He had been squinting at the man on the other side of the moving boat, trying to fix him somewhere in his past. A veil of smoke swirled from the boat’s outboard motor, and suddenly the world was covered in a film of oil. Efe took off his glasses and exhaled onto the misty lenses. He wiped them on his patterned green shirt. A smile formed on his lips as he imagined Ofure beside him, taunting and laughing at this old habit, and in his singsong voice Ofure would say, “You and this your glasses, eh. Every time you dey clean the thing like say you wan scrub gold.”
Efe would roll his eyes and retort: “See your head. Nah my fault? I no know why the glasses dey always dirty. I’m tired of cleaning it.”
How long was it now? Twenty-five years? Maybe more. He’d lost count. But coming back home now, feeling the water roll off his skin as he dipped his fingers into the river, he could hear the tremor of his past beckoning: memories of his childhood bursting into his face like a sky ignited by a garish display of colours. He could feel the surge of memories in his veins like never before.
Putting his glasses back on, he tilted his head to capture this man from his past sitting across from him, wearing a hand-crafted hat and torn shirt, staring ahead. Efe remembered him: Oga Agbo, the fisherman in Ughelli, who ferried both fish and humans, especially traders, across the river to board a bus or keke to a small market in Asaba, where the air was thick, sliceable and everything was coated in dust.
Looking at him now, with his callused feet and face flooded with wrinkles, Efe wasn’t sure the man would remember him or Ofure. Even so, would he remember ever coming to their rescue, allowing him and Ofure to jump into the safety of his boat, away from the preying arms of the boys who smoked weed at open corners in the neighbourhood while ogling older girls? Boys who charged at passers-by, especially other, weaker boys. Boys who called them homo, girl boy, just for being, for wriggling their waists, and having the elegant gait of a woman.
But the bullying and name-calling did not stop. It continued for years after he’d left Ughelli for Ibadan. In junior secondary school, a group of masked senior boys attacked him, pushing him to a corner of the school toilet, slapping and kicking him. One of them had called him a sissy, girl boy, scoffing at his body and gait. Their voices were husky, perhaps because of the masks shielding their faces, and he couldn’t tell one from the other.
“Oga Agbo,” he called out now, above the hum of the small boat’s motor.
“Ehn, my pikin!” the man said in a hoarse voice.
“Nah Efe, Efezino dey talk to you. I be Papa Oghene pikin.”
Leaning forward, Oga Agbo narrowed his eyes to a squint and shook his head. In his lifetime, he must have seen several replicas of Efe. Efe with the glasses that fell helplessly down the bridge of his nose, forcing him to constantly adjust them. Efe with the prominent forehead, dark eyes, and a face framed by neatly groomed tufts of hair at the sides.
He recalled one morning in the bathroom, Janet teasing him about resembling a monster from her favourite childhood cartoon, with a forest of hair on his head. Bringing the clippers to his face, she said she wouldn’t have him looking like a convicted felon as he journeyed to his hometown.
The night before, like every other night, they’d argued about his decision to travel home. That night a strange energy had spread through him as the words darted from his mouth, his eyes resting on her, piercing. “Janet, I’m travelling home. It’s now or never.”
“Not tonight. Not again, Efe,” she said, rising from the bed and turning to him.
It was the dream, he told her. It had always been the dream. A recurring dream which left him with a searing headache each time he was allowed to exit it. He’d seen his therapist, who’d recommended some drugs, but nothing changed. Reluctantly, he’d gone with Janet to see her pastor. His blood boiled as he shifted in his seat, staring at this man with a white collar who described his dream as demonic. That it was an evil spirit manifesting as Ofure, trying to ruin his life so that he remained a prisoner of his past. All the while Efe sat still, muffling the urge to explode in the pastor’s face. Janet sat close to him, holding his hand and nodding reverently to all the pastor was saying.
Maybe it was not his question that made her mood flip that night. Maybe it was the way he’d said those words, “What do you mean by ‘not again?” adjusting his drooping glasses to focus on her and scrunching up his mouth as though he was addressing one of his students in class.
“You’re so insensitive,” she yelled at him. “After all these years, you’re still holding onto the past. He’s gone, Efe. Ofure is gone.”
