Narrator’s Name: Jameel Shatima
XXI. Rooftop Knight
Days: thirty-one days after Umar’s return
I don’t know which to prefer: A gun or a knife.
Does my mere mention of gun makes you think I’ve ever used it before? Maybe I have. And if that was your thought then you have a very objective mind and I like you already. But let me tell you about something far more dangerous than a gun.
A knife.
Case in point: Blood trickled down from my knife to my victim’s body and I enjoyed every moment of it. It takes more courage to take a knife and cut a throat than it takes to shoot from a distance; only cowards hide behind distance. So I cut the throat and watched the life of my victim leave its body. I watched life leave the body of a two-kilogram chicken. What were you expecting? That I killed a human being or would you prefer that I steal Umar’s hidden gun and use it to shoot the chicken. That’s not cool!
The only crime the chicken committed was that it was a chicken and I am a human and an excellent cook. The restaurant downstairs wanted me to make some crispy fried chicken. I help them because I get paid but mostly because I love cooking and I love using a knife. I love using a steel blade on a wooden handle to take life and shaping death into edible, beautiful, and tasty pieces.
“You’re fired!” yelled the chef, Mr. Raj. “Get the hell out of my kitchen. You may be good at what you do but I don’t need you, you rascal,” said Mr. Raj. I was cutting the chicken into pieces and putting them into a small bucket. The knife was in my hand, thirsty to take another life and shape its death. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel tempted to grant the knife its wish. “Did you hear me? Are you deaf?”
“I’m Jameel.” I retorted.
“What?” Mr. Raj said.
“You didn’t hear what I said? Funny! And yet you accuse me of being deaf. I said I’m Jameel, I’m not deaf. Just wanted to clarify,” I don’t really know why Mr. Raj wanted me out and I don’t really care. Mr. Raj hates everybody but he hates me the most. He hates that I never follow his stupid instructions. He hates the fact that he needs me and that I am only a temporary staff. He hates the fact that I come and go as I please even when he needs me. That was the third time he is “firing” me.
“I’ll leave when I finish with this chicken and get paid for it,” I told him. “I don’t like leaving things unfinished.”
Mr. Raj took the bucket of chicken, kicked the exit door open, and flung the chicken to the pavement at the backyard. “Your work here is done. And that there, on the floor, is your payment.” He shouldn’t have done that. As I said, I don’t get sad but I get angry. Getting sad is wasted emotion. Getting sad gets you nowhere. While getting angry gives you purpose.
I was neither angry nor sad the previous times Mr. Raj fired me. But not this time. This time, Mr. Raj needs to be thought a lesson.
***
I was on the rooftop of Kashimu Ibrahim Library. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke tickle the sky. I know you’d say this thing would kill me but this is my great escape.
I love being on that rooftop. Standing up there feels like standing on the tallest mountain in Dihaara like I did with my friends a few weeks ago. What I see when I’m up there are lots and lots of stories trailing under the sun, representing the constant flow of time, of the large and the small and the new and the gone. I think those were Abubakar’s words and now I’m coming round to that point of view.
For an hour or so, all I did was stand on the rooftop, smoked, and watched the constant flow of time below.
I smoked and watched students of the famous Ahmadu Bello University share laughs, knowledge, milestones, and vulnerabilities with one another. Some walked slowly and some fast. What a trying thing to walk fast in a world that has you believe everything is here to stay forever.
I looked at the Department of Architecture – one of the buildings closest to the library – and I remembered when umma used to work there before she quit. I remembered when Abba would drop her early in the morning and pick her up in the evening. Umma quit and started a firm that allowed her to work from home because Safiyya was pregnant with Hafsa, and umma wanted to be eternally available for her daughter and granddaughter.
And from the rooftop, I watched Maryam walk alone, her shadow pulling her. She was probably going to her father’s office. She wouldn’t have heard me if I yelled her name. Not because I was far but because she was far. I could see it in her eyes. She had been crying. Umar kept pretending he was okay about losing her but that was untrue. Human souls are unceasing particles of needs. Once we are connected with someone or something we love, parting ways is hard.
I still don’t fully support the whole idea of marriage but you’ve met me; I’m too messed up to entertain happy endings and you know why. But I wanted Umar and Maryam to be an exception. Their beautiful picture of pasts and present and future wasn’t pinned to the wall. Maybe using a pin and putting a hole in it is the same as putting a hole in time. And time seamlessly fills holes permanently and eternally.
