Knocks on The Gate – Fiction by Nigerian Writer, Aliyu Yakubu

Dinner had long been served when the stranger arrived. The family had gathered in the living room, engrossed in a chatter. The stranger knocked with the kind of urgency that sent echoes into every corner of the compound.

Dr. Abdul glanced at the wall clock. It was 9.15 pm. “Who could that be?”, he wondered. He knew his loyal security guard cum gardener, Mahdi, had travelled home to see his family, and wouldn’t be back till next week.

Eight minutes crawled by silently, and no sound was heard.

Then came other rounds of hard, impatient knocks on the gate.

Abdul and his wife, Fadilah, abandoned everything, opened the door, and rushed towards the gate. Khalil, their four-year-old son came trailing behind them, while his older sister, Shamsiyya, stayed glued to a miniature laptop computer, watching cartoons – an addiction her mother had been battling to cure her of. Abdul made a mental note to deal a hard blow to the madness that had arrived at his house that night with such loudness. At the gate, they halted.

Abdul peered through the spyhole by the edge of the wicket. With the help of the light coming from a distant streetlamp, he made out a manly figure, in a white flowing gown and turban whose end came flapping on the man’s chest. A medium-sized bag hung on his shoulder.

Abdul turned round, backing the gate.

“Who is it?” Fadilah asked under her breath – a little tremor in her voice.

“One Mallam,” Abdul answered, staring vacantly at Fadilah.

“You know him?”

Abdul shrugged, shaking his head.

Silence fell upon them like a shroud upon a corpse, with Abdul wondering what to do.

He peered through the spyhole again. The man was still there – staring emptily at the gate. He seemed to have felt the presence of someone at the gate.

As though prodded by unseen hands, Abdul cherry-picked a key from the bunch in his hand and slid it into the keyhole. The wicket clicked open.

“Sannu Mallam. Lafiya?” Abdul asked, inflecting kindness into his voice to mask his irritation. He observed that the man wasn’t as old as he had thought earlier. He should be a little above four decades, he had thought, looking intently at the man.

“Lafiya, dan-u-wa,” the man stuttered, his voice filled with little panting. He momentarily placed his palm on his chest and started moving it up and down slowly as though steadying his heart beats.

“Your neighbour is hostile; I lost my way and knocked there,” he turned and pointed across to a house, “and the man came charging at me with a big stick – like he’s determined to kill me.” He stopped to catch his breath. “I ran towards the road – to this place.”

Abdul made to giggle, but quickly checked himself.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes – yes –” the man said. “My brother. He lives in this area.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ibrahim.”

“On this street?”

“Yes –”

Abdul went silent, recollecting the names of the house owners on his street. Although he’s relatively new in the area, he knew virtually all the house owners by their names.

“I don’t think your brother lives around here; he could be on the other side,” Abdul said, waving his hand in a semi-circle.

“But this is the area he lives,” the man affirmed.

Abdul sighed, slightly shaking his head.

“Why don’t you call his line?” Abdul suggested, “It’d make your search easier.”

“I don’t have a phone,” the man said, his voice morphing into a whisper.

“Toh fa!” Abdul exclaimed, looking at the man in disbelief.

Fadilah had been standing aloof all the while – her hands folded above her bosom. She found the smell of the perfume emanating from the man offensive. She had turned round twice, and on each occasion, furtively ejected a jet of saliva on to the interlocked ground.

“Give me a place to pass the night, please. I’ll search for the house in the morning; I’m sure I’ll find him,” the man pleaded, filling his voice with all the sentimentality of someone in dire straits.

“Sleep where? Who knows you here?”, thought Fadilah, staring angrily at the man.

She had listened attentively as the man spoke, and strangely felt he had something up his sleeves.

“One needs to be careful with strangers. They’d come wearing harmless faces but leave grief and sorrow in their wake. Even in the daytime, you’d just be embarking on a wild goose’s chase”, Abdul thought, smiling mildly, his hands now folded across his chest.