He felt something shift within him, and in a split second clambered out of the bed and raised his hand to hit her.
“Try it!” she snarled, tightening her jaw and cracking her knuckles. “Efe, hit me.”
Almost at the same time, their daughters, Ofure and Ester, dashed upstairs from the living room, and stood in the doorway, facing their parents. Ester clutched her baby doll and stared in confusion.
It was Ofure who pierced through his heart, her gaze saw straight through him, like she could hear unspoken words. He let his hands drop to his sides and walked across the room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he stared at the wall ashamed of himself. He couldn’t believe that rage had made him the kind of man who’d attempt to strike a woman.
But the next morning, she was a different person. Standing behind him as he sat facing the bathroom mirror, her warm hands on his head, she trimmed his hair to a nice low cut with clippers and cut his beard to a fine V.
“Who says being a physics professor means walking around like a madman?” The way the words spilled from her mouth, her face caught somewhere between seriousness and a budding chuckle, made him smile. She was right. At forty he’d begun to grow his hair, resembling some of his older professor colleagues at the University of Ibadan, who believed that bushy hair was synonymous with being wise. He did not understand the reason for her kindness towards him, but he was grateful. Like other times when he had hurt her by denying her portions of himself, this time, shutting her almost completely out of his world plagued with sorrow and sadness.
The wind ruffled his hair and tickled his neck, tugging him from his reverie. Herons dipped their long necks into the river. Efe sighed at the sight of a heap of rubbish—paper, bottles, plastic cans—clogging a bend and giving off an awful pong. Some shacks still stood; others had crumpled into dusty rubble, like sheep without a shepherd. He could hardly believe the decay. He remembered that the river had been their lifeline—washing, cooking, cleaning. It meant something to them. Some half-clad children dove into the river with their dog, laughing, as an older woman hunkered down with a bucket to fetch water. He breathed deeply, wondering if they knew that the river was sick, even on the verge of death, from all that rubbish forced into its mouth. Did they know that they too could fall sick from drinking this water? But what did he know? They probably were used to this decay.
They arrived on the shore. He had barely stepped off the boat when the children ignored their mothers’ warnings and scrambled around him, chanting, “Uncle, Uncle, Omamọ r’ovwọvwọ. Uncle, good evening.”
“Uncle, can I help you carry this bag?” one of them offered. And without Efe consenting, the boy pulled his backpack from his shoulder. “Uncle, what about this one? May I carry it?” another offered, dragging one of the nylon bags containing sweets and other edibles from his hand. He was grateful he’d remembered to make a quick stop at a shopping mall in Asaba. He paid the fisherman off, tipping him, and watched his face slice open with a smile. “Thank you, my pikin. God bless you,” the man said as he eased the boat back onto the river.
*
The sky melted into gold and crimson as Efe arrived at his parents’ shack. It wasn’t easy to find at first, among other worn-out and broken buildings. But he remembered theirs was missing a window, and he trusted that clue to lead him to it.
Only a gentle pull was needed and the lock gave way; rust had formed around it, but he didn’t have to smash it with stone or metal as he’d feared. Opening the door, he thought of the children—their smiles as they dispersed, each clutching sweets or biscuits—and their parents, who’d greeted him in Urohbo. The children reminded him of his girls, their innocent smiles and their eager “Thank you, daddy,” each time he brought a gift home from work. He smiled as his mind played the scene of his girls inching closer to him as they opened their presents, so that he could pat their backs.
Inside, darkness nearly swallowed the room. Frowning, he swiped open his phone, because Janet hadn’t called again, as promised. She’d only called twice: once when he was on the bus near Enugu to wish him a safe trip, and again upon arriving in Asaba, saying, “Thank God for journey mercies.” He sensed her hesitation, her breath thick on the line, as if she was gathering courage to say more, to empty everything that was sitting heavy on her heart. But she’d ended the call, promising to call again. He would call, but not tonight. His phone had just a few bars left before going silent.
