Catching Butterflies
By Uba Franklin
Copyright 2012 Uba Franklin
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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August, 1996
The cream blue 504 Airport taxi was making close to 180 kmh on the road to Zaria. It was drizzling lightly that August morning and the asphalt glistened as the car zipped through time. Traffic was light and the fast lane indulged speed.
Kano… this was her first time in the ancient city of Kano and the atmosphere that greeted Lile on arrival at the Kano International Airport was quite an anti-climax of her expectations. She might as well have been in Lagos with its cacophony of touts, beggars and harassed travelers.
Lile Yusuf reclined in the back of the car, alone and cozy in the warmth of the car, her thought miles away in Zaria with Ibrahim, her boyfriend. Tomorrow was her birthday and she had traveled all the way from Lagos this morning on the first flight, to pay him a surprise visit.
Lile smiled with anticipation. Ibrahim would be astonished. Only yesterday he had called to wish her a lovely birthday and had wished she were in Zaria to share her birthday with him.
From her handbag Lile brought out a piece of paper to jot down the gifts and list of shopping items she intended to purchase once in Zaria with Ibrahim. First she would have to convert some dollars to naira, but Ibrahim would know the best place. For a long time Lile was silent and contemplative as she made up a list of things to buy, and then she brought out an initial sum of five hundred and fifty dollars and kept this and the list in her shirt pocket. That should fetch at least N50, 000 in the black market.
Suddenly the car started losing speed and Lile was pulled back to the present. A tollgate was approaching and the driver wound down his side window to pay the toll fee. The car was immediately crowded with hawkers plying their wares in the rain. From bread to compact discs, they sold everything and were pushing at the window to catch madam’s attention.
Looking at them in the rain trying to etch out a meager living, Lile felt a wash of pity for them. As the taxi pulled away some of them futilely ran some steps after the car. The driver wound up and the warmth returned while Celine Dione’s mellow voice lulled her to sleep. Ibrahim would be happy to see her but Daddy would be mad, especially as she had traveled to Kano without informing him. She told no one she was coming to Zaria, not even her roommate Maureen at Lagos State University. Lile smiled drowsily; what was the used of a surprise visit if she could not keep it a secret. She wanted her twenty- second birthday to be special and above all to spend it together with Ibrahim Dambaba. Daddy would just have to understand and pardon her again … and again Lile smiled to herself, feeling naughty and happy as she drifted off to sleep …
***~~~***
The screeching of tires on slippery tarmac startled Lile from sleep and for that unbelieving moment it was as though everything was happening in flowmotion, from one frame to another frame of inexorable fate.
At 160 kmh the driver had negotiated a sharp bend right into a crossing herd of Fulani cattle. A sharp swerve and the tires lost friction on the wet road, skidded and spun out of control. Suddenly the car seemed to jump and flipped out of the road. Metal and glass exploded everywhere as the 504 crashed into a boulder and caught fire. And then a terrible explosion; flames engulfed the car and the dying scream of the driver caught between the dashboard.
For Lile, it was strange unreality. Her bleeding body lay sprawled on the road where she had been thrown out of the somersaulting car. Three cows lay struggling in death near her, and people where shouting hysterically around her, yet she couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, totally paralysed and she felt consciousness receding on her and felt a peculiar, rushing buoyancy. Over and over her mind kept re-running a phrase from her recent dream, her boyfriend filled with laughter and astonishment, “Lile baby, you’re totally crazy; you flew all the way from Lagos to hear happy birthday!” And the sound of laughter, over and over and over again, Ibrahim and Lile…
Allen Close in Dolphin Heights belonged to the cult of multi-billionaire residents. The Close was home to Oil and Power barons, retired army generals, blue chip Industrialists and bank owners, Political heavyweights and … drug Lords.
The houses at Allen Close are beyond believe in terms of grandeur and sheer opulence. Each house exuded its own aura of awe and arrogance, invoking a sense of intimidation and magnitude on first time visitors.
Maureen stood hesitantly in front of the massive designer gate of house No.3, trying to summon up the courage to ring the bell.
She had come to the house once before in the company of Lile, and that was three years ago. The General was still serving in the army then, and was away in a mission abroad. Maureen still vividly recalled her awe and amazement that Lile belonged to a mansion like this. “You mean this is really, really your home, Lile? Are you sure!” And Lile grinned at her dismay. “It’s no big deal. In fact, it’s boring. Most times I live here all alone, except when my dad’s in the country. It’s a big, boring and lonely house …just like a beautiful prison.”
