,’ I retorted importantly. ‘Besides, haven’t you all known me for my reticence?’ I asked.

    ‘Where does she live, if I may ask?’ queried Thomas, as skeptical as his Biblical namesake.

    ‘Just a stone’s throw from here, if you don’t mind,’ I replied. ‘It’s about a two-minute walk from here.’

    Meanwhile, I noticed how Cletus pointedly kept quiet from this conversation. I could sense that he was ill at ease, visibly tense for me, being someone who knew as well as I did that Binta couldn’t rightly be called my babe as I had boasted a while ago. He knew the uncertainty that beclouded any attempt to go and see her in the company of Thomas but in my daredevilry, I’d gone too far to chicken out at this point.

    ‘Well,’ shrugged Thomas, ‘what’s bad about going to see this girl of Adoka?’

    ‘Off we go, gentlemen!’ I was already on my feet to call his bluff. The rest followed suit, with some apparent reluctance from Cletus.

    On our way there, I whispered to Cletus on how we were to go about it. I’d stand out of sight, behind the well at the extreme of the compound, where the footpath led to the rear of the house, while he’d send for her before making my presence known to her. The whole plan went as planned. Binta was sent for and she came rather gleefully to Cletus. From where I stood, I could hear her sweet nightingale voice. It transported me back to the glorious first day that we discussed together before this inexplicable phobia she’d developed for me. Suddenly, I heard Cletus say: ‘We’re not alone. We came with somebody special who desires to see you, Binta.’ Something gave way inside my stomach, making me to lean on the wall to prop myself from falling.

    ‘Really?’ I heard her ask with her voice tinged with suspicion. ‘Where is he?’ I could feel the suspense in the air and I was working myself gradually to shake off this inertia that had suddenly come upon me.

    I then decided to come out of hiding as she was straining her neck towards the well-lit area of the compound to see the mysterious visitor. Our eyes met in one brief flash of recognition and a guttural scream escaped her lips as she quickly recoiled as if she’d beheld an unspeakable horror or an ogre.

    ‘I’m feeling hungry,’ she said matter-of-factly to no one in particular and was gone indoors in the twinkling of an eye.

    ‘Binta!’ called Cletus after her but it was too late. The poor girl had gone indoors, out of earshot. Vamoosed into thin air.

    ‘What’s wrong with this girl for goodness’ sake?’ asked a dumbfounded Thomas. ‘Or do I say which kind of girl did our friend Adoka bring us to meet?’

    We were too disappointed to make any reply to his queries. While we stood undecided, we could hear the furious slapping of slippers on the floor from within, fast approaching. It seemed we were not yet through with the show-down of the day. The owner of the slippers soon turned out to be a middle-aged woman, her buxom waist firmly girdled with her head-tie in the manner of our you-must-kill-me-today women. She didn’t wait to reach the entrance door of the house before she started pelting her salvos on us, reeling out terrible words in her language on us. She gesticulated wildly to drive home her points, every now and then stabbing her finger in the air at my direction. I didn’t understand a single word of what she was saying in her language, but it was obvious that she was raining fire and brimstone on our heads on account of her innocent and defenceless daughter. She stopped as suddenly as she’d begun and bounded back to the house, her big fat of flesh greatly provoked as if it was going to fall apart, with her wrappers caught in the parting of her buttocks. After she’d gone, Cletus, who understands Yoruba, interpreted all that she’d said to us. And that in her impassioned speech, she singled me out by repeatedly saying: ‘that boy in green, checked long-sleeved shirt’, and went ahead to say how I’d been oppressing her poor daughter. A rather funereal hush fell in our midst as we made our way home in defeat.

