A Lagos of Memories

I have been here before, many times, in dreams and lifetimes. There was a time when the stretch of road between Ìbàdàn and Ọjọ́ta was dammed with three tolls through which the government milked its citizens by another name. 

Another, before I was old enough to write, when the snakey bridge that now connects the Island to the Mainland was just an idea in the mind of the military regime that made the city its base.

I was here, sometimes only in memories and news, when the many coup announcements that littered the eighties had “Dodan Barracks” as the most topical item. Once the head of the government, it’s now a relic awaiting restoration and opening as a museum of our collective history.

One time, when I lived with my aunt at Ọkọ́ta, I ran outside at the sound of a deafening noise that threatened to knock the roof off the house. Only I wasn’t familiar with it. Outside, the culprit flew towards the sun, tyres still visible from a recent take-off. 

At regular hours from then on, it came back heading in the same direction I could only imagine, carrying passengers I would never meet to places I would probably eventually see. The sight, however, was majestic, the closest I’d ever been to almost touching the tail of an aircraft. 

How crazy it seemed, even then, that the working-class slum bore daily witness to the exodus of some of the country’s best and well-to do.

Each memory was a lifetime, each recall accompanied by the image of someone no longer there: the aunt now departed, relatives who live in many places around the city, neighbours in Ìbàdàn to whom vacation to Lagos was something fabulous to report on when one returned, school teachers who requested written reports, and the blurry places and faces of childhood no longer as tangible. 

When I visited Tarkwa Bay myself just a few years ago, it seemed like an ordinary beach unworthy of such a hold on my memory for such a long time.

Often, I visited my brother who lived near Àkọka, near a canal that connected itself to the Lagos Lagoon. Occasionally, in evenings, we would walk to the University, where he taught students remedial accounting classes. 

Decades earlier, our father had gone to school here, for a few years, on a sponsorship from his employers at the broadcasting service. We did not talk about these memories, my brother and I. His interests lay in other places. 

But often, when the sun set and the warm evening air of the city washed over the silence in the house, my mind would often run through the many lifetimes through which the city had imposed itself through the reality of my existence.