Solomon Abbey did not hide the fact that he wanted me to write about him. He did not mind giving me his full name. He wanted the world to know that he was sorry about what he did, and he was willing to make a change after the hard price he had to pay.
He lost his freedom five years ago, and he looks forward to regaining it soon. He has no doubt that he will be a better person when he gets out of prison, and the evidence will show in his business.
Abbey had surprised me on the morning after I arrived the prison yard. I was seated along the corridor of the block, just outside the door to my cell. He dragged a white plastic chair, and sat on the other side of the door, just by his window.
He had just finished spreading out all his wares in the sun, and I could see everything that may be found at Swali market right before my eyes. Jerry cans of palm and groundnut oil, onions, crayfish, stockfish, fresh pepper, vegetables, and spices.
Abbey was something of a vegetarian, and I noticed that he wrapped the dry leaves of some of his vegetables, and smoked the toke openly. He was the only inmate who seemed to have the nerve to do that even in the presence of warders. That much was clear to me.
The yard was as busy as could be that morning, voices breaking out from cell after cell, inmates shuffling between the facing blocks, and along the corridors, sorting out their worries about breakfast.
Abbey stared at large at the busy yard, his mind far away, and began to talk at nobody in particular about what life used to be before he was locked up at Okaka. He talked about his business concerns and his plans for the future and how things were so promising until he was faced with a great temptation to go on a solo robbery mission that fateful night.
He did not mean to kill the man, he said, if not that the man caught him red-handed and was trying to wrest the gun out of his hand while raising an alarm loud enough to wake the dead.
Abbey did not set out to be caught by one careless man. He would have to do what he had to do. He barked a few warnings for the man to let go, his voice rebounding in that hard metallic tone for which motor park touts are known, but the fellow almost overpowered him.
On a whim, Abbey turned the gun askance and pulled the trigger. The bullet went clean through the man’s chest, and Abbey watched his body go slack as he collapsed to the ground, a sticky gush of blood spilling out on the floor.
The neighbourhood was already astir with anxiety over the blast, and vigilant witnesses had seen enough of him to give a faithful description of the robber, as he hurried towards to his bike, boarded it frantically, and zoomed off in a swift James Bond dash.
Abbey was not caught right away. He went back to his kiosk along Imiringi Road, and served fried Indomie noodles and eggs to his hungry customers like an innocent man going about his law-abiding schedule of duties.
Many weeks later, Abbey felt like having fun. He had been zapping around town on his powerful motorbike like a street-smart _okada_ rider, and he was just tired of looking over his shoulders. He had parked at Clamola Hotel that evening, and was chatting up the ladies when the police swooped on him.
Abbey paused in his loud reverie, and took a deep puff of the roll of vegetable in his hand. The pall of smoke broke freely, easily, like a thick ball of cotton wool loosening out of its own accord, every strand floating free like willing ghosts melting into the waiting air. When he began to talk again, his eyes were misty, and before I knew what was happening, this big strong he-guy broke down and began to cry.
I looked left and right of the prison yard to be sure that nobody was watching this embarrassing scene. I wondered whether this was what happened every morning. Did Abbey weep his eyes out every morning after going over the crime he committed in his tortured mind?
That was just possible. But he soon gathered his wits about him. Wiping the tears off his face and sniffing the catarrh back into his nostrils, he began to tell how he missed his mother.
He said: ‘I wonder how the poor woman is coping without me. I was the bread winner of the family. I have only one sister who is not happy with me about what I did, and I don’t blame her. And if I tell you that my father is a man of God, believe me. I don’t want to steal but when that spirit gets into me, I just can’t resist it. I just go out and look for what to steal.
‘And all the time I’ve gone out robbing, I have never killed anybody. That was the first time, and I didn’t mean to kill the man. But the only way I could get away from him was to shoot him. That’s what brought me to Okaka, armed robbery and murder’.
Abbey took a deep breath and looked in my general direction, a thin film of tears still covering his red eyeballs. I could not believe that I was sitting right next to a self-confessed armed robber, and was feeling sorry for him. But even more curiously, why was he telling me this?
It was clear that he was talking to me, confessing himself to me with evident compunction, and I wondered who I was to deserve such attention. What did he really think of me? Why was he so ready to talk to me? Does he do that to everybody in this prison yard? But Abbey’s voice cut into thoughts.
‘I heard your story. I was in my bed last night when you came in, and I heard everything you said about what brought you here. I committed a crime that’s why I’m paying for it with my time. I have a five-year sentence to finish. But to be in prison because you wrote sentences in a book means the outside world is getting crazier than the crazy people in this prison’, he said.
I looked around the yard and its milling population of inmates sauntering about, involved in one chore or the other, chatting, arguing, or simply moping at the world they had found themselves and wondering when they would get out of it.
‘Prison life is terrible. This is not a place to be at all. Don’t even wish it for your enemy. I have seen three Christmas seasons behind iron bars, first at Ahoada prison, then Okaka prison. I have two more Christmas seasons to see before I become a free man again.
‘But I have made up my mind. When I become a free man walking around in the outside world, I don’t want to be a robber again. I am tired of the job. I want to do something different with my life, and I pray that God should help me’, he said.
He said it with all sincerity of heart, and I could not help but say amen to his prayers. After that encounter, Abbey did not talk to me again at length for a long time.
He greeted me every morning, and went on to mind his business, even though we shared the same corner of the cell, separated only by our beds, practically within bumping distance of each other.