    You’d think, brother, that after such kind of disgrace, I’d leave this girl alone. No, brother, I don’t give up that easily especially when I know that something is mine. I cannot allow life or lesser mortals cheat me out of my life’s bargain. I can go any extent to get what belongs to me. I can even sacrifice my life to get it once my mind is made up. It’s stuff like this that history is made of. It was at this time of my desperation to win Binta’s heart that everything got to your knowledge and you did everything within your power to dissuade me. You pointed out the kind of family we hailed from and the ethno-religious and class differences that stood like a yawning gulf between us. But my passion for her blinded me to all those seemingly insurmountable obstacles and I was bent on winning her love against all odds. Despite her rebuttal of my advances, I still kept pressing on. Every morning I stood, a pilgrim, watching the daily opening of her window and when it’d be shut closed in the evening. I was undaunted in writing her long love-letters with one or two poems slipped inside. I wasn’t bothered that they were not replied by her but I kept on. During moonless nights, I’d hang around the dark corners outside her father’s house like a ghost just to catch a glimpse of her. On most occasions, I’d watch her father along with other male members of the house including children and visitors say their night prayers on sheepskin mats spread on the floor outside. A little boy of ten or thereabouts usually led the prayers at the top of his lilting voice as the others would synchronically go down on their knees, count their prayer-beads, chelbi, solemnly, touch their foreheads on the mats, squat on their haunches again, muttering some mumbo-jumbo in Arabic, rise to their feet, etc. It was all so perfect like in choreography.

    My love for her estranged me further from the church. No, not when the preacher once said on the pulpit that we must not be of unequally yoked with unbelievers. In other words, my Binta was one of those referred to as unbelievers. As if that was not enough, brother, the Holy Writ admonishes believers against giving in to inordinate affections which my love for Binta was, you see? I told myself there and then that if my faith would stand between Binta and me, I’d rather forgo it for her. What was more, brother, I couldn’t imagine gorging myself to death in heaven while my Binta pulled at her hair and gnashed her teeth in hell like the rich man in the parable who saw Lazarus in heaven with Abraham and pleaded for a drop of water to quench his parched throat. I knew from the word go that my faith was the enemy of my love for Binta like our society, and it had to give way for her. No, I couldn’t exchange Binta for anything in the whole world, not even the air that I inhale. Thank goodness, I was able to take this stand because our dictatorial father was long dead, otherwise he’d have disowned me.

    Binta had become my religion, my goddess, because I worshipped the earth that she trod upon. I approached her with a high sense of awe akin to the aura of spirituality like the way I saw her father and the other men and little children at prayers. Anytime I noticed she was about to pass by our house and I couldn’t muster up enough courage to accost her and tell her to her face that I loved her, I’d scurry timidly like a little child, shield myself behind the door curtain to have a peep at her! This continued for several years until I gained admission into the university and was in my fourth year while she was in her third year at the Advanced Teachers College, Apaga. The years had not done any harm to my love for her. On the contrary, it waxed stronger by the day like our locally-brewed corn-beer called burukutu; the longer it is fermented, the more intoxicating it becomes. Who says old wine doesn’t taste better? So was my love for Binta, ageless and ever potent like a river at its youthful stage. At the university, I preserved myself for her. I sent her uncountable gifts, success, Valentine, Happy Christmas, Happy Sallah and New Year cards along with my latest love poems for her. My letters were never replied neither did I ever receive any thank-you note from her but I persevered. For the sake of my love for her, I became a recluse, ‘queer’ to many people, but I never despaired. Of course, the ladies came with their endless amorous advances but met my firm rebuttal as usual. I always felt that merely laughing with any girl at all behind Binta’s back was the greatest act of betrayal and infidelity that I could ever commit in life.

    During the first semester break of my fourth year at the university, I was home. I was now in my mid-twenties and more world-wisely. I had not seen Binta for more than three months now because of my studies. One certain day, I was at my friend’s photographic studio on the same street with her father’s house, though some one hundred and forty metres apart. My friend, Ayiwulu, had gone to obtain some materials for his work and pleaded with me to look after his studio until he came back in half an hour’s time. To while away the time, I busied myself with a soft-selling romance magazine, when a voice called out from without.

    ‘Is there anybody in?’ asked the female voice.

    I lowered the magazine I was reading to a half-mast and looked through the parting of the curtains by the caller. Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat. Binta! I could recognize her standing outside in a bluish gown and veiled like a woman in purdah. She carried a big basin of ground fermented corn on her head, obviously from the grinding shop across the street. Every now and then, she tried to ward off the whitish substance from dripping on her eyes. My palms were suddenly clammy and I could feel one big something got hooked in my throat.

