PALMS OF OIL

Two nights ago, Rasheed kissed me. Outside the safety of his bedroom, out in the open streets of Birnin Gwari where motorcycles whizzed past and traders hurried along, he took my hands, kissed me and I knew some things would change. 

It was not the first time he had done it, pressing his tongue firmly against my lips, eyes wide open, and hands fondling my erection.  It was not the first time we had been wedged stiff in the web of passion either, too drowned to let go of each other, but this time was most peculiar because he had done it outside, jeopardising our safety.

Of course, he knew what would happen had anyone seen us; they would yank us away from each other, eyes scarlet from disgust, chests heaving and shoulders squared. They would say “Yar Kishili” or “qazanta, abomination” and drag us round the main market to his Father, the Cleric who will receive us with disappointment in his eyes. 

He would call it “Sodomy” without flinching and someone from the crowd instinctive into the ways of our Kaduna people would read from the Quran:

“Of all creatures in the world, will ye approach males,

And leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates

Nay, ye are a people transgressing-”

The crowd would shake their heads and arm themselves with stones, and Rasheed will clench his teeth, he would lean over and whisper in my ears “Bilal, I fear, I am afraid” and I would not reply, because I will be afraid too.

But Rasheed knew these things, he knew. We had played the scene in our heads a thousand times, so often that we felt it had already happened, like a scene from our past life. We rehearsed the tenacity, with which we would face the livid crowd, the courage with which we would say, “I love him and I can die for him” and the uproar that would follow.

He said most times, that I would chicken out, that I would refute my love for him. He said, “Bilal, you don’t have mind” and “Their faces will scare you”.

We laughed about it, about my chickening out; we always found things to laugh about, things to tease each other about. Perhaps it was because we felt we did not own our lives, because we felt the real owners were around the corner, like sentinels, stones tucked in their breast pockets waiting for our big day of death and we wanted to savour this little time.

Nevertheless, I did not tell Rasheed that it was he who I feared would chicken out; that in my imaginations it was he, his terrified twenty-year-old form, who looked into his Father’s eyes, into the disappointment and hurt, into the brief flash of tenderness and hated me.

He would say “You lie, Bilal, nothing can change my love for you” plant a kiss on my cheek and then increase the volume of the radio. He would lay my head on his chest, hum a tune, play with the hairs on mine and yet I know I would sense the agony in his voice like I did two nights ago when he kissed me.

“When will you leave?” He had asked, arranging his clothes in his wardrobe.  He would sort them neatly into organised groups, so that he knew which cloth he would wear to Prayer the next Friday and which he would wear to evening lessons.

“I don’t like being unprepared” was how he justified his actions as if people who did not act that way were somehow unprepared. But Rasheed had the meticulousness of stylish women, he was too conscious of his appearance; he bothered when he had not permed his hair for weeks and asked for my opinion on dressing even though he knew I knew little about fashion.

He worried that the collars of his favourite shirts were discoloured and frowned when his hair crept out of his carved hairline after four days. “I have too much hair,” He would say and I would tease him about how I liked them, how I imagined the hairs when we were apart and I touched myself.

 We had just finished lunch of boiled plantains and pepper when he asked when I was leaving.

“Soon” I said, “I have to be in time if I want to catch the bus to Makarfi, Baba warned me to return early”

“But you can go tomorrow?” He said, “Can’t you? It’s easier to travel on Sundays?”

I shook my head and stared at the Arsenal logos that adorned his wardrobe, at the Jersey he was slotting in that had his name inscribed on it.

“No, I cannot, my first cousin, Mansurah, the one whose bean cakes I said are sweet-tasting, is getting married this weekend”

“Okay” He said, and I sensed the agony in his voice. I knew the agony, I knew him long enough to know the agony.

