DREAMS PART 4

15/11/2013

 I can’t stop thinking of Aisha. It looked more like a dream than reality. I just had the best kiss in the world. The tingling feeling that followed cannot be underestimated in the abilities that froze the two bodies together in an atmosphere that lasted like forever. Just a kiss; some people would call it, but to me it was more.  I felt the warmth, as it still circulates my body. I still feel the heat as it stays, wrapping me. Closing my eyes, I was swaddled in your fragile memory. I go to grasp you, but I stop myself just in time. The barely audible sound of your lips parting with my skin sings in bursts of warmth, reminisced in my mind. The subtle nature of your lips caresses the whole facade of smile I kept. Though I didn’t see it, the imaginations I cannot misplace.  I kept on thinking of this future that lies in front of me and sleep was not in view that night. 

I picked up my pen and paper and for the first time in my life I wrote this poem:

 I lie on the ground,
and stare into space,
the stars start to move,
into the shape of your face.

I gaze at your pictures
As I go to sleep,
I can hear your voice
It sounds oh so sweet

You say close your eyes
tell me what you see
I see only two people,
just you and me.

You look in my eyes
And hold me so tight,
The fears that we have
Will soon have respite

I cannot contain
My feelings for you,
My heart is set free
It belongs only to you

Since I was unemployed I kept the poem on the table in my room in expectations of her the next day.
My sleep started around sunrise after a long wait. I had dozed off and the knock on my door woke me up.
It was more of bang than a knock. Subconsciously from my sleep I answered and staggered to the door.
Turning the key slowly to open for either Mustapha or Aisha;
surprisingly it was General who was knocking.
Hello, who are you? He asked
I’m …. Em I’m Mustapha’s friend.
Don’t you have a name my friend!
My name is Francis sir. At this point I was at attention. He walked into the room to observe all that was within.
And after a while told one of his military securities to lock the room without touching
a piece and I should be escorted into his mansion.
Bare footed I was guided into the supposed lion’s den.
An orphan like me to face a General in the Nigerian army is like a dog facing a lion.
I knew I was dead but I didn’t want the pain that would lead to my death. I prefer a shot in the head if possible.

I waited outside for a very long time before General had my time. Even when he did, he started with a long phone call to who I never cared. The talk was long with emotions changing like a chameleon. And afterwards he called me closer, with whom did you say you were again? I continued with a little bravery like someone whose death sentence has been pronounced. My name is Francis Itohan. Who is your father? The late doctor Itohan I answered. He turned to one of the guards and said call Aisha for me. Then I suspected he might have known something was about to go down between me and his daughter. When Aisha arrived; she was surprised to see me inside their compound, thus asked me what I was doing there? I didn’t answer. The dad turned to her and asked who I was. She said I was Mustapha’s friend who helps her with all her assignment.

The tone of praise from Aisha was wonderful. I didn’t know I was that good. My energy was restored and pride came over me. The man looked at me and asked is that all. I nodded a yes. He said we should get out of his sight.

Meanwhile he should move to the room upstairs……….. I sometimes use that room downstairs. Aisha walked me back into the guest house to show me the room upstairs and with dad’s approval even the securities know I was an official inhabitant in this abode. She walked into my room and saw the poem I wrote on the table and her concentration was extreme as all was motionless around her for a while. It took almost five minutes before I realized we were two in the room. I looked towards Aisha and discovered she had held the poem in her hands reading it all over again with tears of joy in her eyes.

I walked towards her to stop her from crying but she buried those wonderful lips one more time on me. Loosing my energy she pushed me on the bed. Stretched her hands to close the door she joined me on the bed. The kiss deepened with tops being removed. She tickled every part of my body with her tongue to the point I felt like the woman. Slowly she removed her bra exposing the sumptuous round breast. An endowment I never saw this way. It was quite different from the ones I used to see in my neighbourhood in Lagos. They were fresh from yard and I knew it. I was careful with it at first but when I fully got a grab of it….. She knew I was a man.

Pulling off tight jeans sometimes could spoil the course of pleasure. It took a while and a halt to pull off the jeans but we resumed with the same fire and energy required. Seeing Aisha fully naked; I knew I’ve seen the mother of my kids. I lay on top of her raising the right leg slowly and guiding my dick into the wet arena for an everlasting move of sexual intercourse. The humming tone she gave; made me know it was really reserved for me. I felt we were married already. Using my two hands to joggle the breast, with a right leg resting on my shoulders, I slowly but consistently continued plunging into Aisha. The speed increased after a while and after some time, when I was reaching orgasm the noise increased. With an intensified force from within, I poured all fertility into the womb to carry my baby, and the door opened.

