Back To Sender 3: ‘Run For Dear Life If Landlord Emerges Holding Something’

Track-up on our true life story, Back to sender: The landlord has made good his threat, of a quit notice, despite all my fasting-backed prayers, but ….

I stood wondering: Did I not pray enough in service today, being the concluding day of my personal three-day fast, cancelling all plans of the devil, declaring favour all around me. Was all that prayer in vain? How about all the Back to sender prayers in church? I could not think much about that.

Some tenants had begun to advise me to leave the premises; some said I should just go and lock myself inside the room; others that I should just prostrate the moment I see him appearing. In all, there were suggestions that If I sensed him bunching his left hand, much less  holding out anything at all, that I should run for my dear life. On no account should I allow him slap me, not a contact of any sort for that matter.

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Back to sender, I shouted as the thought reared up in my mind, moving closer to the exit door.

By the time we saw a huge frame lumbering out, I was clearly close to the exit. I had quickly looked back to ensure nothing and nobody was blocking me just in case…

Even from there, we could see the resoluteness in his face, in his walk. In fact, if you ever watched Ox Baker of the International Wresting Federation (IWF) fame of the late 1990s, you had seem my landlord in his elements.

His voice rang from the distance; you can rightly predict what he said: I should quit the house. But this time round, in one week!

I went blank for a moment, visibly shaking.

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The others had undertaken a survey of my room and seen and seen some strange concoctions of slashed leaves with yellowish slimy pastes on the two arms of the cushion. I was shivering like a chicken just recovered from a pond.

What is next for me? Who can actually come to my rescue? As a matter of fact, who told me to sojourn here, at my impressionable age of 26, when I should be home like my peers fighting for university admission, rather than eking out life as a store keeper in a building construction firm?

I had brooded literally all day in an empty stomach yet no clear idea came to me.

There is no tenant in the compound who is not familiar with the matter that played out between him and this elder brother of his, and if he did it to Baba Osilo, over a house left for them by their father, who not?.

One day, my landlord just picked a fight with him that left that one with terrible bruises. No one advised Baba Osilo to flee with his family and never come back…

Ah, if only I could happen by some miracle that would take me off that room, and out that compound right away, I would glorify God. I began to move, in the direction of the bus stop, as if propelled by some force, totally numb to the buzz of human and vehicular traffic all around me, and not too clear where I was headed. I had crossed several streets when I just remembered I had a school mate, who lived with his Mum within that neigbourhood.

Yes, Ayo. Some five months earlier, he had had his own traumatic experience, something that if someone had playfully wished for him, he would have cursed and shouted Back to sender!

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His entire household had rallied round, borrowed, mortgaged personal comfort and items to raise money to enable Ayo emigrate. It was the in-thing, and France was the destination. Why not US, or Canada or Australia, I wouldn’t know, but it was so unfortunate for my friend, as, the same day that he landed in Paris was the day he was deported.

But I had seen the mother pray back to sender prayers, being of white garment assembly, so what happened? Some base fellows within our clique even joked that the immigration officials did not like Ayo’s face one bit, so that the moment they sighted it, they just resolved and dispense of it expressly. They bundled the young man in the same air craft and had him brought back to Nigeria.

The shock was too much for Ayo he couldn’t return home. I had been the only option, being single, and someone he had fair knowledge of, so I welcomed him with open arms in my one room apartment…

I was almost running towards their house as the whole episode replayed in my memory, praying back to sender prayers for imagine obstacles to my anticipated favour from the mother.

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She was so touched by my story and kept moaning as I told it, but the expression I beheld on her face when she looked up afterwards, dried up all my enthusiasm.

“Ah, and I have just given out my room. Ah, Oluwa oo, what is this”, she cried.

At that instant, I could feel the whole warmed up blood in my system go cold; I did not know when I left the chair to sit on the bare floor…