BABA ÈWÈ (Father to Children)

Maybe, Some Men Die Twice...... "Stop"."No"."Please"."Stop". He laughed. “Why are you shouting? I’m your uncle.”I was seven.In Ebute Meta, everyone knew him as (BABA ÈWÈ)... father to the kids, friend of the house.. He walked into our compound like he owned a portion of it. He prayed with my father. He called my mother “my sister.” He brought sweets for the children and advice for the adults. “I like her around my kids,” he told my parents. “Very intelligent girl.” His hand rested on my head. It did not leave. It travelled… slowly, as though my body were something misplaced and just rediscovered. “She’s comfortable with you,” my mother said.Comfortable. I learned that word before I learned multiplication.Comfort? Comfort... does not make a child freeze, it does not make her memorize doors, it does not make her swallow screams until they dissolve. He visited often, often enough to let me know predators do not chase. They orbit.... His eyes arrived before his body, across rooms, across family gatherings, across Sunday rice and plastic chairs.... They lingered too long.... Measured silence. At seven, I learned stillness.At eight, avoidance.At nine, that respectable men are rarely questioned. Good men are protected by reputation.While, little girls?... Little girls are protected by nothing at all. Years passed.....Then December 2006.The Sosoliso plane fell from the sky in Port Harcourt.... Parents across Nigeria stared at television screens in disbelief. Grief became a national language. In Lagos, people spoke softly about death that December. Even children were not spared.That month I remember how the Tuesday's weather was dull, my father came home unusually quiet. “I went to see BABA ÈWÈ,” he told my mother. “It’s bad. Blood pressure. His heart is failing. His wife has spent everything.”Spent everything..... So even pillars crack. A month later, we went to the hospital.The room was too white, too clean. Machines surrounded him.Beep.Pause.Beep. He looked smaller. The loud laughter was gone. The authority gone. Even the arrogance seemed drained.Then his eyes found mine.The same eyes that once cornered me.But now they were wet. Unsteady. Searching. His lips trembled. Air escaped, but words did not. Fingers twitched as though reaching for something invisible. Forgiveness? Release? Erasure? My mother adjusted his blanket gently. My father whispered a prayer. I stood still. His eyes, though half shut, found their way to me... My palms sweated and the air in the room became thick. Was this justice?Was this coincidence?Was this simply arteries surrendering to time?The machine panicked. Beepbeepbeep— Doctors rushed in... hands pressed against a chest that had once filled doorways, and then—A long, unbroken sound. Flat. He left the world without confession, without exposure, without consequence. Just like that. At his burial, they called him generous. Dependable. A “pillar in the house of God.”I watched as the coffin lowered.When it was my turn, I held sand in my palm.It felt ordinary.... I let it fall. Dust to dust.But dust does not argue.Dust does not testify.Dust simply covers. That night, Lagos was noisy as always.... generators humming, buses shouting, life continuing without permission. I lay awake and wondered if death erases what a man has done, if regret counts in the afterlife, if silence is loyalty… or betrayal. I never told my parents.... Not when I was seven. Not when I was seventeen. Not even at his grave.They covered him with earth. I still wonder, if the ground would keep his body better than my silence kept his secret. Some men die once. Others die every time their name is spoken. Baba Ewe.

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