"The both of you should get married, or are you still waiting?" Yasmin said to Abubakar. They were at an amusement park, something they had talked her into accepting to come. Soliat smiled shyly. "Your father wants you to marry, he's an old man, he could die at anytime, he just wants to see his only child married. I'm not telling you to marry because your father wants it, but at least, go out with somebody who is ready to put a ring on your finger, not my foolish brother."
Abubakar smiled and turned to Soliat. "Did you hear that? She said 'my brother'."
"There was 'foolish' in the middle," Yasmin reminded.
"It doesn't matter, dear sister. And I'm very much ready to put a ring on her finger but she's actually not ready."
"Is that true, Solia?"
She looked away. "I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know? This is the problem, Abubakar was too soft with you as a child. What do you not know, that you like him or that you want to settle down? I heard your father gave you till the end of this month."
"Yasmin, leave us alone."
She shrugged and looked around at the playing children and a wave of nostalgia hit her, she blinked her eyes a few times.
"What about you, Sister Yasmin, when are you marrying Mr. Edegbe?"
"When people get married, they raise a family, they have children and raise a family."
Alhaji's voice was tender when he called. "Yasmin."
"Abubakar, don't start, please don't start. And answer your phone, it's been ringing for some time now."
"No, this is the first time in ages I'm out with my sister and the woman who's going to be my wife."
"Stop." Soliat hit him playfully. "Are you okay with Mr. Edegbe and Sister Yasmin, Brother Abubakar?"
"And since when does Abubakar get to dictate my life?" Yasmin glared at her.
But he answered, "They can tolerate each other and he's a money minded rich man." Then he smiled. "And my sister likes him, the way I like you." He moved closer and circled her waist.
"If you're not blind, you'll see that there are kids here," Yasmin said as curious eyes glanced at their direction.
"It's nothing their parents don't do in darkness of the night. I believe children should be given the right exposure to good love, you can't even imagine the amount of violence some of them see. If violence, then why not love?"
"Abubakar would justify why he shits in the food of a blind man."
Soliat laughed. "Let's go on that, Brother Abubakar!" She pointed excitedly to a rollercoaster.
"Sometimes I wonder if you realize you're in your twenties," Yasmin said. "Abubakar spoilt you too much. Are you a child to want to ride on that?"
"If you look well, you'll see adults," Alhaji interfered.
"Adults babysitting their children."
"Sister Yasmin, please."
Alhaji took her hand. "We came here for fun, don't spoil it." Then he dragged them both and paid for the tickets. She got in the back seat while the couple took the front and as the machine rode up, the altitude increasing, she closed her eyes and slumped into the chair, actually enjoying the ride.
The ringing of her phone disrupted the pleasure, the information she received killed it. Something had happened in the province, something had happened to her house, something had happened to the people who lived in the province. The information was clear, there had been an earthquake in the province, her service was needed. An earthquake meant so many things, so many deaths. Impulsively, she searched through her contacts for Edegbe's number and called it. It didn't ring, it was switched off. Maybe he was not with his phone, maybe he was out of the house, maybe— the machine dinged, opening the door and she hurried out.
"Let's go again," Soliat pleaded.
"I need to be at the province, I just got a call, there was an earthquake." Her voice had taken a distant sharp turn.
"An earthquake?" Alhaji asked, his face absent of the levity it once had.
"An earthquake, Abubakar, an earthquake." Then she dashed into the crowd, disappearing from their sight.
He took Soliat's hand and followed her in hurried steps. "Solia, get into the back. Yasmin, to the front, I'll drive." Then he firmed when she was going to protest. "I'll drive, Yasmin, try calling Edegbe."
"Switched off." She waved her phone to say.
"Nothing will happen."
"Just drive the car."
The toll gate to their province had been blocked, so they had to park the car. There were cars parked already, those of the medical team, those of the forces. Some excavators nestled around. Some force men stood just outside the gate, stopping non medical officers from entering the scene. The scene? The scene looked horrid, like it had been replaced by the scene from a well edited movie. Where was the province she once knew? Where was the tall mansion and tarred road? What replaced them was collapsed buildings, cracks on road, the road that was now smeared with blood. She knew the smell of blood, the smell of dead bodies. She wore a stoic expression, as though her inside was not churning with uncertainty and when she got to the gate, her colleague was already waiting for her. She handed her a tag. "Wear this for identification."
"How is it?"
Yasmin saw disbelief glistening in her eyes. "Not everybody died sha, but it's tragic. It would be worse for you, this is your neighbourhood, they are your neigbours."
"Has anybody come to say he owns a house here?"
Her colleague shook her head. "It's almost as if everyone was home, there's death in each house."
She nodded and began to follow her but halted when she heard Abubakar's raised voice, he barely raised his voice. "What do you mean I can't go in?" He asked one of the force men.
