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punks!
by Eloghosa Osunda
It sounds like a riddle: What is city, god, masquerade and panopticon at the same time? The answer is the Nigerian city of Lagos, in Eloghosa Osunde’s first novel brimming with stories, “Vagabonds!”: the capital city, also known as the “city spirit” Èkó, is a capricious force of 21 million people all watching and being watched. The city warns to “turn around” with a “welcome note” at the beginning of the book. “Because if you wait for us to turn our backs and start going, then darling, go by the weight of our eyes will surely kill you.” The city operates according to a set of rules, it becomes clear: the poor are scapegoated and spit on by a vengeful Èkó, while rich men and women commit crimes with impunity by wearing “body masks” that hide their true selves and demand respect. Appearances are paramount. “After all, it was Nigeria,” writes Osunde in the “Golden” story. “People’s necks were broken for constantly disrupting aesthetics.”
Vagrants spoil the aesthetic, of course. They are outsiders of the city, wandering or displaced – but they also include anyone who is queer in public, according to a particularly Nigerian definition. The Lagosians in these stories “live in the cracks” in a society where gay romance is illegal and often severely punished. Sex takes place secretly on the rooftops of tall buildings, where no one can see; Relationships blossom at house parties and crumble under the weight of societal expectation and fear. Osunde’s Lagos is also teeming with supernatural beings: Satan appears more than once, taking over people’s bodies for sex and a certain brand of dark justice. Fairygodgirls – “girls who have lost everything, girls who are already dead and therefore untouchable” – keep an eye out for the vulnerable living girls that “nobody gets angry enough”. But ghosts aren’t just spirits of the dead, and the line between physical and figurative invisibility is forever blurred. “We are ghosts because we have to be, because our lives depend on passing by,” says Daisy, a dancer at a women’s nightclub. “But we are the ones who often see other ghosts, hug and cuddle with them,” and sleep with them “in our bedrooms, with the doors closed.”
Some of the most indelible characters, often in female duos, recur in more than one story: mothers and daughters, lovers, friends. A genius at designing dresses that are as loud, beautiful, and distracting as Lagos society demands, Wura Blackson doesn’t quite know what to do with her daughter Rain, who one day seems fully grown and free from the constraints of that society. “Just a warning,” says Rain. “I don’t come with a mask. Or a filter. I say what I really think.” Osunde is particularly good at portraying the depth and warmth of casual intimacy, idyllic scenes of the choking queer life. Daisy has been with Divine for years and “even now,” writes Osunde, “they are still connected in the same way: filling the kitchen with food, eating all day. They cook, sharpening each other’s tastes. “By doing all the work I grew up doing in the kitchen,” Divine once said, standing between Daisy’s legs as she sat on the island, “wallahi, she didn’t know at the time, but my mom was raising me to feed you.” ”
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