Unsuitable ties [Part 5]

The bar empties a little after 7.45 p.m. Yemisi guesses there are about a hundred guests in all. Oliver is no longer the only foreign guest. She passes a couple of men who sound German or Austrian. They must be Saheed’s business partners.

On the pilgrimage to the dining room, she sidles up to Akin and whispers, “What were you and Saheed talking about?”

“When?” Akin asks.

“Keep your voice down, please.”

“My voice is down.”

“Lower it.”

“Is this low enough?”

“For God’s sake.”

She walks ahead of Akin as he watches her with a bemused expression. His whispers are loud. Everyone around them will hear what he is saying.

Perhaps he has sold his soul to Saheed. Perhaps this is the man she married. Her clients are no different from his. She had one who bankrupted a finance house using an expense account before fleeing the country. She had another, a lovely woman, who would send her flowers after every catering job. The woman was frogmarched out of a bank when she was caught doing illegal foreign-exchange deals. But she no longer caters for them.

She remembers when Saheed’s became the name to drop in Lagos. She asked Akin how Saheed made his money and Akin said, “Why are you asking me?” Then Saheed became Akin’s client and Akin told her how and she said, “Here we go again.” There was oil in Nigeria, plenty of oil. In a normal country, there would probably be no need to import petroleum products. But the refineries in Nigeria didn’t work, so the bulk of the oil was exported overseas and people like Saheed were in business.

She and Akin believed Saheed’s business was bona fide back then, so she wasn’t surprised Saheed had made his money overnight. She was just put off by how much he spent. When Akin told her Saheed was thinking of buying a yacht, she said she hoped Saheed could swim. When Akin mentioned that Saheed travelled to Monaco to watch the Grand Prix, she said if Saheed was interested in watching drivers trying to kill everyone in their way he should have stayed in Lagos. Akin called her a snob. She didn’t deny that. She got her snobbery from her mother. “He’s so nouveau,” she said. “We’re all nouveau,” Akin said.

The dining room has a marble fireplace, above which is a gilt-framed mirror. There are crystal chandeliers and period paintings of horses. The tables are beautifully set, but so far nothing inspires her. The designs are old and staid. Her clients want cutting-edge modern. She finds her name on the seating chart. She is on the same table as Funke and Biola. Shit, she thinks.

Akin is on Saheed’s table. She doesn’t want to be separated from him. Why would Funke switch seats with him? Why would Funke want to be on a different table from Saheed? Her clients in general want to sit next to their spouses, even when they’re not in the mood to speak to them. They don’t mind being miserable as they eat. After dinner, women will gather together, so will men, separately.

She usually avoids getting involved in planning her clients’ seating arrangements because of the sheer drudgery of considering the relationships between people at any given table in Lagos, their alliances, rivalries and politics. She finds her way to Funke’s table, which is nearest to the dance floor. Funke has probably done the best she can with her last-minute seating arrangements but, on Saheed’s table, Funke has Saheed’s business partner, Mustapha, next to the pastor who blames emirs like Mustapha’s father for Boko Haram attacks. If Mustapha’s father had his way, Nigeria would be an Islamic country. He lobbied for the right to adopt sharia law in Northern Nigeria. Mustapha prefers to play polo there. He founded the first polo-cum-country club in his home state. Saheed, a one-leg-in-one-leg-out Muslim, courted his friendship for years, inviting him to the polo club in Lagos whenever he was in town. The club veterans made fun of Saheed behind his back. He had only just started taking riding lessons. He barely knew how to mount a horse. They said he would never succeed in aligning himself with a Northern aristocrat like Mustapha. But he did. He and Mustapha teamed up to invest in an Islamic banking scheme. How they separated Islam from banking, God only knew.

On the elders’ table, Funke has her father, Professor Akande, a hardcore Yoruba secessionist who believes the South West of Nigeria would be better off as a country in its own right, next to a chief who sits on the board of Saheed’s company. The chief is from the South-South region of Nigeria and is too financially shrewd to be a secessionist. He understands what secessionists don’t; that it makes more sense to do business with Nigerians from ethnic groups he can’t stand, than to demand the partitioning of Nigeria. Still, as an elderly statesman of the South-South, he attends meetings in his home state to discuss how Nigeria’s oil, which is drilled there and has polluted the land, doesn’t benefit his people. He assures his people that any concerns they have will be fully addressed whenever the president decides to convene a national conference.

Yemisi remembers her father saying there were no divisions amongst rich Nigerians, but they created divisions so poor Nigerians could kill each other off. She has had moments of panic at parties in Lagos, when she imagines a suicide bomber gatecrashing, followed by a bloody aftermath with food and blood splattered everywhere, followed by a thought that terrifies her so much she immediately suppresses it: one bomb at a party like this and half of Nigeria’s problems will disappear.

Written by Sefi Atta

Sefi Atta was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1964 and currently divides her time between the United States, England and Nigeria. An award winning writer and playwright, she qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England and a Certified Public Accountant in the United States. She is the author of Everything Good Will Come, News from Home, Swallow, A Bit of Difference and Sefi Atta: Selected Plays.

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