ANOTHER CAUTIONARY TALE

BY KAMSI MAFO

Her head rests on his lap. His hand runs through her hair. She looks at him, a smile on her face. He seems not to notice, his brow furrowed with thought. She reaches up and touches his cheek lightly and his face lightens.

"What smart thing are you thinking now?" she asks.

He laughs gently, his baritone voice causing a vibration at the back of her neck that makes her tongue tingle.

"Bits and pieces, here and there… nothing much," he responds.

She looks at him funnily.

"A funny anecdote or a paradox? Perhaps it's another story about another mad man," she says, laughing too.

There’s a bit of quiet, and the only sound they hear is the night.

"Tell me one of them," she says. "One of your stories."

He smiles and tells her that it's not as easy as she thinks.

"It comes and goes… like a whisper in the wind," he tells her.

"There's a lot of breeze about," she responds. "Listen—perhaps it'll tell you one."

He keeps silent as if he's actually waiting for a story on the wind. Somewhere in the distance, a car honks loudly. He keeps fiddling with her hair and on his lap she lay, satisfied, almost about to drift into sleep until she hears his voice.

"You know," he begins. "If you think about it, it's kind of funny. Everyone has a story to tell, I mean everyone… no matter how boring or challenging their life may be, they still have a story nonetheless. They have their joys, their sadness, their victories and struggles."

She sighs. She doesn't want to hear another of his lectures on the impossibility of satisfaction and the lack of equality. He fails to read her emotions.

"Sometimes," he continues, "I like to put myself in the shoes of a random stranger; try to predict a past, a present, a future. It's how I have so many stories."

He pauses.

"That man over there?" he says, pointing at an elderly Hausa man sitting nearby on a mat, smoking a cigarette. "Perhaps he's a beggar, an addict, and he lost his left arm to vengeful debt collectors—or perhaps he's a devout Muslim who's fought in a holy war. Maybe the car honking in the distance belongs to a disheveled man who’s come home from cheating on his wife, drunk and disoriented. Maybe tonight she’ll finally confront him, maybe tonight he'll carry out the plan that's been in his head to hurt her—so he won’t have to lose half his wealth in a divorce."

He shrugs.

She’s bored. She yawns.

"Do you have a story? One of these… probabilities?"

He leans back as though he's gearing up to begin rattling again.

"Aiit," he says. "Listen closely… listen closely, because if you don't, you'll miss it. Every bit of the story is delicate, important. It's not confusing, it's not mind-boggling, it's simple—but if you underestimate it, the impact is gone. This story begins this one time, I was crossing the road, I think—I forget. What I remember is his face. It was handsome, not too smooth or too rough. Neither his lips nor his eyes nor his nose was either minuscule nor too large. As a matter of fact, his face was nothing remarkable. The only reason his face could even be described as handsome was because it wasn't doing too much or too little… none of his features were overtly exaggerated; he just was. In fact, the only reason I remember his face was because of the pain I saw in his brown eyes."

He was seated in a bus parked beside the road I was crossing. He was a law student, I could tell—from his crisp white shirt and black tie hanging loosely off his neck, from his short-cropped low taper fade and recently tamed chin stubble. He was an unconventional one—that boy. His hands and fingers were stacked with bracelets and bangles and rings of all sorts which, I swear, go against the ethics of their study. He leaned on the window, his head just peeking out. His hand rested on his chin, fingers splayed across his face, attempting to hide his eyes—those eyes. His hazel brown eyes full with tears. Every so often, a tear would escape and dribble down to his chin before he wiped it off. In those tears, I saw his story.

He probably had one of those exotic tribal names like Jamal. He was in the wrong city. He definitely did not look like an Akwa Ibomite—mayhaps he came from one of those central hubs, maybe Lagos, Port Harcourt, or even Abuja.

"Abuja? Like you?"

"Yes. Exactly so."

She smiles.

"Are you sure you're not just trying to find some kindred spirit?"

He smiles too. Continues.

He looked Hausa, and in his eyes there was this… intelligence. Sort of. I saw in his tears, his pain. He was seventeen years old and had left Abuja to study law in Uyo. The reason he left Abuja is as typical as they come—he wanted freedom. The reason he chose law? Even he himself didn’t know.

About four years ago, he was supposed to choose what he would preoccupy himself with for the next seven to ten years before joining the vast majority of the unemployed. He had three main deciding factors: his pride, his inability to receive advice, and pure teenage rebellion.

