Ннеди Окорафор: Lagos Noir

In one corner, as though they stepped out of a Wole Soyinka play, a gaggle of white-garbed members of the Order of the Cherubim and Seraphim church dip themselves in the water, invoking the Virgin Mary and Yemoja in one breath.

Gleaming cars — BMWs, Lexuses — line the waterfront, spilling young people giddy with money and power and privilege and sunshine.

All of this belies the executions that used to happen here in the 1970s. Families gathered to cheer the firecracker shots from the firing squads dispensing with convicted robbers.

But as with much of the world, none of it exists until we arrive and cast our gaze about. And so, it wasn’t until the early seventies that I realized Lagos even existed as a place. My introduction was detention in a hot military aviation shed where my mother (and thus us), on our return to Nigeria after the Biafran War, was held for interrogation for being a Biafran supporter.

Those of us who grew up in the detritus of the war knew, and many of us still know, and carry, an unsettled darkness. A danger, a sense of the ominous we cannot explain. There was death around us, as memory, as suffering, as a scent that permeated everything we did. Even our play was marked by that war; unexploded grenades that went off as we played catch with them, skulls still in helmets, bullets everywhere, burned-out armored cars. And then the guilt of the war — collaborators who were killed, publicly sometimes or privately. Then there were the suicides, people who couldn’t live with who they were and who hung themselves. And then the aunties who couldn’t stop crying, grieving for what had been lost in the war, either men or their innocence. That stays with a person, becomes a second skin you forget you are wearing.

But my first real intimation of Lagos and noir was Lagos Weekend , a Saturday publication, a newspaper I wasn’t meant to read. It was like the National Enquirer and True Crime had merged. There were salacious stories of affairs, of marriages broken down, of women driven to murder their husbands by a jealous rage or for fear of being beaten to death. Men with penises cut off by angry wives. Murders, burnings, lynch mobs — many of the stories were followed by gritty photographs that were hard to make out but that didn’t censor mutilated bodies and other dark subjects, none of them suitable for a child. But I would steal my father’s copy, hide behind the water tank, next to the sugarcane clump, ignoring the vampires my brother convinced me lived in them, and I would devour the paper, the cheap ink sticking to my fingers and palms, leaving a residue, a darkness.

The seventies were also a period of the photo novel, a magazine that was like a TV episode or a short film. A story played out in panels with writing and stark black-and-white photographs, a storyboard, but more. They were amazing, and had titles like True Africa , and Monster of Doom , and She , and SuperMask , and Rex Bullit , and Chunkie — they were either costumed superheroes, private detectives, maverick cowboys, or mystical women. But the most popular was a detective called Lance Spearman. Lance wore neat suits, shiny shoes, smoked cigarettes, sported a mustache and a porkpie hat, looking like a low-rent Richard Roundtree in Shaft , and I loved him. I wanted to be Lance Spearman. Lance took on all kinds of criminals and won, even an African Blackbeard serial killer. Published by African Film Magazine and Drum Magazine , these photo books were noir at its best. Many of them came from Kenya, Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia, as it was still known in those days), South Africa, and also Nigeria.

The complex network of spaghetti bridges that make up the Berger-built freeways limns Lagos like the cosmopolitan city that it is. Driving at night across them, you end up on Third Mainland Bridge and the dazzle of lights on the water is more breathtaking than anything you can imagine.

Lagos never sleeps. Ever. It stays awake long after New York has faded in a long drawn-out yawn, matched only by the vigil of Cairo. On the Internet, the tourist board once promised:

There is something for everyone in Lagos. If your interest is sport, we have it. Soccer (football), tennis, swimming, golf, sailing — all within easy access. If you enjoy volunteer work, it’s here — International Literacy Group, the Motherless Babies Home, the Pacelli School for the Blind — just to name a few opportunities. Perhaps you are a collector. You’ll have plenty of chances to search for artifacts of West Africa. Masks, trader beads, artwork, woodcarving, drums, fabrics, walking sticks. You can find it all in Lagos. Own your very own beach hut on one of the local beaches. We have various clubs — both social and business — representing many nationalities. Have you ever wanted to go on a safari? Lagos is your gateway to East Africa. We offer culture in the MUSON (Musical Society of Nigeria) Centre, the German-sponsored Goethe Institute, and many other venues.

By the way a man sits smoking on the hood of his burned-out Mercedes-Benz, it is clear he wants you to know that this is all temporary. He will be rich again. By his feet a rat skulks for cover. In front of him, dead rats thrown from houses litter the street like a fresh rash of dried leaves from fall.

In front of the National Theatre, shaped like an old Yoruba crown, the statue of Queen Amina of Zaria, on horseback, sword drawn, face pulled back in a snarl, reminds you that here, women will not bow to men, I don’t care what the propaganda says.

On Victoria Island, there are houses that even the richest people in the US cannot imagine owning. In Ikoyi, the money is quieter: the thing here is not the house, it is the land and the fescue lawn and the trees and the quiet swish of water against a boat docked at the end of the garden.

The poor go out of their way to drive past them. Everyone can dream.

Underneath the government-sponsored billboard that says, Keep Lagos Clean , a city of trash, like the work of a crazy artist, grows exponentially.

Lagos is no place to be poor, my brother.

Even though the rich don’t know it or see it from their helicopters and chauffeur-driven cars, for most of the poor, canoes and the waterways are perhaps the most popular means of travel. That and the rickety molue buses.

The sign over the entrance to the open-air market announces: Computer Mega City . This is no joke. There is everything here from a dot matrix printer and the house-sized Wang word processors of the eighties to the smallest, newest Sony VIAO. In Lagos, it is not about what is available but only what you can afford.

The Hotel Intercontinental looks like something out of The Jetsons. It would be more at home in Las Vegas. Inside here, you could be in any city in the world.

In Idumota, the muezzin at the Central Mosque has to compete with the relentless car and bus horns, the call of people haggling, the scream of metal against metal, and the hum of millions of people trying to get through a city too small for them.

And yet, hanging tremulously in the heat, there it is, that call to prayer. And all around, in the heart of the crowd, as though unseen snipers are picking them off, the faithful fall to the ground and begin praying. As though it is the most normal thing in the world — people, buses, and cars thread around them.

The Lagos Marina looks like the New York skyline. Don’t take my word for it. Check Google Images.

Far away from where the heart of the city is now, you can still find the slave jetty and the slave market. Don’t be fooled. A lot of Lagosians got rich selling people into slavery. It was a trade, remember?

Today, in Evanston, Illinois, I am watching a series of short films by Lagosians, and, as dusk falls over the city, listening to Fela Kuti on my iPod and drinking a soothing latte, I am listening to Lagos with my eyes closed.