Mide’s Abor with Olamide Longe
Email: araokian@gmail.com Twitter: @araokian
I conjured up all sorts of imagery with the stars; at a point, there was a headless rider on a horse. Then I got bored. I wanted done with being cooped up in a car surrounded by darkness, heading nowhere. What lay ahead, only the stars knew and I couldn’t read them.
Ingenuity collapse, no doubt.
I looked at Tam. He was sound asleep.
Amazing.
I guess he was better prepared for “anything” than I was. Hardly surprising, since he was the initiator of everything. Yes, I’d been a willing participant at the beginning, but then I got seven bridges thrown at me halfway through. Then, I learnt I was going to spend the night in the middle of nowhere. The excitement I’d started out with had dissipated. I felt alone. Left to grapple with the uncertainties that surrounded me alone, while my co-traveller slept like Jonah. Jonah that caused a storm and went below deck to sleep unperturbed.
Time passed slowly.
I let out a deep sigh.
“Now what was that for?”
I screamed, jumped, and hit my head, all at the same time.
“Are you all right?” Tam leaned over to inspect my head.
I brushed his hand away, offended. “I thought you were asleep.” My heart was still bouncing all over my chest; such was the fright he gave me.
“I dozed—
“No, you were sound asleep. I checked.”
“Maybe for two minutes. You, on the other hand, have worked yourself into a pretty state. Who or what did you think spoke, some ancient ghost?” he laughed.
“It’s all well and good for you to laugh. We may be surrounded by darkness, but I am the one really in the dark here.”
“Care to clarify?”
“What if at the end of it, pa and his kinsmen don’t approve? I mean, your father may not like me.”
He stared at me as if I had two heads.
“What?”
“No wonder you let out that huge sigh. And no wonder you nearly jumped out of your skin, too.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“Look, you have absolutely no reason to be anxious. My father is going to love you at first sight.”
I almost snorted, but good manners forbade me. The dark mood was lifting.
“Trust me on this; he is going to adore you. And what my father approves, his kinsmen will die for.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. And, what I approve, my father will absolutely die for. Why do you think I was all confidence while you were dragging your feet about getting married without meeting him first?”
Yes, I’d been reluctant when he decided we should get married with only our best friends around us. I had no qualms about me; I had only myself to answer. He, however, had his father and his people, but he insisted he was having it no other way and I wasn’t ready to let such an opportunity slip on account of few witnesses.
“You didn’t say he was going to adore me. You said, “He hadn’t got a choice.”
“That’s another way of putting it, don’t you think?”
I looked at him in the dimming light from my torch. “It’s the yin and yang; men being from Mars and women from Venus.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sometimes, it all gets lost in translation.”
“You do have a way of losing me with your words.”
I laughed.
“Now, that is a good sound. And it is having all kind of effects.”
“Tam, Tam, there is none other like you, I swear.”
“Indubitably.”
I cracked up at the way he said it.
“See, I know big words, too.”
Heaven help me.
“You know what I’d like to do now?”
“You’re so predictable.” I slapped at his hand. “Let’s hope you’ll still appreciate me when I am all covered in mosquito bites or whatever it is that bites one in the night around here.” I said.
He chuckled. “They can’t be different from those that bite where we left. It’d be one for the memory book. You’ll look back with a smile on your lips and a tingle. Look around you. I hate to state the obvious.”
I was lost. I tried to resist. “You are crazy.”
“Join me.”
Hmm.
It was crazy. But, good. Very good. It must have been the atmosphere. Stopping the car in the middle of nowhere. (I supposed this place was relatively safe, compared to the highway). It still was a crazy thing to do. It worked like a strange aphrodisiac. Tam had this huge grin and he wouldn’t stop looking at me.
Nowhere would I rather be. As for those bridges ahead, I couldn’t have found a better companion to lead me across. Gullies and hills, I have found where I belong.”