That was three years ago.
Maureen reached up, depressed the bell, and waited. Almost at once a side door by the gate opened and, apparently, the gateman starred quizzically at her. “Who you dey find here?”
“Hello, my name’s Maureen - Maureen Ojo. I’m Lile's friend … we’re roommates at LASU; please is she at home?”
The gateman looked less hostile now. “Ah, she never come home today, she tell you say she dey come house today?”
Maureen shook her head. “See, I’ve not seen Lile for the past ten days. She has missed two important tests in school. I thought perhaps she was sick at home, that’s why I came here.”
“I no understand you, you mean say Lile no dey school for the past ten days? Where she come dey now?”
“I don’t know, she told me she wanted to go home for two days and celebrate her birthday and come back and prepare for her tests. It’s ten days now and she’s not yet back.”
“Abeg this your talk don pass my power, make you come inside come see her papa.”
“Oh, the General is around!” Maureen sounded a bit frightened at the prospect of meeting Lile’s father. She followed the gateman inside the compound.
Once again she felt an over powering sense of awe as she looked around the compound. The lawns around the drive were a lush green and trimmed. An assortment of flowering plants and royal palms thronged the compound. The mansion towered up in front of her, an edifice of marble, glass and oak doors. In front of the foyer, a powerful metallic gray E-class gleamed in the morning sunlight. Six other Jeeps and luxury rides lined an open garage on the left flank of the mansion.
They mounted a short flight of stairs and the gateman beckoned her inside, “Make you sit down here for children parlour until Oga come down from upstairs. He get some work he dey do.” He left her to herself and walked back to his post.
The children parlour was heavily rugged in burgundy. Two Ac’s hummed silently. Huge upholstery chairs in the same wine-red colour clamed pride of position in front of the electronic cabinet, and heavy blinds draped the room. The lighting was quite muted, soft and deliberately positioned to enhance the effects of large framed paintings of wildlife and plains.
Maureen sank gratefully unto a comfortable chair and waited for the presence of the General. Besides her on a side table was a crystal ashtray, crafted in the shape of a tortoise. She picked it up and surveyed this piece of art. It caught the ray of sunlight from the back window and scattered colours like a prism.
“Wonderful”. Maureen kept back the ashtray, and tried to relax.
“Do you like it?” A heavy baritone voice.
Maureen spun around in alarm and the man laughed pleasantly, and came down the flight of stairs towards her and offered his hand for a handshake.
“You must be Maureen, Lile's friend. Sule called from the gate to tell me you were waiting for me. So how are you, young lady? I’m Lile's father.”
The General was a tall man, dark complexioned and lean with a slight paunch. His hair was graying rapidly and Maureen guessed his age to be somewhere in late fifties or early sixties. He grasped her hand firmly in his large hand and his brown eyes fixed penetratingly on her own. He had eyes the colour of honey. Maureen found herself looking at the floor shyly and embarrassed. This old man exuded a disturbing potency around him.
The General took a sit and claimed a cell phone on his side stool and dialed a number expertly with one hand while he lit a cigarette at the same time. “So do you like my ashtray?” he asked Maureen again and chucked, “I caught you examining one.”
“They are fine”, Maureen said.
“China; I got them last year in China while there on business.” He tapped ashes into one for emphasis and without pause he was on a different topic entirely. “How old are you?”
“Sir?”
“I said - oh never mind, my call is through.”
For several minutes he spoke into the phone and Maureen examined him fully. He was an old man but he did not share the effeminate softness of old men. The General was hard and rugged and the only weakness about him seemed to be his paunch. He had a deep baritone voice and an open, amiable feature. Maureen instantly felt attracted to him and at once she felt a certain dread. This man lost his wife over twenty years ago and since then had not deemed it necessary to remarry.
The General clicked shut the cellular and dropped this in the breast pocket of his suit. His manner had become quite abrupt.
“So Maureen what can I do for you?”
“Sir, I haven’t seen Lile for the past ten days now. She has missed two tests so far in school. I came to find out if maybe she was sick …” Maureen’s voice tapered of helplessly.
