Harmattan rolled in with much ceremony, mid-December when we’d begun to think it’d never come. That disquieting fog and cold and scratchy feeling in the air had eluded us until January last year, setting in fresh on the first as I trudged home from church miserably, clutching at the inadequate scarf that I’d torn off my head to protect my shoulders from the biting cold. It was 1 am, and I’d performed my obligatory good Nigerian child duty of attending the crossover service with my mother. She’d all but bundled me into her car, but I’d mostly complied. God would mark my name in the register of people who’d spent 11:59 pm to 12:00 am with him.
At 12, the people shared godly Happy New Year greetings and then by 1 am, they were seated again to continue the service — marching forward until 5 am for the especially devout. I am not in the number, so at the earliest opportunity, I slunk away from the smiling faces guarding questioning eyes that saw 10-year-old me in this impostor’s body and clothes and walked the 30-minute walk to my mother’s house, the sharp air cutting my lips and tongue and lungs.
The sermon still echoed in my head, reverberating, lodged firmly into my ears by the speaker I’d had the misfortune of sitting beside.
“It is a new year! A new season! Your turnaround is here, and what do you need to access it? All you need to do is ask. The Lord has done it! What has he done? Prophesy!”
I’d forgotten all about Harmattan this year until the skies darkened on the 10th, and we thought, “Ah? this weather in December?”
And then the darkness passed after teasing half the day. It will rain? Apparently not. But it did not part for the sun. The fog raced to obscure it before its heat could reach us, and so the light was gentle, and a dry breeze materialised from nowhere. Or from wherever it hid when its turn had not come yet.
Just last week, the heat was scorching and wet, and you could see the heat haze dancing in the air — those mirage-like wavy lines, beyond the sweat dripping down your arm. Now, the harmattan nights are deeper and darker and heavier, and the cold is the least of it. And the days, away from morning and before night rolls around again, are their own special brand of hot, because the heat never fully leaves us here.
It’s hard to be happy when the weather is like this. When the very air holds the sense and smell of foreboding. Like a widening crack.
Why can’t it be mid-January again? When the collective who have lost their minds regain it. When the streets are emptier, the festive madness has ceased, and the frigid air and dust have settled into normalcy, no longer worthy of the commentary of the early days about how harmattan has really come oh and whether we’d rather the wet heat or this dry heat.
The desire to knock my head against a wall increases with the wind and the garish red and green, headache-inducing decorations and light displays on every standing tree, every lying stoop.
That sizzle in the air put there by the people is the worst effect of this season. There’s Christmas, the quote-unquote, most wonderful time of the year. There’s December in Lagos, end-of-year madness with the overpriced everything, the returnees, and the traffic. Lagos is thimble-sized and packed full daily, but just you wait until December.
There’s the 50-million-things-going-on-at-once and family everything and the solemnity of reflection. One year gone and what is there to show for it? You must have something. You better have something. Then there’s the New Year and resolutions and yearning tinged with melancholy and some self-loathing.
My long-standing grievances aside, this year is going to be different. Because she’s coming home.
Bessie said to wait by the phone. By the stroke of two, and not a second later, she’d call me. We’d talk, and everything would make sense. The murkiness that had settled like a thick film; no, like 5 am harmattan fog, over my life would lift. Her voice would drive the musk out of my house in a sharp gust of fresh breeze and the smell of wet grass and light sweeping through the place. The mould would sense her presence and flee.
“Tomorrow, 2 pm. I’ll call you then. And we’ll talk.”
Her text lit up my screen by 11-ish on Sunday night, December 25th. The first text from her in a month. I’d been nursing a headache, cradling a cup of half-finished drink in my hand and drifting off into what would certainly be unfulfilling sleep.
How had I spent the day? I can’t remember most of it, sneaking generous gulps of gin between church and our annual (extended) family Christmas party. I needed to go through the day armed with indifference; senses numbed, reactions slowed.
“So,” half smirk, “Won’t you tell your aunty about your boyfriend?” in front of the league of aunts, cousins, big mummies, and grandmas.
Cue spotlight.
