THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE AND THE BELOVED COUNTRY

PETER

2011

MY MOTHER, WHO had appeared again in our lives easily and without warning, like a pimple on my forehead, asked me that Saturday morning to go to Tejuosho market with her. My grandmother, placated by gifts she had received—packed foods from Walmart and shiny fabric from Mother’s stopover in Dubai—assured me that it was okay to go.

When her encouragement was not enough to make me decide, our grandmother tried tears. She made a production of weeping and wailing, accusing me of ingratitude.

“Peter, you have only one mother, for God’s sake. You are too young to be this unforgiving. Can’t you just be grateful she’s here with us now and be thankful to God she is alive and well?”

I was nineteen. Old enough to keep a grudge until I decided for myself it was time to let go. Tall enough to look down into the center of Mother’s head where the repeated doses of blond dye had thinned her hair into near baldness.

My mother, who stood there staring with hope-filled eyes, looked up at me and patted my right shoulder.

“My dear, please come with me. I will leave Zion with your grandmother. It will be just the two of us,” she said. “I just need to buy some sandals and ankara fabric to take back home with me. You can get whatever you want.”

My mother picked up her handbag, flinging it over her shoulder as she pleaded, wrapping her blond hair in a thick green scarf and exchanging her fluffy pink slippers for flat sandals.

“Have you decided? Are you coming along? Are you gonna wear those?” she asked.

She motioned with a flick of her wrist in the direction of the half-a-size-too-big shoes she had bought me, black-and-white sneakers I would not have dreamed of wearing around our neighborhood. It would have been nothing more than an advertisement to thieves or an invitation for a violent beating from jealous boys.

“I am not wearing those,” I said. I slipped into the tried and trusted rubber slide sandals I wore everywhere those days. My toenails were dirty and chipped, but I pretended not to care about what I looked like. Our mother looked at me, her eyes narrowing with hurt by what appeared to her to be my rejection of her gift.

“I will wear them. I promise,” I said without thinking. “I will wear them when I have someplace nice to go, not to the market.”

She said nothing. I was not sure if my reply satisfied her. She walked out of the living room, through the veranda, out to the gate. She said nothing as we walked down the street to the closest junction hoping to find a vacant taxicab.

When we arrived at the end of our street, Mother stopped by the last of the small goods kiosks. There was a bench in the street next to the kiosk, and Mother sat on this bench. I stood next to her. We waited.

It was Emmanuel’s mother’s kiosk. She was the young widow who took over her late husband’s business selling fried yams and potatoes in the night market. After her husband died, her friends had encouraged her to start taking new lovers in the city to help pay her bills. It was said around the neighborhood that she went out with one man her friend introduced her to and the very next day, her mouth began to swell up like a balloon. Within a week, her gums had turned black and all of her teeth had fallen out. Grandmother was the only person I knew who acted like any of it was normal and expected.

“Mama Emmanuel knows that her late husband was a very jealous man. What did she expect?” she said.

Mother ordered some fried yams and peppered snails. She waited for Emmanuel’s mother to finish wrapping them up then she handed the pack over to me. “There’s something I want to tell you, son,” she said. “Something I’ve not yet told your sisters or your brother. Can I tell you? Then you can let me know what you think. Is that okay?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Peter? Think so?” she asked.

“I don’t know what else to say,” I said.

“You can try to say something definite,” she said.

As she talked, she flagged down a private car. The driver stopped, and Mother got closer to the car, leaning over the front passenger’s seat with the exaggerated giddiness of a teenager as she asked for a ride to the nearest bus stop. Her voice was bright and calming, with just a hint of her American-influenced accent. I did not hear what the driver said but I watched her move away to let the car drive off.

“That man wasn’t nice. What happened to all the okadas around here?” she asked.

“The government banned all commercial motorcycles,” I said.

“How do you all get around, then?” she said.

“We walk everywhere,” I said.

“Of course. No wonder you are all so skinny,” she said.

I almost said something about hunger, but I did not. I unwrapped the fried yams and began to eat.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We walk. We walk to the bus stop,” she said.

We walked for several minutes, saying nothing to each other. I focused on eating the yams as quickly as I could, hoping none of the neighborhood girls I liked passed by. We walked past many people. None of them paid too much attention to us. We walked past Maisuya, who appeared to be on his way to the bus stop as well, but he was slower, a thick roll of newspapers tucked under one arm, a working transistor radio hanging from a rope on his shoulder.