We sat for long on the edge of his bed, his hands wrapped tightly around mine and the receding afternoon sun bounced in golden strips off his mirror. We listened to the Hausa broadcaster on 97.7, Alheri FM for whom Rasheed had a soft spot because of how clearly he said “Barka da yamma Good evening” when it was time for his show although I assumed it was because he was the only one who had carried the news when a gay man was lynched in Yobe.

I was going home to Makarfi that evening, we would resort to calling when we had enough money to buy airtime, texting about the things we wanted to do to each other. We would recommend novels to each other and read from our copies of Giovanni’s Room over the phone.

We liked the character David, the reserve with which he took on the world, Rasheed thought him a little too afraid of himself and I did too but I never said, because it was hypocrisy, a certain two-facedness to accuse someone of being afraid when I was just as afraid too.

It was not my going home that worried him, it was not the first time I had told Baba that I wanted to spend a few days with the Cleric and his Family and gone home after. It was not the first time I would walk to the bus park at Birnin Gwari and he would wave at me until our bus was out of sight.

But in two weeks, I would go to the University in Zaria, I would ride on one of the big buses that read UNIVERSITY SHUTTLE, my life would become a blur of packed classes, rush for seats and midnight reading. I would make new friends and do new things, but he, Rasheed, would be stuck here, in Birnin Gwari, where the sun would remind him of us and the rain likewise.

He would stare for long at the places we kissed, nostalgia flecking the whites of his eyes, his throat tightening, but I do not know if he would be smiling in optimism, or sobbing in loss, yet I knew, I did not want to lose him.

He would smile (I knew this) in fond remembrance staring at the bench in the veranda of their six-room bungalow where we had sat on his birthday reading to each other our favourite quotes from Giovanni’s room.

“I remembered that life in that room seemed to be occurring beneath the sea, time flowed past indifferently above us, hours and days had no meaning” was Rasheed’s favourite; he said it was the honesty about it, the simplicity and knottiness, all at once.

*

Two weeks later, I sat beside a grumpy old man on the bus to Zaria. He was a staff member at the University; non-academic staff and his unruffled and collected nature reminded me of my Father whom I had left behind.

“You will like it at the University,” He said to a half-listening me “Especially as a Medical student, you will really like it”

I nodded because it was rude not to reply when an elder was speaking, because Father had trained me better than that. However, my mind was far away, farther than the grumpy old man with cigarette-stained teeth speaking to me. My mind was farther than my parents who had walked me to the park and armed me with the tales given to one who left home.

My mind was with Rasheed, the boy who completed me. In the twitchy and disturbed environment that was the bus, I thought about him, about serenity, tranquillity, and at that moment, I realised he was home.

I met Rasheed when I was seven, we had just moved to Birnin Gwari from Yobe and Mother said his Father, the Cleric had invited us for a welcome dinner.  Baba disputed with this, he said we would not go, said he did not understand the friendly gesture and my little sister, Salimah for whom Baba had a soft spot tugged relentlessly at his night robe.

We had gone eventually, driving the short distance in Baba’s Mazda in the pouring June rain. I was not sure if it was because of Salimah’s pestering, Mother’s warnings or simply because Baba had wanted to go, simply because Baba was like a wall of brick and his first reaction to anything was defiance.

But he had laughed the loudest during dinner, he laughed when they talked about the Governor Ahmed Makarfi who had assumed office for a second term. He laughed at the uncertainty of the Kaduna people, compared them to the Yobe’s who knew what they wanted, laughed at the Cleric’s imitations of politicians, tried some himself, and in those moments, I forgot it was the same Baba who had wanted us not to come.

Eight-year-old Rasheed was sitting there at the table, scooping mouthfuls from his bowl of Masa, laughing at his Father’s imitations and smiling occasionally at Salimah and me. His Father said then that he was a Hafiz-one who had memorised the entire Quran and Mother had looked at me, anticipation clouding her pupils, wishing she had something to say too.

“Brilliant” was what Baba said when Mother talked about Rasheed the next day at our house before he added “Fine child” too and then “Beautiful family”

“They have invited us for dinner again next Friday,” Mother said as she ironed Baba’s clothes and this time he did not complain.