He turned on his flashlight and navigated his way around the cluster of mismatched plastic chairs to the far corner of the room. The beam captured an old portrait of his parents hanging on the wall. In the picture, his father wore a wide-collared shirt tucked in flared bongo trousers, while his mother, a blouse and a wrapper. He stood with one arm perched on his waist and the other slung across his mother’s shoulders. A small smile sat on her face, making her look peaceful beside his father’s wide grin.
He wondered why his mother hadn’t taken the picture with her when they left for her sister’s place in Ibadan. Maybe, it had slipped her mind. He remembered sitting on one of the chairs at the side of the room, tears snaking down his face as he stared at his mother. He remembered watching her tug at the smallness of their lives—the few shoes, clothes, cutlery, the broom—and cram them into two Ghana-must-go bags, with the urgency of someone hurling rotten food into a dumpster. Every so often, she paused to attend to him, holding his shoulders, and wiping his nose with her wrapper. Yet, Efe could imagine her trying to cloak the edge in her voice as she said, “E neva do? Efe, it’s enough. We’re only travelling, we’re not going to die. Soon, you will meet new people. You will make a new friend.” And then she looked away, briefly, glancing at a corner, as though she were contemplating her next words. “Soon, you will forget everything about this place.”
But Efe had no desire to relocate to another state, to meet new friends; he wished to remain here, with Ofure. Still, he felt his mother’s solemn posture as she turned away from him was her way of repressing the truth, the incident of that Saturday evening. It happened here. His father had been out since morning. The women, including Efe’s mother, had stormed the church for their weekend prayer meeting. So, Efe and Ofure could not use their usual hideout: behind the Mountain of Fire Church. “She’ll take longer in the church, today,” Efe told Ofure, whose eyes were flecked in worry.
“How do you know?” Ofure said, standing by the entrance door, fiddling with his worn shirt.
“I just know. Trust me.”
Tangled up on the bed, they began to kiss and fondle each other until they became hard. And barely a minute later, the door groaned open. His mother flounced in. “Blood of Jesus!” she screamed. And Efe would struggle to erase the memory of that day from his mind, the disgust plastered on his mother’s face as she stood there in shock, her arms by her side as though they’d lost their vitality; as Ofure picked up his clothes and scurried off; as she pounced on Efe, smacking his face with her bible until blood pooled in his mouth, casting out the spirit of homosexuality that had possessed him.
Although his father did not hit him like his mother, Efe would have preferred it to his father’s silence that followed him around the house like a presence. Papa barely looked at him when they were together, and if he ever flicked an eye toward him, there was always something deeply broken in his gaze. And Efe walked around the house like a mouse, too conscious and afraid of his parents, trying to link every change in their voice and their contorted facial expressions to that evening.
That night, through the window, he’d overheard his father telling Oga Agbo to come before the break of dawn to ferry them across the river to Asaba, where they’d board a bus heading to Ibadan. He was surprised that his father—who rarely listened to his mother’s suggestions—had agreed to relocate to Aunty Gloria’s house.
His phone buzzed. It was a message from MTN. He noticed the battery level had dropped to fifteen percent. He found the kerosene lamp and a matchbox sitting on a table beside the window to his left. As he reached for them, something shifted in the darkness. His heart rumbled—but he heaved a sigh as he noticed a rat scurrying from its hideout into a cluster of dirty clothes. Soon, the room was illuminated by the dim orange glow of the lit lamp.
The moon was out already, slipping into the room through the window. Efe kept shifting in his seat, trying to find a suitable sleeping posture, some calm for his body, but there was no mattress. It wasn’t just his body that craved stillness, but his mind, too, as it vacillated between wakefulness and sleep.
At one point, he was a boy of thirteen again, and his mother was her old self, a woman full of hopes, fears and worries for the future. She was sitting beside a charcoal stove blowing hard on its embers until they turned red hot. Efe sat on the ground, legs stretched out, only a thin gap separating him from his friend Ofure, who sat with folded legs. They were examining their towering shadows on the wall behind them, moving their hands and feet this way and that to gauge who was taller and chuckling at the silliness of this game. Minutes later, Efe noticed his mother’s stern gaze resting on them, and he pulled further from Ofure. It was only a matter of seconds before she snapped, “Time never reach for una play to end? Efezino! You know go come help your mama cook?” When he failed to heed her call, she turned to Ofure, shoving out a hand to indicate playtime was over, and at once he sped homeward.
