A Caricature of Something Forgotten

Photo: Michael Dziedzic

1

People often say that Lagos is an amazing city. 

And if you pay close attention to Nollywood movies. To the glamorous display of the city’s beaches, bars, and skyscrapers, then yes, Lagos is amazing. It’s so good that everyone wants to live in it. To belong in it. To feel like they thrive within a city of elites. People believe it’s where you go to make it. So they leave their homes and travel hundreds of miles to get to Lagos. A new start, a fresh beginning. 

Then they come to a realisation when they don’t thrive or belong. When they break and watch helplessly as the city sucks away at what is left of their essence. When they suffocate beneath the rancid smell of sewage, pretence, life-threatening traffic and poverty. Lagos is not an amazing city.

My parents didn’t want me to come to Lagos when I told them of the internship opportunity I got as a fresh graduate. They described Lagos with so many words. Bad city with wicked people. Full of fraudsters and kidnappers. 

‘It is too fast,’ my mother said. ‘Are you sure you will be able to keep up?’ 

My father was rather worried about this tech startup I got an internship role in: who are they? Are they legit? What do they do? What will you be doing for them? 

All the questions I had to answer and all the comments I listened to didn’t deter me from moving to Lagos. I did not care. I got a job, and I intended to keep it. The city can be forbidden and ugly and full of distasteful people, but that was not my problem.

2

I refused to return home after graduating from the university. 

My father called several times to ask what I was still doing in school. And my mother called to remind me that there was nothing left for me in school. Their words were jarring and uncomfortable. Each time they called to tell me to return home, it was as if they were using sandpaper to scrub my body, exposing parts of me that I’d rather have hidden. 

‘Come back home, Mustapha. You came for a degree. You got the degree. What else do you want?’ 

A job.

I wanted a job. 

I wanted to earn for myself. I wanted to be able to buy new underwear when my old ones were worn out. Wasn’t it embarrassing that when asked what I needed money for, I would lie and say it was for a book? Or for some school project. When what I actually wanted to buy was new underwear. Sexy briefs meant to boost my confidence and impress admirers who get lucky to see me in them.

“All the questions I had to answer and all the comments I listened to didn’t deter me from moving to Lagos. I did not care. I got a job, and I intended to keep it. The city can be forbidden and ugly and full of distasteful people, but that was not my problem.”

I wanted to be able to get a cup of ice cream and a bar of chocolate when my emotions overwhelmed me. To be able to feed this feeling of emptiness that engulfed me every now and then. Without having to explain to anyone that the reason my monthly allowance didn’t last long was because I had cried my heart out over cupcakes and chocolates. Because some love interest had hurt me. 

The subsequent phone calls I got were like threats. 

‘You need to come home. We can’t afford to send you your monthly allowance anymore,’ my father said. Almost devoid of consideration. Both kind and unkind. He wasn’t kidding. If I were at home, I would have access to homemade meals and wouldn’t have to worry about rent. Things will be easier for everyone.

My mother, who likes to speak in metaphors and riddles, something I find endearing, was not as direct. 

‘Things are tough, Mustapha. Ete’okatenwu, the floors are hard,’ she said to me. 

A farmer cannot cultivate on hard soil without rain. Dry mouths need water to vivify them. If I do not return home, how will I survive on my own?

Perhaps they were right that there was nothing left for me in school. But what was waiting for me at home? 

I hated home. 

Not the people. But what it represented. 

I have seen people like me, graduates, who went home after school and became caricatures of things forgotten. They wake up to eat. Stroll through the streets in the evenings. Some of them play football when they can. Some of them sleep with the helps of well-to-do families. Some of them impregnate these girls. Some of them have become fathers in their mother’s homes. Eating their mother’s food and not being able to afford new underwear to impress the mothers of their children. 

I didn’t want any of that. 

So I asked my mother and father, ‘What becomes of me if I return home?’ And they had no answers. So I refused to listen. I took my badly prepared CV and decided to go job hunting under the scorching sun of Ilorin. I would rather start my career as a waiter in restaurants and be able to buy new underwear than go home.

3

I didn’t get a job as a waiter. 

