The fat woman snored and grunted in her sleep, her _ankara_ blouse slipping over her right shoulder to reveal brown underwear that I believe could have been white once. She probably dreamt of what she could have been, a nurse, or an accountant perhaps, a dream now buried so deep in her unconsciousness it only surfaces in just that; dreams.

The man who sat to my right had his head in his hands. His white shirt was old, thin from what must have been years of vigorous washing. He took deep breaths and shook his head slowly. I wondered what he thought about. He probably cried because he could see the future; he could see it held nothing for him.

The conductor screamed at the darkness, calling on shapes even he could not see. He was dressed in tattered cloths, fabrics bought at cheap shops that probably never knew the touch of water since. 

"Oshodi, Oshodi, Oshodi!" came the voices of lost souls calling to lost souls. 

I watched the heads of both men and women on the bus, bent and defeated, without hopes or thoughts of the future. Heads that never found a place in the world, heads with dreams unfulfilled. We were not men, not spirits. We were half of each. Men only in our struggle to survive, spirits in the death of our hopes. It was why we didn't sleep in peace, it was why we were parked on a bus two hours before dawn. 

 © Olalekan Mikail (Stormborn)


FUOYE.