The next minute, he was curled up beside Ofure in their usual hideout, under the mango tree. They lay on a carpet of dry leaves and twigs. And under the glare of a full moon and the bright light pouring out of the church, they kissed and touched each other, moaning. Sated, Ofure smiled his deep smile, nuzzling up to Efe and tugging at the strands of hair sprouting from his jaw.
“Kai, it’s painful.” Efe frowned.
“Sorry, ehn. No vex. But when did you start to grow beards? See your small face. You’re becoming a man o.”
Ofure laughed in a way that made Efe laugh, too. Was Ofure right? Was he growing into a man, perhaps like his father? He loved being a child and he wished he could stay that way forever, unburdened by the complexities of adulthood. His father toiled every day, trying to smooth the creases in their lives, crumpled by poverty. His inability to achieve this sometimes drove him into a puddle of frustration and anger. Unlike his mother’s relatives, who were comparatively well off, his father came from a household where poverty was the common thread. Yet, Efe wondered why Papa didn’t ask his mother’s people for help when he clearly needed it.
In his dream, Efe felt the chair rattle. He opened his eyes to someone yanking it out of the room and into the open compound. A strange force lifted him off the ground and planted him on the thorny teeth of a rock, where he watched the river rage and tower over the shanties, as the people milled about, looking for a place to hide. His heart hammered against his chest. The river, like a beast, swept down on the town. He saw Ofure flailing in the water, his screams intermittently swallowed by the river. Efe tried to move but he was bound by an invisible force. No matter how hard he shouted, begging Ofure to take his hand, his voice was only a distant cry.
*
He woke the following morning with pain drilling through his head and the muscles of his legs locked in place. It took a deliberate, continuous spanking of his legs to wake them up. Massaging his temples, he reached for the drugs in his backpack. He looked around for a cup and found one on the floor close to the cluster of dirty clothes.
He’d barely slid out of the chair when the smell of banga soup peppered his nose. He patted his growling stomach. It was a ritual at home for his mother to prepare banga soup for dinner. He knew when she was done because he was always with her in the kitchen, assisting in cutting the onions into perfect rings or slicing the vegetables.
“Oya, Efe, food don ready, go wash plate,” she would instruct him, and he’d feign a stomach upset, insisting he needed to use the toilet. She shook her head, as though sensing what he was up to.
Efe would return some minutes later—with Ofure leaning by the kitchen door—holding out a big empty flask and begging her to add some food, at least a little, for Ofure and his mother because they had only eaten once that day, in the morning. And his mother, perhaps moved by compassion, would fill up both sections of the flask with banga and pounded yam.
For a moment, he felt he had walked into an old world, with an invisible hand nudging him down a familiar path, unwrapping layers of memory. He squinted as the sun streamed into the room, revealing the cobwebs hanging at a corner of the ceiling, a pair of torn sandals on the floor near the door. His father used to wear them to work at the rig, until they ran out of shine and usefulness. He’d refused to change them, despite his mother’s pleas, until she bought him a brand-new pair from Asaba.
“E go better,” was his father’s slogan. Until things got worse, to the point that they could only afford a single meal for a whole day.
His parents’ quarrels appeared to lack concreteness. One minute they’d be raising their voices at each other: she would lament how stubborn his father was, unyielding to her suggestions. “Which kind man you be, Oghene? You don’t even want me to call my sister to help us.”
“Hannah, nah by force to beg your sister for help?”
Next minute, Efe would hear his mother’s moans from outside their window where he sat on the ground. Like something broken: “Oghene, hard, fuck me. Don’t stop.”
Now, he must step outside to get a bag of sachet water. But the knock on the door came nanoseconds after he’d transferred his wallet to his trouser pocket. It was subtle, as though the door swallowed the sound. His heart flipped in his chest. He was certainly not expecting anyone, and not at this time. He hesitated, hoping whoever was behind the door would turn around and leave. But the knock came again, this time a pitch higher.
“Efe! Efezino!” It was more than just a female voice; there was something strangely maternal about it. As though it was his mother calling from the world of the dead. Who was this woman who knew his name? Why did she sound like his mother?