“You don’t have your brother’s exact address or phone number? There are many Ibrahims in this town.”

A moment of silence, punctuated by intermittent croaks of frogs in the culvert across the road fell upon them.

Abdul stood gazing at the distant streetlamp, as though conferring with it on what to do. He suddenly started moving his right foot, back and forth on the ground as though trying to get rid of something on the sole of his shoe. He abruptly turned round, looking in the direction of his wife. She turned her face away – a little frown etched on her face.

“Ba damuwa; mushiga ciki,” Abdul said, breaking the silence.

They all sauntered into the house with Khalil and Fadilah leading the procession.

Inside, Abdul shepherded the stranger towards the Boys’ Quarters – at the other end of the compound. There were three empty, self-contained rooms in the quarters. Abdul turned the door handle of the middle room and the door snapped open. Standing in the doorway, he flicked the switch on the wall. No light came. The lights had suddenly gone off.

With the light from his phone, Abdul set about looking for the kerosene lamp his last visitor from the village had used two three weeks ago. He found it beside the bed and set it burning. The darkness in the room, as though in worship, started bowing before the flames – retreating to the edges where the fingers of the fire couldn’t reach.

“Stay here,” Abdul said, turning to the man.

“I am grateful, sir,” the man said, bowing his head.

“That’s the toilet in case you want to ease yourself,” Abdul added, pointing at the door of the rest at the other end of the room. He bade the stranger, good night and walked towards the main flat. Concerned that the man might be hungry, Abdul went back, holding a bowl of jollof rice, bottled water and a plastic cup.

*

Fadilah peered emptily through the darkness about her, paralyzed with a strange fear. She had woken up minutes ago from a terrifying dream and had been sitting up on the bed, scared to even move her legs. She felt like a pack of malicious ghosts were upon the house.

Everywhere was quiet save for the faint whispers of her irregular breath, and the tentative chirping of insects in the flower bed, at the back of the window. Abdul lay beside her, snoring the night away with an air of nonchalance. She regarded his face through the darkness with her mind and made to tap him, but suddenly changed her mind.

Against the background, she picked a distant hoot of an owl – plaintive and unpleasantly strange. She shuddered at the desolation of the call, which appeared to be coming from the big locust bean tree by the road. An itch on her neck made her scratch the spot fearfully. She listened out with growing alarm, her mind idly going over what she’d seen in the dream. Hefty-hooded men pushing and yelling at her husband. And he begs them to take whatever they please and spare him and his family.

“What does this presage?”, She pondered, dissecting the dream for its meaning. “What did all this mean? The hooting owl. Owls were said to portend ill omen. Was it foretelling a calamity? Or was the dream a result of her suspicion of the stranger?

The following morning, Abdul stepped out of the house, clutching a briefcase. Shamsiyya and Khalil, in their school uniform, trailed behind him. Both had a school bag strapped to their back and held a lunch pack. Their maid, Saude, who doubled as Abdul’s distant cousin, had already arrived at the house to do her chores.
Abdul made a mental note to check up on the stranger so that they could leave together. He had much earlier, taken breakfast and a bucket of warm water to him.
Fadilah had left a little earlier. She had an early morning meeting to preside. She had been the Head of Operations at the Lafia branch of Integrity Bank Limited; the same bank she’d worked with since graduating from the university thirteen years ago.
Abdul had risen through the ranks to become a Registrar at the Specialists’ Hospital, Lafia.

As if by some telepathy, the man was standing outside, mouthing a prayer. And appeared to be counting each chant on a string of white beads and went on – the chaplet slithering between his index and middle fingers, in tune with the movement of his lips. Abdul was taken aback, seeing that the man’s turban was now covering the lower part of his face. Something akin to how Tuaregs dress. Is this man a Nigerian? He pondered – different lines of thought breaking in his head.

