Lagos, Unannounced

I came home in November and did not tell anyone I was coming. The airport was smaller than I remembered and also louder. The man at immigration looked at my passport, looked at me, and said, without a smile, "Welcome back, Samuel." I had not used Samuel in four years. It landed on me like a stone.

Outside, the heat was not a temperature. It was a pressure, and a smell, and a light. A driver I had never met recognised my face from the WhatsApp picture my mother had sent him and said my name as if he had been saying it for years. I got in the car. He drove me home the long way, past the market that was closing, past the church that was starting its Wednesday evening service, past the woman who used to sell suya on the corner and who I had thought about every time I ate badly-cooked meat for four years in three different cities.

I did not tell anyone I was coming because I did not want to be met. I wanted the city to see me first and decide whether to let me back in. The city did. The city always does. That is the thing about Lagos: it does not remember you being gone. It simply notices that you are here again, and asks what took you so long.