Like Adam, hiding among the trees

by Gbolahan Badmus

Sinval Carvalho

— Lagos, May 2022

You considered death as an antidote to hiding, but your silly friends proposed life instead. They carry you on the back of the city, past streets bent like clenched fists — ready to strike or extend a handshake, to a lounge seated by the Atlantic.

Through the clouds of shisha and cigarette smoke, the sea unfurls in waves, swaying to the wind. Your body cannot match the fluidity of water. You ferry away their pleas to mingle. The menu, for mouths accustomed to the language of food, approaches your table: thighs stuffed in satin, caramel skin spiced with glitter, glazed muscles in cotton & tongues made from butter. But something weighs heavy in your stomach, masking itself as fullness. A long time ago, someone said hunger is a God-wide hole in every human. You remember each time you stuck your finger down your throat to purge yourself of Him.

Strangers break down your door, but it is just the music. If no be God I for don die, the DJ plays in a loop. You smile; God still finds you here, like Adam hiding among the trees. Each time you are breathless from running, the priest would say, He is only chasing after you with His goodness. Yet you find ways to escape. The DJ flows into another song. Their joyous roar wrecks the roof. But before the chorus drowns the room, he pauses the music. And in that thin thread of silence, God is a breath away.

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Gbolahan Badmus’ short story “When Rain Fell on the Night of the Red Moon” was recently translated into French by Les Vagabonds du Rêve, as some of the best publications in Omenana from its inception till 2022. His works, non-fiction and fiction, have been published in Akewi Magazine, Republic Journal, Selves: An Afro Anthology of Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He was once shortlisted for the ACT Short Story Prize.