Lo and behold it was General………

DREAMS PART 3

Mustapha was kept in the cell by his father for talking to his mother rudely. I wondered what kind of lazy man the general was. You cannot train your own child again. You are leaving the fate of your child into the hands of the Nigeria police force… hmmm. I told him what I did wrong and he felt bad also. The soldiers that came to release him the next day stood in for me also. Immediately he stepped out of the station his levels changed. Three cars came to pick him and soldiers started barricading him again. He picked ten thousand naira from a slot in the car and gave me with his number written on a card. Give me a call and sirens started clearing the road for the wayward son.

Now I’m a free man with nowhere to go and nobody to call a friend apart from Mustapha. I walked into a joint and asked for cigarette and soda. Everything seems expensive in this town as soda is five hundred naira. I brought out a copy of complete sports newspaper I bought the previous day and read slowly to kill time. From time killing I mistakenly slept off. It was the giggle of some beautiful ladies that woke me up. I was scared and ashamed. Did I really sleep off? I thought to myself how loud my snore was. The ladies looked at me one more time in my confused state and laughed again. A woman walked up to me and asked if there was no problem, I told her there was none. 

I left the joint in shame and walked to the nearest phone booth to make a call. Mustapha has given me his number and how would I start calling someone I just met; who gave me ten thousand for accommodation problems again. The line rang all through the first time with no response. There was a complete ring the second time also. I was about leaving when the phone rang and he was calling back. I rushed to pick and told him the situation I found myself. He gave me an address and told me to meet him there. I stopped a taxi and told him the address: No 234b Kwame Nkrumah Street Asokoro. The driver looked at me in surprise like; who do I know there. 

It was three houses away from them Mustapha’s house. It was like a guest house. He opened a room for me and introduced me to the workers. He told them I’ll be here for a while thus I should be granted all the priviledges expected. I knelt to thank him but he pulled me up and said something “what are friends for”……. Frank don’t worry you’ll do better for me if it was you. I nodded like I knew I would but …….. We sat outside under a tree in the compound reminiscing when a group of girls walked inside. That’s my sister and her friends. They come here more than me he said. “They were matured and ready to be slaughtered” (a slang we use to describe maturity). They walked to us and greeted Musty and I. they said they came to do some group learning. They want to learn more about Sigmund Freud’s psycho analysis.

I leaped into the conversation: Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who became known as the founding father of psychoanalysis. Born: 6 May 1856 and died 23 September 1939

Freud qualified as a doctor of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1881, and then carried out research into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuro-anatomy at the Vienna General Hospital. He was appointed a university lecturer in neuro-pathology in 1885 and became a professor in 1902.

In creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and in whichever order they spontaneously occur) and discovered transference (the process in which patients displace onto their analysts feelings derived from their childhood attachments), establishing its central role in the analytic process. Freud’s redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus and electoral complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory.

Significantly Sigmund believed every human could be traced in his deepest part through some basic instincts. The unconscious is the portion of the mind of which a person is not aware of. Freud said that it is the unconscious that exposes the true feelings, emotions, and thoughts of the individual. There are varieties of psychoanalytic techniques used to access and understand the unconscious, ranging from methods like hypnosis, free association, and dream analysis.

They were lost in my prowess of thoughts that I became a scene of knowledge to them. When I stopped they knew they were where they needed to be. Then I asked what the assignment is. They slowly opened their books and read “write on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory”. Then I met the first three female friends in Abuja. 

With a textbook introduced it took me less than three hours to compose a prose on Sigmund. They appreciated me extremely and I became a muse for their success. Aisha started having feeling for me after I told her my life history one rainy afternoon. I mixed up the story in such a way that the devil would also pity me if he tends to listen. The emotions were greater than those in titanic and like a sinking Jack she became a Rose Surprisingly the daughter of a multi millionaire kissed the son of Dr and Mrs Itohan of blessed memory. She held me tight as she kissed me and told me when we pulled apart that she would always be there.  Then I knew again, I have a dream.

