BY ABDULHAMID AL-GAZALI

In 2024, something dramatic happened to me. It made me understand how one’s life can change in an expected way. And in a blink of an eye.

I love snacks. I have a specific like for a Lebanese bread, with its hummus. This like for snacks takes me to bakeries often. One night in May of 2024, I drove into a particular restaurant in Maiduguri where I have been buying Lebanese bread and hummus from time to time. Before I could disembark from my car, I got a call. As I spoke, I saw a woman standing by my car. She wanted to speak to me.

I reluctantly hang up the call. "Hey, Sayyadi Abdulhamid..." she shockingly called out my name as soon as I opened the car door. Yes, I was called Malam Abdulhamid or Sayyadi Abdulhamid when I was very young. But nobody mentioned that Sayyadi in over three decades. In fact, many of my friends have wondered why I recently added it to my name on Facebook. This was the story.

This must be someone who knew me several years ago, probably a close family member, I had thought. But she was already gasping for breath. Before I could make sense of what was up, she was already flat on the floor.

I could not remember ever seeing this woman before. But she had mentioned my name, then seized just seconds afterwards. And now she was lying down flat before me.

Suddenly, I was surrounded by a crowd. "Wait, is that a setup or something? What is happening?" I asked myself. "No, don't let him drive the car. He may not be in the state of mind to do that," someone suggested from the crowd that built in just a matter of seconds. "But why," I asked myself. Even if everyone panics, I normally don't. Everyone who knows me can tell. Lo!, she was already slotted into the backseat of my car. How did all that happen, I kept wondering. To date, there is a part that surprises me.

I didn't know how I handed over my key to a total stranger to drive the car. Not only that. I also didn’t know who got me in the backseat of the car, with this strange woman’s head resting on my laps. I took my hand and swiped it over my eyes, but I wasn't dreaming.

"Has she been sick? Is she asthmatic?" the stranger was asking me. Before I could answer him, another stranger, seated in the front passenger seat, advised me not to panic. "Just be praying. And maybe you should call her mom to be on her way to the hospital," he suggested. Until he spoke, I didn't know he was in the car. "No, call her father. Her mom may panic," the driver said. I still didn't realise they were both talking to me. Naturally, I would think they were talking to each other. No, they also didn't know each other!

I didn't utter a word, but it didn't stop them from suggesting various things. It didn't bother them that I wasn't talking. In those few minutes' drive until we were at Nursing Home Hospital, they said so much that I was shocked when I later realised they didn't know each other. They gave each other stories of how they were in similar situations and so on, probably as a way to calm me down and prove to me their humanitarian credentials. Just this night, she asked me who it was among the three of us, at the all of us strangers to one another, suggested the hospital she was taken to. I know I was not the one but it was certainly suggested and decided on by the two of them.

Many years ago, one of wives, seeing how I easily blend with shopkeepers, mechanics and so on, told me that she gets so fascinated at how men easily connect and start gisting within seconds of their first meeting. I thought I was familiar with that; but even I was fascinated at the case of those two guys.

The exchange of stories didn't stop, even as we stretchered her to the emergency ward. By every minute, their conversation kept straying away from the incident, until they got deep in to football. Can you imagine?

While they conversed, my mind was racing. "Who is this woman? How are we going to get her admitted? What do we tell the doctors if they ask about her medical history and so on? In fact, what is her name, age and other basics?" I asked myself, all in seconds. But these strangers were already talking about politics and the Nigerien coup!

At the ward, two nurses approached us for something called triage, a word I never heard of before. I don't go to hospitals. I am allergic to the smell of detol, Izal and so on.

Before they would start firing questions at me, they were busy with their stethoscope, thermometer, and other devices, while the guys sat a few meters away monitoring what was happening. It was already past 10 o'clock in the night, but they weren't even worried.

As the nurses worked on her, she slowly opened her eyes. She struggled to open it, after several blinks. "Oh, glory. Thank God, I will finally be out of this trouble and go home," I already told myself. But she kept staring at me. "If you have some questions, you can please ask her," I told the nurses, both of them looking unfriendly but were obviously just so tired or something.

"How do you expect her to speak in this condition? Why are men so insensitive?" the older of them immediately retorted, as if she was already waiting to explode. The other one also took it from her. She was softer, but more offending. "These are what you have to deal with as husbands nowadays," she fired her own, even though I am over 15 years older than her. But why everyone was associating me with this strange lady, was what worried me.

Before I could tell them I didn't even know her, she surprisingly broke in, which was a huge relief for me. "Don't mind them, please," she said, with a very faint smile, as her hand made its way, also slowly, to grab my righthand palm. After a few seconds, I strategically disengaged from her grip, because I couldn't even yet reconcile with the thought of her head resting on my laps.

"I collapsed, right?" she asked, a question which suggested to me that it wasn't her first experience. "Where are we now?" she asked again, in short successions.