“Peter,” he called out in jovial tone. “Peter the goalkeeper, the magnet, Sanu,” he said.

“My customer, good evening. How’s the Amariya? How’s work?” I replied.

There was no need to introduce Mother to him. I did not want to have to explain her absence or be asked to relay greetings when she left again.

“Fine, everyone is fine,” he said as he stopped to fiddle with his batteries. It seemed to me as though he was just giving us time to create distance. I did not like that even this neighbor, who knew me only through my fame as the one-handed goalkeeper, could sense how uncomfortable walking down the street with Mother was making me.

“So, I can talk to you about it?” she asked. Again.

“Yes. Go ahead,” I said.

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a smaller clutch made of some type of velvety red material. She handed me a folded photo.

“I was in a detention center for eighteen months,” she said. “Those are the friends I made there.”

In the picture were four women, all dark and slim like my mother. They wore oversize men’s clothes and brown boots.

“I was arrested for being an illegal alien. They got me six months after my visa expired. It took eighteen months for my asylum application to be granted.”

Ori-ona, the mentally ill woman who claimed to talk to God, was screaming close to a bus parked in front of the beauty-supply store. She was dressed in her usual attire, two woven poly sacks formerly used by farmers to pack red beans, repurposed into a knee-length dress. Her head was clean shaven, her face glowing with a bright shiny oil. Apart from the odd choice of attire, she looked quite clean, almost ordinary, like any other woman in the neighborhood.

“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” she shouted as we walked past. “Prepare the way of the Lord.”

“Who is that?” Mother asked.

“No one really knows. We call her Ori-ona,” I answered.

“Ori-ona? Because she always knows where to go?” Mother asked.

“Well, it has been said that she hears directly from God,” I said.

“Who said?” she asked.

“Everyone around here. People take her warnings seriously.”

“Well,” Mother said, “I guess that makes sense. God can use anyone, even babies.”

A few months before Mother returned, the government had hired a construction crew to strengthen the pedestrian footbridge above the highway. Ori-ona made her camp inches away from the construction workers’ tent. No one paid her any mind. Every morning she was awake before the sun was up, screaming till she was sore, “Repent, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, the kingdom of God is here.”

She went on like this until one day a part of the footbridge being repaired collapsed. Just like that, without warning, one of the pillars cracked, killing more than fifty people. All of the construction workers died in the rubble. The government arrested the head of the foreign-owned construction firm who had won the contract. Nurses from the Lagos psychiatric hospital removed Ori-ona from her spot in the street.

We did not see Ori-ona in the neighborhood for months after that. Then, one day, she was back. Just like that. No one could tell why she was released from the hospital or how she found her way back to her old spot on our street.

I did not tell Mother about any of this. There was no need to. I did not care if she believed it or not. It did not matter. There are stories you can appreciate or understand only by living in a particular place at a particular time. Ori-ona is necessary for us here. In the middle of the worst type of tragedy, we got strange comfort from the idea that it was possible someone somewhere had been trying to warn us, to prevent it. This is how we know that we are not completely forgotten.

Mother and I walked for a few more minutes until we arrived at the bus stop. We got on a danfo bus going to Yaba, sitting next to each other in one of the two rows of passenger seats in the middle.

The moment we got into the bus, I noticed a middle-aged woman outside in iro and buba running and heaving toward our vehicle. She held two large covered plastic bowls, one in each hand. They seemed full and bubbling with liquid. As she ran, she stopped several times to catch her breath.

“Look at that yeye woman,” the bus driver said to a male passenger in the front. “When I married her, she was slim, fine lepa shandy, now just look at her, like Agege bread someone threw in the river.”

The passenger laughed. We watched the woman hurry to the bus. She was the driver’s wife, bringing him his lunch. Several passengers grumbled as the driver got out of his seat to meet with her.

“Sorry, just give me five minutes to quickly eat this food,” he said to the grumbling passengers.

They sat in the waiting area attached to the bus shelter. We sat in the bus and counted the minutes until it was time to leave. He was softer, kinder, in front of her. I watched as she tended to him, how he spoke with her; he was so different talking to her. I could see that she excited him and I wondered why he had sounded so ashamed of her a few moments earlier. Why, in spite of how obviously fond of her he was, did he disparage her to a bus filled with strangers? Maybe this is what love is for some people. It requires them to do nothing, only receive.

