Requiem for the Golden City

Molara Wood

In the end, it was the mining belt that spat him out. But he hadn’t the tiniest intimation of this when he set out that evening, thinking only that he hated short-time. Pick up a girl and check into some cheap establishment whose dim-lit corridor segues into dingy rooms. Decrepit front desk, the Formica countertop scratched and lifting at the edges, doing little to mask the casual degradation of the place. A rate card pasted on the wall, the printed text tippexed and overwritten in scraggly hand as the charge got adjusted time and again, a palimpsest to fevered loins. And always, a rate not originally recorded on the card: Short-Time. You paid for the time it took to get your rocks off, and out you went.

No, he didn’t like short-time, Niran thought as he drove, radio on, lips moving to Bob Marley and the Wailers on the golden oldies hour. Pimper’s Paradise. He felt the bulge of naira notes in his trouser pocket. With his job supervising workers for a Chinese company and the status conferred on him in the burgeoning mining belt, he could do without the grubby transience of short-time. On his getaways from the manmade valley dug deep in the bush, where scores of artisanal miners toiled so hard under the sun that many sought temporary release any which way at night, he cruised the town, knowing he had caught the bug.

Niran had taken to this routine after he started his job at the mine, hardly going back home to a neighboring state twice monthly as he had promised his wife. And because his nature abhorred the vacuum of work breaks not spent with his wife, he substituted with short-time, which directed an ever-increasing quotient of his nocturnal proclivities. An hour or so in a room rented for a brief glimpse of paradise, he would fall back to earth, angel with sullied wings, shrugging off his self-loathing with the dying tremors in his body as he zipped up.

He didn’t dwell too much on the seedy nature of the establishments, not until he started running into artisanal miners on the prowl.

—Ah, Oga, you dey come this place? said one in Pidgin English. The miner’s teeth emitted a shrouded glow under the weak bulb of the narrow corridor, his grin skull-like. He had that whiff of the commingling of ochre and sweat that never quite washed away in the mines, the sillage of skin and metal, of earth sifted endlessly in the muddied anticipation of gold.

—Oga, I like you o, maximum enjoyment! said another, with a conspiratorial wink, in another short-time corridor, latching on to a lady of the night.

Men to whom he was a figure of authority. Respected and maintaining an officious distance, Niran only ever said enough to keep the work going, moving on quickly to inspect the next huddle of miners.

Running into miners in unexpected corners made him turn his back on short-time. A short-lived affair in a deepening predilection marked by brevity. The new awareness made plain to him his deep revulsion for the short-time environment. The rooms were the worst. Lumpy pillows dulled and indented from exhausted use. Wrinkled sheets. Walls stained dry with splatters of every human secretion. Bathrooms no bigger than a cupboard, the shower dry or broken, cistern lid cracked or missing, the handle rusty. A plastic bucket, a third of the way full, usually the only source of water, a bowl adrift on top. He never let his eyes dwell on the toilet bowl, the bottom so discolored it rendered water invisible. The sinks were no better, grimy and blackened at the bottom, the stopper gone, such that the drain hole yawned out, a grave in miniature.

He was done with all that, but he stayed a seeker of a certain kind of pleasure, attuned to the call of the night. And now he drove leisurely through a quiet side of town, shops closed, only one or two persons about. There was a power cut, and only a few houses had generator light. No streetlights in many parts of the city; electrical infrastructure defective at installation or substandard due to corruption and embezzlement, or inert from load shedding at the grid. The only illumination ahead was from the headlights of his Honda, lighting up the billboards of local politicians, their eyes leering at those below.

He never rushed towards his quarry, though sometimes he wondered what he was really seeking. He wound down the window on this side, enjoying the breeze and the calming ambiance of the inky night. He liked to pick out new hotels that were popping up all over town to cater to the influx of prospectors and other seekers. Having turned his back on short-time, he checked into a new hotel each time he picked up a girl; more fitting, and almost no chance of running into his subordinates from the mining ditch. The hospitality sector was exploding in the city, as were eateries and Point-of-Sale operators vending cash to customers, circumventing an increasingly volatile banking system as the naira went kamikaze. Many ATMs had been sabotaged, sometimes with the collusion of bank officials, leaving people little choice but the POS operators.

