I Call My Body a Miracle.
“I saw the future, I did, and in it I was alive.”
—Neil Hilborn
I know I am a dead man as soon as the machete hits my neck. Dead. Dead. Dead. Then I tell myself, “Sima, these people are going to kill you this night—run!”
THEN
July 19, 2022. A day that begins like any other—at least until nightfall, when my life would be upended by the most bizarre circumstances.
Social media is flooded with birthday wishes for the Labour Party presidential candidate. The fervor is palpable, dizzying even; most people believe, with near-religious certainty, that he will save Nigeria from ruin. Like a messiah.
By night, I’m in an orange minibus slicing through the heart of Uyo, feeling restless. My phone glows as I use WhatsApp, fingers typing sluggish replies to my friend, Jacob, who I am on my way to visit. My phone pings with a new message from him
“I’m sick, Sima. Please help me out. I’ll pay you back, I swear.”
I sigh—another loan request. Jacob has been leaning on me too often. Still, I send the money. Aren’t friends supposed to help?
As the bus nears his area, I remember something and call him. When he answers, I blurt the question out immediately.
“Jacob, is your cousin around?”
“My cousin?”
“Yes. The one who’s a cultist, sells weed, and drinks bitters all day.”
A pause. Then, “No, Sima. He’s not here. Omor, you too dey fear sha.”
I ignore him. “I’m almost there.”
The world around me is dark, wet, and cold. Rain flecks the windshield as the minibus speeds through the dimly-lit streets of Uyo, while a vague sense of serpentine dread curls in my gut.
THEN
Inside Jacob’s cramped room, unease creeps under my skin. Something doesn’t feel right to me. The dim glow of phone screens casts shadows on the pink walls. While Jacob is using the Xender app on both of our phones to transfer files, I try to focus elsewhere—the peeling ceiling fan, the threadbare mattress, the flickering TV. I force slow, deep breaths. In. Out.
Then, I hear loud voices outside.
Jacob stiffens. We exchange dark looks. My pulse spikes. He hands me my phone (which I quickly slip into my bag) and leaves to check what is going on. Immediately, I start praying. Seconds stretch, each one thick with tension. When Jacob returns, his face says it all.
“It’s them,” he whispers, avoiding my fearful eyes.
The acrid scent of burning marijuana seeps into the room.
“We have to go. Now.”
We slip out quietly. But then—a figure blocks us.
Jacob’s cousin.
Gravel-voiced, he clears his throat and says to me, “Big Man, no vex abeg. Come this side first.”
My body turns wooden. This is bad. Stay calm, Sima. I try to steady myself. But deep down, I know I have just entered “serious wahala.” Three more men emerge, all lean, hard-eyed, reeking of the streets. Dreadlocks, baggy joggers, cheap sandals. Stereotypical bad boys.
This is how my nightmare begins.
THEN
I glance at Jacob, but his face is already downwards. I grip my school bag tight. My voice wavers when I speak. “Boss man, how far? Wetin dey sup?”
The Cousin clears his throat. “Chairman, I don dey respect you, but you sef know say you don fuck up. Why you go leave hotel, leave your house, come here dey do that homo nonsense with my cousin?”
Shock. My mouth stumbles over words as I realize that just because Jacob is effeminate, I am being tagged as his gay partner.
I try to make the Cousin see reason. “Ah! No o, boss man. No be so abeg. Jacob na just my friend.”
The Cousin signals to one of his men, who quickly vanishes around the corner.
“You think say I dey play with you?” His voice hardens. “Senior man, go down. Now!”
“Go down dia, you still dey reason am?” another voice sneers from behind me.
The missing man returns—holding a machete. Terror slams into my chest as my legs begin to shake. I kneel, slowly, and begin to beg. “Chairman, abeg, abeg—”
The Cousin grabs the blade and roars, specks of his saliva landing on my face. “I dey tell you make you go down, anʼ you still dey think am! You dey mad?”
He swings at my neck, and I scream. The pain explodes and spreads quick, a wildfire searing my nerves. Jacob protests, reaching for his phone. The Cousin hits him too, and snatches the phone away. I drop to the ground, breath ragged, blood rushing loud in my ears. My body is afire, and it screams a single thought:
“Sima, these people are going to kill you this night—run!”
THEN
I take off like a sprinter. Thank God for my sturdy legs. I clutch my school bag tight, lungs burning, feet pounding the earth and crashing into puddles of rainwater. I don’t look back, don’t slow down—just run. The Cousin and his guys are hot at my heels.