They all said the same thing: law students spend all their time reading, the dress code is too strict, are you sure you’ll be okay so far from home? You’ll probably not make it past JAMB. And so, he locked in and tried so hard that he’d get a score that wouldn’t allow him to change his mind. When he finally received that email, he packed his bags as fast as he could.

His father had a friend in the city, a rich old man who sent his driver to pick him up from the bus terminal. The city was different. Beautiful, but different. The last hopeful moment he had was sitting in the back of the old man’s Range Rover, looking across the strange city and eating an ice cream cone he’d bought at the park—his first taste of freedom. The ability to buy something small with his own money.

"Wait." She bursts into the narrative. "Something’s not quite clear. You say he’s proud, yet you paint him as crying because he’s far from home. It’s possible, but unbelievable really. Maybe he’s just crying because of a failed test or a dead relative or something."

"Maybe, maybe not," he laughs. "The narrative is still lacking… relax a bit."

"The thing is," he continues, "being proud and far from home is a deadly combination. An endless cycle of self-destruction. He’s far from home, so he’s on a budget. Yet his extravaganza means he’s a big spender. And before he can think about anything, everything is gone. So he saves what little he has left, dreading to call for more, starving himself till his allowance comes in again. His pride, his hamartia."

"And so he cries? His lack is his pain?"

"If only it were so simple."

He has no money, no home, no anchor. In fact, the only thing he has is the law he came to study. So he plans to throw himself into it. But he procrastinates, convinced that he can absorb fast. Instead, he throws himself into socializing. He experiments. He loses focus. When he returns to his senses, he finds that he’s lost everything he had in his head.

His course looks strange. The legal words and maxims are like alien language. The passion to study law is gone, and he wonders why he chose it in the first place—when seventy-five percent of lawyers don’t even find jobs and end up broke or doing something else.

His mom no longer picks his calls. She fears he’s always going to ask her for money. When she does, it’s brief. His bank app has been having issues and he has five assignments due. He knows next to nothing about Psy 111 and exams are in a week. He breaks down.

This is where you meet him.

 This is where he cries.

“It could be,” he says.

“I don’t get it though,” she frowns. “His problems are self-created. His pride, his stubbornness… it really doesn’t make room for any impact. In the end, it’s just another cautionary tale.”

“Everything’s a cautionary tale, Toriah. It just depends on how you look at it. Life is didactic—always teaching. You only see a lesson if you want to learn. I’m not teaching, Toriah. Sometimes, the lesson is that there’s none to be learnt.”

She laughs. “You always manage to say the stupidest things in the smartest way.”

He laughs too.

“Think about it… all the poems and plays of Shakespeare, all the tomes of the Bible—how many times has some simple action become a symbol, an undertone for something much greater? A blind man becomes a symbol for spiritual blindness. A woman opening a window becomes a metaphor for releasing hidden burdens. But sometimes, a man with a disability is just a man with a disability. A woman opening a window just wants some air. It’s not rocket science.”

He pauses.

“Jamal met her at Maitama. At first, he didn’t know it was a red-light spot. All he wanted to do was buy some grilled meat—suya. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen. She wore a spaghetti strap top and ripped shorts, clearly trying to appear older. When their eyes met by the vendor, she blushed. A man suddenly cut across and pulled her away. Jamal thought it was her boyfriend—until someone later told him girls sold themselves there for cheap.”

He wasn’t heartbroken. Not even dismayed. The feeling was… curiosity.

He went back. Not looking for her, exactly, but for that feeling. He kept pretending to buy suya, scanning the faces. Sometimes he’d see others—painted, heavily made up, barely out of secondary school. One night, he gave in and signaled to one. She was bold. She held him by the wrist and led him away. They didn’t talk much. Later, lying on a bare mattress in a dimly lit room, he wondered why he did it. Then he went again. And again.

He saw her two months, fifteen trips, and eight encounters later.

She hadn’t changed much, just refined. Her complexion had that orangey glow that meant too many cheap toning creams. A silver stud shone in her nose, and she held a cigarette between two fingers like she’d always done it. She wore ripped shorts again, but this time with a cropped tee. She spotted him first.

“You go buy me catfish?” she asked with a teasing grin.

He smiled back. “What’ll you do for more than catfish?”

Her name was Mfoniso.

She took his hand and led him to a lodge. It wasn’t like the others. It was paradoxical—filthy but orderly, with a madam at the door instead of the usual gruff male bouncer. The room smelled of smoke. The walls were worn. The bed didn’t creak. It was strange.

