Ceasefire Blues: When You Find Bones In Suya

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

Aboki. Salaam alaikum.

Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatu Allah, he answers, completing what has become our customary way of greeting each time I stop by his open-air stall to buy suya at a street in Osapa London.

I am not sure I know what that answer means, but he says it is a prayer for Allah's peace and mercy to be upon me. Amin.

I still am not sure how Osapa London got that suffix, but then again, Lagos is also the name of a locality in Portugal. Attn non-Nigerians: If you don’t know what suya is, you are on a long thing.

I point out my selection and Aboki promptly sprinkles some vegetable oil on the skewered beef and spreads them out on the charcoal grill to dry. As the smoke wafts towards my direction, I move out of its general path; I cannot afford to spend the rest of the evening smelling of smoke. But for some reason, the smoke just keeps following wherever I go, so I give up, stand at a point and observe my surroundings.

Aboki is a tall man, probably in his late fifties. Northern Nigerian, maybe Nigerien. His dark face is an artist’s delight, sporting a graffiti of tribal marks that would shame the Berlin Wall. Were the artist who performed these miracles on his face to have been  a European painter, Michelangelo would probably be less popular today. Our eyes meet for the briefest of moments before his, reddened by smoke more than by age, drop downward as he concentrates on his work, flipping the skewers up and down, right and left, his dark lips moving slightly, reminding me of the gentle ripples of the Lagos lagoon on a quiet Sunday evening. He smiles at a wandering lad and I spot the dental anarchy, with the dullness of the remaining teeth an eloquent testimony to the years of chewing goro (gworo?) and tobacco.

Several minutes later, after multiple flips of the skewers over the grill, he transfers them to the table, places them on a couple of old newspapers, unmounts the beef from their skewers, uses a blade which looks like a scimitar to me to cut up the meat into smaller pieces. Looking at that blade, I cannot help wondering if he wouldn't use it to cut me up into little pieces if a religious riot were to break out in this very place, at this very moment. 

I feel a momentary panic and just as quickly stop myself from reaching for my penknife (besides it is just a penknife, a mere penknife, quite a useless weapon), and instead watch as he adds onions, cucumbers, cabbage, and generous sprinklings of dried pepper. Just the way I like it. He wraps up the snack in the old newspapers from July 2013, sticks a couple of toothpicks into the wrapped package (they will serve as prongs with which to pick the meat one by one), puts it in a small, black bag, and hands it to me. I take it and hand him his money. He smiles his thanks and calls out Allah hafiz. He always does that. I keep promising myself I will find out what the correct response to that is. I keep forgetting. So each time he says Allah hafiz, I reply Allah hafiz, smile, wave, and walk away wondering just how stupid I might have succeeded in looking. I also feel a little guilty for thinking about my penknife, but I cannot help looking back at him, just to be sure  I am safe. He is not even looking at me. He is dutifully attending to Miss Hot Legs who is his next customer.

His suya is always nicely prepared, which is why I always stop by his stall to buy some on my way home from work. But tonight, while eating the suya, my teeth hit bone.

Bone?

In suya?

Odd.

But true. They were small bones; they were not small broomsticks.

A couple of Guinness Extra Stouts later, it strikes me:

• It is odd that my government announced a ceasefire that was non-existent and thus deliberately misled its citizens.

• Top officials of my country's government rushed to announce that the girls who were abducted by terrorists would be freed by a certain date; the girls have yet to be released more than a week after the promised release date, the officials have yet to explain the delay, and the government has yet to apologize for so brazenly toying with the emotions of several Nigerians. Very odd.

• It is odd to find bones in suya.

When next I go to buy suya, I will be asking Aboki to pick the meat from the bones.

When next this government describes an announcement as factual, I will be looking those facts up in the area of the State Library labeled FICTION.

For now, I need to look up the meaning of and appropriate response to Allah hafiz.