I looked into Talatu’s big round eyes as we stood in front of her father’s house on Tinna Street in the city of Jos and my heart bleed. ‘Don’t do this,’ I said. ‘Please, don’t do this.’ Talatu sighed and rolled her eyes in a way that says, you just don't get it, do you? ‘There is no point going over this again,’ she said. ‘It’s out of my hands. His parents have met mine and they have agreed to go ahead with the wedding. There is nothing I can do about it.’ ‘But you love me,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘Why do you want to marry him?’ ‘You don’t have a job,’ Talatu said, her voice rising. ‘How many times do we have talk about this? It’s over two years and you keep telling me the same thing. How do we get married if you don’t have a job? How do we afford a wedding? And you know my parents’ stand on this: we can’t get married if none of us has a job. So don’t blame me—’ ‘We are soul mates! We share the same birthdays, same genotype...and nobody can love you the way I do. You know that

The call met me at breakfast, and Eric’s name showed up on the phone’s screen. I spoke to Eric two days ago and our conversation had held little of my interest and I wasn’t in the mood to continue from where we stopped. What does he want? I thought, looking at the phone. I wasn’t ready to hear about his successes with Lagos girls. My relationship problem was already too big for me to handle. Besides, my heart was as broken as a politician’s promise, and was in no mood for other people’s issues. I sat back and allowed the phone to ring through. If it’s important—and there is hardly anything important coming from Eric apart from girls’ issues and his plans to get abroad—he will call again. The phone began to ring again. I took another bite of the bread in my hand and quickly poured the black tea into my mouth. I shot straight up and spilled the contents of my mouth out, spraying it over the dining table. I had forgotten that the tea just came out of the pot and still very hot. I st

Mom and I left home before my two brothers, Jasper and Yusuf, got home. Mom insisted on following me to the park as if I was a teenager, giving the excuse she wanted to get greens in Terminus. I had the feeling she wanted to make sure I wasn’t going somewhere else from Lagos. We got into a tricycle at Fototech Junction and I send a text to Eric telling him I was taking off that night and that he should pick me up the next morning. I got an instant reply: Great! See you tomorrow. I felt a tinge of uncertainty again and I wondered if I was doing the right thing. But the thought of Talatu and the doctor getting married ran across my mind and pushed every doubt out. This was the only hope I had left to counter the doctor from taking Talatu to the UK. Mom and I sat in silence like strangers while the tricycle sped toward Tafawa Balewa Street. ‘Did you pick your credentials?’ mom asked. ‘Yes.’ We sat in another silence listening to the tricycle’s engine until we got to the motor park.

We got to Eric’s house on Alpha Beach on the Lagos Island about an hour later. It was a one room apartment attached to a huge uncompleted building that looked like a warehouse. A settee lined the wall of the little room while a gigantic, old TV sat facing it. A mattress lay on the carpet to the left-hand side of the room. Two bags lined the bottom of the unmade mattress and a couple of trousers and shirts hung by the window pane; no wardrobe was in sight. I looked up and saw two huge spiders hanging on the ceiling, their well-established webs giving away the secret that they had not been disturbed for the last one year. The smell of dirty socks and unaired shoes hovered over the room. ‘Welcome to my bunk,’ Eric said, pulling his shoes off before stepping on the carpet. ‘Make yourself comfortable. The toilet and the kitchen are the doors you saw outside before we got in.’ He pointed to the bottom of the mattress. ‘Keep your bag at the bag station over there.’ He sat on the settee and p

‘Tolu started it all,’ Eric said. ‘He met this guy from the UK online. Tolu was posing as a merchant from Nigeria selling Tin. This guy fell for Tolu’s gimmick and wanted to be part of it. He asked for samples and Tolu sent some to him. The guy got the sample, confirmed that it was the right quality and they struck a deal for him to buy a container load. He was meant to pay a third of the money last week, but he mailed and said there was a change in the plan: he was coming to Nigeria to see Tolu and to verify the quantity and quality before it’s shipped out.’ Eric paused. ‘Tolu tried to dissuade him, promising to send more samples. But the man insisted on coming. Tolu told him it wasn’t safe to come because of the high incidence of foreigner’s kidnapping, but the man was adamant and insisted to come or the deal was off. That’s when Tolu came to me with the problem, saying he was cutting off all communications with the guy and abandoning the deal. But I saw the opportunity and I told T