Akinkunmi 36

The journey eats a person

By Testimony Akinkunmi

1.

The letter came on a Tuesday. Brown envelope, Home Office crest, my name spelled correctly for once. I held it in the hallway of my flat in Peckham, on the grey carpet that smells of other people's years, and I read it twice because I did not believe it the first time.

Indefinite leave to remain. Granted.

Fifteen years. And now a single sheet of paper saying: you may stay. Which also means: you may go.

I put the letter on the kitchen counter. I filled the kettle. I stood there watching it boil and I thought: I can go home. I can book a flight tonight. I can stand in the red earth of Jos and hold my mother and sit in my father's house and breathe air that knows me.

The kettle clicked off. My phone rang.

My mother's voice had that particular thinness it gets when she is trying to hold something in her body that her body does not want to hold.

She said: Emeka is dead.

2.

I sat on the floor. The letter was on the counter above me. The phone was still pressed to my ear. My mother was saying words. Shot. Zaria Road. Your father found him. April riots. I heard all of it and none of it.

Emeka was twenty-six. He was studying engineering at the University of Jos. Second year. He wanted to build bridges. Actual bridges. He said Nigeria needed bridges more than anything, between the north and the south, between the Christians and the Muslims, between the plateau and the plain. He said this with complete sincerity and I loved him for it and I was afraid for him because sincerity is a dangerous thing to carry in a place where people are killing each other over land and God and the difference between the two.

The last time I spoke to him was three weeks ago. He asked me to send him a Chelsea jersey. I said I would.

3.

I left Nigeria in 1998. I was nineteen. Democracy was coming. Everyone said so. My uncle in London said come, come now, study, the country is opening up, you will come back to something better.

I have a master's degree in public health. I work for the NHS. I pay taxes. I vote in local elections because they let you do that, the local ones, as if the local ones matter less. I have a National Insurance number and a Tesco Clubcard and a GP who mispronounces my surname every single time.

Fifteen years of this. Building toward a door. And now the door is open and the person I wanted to walk through it toward is in the ground.

4.

My father sent a text. For a bit of context, my dad never called or messaged me since I came here, it was always me doing the hard work. The message simply said, “the burial is Saturday. are you coming?”

I looked at the letter on the counter.

I could go. For the first time in fifteen years, I could go without losing everything. Without starting the process over. Without another fourteen months, maybe eighteen, of waiting.

But my solicitor's invoice is on my desk. Four thousand pounds outstanding. My savings account has four thousand five hundred. If I buy a flight tomorrow, last-minute Lagos, then a connection to Jos, that is most of it gone. And I still owe the solicitor. And my rent is due on the first.

Or.

I could send the money home. All of it. My mother needs it for the burial. For the family. For my father who has not slept since he found his son on Zaria Road. Five thousand pounds is nothing in London and everything in Jos.

But if I send it, I cannot go.

5.

I called my cousin Chidinma. She picked up on the second ring. I could hear Jos in the background, the generators, the distant call to prayer, a radio playing Fela.

I said: how is Papa.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said: Adaeze, he is sitting in the parlour. He has not moved. He is just sitting there holding Emeka's phone.

I pressed my hand over my mouth.

She said: your mother is strong. You know how she is. But your father. Your father is somewhere else.

I said: I am coming.

She said: when.

I looked at my bank balance on my phone. At the solicitor's invoice. At the brown envelope on the counter. There is a limit to melodrama, and you most likely think it is here, but you are not feeling this pain with me, so let’s move on with it.

I said: soon.

6.

Mama Nkechi, my father's mother, died in November. Ninety-one years old. She had been waiting. My mother told me this plainly, without accusation, which made it worse. Waiting for me to bring someone home. To bring a child. To bring proof that the line would continue.

I watched her funeral on someone's phone, propped against a water bottle, the camera shaking, the audio cutting in and out. I saw my father's back. His shoulders. I saw the red earth. That particular red that stains everything, that I used to hate on my school shoes.

I pressed my hand against the screen.

Now Emeka. And I have the paper. I have the door. And I cannot afford to walk through it.

7.

My mother calls every Sunday. The conversation has a shape, worn smooth like a river stone. She asks about work. I tell her fine. She asks about church. I lie. She asks if I am seeing anyone.

Then she says something like: your cousin Ngozi has had her second child. Or: the Okafor boy, the one who went to Abuja, he is doing very well now.

Last Sunday, before the letter, before the phone call, she said: Adaeze, you are thirty-two. Your father's mother died without seeing her grandchildren. Do you understand what that means.

I said: yes, Mama. I know, Mama. Soon, Mama.

8.

It is Wednesday now. The burial is Saturday. I have not booked a flight. I have not sent the money. I have done nothing. I went to work. I stood on the Northern Line pressed between strangers' coats. I came home. I sat at my kitchen table and looked at the brown envelope and the solicitor's invoice and I did nothing.

Emeka would laugh at me. That big loose laugh that made strangers turn around and smile without knowing why. He would say: Sister London, you are overthinking. Just come. Just come home.

But coming home costs something. Everything costs something. Fifteen years I have been learning this.

9.

Tonight I opened my laptop and searched for flights. Lagos, Thursday morning, connecting to Jos. Eight hundred and forty pounds. I looked at the number. I looked at my savings. I did the maths three times, as if the numbers might change.

If I buy the flight, I cannot pay the solicitor this month. She will send a letter. There may be a late fee. It will be fine. Probably. Maybe.

If I send the money instead, my mother can bury my brother properly. My father can stop holding Emeka's phone in the dark parlour. But I will be here. Again. Watching on a screen. Pressing my hand against glass.

I sat with the booking page open for a long time. The cursor blinking in the passenger’s name field.

10.

There is a word in Igbo. “Njem”. It means journey. But it carries something else, something about the weight of going, the cost of distance. My grandmother used to say: “njem na-eri mmadụ.”

The journey eats a person.

I typed my name into the field. Adaeze Okonkwo. I entered my passport number. The new one. The one that says I can leave and come back. I moved my cursor to the payment button.

My phone buzzed. A message from my mother: “Adaeze, your father wants to know if you are coming. He asked me to ask you.”

I looked at the screen. At my father, who does not ask. Who shows love through proximity, through being in the room, through the weight of his silence beside you. My father, who found his son on Zaria Road and carried him and has not spoken of it and will not speak of it and is sitting in the dark holding a dead boy's phone.

I clicked pay.

Eight hundred and forty pounds. Gone.

The confirmation email arrived. Thursday, 6:15am, Heathrow to Lagos. Connecting flight to Jos.

I will owe the solicitor. I will figure it out. I will figure it out later. Right now I am going home to bury my brother and sit beside my father in his silence and be there. Be there.

I closed the laptop. I went to the kitchen. I started packing food for the journey, the way my mother taught me. Rice in a container. Stew in a jar, wrapped in a plastic bag in case it leaks. Bottled water. Chin-chin in a Ziploc.

My hands were shaking.

I am still being eaten.

Testimony Akinkunmi is a writer, holding an LL.B from the University of Abuja. He naturally writes using narrative storytelling, grounding emotional arcs in the meticulous exploration of consequence, personal duty, and hidden liabilities.