MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT

Mentor Commentary
Nardine Taleb

Recipient Reflection
Zenas Ubere

Collage

Nonfiction by ​​Zenas Ubere

Around the globe, there is a shared tension. A novel coronavirus is at large, running amok, pausing the world, crashing stocks, depressing economies, killing people, breaking hearts, making toilet paper, nose masks, and hand sanitizers sell. And in most countries, interstate travel and international flights are restricted.
 
Right now, everyone is an island.
 
                                                                                 *

In isolation, there are a number of things to keep you occupied:
            1. phone a friend
            2. watch TikTok videos
            3. read a book
            4. unearth memories
 
                                                                                 *

In this memory, it is 2005, and I am a boarding student in junior secondary. My school, sited away from the heart of Omoku, a suburb in Rivers state, teems with lives of teenage boys and girls. It is prep time. We sit in the multi-purpose hall, pretending to read our books. The night is silent under the watchful eyes of the senior prefects. We hunch over our tables, listening to crickets cry and frogs croak in the distance. Insects flutter about, crashing into the fluorescent lighting overhead and landing on our books. A finger’s press kills them, and in the wake of their deaths, a pungent smell comes alive.
 
An unknown man appears at the hall’s entrance. His voice thunders in the hall and cracks the stillness of the night. He orders us to leave immediately: a violent masquerade is at large and has found its way into our premises.
 
The air tenses and we jostle out of our seats. The clatter of soles on wood as we jump over desks and the shuffling of feet fill the hall as we run.
 
Some thread their bodies through half-opened windows. Some scramble to the door.
 
And we trundle, together, towards our hostel.
 
                                                                                 *
​   
It is 2020, and the virus has arrived in my city, Owerri. My head is aching. I place my palms on both sides of my head and feel the flow of blood trundling through pulsing veins. A sting in my lower incisors draws like guitar strings. I lie on my bed and hide under a duvet – my first attempt at self-isolation.
 
Days later, my father calls on the phone to know how I’m doing. I tell him I am better; I was diagnosed with malaria, which I’ve begun treating.
 
My father tells me to come back home, if I can make it.
 
We are in the same state, but an hour and thirty minutes away from each other. And more distant by the rules of social distancing. Travelling to him would be putting myself at the risk of contagion. Travelling to him would be making myself a potential vessel of infection. COVID-19 is harsher on the elderly, the experts had said. So, in this case, we do not run away from the threat together – we run away from each other. Right now, everyone is an island. So, I tell him, No.

                                                                                 * 

Apart from a virus, there are other things you can contract from a crowd:
            1. a thirst for violence
            2. outrage
            3. a shared excitement 
            4. fear
 
                                                                                 *

In this memory, it is 2015, and I am out to get fruits. The evening is warm, and the sepia tone of sunset adds a golden filter to the dying day. I stand in front of a table with fruits heaped in small domes and point to the ones I want. The seller, a middle-aged woman, gathers them into a black nylon bag.
 
I am reaching for my pocket to pay when a group of boys with bottles, machetes, and sticks held above their heads splash into the road like violent waves against a shore.
 
Seeing the brewing chaos, a police station nearby unleashes armed officers into the road. There is a stir and a smash. Passersby quicken their steps. Cars and motorcycles honk and peel away from the chaotic scene. The policemen fire a projectile into the open. Seconds later, the air is rife with whiffs of smoke. Everyone scrambles. I run behind the fruit seller into her store and she latches the door shut.
 
Inside the store, my chest tightens. I place my palms on my knees and struggle to breathe. The insides of my nose burn and my eyes water. I see smoke creeping in through the edges of the shut door, spreading into the room, silently, as viruses do.
 
                                                                                 *

Around the globe, news stations report an increasing number of lives claimed by COVID-19. We watch these numbers on our screens and we cringe.
 
A series of TikTok videos is at large. And in these videos, undertakers dressed in suits, carrying coffins on their shoulders, dance to the deaths of people, an electronic beat playing in the background. We watch these videos on our phones and we laugh.
 

Zenas Ubere

Zenas Ubere is a Nigerian writer. His works appear in Lolwe, Barren Magazine, Agbowo, Praxis Magazine, The Weight of Years - An Afro Anthology of Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He writes from Owerri.
​​