FLIGHT The other day, I showed up early to catch the flight to Abuja. And the Lagos skies were black with rain, the sort that makes you wonder, ‘Hmm. Should I be flying today?’ The Arik staff checking boarding passes struggled with mine; trying to detach the stub she ripped it in two. My brother, I am not a superstitious man but, well, two planes had gone down that week, and even now they have still not found MH370. So, looking at my shredded boarding pass, and the frantic efforts being made to repair it with a bit of sticking tape, I wondered, ‘Hmm. Should I be flying today?’ A stubborn thought, as I sat looking out the window – rain falling in sheets, passengers scampering to escape it, dashing the short distance between bus and plane. I got to my seat, lifted roller bag into baggage hold and reached for my laptop. I tell you this; it’s never failed me before, muscle memory. Sometimes, I drive to work, not consciously, but out of habit; turning right or left because my hands remember. They never forget, either, to reach down and check for my wallet the minute I exit a taxi. Or to grab my laptop bag once boarding is announced. But not that morning. No. That rainy, stormy, omen-possessed morning, standing by my seat in a plane rapidly growing full, I suddenly realized it was not there, my laptop. And for the third time that morning, from the back of a mind understandably anxious about the whereabouts of a work-issued Dell computer, that gut-twisting voice whispered, ‘Hmm. Dike, should you be flying today?’ And I thought to myself, This is too much! Honestly! All these signs of impending doom. What am I supposed to do? Get off this plane and go and wait in the Departure Lounge – for what? Bright blue skies? Like the ones MH17 was shot down from? Wait, until I find an Arik staff with steady hands, one that won’t tear my boarding pass, one that would usher me in with confident hands and a commercial-advert-compliant smile? But, you know what? I’ve been on a plane before, one that trembled so hard the hostesses stopped serving and went and strapped themselves in. And watched with us as our plane wove its way round towering columns of muscular clouds, black as death, sporadically lit up from within by twisted bolts of lightning. In any other circumstance, it would have been awe-inspiring. But, well, what I actually want to say is, when we were boarding, nothing in the demeanor of those hostesses foretold the ordeal. True. So, yes, I know what fear is – to snatch up your phone, the moment you see that facebook update, and start tapping in numbers of wife, brothers, sister, friends, because this bomb did not go off in Gwoza; it went off down the road at Emab. Yes. I know what fear is – to be sitting in an office in V.I. when someone leans over and says, ‘Have you heard? There’s a man in a hospital in Obalende with Ebola.’ Ah! When media goes to town with it, till you’re staring at the person opposite you, silently wondering if he was the one sitting beside the Liberian on the plane. I’ve looked up once, you know, from the strangely serene grounds of the National Assembly, to see black smoke curling up from the Police Headquarters; been sitting having lunch with a friend when a call came through, ‘Oh boy, you still dey there? Didn’t you hear? There’s a bomb o! They said we should evacuate. Me? I dey AYA already!’ I hate it, true, how these things over which I have no control reach into my life and snatch at my peace; how Shekau points his demented finger at a video camera and it suffices to persuade us to stay in; how the hyper-reported news of another bomb blast is analyzed to death and, suddenly, people who have never seen it before are voraciously tweeting their preference for War. You know what? I am tired. So, let me say my own. I am a Nigerian. Simple. Shekau can blow up whatever he wants to blow up but it’s a lot stronger than roads and bridges, these things that bind me to you. Did you hear? I will not hate. Or fear. No matter what the auguries are. For, say what you like, at the end of the day, it is not how we die that matters. It is how we live. So, I got off that plane and ran to the Departure Lounge. And when I found my laptop bag, I went out again into the pouring rain and boarded my flight. Let it be.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 21:54:01 +0000
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