1.
We were all at home when my brother, at age 7, drowned to the point of unconsciousness. I was 13.
After he got dragged out of the pool, the first thing I noticed was that his belly - now distended - looked like it could be the sun. It glistened brighter than everything.
2.
It was a scream that called me to the seriousness.
When I got downstairs and my face was hovering over his own, the world became ice. My brother was not breathing.
3i)
I can’t remember everything that happened. I know there was prayer. I know there were hands on his chest. I know there were gasps. I know my face was wet. I know that I was sorry. I can’t remember what for.
3ii)
When he started breathing again, he sat up and vomited a lake.
Apparently, that was a good sign.
3iii)
In my head though, that memory plays back like a warning. It’s like Death was pressing a picture into my hand and saying: “this is what I really look like when you come close enough. I am not fiction.”
4.
Once, I went to Bar Beach with my family and I took a few steps into the water. I liked the feeling, so I closed my eyes and started spinning. I didn’t realise that I had gone too far until I found myself back on the shore.
As she pulled my ear, my grandmother said something unforgettable in our language.
It is still a tattoo.
5.
I’m 15 and people are annoying. That’s how one day, I was sleeping and my cousin poured cold water in my ear. When I jumped out of my sleep, she said “I knew that would wake you. Oya get up and get ready. We will soon go out.”
Do you know how irritating that is? I could not sleep again, until night.
6.
At some point, Bar Beach too thought life was some sort of playground and went ahead to pour water on VI’s laps. Again.
In hindsight, maybe it was saying to Lagos, what my cousin said to me - because people woke up immediately and hawked the news on their heads like Gala.
But I don’t know, maybe it’s night again. Maybe that’s why we’re trying to sleep.
[What? Is it not the back of the house that is on fire?]
7.
Skill is relative. Water is particular about context.
I can swim in a swimming pool, but I cannot swim across the ocean.
8.
Believe it or not, this is the now and the media is furiously dumping grief on top of the world’s head.
The news is dirty and both empathy and apathy are water. If you fetch enough of the former, you will bathe and be ready to act. But steal even two drops of the latter now, and see if it will not drown and eat you like Mr. Goodluck.
Just like that, you will be there on camera; hand to your rotting chin, not breathing, not human, not alive.
9.
When you translate what my grandma said to English, this is what it means:
“But do you not know that water can eat you?”
I don’t know, maybe grief is related to water.
10.
[the world does not promise to unfreeze.]
11.
Sometimes, behind sleep, my mind wanders and I am 13 again or in secondary school again, or in what I thought was love again, or just in the past again and I wake up sweating from all the baggage.
But even in my nightmares, I’m still myself:
12.
Far away from home and bloated with secrets that I’m too afraid to tell, but
Never the Chibok Girls.
13.
Bruised in strange places, shaking in the dark of the night,
but always in one piece.
Never Borno State.
14.
In some dreams, the maid still sends me to steal sweets and then steals them from me. Occasionally, I think it’s funny. Most times, I hate it.
but even there, the sweets never morph into my life.
I’m not the 10year old girl whose name is now “Suicide Bomber”.
15.
In some memories, I’m in front of the principal’s office, contemplating my fate. I think it’s the end of the world.
But am I the 40 boys lined up and shot in their school?
Am I ever in a market, being blown up to death?
I am not Yobe.
16.
I wake up laughing some days, because I have random dreams, like the one where things are simple and my mother, trying to force feed me beans, is saying “trust me. It will make you taller”. But it’s because beans are beans that I can laugh.
They’re not the flesh and bones and blood of people I love.
I’m not Baga.
17.
I’m not you, who’ve been killed. I’m not you, child abducted. I’m not you, screaming for air. I’m not you, just gunned down in the street. I’m not you, scattered beyond recognition. I’m not you, who didn’t make the news. I’m not you running into a lake and drowning there. I’m not you who when looking for your family, saw a pregnant woman split in half. I’m not you.
18.
Sometimes, I catch my whole body shrivelling, my mouth bending into an “I’m tired”, my heart twisting into an “I’ll rather not care” and then I feel your eyes burning my skin.
I did not not run with you for four days. I’m not the one who hasn’t eaten for days. I’m not the one who is desperate for sleep. You’re the tired one. You’re the one who has to care. I am sorry.
19.
The whole of Nigeria is in the world when you drown to death. Including your president. We are 55.
We are stuck in a dream where we find your shoes at the riverbank. When we try them on, they dizzy our feet. But still, they say: “stay awake.” Still, they say, “swim. I beg you, swim the way you can, for me.”
20.
My mouth is open.
Skill is relative. Water is particular about context.
Prayers do not drown.