DREAMS PART 2

My name is Francis Itohan, and I’ve lived all my life in an environment that characterized the epitome of affluence and poverty. Development was minimal, poverty was rampant, and insecurity was undeniably present, famine was a regular, injustice resided in the neighborhood, kidnapping was now on the loom.

Weird as it could be that some don’t have good water to drink the others use a tank of water to wash their cars every morning, while some don’t have transport fare some roll in convoy, while some can’t find a place to lay their heads others build bungalows for dogs, while some are looking for food to eat we most organize buffet and at the end wasting these foods, while some don’t have clothes to wear others fill their wardrobes with what they will never wear, with insufficient police officers to guide the populace some keep thirty in their compound. The rich could do whatever pleases them and go away with it because justice resides with them.

Of these two one would wonder which I belong; none, I was in the middle class in a society that draws energy from the lower class to enrich the upper class thus suffocating the poor. Growth was restricted in all aspects of life, social, mental, religious, academic even physical. It was suffering and smiling all the way down. Growing up was fun at my level because I don’t have to think too much of where it was coming from, my parents need to get it. From my nursery through primary to secondary and lastly to the university I’ve always been the genius that everyone knew. I was the best in all thoughts of life apart from money. Read all the books in the world on how to get rich quick and discovered they don’t work in our society. Nigeria is greater in diversity than the “think and grow rich and rich dad poor dad” thing. One thing works in this country; if you can’t beat them join them. The truth is you can’t beat them.

I’m an epitome of frustration. The world seems to hate me and I don’t want to run to church because of hunger. Our fathers and mothers seem to be good liars because with their toners of story this country called Nigeria was once a good country. How did it depreciate to this level that it has lost all her flavours.  They all bought milk at 30kobo, when Volkswagen beetle was N300 and it was free education all the way. I don’t know if some of you remembered there were little or no armed robbers in the villages. And they all had jobs when they finished secondary school not even university. They lived in a jungle with no crime but brought us to a city which urbanism has destroyed.

Many mothers were teachers, nurses or traders creating time for their children but suddenly all these issues I’m talking about became dreams impossible for the present day young Nigerian to achieve. 

The accounts department packaged my money and gave me. I counted it in shame as I walked out of the company. I didn’t know the next step to take but I know I must stay where I am. I looked around and saw a more frustrating Lagos.  Since the death of y parents life has changed from being average to below poverty level. I feed from hand to mouth and savings was an abomination to me. What do I even have to save though? I resorted to a relocating but I won’t tell my landlord before he arrests me because of the eleven months house rent I owe. It was a long trek to ikeja from my office but to me it was a stroll. I got to khalif’s house and saw him drafting a proposal. He is also a jobless man but a better street boy than me. He lives on lies and he is capable of doing everything. From estate agents to oil and gas, sales rep, he even arranges affidavits and fake documents all in a quest for survival. He bought two sachet of water for me. It was chilling, which helped to quench the thirst generated from the sun. Who are you writing a proposal for I asked? I’m going to Abuja he said. What for…… guy I don tire for Lagos. I want to be close to the source of the national cake. I bought the idea and asked if I could come. Why not he answered with the assurance that we have an accommodation with an old friend of his who lives at Mpape district in Abuja. 

The next day, we took night bus to arrive Abuja in the morning. It was a ten hour drive and when I saw the glamour in the capital city I knew it was a venue for your dreams to come true. The wide roads and beautiful landscapes caught my attention and the way they smiled like they had no problems was attractive. I pitied my landlord; he is waiting for me to come back. He should sell the lantern and half mattress I have left in the room, I don’t care. As we alighted from the bus and stepped on the roads of Abuja, I knew I was a millionaire. I brought out ten naira from my pocket and walked to an aboki to buy Benson. I lit it and walked to the street to meet Khalif who was making a call. It was the third drag before a truck parked beside me and a man came out saying I’ll be paying a fine of five thousand naira for smoking in public. I was surprised at what he was saying thus I built a deaf ear. Two policemen walked towards us and told me to cooperate else I’ll be charged for ………. Something I can’t remember. I quenched the cigarette at this stage and started pleading.  Sorry man your fine is five thousand naira. Haaa for just smoking ten naira cigarette! My complains and appeals worked no magic, and the next point was Utako police station. The whole dream of becoming a great man in Abuja is going down the drain again. 

We were four in the cell I was kept. There I met Mustapha; a son of a retired general and my dream changed