Chapter 4: Cracks in the Concrete
1106 Words
Morning in Lagos didn’t wait for permission. By 5:45 a.m., the first wave of danfo horns and vendor shouts filled the air. Mustapha was already up, splashing cold water on his face outside the compound. His bones ached from the floor, but his mind was alert.
Inside the tiny room, Zainab stirred.
“You didn’t sleep much,” he said, watching her sit up.
“I couldn’t. My mind’s too loud.”
Mustapha understood. “We go hustle today.”
“Hustle?” she asked, wary.
“I no go leave you for street. But if we wan survive, we go need find way.”
He explained the options: street hawking, errands at the park, or joining some boys who cleaned car windshields at traffic stops. Dangerous, unpredictable—but for now, it was real.
“I can’t beg,” Zainab said firmly.
Mustapha smiled. “Nobody say you go beg. But you go learn sharpness. This city reward sharp people.”
***
They hit the streets together. Zainab wore an oversized hoodie Mustapha borrowed from a friend. She carried a small basin of sachet water on her head, walking behind Mustapha, mimicking the calls he made:
“Cold water! No be pure water wey go wound your throat o!”
At first, her voice trembled. People ignored her.
But Lagos was a tough school—and Zainab was learning fast.
By midday, they had made enough to buy rice and beans from a mama-put stand. As they sat under a tree, eating from the same plate, she glanced at him.
“You’ve done this long?”
“Since I was seventeen.”
She paused. “You don’t talk much about your people.”
Mustapha’s face darkened a little. “Nothing dey there to talk.”
She didn’t press.
But she saw it—that pain behind his smile, the part of him hidden beneath jokes and sarcasm. She had it too. They were different stories, same scar.
***
That evening, they returned to the room. Tired. Sweaty. But oddly… alive.
As they lay on the thin mattress, feet brushing lightly, Mustapha whispered:
“Tomorrow, we try again.”
Zainab smiled into the dark. “We survive today. That’s enough.”
Outside, Lagos roared like it always did. But inside that quiet space, two wounded hearts had begun building something—slowly—on the cracks life had left behind.
---
Later that night, as the noise outside thinned and the city slowed into restless sleep, Zainab lay on her side, staring at the ceiling. The ceiling had water stains shaped like broken wings. She found it oddly poetic.
Mustapha sat by the window, his silhouette framed by the moonlight leaking through the rusted bars. He wasn’t talking, just breathing—slow, steady, lost in thought.
“Why haven’t you ever left this place?” she asked quietly.
He turned. “Leave go where?”
“Anywhere. Start over.”
He gave a tired laugh. “You think say na easy? I no get papers. I no get people. I no even get proper ID. Lagos no give you wings, Zainab. You go grow them yourself—if dem no tear them before you fly.”
Zainab’s heart ached at his words. She knew he wasn’t bitter—just brutally honest.
She sat up. “If you had the chance… would you go back? To Kaduna?”
He looked away, the weight of memories tugging at his jaw. “Maybe. If my mama still dey. But she gone. Nothing dey for me there.”
Zainab moved closer. The room was warm, but the space between them was filled with something fragile.
“You know,” she said, her voice soft, “when I left home, I thought it would hurt more. But it was quiet. Like I was already gone long before I left.”
Mustapha looked at her then—not just with his eyes, but with something deeper. A silent recognition.
“We carry too much, you and I,” he said. “But maybe… we don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”
A long pause passed between them. Then Zainab leaned her head gently on his shoulder.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer with words. He just sat there, still, letting her rest, letting her exist beside him without question or condition.
In the broken corners of Lagos, two broken people had begun stitching something whole. Not love. Not yet. But something close.
---
By midnight, the city had finally quieted, but sleep still refused to visit Zainab. She lay beside Mustapha, listening to the rhythm of his breath — steady, almost protective. For the first time in weeks, she wasn’t scared of the night.
But peace, in Lagos, was always temporary.
A sudden knock thundered on the compound gate.
Voices. Loud ones.
Mustapha sat up instantly. Zainab followed.
“Who be that for outside!?” shouted one of the older tenants.
The voices outside responded roughly. Police? Area boys? Landlord?
Mustapha peeked through the window.
“Wahala dey,” he muttered. “They say dem dey find someone.”
Zainab’s heart jumped. Her mind raced back — had her uncle tracked her? Did someone report her?
“Stay inside,” Mustapha said, standing up.
But the knock moved to their door. Three hard bangs.
Zainab froze.
“Open up!”
Mustapha opened the door, calm but firm. “Wetin happen?”
Two men stood there. One in a local vigilante vest, the other in jeans with a cigarette tucked behind his ear.
“We dey find new girl wey dey sell for junction. People say na here she dey stay.”
Mustapha didn’t flinch. “No girl like that dey here.”
They looked past him. Zainab had stepped behind the curtain, silent.
“You sure?” one asked.
“Very sure,” Mustapha said. “Make una check other rooms. This one no get anything for una.”
After a pause, the men left, muttering threats.
Mustapha shut the door. Locked it. Then turned to Zainab.
“People dey watch,” he said. “Next time, you no go hawk that close to junction.”
She nodded slowly, hands shaking.
Mustapha walked over and placed both hands gently on her shoulders.
“This city no fair. But I go protect you.”
And in that dim, cracked room—with no light, no money, and no certainty—Zainab believed him.
Not because he was perfect.
But because in a world that wanted to break her, Mustapha stood between her and the fall.
- Writer
