Ismaila of Angwa-Dodo

by Fatima Okhuosami

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Ismaila slipped on a puddle of dog piss, landing face-down on his neighbour’s bingo. His rectum, hosting a potpourri of cassava, bitter leaf soup and sukudai, pushed hard against his anus. It was still dark out and the muezzin of Angwa-Dodo central mosque was singing the call to prayers in a loud, one-note wail. “Who dat?” the constable living three doors down, croaked. Ismaila released simultaneous gaseous bombs which corrupted the fine morning air. He stood, tiptoed across the veranda of their face-me-I-face-you apartment, and filled his kettle with water from a plastic drum outside the officer’s door. It belonged to his ex-wife, Salamatu – one of the things she brought with her from her father’s house.

Two full months had passed since he sent her packing. It was not an easy decision, but there was the matter of her confession blurted out in the middle of a bitter quarrel. She spat on his manhood like he was a worthless insect. Still, he would have forgiven everything had she got down on her knees and begged to stay, like a normal human being. Instead, Salamatu did the unthinkable. She tightened the wrapper around her chest, grabbed her akpoti, and moved in with her lover that same day, advertising their sin to the world.

Every day, for hours at a stretch, Ismaila thought of her and his insides sizzled like boiling tomato sauce, an auspicious circumstance for the local chemist who dosed him liberally with nameless concoctions. Wherever he went, he heard stories, elaborate accounts of the affair.

They said he was foolish not to have at least suspected.

They warned that the child in her belly was most likely not his.

Those who pitied him advised he find a young girl from an impoverished family to marry, someone who’d look upon him as her saviour. He was, after all, a man of impressive physical strength, towering height, and skin the colour of burnt sugar. Many families could be persuaded to overlook his chronically sour disposition, a recurring nervous twitch of one eye present in all males in his bloodline or the fact that he was nearing the dusk of his forties without getting on in the world, living in the same village he was born.

He abandoned his ticket officer job in the local government council and spent his days indoors, overwhelmed with lurid fantasies of revenge. Sometimes, it felt like the walls of the room and parlour he rented – because Salamatu’s parents had demanded that he secure a decent accommodation for their only child before accepting her bride price – were closing in on him. Or the jamboree raging inside his head could no longer be contained. Whenever this happened, he knocked on the door of a moneylender living opposite his compound and borrowed two or three thousand naira. This loan was advanced on the strength of the upcoming elections when he hoped to reprise his role as a party thug.

With money in his pocket, Ismaila would go off to Rugan Rabo. The boys who “run things” in Kwali’s most infamous district, supplied him Colorado loaded into cigarettes and copious amounts of sukudai, a pernicious formalin solution fit for stomachs reinforced with concrete. The first time he tried this combo, he woke inside someone’s farm, in a tight embrace with a scarecrow to whom he gifted his shirt, singlet, trousers and cap.

Ismaila took a route behind the popular Kazman Hotel, hop-skipping a series of puddles which were the defining characteristic of the rainy season all over Kwali. A town that provided the capital city’s sole senator for twelve years. Although it was market day, there were as yet no delivery vans, levy collectors or sketchy vendors in pickup trucks advertising multi-purpose tonics with loudspeakers. Save for an okpa seller setting up her canopy on a stack of vehicle tyres, the entire area was empty.

This woman stared at him as though there was something important that she wanted to say, but he forestalled any chit chat by quickening his steps. He crossed the highway and followed a tiny footpath that reared its head.

Ismaila traversed a melon farm, meandered through an uncompleted building, and arrived at a dumpsite before boluses of shit forced their way down his legs. He was bathed in sweat.

But somebody had cleared the bushes around his makeshift toilet.

From the corner of his eye, he caught a man staring him down. Likely chased there under similar circumstances. The stranger was dressed in a matching kaftan and drawstring trousers tailored from the reddest cheapest polyester. Ismaila raised a hand to show he did not mind sharing his space. The man drew back his lips, revealing two rows of teeth fit for a toothpaste commercial. Then his face morphed into something Ismaila could neither explain nor understand, but which forced him to look away.

All at once everywhere felt hot – the air he breathed, the soil on which he stood, his jalabiya – as if he was an offering tied to a burning stake. He heard his heart beat out of tune and wanted to run away, but his feet were in open mutiny against his brain.