Sex work was booming, too. New faces on the strip every night. He took pleasure in never knowing what lay in store for him. Pick the girl, then pick the hotel. He varied his route today to see more of what the city might offer. He turned onto the long road that parted the city through. Whichever route you took, in whatever direction, a stretch of this road would rise to meet you with vistas of the rapidly changing city. As he turned, his eyes were drawn to brightly lit premises to his left, all white and fluorescent. He slowed down. The building and its fence were set well back from the road, leaving a parking space out front. Partly obscuring a pedestrian gate from this angle was a cluster of shrubs, a cascade of white chrysanthemums with golden hearts. Above the gate, a halo-lit signage said:

Golden Dreams Rest Haven
Parks & Gardens

Niran’s eyes lit up. Another hotel! Brand spanking new! A WhatsApp call intruded into the moment, ringing out via his phone’s Bluetooth connection to the sound system. The dashboard lit up with the caller display: Wifey. She had messaged at noon to say she had something to discuss with him, and he had texted back, promising to call when he was done with the day’s work. But he had forgotten by sundown. Standing in his wellies at the edge of the ditch, the crater looked as though a spacecraft had made a rough landing and drilled into the earth, lifting off soon after with a haul of gold. Armed paramilitaries gave security cover to the Chinese overlords, shadowing their every move. To deter pilfering, they watched the miners in the ditch with hawk’s eyes. The haul of the mines was for the Chinese companies and local bigwigs who awarded the contracts in shadowy deals that saw them ferreting hefty percentages into private pockets while the people got the crumbs.

He looked around. Artisanal miners from all over, as far as Zamfara and Bamako, risking metal poisoning for their daily toil. Crumbs. And he was here to get his, having been furloughed from his previous job and unable to get a business off the ground.

—Can a man be furloughed and yet expect his credit rating to rise? said the bank manager, a part-time evangelist who turned down loan requests with paraphrases of the Bible.

Crumbs, Niran thought, as he nodded to greetings from terracotta-splattered figures emerging from the alluvial crater magicked into dense forest, dug with bare hands and equipment sophisticated as well as crude. Anything goes in the quest for gold. The men were baked bronze from the sun and painted ochre from their hair down to their feet. They had converged in this region in a latter-day gold rush that the occasional press clipping claimed was devastating the environment, especially farms and streams in the surrounding communities, some of which would be unfit for human habitation in a few decades.

At his tiny accommodation, Niran shed his forest-green overalls and wellies weighed down by caked soil. After a shower, he put on a loose-fitting kaftan and drawstring trousers. As he walked to his car, he saw miners clustered around the food vendor. She came every evening with her cooler of steaming rice and a smaller cooler for the stew. To stuff the men’s bellies before they rested from the day’s rigours. Some, like him, would seek some distraction first, between someone’s legs, if the price was right.

—Food is so costly in this place, one of the men said in halting Yoruba. —How is it we pay more to eat here than in the big cities?

—One wrap of moinmoin costs the same as in Lagos, said another, —imagine. I was in Lagos some time ago, working on a building site. A skyscraper that collapsed before it was completed, so I came down here. Now, look.

A third miner piped up, waving his plastic food container to catch the vendor’s eye. —It’s all these Yahoo-Yahoo fraudsters that have flooded this town. They lie low here to evade arrest by EFCC. And they have stupid money. They’re the ones driving up the price of everything.

The men may be right about the link between Yahoo Boys and skyrocketing inflation, Niran thought, but they overlooked the influx of artisanal miners like themselves, and contractors and prospectors and fat cats of every stripe. Yahoo Boys had morphed into Yahoo-Plus, no longer wedded to email scams. —Oyinbo people’s eyes have opened, no more European or American mugu, 419 rarely bangs, these days, went the refrain. Now Yahoo scammers were dab hands at money rituals. Even rituals involving murder, grave-robbing, and carnal knowledge of vulnerable women in ghostly places, their panties spirited away for occultic ends. Far beyond anything Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code ever envisaged.

—❉—

Another glance at Wifey on the dashboard. Niran lifted his gaze to the road. He couldn’t talk. Not now. Not when he was chasing the potent seductions of the night. Now that he was pent up and ready, but not for his wife. No, he could not answer the call. The ringing stopped.

