Mercy, Lord!
Segun Iwasanmi@iwasanmisegun212159
2 months ago
© Segun Iwasanmi
💊💊💊
“Holy Ghost, help me find it. Kai! Okada rider, please ride fast. Let me check if it’s this Maruwa.”
That was how my Friday was midway, with sweat on my face, dust on my shoes, and a prayer that kept rising from my chest like someone pushing it up by force. Friday was supposed to be simple. I wanted to attend a teenage and youth program in church, and my plan was to get there early enough to breathe, prepare and settle in. When I boarded the tricycle at Adeyemi School gate, I placed my violin case in that small back-space inside the Keke. I should have kept it between my legs, but I don’t know the spirit that followed my hand that morning.
As I dropped at the junction near church, I paid the driver and crossed the road. It was when I got to the other side that I felt that strange emptiness you feel when something important is no longer in the place you kept it. I turned back sharply. The violin case (Not empty case oo) was gone. Not gone, forgotten . I ran back with a sense of urgency. I stopped an Okada and told him to follow all the Maruwas ahead. The problem was that they looked alike, wore the same colours, and none of them carried the memory of my face.
When I could not find it, I asked the Okada man to take me back to school so we could start again. I came down at intervals to check inside any tricycle that looked familiar. Nothing. The sun was high. My heart was low. What made everything heavier was that the violin wasn’t mine. My own violin’s E-string had cut, so I borrowed another person’s instrument for the weekend practice in Akure. I kept remembering that detail at the wrong times, and each time it landed like a stone in my stomach.
At some point, I dropped the entire matter before God. I told some men of God about it and asked for their prayers. In my heart, I went to meet Elisha the way that young prophet’s servant went to him about the borrowed axe. I went to meet Abraham the way he searched for a sacrifice. In my mind I visited these ancient men as if they were neighbors and told them, “Please help me talk to God. I am learning the hard way today.”
At practice that night, music did not enter my head. Others were rehearsing. I was pacing around quietly, whispering prayers, and sometimes kneeling at the altar. By the time we returned to Ondo the next morning around seven, I went straight to the school gate and stood there for almost one hour. Every Keke that passed, I bent slightly to check that small back-space. By eleven o’clock I was there again. The owner of the violin joined me. She stood at one end of the road and I stood at the other. We carried my own violin case as a reference because both cases looked exactly alike.
To be continued...
© Segun Iwasanmi | ™The Man With The Story.
Book Writer | Screen and Scriptwriter | Creative Fiction writer | Book Editor.
I help people turn rough ideas into bold stories that work.
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