1: WE DO NOT WISH TO SCARE YOU
So the wife of the jinn laid thirty-one eggs. From one of these eggs came qutrubah who is the mother of all the qutrubs. She has the shape of a cat. From another egg were born the iblises (demons), among who is al-Harith abu Murrah. They live in the sea. The marids were born from another egg. They live on islands. Then the ghouls were born from yet another egg. They live in deserts and empty places. The si‘lats came from a different egg. They live in heaps of dirt and in bathrooms. As for the hawam, they were born from another egg. They live in the air, and have the forms of flying snakes. —Al-Mas‘udi, Muruj al-dhahab, 2:138.
If you ever go to the river alone at night,
you will be trapped in the land of the spirits forever
Never mind that’s just slave traders or human traffickers
we do not wish to scare you
Do not go to play in the bush, you might get eaten alive by wolves
could be assault, could be murder, or maybe giant mosquitoes but
we do not wish to scare you
The sounds uttered by jinn bring madness upon a person.
pounding drums, buzzing flies,
a twitter, a loud call from the unseen—hatif
we do not wish to scare you
do not play on the threshold
it is the natural-supernatural frontier;
if one lingers there, one risks stumbling into the realm,
where anjonu wait with big teeth and red eyes.
we do not wish to scare you
Beat a bad child in the balcony to
exorcise him for loving the company of black dogs, and rooms
where the lights are switched off
we do not wish to scare you
And private parts should be called modest names
cushion for the ethos of shame, the horror of
carrying charred consciences inside coffee-coloured chins
we do not wish to scare you
and know this: both depth of forest and density of darkness
do not compare to the blasé streaming of daily culture.
My dear children, do not turn your back to the blackness
What you will see in the light is far eviler,
but we do not wish to scare you.
2: THE TESTIMONY OF A SYNESTHETE
This is not wakanda, but it is pretty close.
Here, let me paint you a picture:
You are
looking at structures halfway between
sculpture and architecture. Majestic,
futuristic, solar run, brutal earth reclamation
irrigation and the holograms of extinct
wildlife in your backyard.
You are
tasting dishes so dear, fishes so rare,
dressed exotic where
they should be carrying placards;
feeling the salt of sweat stinging your eyes,
you struggle with each breath drawn in,
drowning in lava. Because the sun is not feeling cute,
his eye unblinking has you thinking, wishing
you were as one of the gaudy-coloured reptiles hiding
in the cracks of the crags where the sand
is not hot enough to bake you.
You are
listening for the muezzin in the minaret,
the oud player and the kid with the
the gaïta that looks so much like the bad guy on TV.
A D note looks like dark blue burlap
and a G resembles the red from a freshly opened artery.
You are
smelling the odour of sounds and hearing
the splendour of colours that do not
even exist. A pattern that should not persist.
In this oasis, what smells like roses
feels like danger. God bless your synesthesia,
and the fact that you have a really
screwed up idea of how we live,
of how we should live.
3: XOXO
tunes of a toad—
the ex was a xenopus*
x carries the trauma well, but
the monkey on y’s back wears xxl
xiphoid dick:
we are the noble xe
blended in the atmosphere. xxxploited
because of what we
remember × how we remember.
every december, the chorus of the crew
causes nightmares to pirouette in view
but all the dreamers are woke now.
and all the screamers are broke now.
xenophobe on the xylophone: we x’d
the mothership after the xxth century.
circle a xerophyte* in remembrance
of sin and sinner. there is a xenial dinner
same face, same race, but with mines
in the xystus. no xenomorphs or honeybees*
allowed. defenestrate the x**ker.
the x**ker:
i have not come from
my xeric habitat to roleplay xerxes,
x—cross my heart and hope to die—x
hope that reconciliation is xenographed,
all the xylographs show
we are the result of a xenogamy of x-rated
ideas. x is plural and contested
x is plural and sun tested
x’s a mural, not a xeroxed utopia
where x-men try too hard to be
xenoliths. find x in the pyramids. find x
in the tumbling cross on the deck of
the clotilda, you want revenge or restitution? think of x as a union of opposites, x as equilibrium,
x as the spiritual jump-start for refinement, and redefinition. the in-fighting is how they got us the first
time; x-ray the death dealer, his first crime and
his love for the hideous.
dear xerophilous genius,
this is a xenogenesis.
to defeat weaponized disunity
we must achieve a singularity
of purpose, of aim, of peaceful ruthlessness.
xmas came early.
xo xo.
Notes
Xenopus— commonly known as the clawed frog, is a genus of highly aquatic frogs native to areas south of the Sahara. In the dry season, they burrow into mud, leaving a tunnel for air. They may lie dormant for up to a year! They are commonly studied as model organisms for developmental biology, cell biology, toxicology, neuroscience and for modeling human disease and birth defects, because of their powerful combination of experimental tractability and close evolutionary relationship with humans.
Xerophyte—Trees that survive with very little water. In the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, before the Kingdom’s captives departed for the New World to be enslaved, they were forced to march around the ‘Tree of Forgetfulness’ six times so that they would remember neither their home continent nor the people they were leaving behind.
Xenomorphs or honeybees— parasitoid wasps are said to have inspired the creation of the Xenomorph alien in the movie franchise, but the South African Cape honeybee? That’s another matter. These bees (Apis mellifera capensis) can create perfect copies of themselves without a Queen. With this perpetual-cloning ability, they sneak into the hives of the African lowland honeybees (Apis mellifera scutella) and churn out copy after copy of themselves. The clones are freeloaders, who just strut around refusing to do any work. They create chaos and lead to an eventual collapse of any hive they invade.
Clotilda—The schooner Clotilda was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from West Africa (present day Republique du Benin) to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859, with 110 kidnapped men, women, and children. After the voyage, the ship was burned and scuttled in an attempt to destroy the evidence.
Pyramids — You can find the X on the walls of a number of ancient Egyptians temples and pyramids. It is the sign of Osiris, the great sun god. The ancient pharaohs, when they were buried, had the legs crossed in the form of “X” as a sign of devotion to Osiris.
Hannu Afere is an author, animator and artiste whose work has appeared in several publications in Nigeria, China, Canada and the US. He co-authored the critically acclaimed graphic novel Trinity: Red October in 2018 and in 2019, his debut collection of short stories GrimGrin: WTF was published. His novella Dog Days of Rain was published in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic; and in 2021, he wrote the screenplay to The Adventures of Captain Blud, an animated series with the Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka. In 2022, his short story Dogz of War was nominated for the British Science Fiction Awards.
Presently, he is the Editor-in-chief of the Anthology of West African Literature (8th House Publishing, Montréal), and he is collaborating with the Lao Minnesotan Poet Laureate Bryan Thao Worra on a book of poems titled Laos N Lagos. When he’s not creating or collecting art, he can be found spending quality time with his partner Didi, and their canine companions, Rain and Roulette. He writes from Lagos.
You can read an interview we did with him earlier this year here.