He knew she wasn’t calling for money because his salary went into their joint account, and even as his nocturnal spending increased, she never asked questions. He heard two bleeps as her message dropped. A voice note. She tended to leave long messages, mini essays.

—I waited for your call, she began. —What does it take to have you call or pick up my call, ehn? There’s not a minute I don’t think of you, and yet you go whole days without calling me. I can’t get to the root of this… this growing distance between us.

Her nasal voice filled his ears. The Rs she could never get her tongue around, like a speaker of French, one of the qualities that endeared her to him when they first met. These days he seemed to notice it more in her recorded voice. She stifled a sob and went quiet for a bit. He felt trapped in the car by a despair he could not give in to, so he tuned her out and looked around as he drove. This stretch of road was wider and better illuminated, lined with signages and shop awnings and banks. Phone recharge card kiosks, the mushrooming POS signs, and entire buildings given over to advertising, branded in telecoms company colors. All closed but luring eyes with the afterglow of their daytime selves.

He passed the Ministry of Agriculture, its front courtyard festooned with Teak and Gmelina, export trees the forestry department forbade anyone to cut. Further along, the Ijesa Elite Club he had thought of joining. Nearby was the primary school founded by The Salvation Army in 1930, the year Joseph Ayo Babalola shook this city with his revival at Oke Ooye, a crusade upon which he founded a church.

—Pastor has asked of you several times, his wife continued, —but I’ve run out of excuses for why you don’t come home. You don’t answer when he calls… She paused again, clucking her regret. He imagined her shaking her head. —And tell me: How are we to continue to try for this baby if you don’t come home? How? I know it’s depressing after all these years, but how do you think I feel? We can’t give up. We’ve got to keep trying…

—Well, that is exactly the problem! Niran said, one hand ranging over the steering wheel as though addressing the disembodied voice of his wife. —That is exactly it!

He closed the app, switched off the car radio, and put his phone down so that all was silent except for the murmur of night and the breathing organism that was the city. She had touched a nerve. The baby was exactly the problem. It had become soul-destroying for him, watching the sadness cave into his wife every month, knowing he had laboured in the preceding weeks for nothing. Labour, that was what it had become. Duty eroding desire. Coitus without ardor. They no longer made love, he felt. He humped mechanically as the joy and spontaneity seeped from him. His feeling of inadequacy every time their hope was dashed, his increasing discomfort around family and friends, wondering to himself if he was okay, if he was a real man. At least now that he stayed away, they had an alibi for her not getting pregnant. He was away, a ready excuse for eggs unfertilized.

That was what was so freeing about his nocturnal forays in the mining belt, he thought. Here, it was sex without expectation. He could take his pleasure without the burden of elusive fecundity. And in relative anonymity, though, he was not a total stranger to this place. As a young boy, Niran had spent holidays visiting his great-grandmother, who lived in the Ìṣọ̀nà area of the city. Several relatives lived with her, and everyone called her Yèyé Wesley because any small ailment she would say, —Mo mí re Wẹ́sílì. Weaned on herbs and native wisdom, she nonetheless affirmed her faith in medical science at every opportunity, draping her ìpèlé on her shoulder to head to Wesley Guild Hospital. Her daughter died giving birth, and so Yèyé Wesley raised the newborn as her own. When the child suffered a serious illness at age two, she was brought back to health at Wesley. From then on, Yèyé Wesley swore by the hospital. That child grew up to be Niran’s mother. And so, he called the elderly woman Yèyé Wesley, too. Better than when he first called her grandmother.

—Mée ṣe Yèyé-yèye rẹ, she had told him in the dialect.

—I know…

—Yèyé-yèyé-yèye rẹ ni mèrè.

—My great-grandmother.

—Han-in o, bẹ́ẹ̀ gẹ́gẹ́ ni. Exactly that, she said with a nod, smiling such that the pélé-Ìjèṣà scarification marks convexed on her cheeks. Then she got up to oversee the preparation of that evening’s meal of iyán and egusi stew. Pounded yam, almighty Iyán, chief of foods to the Ijesa, so beloved that the leftover was a relished breakfast the next morning, acquiring an added flavour as well as a moniker. Yèyé Wesley lived to a hundred-and-seven. Estimated age, since there was no birth record. But to him, she was as old as forever. As a child, she had lived through the Kiriji War.