He collected himself and opened the door. Cold air stung his face, but he was more startled by this strange woman standing by the doorway, her lips spread out in a smile, greeting him. She wore a faded blue blouse and wound a wrapper around her waist. Her nose was accentuated but made beautiful by her striking black eyes. He was struggling to find her in his memory. “Good morning,” he said.
“Efe, Ahn-ahn now, at least let me come in.”
He stepped aside as she sashayed into the room, startled by the fondness in her tone, as though they had been close in a previous life. She stood beside the window, her hands clasped together, scanning the room as if looking for a lost item. Arms folded, he leaned against the closed door, waiting for her to disclose her identity.
She turned to him. “The way you dey look me so, you know remember me?”
His phone jingled in his pocket, and he hoped it was Janet. He would call her back once he charged it. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember you, ma.”
“Seriously? Nah me be Mama Vero, your mother’s friend.”
Quite frankly, his mother had had hordes of friends, including women from the market where she sold her products and those belonging to the church. Women who sometimes visited his mother, wearing turbans on their heads and carrying bibles wedged under their armpits. They wore solemn faces and prayed for hours, casting and binding the spirit of poverty that hovered in the air.
“Ok. Forgive me, ma. It’s been a long time.” He was looking above her shoulder at the crack on the wall.
“Do you remember Vero, my daughter?” she said, tapping a hand on her chest.
He apologised again—he could not remember her or any Vero.
The woman reached into her blouse and pulled out an old photograph. Leaning into him, she shoved the picture in his face: “Ok, see my pikin. See my Vero.”
He grew uncomfortable near her. He didn’t speak. Only nodded. His foul breath hung heavy beneath his nose, and he hoped she didn’t notice.
“Oh,” he said, after seeing the picture, moving away from her slowly.
In it, he stood beside a grinning Vero, their mothers standing behind them, smiling. But he was not smiling. Even now, he remembered scrunching his face on purpose before the camera clicked, because his mother had forced him to take a picture with Vero and her mother.
Although Vero was beautiful, gifted with her mother’s distinctive facial features, he did not like her. He did not like the way she clung to him in church as though they shared the same skin. Nor the way she held his hand when the pastor instructed them to greet one another in the love of Christ. He hated the way she smiled too widely, almost reverently each time his mother called her his wife. Days later at school, when he told Ofure during breaktime, they laughed, Ofure teasing him about being Vero’s husband. He was grateful that Ofure took it all with a lightness of heart and didn’t raise an eyebrow at him. Their laughter unravelled the knot of anxiety lodged in his chest.
He raised an eyebrow. “I think I remember.” The woman smiled. He asked about Vero.
“She dey fine o. Vero is now a big girl. She just finish youth service last year and we are praying for better job for her.” She smiled—the kind of smile partly masked, yet offering titbits of its true intent.
Sensing the woman’s intention, he brushed back his hair with his palm, exposing the ring on his finger. A declaration of his unavailability. The woman’s face collapsed into a frown.
After an awkward moment of silence, as he tried not to meet her gaze, she asked about his parents, especially his mother. His parents, he told her, died some years ago.
“Kai! Eyah! Hannah my friend, I miss you die, but Papa God knows best.” She shook her head and heaved her shoulders. “How are you? What brought you home?”
“I came to get some of my parents’ things.” He surprised himself by how fast the lie slipped from his lips.
“Ok. Welcome. Welcome. If you need anything, my place dey behind your house.”
*
The sun was awake already, furiously baking his scalp until his forehead glistened with sweat. Perhaps he should have waited for the cooler evening before stepping out. But the anxiety grew in his chest. As he trudged on, he kicked the hot sand from his sandals. It had been a long time; the old routes were unclear, but he trusted his instincts to lead him on.
He walked past a small garri factory on his left, where a group of women milled about, some frying grains of garri over a hot kiln. Others filling up thick sacks with washed cassava tubers, their chatty voices rising above the angry hum of the grinding machine. At a corner of the building, some men sat on a long bench hunched over a game of drafts, chatting. He greeted them, but they were buried in their conversation. He greeted the women, who chorused, “Omamọ urhiọke!”
