I wake up sweating when the sun has almost dipped behind the horizon. It takes me a few minutes to get my groggy self back on the road, crossing the railway tracks to join the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway that will finally lead me to Oshodi. At this point, I feel not only grateful and even more extremely tired—typical feeling at the last lap of a race—but joyous that at least one good thing seems to be coming out of this after all.
The highway is silent too, as expected. Nightly creatures yawn and stretch and begin their chorus of noises. I walk in the middle of the road, maintaining a good 360-degree view of everything all round me. More yellow danfos and kekes are lined up along the wire fence before the railway, same way they have at all the big bus stops. I ignore the rattling I hear in some of them—I know human and godling rattlings, and those do not sound like either—and instead focus on the Oshodi Interchange before me.
Many years ago, long before The Falling, the Oshodi Interchange was known to most as the heartbeat of Lagos, where you could get transportation to literally every single nook and cranny of the state, and even beyond. The interchange is characterised by two things: a lengthy flyover, allowing those who didn’t want to have anything to do with the interchange be on their merry way, known to most as Oshodi Oke; and beneath the flyover and pedestrian bridges, where all the buses and taxis and touts and hawkers of wares and hoodlums and pickpockets and every possible godforsaken combination of trade and squalor and vice exists. This underside, splayed across the ongoing railway tracks like a milk spill, was known to most as Oshodi Ìsàlẹ̀, one of the most dangerous places in Lagos.
That has not changed.
I arrive at the place square underneath the bridges. The remnants of a once busy precinct are still here; the danfos, the tattered posters and crooked writing scrawled in yellow chalk on the pillars under the bridge advertising domestic workers and penis enlargements, abandoned makeshift wooden sheds, kiosks and mobile toilets, and a massive combined stink of stagnant gutter water, decomposing refuse and spirogyra.
Right. If Olokun is to be believed, this is where I begin my search for the thing that will make me larger than life, that will enable me rise above myself and become something bigger: Amunǫwa, the one who brings fire.
Something is different about Oshodi than the last time I saw it, many years ago. Across the road, right where there used to be a massive freeway, is a blockade of vertical concrete slabs and military sandbags, supported by tractor-size tyres. The wire fences once used to separate the train tracks from the bridge have been moved, now installed on each side of the blockade so that it snakes with the length of the flyover, shutting off everything beyond from anyone arriving at Oshodi from my end. It’s a blockade through-and-through, that without a sign in sight clearly says Do Not Cross.
I’m standing there, thinking, when there is a swift movement to my right. I spin, but there’s nothing but shadows between the pillars under the flyover. I scuttle towards the divider in the middle of the road, so I can get a good vantage point on all sides. I hear the same rattle, the sound of feet scurrying after me, stopping when I stop, from the opposite side of the road. Whatever it is, it’s all around me; I feel a choking presence converging. It becomes increasingly clear to me that no matter how fast I run, I’ll still get caught.
“Okay,” I say, to no one in particular, facing the darkness beyond the pillars under the bridge. “Show yourself.”
There is hesitation, a tentativeness to the footfalls.
“I have not come here to make trouble,” I say. “I’m just looking for something.”
Then the shadows slink out from behind the pillars, moving as a pack. They circle me slowly, cautiously. I count over a dozen of them. They’re people, dressed in clothes more worn than mine, with pieces of cloth tied around their noses. A closer look tells me that most of them are women, and all of them hold weapons: some guns, some machetes and knives, some clubs.
Of course Olokun sent me into a trap.
What else do gods do but get unsuspecting humans caught up in their quests for personal fulfillment? I am the stupid one for trusting him.
“Okay,” I say, raising my hands as the militants circle me. “I come in peace, okay? I’m not here to fight. If you’ll just let me be on my way...”
I leave the sentence hanging, hoping the ones who’re pointing their guns at me will get the message first and lower their weapons, but they hold them steady. I start to back up then, my hands still raised, keeping all of them in my line of sight as they fall into a rough horseshoe shape, keeping my rear as the only direction of escape, or retreat.
As I come out from under the bridge, a figure rides out from the shadows. Rides, because she’s on a horse. A fucking horse. She’s riding it bareback, her hands clutching nothing but its mane. She’s dressed in combat-looking gear, complete with boots. She holds no weapons, but she doesn’t need to, to look menacing. She stops behind me, blocking my escape. I turn to look up at her.
“Look, I said I don’t want any troub—”
She throws something at me. Not a weapon, only a sort of belt made of plastic or wooden beads, that wraps itself around my torso and snaps together with a magnetic click. I’m almost chiding myself at flinching, when I realise that I can’t take off the belt at all. In fact, it tightens the more I try to take it off, and then I realise: the beads are getting stuck to my skin.
It’s fucking warded, dammit.
And then slowly, my senses begin to fade like a camera out of focus, my esper retreating to some faraway place, out of my reach. At the same time, the group converges on me swiftly, like they’ve rehearsed it: someone knocks at the back of my knees, so that I fall to the ground; another puts a hangman’s noose of rope around my neck; and others bind my wrist and ankles. In under thirty seconds, I’m completely immobile.