    ‘Come in,’ said I rather huskily. I was freezing with trepidation in spite of the heat of the noonday sun.

    ‘I just want to be sure somebody is in. I shall go and drop this at home and then come back,’ replied she innocently. If she was aware that I was the one, she didn’t show it. And I doubted it so much.

    ‘Till you come then,’ I said hoarsely.

    She grunted a reply which I couldn’t hear and went away. I heaved a sigh of relief. Man, that was the closest I had been to her for years now. I got up from the upholstered chair I was sitting to prepare for her coming. I sternly rebuked the cowardly thought that I should flee home before she came back. How on earth could I lose my courage so foolishly when the lady I had been craving for all these years was within my reach? No, I’ve to be a man and brave it, I thought. I looked at my reflection on the large mirror on the wall and I shivered at how far I had neglected myself. Because of my approaching baldness, my head looked as if it had been haphazardly pecked upon by a mother hen and her little chicks – some areas luxuriated with hair while the majority of the landscape was bereft of the tiniest strand of hair like a desert. And to make things worse, my several months’ beard was unkempt. Hurriedly, I took my time to brush my beard, and using my right palm, I pressed it down to look even. When I was done, I returned to my seat to await her return. Shortly after, she salaamed and came in. I noticed something surreptitious about her manner. She cast furtive glances over her shoulders before coming in. She’d taken her time to put some finishing touches to her appearance before leaving home. I gestured her to the seat opposite mine and she meekly obliged. She said nothing when I told her the photographer had gone out. There was a pregnant silence for about a few seconds. My power of speech seemed to have momentarily deserted me, for I lacked how to start.

    ‘At last, Binta,’ I croaked as if I was about to weep.

    ‘Yes,’ she answered firmly. A brief, uncomfortable pause followed.

    ‘Do you hate me so much that you didn’t even care to reply to my letters?’ I asked for want of how to begin. ‘You’ve not even condescended to write to acknowledge any of the gifts I sent to you, Binta? Why? Was that how to treat a fellow human being like you?’ I complained. She kept quiet, apparently unruffled but deep in thought. Suddenly she gave in to the emotion bottled up in her for so many years.

    ‘My father will kill me if he knows that I’m having an affair with a non-Muslim,’ she blurted out, whimperingly. ‘If you knew how strict my father is, you wouldn’t blame me. You wouldn’t be saying what you have just said. It’s not safe for us to be seen together here,’ she warned, casting fearful glances at the door. I was touched to the marrow by her plaintive voice. I could easily put myself in her shoes and know how they pinched. We seemed to have the same kind of fathers only that mine was dead and it was good riddance.

    ‘So what do we do? Do I come and meet you at your school?’ I suggested.

    ‘Wai, no. That’ll be too dangerous,’ she said, pop-eyed. ‘I’ll come and see you in your school,’ she offered quickly. ‘If you come to our school, there are people who will see us together and report it to my father,’ she explained. I nodded in agreement, more so that her father was a highly respected mallam who might have spies all around his grown-up daughters.

    We discussed briefly and she left for home before she would be missed. When my photographer friend came, I returned home. That night before I slept, I reviewed my discussion with Binta. I pondered on the question she’d asked me. Why did I love her so much? I rumbled on and on without a definite, unequivocal answer. She knew I was discomfited by the question and let it pass, half-answered. And I ask, brother: must every true love be explained like an equation in mathematics? Can’t we have genuine love from the heart that is anchored purely on human, selfless reasons? I just loved Binta and still do because true love never dies except for your cruel, busybody world which interfered in what didn’t concern it. A loveless, busybody world, you might say.

