‘Go back to sleep, you need more rest.’ I picked up my toothbrush and a cup of water and went out to the verandah. The students, who should have been abustle taking their baths and getting set for lectures, sat idly outside their rooms, by the roadsides, in groups, discussing the boycott of lectures.

Bola came out and stood beside me.

‘The boycott is on,’ I said, my feelings uncertain.

I didn’t want to increase Bola’s agitation by telling him of it, but I also had a strong presentiment of something dark and scary lurking in the shadows, inching its way on to the forestage of our lives.

It had started yesterday at the rally, when my ears suddenly went dead and I couldn’t hear a word of what Sankara was saying. Yet I could make out every word he shouted as he jumped and gesticulated before the students: as if the words were coming in through the pores on my skin; or maybe I was reading his lips.

‘… I say we are tired of being tired!’

‘Yes! Tell them, Sanke!’

‘Great Nigerian students!’

‘G-R-E-A-T!’

‘Remember what Soyinka wrote, “The man dies in him who stands silent in the face of tyranny.” And according to Amilcar Cabral, “Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor.” That is why we are here today – we can’t continue to be onlookers when a handful of gun-toting thugs are determined to push our beloved nation over the precipice…’

I was the only one in the crowd who was not jumping up and down and gesticulating and urging Sankara on. Not because I didn’t agree with his words; I did, but I was not moved. I felt cold; I felt like an impostor, out of place, and my ears deaf. Bola, beside me, was throwing punches in the air and shouting. Before me was a group of girls screaming themselves hoarse, their wigs bobbing and sinking like boats in a storm as they jumped up and down. One staggered backward and stepped on my toes, all the while giggling. Suddenly I felt trapped among the hundreds of jumping, shouting and sweating bodies.

I quietly slipped out of the crowd and stood alone, surveying it from a distance. Sankara looked exaggeratedly huge on the upturned drum; he was dressed in combat jacket and trousers; his wispy goatee hung like a comb from his chin. The upraised, urging fists below him formed a plinth, supporting him. His strong voice carried easily to where I stood: ‘We are tired of phantom transition programmes that are nothing but grand designs to embezzle our money!’

‘Down with the Junta!’

In the room, I buried my head in a novel, trying to screen out Sankara’s voice trickling in through the window amidst the static of shouts and chants. Much later, when I had almost drifted off to sleep, Bola entered, flushed with excitement, spouting revolutionary talk.