—Ogun Kiriji, she would say, as though the war happened yesterday.

When she was pleased with those around her, she called them —Ọmọ Ọwá, Ọmọ Ẹkùn, regaling them with the poetic oríkì of the people, an exhortation binding all Ijesa as children and subjects of the Ọwá, fearless as the big cat that was their totem. Niran would swell with pride when she addressed him in these terms, affirming what tiny percentage of his DNA was Ijesa, notwithstanding the fact that his patrilineage—the part that larger society gave primacy—was from elsewhere in Yorubaland.

Although he had never given much thought to it, what Yèyé Wesley imparted had stayed with him, especially concerning this city and the ways of the Ijesa. Walking with her to Atakumosa Market, where she sold ògùṣọ̀, the sundried palm-nut byproduct with which households fuelled their cooking fires in those days, she told him this was the heart of a great kingdom stretching over scores of towns nestled in hills and valleys in this region. This was the olú-ìlú of the Ijesa people, Yèyé Wesley said, through the fine red dust that trailed passing cars and touched everything in the city in those days. The city-state that, under the command of the legendary Ogedengbe, led the Ekitiparapo army to face down Ibadan. Known for an affecting obstinacy and folk-sense, these were people who did not turn easily. And they could cuss for Africa. They deployed cusses, curses even, in a myriad of situations, and with that unique streak of Ijesa indignation that bore no ill-intent. Curses were a function of language, figures of speech, a verbalisation of high emotion among a people for whom the most basic insult was deftly enounced as simile. Could one be among them and not have a flair for the dramatic? he sometimes wondered, recalling his time with Yèyé Wesley in her modest bungalow, rebuilt during the reign of Agunlejika from the mudbrick that sheltered her forebears. Passing in front of the palace, she told the story of the first king, Owa Ajibogun, who made the long journey to the coast to fetch sea water to cure the blindness of his father Oduduwa, progenitor of the Yoruba people. For this, Ajibogun got a throne, bequeathing to all Ijesa the honorific, Ọmọ Obòkun, Children of Obòkun, Fetcher of Sea Water.

Yèyé Wesley never went to school, but she was confident of her place in the world and what she knew. —Bí mẹ́ tilẹ̀ kà’wé, mọ ka inú mi. Even if I have not read books, I have read my inside.

She would lean back on a low wooden stool, rest her back on the wall of her corridor, and doze off. In the languorous half-light of the late afternoon in that corridor, her facial marks would take on a touch of the ethereal, etched as they were into her skin in another time, another age, a time too far back for Niran to grasp. Perhaps it was that sense of forever, that sense of the indomitable weathering the storm that drew him to the city long after Yèyé Wesley was gone. And despite his wife’s misgivings about the mines. He had come to the land of his ancestress. For was he not also taking refuge here, like those of a bygone era that took cover behind Ogedengbe?

—❉—

A drizzle quickened into steady showers as he neared the city centre. He wound up his window and turned on the wipers. Rain danced in running streaks on the windows, each a watery looking glass onto the glistening evening scene, which picked up pace as he approached Owa’s roundabout. Beyond the streaming windows, things had become less distinct at the edges, one form melding into another, a liquid dream. Vehicle horns, the patter of rain on the car’s roof, the squish of tyres on the sodden streets. It all added to this feeling he had, of being on the edge of reality. A bustling nightscape rolled by unimpeded by rain, illuminated by vehicle and storefront lights. Traders attended to their wares by rechargeable lamps at collapsible stalls under capacious umbrellas in a kaleidoscope of colors. The molten tones of the rain-drenched market spread out by the palace: cars red, black, and white; blue transport buses, okada commercial motorbike riders in transparent raincoats, the hotch-potch of colors on people. At the roundabout, he looked up at the old palace gate, flanked to this side by a white horse leaping off the cornflower blue of a bank. There was the ubiquitous banner of Trophy beer, brewed with purified water from its local namesake, Omi Aṣorò, a stream that had flowed through the city since the dawn of time.