    I resumed for my second semester at the university with very high expectations and in a jubilant mood. The break had been a rousing success in that I was able to extract a promise from my Binta for a visit. And true to her word, she came as promised, brother. You could imagine my excitement. I left all that I was doing in the lecture-halls, took her to the room I shared with four other students, introduced her happily to them and off we went on an exploration of the forest behind Naraguta Hostel. We chatted desultorily like two love-birds which had not seen each other for ages. When we reached the stream, the water at this time of the year was knee-deep. I folded my trousers right up to my thighs and she climbed on my back, her nipples, pricks of thorns on my back. We lay on the sand-dunes on the other bank and cooed away until the sun had descended behind the hefty hills, casting orange brilliance on the earth. With Binta lying on my side, her hair spread-eagled on the sand, Garden of Eden was revisited. I had a glimpse of paradise when I took her gently at first. Binta of the primordial beginnings, gentle and supple, your strength is the Mother Eagle’s. Take me, ride me roughshod on your viewless wings of passion. Are these stars that I see? When Adam fell in a trance to beget you, trance from then became the death-like state every man must experience between your thighs. Woman, your name is sweet death. Lead me gently, softly through these endless labyrinths, these rites of passage. Bathe me with the water from the waterfall of your temple …

    Brother, when a man makes love to the woman he loves, the experience ceases to be mere sex but a form of worship. That was the experience I’d when Binta and I communed in the most esoteric language ever known to man. Time stood still in deference, save for the choir of the birds in the background.

    That night she passed the night in one of my female acquaintances’ rooms at the female hostel.  The following day, she departed for her school not after I’d extracted the promise for her to be my wife. We were to keep our love a top secret until it was ripe enough to be broadcast, when we must have finished our studies and at a better stead to dare the world. I’ve never felt so fulfilled in all my life, brother. Binta’s love gave me unusual confidence in myself that I wouldn’t mind to take on the world alone. Her visit was to be repeated until she came one day to tell me what was to change the entire course of our lives.

    I’ve come to discover one thing over the years, brother, that like the timeless concepts of truth and justice, love can never be hidden nor suppressed for a long time. It’s a volcano that’ll surely erupt one day. That was the story of our love. What we had thought could be clandestinely done, was not to be. The semester was no sooner over than I returned home for a month’s break. Despite our plan not to meet at home, the desperation to see each other was only comparable to a drug-addict’s pathological crave for a shot of the drug to quench the monster ravaging his blood. Before we knew it, we’d started seeing each other behind her father’s house when it was dark inside the uncompleted structures. I’d rest my back against the wall while she lay on me, baptizing me with the shampooed smell of her hair. We’d coo away the night as if we were the only creatures on earth, unmindful of whether she’d be missed at home. Such chivalry, brother! Like death, love and sex are the levellers of all classes; they are the basic emotions of man, irrespective of his class or creed. Unfortunately, happiness has a slender back that breaks too easily. While we were busy celebrating our love, little did we know that there were some killjoys around, watching and condemning with their eyes. We didn’t bargain for the explosion in her family when the news broke out that she was dating a non-believer, an infidel, an arnai. She suddenly became the black sheep of her family who was bent on bringing shame to the name of the family by her foolish emotion. Just imagine the daughter of a highly respected mallam whose house was the Mecca where little children met twice a week to recite Quran on wooden slates! She told me all this when we met secretly in our next rendezvous – my friend’s photographic studio – after all other avenues had failed. She’d pretend as if she was passing by and sneaked in as soon as nobody was watching her. One day she removed her gown to show me the ugly marks where her father had unleashed the dorina on her the way I watched the Quranic teacher inflict on recalcitrant pupils. A whole twenty-four-year-old lady, brother! At such moments, I was naturally touched and happier that I wasn’t born with a silver spoon. You cannot imagine, brother, how the rich oppress their children in the name of parental authority. Her father’s house had come afire because she dared to love me, yet apart from you, nobody from our family was even aware that I was in love with an Alhaji’s daughter, a mallam at that. Nobody knew that my adventure in love was enough to cause a Jihad in any town, no thanks to our love for violence in this country.