My mother was also watching them, saying nothing to me. I appreciated the silence, the way she permitted me the illusion of thinking. Many people feel pressured to fill silences with words, to give more information, or to ask you to convince them that what they have spoken to you is still on your mind. I do not like forced discussions.

I was not thinking about her time in the detention center, not at first. I was thinking about Father, wondering how much he knew, wondering if learning what had happened to her was what broke him. Why did he leave like that? Why did she, who went to prison in another continent, come back first?

The bus driver returned to us. He had a cassette player. He made a show of turning off the radio station, slotting in his own tape. The first song began with the distinct mumbling we all associated back then with Craig David.

When the chorus began, half the bus, as if on cue, sang along to lyrics about taking a girl for a drink on Tuesday.

The bus driver screamed at the entire bus like a principal to a restive group of schoolchildren.

“All of you settle down! Don’t make so much noise before the police stop us for no gotdamn reason.”

My mother was laughing gently. She paused as I turned to look at her.

“This song is at least ten years old, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I guess so,” I said.

“How is it still so popular here?” Mother asked.

“Because it is not America, we don’t get the songs as soon as they are released,” I replied.

“I know what you mean,” Mother said in a low voice. “Prison is a terrible place, you miss so much of the outside world, music, news, fashion.”

After Craig David, we heard Shaggy and Sisqó and Des’ree. People all around us were smiling and humming along. There was a kind of peaceful silence happening inside me because the bus was noisy and hot. It was almost as if I could no longer sense what was going on amid the music, the arguing, people chewing food, the lady in the seat in front of me loosening her shoulder-length box braids with the cap of a Bic pen.

I was thinking about this woman, my mother, disappearing one day like smoke, gone for almost ten years, and then reappearing just like that, expecting everything to be okay.

There was nothing for me to do but watch her. What were her expectations? Love? Respect? Compassion? What did she suppose would happen after all this time? Whatever she expected, I was glad to disappoint her. As I listened to her talk, I was even more determined to make the fantasy she had built crumble before her.

She was so happy and satisfied with her life’s choices. That was what I found most surprising about it all. In my mind, I had imagined her always sad, tired, frail, barely alive without us. I imagined her showing up, falling at our knees, crying like actresses in Nollywood movies, begging to be reinstated in our lives, promising to never leave us again. Instead, Grandmother was treating her like a tourist, making the best meals, asking us to show her around the city as though it were no longer the same Lagos she had been born in.

I was thinking of the story Sister Bibike often told my brother and me when we were younger. The story of the woman who threw her hens away because it was too hard to take care of them. When she found that one of the hens had produced seven healthy chicks by itself in the forest, she wanted it back. She demanded the return of the hen and its chicks even after throwing it away without remorse. I remember that story because of the song we sang. I remember that story because I always thought the king who asked the hen to go free but to give the woman one of its chicks was a wicked king. Now I realize that the king, kinder, fairer than I could ever be, was also very wise. No matter what your mother does, this is Lagos. Society will never let you cast her away. Especially when she wants you back.

“Peter, look, when did they build that there?” my mother asked, pointing out the window at a new estate the state government had set up for civil servants.

“Who knows?” I answered. “We all just woke up one day and it was there.”

If Mother had a problem with my tone, she did not show it.

The bus stopped, and two people got out. One person, a tall man carrying a small loaf of bread, got on.

“We should come here tomorrow and go in, see what it looks like,” Mother said.

“If you want to, I am sure they will let us in. It’s definitely open for everyone, not just people who live there,” I said.

Mother said nothing to me after that. I was beginning to feel bad. It is difficult to fight with someone who will not fight you back. The bus arrived at the final stop, the railway tracks adjacent to Yaba market. At the entrance of the market, a group of teenagers, boys and girls around my age and younger, called out to my mother.

“Auntie, we do fine braids.”

“Auntie, come and make your nails.”

“Auntie, I will fix for you fine eyelashes.”

“Things are so different around here,” Mother exclaimed. “I cannot believe that in this same Lagos, boys are making hair in the market.”

We turned away from the group, walking through the wide gates to the first row of shops. There were two sets of traders in the market. The first were those with shops and goods inside them. These were the minority. Most of the traders were those with mobile stores. Some had their wares in large steel bowls balanced on their heads, others had wheelbarrows filled with stuff for sale. Traders selling the same type of stuff were grouped together in the market. In a Lagos market, there is no reason or means for individual distinction.