He curved left at the roundabout island where the statue of Owa Ajibogun stood in perpetual warrior’s charge. He exited by the petrol station and drove two hundred yards down the street before taking a left and then a sharp right, arriving at his quarry. Niran felt his excitement rise at the sight of the girls, clad in abbreviated numbers, peering out from under a blue tarpaulin rain shelter. The rain stopped as though someone had turned off a faucet in the sky, and the girls fanned out as he slowed to a crawl, wound down his window, and stuck out his chin.

—Oga, how you dey? a young lady greeted in Pidgin English. Stooping to the window, and with a finger, she twirled one of the chunky braids that snaked around her face.

—I dey fine o.

—I’m the one you need. I go give you good time.

Another woman, about forty, edged the girl from the window before Niran could reply. A minder to the working girls or possibly their madame, this was the first time the woman would be in his face.

—Oga, good evening. Sorry o, we just wan’ make sure say we know who dey carry our girls.

She said they were on high alert because of ritualists. One girl got picked up by a Yahoo Boy a week ago and was never seen alive again.

—Ehn?

—They just kpai her like that. Na yesterday dem find the body.

—Chai! He cupped his head with his hands.

She shrugged. —Na so we see am o. The Yahoo Boy sef don disappear.

Having satisfied herself that she’d registered his face, she moved along. The girl with the chunky braids, meanwhile, had gone round to the other side of the car and settled into the passenger seat. Niran turned to her. An oncoming jeep had full headlights on, something that usually bothered him, but now it made for a clear view of the girl. Her braids were swept to the other side of her face, curling down nearly up to her knees. Two strands stood out: one strawberry blonde, one green. On this side, her earlobe had multiple piercings stuffed with hoops and studs. Her face was an uneven yellow color that came from mixing creams to lighten the complexion. He lowered his gaze to her red miniskirt, then up to the orange off-the-shoulder short-sleeved mesh worn over the sheerest black vest crop top. She wore no bra, and her breasts were round orbs straining against the sheer and the mesh. Her nipples jutted out. Orbital, heat-seeking. He swallowed, fighting the urge to bend down and flick his tongue over a nipple. He felt a bulge in his trousers.

She sized him up from under lashes that were more like shutters.

—Oga, how far nauw? she said. —You wan’ fuck abi you no wan’ fuck?

—How much?

—Short-time, abi?

—No short-time. A dreamy note crept into his voice. —Let’s pretend it’s forever.

—Ehn?

—The whole night. Stay the night with me. How about that?

—Till daybreak. Ah, you go pay o.

—No problem. He tapped the other bulge, the one in his pocket.

—Where you wan’ go?

—I know just the place, he said.

—❉—

By the time Niran pulled into the car park of the Golden Dreams Rest Haven, her braids were coiled between them, caressing his gearstick. She had given only short answers to his attempts at conversation on the drive down, volunteering only that she was a polytechnic student and not from these parts. She stayed a step behind him as he headed towards the chrysanthemums. Their shadows pulled away from them. A security guard regarded them through the pedestrian gate’s grills, raising a quizzical brow. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened up, saying, —Good evening.

As they proceeded inside, the girl glared back at the guard, sensing she had been subtly profiled as a purveyor of her trade. They entered a reception area that was heavy with a sickly sweet fragrance, all light grey furniture, white walls, and soft pearl lighting. Artificial white flowers everywhere. Hydrangeas, orchids, lilies. The girl was an exotic bird drawn in vivid colors in this pallid atmosphere. Niran held her hand for respectability as they approached the desk, and she let him. He wrinkled his nose at the overpowering perfume in the air. A male attendant emerged from an inner section. He wore white, a grey name tag pinned to his left breast. On the wall behind him, it was nine o’clock.

—We’d like a room, please.

The attendant’s eyes narrowed, his mouth parted but said nothing, head to one side as if trying to figure out something. In came a second attendant, adjusting the collar of his uniform. Wafting in his wake was classical music that kicked up just before he appeared. A soprano giving her all; the only distinct word was “requiem.”

—Is it for your mother or father? asked the second attendant, coming to stand next to his colleague behind the desk.

—Erm… We just want a room, one night.