Major General M.S Yusuf. (Retired) was a man of considerable force and arrogance. He was an extremely successful career soldier and now retired, he had built an intimidating fortune in the oil sector. His rivals called him a cunning, cold and ruthless man. He executed business and politics with the same military strategy he would employ in war. He would readily stake the lives of his men, his reputation and his money to achieve whatsoever he sought. But over the years, especially the last couple of years, he had come to love his daughter. And he had gone about winning her love and respect with the same single-minded intensity he had employed to become the man he was. In the end, she was all that he had, all that really mattered. He had lost his son at childbirth with his wife twenty years ago and his bloody career had not given him the time to replace them. And now, almost too late, he decided to claim the love of his daughter and heir, Lile Yusuf.
The General sat very still and silent, cat eyes fixed on Maureen and the girl felt like a butterfly pinned to the upholstered chair.
Maureen said, “I’m really confused. She told me she wanted two days break to spend her birthday alone. I thought she was coming here but -” Maureen shrugged, “I am sorry sir, but I don’t know what to say. Maybe she went to Zaria, to see Ibrahim.”
“Maybe”, said the old man softly, “maybe ….” Once more, he reached for his cellular and slowly crushed his cigarette in the ashtray.
The girl sat in a wheelchair under the shade of a mango tree, engrossed in the contents of a magazine. Her head was heavily bandaged and her left leg was still in POP cast, stretched out in front of her. She was a courageous girl and her easy acceptance of her fate had already won her many friends at the Kano-based Intensive Care Hospital.
Watching her from the window Mrs. Adams felt a lot of compassion for the girl’s plight.
“Her name is Lile,” Doctor Bala informed the woman. “And that is all she can recall about herself. Just the name, Lile.”
“It sounds all so horrible,” Mrs. Adams said.
“Total amnesia. The blow to her head was severe, almost fatal. When those unknown men dumped her in front of our gate, we thought she was dead. It’s a miracle that she’s still alive.”
Doctor Bala owned Intensive Care Hospital. Again he found himself recounting to Mrs. Adams the events of that fateful day three weeks ago when some unknown men had stopped their pickup truck in front of the hospital and discarded the unconscious body of Lile on his hapless security guard. She was left there in a pool of her blood and the guard had been forced to rush her inside the hospital.
Dr. Bala said, “I was scared because she was almost dead, hardly breathing, and I didn’t want complications with her people and the police. However, I couldn’t just sit there and watch her die. Such a young, healthy and beautiful girl. So we transferred her to the theatre and searched her clothes for identification papers. Guess what we found, madam?”
“What?”
“Nothing! Just a shopping list … and five hundred and fifty dollars!”
“Oh my goodness!” Mrs. Adams was astonished. “Five hundred and fifty dollars!”
“Yes, we found that much money on her, and that made me realise she hadn’t been a crime victim as we had first assumed. Probably an accident victim, and the men who dumped her on us were probably good Samaritans who didn’t want to get more involved than they could help.”
Mrs. Adams starred at the girl. Even from that distance, Mrs. Adam's could see she was a pretty, young thing. “She’s been here three weeks you say, and nobody has asked after her?”
Dr. Bala shook his head. “They probably don’t know her whereabouts. Negligence,” said Dr. Bala, “it’s a classical rich kid-rich parent relationship.”
“Not my Ronke”, Mrs. Adams denied with some vehemence. “Ronke is everything to Dele and I.”
Dr. Bala chuckled, “Oh you’re different, Mrs. Adams. Besides, Ronke is an only child, and a Sickler to booth. You are bound to be strongly bonded. But believe me, most rich parents are too busy making money and contacts these days to give proper time for family bonding. They think giving money and indulging expensive habits on their children is enough. It's not enough, Mrs. Adams, they’re destroying these kids.”
Looking at the girl through the window in Dr. Bala’s office Mrs. Adams wondered what was going through the mind of the girl. “She’s only a baby ...”
***~~~***
Lile looked up from her magazine as the elderly woman approached her. The woman looked kind faced and motherly, dark in complexion and on the bulky side. She sat down on a bench besides the wheelchair and introduced herself.
“I am Mrs. Adams. This is our family hospital. My Ronke is having her periodic check up, she’s a sickler and she just suffered a crisis recently.”
“Oh I’m so sorry to hear that”. Lile returned the magazine to her lap with some pain. “I hope she’s feeling better now?”
