The silence of the night was nothing compared to the stillness of my mind. For the first time in my entire pilgrimage on earth, my ever engaging mind was dead silent, but not void of images. The events of the last 30 minutes was being replayed over again in my mind. What if they actually had a gun? What if they had actually killed me and dumped me in a bush? Maybe it would be the flow of blood or a stench from my decaying body that would sound the alarm in the neighbourhood.
Up till 30 minutes ago, I had imagined such scene playing out several times; walking in the dead of the night, mostly in a secluded area, accosted by robbers, face them with all audacity so amazing that they would let me go. However, the reality that came to be minutes ago defeated my imagination a bit, not in what happened but the effect it had on me.
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Imagination can breed confidence, and also stupidity if it goes extreme, since its banks have no bounds, and I would say that was my motivation for leaving a friend's apartment by 9:57pm that same night (I actually thought it was few minutes to 9pm), when all my senses rebeled greatly against that decision to go back to the hostel that night. My host even advised me to stay over for my own safety, as it was commom knowledge that the dead hour had become deadlier since a prominent figure in that community had been maimed days earlier and every student in that community automatically became targets for revenge. (Looking back now, I could have slept over. I mean, there were several people planning to sleep in that room that night, both male and female. Maybe I just loathed the idea of sleeping over in a lady's room).
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The images kept replaying so fast in my mind that I stopped trying to figure out how long the robery took. It looks like it happened so fast now, but it felt like forever at that time.
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I walked briskly and hastily through that dark route, all alone in the darkness with only the crickets' voices filling the silence that would have been. There was a radiance of light not to far ahead. Ah! I was close to safety. Then a man was coming towards the route I was on, a light shining from a torch in his hands, his phone torch maybe, I can't remember now. The only mistake I made that night, at least I think so, was raising my hand to block the rays directed at my face from the torch. When I thought I had escaped that night forever, it happened.
"Hey. Stop there"
I tried playing calm. Actually, i was calm. I stopped dead in my tracks and waited. The man approached me, with a lit cigar between his thumb and index finger, a face cap obstructing my view of his face. I was a little taller, but then at this juncture, height never matters.
"Are you armed?"
The question sounded funny to me but my voice could not echo the chuckle in my heart.
"No"
"Let me check."
Like play, like play, he searched the pockets of my jean trousers and took my phone out.
He examined its back case.
"What kind of phone is this?"
I was taken aback because if he didn't know the make, then it was obviously lower than his league of operations. Hope was stirred in my heart. I told him the phone make. He dismanted it, gave me my sim cards and said;
"Oya, move fast. The guys wey dey follow me for back dangerous o, the fit kill you o."
His pidgin expression told me all I needed to know. I knew I needed to not argue with him and just leave quiety. I was still not afraid at this point. I took my sims, was already leaving when the another two accosted me (the three were all in the same gang that night).
"Hey"
"Sir, that bros just meet me now now sir.", I said, pointing to the one that just told me to "move". I didn't know when the spirit of respect jumped on me.
"Ehn ehn, where you dey come from? Where you dey go?" I answered them appropriately.
"You be student?"
"Yes."
"Which Faculty? Which level?"
I answered that too.
"You be cultist?"
"No o, me ke, no sir."
They looked at one another and I heard;
"Make we "drop" am?" The maker of the statement had his hand under his cloth, probably holding what would become a murder weapon.
(Note: in this context, "drop" means to kill.)
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That was where my prior imagination which had guided my responses and reactions till that point came to a halt. All my anticipated reactions disappeared. For the first time as a youth, I saw death in the face and it was laughing at me. Fear gripped my heart. I pleaded for my life, with the language death understood at that time: pidgin.
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I always thought dying would be easy for me at any point, that in fact, a gun shot would make it faster. But right there, I wanted to live more than anything. But then, it wasn't the fear of dying that quieted my mind, it was the fear of not being found.
12|01|18
11:59pm.
Shot taken by me (B1Photography).