Whispers of the Dead
By Uji Akimugu
“At the Nasarawa makeshift market, I have a store at the neighbouring old Muslim cemetery that has been left to regenerate for residential purposes. Probably 20 to 40 years when all bones might have become dust, new buildings will spring up there.
“The state government had demolished the old market, so it was relocated to a ground beside Government Day Secondary School,” a middle aged man, skeptical of earthly life he once enjoyed, narrated.
“I know all this,” I told him without interest.
“I come to ask you to write down my story. Somebody told me that you are a journalist and a writer. And you will be in Nasarawa for the weekend. Can you write down my story?”
“Which story.”
“Sometimes I would feel asleep even though I knew I was not tired or hungry. I ate goro to keep me alive to no avail.
In my store separated by a short, some gentle breeže would come to wipe my face. Someone would gently touch my ears with something soft and light like a bird’s feather. But on waking up I would find nobody.
One day, he teased my ears as usual and said: ‘Come home and enjoy eternal bliss.’
“What bliss will I enjoy at home, with gunmen allover my village, claiming ownership of all my possessions, human and material? In the that has become our sanctuary, I toy day and night to keep my family alive, yet garri and bread walk faster away.”
‘That is why I said come home. Join us here,’ he said, pointing to a happy city.
I fixed a gaže at where his finger pointed. It was the disused and abandoned cemetery. Then a customer who came to buy a cup from my half-rotten basket of tomatoes, tapped me. I woke up with a start. I began to shake with cold. Where the strange man was pointing at was unmistaking; it was the cemetery.