RUNNING FROM DUST BY MERIT GOGO-FYNEFACE.

“Your name ma, the unattractive lady asked raising her head from her cluttered wooden desk to meet my gaze. I was irritated yet i concealed it; I returned a very disgusted glance and said, “Sandra Minimah,” with a finality that dared her not to verify the spelling of my last name. I looked away as she scribbled my name on the ticket with the alphabets an inch or more above the line they should have rested. “Destination,” she inquired, with her front bald hair struggling to remain hidden beneath the sky blue scarf she had on. “Port Harcourt,” I said in a tone mixed with even more disgust but a tinge of humility to avert the possibility of her handing me the naira notes I had given and in her husky voice say, “sorry madam I cannot have you on this bus”. I could not afford even another day in this place not after all I had been through amidst the prevalent chaos to withdraw the last currency in my account at the ATM spot at Chiromawa yesterday, the 24th day of July, 2014. There was a recap of the bomb blast that had occurred that day on the national television; I heard the female reporter say something about a high capacity improvised explosive device (IED) detonated at the New Road Motor Park in Sabon Gari, then she held a countenance that matched the severity of the news that had just been cast . This gave me even more zeal to leave Kano by all means. “Port Harcourt,” I reiterated, with a feigned smile that did not survive after I was handed my ticket. I got in the first seat behind the driver, my joy knew no bounds. I was running from dust, from the incessant deaths that had occurred even before my arrival in Kano. I filled my eyes with the passengers getting into the rickety bus, I was inadvertently alerted by some drops of poorly pasted jolof rice falling off from a bruised tiny stainless plate an approximately two year old girl had been feeding from; she had a small peach hijab which only revealed her ebony coloured face. I gestured to show she could sit on my lap after her mother had muttered some words in Hausa; she flashed a hearty smile revealing her fancy gold canine unintentionally. Perhaps she had presumed I was a Northerner, I was dark enough, had a conspicuous pointed nose and henna tattoo which my friend, Amina had playfully drawn on my skin. As the bus jostled past large mass of Sahara vegetation, brown fields, pyramids of fresh tomatoes and fruits stacked by traders along the road and herdsmen with healthy lazy cows crossing from one side of the road to the other which helped check our drivers speed as we journeyed that sunny afternoon; I stared at the gigantic rocks and I wondered how an individual had climbed so high to get a gubernatorial election flyer pasted there and in bold white paints had written the name of the aspirant. I leaned on the dusty glass windows and reminisced how I had found myself in the North West of Nigeria. It was January 2011, my mother, Patricia Minimah had driven down to my Aunts at Ada George, Port Harcourt where I was observing my holiday after the second attempt with the JAMB examinations to secure admission into the University. We rode silently, then she struggled to park her blue 2007 model Toyota car in our small garage on our arrival home. On entering our flat in Harvey Estate, it was apparent nothing had changed! The sitting room was as serene as it could be with our hoary cream coloured leather sofa which Mama takes pains to dust herself, to keep in shape till we could afford new ones, still looking flattened with traces of the massive behinds that had compressed them. The old air conditioner hung in its space noisily chilling the sitting room. Papa’s cherished painting hung beside it, perfect drawing of Papa in his military uniform except that Papa’s lips were not as large as the artist had drawn, for the token Papa had paid for that painting, it so reflected. The wooden table was finely placed in the center of the living room, sagging with a lot of Papa’s news magazines, our water dispenser was even faulty but Mama would not let go, she left it for guests to see to show she had one, to tell that there were times when we almost had it all. Except for these, there was nothing to write home about in this house, all our age long belongings yelled ‘average family’. I heard mama cursing with grave bitterness. I did not know what caused all this bitterness in Mama that made her interrupt the coziness I tried to gain with my head phones, I was forced to turn down my favourite Fred Hammond track and make out what the loud complaints was all about. “What sin did we commit, who have I offended?” Mama kept shouting. After several wailings, I realized, in the wake of terrorism in Nigeria, Papa had been enlisted as one of the officers posted to the metropolitan city to fight terrorism. Papa said we could stay in Port Harcourt but Mama refused and that meant I had to go too. I spread the news of our forthcoming journey to Kano around the neighbourhood hoping that the more I spoke about it, something somehow would serve as a hindrance but unfortunately that jinx was nowhere near. It was several months into the harmattan season, dust filled the air at noon with cold wind lifting fallen dry leaves in angry spiral tosses and throwing them back to another part of the ground. Amina, our neighbour whom Mama forbade I associate with for reasons I could not fathom had still been my friend in Mama’s absence, on our way to the