The horse woman dismounts and stands above me. I can’t see her face—I can’t see anyone’s face—but I can tell she’s smiling, like she’s humbled me in my pride, and it brings a memory from last year, where I last saw this look, the last time I was in captivity; the last time I felt hopeless, helpless and useless to the rest of the world.
And I find myself thinking: Oh, for fuck’s sake, not this again.
Chapter Eighteen
THE NIGERIAN ARMY Shopping Arena was one of the most guarded shopping complexes of Oshodi in its heyday. Now, as I am carried between four members of the militant group like a log—I realise the group that bound me by the bridge, outside the blockade, were sentries. The large, arched gate into the Arena, a half mile down from the blockade, sports even more guards and guns than pre-Falling. The three gates are padlocked with heavy chains. A guard, masked like the others, unlocks one when we arrive and lets us in.
The horse woman leads the troop. I hear nothing of the little conversation she makes with people—what with my senses blocked out with the binding ward written into the beads around me—but I can see from the way she moves, the way the bodies of others stiffen just a little when she goes past them, that she is some sort of leader here. And a wizard, of course.
For the first time since Makoko, I see lights in the former shopping stalls ahead of us, and hear life in the familiar sounds of children at play. For a moment, I’m comforted that I am not in the hands of a deadly militant group intent on carving my skin and using it for rituals (I’m sure someone’s had the idea). All that hope evaporates soon when, instead of moving in the direction of that warmth, we veer right, into an unlit portion of the massive compound.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, barely hearing myself, not quite sure if I make any sense to them at all. “Where are we going?”
I’m taken around back without response, as if they want to keep the dirty work they’re about to do with me out of the eyes of the happy children. We walk at least half a kilometre before I hear the sound of a large door being opened. I’m carried into a large building, a warehouse of sorts. It’s pitch dark.
They dump me on the ground. Someone tur
ns on a torchlight and points it directly into my face. If I couldn’t see for shit before, it’s even worse now.
“I’m going to ask you just once,” a voice says: clearly the commander’s. She sounds older, but firm, like she is used to commanding people. “Who sent you?”
“Sent... What?”
Something hard—the butt of a gun, maybe—smacks me in the temple.
“Every time you respond to my question without the answer I’m looking for, I break your head. Now, who sent you?”
I shake my head to orient myself. “Nobody. Nobody sent me.”
Another smack.
“Did the Fiery Ones send you?”
“Did the—What? The Fiery Ones didn’t send me, what the hell?”
Smack.
“Can you hold on?” I find myself shouting. “Can you just, like, wait for a second?”
There is a pause.
“Sango and Aganju didn’t send me,” I say. “I’m looking for them.”
“And why are you looking for them?”
“Because,” I say, the image of Cardoso House burning in my mind’s eye, “they took everything from me.” I realise I’m voicing it for the first time, and this sends pinpricks into my chest, but I clear my throat and soldier on. “They attacked and burnt my house. They”—don’t say it, David, don’t say it—“they... killed my family.”
There is silence, as if they hear the grief in my voice and are waiting for it to pass.
“This house,” the commander says, softness coming into her voice. “Where is it? Who are you?”
“Cardoso House, off Simpson in Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó,” I say. “My name is David Mogo.”
There is another pause, then someone clicks a lighter, lights a lantern and raises it.
We are in a warehouse, alright: a large open space of concrete and cement, storeys high. There are seven of the guerillas in front of me, the commander included. They all hold guns bar the commander. She approaches me, slowly, kneels, then takes off her cloth mask. She is middle-aged, with sharp cheekbones, steely eyes and rough hands, in that way I know she must have once been military. A whisp of greying hair peeks out from under her headwrap.
“The godhunter,” she says.
I nod.
“You fought the Wizard at 81 Division.”
“That’s me,” I say, smiling weakly.
“You’re Udi Odivwiri’s son.”
I’ve never thought of myself as Payu’s son, but there’s a thought.
“Hold on,” I say, confused. “How do you know so much about me?”
“Is he really dead? Udi?”
I stare at her wordlessly. She walks away with her back to me, her hands akimbo, shoulders drooped. The others look on, wearing the same fallen faces.
The commander returns to me.
“Why are you here? How did you find us?”
“How did I find...? You guys know you’re literally on the road, right?”
“No one like you—no deity of any sort—has come here, ever,” she says. “And we’ve had to be extra careful since the Fiery Ones took over.”
My head rings. “Since the what took over what?”
She lifts her eyebrows. “Oh. You didn’t know.”
“I’ve been... occupied. What’s happening?”
She looks at me for a long time, something akin to pity in her eyes, then, matter-of-factly, says: “The Fiery Ones took over the State House in Upper Island a few days ago. We no longer run Lagos, godhunter. The gods do now.”
THE COMMANDER’S NAME is Shonuga, and after clarifying that I really do come in peace, she unties me from the warded beads. My senses return with a pop, and I grab for my esper and flex it with my mind. For the first time since the lightning strike, it seems to be working quite well.
