Dad has made a pilgrimage to Mecca for about a month and he just buzzed me that I should look for someone that would drive his car so we could pick him up at the joint where they constellated before moving to the airport. I called one of his friends who I know, knows how to drive a car, my uncle, Tunde, and one of his apprentices, Waliy. We zoomed off.

On our way, I was already thinking of some weird stuffs. Trying to put his arrival into a guess as I was nurturing how the reality would be. I was imagining how weird it would be if I rushed to give a coll like two old friends that have parted ways for years would. I was in the vesica pisces between the euphoria I was basking on his arrival and the devastation of our mind-numbling relationship.

My Dad is a person who loves his kids as much as he loves himself. He gave us everything any child could have ever wanted. From good cloths, to good education, to good housing, you name them. He is not rich, but he has enough to settle our bills and make sure we don't lack.

The con of his character is how he relates with his older child. Maybe he feels like I'm old enough to enjoy the closest intimacy as he gives to my younger siblings. He's a quintessence of a Nigerian psychopath in an alien world when it comes to relating with me.

We have our rooms faced each other as the toilet and bathroom dividing them. Yet, we don't talk. Our apartment is like morgue. I say "good morning" once in a while and he is the one that doesn't take good morning seriously too. He'd answer sometimes, sometimes he'd ignore. He calls me only when he has technical difficulty on his smart phone, time for prayer, or the toilet needs cleaning. That's how we live and it has become the core of our existence.

Boom! There was a obnoxious sound reverberating in my eardrums from about 50meter to where we were seated. "Won ti de oooo"; meaning they have arrived. The whole neighborhood erupted as people were coming out from their houses to welcome the newest Alhajis and Alhajas in town. There were loud, hellish, piercing, and shrieking noises surrounding the bus around the expanse of the area.

I am such a calm and collective person, thus quiet oversensitive about everything. I find all the gloating really absurd and weird so I maintained my sitting position until I saw a lanky figure of my dad in a silhouette form against the floodlight beaming from inside the bus. I quickly ran to him as his flaps of his flip-flops got closer and closer. He was looking like someone who's convalescing from catarrh as he was walking languorously while covering his nose with a handkerchief.

I still didn't know how I would welcome him till I bumped into his face and was totally numbed. With a stutter voice, I said; E kaabo sa. I felt it wasn't enough for someone who had just arrived from a very far place away from this continent. Then, subconsciously, I stretched my arms to cup his body which he quickly reciprocated the hug. Word eluded both of us. Just embrace and embrace till we were drawn in the free-spiritedness of the exhilaration and wore our glee into the car. We both looked weird as it was the first time we would fall on each other's necks.

It's almost a year now and I can't stop the memory from playing in my head. And oh, the hug, it felt like a ferrous delight.

Lukmon O. Lateef

lolz