When she began undressing, he stopped her.

“I want to talk,” he said.

She laughed. “Na talk you come talk?”

But eventually, she listened. Not that day, but after enough visits.

He asked her why. Why she did this. Why she stayed.

There was no sob story. No dead parent. No cruel uncle. She just… wanted things. She had needs she couldn’t ask her father to meet. She liked the high. She liked the freedom. The risk. The pleasure. She could leave, she said. But she didn’t want to. She was addicted—to everything. Money. Weed. Control.

Jamal started to go more often. So often he forgot the days he didn’t go. He started to think maybe—just maybe—there was a future.

“A future?” Toriah interrupts, eyebrows raised. “With a hook-up girl? I thought you said he was smart. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard.”

He chuckles. “Aren’t they entitled to love too? What’s a sex worker before they became one? Just a person—with desires, dreams, and trauma.”

“They should find healing before love,” she says. “Maybe start with the love of Christ.”

He smiles. “Still, what is love if not foolishness wrapped in warm excuses? And what’s more foolish than falling for someone like her?”

“I can name a few,” she replies, crossing her arms.

“Like?”

“Like creating a character from thin air to dramatize your own feelings, just to guilt-trip someone. It’s obvious something bad’s going to happen.” She softens with a smile.

He grins. “You’ve ruined it for the reader.”

They both laugh.

“So what’s the bombshell?” she asks. “He flunks out? She steals from him? He gets caught by the police?”

“She dies,” he says.

“Oh.”

It was raining when he knocked three times at her door and she didn’t answer. He thought she had a client. He waited. He was jealous. He wanted to see her face when she emerged. He wanted her to look guilty. But time passed. Too much time. It was quiet—too quiet.

He knocked again.

The madam came down and hissed. “Na bad luck to knock on dead girl door. If you come again, I no go come alone.”

Still, he waited. Until men came to throw him out.

Later, he learned everything.

The girls were students. Underage boarders who jumped the fence at night. Mfoniso never used protection. The pimps took more than half of what they earned. The girls were replaceable. The madam didn’t care—only that they showed up when expected.

That night, she screamed. She begged. She called names.

He wonders if one of them was his.

Her father only discovered her secret life after he saw her body. The school she attended raised its fence higher.

“Stupid,” Jamal thought. “Plain stupid.”

He ran his hand along the new wall, staring at the crude cement work. Somewhere nearby, a man in a Dangote-branded headwrap nodded at him. Jamal nodded back. Mfoniso would have hated that wall.

He flagged down a bus and clambered in. The ride was silent until they reached a filling station.

“Mọ ke inọ iso mman mfuo. I want to get fuel,” the driver mumbled.

A passenger beside him started chatting. His skin was leathery, voice gravelly, chewing kola with gusto.

“These politicians dey lie,” he said. “Lawyers among them. Dem go ruin Akwa Ibom.”

He told Jamal about his son who wanted to study law.

“You no go be like dem o. Fight for the people!”

He over-shared. Asked too many questions. “You be from Yobe? Your name dey somehow. I serve there for NYSC. You go marry Ibibio girl—mark am.”

Jamal leaned his head out the window. People passed by, lost in their lives.

And it hit him.

There’s no one. No one. You’re one in eight billion. If you die, you’ll die foreign. Nameless. The world will keep spinning—out of order, into place.

The thoughts rushed him like a storm.

Psy 121. Mfoniso. Moniepoint. Abuja. Oron. Maitama. Mfoniso. Ikot. Cannabis. Didi. Psy 121. Abigail. Mfoniso.

Then the tear fell.

 And I saw it.

 And I saw his story.

“So this… Jamal,” Toriah asks, voice tinged with suspicion. “He’s got all this pain and poetry, all this tragedy and philosophy, and you’re telling me you just saw it? In a stranger’s eyes? From a bus window?”

He doesn’t flinch.

She narrows her eyes. “It sounds fake. Like a cheesy Netflix flick. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to real people, does it?”

“Maybe,” he says. “I never saw him through a window.”

Toriah’s eyebrow lifts. “So you made it up?”

He turns away, stares into the night.

“No,” he says. “I was him.”

Toriah is quiet. The wind rustles the leaves. A car honks far away.

“And the girl?” she asks softly.

He nods. “Real.”

She says nothing. She lays her head back in his lap again. This time, she doesn’t smile.