Abuja. November 19, 2009.

The air was smoky from the kerosene lamps and candles that lit up the night. Emp
ty tables lined the roadside, and behind one of them was a stone-bound ring of e
mbers, dying remnants of the suya mallam’s fire. Efe hated walking this road so la
te but sometimes she couldn’t avoid it after reading at the library. She prayed sh
e would not meet secret cult members who were reputed to use this route on their
way from their haunts. Someone appeared ahead and she walked slower, mouth tigh
t and fists clutching her chest. A small shriek escaped her when the person sudd
enly looked back.
She heaved a sigh of relief at the flashing white teeth and walked towards him w
ith a smile of recognition.
“Kevwe…”
She stopped in a moment, clenched hands wiping her eyes when, instead of moving
closer to him, he drifted further and further away. Sounds of revelry disturbed
the silence of the night and Efe walked faster, heart pounding and sweat drippin
g from her nose. More shadows began to melt out of the side of the road, coming
towards her. As the figures began to chant gutturally, one raised an arm and som
ething metal glinted from the light of the fire. Menace filled the air thicker t
han smoke and Efe ran forward, screaming Kevwe’s name. He couldn’t leave her here, h
e was supposed to love and protect her forever…
“Kevwe no…” Efe groaned, as her head tossed from side to side. “Don’t leave me...”
The alarm on the bedside table buzzed and she jerked awake. It took another minu
te to lift eyelids swollen from tears. She was under the blankets, but the chill
y tremors from the nightmare still racked her. Efe dragged herself out of bed, f
eeling as if her head was breaking in two. This was the third time in as many da
ys she’d had a Kevwe nightmare.
They never left her completely, but what was more worrying was how frequently th
ey were now occurring. Had she made a mistake in returning to Nigeria? Was her s
ubconscious trying to pass a message across to her? God knows it had taken a lon
g time and plenty of effort on her part to push Kevwe and that part of her life
to the recesses of her mind. Her thoughts went round and round, tying knots in h
er stomach as she dragged herself into the bathroom for a shower.
Efe recalled that she also sunk into despair after Kevwe, her former fiancé, broke
up with her. In the weeks before their breakup seven years ago, she’d begged for
weeks to stay in Nigeria because of him, instead of travelling out using her new
ly won American visa like her parents wanted. After his rejection, she demanded
to leave immediately, but her body failed her. Overtaken by headaches, tears, an
d nightmares, and reduced to a shadow, she was unable to travel. Her parents alm
ost panicked, triggering a sad time, not just for her but the entire family, as
they moved cities and she finally left the country. But she was a month late, an
d missed the opening date of her new college.
Efe returned to the bedroom after several minutes under the cool shower jets. He
r mood had soured as she remembered the year spent stacking shelves in FreshCo a
nd waiting for summer school to start. To cheer up, she slotted in her ipod into
its dock and selected Asa, a recent Nigerian female favorite before sliding ope
n the closet and rifling through it. Her clothes brought fresh memories of how s
he was nicknamed the Black Widow in school due to the black and sober outfits sh
e frequently wore. At least now she could look back to those dark days and not c
ringe anymore.
Efe picked out a light gray and beige suit which she’d added to her wardrobe at he
r mother’s insistence. When she had returned to Nigeria in April, her mum had nagg
ed her to overhaul her wardrobe, not being impressed by the designer labels or t
he quality of her American outfits. They were too drab, she said, and that would
 discourage suitors. Efe had kept quiet. She didn’t tell her mum that she needed s
uitors like she needed a gun to the head. However, when her oldest friend, Nneka
, started too, she made it clear she wouldn’t tolerate any badgering.
Though Efe never asked for it, Nneka would not let her rest for trying to fix he
r up. After Efe left the country, they lost contact but had found each other aga
in on Facebook two years ago, soon after Nneka’s marriage. Still sweet and bubbly,
Nneka was happily married but Efe hadn’t been surprised that they started from wh
ere they left off, having been very close back in UniBen. However, since having
her first baby in May, Nneka was refusing to give Efe any space.
As Efe drove to work, she was soothed by the neatness and the well planned layou
t of the streets of Abuja. She’d spent most of her early life in Sapele, Warri and
Benin. Those cities had been small compared to some of the other Nigerian citie
s but they were still congested and sometimes very foul. In the later years in W
arri, during the riots, it had not been too uncommon to see dead bodies on the s
treets. So with those memories, and after spending the first month of her return
to Nigeria in rowdy Lagos with her parents, she liked the orderliness in Abuja.
There was no refuse on the streets, and the odor of pollution that plagued most
other cities was absent.
Efe thought about her work at the Hilton Corporation, an international hotel cha
in based in the city. She was fortunate that the hotel subsidized her cost of li
ving expenses, otherwise Abuja would definitely have taken a toll on her purse,
and it would have been completely impossible to live there. The city was definit
ely not cheap and she frequently found that she paid international prices for si
mple items. In fact, she found that she spent more money now than she did in Wes
t Palm Beach.