The first group of traders were mostly women selling stuff for newborns and babies. Mother stopped in front of a shop. She grabbed at a large yellow bath towel hanging on a nook above the store’s entrance. She shook it off the nook, then, squeezing and gripping, asked if it was made in Nigeria.

“And how much is this?” she asked, after the trader told her it was imported from Turkey.

“Three hundred naira,” the woman said.

“Three hundred naira? How much is that in dollars?” Mother asked. She had turned to me as she said this, but she was not really talking to me. She was talking to the trader. I said nothing. She continued making a show of inspecting the towel closely. When she found what she was searching for, a loose thread, she picked at it.

“Look at this. This looks like it is made in Nigeria, such poor quality,” she said.

“It is a great towel. How much do you want to pay, my sweet auntie?” the woman asked. The trader’s voice had a very determined joviality to it. I immediately envied it. I wanted to also be able to talk to the most infuriating people like I couldn’t see through their nonsense, and didn’t care.

“One hundred naira,” Mother said.

She paid two hundred and ninety naira for that bath towel. She seemed pleased with it even though we had just spent a fraction of an hour haggling for a mere ten naira in savings. I said nothing about that. I figured it was best to save my irritation with her for the big stuff. I think families who spend a lot of time arguing about the small stuff do it because they do not have the courage to talk about the big things.

I had learned from my sister Bibike to ask myself: Peter, what is the true source of your anger? Peter, what are you really afraid of? I am angry because I know she will never truly be sorry. I am afraid I will forgive her, trust her, and give her the opportunity to hurt me again. No, I am afraid that I would be unable to forgive her even if I wanted to. I am afraid I am the kind of boy who hates his mother.

After buying the yellow towel, we walked casually around the market, stopping in shops for Mother to try on several sandals and buy none. “I am sorry this is taking so long, Peter. I need to buy a few pairs of sandals to give the neighbors as gifts when I go back home,” she explained to me. “But these are not comfortable, no one will wear this.”

In a tiny shop at the end of the shoe section, we found a man sitting on a little stool. He rose up when he saw us come in. We could immediately tell that the man had only one good leg; the other one was limp from the knee down. It dragged behind him as he walked.

“In America,” Mother said to me, but loudly enough for the man to hear as well, “he would not have to work, the government would pay him over a thousand dollars a month just because of his condition.”

The man said nothing.

I said nothing.

“Do you not believe me?” Mother asked. “I know another African who got one hand cut off during the war in Liberia. He has his own house and car, everything from government money.”

“Which shoes will you like to take a look at?” the man asked instead.

Mother pointed to a pink pair on the topmost part of the display shelves. The man picked up a long stick I hadn’t previously noticed. It had several bent nails attached to its head. With the stick, he hooked the ankle portion of the sandals, pulling them down in one deft move.

The sandals were replicas, one of the many made in Aba as designer dupes. Mother bought several of them from the store owner. She haggled a little more and paid much less than he had asked for. As we walked out, several owners of neighboring stores called out, telling us they had real African leather sandals, handmade. Mother ignored them all as she walked away. I followed. We went back the way we came.

Once we were outside the market gates, Mother asked where we could go get something to eat.

“There is a Mr. Biggs in a plaza close to this place,” I answered.

“Really? Do they have meat pies?” she asked.

“They better,” I said.

This time, she realized it was a joke and laughed with me. There was something sad and vulnerable in that brief laughter.

“We should go to Chinatown before you leave,” I said, feeling the need to say something.

“There’s a Chinatown? Here in Lagos?” she asked.

“Yes, there is,” I answered. “They have loads of great stuff for sale. Cheap, too.”

“I’d love to get some orange chicken and Szechuan dumplings,” she said.

“You will have to wait till you get back to America to eat that. There’s no restaurant there. Just shopping,” I said.

Mother looked down at her watch, then into the wide windows of a perfume shop. There was a sign announcing 50 percent discount on Perry Ellis perfumes.

“Do you think all those perfumes are real?” she asked me.

“Not sure. Probably not. At least expired and repackaged. You know how things are in Lagos,” I said.

We arrived at the Mr. Biggs. A security officer wearing a black-and-white shirt and black pants greeted us with exaggerated warmth.

