THE SHADOW OF GOD'S GAZE

This story begins after the deed is done. Smoke clouds the afternoon sky. A naked body dances to the crackles of flame till stasis puffs away its final breath in defeat. The woman who made the first cry of “ole¹” watches from a corner, tears in her eyes. She doesn’t know if it is the smoke or the guilt. A horde of street urchins disperses into backstreets, tossing cudgels in the gutter. An empty barrel of petrol cools on the sidewalk. A toddler picks up a matchbox and shows her mother the way to hell. A man tells his son that all thieves shall char, in this life or the one after. Sirens wail louder. The street is deserted, save a lost soul seeking peace on its way home.

Many stories end in death. Grief, however, lingers long after. A woman sits by the bed of an ailing girl in the hospital, praying into clasped fingers. When the doctor comes in to examine her daughter, she kneels and clutches his legs. He too is a parent, surely soft-hearted. He must understand why the life of the girl is so precious to her. The doctor lists reasons why an expensive surgery can’t be undertaken on credit. The hospital has already assisted by subsidizing the drugs that have sustained the girl’s breath till now. He asks after her husband, and she expresses his imminent return. With money, hopefully. Behind the doctor, the TV reports the mob lynching of a thief at the Oshodi Market. Her daughter grunts, and the woman turns off the TV.

The story seeks compassionate eyes, and it finds one in the rookie police officer. While his superiors harry the morgue attendants over the phone on whether there is a facility for a thief burned beyond recognition, the rookie scours the crime scene. The dead man’s clothes could have been here somewhere, but tomb raiders would rob the corpse of a man crucified for stealing. He finds a pair of slippers flung on the sidewalk, too worn out for new use. In between, a crumpled piece of paper fights the wind. He picks it up and reads a drug prescription. On the other side of the paper is half the letterhead of a private hospital in Oshodi. He pockets the paper, and sprints back to his colleagues. They hoist the cremains into the back of the van. Ashes dot the street. A statement against thievery. A deterrent for thieves. The rookie cop says nothing; he knows so little.

Hospitals heal, sometimes. Most times, they are frantic attempts at saving things long gone. There are a lot of corpses wheeled out of the hospital today. The story clings to the little girl’s, like her mother. The woman tears fistfuls of her hair in search of support. The nurses hold her back, but she pulls her daughter once again and once more. She wants to think about the warmth exiting her daughter’s body. She wants to cry about the bleakness life has tucked in her trajectory. Instead, her mind falters at the thought of the amount they’ve spent on her daughter’s health, all the money they’ve borrowed. She queries the girl’s selfishness to leave. She could have just lived for her mother’s sake. For her father’s sake. The woman thinks of her husband, and all he’s done to make money. She thinks of the debts they’ve accrued at the hospital and the one that awaits regarding the girl’s burial. At the yard of the hospital, she collapses. The nurses hesitate.

The rookie cop enters this story again, right after the climax. At the entrance of the hospital, the doctor points the owner of the prescription at him. His eyes dampen at the sight of the woman crouched between two ambulances, her head buried between her knees, shoulders quaking with grief. The doctor moans his disappointment in the girl’s death. The poor girl has left her parents in debt. If she’d stayed alive, the parents wouldn’t mind appreciating the hospital. Now, the management withholds the girl’s corpse as a guarantee, expecting the father to return with some money. The rookie cop swallows the thought of revealing the father’s fate. He stares at the woman and wonders why God looked away and allowed that amount of entropy to crash land on a family.

Every dead man has a killer, sometimes killers. Often we know a man’s killer but do not know if their reason is noble. There is the thief who shouldn’t, in the first instance, finger what isn’t his. There is the mob who has no right to punish an offender. There is the police who arrive late. There is the government who created the hunger spree that pushed the thief and angered the mob. A woman shouts “thief!” People spring out with cudgel and strike the heartless mind who doesn’t consider the hunger-ravaged streets. A barrel of petrol squeezes out of fuel subsidy, and bodies brimming with napalm crank out flames. The thief wears a halo of used tires. Right before the flames begin to eat him up, he pleads. But that’s what all apprehended thieves do; they offer to explain. In this story, the thief gets no chance to explain.

This story ends with the woman that prompted the narration. She clutches her pillow to her chest and wonders if ghosts are real. A dead man half black-skin and half black-skeleton lurks in the corner of her room. She cannot speak because her husband doesn’t see the ghost. He believes the incident traumatized her, even though it shouldn’t. The thief had it coming. He bumped into her, and when she swirled, the contents of her bag were at his feet. When he picked them up, she screamed “ole.” It was the ideal thing to do. Cudgels appeared before she heard his unfinished apology and outstretched return of her belongings. She peers into the ghost’s eyes and hopes he is telepathic. He shakes his head negatively, and his presence weighs heavier.

¹ thief