Nor did I look for a job in any restaurant. My allowance got smaller and smaller till I eventually stopped calling to ask. And my parents got tired of asking me to return. But I was a writer, or so I thought, and difficult as it is, I believed I could earn a living with writing. I wasn’t writing essays or opinion pieces or sending out pitches to magazines. I wasn’t interested in any of those. I wrote fiction instead. 

There was no immediate popularity like I had expected. There was no money, and I got a lot of rejections from magazines, even those I had not heard about before my journey as a writer. The magazines that accepted me mostly didn't pay or paid a meagre sum. And there was little to no publicity for my writing. I remember my first acceptance to an American Academic publication, Artheton Review. They had published my short story titled Naked. The editing process was a memorable one. There were clearly cultural differences between the editor and me. I'd written "wrapper", and the editor suggested I change it to "wraps". In another paragraph, I wrote "slippers", and he told me to change it to "flip flops". I refused, insisting that "wrapper" is "wrapper" and "slippers" is "slippers". Not "wraps" or "flip flops". I was careful, of course, in the way I explained this to the editor. The magazines that paid (mostly magazines in the United States and London) didn't accept me. So I compensated by taking up school projects from graduate students—assignments, theses, research papers. All for meagre pay. 

I thought that if I had a wide readership or audience, it would improve my acceptance rates. I would get an agent in no time and then publish a novel. At the time, I did try to write a book but it was too American. I swear I had no idea why I decided to write that novel. It was meant to be historical. About my people, the Ebira people, but then they wore American clothes and their dialogues had a lot of "finna", "gonna”, “wanna".  And they wore skirts and jackets and hats. In my defence, I was reading a lot of Paulo Coelho and James Hadley Chase novels then. I looked at the novel a few weeks back, and it had the struggling potential of a clueless novice writer. My writing progressively changed after I read Teju Cole’s “Eight Letters to a Young Writer”. 

“So I asked my mother and father, ‘What becomes of me if I return home?’ And they had no answers. So I refused to listen.”

I also thought paying foreign magazines didn’t accept me because I was African and I wrote African stories. So I started submitting to African magazines more. I eventually got into Harvard University's Transition Magazine, and I discovered the hard way that the right people loved my stories. Hard because I got acceptances for the same stories rejected by foreign magazines, and all the while,  magazines that published stories like mine have been seeking, waiting, for me. And there I was seeking something distant. Perhaps rejections—as hurtful as they are —could be good in moulding a novice writer.

My very first submission got me an acceptance in The Kalahari Review, where I wrote my very first queer story, “Bring It Closer.” Then I went on to win the K and L Prize for African Literature the following year. These wins validated my writing. They cemented what will be, what I like to call, a chaotically beautiful writing career. I have also learned to not write for money.

But the successes were few and far between and earnings were not enough to support a living. Then I heard blog posts made money for writers. Like every click they got converted to money, like Linda Ikeji's blog. “When Google Ads enter your blog like this, you will blow.” So I tried blogging. I didn’t blow. 

The weeks leading up to the moment I finally got a job as an intern in a tech startup in Lagos were difficult. 

My rent was due to expire in a week, and I would be asked to leave my hostel. There was barely enough food and no one to ask for help. So I spent the bulk of my time sending out applications to job openings and more time on dating apps. And I worried more about my worn-out underwear. I worried that my admirers would see them and not like them. I worried a lot about how people perceived me. 

4

When I got the call after my application to the tech startup in Lagos, the first thing I asked the recruiter was, ‘Is the job remote?’ Because I had been to Lagos, and I didn’t like it. Yes, it is where the big leagues are. And yes, it is where the big opportunities are. But it smells, and there is traffic and a lot of people. Then the flooding when it rains! There is also a lot of shouting and screaming, and beggars are littered everywhere. I wasn't ready to trade peaceful Ilorin for it—even though the sun in Ilorin was hot as hell. 

