“Witness” by Innocent Chizaram Ilo

Danladi was setting up the kiosk when it happened. The dimming torchlight guided him as he arranged the biscuits, candies, bubblegums and juice boxes on the display cart. He cherished this moment alone in the kiosk before Alhaji trotted in, bellowing about how Danladi had better not be sleeping because he did not bring him all the way from Kontagora to be sleeping instead of selling market. Danladi did not mind the shouting on its own but it came with the tiny bits of chewed gworo and a breath that stank of cigarette. 

He was admiring the display cart and wondering which brand of biscuit and juice box Ifeanyi would buy today when the street erupted with “Na homo o, Na homo o! We don catch una today!” Then there was a crack. Dry wood connecting to a bone. The street filled up quickly. Men in suits holding peeling suitcases, women with groggy eyes holding their lappahs to their chest, schoolchildren with half-fastened sandals. 

Danladi could not see the men's faces but he knew the one on the right because of his blue hair. He owned the barbershop on the next street. Bobo; that was what everyone called him. The other man was so gangly Danladi thought his arms would yank off each time one of the street vigilante boys smacked him with a plank. The men were bloodied and stripped to the bone, with nothing but the remains of a shredded singlet around their neck. 

The onlookers spat out, waved their heads, nodded in agreement, but never walked away. Someone volunteered a spare tire and another was about to bring fuel from his okada when the police van came. The policemen shot twice into the air and the crowd scattered but the vigilante boys remained. After some roughhousing and a generous exchange of insults the vigilante boys left Bobo and the other man to the police. 

The dust of the police van driving off barely settled before the buses cranked up and conductors started hailing passengers. Before Danladi could even take in all that had just happened, schoolchildren already swarmed the kiosk. 

Please give me two Speedy and one Coster biscuit. 

I want apple Capri-Sun not orange. 

My change is not complete. 

He went about settling each child with a blank face. A blank face that lit up when he saw Ifeanyi standing by the corner, arms folded across his chest, in his crisply ironed white shirt and blue trousers. Danladi waved at him to come as he packaged three packets of Noreos for the last boy in front of the kiosk.

“Good morning Danladi,” Ifeanyi said as he unfolded a five hundred naira note.. “Please give me Viju Milk and three Fibre Active biscuits.”

He loved when Ifeanyi called him by his name. He was the only person that called him Danladi here, apart from Alhaji.  Everyone else called him Ssst, Aboki or Mallam.

“Here,” Danladi handed the snacks over to Ifeanyi in a black plastic bag. “I added two Milkose and Nutri-C as jara for you.”

“Thank you, Danladi.” Ifeanyi smiled. “You're the best.” 

There were so many things Danladi wanted to say to Ifeanyi– if Ifeanyi knew that he was reading the WAEC practice questions, the same one Ifeanyi had in his schoolbag, before Alhaji prised him away from his mother's arms and brought him to the city, if Ifeanyi knew that he called him Danladi with the same softness as Haruna, if he knew that his smile had replaced Haruna's laughter in Danladi’s mind when Danladi touched himself at night, if he had seen what happened to Bobo this morning, and if the same thing would happen to them if someone caught them during the evenings they spent at the abandoned general hospital building, if Ifeanyi felt any lump in his throat after they pulled up their trousers and dusted off their bodies and then wandered into the OR to play doctor and patient. 

The words died before Danladi could even open his mouth. He could hear Alhaji's Salaam-Alaikum in the distance.