I tear into traffic, barely missing a speeding car. Horns blare. Tires screech. Drivers swerve, screaming insults. But I keep going, threading through the chaos, my terror louder than Uyo’s nighttime noise. My eyes search frantically for an empty keke. I spot one, flag it down, and dive inside. “Go! Go! Go!”
But the elderly driver hesitates. Takes too long to sync with my desperation. The Devil isn’t done with me yet. The boys catch up. Hands grab me, yanking me out before I can brace myself.
I hit the road hard, asphalt scraping skin. The driver stumbles out, shouting. The boys descend on me with rage.
Fists. Kicks. Blows landing like gunfire against my ribs.
I grip my backpack, refusing to let go. If they drag me into the shadows, I am finished. I stay on the road, under the lights, where people can see me. A traffic jam builds. A crowd gathers quickly and begins to murmur, shifting this way and that.
What did he do?
Why are you beating him?
Wetin him do?
Na homo, one of them spits. We catch am as he dey fuck small boy.
Na lie! I scream.
The accusation hangs in the air like smoke. A man steps forward, gripping a short, thick metal rod. My stomach twists. A couple of hits from that thing, and my skull would split open like a bloated pawpaw.
A female voice in the crowd screams, and someone thankfully pulls this man back. But the Cousin and his guys keep going. My right eye swells shut. I can already feel the slick blood trailing down the sides of my face. Still, I scream. No! No! Leave my bag! Leave my bag! Thief! Maybe being slightly overweight has an upside—boys half my size have to hit me twice as hard just to shake me.
Then, one of the guys brings out a small keg of gasoline from nowhere, almost like a magic trick. I freeze. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Later, I’ll learn that nearly 400 people in Nigeria have been lynched since 2019. Jungle justice. It was a matter of inches and seconds that prevented me from becoming an additional digit to that statistic. My body would have burned horribly, and my family would have lived with the shame of a false story.
Utterly desperate and scared out of my senses, I try to jump into another keke. The Cousin himself drags me down, and we both stumble onto the hard road. The crowd jeers. My knees begin to bleed, and from where I lie on the road, I can see that the Cousin is wounded as well. The sight of his blood makes him mad. He yanks me up and almost takes my left eye out with a punch. “You see as you don wound me, abi?” he says. “I go kill you this night.”
A police patrol van crawls by. Doesn’t stop. But its mere presence is enough. The cultists hesitate, then scatter, snatching my phone before they go. My bag is lighter now—just a jotter, an old earpiece, and my copy of Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide. The irony isn’t lost on me. Elnathan John wrote about people like me. About how, in Nigeria, to die unjustly, to burn on camera, might be enough to earn a hashtag.
#JusticeForSima. But I don’t want to be a hashtag. A keke pulls up on the other side of the road. Patrick, the keke driver, had been watching. He moves fast, kneeling beside me.
“Help me hold him,” he tells someone. “Stay with him. I’m coming.”
When Patrick turns his keke around, I don’t wait. I leap inside and urge him to go, go, go. A bottle flies and shatters against the keke. Green glass rains down as I shut my eyes, expecting more. But Patrick is faster. Twenty-five minutes later, I limp into my family’s compound. My mother screams, “Jesus, Jesus! Blood of Jesus! What happened?” My father stares, stunned. I sink into a chair, body trembling, jaw broken, blood still warm on my tongue.
Only then do I believe it, that the worst is over. And I’m safe, at last.
NOW
Three long years have passed since that night. I tell myself to be grateful, and sometimes I tell myself that I am not grateful enough. I did not just survive. God spared me. And that is why I call my body a miracle. As if I am Jesus showing the wounds on his palms to stunned disciples. See: a thin scar on my wrist, machete wound. See: twin scars on my knees, from being dragged on rough asphalt.
But the real wounds are inside my head. PTSD is a bastard, no? Some nights, I wake up gasping, phantom fists slamming into my ribs, gasoline stinging my nostrils. When I walk through crowds at Ibom Plaza in Uyo, I make sure my feet move fast. What if they see me? What if someone accuses me on the spot, pointing fingers, summoning hell all over again?
I know now how easily a lie can become a death sentence. How the wrong words, the wrong place, the wrong time, can be enough to end a life. I know how fear smells—like sweat and burning petrol. And I know that surviving isn’t the same as recovering. But I also know that I will be myself again one day.
And that’s on God.
