Rasheedotegbola's Blog

The enemies have infiltrated our ranks claiming thousands of my best soldiers in the process. Their methods are simple but made them indomitable to any military in the world. They take control of my men coercing them to train more of theirs with a remotely vicious method saving the coup-de-grace for the last. Invariably, for every soldier I lose, the enemies have their ranks swollen in folds and dexterity. My men are well-equipped but it is a losing battle. Our armoury has been excessively depleted. The air reeks of pungent decay of flesh- soldiers which could not be properly buried due to persistent attacks on our camps. Bald-headed scavengers soar merrily across the vastness of the sky above, swooning down at every opportunity to get their fill of my comrades. These brave soldiers who fell in a bid to defend our common interest shall not die in vain. Their gallant falls symbolize integrity, valour and a resilience that shall be forever etched on the walls of the thick skulls of my kind. I have vowed to witness it all and be the last soldier to fall like a true General.

I cannot recall the exact point in time that the changes occurred but I am certain that my childhood is filled with memories devoid of war or carnage. I grew up in a serene neighbourhood with my mother and elder sister. We had really nice neighbours who lives in bungalows just like us. My sister and I attended the same school. Although, she is five years older than me but she was only three years ahead of me in school. Adun, as she was popularly called in school was always on the look-out for me while the boys in my class scorned me for being such a sissy. Although, I did not mind since Mama assured me that their derision was fed by envy. Mama was kind, gentle and gave me all the love and attention a mother could possibly muster. She provided me with anything I wanted and granted all my wishes except when I decline from sharing our special medicine with her. She would coax me to share the pills with her saying that it is really specially made to make us victorious over our enemies as my name (Segun) interprets in our native language. Adun was already victorious over her own foes, according to Mama. So, she does not share our special medicine with us. Although, I am sometimes puzzled when Adun got beaten up in a fight but that was just one of my many nagging mysteries

The innocence of childhood also prevented me from probing further whenever Mama discarded my enquiry into the circumstances leading to my father’s everlasting mission to heaven with a shallow and confusing parable. She will feed me vanilla-flavoured ice-cream afterward. Whenever I start a casual conversation bordering on my father with Adun who seems to know him, she often casts a nervous look at Mama who reciprocates with a stern glare and the chat ends just like that. With time, I accepted that my father is not an encouraged topic at home and assimilated the fact albeit reluctantly. My life seemed perfect but the absence of a father imparted a hollowness that bores deep into my soul. It is even aggravated by mockery from my peers and a raw craving nagging persistently at my sub-conscious mind. When I eventually found my father, I wish I had not expected so much.

“How farther would you go?” Adun’s voice was unmistakable to me even with the naked acrimony that permeates every syllable. I stared sideways at her and managed a weak smile. The innocence of my smile often brings a momentary relief to her but not this time. Her expression remains as taut as a guitar string while two silver lines streaked down her smooth face. I knew she has been crying all day. I longed to pacify her but I cannot breach the military protocol. I simply stretched out an arm and caress her dishevelled hair as I have always done. My elder sister wept like a baby by my sick bed. It simply reminded me of the common tears we shared when she revealed my father’s where-about to me. Only that this time around, she wept because she would be all alone after I lose this battle. She knew I am going to die. She also knew that our mother is not coming back and she cannot go to our father. Adun would simply be the complete orphan when all of these are over.

Our mother is like a mirage. She was everywhere granting us succour and protection in this cruel world. With Mama around, I was assured of a secured future but she vanished into thin air as if she never existed and with her went all the vista of comfort which occupied my thoughts. I had always shared my dream of constructing the most impressive bridge the world would ever see with mama. I even dared to envision my future family of five and share the dream with her but all of these dissipated with her demise. It all seemed a cruel mirage now.

