Found
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Dear Bolu,
On the corner of 9th and 11th, just outside the jewellery store with huge transparent doors, you’d find a man in spotted black pants and a faded ankara top. I wish I could be more descriptive about the type of “top” he wears, but he makes it impossible to do so. On some days, it’s so long it almost touches his ankles; on others, it barely has enough real estate to be tucked in properly. His sleeves could be long, short or elbow length depending on the humidity, wind direction or God-knows-what. And although you can never bet on it, every so often, you’d see tiny white buttons on his top's cuffs and front placket if you looked carefully enough. The only constant in all of these configurations is the pattern on the ankara which features several splendid yellow suns cut in half and full moons suffocated by dying flowers. They also seem very worn out, as if he’d donned them every day for a thousand years without fail and without any regard whatsoever for the weatherman’s predictions.
His outfit is as much of a mystery as himself. He’s been around for as long as I can remember, and some townsfolk believe he was there when the city's foundations were laid. No one can verify this claim or the many others that add several layers of mystique to his person, of course. Where was he from? Who was he? I've heard several attempts to answer these questions, but none can be taken seriously without significantly injuring one's capacity for rational thought. None of these implausible explanations can be completely disregarded either because his very existence assumes an other-worldly nature that can hardly be explained by words like "strange", "alien", and their many synonyms.
Some say he fell out of the sky while travelling from the old world to the future. Others argue that he's the ghost of the founder of the jewellery store, coughed up by the ground and cursed to forever roam the land of the living for breaking the deal he signed with the devil. And they say that explains why the jewellery store never chases him away, notwithstanding his especially unflattering appearance at the entrance of their house of vanities. Some claim to have seen him travel with the wind, and others, that he vanishes into thin air as if he was in unison with the ether. When I was much younger, I also heard that he had the answer to any question you could think of, but it would come at the cost of either your sanity or your life, depending on which one you valued more.
A lot is said of him that can't be proven, and I will cease talking about any such conjectures henceforth. That said, there is one thing—no, two things about him that are true without a shadow of a doubt, and I swear on the air in my lungs that they are indeed the truth. First. Although he’s clearly an aged man, he hasn’t aged a bit since the first time I saw him, which was a couple of decades ago. Whether his anti-ageing rituals work wonders or he has always worn a mask on his face, I can’t say for sure. He’s old, but he just doesn’t get older. Second, you’d always find him with a rectangular article stretching from his chest to his calf, suspended by a stained white rope hung around his neck whose thinness belies its true strength. This article is a mirror with a slightly bluish hue, bordered on all sides by finely polished wood with imperceptible engravings. It’s a fancy mirror—the kind you’d expect to find inside the jewellery store, except it wasn’t. It was the man’s, and he wore it such that when you looked at him, you saw more of yourself than of him. That often made me wonder whether his sole purpose for standing in that corner and manner was to remind us that what we see when we examine other people—their looks and lives—and our judgements often say more about us than we might think. Whatever his purpose was, I could only divine so much, and my divination skills are nothing to write home about. And so I remained unsure of what exactly he was until yesterday.
Yesterday, I found the courage to walk up to the man with the mirror for the first time. No, it wasn’t so much a found courage as it was a loss of all fright. My worst fears had been realized in the space of a few seconds—with a paucity of words so potent they still echo in the corridors of my mind, and each echo is accompanied by the further fragmentation of my heart. Lost, I lost all fear of any would-be consequence of talking to the mirror man. Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever get imbued with some indescribable fearlessness in the event of a disaster? Do you ever feel emboldened to take on any challenge when your worst nightmares materialize? Yesterday, I did. I’d lost it all, and I had nothing else to lose.
I showed myself to the man and his mirror, and of course, all I saw was myself, downcast and defeated as I truly was. After a few moments, I looked at him, almost as if to say, “is this all that you are—a mirror stand?” His eyes dimmed a little and invited me to cast my gaze back on the mirror. When I did, the bluish hue began to shine more brightly. Although I stood still before him, I could see myself receding in that two-dimensional surface till my frame completely faded out. Almost immediately, I began to speak of all my troubles, but I couldn’t feel my mouth move. I unravelled like an onion as layer after layer of confessions poured out. I don’t recall most of what I said, but I know that I spoke truths that I didn’t know existed. It was scary yet freeing, frightening yet liberating.
I spoke till an image briefly appeared in the blue mirror—it was of a woman with grey cowries in her winding hair and gold dust on the soles of her feet. She was the one I’d loved for a minute too long and from a yard too far. And even then, her voice echoed in my mind. Overwhelmed and overcome by the revisiting reality of my misery, I dropped to my knees and asked the man, as loud as I could, what I was to do with this love I’d found and lost. For the first time in his presence, I felt my mouth move. I’d asked him a question, and time would tell whether it’d cost me my sanity or my life. But in all of these, he never spoke a word. Again and again, I asked the same question. No matter how deafening my tone was, he refused me the dignity of a response. And I left his corner after many futile attempts. I don’t remember the walk home or anything that happened after, but I woke up this morning with the phrase, “all of life is a cul-de-sac”, on my lips. Was that his answer? What does that even mean? I don’t know, dear friend. Do you?
Fin.
P.S.
This one is a nod to Jacob Bank’s Found, which you can listen to on Spotify or Youtube.
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Write you soon, merci!
- Wolemercy