—I’m very sorry, said the second attendant, — this is a private cemetery. It’s a cemetery.

The girl snatched her hand away, almost ripping Niran’s arm from its socket. Her handbag had dropped to the floor, and she backpedaled maniacally, hopping about and emitting earsplitting screams.

—Yeee, I don die! I’m dead! she cried. —A cemetery, a cemetery, cemetery!!

On the wall opposite the attendants was a framed testimonial bearing a picture of the proprietress. She also wore white. Her hair was pulled back and she smiled a beatific smile. Under her name and picture were the words “U.S. Certified Mortician.”

The girl retrieved her bag and reeled in paroxysms out the door. Niran followed as though in a daze. The pedestrian gate opened and closed after them.

Getting his bearings in the parking lot, he tried to steer the girl to the car.

—No touch me! she shouted and ran into the road.

—Please, let’s leave this place, he said.

—I no dey go anywhere with you! Then came the curses, all while staggering about on the road, tottering on block heels. —Olóríbúrukú olòṣì! Fọ̀rẹ́vèr kọ́, fọ̀rẹ̀vèr ni! Ẹ́ raa dáa fún ọ! Réderède lá bá ọ! Ṣànpọ̀nná lá pa ọ́!

She had forgotten that she was not from these parts. An okada rider came whizzing by and she ran in front of him, begging to be saved from a ritualist. The rider braked with one boot to the asphalt, and she clambered on. After the sound of the okada and her shouts had receded into the night, it struck Niran that the frontage of the cemetery he had mistaken for a hotel was as cold and quiet as a grave. As though to drive home the point, or perhaps as a result of what just happened, all lights went off on the premises, leaving pitch darkness where the Golden Dreams Rest Haven had been.

He got in the car and drove towards the mining camp, face contorted, wondering how the night had taken such a bitter turn. Then he remembered the half-played voice note from his wife.

Wifey lit up on the dashboard.

—I also wanted to let you know that my uncle is in the country for a few weeks and we’ve been talking. He knows you’ve turned down offers of help in the past, but he really hopes you’ll consider this one: basically, he’s willing to loan you the funds for that automatic car wash you wanted to start, darling. I hope you don’t mind, but I told him that’s what you’d really like to do. He’ll lend you the money. A soft loan. Isn’t that amazing? We won’t even have to pay back for five years.

Niran listened, his mind numb.

—My uncle shares my concerns about the harmful effects of all that unregulated mining going on down there, the contracts that only leave the people poorer, rivers polluted, soil toxic… People will start getting sick. And even if you don’t care about any of that, think about us. This loan will allow us to be together. Think about it. Enlightened self-interest, I believe it’s called.

Back at the camp, Niran felt as though he had been dragged all the way from that cursed car park. He stripped off and got into the shower area, a cement-walled square with a sloping floor and a drain hole. No pipe-borne water. He had a steward fetch several buckets of water daily. He scooped water with a bowl to pour on his head. He gave a start at first when the cold water struck his skin, then he continued. He let the water soothe his body, his mind, a recuperative process begun by his wife’s voice.

—❉—

Some days after his misadventure with the girl with the chunky braids, Niran started to notice a change in the way people navigated space around him in the camp. Miners whispered in the ditch and cast veiled glances in his direction. Whatever anyone was saying, they went silent when he came by. Some miners became sluggish in carrying out his instructions. Even the food vendor looked askance at him and shook her head as he passed.

—But I am not a kerb-crawler, he said, when Mr. Chang called him into the office for a disjointed talk about the need to act responsibly.

—Who say thing about kerb-crawling? Chang replied in his quick-jawed manner. —Tell me, where the kerbs in this country anyway? No sidewalks. No nothing.

Niran looked hangdog-eyed at Chang, wanting to tell him that Chinese companies were part of the problem since they had the lion’s share of infrastructural development contracts in the country, working in cahoots with corrupt politicians, paying bribes, inflating budgets, and delivering below standard after the bulk of the funds had been stolen.

—If there was nothing, you wouldn’t be here digging for the gold, Mr. Chang, because you’re not doing it for our people, that’s for sure.

—What I saying is that: we are foreign company. We no want trouble. Please be careful.

—No problem, Mr. Chang.

