belonged to a dead man. First he checked the safe where he had kept his title deed for many years, but he could not find the documents. ‘Who am I?’ he muttered to himself and began to wander numbly through the house in search of clues.
His spirit lifted when he remembered his photo albums. It occurred to him that they could be the key to resolving his identity. In the albums were a number of photos he had taken with some of his neighbours – at birthday parties, naming ceremonies and other special occasions; photos of him and Lela, some taken on romantic outings, many more in that house of a dead man. He was ecstatic with delight.
For hours he searched desperately for the albums. He searched until sweat was running down his entire body, into his shoes, and every living part of him began to ache. Still, he searched; way past midnight. And as the city slept, gripped in one gigantic nightmare, he finally accepted, with crushing resignation, that his precious albums had been swallowed by the same mystery that erased his identity.
He would not give up. He needed to find something, anything, that connected him to a society that no longer knew him. There had to be something. He remembered the papers; he used to be front-page news before he went into exile. Frantically, he gathered all the old papers in the house and searched through them. But he couldn’t find a single mention of himself in any of them. Somehow, he had been erased from the printed pages.
Defeated and exhausted, he joined the city in sleep. When he awoke it was seven o’clock. ‘Is it possible that there is some truth in legend?’ he asked himself. For several minutes he tossed and turned in bed, and then he drifted into a state of half sleep, and lingered in that state until early evening when the frenetic noises of the city slowly began to ease.
*
Aroli paid him a visit that evening. He knocked on the door in a manner that would have woken the dead.
‘Find a seat, please,’ Taduno said awkwardly, after letting him in. ‘The place is dusty. I haven’t had time to clean.’
A huge smile remained plastered on Aroli’s face knowing Taduno must still be reeling from his loud knocking.
‘I’m sorry about this whole confusion,’ Aroli began, ‘but I’m sure things will sort themselves out.’ He shifted uncertainly in his seat. ‘How are you settling in?’
Taduno shrugged and laughed. ‘Well, I’m getting used to being a stranger.’
‘I’m sure you’ll not feel like a stranger for too long. Everybody likes you. They want you to settle in and see yourself as one of us. Let me know if you need anything. Feel free to come round to my place any time. I live three houses away. I . . .’
‘I know, Aroli,’ he interrupted him. ‘I know you live in a two-bedroom apartment in a block three houses away. I know you have a sister called Bukky, who used to live with you; then she got married and moved with her husband to Accra. I know you have a girlfriend called Janet, who you are confused about. I know your name is Rolland, but everyone calls you Aroli. I know you have a fake Mona Lisa, which you bought from Ojuelegba, hanging on the wall of your living room, above your thirty-inch Sony TV. I’ve visited your apartment many times before and you’ve visited me countless times. I know you, Aroli, I know you well, the poet/estate agent who goes around banging on people’s door with a gentle smile. How can I not know you?’ A faint smile warmed his face.
Aroli shifted uncomfortably, lost for what to say.
Without bothering to ask whether Aroli wanted a drink, he went to fetch two bottles of beer from the kitchen. He opened them and passed a bottle to Aroli, and together they drank in silence.
‘I guess you must be hungry,’ Aroli said, when they finished drinking. ‘Let’s go and get something to eat.’
They went to Mama Iyabo’s restaurant a few streets away where they ate amala and ewedu soup, and everyone gave him that polite smile normally reserved for strangers. And he smiled back at them in like manner, not because he saw them as strangers, but because he no longer knew himself.
*
He went out in the morning to get some provisions and the papers. Then he returned and locked himself away from the world for seven days and seven nights, hoping that by the time he re-emerged something would have changed about the city and that that something would have changed the city in a way that people would begin to remember him, and he would find Lela again, and all that had forced him to go into exile would have changed too, and it would be a happy homecoming for him after all.
His neighbours became very worried about him. They gathered outside his house every day for those seven days, wondering if he had done something to himself, debating whether to break down the door.
But Aroli implored them not to take a hurried decision. ‘After all,’ he told them, ‘Taduno is a nice man who would not want anything bad to happen to anyone, least of all himself.’ And so his neighbours exercised patience. And on the eighth day he emerged. And apart from the fact that his neighbours were delighted to see him, he realised that nothing had changed about the city. Nothing had changed about him either – except that he had grown a full beard.
THREE
It was while shaving off his beard that Taduno experienced his most lucid state since returning from exile; and it occurred to him that losing his identity was not so bad after all. He realised that he was no longer a man on the run from the law, as was the case before. Considering this advantage, he began to see himself as his neighbours saw him – a man with no past – and he realised that if he must find Lela and unravel the mystery that now surrounded him, he must continue to see himself that way.
During the time he had locked himself away from the world, he had agonised over Lela’s plight. He wondered why government agents arrested her, a simple teacher – a maths teacher for that matter – who worked only with equations and never involved herself with suppositions or anti-government activities.
He had always taken care not to reveal much of his life as an activist to her. Even when he had to go into exile he had simply left her a note saying ‘Where I go I know not’. Could it be that he compromised her with that simple note?
For a while this question haunted him. And then, making up his mind to find out more about Lela’s arrest, he returned to her parents’ house, where he found Judah kicking a ball on the street with a couple of kids. The boy was the lone star: he had on the trainers with red lights, the others played barefoot.
‘Judah,’ he called out.
The boy pulled out of the game and walked up to him. He had a smile on his cherubic face, unlike the last time when he wore a confused frown.
Taduno wasn’t surprised. Everyone was being so nice to him, Judah no exception. He smiled back at the boy.
‘Sorry to interrupt your game.’
‘It’s okay.’ Judah looked down at his trainers and then up at Taduno’s face, and it was clear that he still could not connect the two.
‘I want to talk to you about your sister.’
The boy nodded eagerly. ‘Have you found her?’
‘No, I have not, but I’m going to find her.’
Judah beamed. ‘Thank you!’
‘When