It was my fifteenth birthday. Mama and Adun were standing at my bed-side when I woke that morning with mischievous smiles creasing their oval faces. Their hands were hidden behind them. I did not understand the unusual occasion as I had not celebrated a birthday in the last four years. Sensing the confusion on my face as I propped myself up on one elbow and searched from one face to another, Mama shared a knowing look with Adun and together, they blurted out “attack!”

In that instance, it all rushed back to me. They have resuscitated our old tradition of celebrating birthdays. Before I ducked out of bed, I was fully drenched in water. I darted for the door which was left ajar and ran towards the sitting room to escape the accompanying “beating with broom-sticks” while they chase me relentlessly. The strange celebration was initiated into our home by Adun who claimed that it would remind the celebrant of how he was wet and cried at birth. Mama endorsed it only to add flavour to our bland and boring life-style. After a sumptuous breakfast and our special medicine which I was accustomed to by then, Mama left me and Adun at home with a promise of going to get the bicycle I requested as birthday gift. We were still washing the dishes and cutleries when we heard frantic knocks on the front door. Adun and I rushed to the entrance to see a panic-stricken young man who blurted out the news.

“Your mother”, he stammered. “It was a ghastly accident as she crosses the road to the supermarket”

Mama was buried a week later after a poorly-attended funeral. The cost was paid off majorly from donations from neighbours, friends and the only uncle we knew.

On the night of the funeral, I slept in the room Adun and Mama shared. A few neighbours called the next morning to condole with us. Some even brought food and cash donations but we could not take a bite. We were both stricken by the great loss of the only family we knew. After three weeks of mourning, we were visited by a woman who is about the age of our mother. She claimed to be our paternal aunty and wanted us to visit her if we ever needed anything. I do not know if it was her kind words or it was just our common lineage that re-awakened that yearning. All of a sudden, I wanted to know my father’s where-about again but chose to be methodical about it this time around.

Adun sat by me on the bed as she has always done since Mama’s demise and we chatted about her new teaching job, my school, our family, the future and every other thing that comes in between. As she rose to retire back into Mama’s room, I held her hand and stared earnestly into her eyes.

“What is it?” she asked looking a little tired.

“Where is our father?” I did not give any preamble to my question. Adun was caught off-guard. I read the confusion on her face as she reeled back into the ragged sofa in the corner of my room.

“Adun, I am a man now and I am old enough to know the truth” I blurted as I sat up on the bed feigning toughness. “Tell me where our father is”.

“He died before you were born” she said solemnly

“How?” my non-descript question denying the lurid reality of his death did not unfazed her.

“Mother stabbed him four times on the chest with her scissors” she whispered. I was more confused than ever and hastily pressed further.

“Why?”

Sobbing silently, Adun told me about the father I never knew. Our father, a taxi driver was a drunkard and a chronic womanizer. He met my mother while she was an apprentice at a tailor shop owned by his friend. They married quickly and Mama was carrying Adun in her womb when she realized that her husband has several concubines. At first, she protested and threatened to leave him but the birth of Adun compelled her to stay as she cannot cater for the baby alone.

“Mama endured a lot of humiliation and battering from him” Adun said with open resentment and deliberate defiance as she consciously referred to our father as “him”.

“What happened between them?” I asked impatiently.

“Mama came back from one of her routine check-ups when she was pregnant with you and was so upset. I heard her wept once she locked herself in the bed-room and came out looking composed moments later”

After a heavy sigh, Adun narrated how Mama sent her to bed as soon as our father honked his distinct horn outside. He trudged-in reeking of liquor as usual and Mama confronted him with myriads of questions presenting a rumpled sheet of paper to him. Adun told me how she saw our father tore the piece of paper into shreds and pummelled Mama as he usually does every night he comes home drunk. The only difference this time around is that Mama did not receive the lashing passively. She reached for her pair of scissors on the chair and stabbed our father in four places.

