ALL OVER — AGAIN
He decided that they had simply had enough. The incessant riots and attendant killings would not put any responsible person’s mind at peace, not to talk of a family man.
Perhaps the peak of the Northern unrest came when a riot broke out on the street, Airport road, and schools were forced to close. His wife raced to the street to get the kids, two boys. On getting to the school, the gate was locked and the inside looked completely empty and quiet. Her head switched off and was empty as the school compound looked. Where are my two kids, what would I tell their father, where would I start from? These questions and more turned her mind into a maze. These Hausas, when it comes to bloodshed, don’t have regard for anyone not of their tribe. All others were ultimately expendable. What would be her gain in the North after successfully mastering their language, only to lose her priceless offsprings to the same culture? This must not be, she shouted. In a bout of reaction, her wrapper was already loose, her scarf had been thrown away the way an artiste who performs in front a huge audience throws a part of her outfit. She took to the street on which the school was located, switching and mixing codes, from Hausa to Yoruba, to Broken, to English. The riot onlookers seemed not to be interested in a couple of missing kids but rather in the bloodshed which was taking the form of a gladiatorial spectacle.
She reached the gate of her house, devastated, when a Hausa man, a friend on the street, beckoned. The lightning speed of her response suggested to the Hausa man that he had better start talking before he is at the receiving end of a transferred aggression. “Yaro ki suna nan da ne” (meaning “your children are with me”), he said to her. Before the man could finish pointing towards the direction of the open door, the already forlorn mother barged in and hugged her boys in what seemed like a discovery of an age-long treasure.
This was the ordeal his wife went through which sealed their fate — time’s up. The wife and children had to relocate to Ibadan, the closest urban city to his hometown — Oyo, and would afford him the opportunity to be able to continue his legal profession in an equally promising and productive atmosphere such as the city (Kano) his family was leaving. The family settled and work began earnestly on having a smooth transition to the South when an offer came up to become a judge, the very first from his ancient empire of a hometown, in a city of his choice. It was the perfect opportunity, one which would put his name in the record books. “There truly is an Allah in heaven”, he mused to himself. The paperwork was straightforward; his peers had glowing recommendations for him as well as expectations. After all had been finalised, the only thing left was to reunite with his family in Ibadan. The landline available in that period was the easier way to reach his wife in advance, the just introduced GSM during the Obasanjo administration was still esoteric.
Omolara knew that this was finally the start of life for her family; her husband just became a judge. Even though they’d been living very much okay, this would be a huge step closer to being big people, with access to everything official and government and ultimately, class. She looked at the kids and could not but rejoice at how her life has miraculously transformed after a turbulent childhood and youthhood in which she was abandoned by her own mother as an eight-month-old, maltreated by an abusive step-mother, sold water, hawked newspapers and served as a maid.
A girl had joined the already existing fold of two boys. There’s no longer the fear of a riot breaking out, the only concern she had was the boys’ stubbornness to go for Arabic lesson given there was no tough male voice to caution them. Even that would be solved with the arrival of their father.
Rahman the older boy is sent to grind dry yam tubers to make yam flour. The arriving judge in waiting deserves to be treated with his favourite delicacy which is also the conventional Oyo food — amala with gbegiri soup. On his way back, he misses a step and the bucket containing the yam flour is shattered; everything is wasted. It is only in retrospect that the mother of 3 sees the event as a foreshadowing — an omen. Just like the promise of what would have been a delicious amala from the yam flour that left the grinding house without making it to the kitchen so was Omolara’s husband’s journey from Kano to Ibadan. The awaiting judge never made it to the promise land — like Moses you could say.
Omolara knew that that incident categorically sent her back to the turbulent years. The door of transformation was open to her just to take that last step inside, but the strongest storm her life had ever experienced whisked her away and returned her to where she thought was history in her life. All over — again.