He headed down the dirt road behind the Mountain of Fire church, where memory stirred. Crouching under the mango tree, he felt the earth below him, gathering morsels of sand and dry leaves into his palm. He inhaled the leaves, trying to catch the trace of the residual memories; the scent of Ofure and the times spent together.
They’d spent many evenings here, but the one that stood out was the evening when they lay on the cold ground, swaddled in each other’s arms, sharing their dreams and aspirations and watching the starless sky. They promised that they would always be there for each other. They promised that they would always be there for each other until the separation.
A wave of shock washed over him as he arrived at his destination. It’s not possible, he thought. How was it that Ofure’s shack was still there, standing in place, although its walls were dressed in cracks? Hadn’t the river guzzled up everything, including the shack? he said to himself, as if he were not living in the moment. As if something had upended his dream, distorting its original configuration.
He spotted a huge hole in the roof and remembered the black birds that always swooped down around it, dipping their necks into the void as if looking for grains. Ofure and Efe, sitting at the foot of the tree facing Ofure’s shack, would fling stones at them as they lifted into the sky.
It was always a delight for Efe to hear Ofure talk about his plans, to watch the network of veins on his face amplify the seriousness of his voice. “When I become rich, I will build a big house in Asaba or Lagos for mama, and there will be plenty food everywhere. She no go cry again and hunger no go deal with our stomach.” He was always brimming with strange energy that left Efe drunk with excitement, as though he could already see the future and could not wait to claim it.
Efe’s phone rang, jolting him out of his thoughts. He pulled it out of his pocket. It was Janet.
He tucked the phone back in, allowing it to ring until it stopped. He was not in the mood to talk to her now. Again, he assured himself that he would call her back, when the fog in his head cleared.
Edging closer to the door of the shack, he noted the padlock, huge and rusty. He gazed at the shacks scattered around, silent, as though the occupants had deserted them. He turned to see a woman and a child prancing up the little bush path behind him. A basin of harvested crops was balanced on the woman’s head, and the boy held a dirty plaything to his chest. She greeted him, and as she was about to pass, he touched her hand.
“Good afternoon, sister. Abeg, no vex. I dey look for the people wey get this house.”
She shot him a weird look. “Why you dey look for them?”
There was a gathering in his stomach, a mixture of feelings he couldn’t name. “Ehm… Ehm… I be friend.”
“Oga, nobody dey here again. Who no know say Ofure and him mama don die since? Abi you be stranger?” He fell silent, his heart melting in his chest but he managed to steel himself and ask how they died, as though his mother hadn’t called to inform him about it a week before she died, his chest thumping as she called his name in a distressed voice.
Now, the woman pouted her lips and crossed her hands. “Hmm… One night as them they sleep, one big snake enter their house bite them. Nah so that poor woman and her son, wey just get job for Lagos, take die. Death no fair o.”
He thanked the woman, although he was suddenly disenchanted by everything. The woman kept talking, but her voice reached him like a distant echo.
When he finally slipped back into his mind, the woman was no longer within eyeshot. He staggered towards the tree and hit the ground. God knows he had awaited a miracle, a sign that his dream was finally growing flesh and bones. But what did he see in the woman’s eyes when she asked why he was so eager to know about their whereabouts? Was it a flicker of hope or a wave of sadness? Was it the realisation that what he sought was already out of reach? Was it better to leave the past where it belonged? Did prying open sealed cracks only lead to dire consequences?
The phone rang. He slipped it out of his pocket. It was Janet. Letting it slide to the ground, he buried his face in his palms and wept. He wasn’t given the space for closure, to end things properly with Ofure. The journey had ended but not for him. He was undone and didn’t know how to return to the present. At once, his chest became a bag of pain, rage and sadness that hunched his back as he recalled the evenings spent under the mango tree, Ofure’s smile, the promise to always be there for each other. He cried the more, mourning the dreams stripped of their wings and reduced to dust.
This story is an excerpt from While the World Slept, published by Win’s Books Publishing (2026).
In this collection of ten poignant short stories set in Nigeria, Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi delves into the complexities of identity, community and social justice, offering a profound exploration of personal and social struggles.