My reactions sufficiently dulled and slowed, I’d give them my biggest, brightest smile and charm them to bits and pieces. Tell them how I’m too busy with my life for that right now. My eye is on the prize ma’s. I’m focusing on work and getting my life together, and such. They’d take it with a few objections and reminders that the liberty of time to do so was a privilege that I was quickly losing.
Time moved in a drag like the laborious dripping of water out of a leaking tap, and nostalgia from my childhood — memories littered all around my grandfather’s sprawling house, came rushing back.
Seeing that text, I had giddy first-day flashbacks of Bessie; arsenal jersey, blue jean thigh-length shorts, mid-calf socks, Nike slides, face-framing boyband length locs, heaven-sent smile, and soft, firm hands.
She’d led me to the front, near dragging me through a sea of protesting bodies and then she’d lodged me firmly in front of the stage, standing behind me to secure our spot, her hands at my sides, one hand holding the gate in front of me that separated us from the elevated stage, the other casually resting on my lower belly.
She’d whispered, breath hot in my ear, chest against my back, “You have the second best view at this show” while looking beyond my eyes and into my soul. Then we’d swayed to Wavy The Creator, and Bessie sang Stella Riddim to me.
I fell through ceilings and floors.
That was two years ago; a good time. The best time. We’d been inseparable the entire season.
She loved Harmattan because it wasn’t winter, and she was home. Her excitement was infectious, and my age-long December animosity melted away in her presence.
I woke up without realising I’d even been asleep, and then it was two.
We’d kept in touch for an entire year when she left. Daily calls, and texts and pictures. We made it work through a girlfriend and a very intense fling (on her end, I persevered; mostly). We held together because soon, December would come again, and we would try to recreate the magic that had us professing love three days in.
But then she did not come, and to meet disappointment at the end of longing and pining and waiting takes its toll.
The next year was not the same. We kept in touch, tugging at each other’s hearts whenever the opportunity presented itself but going on with our very separate lives otherwise. Feigning casual conversation when my heart still did flips when she spoke to me low and slow.
In my stiffest voice, saliva lodged in my throat;
“Hello Bessie, hi, how are you?”
“Hi, baby. I’m sorry, I know I’m more than a little late, and I have much explaining to do. I’ve missed Christmas and the large part of a year, and then a month. But most of all, I’ve missed you.”
And all was instantly right with the world.
“I missed you too.”
She sighed with relief and then laughed, and it sounded to me like angels singing.
“I was scared when you answered me in your business casual voice.”
She’d be back on the 28th, last-minute ticket purchase. She’d failed a semester, and she was devastated by it. She had to come home to plot out her next step because the boot of immigration delivered a swift kick. It’d been a hard year, and then month.
I couldn’t bear it; that I hadn’t been there for her in my limited way, in a box, on a screen, an ocean away. She told me it was fine. Too much was going on. She couldn’t handle my worry, my constant welfare check-ins. But she’d seen a silver lining. She could come home, to me. To her friends and her adorable step-brother and the beach, and to December madness.
I could hear the jingle in the bells, and better late than never. I’d picked her up from the airport, two days before her family expected her, and even MM2 wore an attempt at Christmas spirit, but never mind that I was brimming with it.
We’d spent the 72 hours between that December 25th call and her arrival, save the six hours spent on her flight, on the phone, sleeping and waking together. And planning. Wishing and dreaming together.
I remained on the phone with her while she worked her final day, and the store she worked at played Mariah Carey's Christmas songs all through the 4/4 hour shifts on a loop.
As I drove to pick her up from the airport, I hummed ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’, playing that very album. The air felt just right, crisp and bare with fulfilled promise; like washing winds ushering in newness, reflection, an appreciation for life, and love, and enjoyment.
I waited for her at arrivals, and she swaggered out of the gate in her widest smile; black joggers, a blue tank top, shoulder — no; back length locs, twinkle in her eye, racing to me with one arm spread wide, the other dragging two suitcases.
Her hug was electric as always. And as we stood there in each other’s arms too long, attracting side glances and stares, our long list of December plans laid out in front of us; I understood. I finally felt my own dose of Christmas spirit, like the first half of a bottle of wine — purposeful and pleasantly indulgent.
the emotional journey is so real, felt like i was there every step of the way