“Oh she is, poor baby. She is so brave about the whole thing. And to think she’s suffering so much because her parents were too selfish, too preoccupied with ourselves to care about consequences.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Mummy.”
The woman smiled. “Well, we’re paying the price for our self-centeredness. Besides, we haven’t dared raise another child for sheer dread. But enough of me; I came here to talk about you. Dr. Bala has just been telling me your case history. Is it true you don’t remember anything about yourself or”, and Mrs. Adams lowered her voice conspiratorially, “you’re only acting that you don’t, like in the movies?”
Lile could not help laughing and Mrs. Adams saw that she really was beautiful in a subtle, charming manner. She had an oval, nomadic face dimpled on both cheeks when she smiled. She was a tall girl, slim and mild complexioned, but the striking thing about her were her eyes, they were light gold, the colour of new honey and sparkled with laughter. Her voice was soft and pleasant with a faint, unplaceable accent. Mrs. Adams zeroed her for a Fulani girl.
“I wish I were faking amnesia, Mrs. Adams. Each time I try to think I end up with a splitting headache”. Lile touched her bandaged head softly. “Everything is blank upstairs. I don’t even know how I know that I am called Lile. I just feel that’s my name.”
“Poor little child,” Mrs. Adams was clearly touched. “And please, I like it when you call me mummy.”
“Everybody has been so nice here. The nurses, the doctors, everybody. Even the patients here are very nice to me.”
“That’s because you radiate sunshine. Look at me, an hour ago I did not know you, but now I feel I know a lot about you.”
Lile smile teasingly. “Maybe you can tell me who I am, Mummy. Whether I have a father and mother, a Christian or a Muslim, whether I am Ibo, Hausa or Yoruba - whether I am married or single, things like that.” Her voice hung in the air, sad and plaintive.
Mrs. Adams took her hand. “Look child, don’t think of these things now. Don’t force yourself to think about all these painful and, for now, clearly irrelevant things. Just concentrate on getting well and slowly your memory with come back.
“I was just now talking to Dr. Bala and he said you have been shocked and traumatised, probably in a ghastly motor accident. He said you were in a coma for almost four days! Four days! They had to shave your head and operated on you three times.” Mrs. Adams held her eyes warmly. “Lile, it is a miracle that you are alive - just be grateful to God Almighty.”
Tears were spilling down the girl’s face. Mrs. Adams helped her to wipe her tears. “Don’t give up the fight, darling. These are the same words I tell my baby.”
***~~~***
Doctor Bala worked late into the night in his office trying to analyse the new impute of data Mrs. Adams had supplied from her discussion with the enigmatic Lile. I have been in this profession for thirty-two years, Dr. Bala thought, and I have never come across a case like this one before. The girl was a total blank as to her own history and as she recovered and gained strength physically she would become increasingly worried and emotionally distressed, and if left uncontained may snowball into full fledge hysteria. It was often the case with Amnesiacs. And in her own case worse because nobody had yet shown up to claim and re-orient her. Even the police had not shown up again after the initial questioning when the case had been reported to them.
Dr. Bala was a man of small stature but considerable intellect and initiative. He presided over four other doctors and interns that worked for him. For twenty years he had almost single handedly built up the Intensive Care Hospital to its present reputation of excellence, and an exalted list of wealthy client attested to his overwhelming success.
This was probably the reason why Doctor Bala had risked the challenge of Lile’s case where other less determined practitioners would have balked or felt incapacitated and reluctant to handle an unknown and dying accident victim.
They had quickly transferred the unconscious girl to a life-supporting machine while an assay of her blood had been quickly carried out. Some bones were fractured and she was bleeding internally but thankfully, she showed a normal blood glucose level. She would survive.
Now, three weeks later, Dr. Bala sat late in his office examining his file and the sketchy identity profile he had drawn up on her:
01.Name: Lile; 02. Language: Multilingual; 03. Age Estimate: 23yrs; 04. Height: 5’8”; 05. Sex: Female; 06. Blood Group: AB; 07. Eye colour: Light brown; 08. Facial mark: None; 09. Ibrahim: Father, husband, brother, boyfriend?; 10. Lagos, Abuja: Familiar towns (Why not Kano?); 11. Possession: Shopping list, $550, Elizabeth Arden designer wristwatch, a golden neck chain with butterfly pendant, Expensive leather Jacket and Tee shirt, Lee jeans and sneakers.
