The day you knew how cruel life could be was the day your younger brother, Tomiwa, was burnt to death in the middle of Yaba market.
You’ll never forget the date.
25/3/2016. 3:47pm.
It was an ordinary Friday afternoon, the kind where the sun was at its menacing best and the heat swirled in waves above the congested streets.
It was a "market day," so more than a typical day, the air was filled with the chaotic sounds of traders haggling, trucks offloading goods, danfo conductors yelling, and hawkers weaving dangerously through traffic.
You were going to buy the things you needed for resumption in school, and Tomiwa had begged you to take him with you.
You vehemently refused, but he begged constantly for days, and even your parents agreed that he could come with you.
It was bad enough that you would have to handle all the stress of the bustling market on such a busy day; why did you have to babysit your 11-year-old baby brother too?
You had a strong and fair point, but all your arguments fell on deaf ears.
So there you were that afternoon, pulling his hand through the ever-thickening crowd, wondering to yourself why so many people chose to live in Lagos.
You were sweating profusely and, even more frustrating, you couldn't find any of the things you wanted to buy.
After walking around the market for hours, going from stall to stall, you finally cleared your list.
You sighed with relief as you drank a cold sachet of pure water and relished the cool breeze that suddenly swept through the air.
For the first time that afternoon, you smiled, feeling good.
Sensing the change in your mood and probably grateful for it too, Tomiwa had snatched the thing in your hands and ran away with it, laughing.
"Brother Tunde, you can't catch meeeee."
It was a little game he liked to play.
What was even the thing he snatched? A small bag of chin chin? A bottle of LaCasera?
It's the only detail you can't remember from that day.
A small, insignificant detail that should have never been worth remembering in the first place.
What you do remember is how you chased after him through the market, laughing and shouting at him to "come back, little rascal."
It was a little game you both liked to play.
He snatches your stuff, and you chase him.
You snatch his stuff, and he chases you.
You played it everywhere you went.
If only you both knew that one of the most crowded marketplaces in Nigeria was probably not the most ideal location to engage in such an activity.
But you didn't.
It was all fun and games until you shouted those words.
"Olè! Olè!"
You had only been playing.
Those two little words were a joke.
A stupid, thoughtless joke.
You'll never understand what drove you to make such a mistake.
Was it the adrenaline that pulsed in your veins as you ran after him, or was it the laxity from the relief you felt after the cold water had cooled your insides on such a hot day?
If only you had just shut your mouth.
You didn’t know that, for weeks, traders had been losing goods in the market.
Their cash, phones, and market stalls were all being ransacked by petty thieves.
You didn’t know that the frustration had been thick in the air like a gas leak, just waiting for a single spark to set it off.
In that instant, your careless words ignited all the tension that had built up in the worst way imaginable.
The moment the market heard your voice and saw your brother running, with you in pursuit, something unholy took over them.
Chants of "Olè" (thief) echoed through the market space, followed by fingers pointing in the direction of your brother, who was oblivious as he continued to run and shriek in excitement.
You know that there's no way Tomiwa would have understood what was happening as the first pair of hands grabbed him.
He would have been confused, maybe even cowering like a deer in headlights, as more hands latched onto him and more voices assaulted him with insults in Yoruba, a language he never quite understood.
But he did try to talk. He was stammering apologies when the first fists found his face.
The more he cried and asked, "What did I do!?", the more the angry mob felt justified in their decision.
On the surface, it seemed like they were just tired of the stealing, tired of the injustice, and tired of waiting for the police to do their jobs.
But deep inside, it's obvious that they were tired of the heat of the blistering sun, tired of the worsening economy, and tired of the terrible performance of the government that had promised them "change."
They were eager for vengeance, eager to express all their anger and frustration, and in that moment, they finally had a scapegoat.
An outlet.
A "justified" channel through which they could express all their pain.
Maybe if they had been thinking straight, they would have realised the grave error they were about to make.
But it was too late.
Just like it was when you finally understood what was happening.
You had tried to push through bodies, shoving the people in front of you aside, screaming that it was a misunderstanding, but nobody listened.
Nobody even heard you.
A massive crowd had gathered by then, and the mob was desperately eager to see the fate of one of the miserable thieves that had been constituting a nuisance for so long.
Tears poured out of your eyes, the fear clawing at your heart in desperation as you tried to force your way through the horde of people that kept getting bigger by the second.
"Tomiwa! Please, he's not a thief! He's my brother, please!"
Nobody listened.
Nobody even heard you.
That was when you saw it being rolled into the midst of the crowd.
The first tire. Then the second. Then the third.
Some people had tried to save your brother.
You remember the woman in the faded ankara wrapper who fell to her knees with her hands raised and her voice trembling: “Ẹ jọ̀ọ́, ẹ dákún!" She had screamed, "Ọmọ kékéré ni!"
(Please have mercy on him; he's just a child.)
She wailed and she wailed, and God must have heard your prayers, because for a moment the mob seemed to pause to listen to her.