“You are already here?” Abdul asked, smilingly as he walked in measured, firm, confident and controlled steps towards the man.
“Yes, sir,” the stranger answered, slightly bowing his head.
Abdul stretched out his hand for a handshake. “You can come with us in the car; I’ll drop you off in the heart of the town where you can ask around.”
“No, sir. Thank you. I’ll cross to the other streets and ask; Ibrahim stays in this area.”
“Okay –”
Concerned that the man might be in low water, Abdul reached for the breast pocket of his safari suit and handed two one thousand naira notes to him.
“Again? After accommodating me?” the man said, smiling mildly, and lacing and unlacing his fingers.
“Take it, please,” Abdul pleaded, “it’s nothing.”
“I’m grateful, sir. May God reward you handsomely,” the man hunched forward and took the money.
Abdul and the children made for the car park at the other end of the compound, while the stranger ambled towards the gate.
By the time Abdul drove out of the house, the stranger had crossed to the other side of the road. He honked his horn twice and waved. The man turned around and waved back.

*

Dr Abdul’s family had gathered in the living room in the evening when a knock from the gate was heard.

“Who is it again?!” Fadilah, bristling with hostility, asked no one in particular. “Whosoever it is should come in the morning.” She reclined in the settee, issuing out a long hiss. Her lips pouted in sulk.

“Mhmhmm,” Abdul had cleared his throat to continue narrating the incident he had witnessed on his way home earlier. “As I was saying, the woman insisted that the lad must return home, and kept dragging him out of the motor park. But the boy remained resolute that he must leave town to pursue his dream of becoming a musician. And held tightly onto the window of the commuter bus.”

“Iyee…” Fadilah gaped; her right palm wound around her chin.
As though to interrupt Abdul again, another two successive knocks came. Abdul rose and made to go.

“If it’s that stranger, tell him to go and look for another place to pass the night,” Fadilah said, her face contorted with anger.

On opening the wicket, three hooded men barged into the house. Two held Abdul by his neck and hands, and one went to lock the gate. They dragged him to the living room. On seeing them, Fadilah and the children, convulsing with fear, started screaming.

“Keep quiet!” One of the men thundered.
“Baba – Baba –” Shamsiyya, still shaking vigorously, continued calling out to her father who was still in the men’s grip.
“Sshshhshhhh….” one of the men placed his index finger over his lips.
The men ordered all of them to lie on their bellies.
“I’ll shoot you if you scream,” the shortest of the three men, threatened – pointing a gun at Abdul’s head. This made Abdul’s heart burst as he blabbered, cupping his palms over his mouth.

The gun pressed lightly on the back of Abdul’s head. He discerned the pungent smell of Indian hemp mixed with another smell similar to what he’d discerned from the stranger he had accommodated the night before. And with the offending smell came gusts of dreadful possibilities turning in little whirls around his mind. Isn’t this the man who slept in this house yesterday? Perhaps They’ve been sent to kill me. He suddenly started shaking vigorously.

“Your car key. Money. Phones. Gold. Computers,” the man pressed the gun hard on Abdul’s head.
“We’ll give you all that you ask for,” Abdul stuttered, “please spare me and my family.”

Abdul thought the voice of the man standing over his head was no other than that of the stranger.
“Oya, get up!” the assailant thundered.

Abdul, in a mad panic, rose to his feet.

Having learnt to be suspicious of every one of his victim’s moves, the man speculated Abdul might try to do something. So, he grabbed him by the waist of his trousers. “Let’s go!” the man pushed Abdul forward. “If you try to do anything funny, I’ll kill you. I swear!”

Abdul knew the man meant what he had said. And he led him into the bedroom, leaving the other marauders and his wife and children in the living room.
Inside, the man allowed Abdul to function unencumbered, but at the same time, kept an eye on him. Abdul rummaged through the clothes in the wardrobe and brought out wads of money.

By the time the marauders left, Abdul’s car, phones, laptop computers and Fadilah’s casket of necklaces and earrings were gone.