    Ironically, the more the opposition grew against our love, the more it waxed stronger. It came to a time that we couldn’t meet because she was placed under a twenty-four-hour surveillance by her father and her movements were minutely monitored. During this period, I felt asphyxiated and prayed fervently for the holidays to be soon over. But the holidays dragged on endlessly as if in consort with the enemies of our love, the philistines! Eventually, I breathed a sigh of relief when it came to an end and I quickly returned to school for the final year of my studies. She resumed her visits, though less frequent than before because it had got to the knowledge of her parents that she was still visiting me secretly at the university.

    One certain Friday afternoon, I was at the faculty of law library upstairs, when Logji, one of my course-mates came up to inform me that I had a visitor waiting for me downstairs. I left my books and rushed downstairs to meet the visitor. Lo and behold, it was my Binta. She was standing at the large entrance, reading the myriad of notices on the board. When she saw me, we moved casually to meet each other lest we gave in to our passions which could unnecessarily draw attention to us. From the expression on her face, I knew instinctively that all was not well. Something was definitely amiss. I asked her to wait for me while I ran upstairs to get my books. When I returned, we walked speechlessly to the school gates to board a taxi bound for the hostels. The silence was unnervingly suspenseful as I wondered within myself of the likely problem.

    On arrival, we rushed to my room in the hostel and I quickly changed into less formal clothes and we made for our usual haunt – the forest behind Naraguta Hostel. We waded through the almost dry stream in silence until I couldn’t stand it any more.

    ‘Something awful must have happened? I stated rather than asked.

    ‘Yes, that was why I came.’ There was a pause. ‘I cannot stand it any longer, Adoka! We’ve to do something very fast,’ she passionately stated, wringing her hands in confusion. Her voice trembled with emotion.

    ‘It’d be nice if you first told me what really happened,’ I suggested in a deceptively calm voice.

    ‘My father has vowed that he’ll force me into marrying a man that I don’t love,’ she whined. ‘He says that since I don’t want to leave this arnai, he’ll give me out as sadaka to Abdulazeez, the son of one of his friends.’

    I was stunned by his news. I saw our world crumbling if we allowed this to happen. No, how would I be able to live without Binta? It was either she or death. All the same, I saw that plan as a ploy to snatch my one and only joy from me.

    ‘You mean that’s their latest game plan?’ I croaked when I could find my voice.

    ‘Yes, they feel that’s the only way to separate us by forcing me to marry a man I don’t love,’ she replied.

    ‘Oh, my God,’ I mumbled in confusion. What should I do now? This new problem towered very high before me like Goliath. I felt incapacitated by the abject poverty in our family and I was afraid of taking any wrong step that could upset all that I’d been building all these many years.

    ‘What shall we do, Binta?’ I finally asked.

    ‘That is why I came to you,’ replied she.

    ‘I want to hear your suggestion,’ I egged her on. ‘Please feel free to say anything.’

    ‘Well, um … let’s go away from here. Just anywhere they won’t see us …’

    ‘What? I interjected interruptedly. ‘Elope? Come off it, Binta, you can’t be serious. I mean what about our studies? We’re both in the final years of our studies. Do you want us to run away and leave it just like that because of your parents? How preposterous! How shall we feed?’ I asked rhetorically when the silence from her was becoming rather uncomfortable for me.

    ‘Yes, I meant everything that I’ve just said, hon,’ she said calmly. ‘I value our love more than those mundane things you mentioned. I love you more than life, Adoka, and I’m ever ready to leave everything, my family, studies, and relations to come away with you to the end of the world. I’ll face the seven demons in hell just to have you,’ she said. Then suddenly breaking down in tears, she pleaded, holding my hands dementedly: ‘Just anywhere, Adoka. I hate this life! I hate my parents! I cannot stand it any longer if you don’t help me.’

    I was moved beyond words by the fear I saw in her eyes, her helplessness if I didn’t do something, and I took her in my arms. We kissed hungrily every part of our bodies as if we’d not have another opportunity like this again, smooched to console ourselves and cried at this impending tsunami to our world of bliss.

    ‘I love you, Binta,’ I said with an emotion-laden voice. ‘But I don’t want us to do anything rash that we’ll live to regret it much later,’ I said. ‘Let’s be realistic for once, Binta.’

