The Gaze

My dearest M,

Picture this, you're in a not-so-secluded village in the only primary school around that would entertain your boredom. The school, with its open field separated by a path in the middle that leads down to the bungalow of classrooms. You enter a class, led by the hand of a teacher who's not known for her patience, acting all shy and unknowing. In a faint whisper, you introduce yourself to the class, stating your name, age, family, and so on. No one hears you so you become shyer and withdrawn. Unbeknownst to you, the barrier isn't in the people not wanting to listen but because they simply don't understand you. You and your foreign language. So, you proceed to your sit while the whole class continues to stare at you like a fish in a fishbowl.

Later that afternoon, In the thickness of the dusty harmattan afternoon, you sit outside, allowing the dust to gather on you like a magnet attracts metal, as you spread your wings of knowledge on the blank pages on your lap. Not caring a fig about how your spectators saw you.

Did you think that you were better than us?

This habit continues for quite some time which earns you no companion, making your thoughts and that weird kid in your class your only friend, from a distance.

Did you notice the yearning in my desperate yet stealthy gazes? I wanted to be you, I mean, I still do! But knowing you, I’m sure you’ll want me to be better. So, in some ways, this letter is somewhat your fault, M. I did what I never told you I would do; I learned your foreign language. And I’m quite fluent at it, sometimes.

They say, 'curiosity killed the cat,' well, in my case, it annihilated the freaking feline beast. Flipped it into what we have now come to tolerate, and dare I say, approve. It was curiosity that first sparked the flames of awe at how unperturbed you were by our snickering. I say 'our' because I laughed too when you did the most absurd things. Like how you’d sit outside staring at nothing and returning your gaze to your notebook and boom, you start writing. That sight alone was both funny and mind-blowing. To conjure words from thin air without copying from the blackboard is magnificent.

The following Wednesday morning, Mr. Ibinayo, the integrated science teacher; a skinny-looking man with a protruding belly that might be the evidence of too much palm wine consumption, takes you and your classmates on an excursion to the market in the next town, just south of the school. On the bus, you don’t talk to anyone, and no one talks to you so you mute the surrounding noises with your pen and pages, scribbling as if your life depends on it; in some ways, it might have because for you, that is the only way to remain sane in this hellhole.

Finally, you arrive at the market, it’s not so busy as it usually is. The mad man that doubles as a beggar who usually sits at the entrance gate with his bowl stretched out begging for Kobos when you’d come with your mother on Saturdays was not there today. It confuses you how a mad man can also beg. You move further into the market, and you see the same stalls that usually line the pathways into the market, the only difference today is that most of them are closed. No one goes to the market on a Wednesday! "What was this dimwitted man thinking bringing us here?" You mutter under your breath. Yet you ignore this oversight and match forward because suddenly Mr. Ibinayo recognizes someone and beckons you all to follow.

He was talking to a birdman, a pot-bellied man with a receding hairline and a bald spot that would make a bottle weep. You arrive at the stall and instinctively hold your nose to ward off the foul stench of bird shit as if that would work. The birdman and Mr. Ibinayo exchange an all too familiar greeting that sends a chill feeling of déjà vu down your spine, like when your mother recognizes an old friend she had not seen in a while after church service. You know instantly you’d linger, if not eternally, but for a significant amount of time.

The birdman’s stall, decked in birdcages, birds, and feed was not big enough for the birds let alone accommodate him, so he stood in front of it. Alarmed by the multitude of students spectating them, the birds become noisier. As the birdman attempt to soothe their ruffled feathers, especially the parrot who seems to talk too; profanely, you notice a bird with pearly white feathers and beady black eyes sitting at the back of the stall in an old rusty cage. "It’s a barn owl," said the birdman to you. You turn and stare up at him, not realizing when he had come that close or even quieted the birds. Perplexed, you ask, "a what?"

"A barn owl," he repeated, "they prefer mixed agricultural fields or dense trees, but as you can see I don’t’ have such a space here, so, they’re in the back. What do you think? Are they as scary as you were told?"

"Hm?" You stumbled.

Noticing that you did not understand a single word he had said to you, he motions for Mr. Ibinayo mumbling something into his ears, then Mr. Ibinayo approaches you as the class gawks. He places his hands on your shoulders and begins in broken English, "this bird na barn owl. Them like to dey by themselves or for farm. E no too common for this part of Nigeria, na why we no get proper amenities or farmland for am. You understand?" You nod vigorously and turn back to stare at the birds not comprehending why everyone was laughing. Not laughing per se, more like, cackling.

Mr. Ibinayo continues in broken English to the class at large, "make una dey listen, na barn owl be dis. They swallow their prey—insects, small mammals, reptiles, and other birds—whole without biting or chewing. Na this dey make people fear them. People believe that the bird is an evil omen and that when you see one in the afternoon, it means it has an urgent evil agenda."

With this declaration, the students stood back in fear of its witchery powers rubbing off on them, but not you. You stare intently at it, wondering why such an anti-social creature could be perceived as such but understanding the irony, nonetheless.

"Sometimes, e dey rotate the neck 270 degrees like this," Mr. Ibinayo speaks out while attempting to demonstrate the rotation.

While everyone's attention is on Mr. Ibinayo, you get closer to the bird, examine it, and aggressively jot down the little you understood from him and all you have deduced for yourself.

Were you aware that at the moment you moved away from us that we didn’t like you? That in fact, since the day you arrived at our school, every teacher including the headmistress, Mrs. Obiora, who never spoke to us unless it was an emergency or she had some pyramid schemes she wanted us to relay to our parents, was bending over backward for you? Something they’ve never done for us! That’s the kind of drastic effort, energy, and curiosity you inspired in everyone, especially in me.

The following week, you don’t go to school anymore, choosing instead to be illiterate maybe that way you'd be more like them. You leave your trusted confidant under the desk permitting anyone to glimpse. Maybe they'd understand you a little more.

Well, I did. Tried to. It was in these pages that I knew, saw, and felt you. You were one of a kind, M. And now I’m wishing to the heavens that we could go back in time so that I could experience you differently firsthand. You, with a small 40 leaves exercise book singed a flame of curiosity in me when I read what you had written about the owl we saw that afternoon. I saw them too, but in my limited vocabulary, I couldn’t adequately describe them compared to you. And just like how you connected with that barn owl, I, too, connected with you. You, in your sly manner, have taught me that sometimes it’s okay to stray far away from the cliffs of normalcy. That, in fact, as you grow, it is normal not to be normal. With your talons, you weeded out doubts, fear, and my never-ending supply of imposter syndrome thereby making me what I am today, a proper imposter. And for this, I am forever in your debt.

P.S. From the first day I met you, I knew you’d change my life, and as a barn owl retreats into the safe crevices of its hollow shelter, keenly observing the activities of its prey through its unfathomable piercing gazes, your ambiance is forever buried in the most secretive part of me, my memories.

Possibly yours,

Anthony.