One of Those People (Short Story)

One Of Those People

By Sadiq Abdulsalam Adeiza


You never thought you would be one of those people. One of those people who had online scandals, who had their dirty linens washed, spread and hung for millions of people all over the world to see, examine and ask if they were clean enough yet.

 You never thought you would be one of those people. One of those people you sometimes laughed at, felt pity for, shook your head for, all the while scrolling through Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages on your mobile phone.

Even now as you sit on the edge of a wooden bench in front of the police station, watching an army of angry looking soldier ants march across the uneven lawn, you are still wondering how it is that you became one of those people.

The first time you came across @ManLykeDan was on Instagram, when he liked one of your posts – a picture of some impoverished Nigerians with the caption “The Nigerian church must do more #WeNeedToDoBetter.” Although being a church girl all your life – part consequence of being born to the rather cliché and familiar love story of a small time pastor and a choir mistress, you have always been vocal about church reforms, especially on social media.

You found that @ManLykeDan was following you, so you followed back.

It was some weeks later that he sent you a personal message, you had been impressed that he did not come at you with the usual hi-hello-what are your hobbies dialogue that was the default template of a conversation followed religiously by most guys. Rather he’d introduced himself as Daniel and said that he’d been going through your posts and that he agreed with a lot of your views and would like to be friends. “Besides” he had said “you look cute”.

You had soon fallen into effortless conversation with him, he asked and you answered apparently harmless questions, and you found him cool, intelligent and funny even, such that when he asked for your number so that he can “chat you up on whatsapp” you’d given it to him. Aunty, Aunty dem dun come o” someone calls to you pulling you out of your reverie, it is the woman sitting under the shade of the mango tree with one child tied with wrapper on her back and the other sitting on a piece of luggage. The purple swelling below her left eye suggests to you that she is a victim of domestic violence. She is pointing at the two police vans that have just pulled up in the makeshift car park.

Some police men come out of the vans chatting loudly and trading banters in the indigenous lingua, you count eight of them with one police woman amongst them. They stride towards the entrance in their black on black uniforms, the one leading the group walks with an air of importance about him, his chest puffed with a baton swinging in one hand and a gun hung across his chest, you guess he is the DPO and one of his men soon call him so.

You tap the wiry old man reeking of alcohol, curled on the bench next to you and he bolts up staring around confusedly with half-asleep eyes.

“Baba they have come” you say to him motioning to the band of policemen now few meters away

He nods frantically and mutters “Thank you”

 “Good Morning officers” you greet as soon as they are within earshot, they grumble their replies.

The old man stands up as erect as possible, stamps his right foot on the ground, his right hand moving simultaneously in salute and croaks “Morn sirs!” they respond to him jovially and you wonder if perhaps you should have done the same.

The metal door to the station finally swings open after several tries by the policemen and they usher the old baba in.

You never thought you would be one of those people, one of those people who came to police stations, who came to make complaints and report other people. You press the side button on your phone and the screen lit up to show the time is 10:42; the old man has been inside the DPO’s office for about fifteen minutes now.

The woman with the children comes over and sits down on the bench beside you, her two kids have fallen asleep; she laid them side by side on her wrapper spread under the mango tree.

On closer inspection, you can see cuts below her lips, swellings on her head and wounds on her arms and legs, a surge of unexpected anger courses through you.

“My sister, wetin bring you come?” she asks in a quivering voice

At that moment your problems seems rather like a molehill to her mountain

You are not sure how much she knew about social media so you tell her your story the way she could understand; you tell her how you met someone and how you had just been friends that spoke occasionally and then how one day from nowhere he asks you to send him naked pictures of yourself, you tell her how you had felt insulted and you had replied him, raining generational curses on his family and terminated the friendship instantly.

You tell her how yesterday, months after that initial incident; you start receiving calls from your friends asking you what was happening? Telling you to go online and see your naked pictures
everywhere. You indeed found an account online sharing a lady’s nude pictures with the face blurred out claiming it was you - @TheToun and how you keep sending it to them though they keep refusing your advances.

You don’t tell her how most people had assumed it was you in the pictures without even asking you, you tell her how after some e-investigation you found out the person behind it was @ManLykeDan, but you don’t tell her how your pastor called you to tell you that you were a disgrace to the church or how your parents called you to express the profundity of their disappointment, even now you can still hear your mother’s voice “Toun are you sure it’s not you?”

You don’t tell her of the disparaging comments you saw online, some from friends; “it’s always the ‘holy ones’ ” they said “I always knew she was a low key hoe”.  You also don’t tell her of your urge to grab a knife, go to @ManLykeDan’s home and plant it in his eye.

The two of you remain in silence after your story before she breaks it with a sympathetic sigh and say “he’s an animal but at least you did not marry him”

Finally the old man comes out of the station, just then a black jeep drives into view, a huge man wearing black shades gets out, takes a sweeping glance around and marches to the sleeping children and carries the two kids on one arm, he heads back to the car and shoves them in, the woman runs after him shouting “give me my children o”.

Some of the policemen including the DPO come over to the chaotic scene unfurling before you but the man just raises a hand to them and says “Chief sent me.” It seems to be a magic phrase as they all shrink away from the man, the policewoman is now trying to restrain the woman as she kicks and scream for her kids. The huge man drives the jeep off raising dust in the face of the woman who is now on her knees sobbing.

You feel that surge again.

The woman jerks up suddenly, turns back and stares at you for a brief moment and then start to run in the direction the car drove. The old man now standing beside you begins to laugh, somehow he found this funny, and he laughs so hard, he sits on the floor, coughing.

There had been something in the woman’s eyes, something you could not discern, but something that called to you.

“Make we dey go chief place, maybe we go see small raba hold from all these drama” the DPO announces

You just stand there, dumbfounded, watching as the police lock up, squeeze into one van and drive off; No one had spared you a look or even asked what you were there for.

The old man is still laughing. It sickens you and you feel the surge again. This time you let it wash over you; you stomp over to the old man and slap him hard across the face. He is still for a moment as if in shock then he throws his head back and start to laugh again

You never thought you would be one of those people. One of those people that sometimes lost their marbles but you were past caring, you take off your high heels and fling them at the laughing old man and start to run after the disappearing police van.