I’m left to catch some badly-needed sleep before the next morning. In order not to alarm the population of the Arena, Shonuga has me sleep in an abandoned bank building her squad has set aside for ‘extraordinary guests.’ I’m not sure what extraordinary means in this context, and I’m too tired and hungry to worry. I end up with some dry garri and water, which I gobble up before bed. I struggle to sleep, of course, but the weariness from walking almost twenty-four hours wins, and I drift into fitful slumber.
Morning sees a late forties-ish man with albinism, thin, dressed in office trousers and a dress shirt, tucked in and everything (the neatest I’ve seen in a long time) arrive and stand over me while I wake. He’s the first person I’ve seen here who’s not armed, and not poised to gun me down. He has new clothes for me, a long-sleeved dress shirt like his and a pair of size 34 jeans, intended to help me blend better into the population of the Arena while Shonuga, who in essence runs this place, figures out what to do with me. I dress behind what had formerly been a cashier’s counter. He notices the Lichtenberg figures on my chest, but says nothing about it. Instead, he explains to me that his name is Shonekan, and he is a second-in-command of sorts for the Arena. Then he goes on to explain, in what I consider unnecessary detail, how he first was in the military, then after deciding combat fatigues were not for him, moved on to become a lecturer of history at the now-defunct University of Lagos.
We take a walk around the compound. The Arena is a very modern shopping complex, now converted into a semi-comfortable post-Falling sanctuary. A parallel layout of lock-up shops (“With their own toilets,” Shonekan tells me)—over a hundred of them, at a guess—house displaced families, assigned according to need. An equal number of the smaller stalls—traditionally built market kiosks with wooden façades—house singular folk. Behind these are over two hundred square metres of warehouse space, as well as a few odds-and-ends, like the bank where I slept.
Most people are dressed well, as if they’ve just began their own post-Falling life. They go about their business, which for the most part seems to consist of trying to find people to trade stuff with. We pass by a large general courtyard where small groups of people gather, bending over blankets spread out in the early morning sun sporting signs like, I HAVE COKE AND WINE. LOOKING FOR SIZE 40 FEMALE SHOES. Some are selling perishable goods, like in a good old open-air market, while some sell more practical stuff, like lanterns and candles. There is a big, black pot in the corner, with a heap of ash underneath, and sprinkles of jollof rice around.
The Arena is so well kept that for a moment I’m taken back to a time when there were no gods in Lagos, when the mainland too was a haven like Upper Island is now (at least, before the Fiery Ones got there). The Arena might’ve been one of the government’s occasional bids to gentrify the mainland, sure, but for a moment, as we walk around the paved roads and walkways of interlocking tiles between stalls and lock-up shops, I feel like a little slice of heaven is here. Well-pruned shrubbery, glass windows intact, even a good number of vehicles parked around—not moving, sure, but not rundown and infested with scavengers or godlings. A dog barks in the distance; not a howl, but the joyous bark of a dog fetching a ball. As we circle back to the lock-up shops, two children wave to us from a window. Shonekan waves back, and the children giggle to one another.
Shonekan himself is a quiet man with small hands, mostly always squinting behind his glasses. He is a far cry from Shonuga. I guess being someone of fewer words and a demure manner, she always sends him to do the tedious work of building relationships with people.
He takes me back to an empty row of kiosk-style open stalls. He tries a few keys in one lock, and when it clicks open, pulls out the key and hands it to me.
“Shonuga says you should put up here until you two can have extensive discussions about your... mission,” he says. “You have a mattress on the floor in there. We don’t get a lot of water until it rains, so you might just have to be okay with delaying that bath. We do communal feeding in the evenings, so if you’re hungry, be in the courtyard at seven.”
“How did you come to be deputy here?”
Shonekan pauses. “Well, I arrived here like everyone else, joined forces with Shonuga, and
put my skills to use.”
“You’re not scared of her?”
He regards me quizzically. “How do you mean, scared? No one is scared of Shonuga. Yes, she’s a little rough around the edges, but if you’ve heard what we’ve heard about what has been happening out there, you will be too. She protects us, and we respect her for it.”
“So you all are okay with... what she is?”
“That she’s a wizard?”
His directness takes me by surprise. “You know about that?”
“Everyone knows about that,” he says, laughing. “We have a governing council, five of us: we’re all wizards, including me.”
I stop in my tracks. “Wow.”
“Wait, you didn’t know?” He has a smile on his face.
“How would I know that?”
“We, the pioneers of this settlement, call ourselves Oshodi. Wizards coming together. Our names? Shonekan, Shonuga, Sholuyi? Oṣó literally means ‘wizard.’”
I realise he pronounces the name the exact same way Olokun did, with a stress on the second syllable, and not the first, as I’d done all along. My bad Yoruba is going to catch up with me one day.
“So, Oshodi is a people? What about the interchange?”
Shonekan laughs at my epiphany. It’s been a while since I’ve heard hearty laughter. I didn’t know I missed it this much.
David Mogo Godhunter Page 14