Abuja can be a funny place. True story. An afternoon like any other. The phone rings. This is before mobile phones, so I run out of my room, into the sitting room, and snatch up the receiver. It's my first semester holiday, first year. I cannot remember. But I think I was 'expecting a call' (if you know what I mean).
Hello? But there was just quiet breathing at the other end. Then a female voice, speaking English with the faintest whiff of an Hausa accent: 'Who is this? Where have I called?' I take the receiver off my ear and look at it, put it back and say – Did you not call this number? 'Okay' replies the voice and (honestly, not one word of embellishment), 'I live in Area 1. My husband is away for a while. Can you come over?' My brother, sometimes I still wonder what would have happened to me if I had taken a taxi to Area 1 that day. Or what would have happened to me if, nine years later, I had taken the train to Newcastle. Because – if I am lying, let me grow a small pimple – it happened again.
Middle of the night. Trying to find warmth under my duvet. The phone (mobile this time) rings. After a few seconds listening, I politely explain that, 'this is the wrong number'. But it rings again. 'I'm really sorry to call again. But…you have such a lovely voice.' (If there is something I should have said in response, I still do not know it.) What comes naturally is - 'Eh?' - in my default accent, no forming. The one I grew up with, not the one I manage in London. But she doesn't seem to mind. It IS, after all, the night before Christmas. 'Why don't you take the train up to Newcastle? And I'll meet you at the station.'
Hmm. I don't know, but I strongly suspect I have no head for alcohol; that half a glass will do to me what six bottles did to Obaino that day at Uni. He left me in the room to go and 'quickly' get something from a friend, staggered back, an hour later, DRUNK. He tried to tell me what happened, in between burps and hysterical giggles; how he walked into some sort of party, and every time he tried to leave someone shoved 'one more' into his hand. He, eventually, passed out in the middle of the room. And nothing – read my lips, NOTHING – we did woke him up, till he was done sleeping.
So, I understand. Honestly, after a while, Loneliness will do you like six bottles of 'manya'. In that state of mind, every crooked road branching off the one you're walking down suddenly looks like the highway to heaven. Just because it's been so long since someone said something nice to you – noticed your hair, or the color of your eyes, reached across the cold aisle and offered you a hand.
But! Not so fast. Maybe (let me just agree with you) the midnight voice actually belonged to a beautiful woman; what if she was with a group of men, all carrying garottes in their back pockets? Some people have developed this skill to the level of dazzling proficiency, exploiting the spaces others carry around in their hearts, like that girl who orders the whole suya on the first date, chomping holes through your back pocket, or the man who colonizes your car, leaving you to hustle buses to work. Ah! The things we endure for fear of being alone.
But you need to see the way these things really work. True Love acts a lot like you or me, a little put off by THAT look – the one that says you NEED me, can't do without me, always thinking of me, will die without me. Honestly, the only people genuinely attracted to desperation are people looking to mop the floor with others. Just remember – not many things will convince someone else that he or she can enjoy your company as surely as this one will, watching you enjoy it yourself. And even if, at the end of the day, no one worth the trouble ever shows up, believe me, you would still have lived a complete life.
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