Later that evening, Niran avoided the Golden Dreams Rest Haven, taking a different route. What would Yèyé Wesley have made of him working in a mine that contributed to the despoliation of her beloved land? he wondered. Instilled in him in those days was the essential decency of the Ijesa. They were like open palms. Hard work had pride of place. They were known for their ingenuity as traders, earning the sobriquet, Oṣomaalo, for their shrewdly comical ways of extracting their dues from debtors. Oṣomaalo—Don’t pacify me with a seat, I will sit on my haunches till you pay me my money.

How had such a place rolled over to become a haven for Yahoo Boys throwing money about, swelling their ranks with local youths, and ripping into the social fabric? In those days, if Yèyé Wesley sent him on an errand and he took too long getting back, she would smirk and say, —Did you go to Kontagora? Since her people were known to transverse great terrains for commerce, trading all the way to the north, and Kontagora became an Ijesa byword for distance.

It wasn’t yet eight o’clock when he arrived at the strip. The girls lined up as though behind a bulwark, lacking their usual jollity. Niran bent his head to scan through the windscreen at the faces. He planned to make it up to the girl with the chunky braids, maybe even pay her a token as compensation; then he hoped to get one of her colleagues for the night, so he wouldn’t have to think about his loss of face in the camp, at least not tonight. The forty-something woman’s face at the car window cut into his rumination. She smiled or snarled, he didn’t know which.

—Wetin you dey find, Oga?

—Good evening, Madam, he said.

—Wetin good about the evening? She straightened up and glared down at him. —I dey ask you: wetin good about the evening? You carry girl go cemetery and you get mind to come back to this place. You no fear God?

—It was a misunderstanding. Niran’s hands spread palm up, beseeching. —I’ve come to explain myself to her and to apologise for giving her such a fright.

—She no dey here o. She don go, talk say she no do olosho again.

—She left?

—She left. I lost my investment because of you. Abeg, leave here. Go! She banged her fist on the side of the car.

—Oh… I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.

—Ìwọ man yí, yìn mí nù! Stop bugging me! She stamped her foot and her entire body bristled. All eyes were on them now, all other activity at pause. —We will call Amotekun for you o!

The mention of Amotekun, the native paramilitary force named after the leopard and uniformed accordingly, was a pinprick to his skin. Active in five Yoruba states, they were sometimes the only security presence around. He started to maneuver for a U-turn.

—No come here again! Ritualist! the woman shouted after him.

Niran’s hands trembled on the steering wheel as he turned the corner, feeling his world constricting. After he had put a bit of a distance between him and the strip and checked the rear-view mirror to ensure he was not being followed, he pulled up by the side of the road and buried his face in the steering wheel, his heart pounding. His knees felt wobbly, his head woozy. After some minutes, when he thought he might have sufficiently composed himself, he raised his head, wiped his face with his sleeve, and started the car. His eyes stung without tears, mourning without a death. He saw himself as flotsam, without an anchor, unmoored from the present and the past.

His mind all over the place, he had driven aimlessly for a while before realizing he was in Yèyé Wesley’s old neighborhood. He had been away in boarding school when she died, and her house was eventually sold, but surely he would still be able to locate it? Ten minutes later, he wasn’t so sure. Some streets bore new names or had been widened to make way for new roads, and a good portion of the area had been rebuilt. Story buildings and culverts where there had been bungalows and trees. Not even the consolation of his childhood idyll, not tonight.

Yearning for the old familiar place, Niran was suddenly struck by a memory, and he smiled despite the ache within him. One time he arrived at Yèyé Wesley’s with an unruled exercise book in which his Art teacher had encouraged pupils to draw colored illustrations of every flower they could find on the school premises. Florilegium, the teacher had called it, a word the pupils could barely pronounce.

—Ìwé kíi yèé? Yèyé Wesley had asked, opening the book to trace a knobbly finger around a sunflower.

Niran explained that it was a collection of his memories of flowers that had since died, a way of preserving things that mattered to him.

—O káre láé, she said, and patted his head. Perhaps one day, he would make one for her, she told him.

