Otaare Read online

  Table of Contents

  otaare

  book details

  otaare as sung by blaze

  otaare, a spoken word rendition by ukeme collins

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  epilogue

  appendix

  about the author

  otaare

  alessandra ebulu

  When Bola gets a call from his cousin and manager about a twitter war he's been tossed into, a rant accusing him of plagiarism, he's stunned. He's even more stunned when he learns who made the accusation: Ukeme Collins, a writer with a beef against his family because of his father's involvement in the oil trade.

  Hating someone is easy. What neither man expects is for mutual loathing to turn into something else—something complicated and disconcerting, that could shatter their worlds completely, or build something entirely new.

  Otaare

  By Alessandra Ebulu

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Cora Walker

  Cover designed by Michelle Seaver

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition October 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Alessandra Ebulu

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684311200

  Print ISBN 9781684311521

  My mother once told me, my son beware of enemies

  They bring you ruin, leave you in pain, shattered beyond belief,

  Some even make you cry tears of blood

  Leaving scars and tears. Ota n pa ni, omo magbagbe.

  My father's words were a bit different, they came with a little spin.

  Enemies are necessary in life, you'll see.

  They bring strength and growth, hell some even bring joy

  Ko n se gbogbo ota lo n pa ni, ko gbadura fun otaare.

  Father Lord, bring them my way,

  Otaare, the type that comes with your grace

  Not the type my mother talks about, but my father please

  Enemies that bring blessings, Lord please have your say.

  And so I grew, and sure enough, the enemies came

  They brought the pain and tears, some even made me scream

  But once in a while, an Otaare came my way

  And even as I hated them and they me, I grew.

  Mother, I'm sorry, but I'm following father's advice

  I won't go looking for enemies, but if they come, I'll thank God

  I'll thank God for the Otaare he brought my way

  And use them to grow, just like papa said.

  Father Lord, bring them my way,

  Otaare, the type that comes with your grace

  Not the type my mother talks about, but my father, please

  Enemies that bring blessings, Lord, please, have your say.

  – Otaare as sung by Blaze.

  A couple of friends heard me praying one day

  Taken aback, they asked, 'what did you just say?'

  I shrugged, told them it was to God I prayed

  Begging him to send an Otaare my way

  Looking shocked they asked, 'have you gone cray cray?

  What idiotic mind or spirit's trying to lead you astray?

  Who in their right mind asks God to send an enemy their way?'

  I laughed, chuckled, shook my head

  They called me crazy, stubborn, a man who won't bend.

  And then I told them something that turned everything on its head

  Life's enemies aren't the ones to dread

  If you play your cards right, they won't lead to your end

  No, an enemy just might turn into a good friend

  Or even better, bring blessings that will make him god-sent

  So in praying, always for an Otaare ask

  They bring blessings, friends in an enemies' mask

  Those unique enemies most would seek to unmask

  But whom my father told me about over his palm wine cask

  He said son, always for an Otaare ask

  Cuz if you want to prosper, they're always up for the task.

  – Otaare, a spoken word rendition by Ukeme Collins

  chapter one

  His phone buzzed and Bola jerked awake. His head hurt and his mouth tasted like something had died in there. Something old and foul. Kind of like the syrup his mother liked to force down his throat every time he had a cough. Even when he insisted that it was just the flu, she still forced him to gobble it all down, whilst insisting that in Nigeria, every sign of the flu was malaria. He brought his palm to his forehead, and breathed a sigh of relief at the confirmation that his body temperature wasn't high. Sure, he felt sweaty and clammy, slightly nauseous and parched, but his temperature was normal, and he didn't have a fever.

  His eyes swung around, trying to locate his phone, so he could shut the damn thing down and get some sleep, when his eyes landed on the bottles of beer—Star and Heineken.

  So, that explained why it felt like someone was pounding yam with his head.

  The old newspaper stained with pepper sauce and oil next to the bottles explained the foul taste. He hadn't brushed his teeth after eating last night's suya—peppered chunks of meat grilled over high heat, then sprinkled with onions and more pepper. It explained why he had onion breath, too.

  His mouth curled at the thought of what his mother would say if she could get a glimpse of his room. She'd probably wail about how leaving the family house had turned him into a pig.

  Bola chuckled.

  His phone started to make a clanking sound with added buzzing, for good measure. Fuck. And here he'd thought that since the buzzing had stopped, it meant whoever was trying to reach him had given up.

  He leaned over to the other side of his king-size bed and stretched his hand to the back of the headboard. He'd asked his carpenter to put in a small pouch area at the back of the headboard, back when the man was building the bed. The pouch was large enough to fit his phone, and he liked putting it there, just before he went to sleep. Ingenious, really. Plus, it helped him keep his whole shall-not-look-at-his-screen promise when he was in bed. The man had thought him crazy. But knew better than to argue with a man famous and rich enough to live in one of Lagos, wealthiest and most expensive areas: Banana Island.

  Ha. Finally! His fingers closed around his phone. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. It was Sukanmi, his cousin and occasional manager.