I did not know how to react to the murder of the father I never knew. I cannot even avenge him as his murderer who happens to be my mother is now dead and I heard she did so in self-defence. The court ascertained this when a charge of man-slaughter was eventually levelled against my mother. Mama was discharged and acquitted of the crime but the stigma stuck. She lost her friends and family members stopped visiting. Even her neighbours dispersed once they see her approaching their group. She became a subject of gossip and ridicule on the street. She realized that her son cannot be raised amidst such hostilities. One dawn, she just packed her most treasured belongings and moved to our new apartment where I was born.

Since Mama passed on, Adun weeps every morning until we agreed that it is in our common interest to pack paraphernalia which reminds us of her demise. As we packed that morning, I stumbled across our special medicine and memories woven around it came pouring back. I remembered how it was our secret of anticipated victories, how I was told never to miss a regimen and how Mama coaxed me to take it every other time I resisted. It dawned on me that I had missed it for nearly a month and was tempted to take it there and then but I cannot withstand the pains of sweet memories shared with my mother. I also do not know if I should forgive the fact that she killed my father. At that instance, I vowed never to touch those medicines again because I cannot trust my mother. I was angry at her for a reason I cannot exactly pin-point. I did not know maybe it was for leaving me and Adun all alone in this world, for murdering my father or it was for keeping me in the dark about everything. It later turned out that there was still more to be angry with Mama for.

“Please, you must end this madness” Adun pleaded but I cannot obliged her. I have lost too many soldiers. I cannot win the war and would never surrender to the enemies.

“I understand your plight Adun. You don’t want to lose your kid-brother to this war but I have chosen my path. I cannot come back home a vanquished soldier. I must see this battle to the end”

I turned my back to her and pull the blanket over my shoulders as she started weeping again.

It was three years after Mama’s demise that the truth hit us like a gust of wind. It began with bouts of fever. I had plethora of infections- pneumonia, skin rashes, candidiasis and diarrhoea. The doctor recommended series of tests but before I got the results of the tests, I checked up the names of our special medicine on the internet and their indications. The results of the tests confirm my findings. I am infected with the virus. I am a virgin with human immunodeficiency virus. Adun knew all along but did not tell either me or Mama. She even knew about our special medicine but kept it all to herself. When I told her the outcome of the test she only nodded knowingly. I shook my head incredulously.

“So, you knew all along” I barked at her

“What was I supposed to do? I was too young to understand the content of the paper” she whimpered.

“What paper?” I stammered apparently tired of being in the dark about everything.

“The night he died” she said, referring to our father as “him” again. “I picked every bit of the torn paper Mama gave him and only deciphered it after Mama’s death”

I was livid with anger.

“And… you couldn’t tell me all along…” I paused. The truth settled in like the cold mist of dawn. I was infected in Mama’s womb and it was my father who infected her.

The father I so much wanted to meet is responsible for my death sentence and the mother who cared for me all along shielded me from this truth of immense consequence. I was overwhelmed by mixed feelings of bitterness and deception. I felt so vulnerable and longed for the soothing voice of my mother. I just sat on the terrace and wept genuinely for the second time in my life. Everything lost their allure for me and I lacked the will to go on. I am too young for the fate I surfer. There is only one option that appealed to me.

Today, the soldiers in my body have fought the viruses for five consecutive years without the special force code-named our special medicine. The first two years were replete with tortuous memories- brazen psychological and physical torments gnawing impishly at my sanity. For the rest of the years, I developed a detached mind from my physical being. I trained my mind to only conceive me as a supernatural essence dwelling in the body of an ailing young man. This method was hugely effective in shielding me from the consequences of being positive with the virus. It also granted me momentary gratification while reflecting on the futility of existence and how life as dealt me an unfair fate. My theory of conceiving cells in my body as soldiers made those who dared visit me to consider me as delirious but Adun understood me perfectly well. She continually pleaded with me to get back on the regimen but I have found my place with the Saints or what else would you call a virgin who died of HIV virus. Perhaps, a martyr would be more befitting in my case.

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