But sadness is poetry. I liked her for Umar. My friend Umar is someone who needs to be reminded to take care of himself and she did that perfectly. I liked her for him for that reason and I liked her for him because she can use a kitchen knife well. I like women who can use a steel blade on a wooden handle well. Don’t let your mind go far. I mean she can cook. She can cook. What did you think I meant?
I watched Maryam leave my visual field and I remembered that the last time I allowed myself to feel sad was when Safiyya died. And the second to last, was two years ago when I saw you in Bauchi. I had thought you had died when I drove for five hours with my three friends only to see you alive – and crying over the death of your husband, my stepfather. I wanted to run to you and hug you but I stopped myself.
The simple fact is everything changes. But sadness makes time to halt. As if nothing is happening but pain – forever and ever and ever. That’s why I prefer anger over sadness. It makes me crave for the day change folds the pieces of my life and grind it with the finest surface of time. It makes me see that second.
Just one second. One.
Maybe when I see it I’d believe again. It’d make me want more thus making me experience what greed is – more seconds, more me in them. Because that one second is like a string of beads and once one cut loose the rest of the beads will follow suit.
And in the case of Mr. Raj, I’m going to pick anger. And maybe a kitchen knife too. But that was for later. At the moment, I was standing on a rooftop watching time. Because it conversed with me and converted in me.
It was then Adam called. I cleared my throat, removed my phone from my pocket, and answered the call.
“Mr. Raj called me. What did you to him?” Adam said, after the pleasantries.
“Wrong question. ‘What am I going to do to him,’ – that’s what you should be asking,”
“He said he’s going to make sure you get kicked out of the apartment,” Adam said. “He said the reason he hadn’t done that earlier is because he thought I still live in the apartment. I know Mr. Raj is a lot to handle but please be more patient with him, bro. Tell me what happened?”
“You keep asking the wrong questions. You’re the worst journalist I know. And I know only one.”
“Alright, what are you going to do to him?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” I said.
“Will you just spill it out already,” Adam said. He wasn’t upset. He didn’t call because he was afraid I was going to be kicked out of the apartment and he’d lose his only abode in Zaria. He called because he was worried about what I’d do.
“Do you remember Barrister Sule?” I said.
“Your lecturer back in your university years? – The lecturer known for abusing his power and for his vulgarism? He called you bastard, slapped you, and told you to leave his class and you left saying ‘flat tyre, sir. Flat tyre,’ After a few days you stole his car for a month, leaving him so devastated that he stopped coming to work because the car was his most prized possession. After a month, you took the car and left it at North Gate. You had stabbed the four tyres and left a note on the front seat: ‘you can’t get anywhere with a flat tyre; you have to change them first, don’t you agree, sir?
“That was the same reason the lecturer suspected it was you, you idiot. Come to think of it, you still haven’t told us how you stole the car? Wasn’t it on the University premises? Wasn’t it locked?”
“There’s no lock in the universe that’s unique,” I said.
“Are you going to stab Mr. Raj’s car?”
“He doesn’t have a car. Besides, Junaid – the king’s aide? He stole my unique move when he stabbed Abubakar’s car on our way to Dihaara. So I’m done stabbing car tyres.”
Adam laughed. “Maybe it’s karma. Look, in the story of Barrister Sule, you were the hero. He couldn’t even prove you were the one behind the theft and – and this is the most important point – the whole incident tamed him. You can’t tame Mr. Raj. You said you’re not going to stab his car. What exactly do you have planned?”
“It involves visiting him in the night,” I said.
“I’m not even going to ask. Just don’t do anything foolish. Jameel, learn to hold things as water does. Anything it can't hold, it let it sink. It let it go.”
“But if you're within the strength of its spine – if it likes you – it will hold you lovingly and with ease even if you are as heavy as the titanic. If it doesn’t like you it tears you to pieces. Letting you sink is kindness and I’m not that kind, Adam.”
“Look, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Come to Zaria and all will be forgotten. That’s the ultimatum.”
“Ultimatum!? You’re funny! I actually do plan on coming. I’ve just been busy. Right now, I’m at my parents’ in Katsina. Planned to stop at Zaria on my way back but work calls. I’d be boarding a plane to Lagos in a few hours,” Adam said. It made me remember the story of Adam’s first encounter with Abubakar when he took Abubakar to the airport. When he was just a little boy who made a living through driving. And now Adam was making his way in the world.
“How are they – your parents?”
“Great. As usual, mother didn’t want me to leave. Father still drives his old taxi. I tell him he doesn’t have to now since I provide for them but he insists. It’s a part of him. He says he can’t just sit and be loafing around doing nothing.”
