NYU Black Renaissance Noire Spring/Summer 2013 | Page 10

4

Dimié Abrakasa stepped into the
harsh light of mid-afternoon. On the
horizon, he saw a mass of bruise-dark
clouds bearing down on the sun. The
air was heavy, there was no wind. Rain
was approaching. Dimié Abrakasa
considered shortcutting through the
back streets, but he remembered the
money in his pocket, so he headed for
the open road.

Dimié Abrakasa halted, opened his fly,
and ignoring the faded letters on the
wall in front of him that spelled,
do not unirate overhere anymore
by order! the landlord
he splashed the wall. He arched his
back and sighed in release, then shifted
his foot to avoid the foaming stream.
A thrill of excitement entered the boys’
voices. As he squeezed out the last
drops, the boys raised a cheer—a shriek
of agony rent the air. Startled, he
jumped, and his fly-zipper snagged his
flesh. He yelped with pain, and sucked
in his breath. Then, with careful fingers,
he freed himself from the grip of the
zipper teeth.

Giving in to a curiosity so intense
he could smell its cat breath, Dimié
Abrakasa approached the boys. They
made way; they absorbed him into
their ranks. As he’d suspected, it
was something subhuman they had
ganged up on. He’d expected to see a
mangy dog, or a goat lying in a pool
of blood, but he found he was staring
at the cowering form of a rag-draped
madwoman. She was crouched on
the ground in the centre of the circle
formed by the boys. Her knees were
drawn up to her chest and her hands
covered her ears. The skin of her knees
was scabrous; her hands were tree-root
grimy. Her hair fell on her shoulders
in thick, brownish clumps, and it was
sprinkled with the confetti of garbage
dumps. She reeked of disease.
Dimié Abrakasa turned his gaze to the
boys. He counted heads, but when he
got to the twelfth, someone moved to
a new position, distracting him, and
he was too close to the end to bother
starting over. Some boys held sticks
in their hands, others clutched bricks,
and a few had both. He recognised two
boys as schoolmates, but every other
person was a stranger.

8

The 1.3 kilometre Ernest Ikoli Road,
started in September 1970 and finished
nine months later, was for many years
extolled—on account of its wideness
and its drainage system, its gardened
roundabouts and traffic lights and
cat’s-eyes lane markers—as the model
Nigerian city road, the road of the
bright future. Once charcoal-black,
the road was now an ash-grey stream
that threw off sparks where the metal
of embedded bolts and bottle tops
caught the sunlight. Potholes strewed
the asphalt, and the concrete sidewalks
were shot with cracks. The roadside
drains were silted over in some places,
and trash-choked in others. The
revving engines and horn blares of
commuters, the clang-and-bang of
artisans, the roar of a populace worldfamous as a loudmouthed lot, beat the
air. Theme music of city life.

After he passed Number II Sand Field
and crossed the road to avoid an
approaching pushcart piled high with
yams, Dimié Abrakasa felt the urge to
urinate. He stopped, looked around,
moved forward a few steps, reached the
mouth of the alley he’d spotted, and
turned into it. The alley was in shadow.
Relief from the sun’s glare heightened
the pressure on his bladder, and he
picked his way across the alley, holding
his breath. The alley floor was dotted
with shit mounds; the air stank of
old urine. The windows of the storey
buildings that formed the sides of the
alley were boarded up, and paint flakes
curled off the lichened walls. A group
of boys was gathered at the alley end.

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4/8/13 9:38 PM