    I went ahead to emphasize the need for us to finish our studies first before we took any such drastic action as she’d suggested. In less than five months’ time, I’d be through with my LL.B programme and by then she would be through with her National Certificate of Education too. And once I’d bagged my first degree, we’d elope to Lagos. With my creative writing talents properly honed during my stay at the university, I could apply to write sentimental love stories and poems in the mould of Mills and Boon for soft-selling, romance magazines like Kiss and Hints to fend for ourselves without having to go to the Nigerian Law School to be called to the Bar. We could survive without my being a lawyer for the sake of our love. But Binta didn’t seem convinced by my persuasion. She was furious with my suggestion.

    ‘If that’s how you want it, fine and good,’ she said sarcastically. ‘In the meantime, how do I face the pressure from my family to get married to that man? Don’t you think you’re being callously selfish? I bet you, you’re saying all this because you’ve not put yourself in my shoes,’ she stabbed. I squirmed under her accusing eyes but was speechless and powerless. I couldn’t imagine all the years I had spent go up in flames without a degree to show for it.

    Some few hours later, we made frantic love but it was rather mechanical and not as fulfilling as the previous times. Binta clung at me, crying instead of dictating the pace as usual. The fear of an uncertain future loomed big before us like a monster, held us in its grip that we couldn’t let go of our emotions freely like before.

    The following day, I saw her off to the motor-park and she departed. When the car she boarded was about to take off, I felt like stopping her so that we’d elope to where nobody would know us but I waved it off as a rather whimsical thought that bordered on childishness. Little did I know that that was the last time I was to see her, brother. Everything moved with lightning speed to destroy our world.

    A week later, Cletus was at the university to see me. Immediately I set my eyes on him, I knew all was not well at home. The lecture-rooms were not the right environment to discuss intimate issues, so we rushed to the hostel and thereafter to the forest where we could discuss freely and uninhibited. I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer and blurted out.

    ‘I know something has happened to my Binta, Cletus,’ I stated, quivering with great anxiety. The silence from him was oppressive. Cletus evaded my eyes, which heightened the tension building up in me.

    ‘Talk to me, Cley,’ I urged. ‘We’re both men here.’

    ‘Yes, I know. And that’s how you’re going to take what I’m going to tell you as a man,’ he began forebodingly. ‘I’m afraid to inform you that Binta is dead, Adoka.’ I felt something like ice-cold water being poured on me in a very chill weather. I was stupefied and speechless for about three minutes or thereabouts.

    ‘What!’ I managed to utter rather feebly when I was able to find my voice. My Binta dead? No, that couldn’t be true, for I couldn’t imagine a life without her. Instantly, Cletus clasped his arms around me so tight lest I did any harm to myself. We struggled like two giant elephants in a forest.

    ‘No, Adoka! Please, I beg you in the name of God,’ he pleaded in-between clenched teeth.

    ‘Now leave me, Cletus!’ I said, struggling. ‘Let go of me.’

    ‘I won’t until you promise me you won’t do any harm to yourself, Adoka,’ he implored.

    ‘I promise. Now leave me,’ I said and he unclasped his arms gradually. There was an uneasy silence as I tried to pull myself together. The whole thing seemed like a nightmare to me and anytime I might wake up to a beautiful, problem-free world.

    ‘How did she die?’ I found my voice eventually when reality failed to thaw to unreality.

    ‘She committed suicide,’ he replied sadly.

    ‘Suicide?’ I croaked, very astounded.

    ‘Yes. She told me she was here to see you about her parents’ plan to force her into marrying a man she never loved but you couldn’t help her. When she returned to Keffi, the pressure was too much on her. And against her wish, she was married off to that man, one Abdulazeez or so. On the night of the wedding, she sent a little boy with a note for me which she pleaded that I must try and get it to you as soon as possible.’ He handed me a small, folded piece of paper. ‘This is from her.’

    I opened it with trembling hands. It was unmistakably her handwriting, all right, scrawled hastily across the page. It contained only two short sentences, ‘Dearest love,’ it began. ‘He never defiled me. It’s goodbye from me until we meet to part no more. Your Binta.’