‘No, the job is not remote. You have to come to Lagos,’ the recruiter said. He had this raspy voice and spoke with some sort of poshness that I admired. Later, I would learn that he was Ebira too, and his name was J, and he graduated two years before I did and had refused to return home, just like me. The home I know, that J knows, will prevent us from breaking barriers and reaching new heights. Knowing this, J and I reduced home to nothing, not even memories we would like to live with. I want to believe that this is how Africans in the diaspora— and if we stretch it a bit, immigrants—who have run away from their countries perceive home. Just like J and I.

‘But I don’t live in Lagos,’ I said. Thanks to J, like some of the other interns that were hired, I was allowed to live at the company’s boys quarters. Maybe J saw something in me. Maybe it was faith. Whatever made me get that job made me move to Lagos. I did not regret it.

5

Things changed. 

New city. New faces. A work environment that was healthy. Stressful sometimes, but the monthly stipend was rewarding. I was no longer hungry, and I could afford to buy a lot of underwear, which boosted my confidence. 

In my village, it is customary to share your first pay with your entire family. But I wasn’t going to do that. To hell with customs and traditions. My half-sister studied nursing, and I remembered what she did when her first salary came. It was a Saturday morning. (She’d withdrawn her entire salary the day before.) That morning, she took everything to her father’s house, knelt down and said, ‘Father, here is my first pay.’ Her father beamed with so much pride, a smile plastered on his face, she’d told us. He praised her in a high-pitched voice so his other wives and children would hear in order to spite them. That smile never left his face. Half of her money for him and our mother, and the other half for her. One week to my first pay, and I knew my father wanted the same thing. You see, I do not know if I am brave or just plain stubborn, but I was not going to give my stipend to my family. 

Soon, I was sandwiched between plenty of hours of work. A stipend that later became too small due to rising cost of living. And black tax. Often, I would get a call from my mother; she would greet me and ask about my job. She would ask if I was eating well. Then she would sigh and say, “Ete’okatewnwu, Mustapha, o easy fa,”. And I would send her some money when we were done talking. When my brothers’ school fees were not complete, I was reached out to. When there was a faulty pipe in the house. Someone wanted a new phone. Money was needed for this and that. Money was always needed for this and that. And uncustomary as it was and still is—I am not the firstborn; I am second to the last of six children—my phone bled. My account balance bled. And I massaged my pain with patience and the fact that I did not return home after school. A heart grateful to God’s faithfulness. Years later, and everyone told me how proud they were of me that I didn’t succumb to the pressure, that my decision to not go home after school was the best thing I ever did. But that didn’t stop them from piling new pressures: they now wanted me to get married. 

After spending four years in Lagos, I concluded that for J and I, home is nothing but memories we visit, not memories we live with.  And I never want to relive those memories: my parent’s separation, the talks, snide comments from neighbours, the anger, the verbal wars. You should know that my mother is a lecturer, an academic. And my father is a retired bank manager. Though the power dynamics between them were subtle, it was big enough to chip away at the bond of their marriage. My mother moved to her own house, and my father moved to a new city. The separation was painful. But it made me realize something about home. When I travelled to visit my father, there was a semblance of home I yearned for. And when I was in my mother’s home, there was the other half of home I yearned for. Home is not one thing. It morphs. It takes the shape of the relationship we have with the people who tend to it.

Home became an old wound for me and returning would be like reopening it. I knew I was better off staying away. I haven’t seen my father in four years. And even though I have been alone in Lagos for four years now, I know I carry a part of my home with me. I have learned that home is not a place. Home is people. And I have two:  I have a home with my mother and another with my father. My house in Lagos is not my home. Lagos is not my home. I have realised that I did not make home into a caricature of something forgotten. I couldn’t. It was the memories I hated. The snide comments and some of the people. I have realised that when one makes home into a caricature of something forgotten, one becomes homeless.

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About the Author

Mustapha Enesi is an Ebira writer from Okene, whose works have appeared in several literary magazines. He is fascinated by the concept of human existence. The very fabric of his storytelling is centred on it, the delicate process of creation—sex, pregnancy, childhood, awareness, the complex realization of subconsciousness—and how all these phenomena crystallize as innate humanness. He is the joint winner of the 2023 Bridport Short Story prize (Young Writers Award) for his short story, One Good Thing.

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