“Madam the madam. Beautiful madam. Is this your brother or your son? You are too young to have such a big man o,” he said.

“You should see his older sisters then,” Mother said, laughing. This time, her laugh was relaxed, genuine. She reached out to him and dropped in his hand all the change she had received from the shoe seller.

“He must make a ton of money every day, lucky guy,” I said.

After we ordered our food, we sat in a booth and watched soccer replays on the big screen.

“Do you get to watch soccer in America?’ I asked.

“No. Not really,” she said. “American football is way more interesting,” she added quickly. “Basketball is really big there as well.”

What was this place, this America she now called home? Who were these people? I wanted there and then, in the market, to scream at her, to ask how she could go to prison just for the chance to live in another country? What kind of country demanded that people make such sacrifices?

I took a loud gulp of my Coca-Cola. Two girls in the booth next to us turned around and laughed loudly at me.

“Mom, I do not want to go to America with you,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“No reason. I just want to get into Unilag. Like Andrew. Maybe study medicine,” I said.

“Andrew is coming along. He is coming with us,” she said.

“Has he told you that?” I asked.

One of the girls in the close-by booth turned around and caught my eye. She shook her head slowly. This I interpreted to mean, You, crazy ungrateful boy. I said nothing more after that. Mother said nothing as well. We continued to chew and sip in quiet.

The television in the corner began playing church music. My mother pushed her uneaten coleslaw and chicken toward me. All the booths in the restaurant were filled. Another girl joined the girls at the table nearest to us. They were singing along with the songs on the television.

“Is there sugar in this?” Mother asked, pointing to her coleslaw. “I don’t like how it tastes.”

I shrugged and said nothing. I was looking at the girl who had just joined the next booth. She had brought a book with her and was trying to read while her friends talked to and over her. The book was open on the table, next to a glass of orange juice. She had placed her dark brown wallet on the thicker side of the book, to hold the pages in place. There was something so calming about watching her read peacefully in all that chaos, and for a moment I wished I was like one of those guys in American sitcoms who could walk up to a strange girl.

“I had no idea,” Mother said, her voice startling in its loudness now. “I had no idea your father would leave. I would have stayed if I knew he would do that. Do you believe me?”

I looked around. No one was watching or listening to our conversation. Outwardly, we were just like everyone else here, eating, enjoying our air-conditioned respite from the Lagos heat.

THE BOYS IN the neighborhood who called us abandoned bastards when we argued had been around when Mother arrived a few nights ago. They had helped with getting her boxes out of the taxi. They did not leave until she had handed out several packs of sneakers and Kit Kat bars as thank-you gifts.

“Are you listening to me?” Mother continued, her voice quieter this time. “Peter, I did not know I’d spend all that time in jail either. No one makes plans for suffering.”

Above the headboard in the room Grandmother slept in hung a framed picture of Mother and Father at their wedding. Once, when someone shut the front door so hard the walls shook, the frame fell to the floor. Grandmother picked up every shred of glass, patching it all together with clear tape. Two weeks later, I picked up that frame, ran all the way to two streets away, and threw it in a dumpster. For weeks after that, Grandmother shouted and ranted about that picture, but I said nothing. I still haven’t told anyone it was me.

“I was set up,” Mother said. “I worked as a nanny for a Nigerian doctor and his wife. They were to pay me after six months. I planned to come back within a year. But they called immigration on me instead of paying. You have no idea what I have been through.” She was whispering now. “Please just forgive me.”

The girl at the next table was still reading. Her neck had been bent, so I had not seen her face. One of her friends raised a piece of sausage on a fork to her lips, forcing her to eat it. As she did, I caught a small glimpse of her. She had been crying, her eyes a dull red, the skin around her nose as brown as a bad tomato. Was she crying about characters in a book?

“But you got your papers years ago. You only came back because Pastor David sent you money. You are here for the wedding,” I said.

Mother opened her mouth wide, but no sounds came out. Her mouth was like a fat letter O.

A bulb in one of the lanterns hanging from the ceiling flickered, blinking for few seconds. Then it turned off. Our booth and the one next to us went dark. The girl who was reading a book shut it, then placed it under her arm. She opened a case, taking out her glasses. They were tortoiseshell, cat-eye glasses, with a pink tint to the plastic frame. It occurred to me then that she hadn’t said anything the entire time she had been there but somehow, she seemed to me like the solid center in her group of friends.