A few people that were around the crowd also murmured their agreements.
You wanted to cry in relief because you thought it was over.
And for a few seconds, it was.
Then someone tossed a keg into the middle of the crowd, and the angry mob seemed to remember how angry they were.
The shouts erupted again; the crowd resumed its chanting of "Òlè! Òlè!!"
That desperate fear returned back within you, and so did the tears.
You mustered all the strength your 16-year-old frame could, and you somehow managed to force yourself to the centre of the action.
You got there as they were dousing your brother with the kerosene from the keg, bathing his entire body with it repeatedly.
You tried to run to him, but firm hands held you back. You trashed and shoved and screamed, but they didn't budge at all.
"Nothing you fit do for am again," you heard a voice say to you.
That was when you and Tomiwa made eye contact.
On recognition, the fear on his face seemed to fade a bit, until he saw just how helpless you also were in the situation.
His panic-stricken expression returned and he started to struggle again.
The tears were still flowing down freely from his eyes, in perfect sync with his shouts as someone lit the first match.
The smell came first.
That thick, oily stench of burning rubber filled the air quickly.
Then Tomiwa’s voice replaced the odour in your sensations as he let out a shrill, desperate scream.
Many nights, you still remember the raw horror in his voice as he called out for you.
"Brother Tunde!! Brother Tunde, help me!"
But you couldn't.
You couldn’t help him.
You just helplessly watched as his body jerked back and forth in flames across the ground, blackening as the seconds passed.
His screams didn’t stop for a second.
They seemed to last for an eternity, piercing the air, consuming your heart from the inside.
The only thing that rivalled that horrible, horrible sound was the cheers and jeers from the crowd as they watched the scene.
Eventually, the hands that were holding you back released you, and you fell down to the ground, face flat.
After what you'll swear was a million years, you didn't hear his screams again.
But you heard the sound of people as they started to leave.
And why not? The fun was over. The wretched thief had been served justice.
Nothing else for them to do than to return back to their own lives.
You don't remember how long you were there.
You don't remember when you stopped screaming his name.
Somehow, though, you remember the sound of the sirens as they filled the air, loud and urgent.
You remember the pounding footsteps of the remainder of the market mob as they ran away from the police.
You remember how some people talked about the "burnt child" as they moved his body away from the market.
Someone later lifted you up from the ground, while another asked you what your name was, and another asked you if you knew the boy.
You gave no answers.
You just stayed there, silent and limp, as you were carried away.
It felt like a dream.
Maybe it was.
Maybe if you were to open your eyes and look, Tomiwa would still be there.
So, you did.
You didn't want to, but you did.
You turned back to look, and when you did, the blackened patch of ground where your brother had once stood confirmed that everything that had happened was indeed real.
You still live with Tomiwa's screams from that day.
They never leave you.
And so does the image of him burning in the middle of the market.
The sights and the sounds are a part of you now, especially when you dream.
Sometimes, you even perceive that foul odour again.
Yet nothing eats you up as bad as the guilt.
The guilt is a ghost that follows you everywhere.
It lingers in your thoughts. It whispers accusations in your ears. It reminds you of its presence whenever you try to be happy.
You have replayed the events of that day over and over, wishing so desperately that you could rewrite the ending.
If only you hadn’t shouted.
If only you had run faster.
If only someone had listened.
If… If… If…
Fire scares you now, and so do marketplaces. You avoid both of them as much as you can.
You wish you could avoid your parents the same way.
They never forgave you.
It was obvious, not through their words but through their silence.
Your mother’s eyes stopped meeting yours.
Your father’s voice lost all warmth when he spoke to you.
On countless nights, you would hear your mother weeping, her sorrow, an endless river.
You didn't tell them what had really happened.
They didn’t know that it was your recklessness that killed their son.
But did you even need to?
They already blamed you for his death.
And why shouldn’t they?
Tomiwa was your responsibility.
You were the ẹ̀gbọ́n.
The one tasked with leading and protecting.
And you failed.
You failed even more than you’ll ever admit to anybody, and you’ll take it to your grave.
It’s a secret that nobody else will ever know.
Except maybe Tomiwa.
On some nights, you wonder if he knows what had really happened.
If he knows what truly led to his death.
If he does, will he ever forgive you?
Will he still look at you with that deep reverence and admiration like he used to?
Will he forgive you for cutting off his life so prematurely?
Will he know that what happened was a mistake that you'll regret deeply for the rest of your life?
You hate that you'll never see him or talk to him again.
You won't be able to chase him and tackle him through the bushes.
You hate that you'll never get the answers to all these your endless questions.
And I hate it too, because I don't blame you for what happened.
Not one bit.
I have forgiven you, Brother Tunde.
I just hope that one day, you'll also forgive yourself.
Crazy things.
Anyways,
READ NEXT-
How do you write something like this and go “crazy things. Anyways???”
This made my heart ache, I wanted to stop but I had to finish it
Ebun love
I don't want to be feeling things naaa. How person go dey cry in the middle of Camp?