Pilgrimage – A Short Story by Nnalue Chidinma, Nigeria

Iya Risika was the most popular food seller in Ileja. Every day, she sat down surrounded by huge pots and coolers, dishing out meals to customers while giving orders to the girls who worked for her. Girls who wrestled with mortars full of yam. Girls who stirred pots of boiling food or food steeped in oil. Girls whom Iya Risika later accused of bringing her bad luck because it was the day after she paid their salary that the government officials fulfilled their year-long threat of coming to hew down shops that were on the ‘government road’. ‘Those new girls I employed brought me bad luck’ was the answer she gave everyone who asked what had happened to her shop. But that was six months ago.

Now she sat at the far back of the danfo, her grandson, Tesbiu, propped on her lap while they waited for other passengers to board. Tesbiu sneezed and Iya Risika placed a hand on his back, rubbing it gently. Tesbiu was turning out to be such a smart chap at school and a good helping hand at home. Iya Risika remembered how angry she had been with Risika when the girl had fallen pregnant. Now that same baby was Iya Risika’s closest companion and today again he was going with her to Madam’s house. She would give him some little tasks to do so they would finish the work faster. She still had people to beg money from today. She needed to.

Just then, a woman opened the door to the front seat of the bus and sat close to the driver. Iya Risika didn’t hear what the woman said but the driver’s voice was loud enough for her to hear, ‘No worry. I go carry you.’ The woman seemed to sigh in relief at those words. ‘Did something happen to her car somewhere?’ Iya Risika thought. ‘She doesn’t look like the danfo type’, she said to herself. Unless the fine-looking lady was one of those people who led fake lives in this Lagos. One of those people who moved from place to place, claiming that they needed help. People who claimed that they had lost their money and needed help getting to their destination. People like Iya Risika.

Tesbiu looked out the window watching the yellow buses zoom past while Iya Risika pulled a thread off the collar of his shirt. ‘Gbagada, new garage,’ the conductor continued to call. Soon enough, other passengers trickled into the bus. ‘Madam, abeg shift small.’ It was the heavyset woman beside Iya Risika who spoke. ‘The two of us na orobo’, Iya Risika said, smiling. The other woman didn’t smile back so Iya Risika pressed herself closer to the wall of the bus to make room. She would oblige the woman. After all, the woman might just be the one to pay Iya Risika’s bus fare today.

The bus made its way down the tarred road and almost immediately, the conductor started to ask for his money. ‘Owo e da- Where’s your money?’ he asked. Before he got to her, Iya Risika tapped the woman close to her lightly, ‘Aunty, please I’m going far. Can you help me with transport?’ The woman shook her head without shifting her gaze from the game she was playing on her phone. Iya Risika turned to ask the woman in front, then said ‘thank you,’ as the woman pressed a 200 Naira note into her palm. She handed it to the conductor. Then she moved on to other passengers, telling them that she was ‘still going far’.

Iya Risika recognised some of the stares she got. She knew those eyes frowned at what she was doing. But then this was Lagos. Many people did what she was doing now. Besides she had her reasons. Good reasons too. Holy reasons in fact! Couldn’t they see she looked better than a street beggar ever could in her iro and buba? A woman like her deserved a break and a place to go to other than remain in a small Nigerian town year after year. That was why she needed their money in the first place.

‘Gbagada’, the conductor called, breaking into Iya Risika’s thoughts. She held Tesbiu as they alighted. They would walk for a few more minutes then go into the compound with the big white gate, knock on the door of flat 5, respond to Madam’s ‘Who is that?’ before being let in. Iya Risika and the boy would get to work, scrubbing and cleaning. The aroma from the meals Iya Risika would prepare would have Madam smiling satisfactorily. Then they would go from the house to a bus stop where Iya Risika would beg for more money while holding Tesbiu’s hand tightly. This was her new life. And if it could fund her dream of going to Hajj this year, it seemed like a perfectly okay life.

***

‘Iya Risika, o ma gbon rara. You are not wise at all. So after losing your shop, you still want to go to Mecca. You still want golden teeth so you can show everyone in the village that you are ‘something’. So that they can call you Alhaja abi. Alhaja without one naira. Shio.’ It was baba Risika who was talking and teasing. Iya Risika was sure that the neighbours would soon tell her children to hush while they pinned their ears to the wall, straining to hear.

‘Look Baba Risika. Don’t put your mouth in this matter o,’ she said, shaking a finger at him. ‘If person fall, shebi he go rise again?’,she asked. ‘I will attend that village meeting and I will go there with photos from Mecca and two golden teeth.’ She paused to catch her breath. ‘After I have told everybody last year that I will be the talk of town. Wallahi, no put sand sand inside my garri o. Don’t do it o’, she said. ‘Nonsense,’ Baba Risika replied. ‘Nonsense,’ he said again before leaving the room.

Iya Risika bit her lip. How could she have been so careless? He had walked into the room right after her call with mama Tobi , her best friend, who had agreed to send her some money. She could never lie past mama Tobi. At first, Iya Risika had said she needed the money for Risika whose husband had started acting funny. But when mama Tobi demanded the truth, Iya Risika had confessed that she needed money to go on the Hajj pilgrimage.

Baba Risika could shout all he wanted. She needed to do this for herself. ‘What sensible Muslim woman doesn’t want people to call her Alhaja?’ she asked. Well, if no one did, she wanted to be called that. Mama Tobi had promised to send her a sufficient amount. She didn’t say how much but Iya Risika trusted her friend. Mama Tobi, herself, could understand the desire because she was the one who had first planted stories about how every Muslimah needed to visit the holy city.

‘Ah, God, if you can do this for me, I’ll be so thankful’, Iya Risika said, rubbing her hands together in supplication. One more month and she’d be on an aircraft out of the country. Out to the vast world that God had made. Out to see that city called Mecca. And to pray too. Of course, she would pray as well. For now, she needed to work harder. This begging was bringing in quite a lot. She just needed to put in extra effort. She had survived many things. She could win at this one too. And Baba Risika would not stop her shine. Never. She couldn’t care less about him.

***

There was no work to go to today so she would sleep in and rest a bit. But before then, she needed to count her money. It had become like a ritual now, counting the money, wishing that it would increase every time that she counted. But as Iya Risika dipped her hands into her bag of clothes, she couldn’t find the big green Milo tin where all the money she had stuffed in it was. She turned over the bed, searched the cupboard and in between the few books that were in the house, yet nothing. It couldn’t be baba Risika. Did he know about the money? No, he couldn’t have known where it was.

Suddenly, her mind went to Gbenga, her youngest child. He had left the house that morning saying that he would return home with some good news. Where was her phone? Could it be him who had taken her 80,000 Naira? Was it Gbenga? Was it baba Risika? It had to be one of them. ‘Where is that phone?’, she asked herself again, pushing a chair out of the way. If it was Gbenga, she knew what all her money, all her labour would go into. And even now, she could hear his voice, loud and confident in the lottery shop, gambling one naira note after the other. ‘Gbenga’, iya Risika breathed. ‘Gbenga has killed me ooo,’ she screamed.

This short story was published in the January 2021 edition of the WSA magazine. Please click here to download.
Read – Between Friends – A Short story by Nkabinde Ntombifuthi, South Africa