A Time That Died

We died together.

It was on a Saturday, wrapped into each other when the building came down. We had just made up from a week long fight, talked long into the night, and he proposed. No ring,no fancy dinner or talk. It was on the bed, in his dingy bedroom on the tiny 3rd floor apartment.

"Let's just get married. We are as good as married anyway." He said matter-of-factly.

"I'm Yoruba. Your mother hates Yorubas. You're broke. You earn thirty thousand naira a month. You won't take money from me. I can reel out a hundred reasons.

"I was trying to stall, I had seen the glint in his eyes, one that meant he wasn't going to change his mind.

He just snorted, and with one bullish arm swung me to his chest. "We'll get married,tomorrow if possible. " I almost choked on the laughter, as I gurgled in delight.

So we started to iron out the tiny details, over stale sliced bread and margarine. I watched him nibble at the bread with the slight sneer that said he was only eating it because he had to fill his belly, my Somto never liked bread. I still remember his bearded face that night.

He agreed to move into my apartment. To allow me fund the wedding, things his alpha male ego wouldn't normally allow him agree to. He just wanted to be married. Like he had a premonition.

We must have been asleep only an hour when the deep rumble of concrete giving way started. I heard it, somewhere in the deep of my fuzzy sleepy mind, but I didn't wake up. I must have thought it was rain and thunder. Somto must have too, but we died together,under the rubble of the collapsed building.

My body was revived, but my spirit had gone with Somto. They said he protected me even in death. My limp body was retrieved from the embrace of his corpse under the rubble.

Six years later, I am married, with two kids but I died with Somto, that Saturday morning.I'm just this dull woman who rarely laughs and whose smiles never touch the eyes.

One morning I see him, Somto with a pronounced limp, his hair plaited in neat corn rows and a thin scar running down the left side of his head. He looks much bigger too, not fatty bigger, muscle bigger. Biceps bulging and visible beneath his blue shirt. His beards were gone, a smooth jaw in its place.

My skin sprouts goose pimples, my head seems to grow bigger. I have no idea what I am seeing. Has Somto become an 'akudaya'? Or is it just creepy resemblance?

My Somto hadn't been one to plait cornrows, his head had always been clean shaven.

Nor could he have become a gym instructor, Somto had been too ambitious, loved money, as if his poor background was a curse he had to be cleansed of by being rich.

I go back to the gym, everyday, though creeped out at every sight of this strange man. I ask questions, make calls, snoop around the site of Somto's old building.

And then I find out, Somto didn't die. He had even regained consciousness before I did,but not his memory. He had amnesia.

Enters my over-bearing mother. She had talked to Somto's family, agreed with them that we were better off apart.



I didn't doubt the story I had heard from my mother when I regained consciousness or even visit Somto's family because they hated me, for being Yoruba and stealing their son's heart. It would have been next to suicide to go rub my survival in their face. And of course, I never returned to the site of the collapsed building.

If I had, I would have found Somto living in the next house, holding on to the story of a girlfriend who had died, a girlfriend he didn't remember. How convenient for him.

So every morning, I go to the gym, we talk and I come alive. He's my fitness instructor,he owns the gym too.

He is married. My heart is gored badly but I take some solace in seeing him daily, the occasional physical contact as he shows me some posture or the other.

I wonder if he still loves loud music, as I remember the night clubs we went to together,he used to be a DJ and I would be at his side screaming myself hoarse as I guzzled beer.

I wonder if he still doesn't like bread. If he still loves beans and potatoes.

Most of all I wonder where he put all the love he felt for me, where did it go? It's tough,because my heart is heavy, my chest is tight and my living bland without that love.

I know I'll tell him our story one day. Someday. Maybe I'm waiting for him to fall in love with me again, or remember, or I'm just too scared


Written By Wole Olayinka