The man spoke in Hausa, telling him he was not a paramedic, that only paramedic could go in.
"I am a resident of this neighbourhood, my house could be one of those on the floor."
The man looked unsure. "What about her?"
Alhaji took Soliat's hand. "She is my wife."
The man who looked like he was too tired to argue, allowed them pass, telling them to be careful, people had died from after a natural disaster as much as they had died during the disaster itself.
As Yasmin passed, she found people on the stretcher, some of who she knew, receiving an early first aid. The ambulance, as she had been told, was yet to return from having sent the first batch of survivors to a hospital. She placed careful tiptoed steps on the ground, alarmed by the debris which looked like it could snap and swallow her six feet below.
"Wallahi, it was serious." She heard the horror in Soliat's voice as their eyes took in the environment. But gore was yet to come.
Her feet slowed when she neared Ahmed's house, everything was down and at its feet laid the man, bolus of fat and skin gathering at his neck as his face shuddered in. Even in death, he looked as heavy as the food he eat made him. But it was not the heaviness or lifelessness that held her attention, it was that his tummy, fat, big and potted, allowed the aluminum he used in his roof to slice through it, opening him up and his intestines gorged out like overly cooked and rejected noddles. He laid in a pool of blood, looking relaxed like he had not tried to fight his death. Yasmin could imagine what had happened; the man was outside when the shaking happened and because he did not have the strength to run and since his stamina was weak, the shaking fell him to the ground and the event that happened after led to his present state.
But Yasmin did not like to think that anybody would wholesomely accept death, so she had a different imagination. In her head this time, he fought, he ran as fast as his short and yam-like legs could carry him but since his cardio tolerance was next to nothing, the succumbed to the embrace of the ground. Had he thought of food during his last moments? Had he known he wouldn't be able to survive, like the stories she often heard of aged people who knew when they would die and maybe how? But Ahmed was not an old man, he was a young man who killed himself, first, with the food he consumed.
"Ah!" Soliat covered her eyes and looked away from the corpse as tears burned at the back of her eyes. "Allah!"
"People die, if you work in the sector I work in, then you'd know that people die," Yasmin told her.
"Not like this." Alhaji sighed his hand into his pocket. "And he's our neigbour, and friend, and business associate."
"People die in something like this," she firmed, maybe trying to convinced herself, or prepare herself.
Alhaji read her. "Nothing will happen to him."
"I don't know what you're talking about." She wore her gloves and joined the other people to lift Ahmed into the stretcher. Before they carried him away, she taged his wrist with a red ribbon and glanced at him for the last time. "May his soul find food where he is." And watched as they took him away. She took out a few ribbons and passed them to Alhaji. "Since you're here, you can as well make yourselves useful. Green for those alive, yellow for those between life and death and red for those dead or almost dead. And when you tag a man green you must call a paramedic to give the patient immediate attention." She crossed her eyes over to Soliat. "Are you also going to help or are you going to follow him like fly following an old shit?" It was obvious she was pissed, and gave a few more ribbons to the lady before she could reply.
"Is she going to be alright?" Soliat asked, watching her retreating figure.
"Nothing will happen," Alhaji answered with the authority correlated with affirming positive words, as if audible verbal affirmation would make them a reality.
She looked around the place, it was becoming rowdy. And noises. And the nurses were lifting victims into stretchers, like they had with Ahmed, and carrying them to wait for the ambulance, people who she may know but not really know. Ahmed's death was still a shocker to her. It was possible for her to think that anybody could die, but it was impossible when it became someone she knew. She pressed a hand to her mouth and suppressed the urge to vomit.
Quietly, so she wouldn't be a distraction to Alhaji, she followed his steps, surprised that he was his usual calm self when her insides were churning and eager to run to a safe quieten place. Most houses were completely destroyed and she imagined the number of lives that had been lost. Was she glad they had gone out? If they hadn't, would they had been amongst the victims now? She wondered if she had the liberty to think that way, she wondered if Sister Yasmin's lover was dead, and she wondered if Brother Abubakar's house had collapsed too.
The thought brought dread to her spine. Had it? Brother Abubakar had so many servants, if the house had collapsed, then…. She retreated her steps from following him to the path that led to his house. His house? The sight she beheld did not look like anything similar and it made her knees weak. It had collapsed, but not everything though, some parts were still standing and it was from there the men brought out the bodies out. They, his cook, his cleaner, his security, had now turned into corpses. Tears gathered in her eyes at the realization of how much transition could occur within seconds. She refused to look as the nurses brought more victims out and maybe she should have turned around and left, but she did not, and so the corner of her eyes caught another corpse whose clothes did not belong to the lower class of the society that worked for Alhaji. Alhaji's workers were not huge and did not dress in well tailored Yoruba clothes. Slowly, as though her pace would change reality, she walked to the oncoming paramedics and when their steps brought them together, looking at the face on the stretcher, she screamed.