market, on our several tours to Tiga. Amina’s mother, Zaynab had warned we avoid attack prone places, she had also warned that if I got into a vehicle with a man whose legs were stretched abnormally I should alight immediately because there was a possibility that he could have a weapon hidden beneath his attire, she had insisted I always take vehicles from the park but the irony of it all was that no one was safe and nowhere was. Mama had smiled over Zaynab’s hospitality and had thanked her but in the privacy of our apartment, she forbade me from associating with them but I did not see reasons they were just as harmless as we were. I was awakened by the prayers in the mosque opposite our apartment at 5.00pm. I set about my daily routine and later in the day, I approached Amina’s apartment to remind her of our trip to Tiga that day but something had changed about her, she did not look at me when I spoke, she mumbled something about her inability to accompany me, shortly afterwards, her mother pulled her in. I tried to figure what the problem was, I had apologized when I had asked what part of Hausa she hailed from and she angrily said, “I am not Hausa, I am Fulani,” judging from her tone, I could tell it was a fact she was weary of explaining, and she had also explained her maternal grandmother was Hausa, then I wondered why she was upset when I mistook her for being Hausa. Anthony! I thought, that could probably be what this was about. I had inadvertently told Amina that Anthony had asked me out, without the slightest knowledge that she had nursed unrequited feelings for him. I had met him severally with Amina, she had introduced him as a friend on our first encounter and on our subsequent encounters he had played and laughed with us in a way that did not reveal anything beyond the surface. I had slowly fallen in love with Anthony, a moderately handsome Lagosian, our first stares grew into first words and so had our love grown, it was only after he kissed me that he revealed he was Muslim. I began to fantasize about our lives together, making up excuses I would tell Mama when she gives a loud no! without a second thought when I reveal my likeness for Anthony- just the way she had disgraced Peter out of her presence. That one loved me to the moon but when Mama had frankly told me she did not like him, there was nothing I could do. I had not forced him to adorn himself in the faded white shirt he tucked into an old gray trouser and if he had listened closely to the kind of woman I told him Mama was, a woman who would alter the colour of her lips in conspicuous red, doubled her earrings on each ear at sixty, nothing would have made him fasten a brown tattered belt into that trouser. As I scooped every drop of the ice cream Peter brought along with his rotund shadow that afternoon, I unremorsefully told him that Mama did not like him and there was nothing I could do but also wish I could also swap his uneven dentition because our children could never own his teeth. “I love you Sandra, there is no place in my heart for anyone else,“ Anthony said, when I confronted him but my mind was made up I left him no choice but to carry on with Amina, his childhood love and for the days that followed I had learnt to live by myself, even without Amina. I had just served Mama our breakfast of partially heated potatoes and tea owing to the power failure that occurred minutes after I switched on the old micro wave. Mama hurriedly turned on our portable radio and relaxed into her seat after tuning properly, when our fourteen inch television went off. There was a knock at the door, from where I sat, I saw a short man standing in our veranda, he handed Mama a white envelope and she shut the door behind him as Mama tore the envelope desperately. “San…” Mama called out, without letting her pronounce the last letters of my name I combed our apartment for her brown framed reading glasses and took another sip from my tea cup. Mama knocked down the side table and it tumbled our breakfast as she raced out after reading of how papa had been among one of the soldiers that had passed on in course of a gunfire exchange. I called out severally, screaming, running after Mama with every bit of strength my twenty-two year old frame could afford, bare footed, with my turquoise flay gown fluttering around my long legs. Zaynab joined in the pursuit on realizing what had happened but Mama did not stop she ran faster than I could ever imagine her huge size could permit, with no care in the world she ran and suddenly before my eyes Mama ran into an oncoming vehicle even before we approached the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, she was stone dead. I did not cry in the company of Zaynab and Amina all along, but on our return days later when my eyes fell on the wasted breakfast, one of Mama’s high target wrappers that had left her waist on her way out tears trickled rapidly. I resolved to leave the nothingness behind to begin a fresh start back in Port Harcourt. Finally, our bus gave a loud cry as it halted after numerous hours; I secured a space for my belongings making them lean on my legs as I slid my hands into my pocket reaching for my phone to read a message notification, it began to drizzle; my lips broadened in a smile on seeing a gentleman in the kind of clothes that Mama would like. He offered to help shelter my small luggage, he wanted to know my name and in the years that followed our children began to have his teeth.