    ‘The following morning,’ continued Cletus, he’d not yet finished. ‘I learnt of her death. That was today. She was buried this afternoon in accordance with the Islamic rites of passage. I told myself what was I still doing at Keffi? So I boarded the next available vehicle to come and see you and here am I.’

    ‘You’ve done well, Cley,’ I replied bravely. ‘Thank you.’

    ‘You’ve to take heart, Adoka,’ he said sympathetically. ‘I know how you feel. But what has happened has happened and cannot be undone. Such is life.’

    ‘You’re right,’ came my stoical reply. ‘I don’t have any choice in the matter. May her soul rest in perfect peace’, I added with feigned bravado.

    Before Cletus left the following day, I’d already made up my mind of what I’d do. I travelled to Keffi incognito that same day after he had left, made enquiries as to where she was buried. In the middle of the night, I was at her grave to bid her farewell. I then returned secretly to the university to continue with my studies. But this was not to be, brother. I’d reckoned without the aftermath of the loss. Suddenly, the magnitude of my bereavement began to weigh heavily upon me like the after-effect of a knife-cut which may not be instantaneous until after some minutes when the surprised flesh begins to gush out blood. I was burdened by self-guilt. Binta had given up her life for the sake of our love, and here was I back to my studies, after barely two days of her death instead of mourning her properly, my heart convicted. I could remember our last discussion together, how she’d pleaded that we eloper, ‘just anywhere they won’t see us …’, but my selfishness had gotten the better of me and I allowed her to drive herself to her death. I could imagine the agony she underwent in that farce of a marriage that her parents orchestrated, then the supreme price of taking her life. My mind’s eye could conjure up the self-slaughter scene very well. She mounted the centre-table of the sitting room, almost missing her step, tied the noose around the ceiling fan and … No, brother! I cannot bear to think how she died for the sake of our sacred love. There and then, I made up my mind. If her life was of no value to her because of our love, then who was I to treasure mine? She’d given up her life for me, what was I waiting for?

    I know you will find this difficult to believe but at times, I saw her waving me to come away with her from this cruel world to a world where our love would be consummated without inhibitions, where one man’s will would not suppress another man’s, where our commingled souls would mate eternally, where we would ‘meet to part no more,’ as her note said. I don’t envy your world, brother. If it could deny me of my Binta, then let it do without my talents. It may not produce another great writer like me again. It’s my curse upon your world that wastes her best brains like this. I could refuse to take this action and become a lawyer but of what benefit would it be to your evil world of injustice? My fight for justice will only be a drop in the ocean. People will still suffer great injustice and die of starvation in the midst of plenty and nothing will happen. The gods of this earth will always trample underfoot the rights of many and go scot-free.  You may well say that I was being too selfish to have taken this action, not mindful of the abject poverty in our family, of our old withering mother at Keffi, and the brave efforts made by you and her to get me to this level in life. All these pale into significance when compared to my Binta. All the same, you must learn to forgive me. This is the path that I’ve chosen to tread, to die for love. I’ve no regrets whatsoever.

     Look, there she is! Can you not see her, brother? I can see her right now as I’m writing this to you. She is taunting me, brother, mocking my manhood. My soul is heavy, brother, like Christ when he was about to go to the Cross. I feel sad and life-wearied like Keats when he penned his immortal ‘Ode to Nightingale’.  My soul feels drowsy, in love with soulful death. Fly away, Binta, for my soul shall fly away with you shortly, where we shall meet to part no more. Every moment taints me with cowardice. The pen is heavy in my hand like a heavy lead, brother. Ah, woe is me!  I cannot write anymore. It’s only my body that is here. My soul has long flown away with Binta. No, I can-not. No. I … I go to meet …

    The note ended abruptly in an elliptical sentence. Samson could imagine his brother being possessed by his will to carry out his plan. The noose around his neck and then the last macabre dance of death in the air. But why did he have to do it?

    He lifted up his eyes from the table. It was like coming awake from a horrible nightmare to meet a less gloomy world. Apart from the reading-table, the room was plunged in total darkness. Is this the nothingness that death is?