It did not take long before dinners at their home became the order of Friday nights, sometimes we brought our own food, Brabusco or Pate in shiny Thermos Flasks and the Clerics wife would smile at Mother before accepting the bowls. 

Their house, a six-room bungalow with high ceilings and a gallery that was convenient for our meetings. There were murals on its walls, framed quotes-“So what if this life is not perfect? It’s not Jannah” “Being a Muslim is about changing yourself not changing Islam”-in its lobby and gaudy lanterns on its stools. It looked like a miniaturized museum, like a home cut out of a scene from Haroun and the sea of stories. 

There where doors that led to other doors, the majority quaintly locked as if they had never been opened and Rasheed’s simple warning of “They are my Fathers rooms” warded off the ones that clicked slightly when pushed.

It did not take long either before I became best friends with Rasheed. We attended the same school, prescribed to us by his Mother and we came home together, I arriving home first and he walking forward.

We stole minutes away from the Family during dinner to count the comics he had in his bedroom, ran our hands along the edges of the frames in the lobby and made jokes about them. We licked ice from the freezer in the kitchen when no one was looking, mimicked the prayers from the Catholic Church beside the house and made comics of our own in his jotter.

Baba was proud of my association with him, I knew, and so was Mother. They perhaps felt that by associating with a Hafiz, I too might become one; perhaps felt that it was a trait, like Vaseline that could be rubbed off on another.

An accountant at the water corporation was what Baba was, warily counting wads of naira notes from taxes, water levies, and arranging them into neat piles. Saying “Trade union” and “Our rights” in the manner influential people said them. He earned respect amongst the indigenes for this; he was the only one, who drove a 2001 Mazda, the only one who had seen and touched more money than they ever would although none belonged to him.

“Eccentric” was how Rasheed described him on his eleventh Birthday when Baba did not give him a gift. “Your Father is very eccentric, they say it in the Mosque and at the market, he is a no-nonsense person”

I had not known what the word meant then and so I had not known how to react, but I smiled lightly and helped tie balloons on the balcony railing. That night, I looked up the word eccentric in my Longman dictionary and a smile creased the corners of my lips.

My relationship with Rasheed did not become unusual until the year he turned fifteen. I was fourteen; we both were seniors at our junior secondary school; rolling in the waters of youthful exuberance, starting to masturbate to images of Spice Girls and Christina Aguilera in our school bathroom and just realising that sex was not how we previously thought.

I started to notice him more, started to notice the girls that noticed him. I noticed that he ate his rice with little stew—I would later tell my Mother that I wanted to eat rice this way too—and that his hair was a clean-shaved afro, not Gorimapa like the rest of us boys those days. 

I liked the way he read his passages during English class, carefully articulating “Brussels”, “Budapest” so that they started to sound like shiny things, perhaps jewellery or glitter rather than cities; liked how slowly he said my name “Bilal” as if he read deeper meaning from it with every enunciation. 

He had a way of making things beautiful, Rasheed. I did not like Nazifi Asnanic’s song, “Jai-Jani” until he sang the words to me one evening in his bedroom, brushed off the amicable way with which the songwriter wrote until he pointed it out to me.

 It was as if things did not become beautiful until Rasheed acknowledged them; as if he was an immigration officer who stamped beauty on things.

Our conversations those days became about girls with big breasts, boys who had touched these big breasts, ample hips and girls who let boys lift their pinafore for them to touch something. It was later that I would sense the disconnect in his voice when he talked about girls, but not then, there was no way I could have sensed it then.

He was Rasheed, the wiry boy with a mild stutter, Lipton-coloured face and eyebrows drawn delicately, too delicately as if God had had too much time on his hands when he created him. I was not like him; I was not as handsome as he was, not as brilliant; and so more girls were after him, more girls wanted the “Kora” boy with a brain.

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