At the hotel, she parked in the employee bay and walked into the building. Leavi
ng instructions with the front office not to accept any visitors for her, she to
ok the elevator to her fifth floor office. She wanted to tackle some records and
then finish up an order in preparation for the busier nights the club had on Fr
idays. Her assistant had not come in for the past two days so she was running be
hind her schedule. As the day progressed, she was interrupted a handful of times
, but only by people who had previous appointments. When she finally checked in
some numbers around six, the order was almost ready and she felt quite pleased w
ith herself.
Suddenly, a man’s angry voice shattered the silence.
“Who is Ms. Sagay?” he thundered. “Someone at the front desk said I should speak to th
e assistant general manager. Where is she?”
Efe heard her secretary telling the man that it was late and Ms. Sagay could not
see him and tried to get back to her work, but the voice tugged at her memories
, so she moved to the door and opened it to hear the voices more clearly. The ma
n complaining had his back to her and she took in his tall frame and wide should
ers. He wore jeans, but his outfit was made more formal by a well-ironed and col
lared shirt. Her secretary asked the man if she could help with his problem and
Efe waited for him to speak again, but his next words pushed thoughts of placing
his voice out of her head.
“I’m done dealing with secretaries. I’d like to speak to Ms. Sagay,” he said, placing an
emphasis on the title indicating her unmarried status.
Efe knew the ‘Ms.’ preface was not common in Nigeria but still felt a mild annoyance
at the obviously chauvinist tone in the man’s voice. She opened the door wider an
d marched into the outer office. “I am Ms. Sagay.”
He turned towards her and she blinked. It was the face of her nightmares. Taken
by surprise, Efe took a step backwards, tottering against a nearby chair as her
legs folded under her. The visitor moved to her quickly, and Efe had to stop her
self from shrinking away. He assisted her to a padded couch and insisted she sit
down. She blinked several times and then looked up warily. It was still there;
the face that haunted her. Her angry visitor stared at her from the opposite arm
chair.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“I’m fine!” she replied, loudly, but she could feel the gooseflesh rising on her skin
at the lack of recognition in his eyes. Efe forced her gaze away. Sitting up jer
kily, she crossed one leg over the other before jumping to her feet.
“Are you sure you’re OK? I’m a doctor…” he asked in the same calm voice.
“I’m good, just a misstep, the carpet...” Efe flicked at her nose and cursed under her
breath. First the stumbling, now she was mumbling. It wasn’t a surprise she was s
o rattled but she needed to get hold of herself.
“Hmm… if you say so.” He shook his head, his gaze flicking over her once more. “I’ll never
understand you independent women.”
Efe openly glared at him, ordering the hovering secretary away before turning ba
ck to him. He was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. With a buzzing noise f
illing her ears and her heart thumping, she truly felt like Alice in Wonderland,
and it was his fault.
“You say you’re a doctor?” she asked, her mind repeating one name over and again. He h
ad to be Ofure, Kevwe’s twin brother.
“Dr. Mukoro, the owner of Miracle Hospital and Lab,” he replied, stretching forward
his hand. “I came to collect my long overdue bill and audit.”
It was as she already knew. Quivering inside, Efe accepted the handshake. “Come on
in.”
She remembered noting the Mukoro name on the hospital file during her first mont
h. According to their books, his hospital regularly held trainings in the hotel’s
Congress Hall or board meetings in the smaller halls for which her office produc
ed quarterly reports. She’d pushed the file to her assistant and hadn’t touched it s
ince then so it was not strange that they’d not met before now.
She led him into her office, and sitting at the desk, she studied him fully. He
was exactly like Kevwe, down to the tribal mark in the middle of his forehead. I
t could have been her former fiancé except she knew it wasn’t.
“I’m not happy at the delay, my accountants and foreign partners are becoming antsy.”
He paused and looked her over, “You sound like you can understand.”
She shook her head and replied. “Sorry for the hassle, but I can assure you that t
he report will soon be finished.” He was probably referring to her American accent
which was yet to fade even after eight months. Efe unsuccessfully tried to lose
it when speaking to Nigerians.
“When will it be ready for me to pick up?”
“Next week, definitely…”
“I’ll give you a week,” he warned, “and it had better be ready by then or the hospital a
nd our partners will never host events at this venue ever again. I mean that.”
“Oh no, there’s no need for that,” Efe exclaimed. She noticed he had a faint accent to
o and recalled the few times she’d spoken with him over the phone, back when she w
as still dating Kevwe. In the first year after moving to the States, she’d half-ex
pected him to call her up one day and say that Kevwe had changed his mind and wa
nted her back.
That hope had fizzled out, and as she spoke, assuring him that the reports would
be ready as soon as possible, a part of her mind clouded with painful memories.
Efe was relieved when he got to his feet, pacified.
She walked him out of the office, promising to get the report ready and have som
eone bring it over to his office the following Friday. With him gone, she stagge
red into her office and collapsed at her desk. Pushing her laptop aside, she bur
ied her face in the sanctuary of her folded her arms, lost in her university pas
t and the day she now knew it all started.
**