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70
Momma's Boy @ Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi
Bauchi, Nigeria
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A Silent Plea
<p>Hands in pockets, I walk. Passersby drift through the noise of highway traffic. A woman guides a Dalmatian. A foreigner. Another follows — Hispanic, ample-chested, dragging a microscopic Chihuahua. Then an Asian woman, Japanese or Korean perhaps, with a perfectly trimmed poodle. Blonde. Ebony. Caribbean? African? A beagle trots beside her.</p><p>Everyone has a dog.</p><p>Most of them live in the luxurious _Mazauna_ estate — _Anguwan turawa_, as locals call it. A monument to the new order and its imported ways. I doubt the _Hisbah_ smiles at such progress. Neither do I. Never had much reason to.</p><p>Some walk alone, most in clusters. Twos, threes, fours. One group of six. Faces carry borrowed expressions: joy, misery, neutrality. Masks all.</p><p>One man does not bother with a mask.</p><p>He staggers. Eyes red. Bags heavy. We brush shoulders. Dust bursts from his jacket like a sigh.</p><p>“I feel you,” I murmur once he passes. “They don’t care.”</p><p>A boy walks by. Headphones seal his ears.</p><p>“As I was saying,” I tell myself, “people pass suffering the way they pass streetlights — noticed, but never felt.”</p><p>When I turn back, the man is crouched, face in palms, sobbing.</p><p>I walk on.</p><p>Perhaps I lack sympathy, not empathy.</p><p>At the bridge stairs I see a boy in uniform, crying.</p><p>What do I do?</p><p>Help him? Ignore him? Continue?</p><p>He glances up. Wet eyes. A silent plea.</p><p>Uncomfortable.</p><p>Helping would be worse.</p><p>I decide to walk past.</p><p>Then I notice a woman approaching under an umbrella.</p><p>What if she helps him?</p><p>Simulation.</p><p>I would not like that.</p><p>Panic.</p><p>“Hey boy!” I call.</p><p>No response.</p><p>She is closer.</p><p>“Hey kid!”</p><p>Closer.</p><p>I grab his elbow and turn him.</p><p>“What’s the matter? Are you lost?”</p><p>He nods.</p><p>The woman walks past.</p><p>I had won.</p>
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