![]() ![]() She had all these stories, stories before her time, before mine. In the Congo Basin, the birds had flocked to her as she called them by name. At the pyramids, she ran her hands across the hieroglyphics, translating texts lost to the ages and startling the tourists. As a young girl, I had also fledged but I was nothing compared to Abike. From the spice markets of Morocco to the Serengeti, we traveled the continent. You deserve better.’ The confused creases had still not left her forehead, ‘You belong with your people, your family’. ‘I’m not right for you, not the way I am now. ‘I don’t know where I’m headed and I don’t - I don’t know - Abike I’m not okay, do you understand?’ My voice was starting to break under the weight of the sobs I was stifling. ‘Abike, I got in touch with your clan’s people, they are so eager to see you.’ I said, drawing in a lung full of air, my hands reaching into hers. I realized I’d been holding my breath all along. ‘Soon dear.’ I lifted my head to pull the tears back in, ‘I’ll probably head home to Nigeria, I’m not sure’. ‘I’m leaving Botswana.’ I had rehearsed the line for days. With her gone, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I had lost Dike five years into our marriage and Kadiri had become everything to me. It stayed at the bottom of the stairway for weeks. I took her things, the carvings on the wall, her seedlings in the old Milo tins, shoved them into a box and threw it down the stairs. There were other mirrors, but she said mine made her look like a painting. Kadiri liked to stand in front of my mirror. Not when the body was brought in from the morgue nor when we laid her in the ground. Bodies sailing in the wind, the echo of their voices would be heard for miles and miles as they ran reckless and wild.Ī week before the Maitisong Festival, Kadiri died. In return, they’d get back rides across the grasslands. When the last of the Zebras migrated with the rains across the Chobe National Park, the girls would find them, easing them as they weeded ticks from their hide. They’d squeeze into themselves, learning the texture of each other’s hair. The two were never more than a whisper apart. She grew up sauntering all over the savannah with my daughter, Kadiri. ![]() When she came to us at the Botswana Sanctuary for Continentally Displaced Persons, no one had thought she’d make it. ‘Abike I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I reached for her, and as I pulled her into me, her sobs came down hard rocking both our bodies.Īfter the Oil War ravaged half the continent, from Djibouti down to the Table Mountains, Abike who had lost her sight, her family and her home, became one of the last living members of the Ailopin people. ‘No, they - they don’t know that, they don’t know how strong she - she is -’ ![]() ‘The doctors said she has less than a month now.’ I stared down at my hands, then up to the cobwebs in the ceiling and down at my hands again. A cyst the size of a berry had been found lodged in a corner of her brain. It was Kadiri’s second year at the oncology center. ![]() Kadiri would never have liked it here, she and Abike.Ģ1 years, 7 months, 2 weeks, 5 days before … Inside, the table – the only piece of furniture I own, greets me. If I slip and fall to my unquestionable death, the feral cats from the sewage will rip me to pieces before anyone finds me. I ramble up to my one-room spot on the fourth floor. Like every other house in Maradi, the building is a pile of metal scraps, sand bags and everything else. With lenses scratched all over, I wouldn’t see a dune rattlesnake if it was slithering right in front of me. Sometimes, in my dreams, I see it, the grin spread across the diviner’s face as he pushed the goggles into my hands. I remember the flickering of the gaslight, I remember my shadow leading the way into the makeshift shrine that served as a storehouse and a bedroom. Hair braided in sand, mind half lost, I had bartered Dike’s ring for a sand coat, a pair of silver rimmed goggles and information about The Collecting. I fasten the straps of my eye-gear and a memory walks in. Kind enough to leave the goats behind when they send hay scattering through the streets. With his passing, I am all that’s left of those who came here to Maradi, looking for answers. Their cuts came with a blistering infection and with the nearest clinic two valleys away, I watched the fever take Athjar. It is why we drape in the thickest of wool, from the ends of our hair, to the tip of our toes. Needle sands that is what the locals called them. I knew when I saw his skin – cut in a hundred places like he’d been caught in a knife brawl – that I should have left him buried. As night fell and the desert winds with it, I pulled Athjar from the sands. Hands thrown over my ears, I still heard them, his screams, I’ve never heard anything like it. When the last sandstorm left town, it took Athjar’s eyes with it. I cannot will myself to believe the still spread is nothing more than liquid over solid ground. ![]()
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