  I wonder what he wants.

  Bola swiped across the screen to pick up the call at about the same time he picked up his Cartier watch and saw that it was just five-thirty. Unless his sense of time had warped, that was AM, not PM, and was not the time for any meaningful conversation to be had.

  "What?" he answered the phone, sounding as cross as he felt.

  Sukanmi, his thick-headed cousin, didn't seem to get it and just went right on rambling. "Bola, please tell me you're not sleeping."

  He sounded so alarmed that Bola pushed himself off the bed, blinking hard. Had he missed a performance or a meeting?

  Nah. Nobody was that stupid to fix a meeting for me for five-thirty on a bloody Saturday!

  "What else woul
d I be doing? It's Saturday. Man's got to sleep. You should try it sometime."

  "Ha-ha. Very funny. Except this man doesn't have quanta breathing down his neck. You do."

  Quanta? Why did Sukanmi switch to pidgin when he wasn't as fluent in the language? Did I get into some sort of trouble last night?

  Bola cast his mind back to the previous night, but nothing stood out in particular. "Did I tweet or Instagram something weird last night? Say, a picture of my dick?" he teased, expecting Sukanmi to laugh it off.

  Sukanmi didn't. His end of the line went quiet. Too quiet. The type of quiet that Sukanmi only used just before he hit Bola with some unpleasant news. Like news of his father cutting him off when he turned twenty-one, because the old man wanted him to try standing on his own feet and making something 'out of his life'. It had been three years since he'd received that call, and yet, he was once again the stunned twenty-one-year-old receiving horrific news and not his present twenty-four-year-old self.

  "Please tell me I really didn't tweet something offensive," Bola begged, his mind working quickly, trying to see the best way to appease his more stringent fans—the die-hard conservative ones who wanted his image as Blaze the performer to be pristine-clean at all times.

  "Funny that you should use the word 'tweet'," Sukanmi started, his voice edging in that same old way it did when he really was about to deliver unpleasant news. "Someone called you a plagiarist on Twitter last night, and it's blown sky high."

  Bola had been worried about naked pictures. It took a while for the words to sink in. When they did, he chortled. He breathed a sigh of relief. Of all the things he'd thought would be the problem, someone calling him a fraud was not part of it. "Well, that's a relief to hear," he said with a smile, easing back onto his back and the soft cushion of his pillows.

  "No. It is not a relief, Bola. This is serious," Sukanmi said, sounding grave.

  "Come on, Sukanmi," Bola said. "This is not the first time someone would be calling me a fraud. Remember last December, at the Access Bank end of the year party, didn't Kunle say I'd stolen his songs? We all laughed it off, remember?"

  "Yeah, cuz Kunle's always saying shit like that about all the hottest artists. You start to trend, he accuses you of intellectual theft. It's his MO."

  "Okay. So, who's accusing me of plagiarism?" Bola asked.

  "Ukeme Collins," Sukanmi replied. "Give me a moment; let me look for his number."

  "You don't know his number offhand," Bola teased.

  Sukanmi snorted. "Like I make it a point to remember the number of everyone I've ever come across. Not everybody's memory is like yours, you know."

  Bola had been making to stand up when he stopped. "Wait, you're serious? You actually got his number?"

  "I searched Twitter…"

  "And," Bola prompted. Knowing Sukanmi, it probably wasn't as easy as him 'stumbling' on the man's phone number whilst on Twitter. Who put up their private numbers on social media anymore, anyway?

  "I might have listened in on some conversations and direct messaged one of his friends, who was a bit hesitant, but caved when I told him I was a fan," Sukanmi muttered, like he knew Bola was just minutes away from tearing him a new one.

  "Bribery or flattery?" Bola asked. Sukanmi's conversations with people he didn't know were merely euphemisms for the underhand ways he used to pump them for information. Like back in secondary school, when he'd spent three weeks tailing Feyikemi—one of the SS2 seniors—and showering her with compliments, until she'd softened up enough to him to tell him which of the SS2 boys had it in for Bola, back when he and Sukanmi had been in JSS2.

  Or when he'd bribed their class captain: Segun, with his old Nintendo, so Segun wouldn't write their names on the noisemaker's list, thus saving them from a term of being constantly punished by their Math's teacher.

  "I would have you know I did not bribe or flatter him," Sukanmi hissed.

  "Flirting, then," Bola concluded as he looked around for his slippers. "So, what's his name?"

  "Ukeme Collins."

  Ukeme Collins. Bola rolled the name over in his mind. Ukeme. It sounded like a strong, stout name. The owner was probably short, black, and stocky, like one of those farmers he'd seen when he'd followed his mother to her village in Ondo.

  Strange, though. He didn't think he knew any artist with that name. Unless Ukeme had a stage name. "I don't think I know that singer…"

  "That's because Ukeme's a writer!"

  Sukanmi sounded so affronted on his behalf that Bola laughed. A writer accusing him of plagiarism? And Sukanmi wanted to burst a gut about it? "How could I have plagiarized him?"

