She was hysterical. ‘I’ll never leave Bahia. It’s my home!’

You’ll never take my son away, Nunca! Nunca! Nunca!’

‘The boy will decide. He is old enough.’

I said, ‘Gregorio, my son, you are of the Yoruba tribe.

Your forefathers came here as slaves many years ago.

I have saved enough money to cross the Atlantic.

Will you travel with me and live as a free man,

or will you always be underdog to the white man in Brazil?

He answered, clear-eyed and sure, ‘I will sail with you, Baba.’

I cried. The year – 1875 – we went home.

Lagos, Nigeria, 1875 –

BABA

WAS THIS the land of my great-grandmother home?

This strange island of swirling cloth and colour clash?

I found these people so arrogant, quarrelsome, so proud.

Years later I realised we enslaved had been subdued,

by then my stride had the measure of ownership too.

We Brazilians were plenty, were prosperous, ambitious.

I became a master at the first Portuguese school,

like an uprooted seed in time my roots took hold.

When they finally stopped slavery, more Brazilians

sought harbour in Lagos. We welcomed them.

None had any news of Joana. Is she alive today?

I only know that her tears, like a curse, still damn me.

Ha! My memories are a fort in which I am the prisoner.

Baba opened his mouth to speak, but ghosts flew out.

The muscled baobab leaves whispered behind him.

Taiwo sat dazed and speechless in the bristling silence.

He crept off into twilight, a cat courting the shadows.

Baba would sit up by the light of a kerosene lamp.

The world he entered Taiwo would never know.

CHAPTER 20

Lagos, Nigeria, 1946 –

SHAKESPEARE, Keats, Socrates and the Romans’

ink ran like Greek messengers across golden sands

in the class books for boys at King’s College, Lagos,

where beneath the whizz of a whirring fan, Taiwo’s keen

brain processed words that would shape his vision,

his fountain pen poised for Imperial College, London.

Immersed in the soliloquy of Lear’s madness,

Taiwo found no time for his grandfather’s reminiscences,

now bloated beyond walking with elephantiasis legs,

his thickened skin tended by maids and Zenobia;

while Gregorio was driven between cities on business,

had mistresses in the Cameroon, Togo, the Gold Coast;

and the day Baba left his body in his bed,

High Mass was said by the padre in Holy Cross Church,

the road closed for ceremonies – drummers, wailers, food,

while his body lay hollowed in his darkened bedroom.

His secret idols lit by candles, the stone altar in the wall,

Baba’s journey had begun.

GOURD-BELLIED, guava-sweet, crisp as custard apple,

Kehinde seeded a child soon after marriage to Segun,

kept Zenobia company while Segun studied Britain’s law

and Gregorio’s absences rumoured a new wife in Warri.

Kehinde teased Taiwo daily over his self-conscious strut,

badgered him on the steps as the island’s sun sagged,

splashing zinc roofs rust, whitewashed walls dusty pink.