From the open door of his shed, Brother looked out at the fighting women and the refuse heaps and the passing mongrel dogs and sighed, ‘If to say I get money. If only I get money.’

The reclining, recumbent figures before him also sighed in solidarity. They smoked marijuana openly, passing the stick from hand to hand, blowing out smoke, stifling a cough. Brother took a deep drag and sighed again. He pushed the half-finished trousers he was working on into a bamboo basket and raised his good leg on to the cutting board.

‘One day Allah go give me a million, I know it.’

‘Amen,’ his friends murmured, their voices languorous from marijuana. They were mostly drivers and park touts and mechanics back from work and reluctant to go home just yet. Brother, once a driver himself, spoke the same language as them and was their favourite tailor. They’d hang upon every word of his outlandish stories as, outside, the evening grew darker and the shapes of the ever-present women fetching water became blurred. Brother’s words would hover above their faces in the dark, mingled with the smoke haze.

‘To each of una, my friends, I go dash a thousand naira, no, ten thousand naira!’

‘Ah, Brother. You be good man,’ they murmured.

‘No, twenty thousand! Who I get apart from una? I no get wife, I no get pikin. You be the only family I get.’

They nodded. Then they urged him on to their favourite part of the wishful narrative. It was obvious that Brother’s dreams were as familiar to them as their own.

‘Then I go throw send-off party. My send-off from life of poverty. I go repaint every house for this street. I go hire labourers to sweep everywhere till everything de shine like glass. All of us go wear aso-ebi, fine lace, and Italian shoes. The Military Governor and the Local Government Sole Administrator – all go come here. I go pay Teacher Joshua to write my speech for good colo English, no be dis kin’ yeye English wey dem de teach children for school now. We go eat and dance and drink and smoke fine imported igbo from Jamaica, the type Bob Marley used to smoke. Then finally I go stand before the TV people dem for final last handshake with Poverty. “Oga Poverty,” I go say, “we don finally reach end of road. We don dey together since I was born, but now time don come wey me and you must part. Bye bye. Goodnight. Ka chi foo. Oda ro. Sai gobe.” ’