Turning here and there, Niran eventually landed on a route that led back to the mining camp. On a bend just past Ibala Road junction, he raised one hand to shield his eyes from the golden yellow headlights of an oncoming truck, and he pulled to the side to avoid the glare, catching his breath at another memory. Yèyé Wesley had sent him to get something from her friend, Iya Alagira, who lived in Ọmọfẹ. In those days, children could play and stray far from home and come to no harm. Several streets along, he came across the Etiyeri masquerade, costumed in an array of colorful fabrics. Trailing the Egungun was an exuberant crowd of runners and drummers as well as adults and children, all dancing and singing and beating gongs. The sun sheathed its intensity on that day, bathing the land in warm hues that gave a honeyed radiance to everything. The Egungun was in constant motion, a glittering whirl that fed on the sun’s rays bouncing off the glass fragments and sequins sewn into his costume, dazzling all who saw him. The late afternoon sun, the dust kicking up from stamping feet to talc the air, the motley crowd, the masked ancestor—it all made Niran cross-eyed with wonder. He saw at last why Yèyé Wesley called this the golden city, ìlú tó n dán bíi wúrà, with gold deposits underfoot. When they dug the ground to farm, lay foundations or bury their dead, they sometimes happened upon gold nuggets. Niran forgot about Iya Alagira and the errand and joined the swelling crowd, dancing through the streets with Etiyeri till dusk. He came home to a livid Yèyé Wesley, who had cut a fine stalk ready to whip some sense into him. Her headwrap was not on her head but tied like a sash on her midriff in the manner of a woman incensed. Niran looked at her sparse white hair and the gravity of the situation hit him, so he lied. He said the crowd had been so densely packed around the heavenly being that it had been impossible to find a way forward. Yèyé Wesley’s frown disappeared. She dropped the stalk and gathered him into her arms. He must always remember, she told him: —If the way forward is not possible, the way back is always an option.

And so, right there on the bend by Ibala junction, Niran sent a text message to Mr. Chang.

—Please take this as a notice of my resignation, effective immediately.

If the way forward is not possible, the way back is always an option. His employment contract had stipulated that he could be sacked without notice, effective immediately. If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for Chang, he thought as he turned the car around. He would contact the steward later about getting his things sent out to him. He called his wife to say he was coming home and that she should stay up. He should be there by eleven if the road was clear. He was coming home. The air was flecked with the promise of rain. Niran felt a sense of calm as he drove his outward way.

He passed the aged and sacred Iroko tree, a landmark, graceful, towering over all it surveyed. Many believed it to be an abode of the spirits and some deity, an òrìṣà. Imọlẹ̀, they sometimes called òrìṣà in these parts. A noisy crowd was watching an English Premier League match at a viewing centre, and the iroko was spotlighted because everywhere was brightly lit. He saw the patch of callus tissue where one of the tree’s limbs had been severed. Seven workmen from the environmental board came with equipment to cut the branch a couple of months before. They said it was overhanging the road. People in the area begged them not to cut it. The branch was high up and bothering no one. No one touches the iroko, they said. The men carried out their task, but none lived to see seven days. If a visitor asked townspeople if it was true, if the men died because they defied the iroko, and if such a thing was possible, the people would reply, —Of course it’s true. It happened. They carried the news on the radio.

Owa’s roundabout was also lit up. Behind the old palace gate, a telecoms mast reached to the sky, receiver dishes in every direction like suckers on an octopus. Niran thought of the palace, some of its structures a thousand years old. This city had weathered many epochs—wars, epidemics, boom and bust. It had spawned great jurists, car dealer millionaires, and fabled fortunes back when money was money. Could it weather the onslaught of the mines?

It was clear to Niran now that this city had been an animated presence in his memories, a love of his life. But what was the use? Along with the Yahoo Boys, the sex workers, the Chinese prospectors, the hordes of artisanal miners, he was just another escapee hiding out in the mining belt. There was gold aplenty, but this was no El Dorado, and he was done.

City limits behind him, he thought of a future conversation he might have with a friend. He would say, and he would believe what he would say: that he had left the mining belt for Yèyé Wesley and his wife to be the man they thought he was and for the child he hoped to sire. But he could not be certain that this would be the truth, that he was the man he thought he was, or that he would have left in the way he did if it were entirely up to him. In the end, it was the mining belt that spat him out.