I almost didn't know, too, because how can I tell all that happened. I am a very deliberate person. I don't do things impulsively. But all at once, the control I used to (erroneously think I) exert on running my affairs, was shedded off me. So I could not immediately remember where we were. All I knew was that we were in a hospital, which I also thought she should know since she was now conscious.

While they wheeled her into the admission room, they asked me to go to the registry to open a file and obtain a hospital number. I didn’t know why the nurses were very mean, but they refused to answer me when I asked for the direction. They didn't let me have any talk with her too, neither were they willing to listen to me. They were treating me as some kind of an irresponsible 'husband' who didn't yet appreciate the urgency of the situation.

The two strangers were already treating themselves to beautiful cuts of watermelon. Where they got it, only God knows. As I made my way to locate the registry, they stood up as though they would join me. They didn’t.

"Thank God she is up now, I knew from seeing her that the situation was not that bad," one of them said. "Yes, you are right. I could feel it too," the other also added, leaving me to wonder who was more talkative and weird. They were trying to console me, anyway.

The security men helped me locate the registry. It was a small cubicle, which would leave everyone, even if in distress, to wonder how the attendant, his table and laptop, pile in there. Because, if my memories are still correct, it is about the size of my deep freezer at home, if not smaller. That was not really my problem, I only thought that it was too small given how big the ward looked.

"What is the name?" the broad-shouldered attendant blew out in between his six front teeth, with his eyes stuck to the screen of an obviously old, yet rugged Hewlett-Packard desktop. He must be a terrific kola nut addict and obviously didn’t have a mustache comb.

People’s lips are usually darker than their complexion, but his was darker than the average. Before Maiduguri’s sun turned me darker, people would say I must have been puffing cigarettes to have had such a dark lip. Now, sun has leveled the colours of my face and lips, thank God.

As I stood by the glass screen, his questions reminded me that this was not even my job. "Let me go and ask for her husband's, parent's or whosoever's telephone number to call. They should be doing this," I advised myself. I went back to the admission room, an a 100m floor walk.

She was sleeping! And where was her phone, I could not tell. There was already a long list of drugs and tests written by a doctor, with a very bad handwriting, too, waiting for me. "You need the hospital number to be able to get the drugs and tests at the pharmacy and lab," the nurse told me, since, she thought I was already her husband. I ignored her and took another 100m walk back to the registry.

"Abdulhamid, who is sick?" the attendant now asked. I took a second look at him, and realised I knew him. I didn't recognise him the first time because my mind was in a race. I see him as the guy who was almost entirely responsible for plunging many young men in our neighbourhood into smoking cigarettes and weed, which at the time we were growing was one of the only few known addictions. He used to sell cigarettes, kola nuts and a drink called Don Simon. My friend's father saw one of his sons sipping a sachet of the drink, and even though it wasn’t alcoholic, made sure he mobilised the community to close the man's kiosk. I didn't see him ever since. His name, may be a nickname, is Hayaki.

Even though Hayaki was Hayaki, it was a relief because this was the first time I met someone I knew in this crisis. So I explained the situation to him, and he really helped to open the file, and generated the hospital number. He asked me to make sure it was updated when I figure out what was going on.

I got back with the number. I went to the doctor's office, so I could explain the situation to him. He asked me, before I could explain anything, to go get the drugs and have the test samples dropped in the lab. I actually was not worried about how much I spent, but my phone's fitness app the next morning said I had taken 6, 000 more steps than my daily average.

The doctor kept me waiting for too long. He was gisting with a patient relative, but each time I made attempts to get into the small office, he would pretend he was scribbling something on a prescription sheet. I didn't understand his trick, until I saw the young lady's face. I wouldn't blame him, I only prayed she could put up with his egg-shell bald head and whatever that was there that he would call a side box.

My phone rang several times as I wandered about the hospital. I didn't have time for any call. When I finally checked, it was 1:05 am! I needed to be back home, I had to. I missed a lot of calls already. I left my phone number with the nurses, with a promise to be back shortly. I also told them to call me immediately she was up.

I went out of the admission room, and those two strangers were still standing on their feet, still talking about football. Men don’t really take the world seriously. As weird as it was, I had to salute their endurance. I told them everything needed was done, I would take them back to the restaurant to pick their cars. Don’t ask me what happened, I ended up reaching home 3:00 am, after I had taken each one of them to those places they called their homes!

At 5:30 am, I had a call from one of the nurses. The nurse, who I later learnt was named Grace, said ‘your “wife” is up, and no one is here,’ as soon as I answered the call. Since she was up, it was an opportunity to go back and sign myself out of this matter, by getting her family informed. But deep inside of me, I really was looking forward to seeing her do better and out of hospital. I was already having conversations with myself as to what this whole thing would lead to. About who she could be and where she may have known me and so on.

I was at the hospital by 6:30 am, which was the biggest of my sacrifices in all of the incident, since this is normally my sleep time. By the time I was in the admission room, this smile-wearing man walked up to me and held my hands very tightly. Do you know who?

(c) Sayyadi Abdulhamid Al-Gazali