A bright red viscous river is running through my grandmother’s compound as the strangled cries diminuendo to a deadened silence. The kill was halal; a razor sharp blade swept cleanly across the jugular quietened the bloodcurdling bleats of a terrified kid soon enough. The goat had been bucking against the pull of the rope around its neck as soon as it was untied from the wrought iron gate, but in a matter of minutes its limbs went limp. The red river ran everywhere, winding its way along cracks and crevices in the cement, slowing down as it pooled into the grass. An avalanche of water is poured over the sacrificial stone and the red river burst its banks; we were in a sea of blood. The butchers, I forget how many, began…
Although a grizzly sight for a six year old, there are other memories of less blood which give me the shivers more than this one. My feeling towards this ordeal is nonchalant, matter of fact, with a hint of curiosity. This is just what happens to cattle I’ve seen tied to gates of other compounds.
Grandma is perched on what I think is a log because we are under a tree. I have seen a picture of her here with two of her friends, so perhaps this is a confabulation. She is stirring the ikoko filled almost to the brim with the meat and oil. And the meat was delicious; fried goat is a party favourite.
Erọgẹdẹdindodooo the street hawker cries. To me, hers is the sound of Lagos. Floating above the throngs of car horns and murmurs of the malams. She wafts the wares through the streets, her voice carrying higher than the plantains on her head, tempting us with dodo.
Grandma uses my middle name when she calls me. I am Faitmat at Fola Agoro where we slaughter goats for Eid; where I practice salat in the parlour. I do not know the words so I just move my lips and bow when she bows. The psychedelic sixties swirls on her carpet repeat endlessly from the window down to the 1970s cocktail bar. Luminescent yellows, oranges and reds leap about my scrunched up six-year-old body when I kowtow towards Mecca.
Even when my legs and arms are stretched out as I roll around the carpet with my baby brother, who is still in Pampers, the swirls keep repeating past my fingertips until they are sliced off by the wall on one side and swallowed by the settee on the opposite. But down at the bar, the light does not reach and the colours dull. There is little there except grandma’s sajājīd and it is usually semi-partitioned off by the bamboo screen. Stuck at one third of the way across, that place behind the screen is too dark to venture.
I think I am in 1992, based on photographs and anecdotes from family. It is the first Nigeria I knew and the one I remember most often; my grandma’s giant living room in the compound on Fola Agoro Street, Suru Lere, Lagos. This memory often sits juxtaposed to those I made at 298 Greenrigg Walk, Chalkhill Estate, Wembley around the same year. On Chalkhill Estate, we did not slaughter goats for Eid. In Wembley we attended New Life Christian Centre and my name was never Faitmat, but Mummy still stopped by the halal shop to buy our meat. The costermongers in Wembley market also sang, but their songs did not promise the salty sweetness of a fried fruit, so I have never remembered their lyrics. Chalkhill is grey-washed sky behind ash-coloured seventies high-rise, corridors colour coded on the inside; Bluebird, Goldbeaters, Greenrigg and Redcliff Walks through the blocks but there are many corners where the light does not reach.
Sometimes Nigeria is in Chalkhill. In parties with fried goat, jọllọf, moin moin, salād, ẹfọ, Supermalt and the diced party dodo. The jùjú drums of King Sunny Adé’s synchro speak through the sound system and mamas slightly bent at the waist gyrate to the shek, shek, shek of the shekere. Iro and bubas shimmy downwards, beckoning money to fly from fingertips. The bass guitar riffs and the lyrics distort as the decibels radiate out of church and community centres on these Lagotian nights.
In the light of day though, Nigeria keeps quieter. It is the early nineties and its voice is muted amidst the pre-existing patwa and a young generation of Jafaicans. A grown-up man tells me that I cannot pronounce my bedroom properly; my ‘e’ is too full, my ‘o’ too long, and the tone of my voice does not rise where it should. I cannot sing English convincingly with a Yoruba tongue.
Mummy and I change my bedroom. The new, properly pronounced one is six miles away in Stanmore and much further from Fola Agoro. Mummy does not have a car and so the Lagotian nights are harder to get to.