Examining the last entry Dr. Bala found himself wondering about the pendant. If only it had been a cross, that would at least have solved one small part of her mystery. That she came from a wealthy home was quite evident and Dr. Bala did not worry about the eventual settlement of his medical bill - that was secondary to the driving curiosity he had for unraveling the enigma. For him, the girl was a piece of DNA helix and the key to reading her coded mystery was somewhere in her head, embedded deep within her subconscious.
“Who are you?” Dr. Bala asked of her file, “who are you Lile? Talk to me, talk to me …”
The Head office of the Oiltech Industrial Service Company was situated in a multi-story building at the Surulere Industrial Road Ogba, Lagos. The company occupied the entire third floor of the building. The Oil Company also had three other branches at Abuja, Warri and Port Harcourt.
Major General M. S. Yusuf owned Oiltech. The company served as the arrowhead of his several business concerns and with it he had bulldozed his way as an active player in the vital oil and gas sector of the country. The oil firm was not yet three years old but already it had a commanding presence among major oil servicing companies. Thanks to a powerful 'oldboy' network and the practical hijack of the oil sector by the military institution. In fact, there is hardly any oil company, servicing or producing that is not heavily polluted by a permissive military presence. Retired or serving, the Generals owned the vital oil sector of Nigeria.
Ibrahim Dambaba’s blue five series BMW was well known to the gatemen at the Oiltech premises and the guards let him drive in after a brief exchange of pleasantries. Ibrahim was a regular visitor and the staffs of the company liked him. Behind his back, they referred to him fondly as “our in-law.”
Above, the sky was overcast and dull, pregnant with rain cloud. Ibrahim packed and locked the car and strode into the building. He chose to mount the stairs rather than wait for the lift.
At twenty-nine, Ibrahim was tall of stature and fair of complexion, athletic looking. He had graduated four years ago from ABU with a degree in Business Administration, and after the compulsory one year National Service, he was made a manager in one of his uncle’s companies. However, two years ago he had easily secured a study leave from the company and enrolled as a student pilot at the Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria. This was in fulfillment of a childhood dream of becoming a pilot.
This was Ibrahim’s third visit to Oiltech to see Lile’s old man in the past two weeks. Also, he had been to the house several times, sometimes in the company of his father, Rear Admiral Dambaba of the Nigerian Navy.
The two families went way back to their roots in Niger State. Admiral Dambaba and M.S Yusuf had known each other even before their army days. The two had joined the military at about the same time but had been drawn to different arms of the military. They had been mates at the NMC and later, Jaji. They had profited enormously from the IBB years and in military circle had been part of the cardinal caucus obliquely referred to as the 'Minna Mafia'. However, with the ascendancy of the Iron General, the group had lost out somewhat in the power equation and only recently did they regain their former prestige and influence with the enthronement of one their own as the incumbent C-in-C, the amiable general Adbulsalami Abubakar.
The generals P.A. politely informed Ibrahim that the General was with the commissioner of police and asked him to wait. He picked up a magazine and sat down in a divan besides the commissioner’s police orderly. Two important looking businessmen were waiting for the general and Ibrahim exchanged pleasantries with them in Hausa.
The TELL magazine he had chosen was the latest issue and irritatingly they were still eulogizing Abiola several months after the man's death. It seemed as though the whole Nigerian papers had no other topic to write about except Abiola, his life and many achievements, and eventually his very high profile death before the eyes of the world.
Ibrahim was indifferent to MKO as a person; he was clearly a great and powerful man, infact a business icon. However, he posed too great a danger to a cabalistic order that existed long before he was conceived, and insha Allah, would continue to prevail in Nigeria. Abiola became who he was because he rode on the shoulder of this feudal, conservative system only for him to turn around and fight a system that picked him up from the slum of life and ordained him a prince among his people. In the end, there was no loss in MKO’s death as well as that of Abacha. They were simply two pawns in a chessboard and they had outlived their strategic relevance. Ibrahim felt mo pity for either of these men.
The inner door opened and the Lagos commissioner of police came out and the police orderly beside Ibrahim sprang up to full attention.
Ibrahim shook hands with the police boss. He had been to the man's office several times before. The commissioner shook hands with the other two Alhaji’s who made their way together into the chairman’s office. Ibrahim followed the commission to the lift, a bit anxious.