The man hobbled closer and Ismaila noticed one leg was less steady than the other. As was an arm which hung from its socket like a stump.

He had a sack made from raffia on his good shoulder, similar to those used by farmers for keeping their implements.

“Ina kwana,” he said, offering greetings.

Ismaila would have answered, and he tried to, but something moved inside the man’s bag, distracting him. Within seconds, pain gripped him in the neck. Rough hands dragged him to the ground. Pushed a kerchief into his nostrils. He felt his strength evaporate. It was as if he split in two, one half floating, gawking at the inert form, begging him to fight. His limbs became water.

The stranger knelt beside him, on the left side, pressing against his kidney. He started to mumble gibberish as if under a spell. Then he took a knife out of his bag.

“Buy okpa. Sweet okpa.” It was the vendor Ismaila crossed earlier, doing her rounds. She was headed in their direction, hoping to take the shortcut to Kuzman filling station, where she had a delivery for the fuel attendants.

The stranger paused, listened carefully to the approaching footsteps, then retrieved his knife and kerchief. He was waiting for the intruder to come into clear view.

Ismaila swallowed mouthfuls of air. He wiggled his fingers and toes as strength returned to him. An anxious expectancy rose in his chest. He stared at his tormentor, eyes wide, sweat beading on his nose. Both his halves merged.

The okpa seller appeared, supporting a plastic bucket full of merchandise on her head. Ismaila had resolved to call for help, but at the crucial moment, a lump gagged his throat. He could not breathe. The man was squeezing his neck.

She hurried over, kept her goods next to a congregation of weeds, then said in a voice so low, only the three of them could hear: “Is he the one you caught? You suppose wait for the muezzin to pass na. This man has been drowning himself in so much liquor, his kidneys are definitely useless by now.”

“So, what should we do? If we let go, he will expose you.”

The hairs on Ismaila’s skin turned into spikes. He screamed wordlessly and passed out.

Through the haphazard ringing in his ears, he heard a wicked cry: “My penis o. This man don thief my penis.”

He woke, white with shock.

All twelve members of Angwa-Dodo’s vigilante team were at the scene. With heavy slaps, they demanded that he return what he stole. The hawker, who quickly found somewhere to hide her goods, informed the gathering that two penises were spirited away in Gwagwalada the previous week. They consoled and reassured the stranger who by this time, was heaving. “I only come Kwali to find work so I go fit feed my wife and my pikin,” he sobbed. “Leg I no get. Hand I no get. Wetin I go say happen to my penis when I return house?”

Worshippers coming back from the mosque, motorcyclists hustling for passengers, and kids by their mothers’ sides waiting for the school bus, assembled. The crowd roared like a poorly synchronised opera, eager to conquer the thing before it – for Ismaila had ceased to be a person and was now lesser than an object. They tore off his clothes.

Murder was the goal, and by instinct, each participant knew his part. Some picked stones. Others grabbed wood logs. A few managed to find heavy bits of scrap metal. They laughed at his tears, the unabashed cackling of the mentally ill. The sky wept in solidarity, hard and relentless.

A man with a face like a bicycle seat stood at the head of the horde. It was Ismaila’s neighbour who had stopped by on his way to the police station. He held a vehicle tyre in one hand, kept a jerrycan of petrol next to his feet, and was gawking at his love rival with the venomous loathing of a cobra about to strike. It was he who took the plaintiff to the side, emerging some twenty minutes later to inform everyone that he had verified that the penis and testicles were gone.

Ismaila’s eyes darted from person to person, desperate for a saviour. Friends, acquaintances, comrades with whom he used to down bottles every evening. That was when he sighted Salamatu. She pushed through towards him with her swollen tummy, tried to say a sentence or two in his favour. But the crowd, led by her lover, silenced her.

Ismaila covered his privates with his palms. One of his eyes was swollen shut. Blood dripped from a wound under what remained of his nose. There was a nonstop whoosh sound inside his ears.

“I swear, I no thief bros penis,” Ismaila wailed in a voice that could have thawed the most frozen of hearts.

Then the constable hit him with a plank, and everything went black.