For A…
My life—my real life—started when a lady walked into it, a beautiful stranger in a perfect pink hijab, and, yes, I know how that sounds. My friend Olajide would snort and convey the kind of multi-pronged disgust I rely on him to covey. One prong of disgust at the whole idea of a lady changing a man’s life and the other prong of disgust for the inaccuracy of saying my life began at the age of twenty when I first saw her over two years ago. He would cap it up with “yeye”.
I first saw her one Wednesday afternoon at the campus mosque while performing ablution. She was like something out of a dream. She was in company of her brother. My life changed completely after that encounter. She attacked my whole immune system and took control of every part of my being. I instantly lost my senses of reasoning-my heart, my brain and mind were all at lost. Jack Sparrow’s craziness in “Pirates of the Caribbean” was nothing compared to my own brand of insanity.
She turned me into an emergency poet. I compose poems to her even in a middle of a lecture in class, in a taxi going home, in the night and even in my dreams. She became my addiction, worse than the addiction of a drug addict to drugs. After school every day, I pass through her lecture hall deliberately just to catch a glimpse of her. She truly became my addiction, my anything and everything.
I first spoke to her one beautiful Friday. Her nearness had left me a bit shaken. My Lord, she was “beautiful” in all sense of the word. But it wasn’t that. Beautiful people were everywhere. It was her eyes and the magic they held. Who is this lady and why was I being pulled towards her? Indeed I’ve been charmed by everything about this lady. I need her in my life; I need her in every part of it because she is needful.
There is so lively an image of her imprinted in my mind that I think of her too often. I fear for my peace of mind, and too often fear for my sanity. I want to tell her how I feel and also that she is the main character in the movie I watch every time I see the inside of my eyelids. I feel like a condemned criminal in a prison cell without her in my life every second. Had I better stay here and do nothing, or go down and do less? Inclination tells me to go, receive my sentence and no longer in suspense. But reason says if you do and your attempt proves unsuccessful, you will be ten times more wretched than ever.
She keeps getting better by each day- so better that her beauty, elegance, class, and “effizy” can make any reasonable man confused and lost for words to say. The second time we spoke, I had polished in my mind the words I would say to her, but when the time came, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder and interrupted with pauses of uncommon length, were the visible marks of my strange confusion but I love this feeling and every other feeling that has to do with her because she is my universe in ecstatic motion.
Just like Rumi said, from the beginning of my life I have been looking for her face, but now I’ve found it. I see nothing in my eyes but her face. I hear nothing in my ears but her voice. I smell nothing through my nostrils but her beautiful fragrance. She has the best of me now and the rest of the world can share the rest of me. I can close my eyes any day anytime and run to her straight without missing way because she’s my road, compass and destination all at the same time.
If I say she is beautiful, it is a statement of fact- just like a cell is a basic building block of biological organism. I was never good at biology during my secondary school days as such she must teach me anatomy, biochemistry, physiology and other related courses. I promise to be good a student. In every scheme of happiness, she is placed in the fore-front of the picture, as the principal figure. Take that away, and it is not picture for me.
I sat on my reading table some days back reading a book on Thomas Jefferson, former President of the United State of America. As a young man, Jefferson was madly in love with a lady called Belinda. Out of frustration, he told his best friend and confidant that “If Belinda will not accept my service, it shall never be offered to another”. Let me say this in salient whispers, our own story will never reach to this extent because by the will of the Owner of heavens and earth, you will accept my own service. With you by my side, with all that uprightness and sensibility which promises to ensure you the great happiness mortals are capable of enjoying to the best of my ability. Together we are complete like the river where river niger and benue meets or together like a single grain of sand. I care!!!
Inspired by Marisa de los Santos‘s novel “Love walked in”
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