  "He's tweeting that your new single, Otaare, is a rip-off, and a copy of the spoken-word he gave at Bogobiri two months ago."

  Sukanmi cast his mind back. Two months was such a long time; he couldn't remember. Was there any Thursday when he'd left his house to go to Bogobiri—the bar on the island, where Lagos elites and intellectuals gathered to share their writing and art, whilst celebrating their creativity—then he remembered. Two months ago. He'd only left his house once during that period. Partly because he'd been stumped and was looking for inspiration to write, and partly because he just hadn't been in the mood. "I couldn't have been at Bogobiri two months ago. I only left my house once that month, and it was to be at Kunle's bachelor's party, remember? We went clubbing and partying."

  "We left La Mango at ten because you said you had a headache and we decided to head back to Lagos Island early—"

  "And made it in time to Bogobiri just in time to catch the last performance," Bola finished.

  "Ukeme Collins's performance," Sukanmi confirmed, sounding apologetic and concerned.

  Shit. Bola was starting to come down with a headache. This wasn't good. "But I didn't. Did I? Could I?" The room had been dark, and they'd come in at the tail end of the performance. All he could remember was the voice, low and strong, filled with so much emotion that it had brimmed over with them: laughter and caution and life and power, mixed together, so Ukeme's voice had thrummed with the force of it all. He hadn't caught a whiff of the words, but he remembered Ukeme's voice. So, how could he have stolen the guy's words?

  "Did he upload his poem?" Bola asked.

  "Yeah. I'll email you the document in a bit."

  "Is it close?" Bola pressed.

  "Honestly. No. I don't think so. Sure, you both are talking about enemies and how sometimes they can bring you good things, but there are so many ways your stories differ."

  Oh. Then there's nothing to worry about, then.

  Bola gave a sigh of relief and swung his legs over his bed, then slid them into his slippers. "Well, then, I'll just reach out to him. Tell him to stop the badmouthing and explain why things got so confused."

  "Good. I'll send you his number, and then see if I can get you his house address, so you can go pay him a visit."

  "Right. And get called a stalker as well as a fraud," Bola snarked and ran his fingers through his hair, mentally making a note to go get a shave. Just a little trim to even out his edges. "I'll just DM him on Twitter and explain things to him. Hopefully, we would be able to put this behind us and who knows, I might even take him to lunch, so we can celebrate resolving the bad blood between us."

  "Uh-huh. Even better, I'll come along and take a picture, tag it with the hashtag BlazeIsAFraud, so it can pop up on everybody's feed."

  "There's a hashtag calling me a fraud?" Bola squawked.

  "Worse. It's gaining some traction. Check your feed. People have been retweeting and tweeting at you all morning."

  "Shit."

  "There's good news, though," Sukanmi said.

  "What?"

  "You've gained three thousand new Twitter followers in the last four hours."

  Of course. Nigerians liked nothing better than being in the know when a celebrity twitter beef went down. Except Ukeme wasn't even a celebrity!

  *~*~*

  Ukeme woke to the soothing calming sounds of water washing again
st the seashore, the crystal-clear quality of his headphones making it so real, he could almost picture himself by the ocean. The sound was so blissful that he stayed on his bed for a moment, listening to the lapping sound the ocean made as it kissed the sand. He moved his arms and crossed them against the back of his head, his elbows brushing the wireless headphones he'd made sure to put on before he went to bed last night.

  The minute his hands touched the headphones, his eyes opened, albeit a bit reluctantly, and he took in the small, cramped-in space of his bedroom. There went his inner peace. But he wasn't going to let that just go away, so he closed his eyes and let the sound soothe him just a little bit more.

  He reached for his phone, swiped across the screen, and he was on the Nature-themed meditative app that sent him to sleep with the sound of the ocean and woke him up with that very same sound. He switched off the app with a light tap, and the beach faded away.

  Ukeme slipped the headphones off his ears and was immediately hit with the sound of touting horns, hawkers screaming out their wares and their prices, bus conductors shouting out their destination and their price, with the usual refrain of ' hold your change,', and pedestrians who cursed at each other as they went about their day, everyone in a hurry to get to work before the time said eight.

  On mornings like this, he was glad he didn't have a regular nine-to-five job.

  Ukeme stayed in bed.

  Then something hard hit the wall and his eyes snapped open again.

  Trust his always-ready-to-fight neighbors to get him out of bed whenever he needed to get an extra snooze. He might have noise-cancelling headphones, but nothing could protect him from the sound of two men in their mid-twenties roughhousing it like they'd made a deal with the devil before they went to bed. A deal that one of them would be on his way to meet his maker that morning. The strange thing, though, was that no matter how much they fought, they always survived to see another day.

  Sometimes he wondered if maybe they were just lovers having energetic sex, but he'd always pushed away the notion. Same-sex lovers who were that loud in Lagos? In a country where you would be imprisoned or killed if anyone found out? In an apartment with thin walls and too many people cramped into too little living space? It would be suicidal to announce their sexual preference to the world.