“That’s lovely. And how’s work?”
“It is exhausting. These days I feel like I’m earning off the ever-growing multiplicity of chaos, unrest, and disunity. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work. I love bringing out the ugliness of it all so that people will be aware but it sometimes feels like I’m not really making a change. That nothing changes in this country. The worst thing about Nigerian problems is that people do not think it's fixable. Sadly, I’ve become one of them. It’s like we are getting desensitized because we are used to it.
“Kidnapping is a viable business and it pays handsomely. You don’t even need capital to get started. It requires no skill acquisition training, it has no age limitation, and it has crept into villages and towns.
“Corruption is a prerequisite for living. It’s now a ritual right to lie, cheat and deceive. We live in a community where people become surprised if you’re all for truth.
“People kill their loved ones for money and fame. Jameel, I’ve reported and written about a lot of cases where a son kills his parents for a pleasure short-lived.
“Education, water, roads, and employment are still hard to provide. For the past seven days I’ve been in my village here in Katsina and I had to take a cart to a river in the outskirt of the village to get water twice every day. We still don’t even have a borehole.
“Also, travelling in the night is a story found only in fairy tales. I remember when I’d get in my father’s taxi late in the night, picking up passengers and traveling to cities. I didn’t come back till dawn. I’d wash the taxi because my father uses it in the daytime while I went to school. We no longer have that.”
“Gone are those days, Adam. All we have now are tales,” I said.
“That’s actually one of the reasons I love Dihaara. They’ve long surpassed these problems. Maybe one day we’ll all get there but the future seems bleak. We have lost our love. We have lost our sense of honor and our shame,” Adam said. I could hear him breathing heavily. This was the reason Adam wrote ‘Anecdotes of Zaria’. Whenever he wasn’t driving and listening to people’s stories, I remember him knocking on doors or having a random conversation with people on buses or restaurants and he had a way with people. He’d listen to their stories, inform them he would write what they said down, then he’d come back to the apartment to do just that.
One of the worse things that could happen to a country is people like Adam Talha losing hope. What is a country without hope?
“I believe,” Adam continued, “the only way things can get better is when we learn to put things in their due place. First off, give our Maker his due through pure gratitude for his abundant favors. We safeguard and give Him what is due to Him and He’d safeguard us. Then we give his creation what is due to them – give each other what we know we need: Love. And to love, we need to be disciplined.”
‘“To love, you need to externalize you, right?’” I said quoting Adam’s three-hundredth entry in his ‘Anecdotes of Zaria’.
“Oh wow! I have totally forgotten about that. You’ve been reading my manuscript? I thought I hid the manuscript,” Adam said.
“Adam, it’s me. You can’t hide anything from Jameel Shatima,” I said.
Adam grunted then acquiesced. “I actually got that phrase from something Saleem wrote in his book, The Color of Blood. He was talking about endurance. I think this is what he wrote:
‘It’s necessary. In fact, it’s the only way. Because the whole thing I learnt from the whole experience is this. Somebody, out there, really wants to know you are you. Somebody needs you to be you. And that person really wants to meet you.’”
“Cool!” I said but was that really? Well, at least it was better than Alhaji’s mantra of everyone having a question to answer. That life is like arithmetic and in solving the arithmetic problem you also solve the problem within yourself. Of fear, of hesitation, of lack of confidence, of getting distracted. Trust me, if I hear that one more time I’m going to go crazy. And no, I haven’t talked to or seen Alhaji Shatima since that night I found him wasted in his house. The night he slapped me.
I took another drag on my cigarette and said teasing Adam. “I guess you are a big fan of Saleem… Well, I do hope you got an autograph from him?”
“Of course he did,” Adam said. “Jameel, I have to go. Just so we are clear, you don’t touch Mr. Raj.”
“I won’t touch Mr. Raj provided you come to Zaria… before the end of this month.”
“Deal. How’s Umar? Any progress with finding the identity of R?”
“None whatsoever,” I said. “It must be fun to be unknown, to be hidden. While hidden, you’re free from the burden and boredom of being one person and one name. You give no apologies for being you neither is an apology expected. You give no grudging respect neither do you wait for one. All that’s upon you is that you do what you want to do, hidden and unknown. And perhaps one day what you do will give you a name. A name created from your deeds. A name you like.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We haven’t found R because R doesn’t want to be found yet.”
***
I was about to leave the rooftop when Umar’s text came.
Umar: I need you. Today, I tell you everything.