“Pastor David just paid for the tickets,” my mother said. “I am here because I want to be.”

“We are happy you made it. We all are,” I said.

“We will be so happy in America. You’ll get a great education, become anything you want to be. You don’t even have to be a doctor to get rich,” she said.

“We are happy here. I’m not cut out to live in a strange country,” I said.

The girls were leaving. I watched the girl with the book finish her orange juice in one long gulp. The other girls reapplied lip gloss and dabbed saliva-stained fingers across one another’s eyebrows.

“Do you sometimes wonder what would have happened if you didn’t leave us?” I asked. My heart was filling with a strange sadness, watching that girl walk away.

“Every single fucking day,” Mother answered.

“You made the wrong choice, and I want to make the right choice for my life,” I said.

“Things will be so much easier for you. You will have papers already, I did not, you will have someone to care for you, I did not,” she said.

“Can’t I just come visit? You know, for Christmas or something?” I asked.

Mother laughed. It was a hearty, sustained laugh. She wiped the corner of her eye when she was done.

“Yes, you can visit, but I promise you, you will not ever want to come back to Lagos as soon as you arrive. This is America we are talking about,” she said when she was done laughing.

A man in a green shirt pulled a stepladder into the middle of the room. Around us, church music rang from the television and speakers. If anyone but me minded Don Moen singing God is good, no one said anything. The man with the ladder stood on the second topmost rung and stretched to remove the blown bulb. The bulb cackled and came to life at that moment, stunning him.

The man on the ladder lost his balance and struggled with steadying himself. I got up immediately, as did another young man, from a booth behind me. We stood on opposite sides of the ladder, steadying it.

Once the bulb change was complete, I signaled to Mother that it was time to leave.

The streets were busier now. The sun had gone down, it was early evening. Many people getting off the buses that brought them from jobs on the island were stopping to buy stuff before getting on other buses to take them farther into the mainland.

“Do you think we can get a taxi this time?” Mother asked.

“This is rush hour, the prices will be astronomical,” I answered.

“Astronomical,” she repeated, laughing again. “Americans will love you. They love black men who use big words.”

“If you could do it all again, would you?” I asked.

“Do what?” my mother asked.

A young girl hawking a tray of sliced pineapples and pawpaws wrapped in clear shopping bags walked up to us. “Fine auntie, please buy my fruits so I can go home. My stepmother will beat me if I don’t sell them all. It’s night. Please, my auntie,” the girl was saying.

“Everything. Leave Lagos for America,” I replied.

Mother stopped to talk with the girl who had the fruit tray. She bought most of the sliced pineapple on the tray. She let the girl keep the change.

“Now go home and get some sleep,” Mother said to her.

“In America, that little darling would be taken away from her parents. Given to people who know better than to let a girl that young roam these dangerous streets selling stuff,” she said to me as we watched the girl go away.

I did not really expect her to answer my question about regrets. Just like I needed to ask, she needed to not answer. She did not seem to remember who she was before she ran to America in hopes for a better life. I did not know anything but the mother she used to be. That comparing and contrasting was my burden. I did not pay the price that she did, so America was not at all beautiful to me. What is the value of a thing but the price a buyer pays for it? How can I expect someone who went to prison for a chance to live in a country not to be excited when she got that chance? I did not really hate my mother, I did not even hate America. How can you hate something you do not know? America will always be, to me, the country that stole my mother and sent back something unrecognizable in her place. I will not call that country beautiful, or its people beloved.

The bus we rode home filled with passengers in less than five minutes. When the driver tried to start the engine, it sputtered and coughed several times but failed to start. As if on cue, with no words spoken, I and every other male on the bus got out and began to push. We were seven men trotting behind a bus. As I pushed, I noticed the girl with the fruit tray emerge from behind one of the shops in the market. Her tray was full again and she was looking around the crowd like a trained scout.

I smiled to myself as she ran to a tall, light-skinned woman dressed in a black skirt suit, a lawyer’s white bib hanging around her neck.

“Fine auntie, please buy my fruits, so I can go home. It’s night. Please.” The girl was shouting. Her voice sounded like she had been crying.

The tall lady said something I could not hear and handed the girl some money, taking none of her fruit.

The bus sputtered and came to life. One after the other, all us men ran after the moving bus, jumping in, finding our seats.