Street Diaries

They say home is where the heart resides, where the roots dig deep and the soul finds comfort. If that's the case, then Harmony City is my home, my heart, my roots, my soul. My bloodline has lived and died in this city's belly, a city as ironic as its name, steeped in crime and chaos, a God-forsaken cesspool of human struggle that has been anything but harmonious for generations.

Growing up here wasn't easy, the second of four siblings, I witnessed my mother, a pillar of strength and sorrow, toil day and night as a domestic worker for the city's aristocracy. She worked with the strength of an elephant and was compensated like a mosquito. We were poor, and in those days, you were either living amidst the glitz and glamour of the rich, or you were barely surviving, choked by the dust and grime of poverty. The middle class? A mythical concept, a cruel joke in this city.

Harmony City was a chessboard, and we were the pawns. The government had designed the game to keep the rich in a perpetual state of prosperity, and the poor, us, in an eternal state of despair. Criminality was no longer a choice, but a means of survival. A grim baptism of fire for those desperate to escape the shackles of poverty.

Hell's Gaze district, an apt name for the ghetto we called home. The district was infamous for its high crime rate, the only place a poor soul could afford to breathe. The neighborhood was controlled by gangsters, their reach extending far and wide, their power cemented by the corrupt politicians who used them as their muscle. The gang bosses, in return, enjoyed the protection of the city's high officials, even the governor, enabling them to operate with impunity.

The police force, a corrupt institution that had long abandoned its duty to serve and protect, was a mere puppet in the hands of the powerful. The citizens of Hell's Gaze, living under the constant threat of poverty and crime, found solace not in the uniformed guardians of justice, but in the ruthless lords of the underworld.

My mother fell ill when I was seven, Kazeem, my older brother, was ten, and my younger siblings, Shola and Shade, were just toddlers. Our father had been imprisoned three years prior, his voice of dissent against the oppressive working conditions in his construction company silenced behind bars.

Breast cancer had claimed my mother, a sentence more lethal than any judge could pronounce. We were already walking a tightrope, balancing the demands of an empty stomach and a roof over our heads. How could we afford cancer treatment? The disease forced her to abandon her work, and we were left under the care of our uncle Kasali, a notorious smuggler. We watched, helpless, as our mother's life slowly drained out of her, her pain a constant reminder of our helplessness.

Kazeem, after the passing of our mother, spiraled into a world of crime. He joined the Warlords, a street gang that our father once belonged to, now led by the infamous Billy "The Devil" Ajebukola. A man who had everything - money, fame, power, influence, and protection. Kazeem dropped out of school and embraced this life of crime with open arms. He fed us, clothed us, and we, in our desperation, did not care where it all came from. A year after my mother's death we went to check on my father in prison. He had gotten his sentence reduced for good behavior and he was supposed to be coming home in a couple of months, that was the only good news we had heard in a long while, so Kazem took us out to a diner that night before we visited him, something we rarely did back then, it was a luxury reserved for the rich. we all even had our best clothes in order not to look too ghetto or dirty at the diner.

We visited dad the next day, and boy he was very happy, we all were.

"Everything is going to be better once I get out of here kid, " He said smiling from ear to ear like he usually did.

Unfortunately, he didn't get out of prison, at least not alive. He died the following month and never got to make everything better as he promised. He was just found stabbed in his cell and that was the end of it.

This further twisted Kazeem up. Six years passed and Kazeem had already become an enforcer for the warlords. He got the nickname "the butcher" and became even colder than before. As bad as uncle Kasali was, even he tried to get him to leave the gang but he failed.

"The only way out of the gang is in a box or boxes, uncle, and you know it, " he would argue.

"Not if you leave town, " Kasali explained.

"So that they can come for my siblings?" Kazeem screeched.

"Billy wouldn't do that. He was a friend of your dad's when they were young, " Kasali responded.

"If you think he wouldn't come after everybody I know including you and your family, then you don't really know what you're talking about, " kazeem screamed.

This got Kasali quiet and he held Kazeem by his shoulder and said:

"Just be careful out there, kid. Your siblings only have you now."

"Man you be careful too, you're a criminal too, " kazeem chuckled.

I was already in high school and I was doing good, life was better and Kazeem was taking care of us. He moved us out of Hell's gaze, to Taiwo's avenue, a street named after one of the first rich families to settle there. I got into one of the better high schools in the neighborhood. I met another kid who was also from the ghetto and we became friends. He was from Kings lane, which was just another poor neighborhood.

He was only there on scholarship, his name was Mike and he had a single parent, his overprotective mother.

Another election was about to be held and as part of their campaigns, the politicians would start school programs. One of these programs was a quiz competition among several schools.

I had won the competition for my school, two consecutive years before then, and when it was announced on the television and all the schools involved started preparations, Mike overheard some of the boys in Hell's gaze who belonged to the 666 Street mob when they were threatening to "deal with the Kid that's always winning the competition if he tried to win again."

"I know they were talking about you, Kunle what are you going to do?" Mike whispered.

"Well... they're just bluffing. They can't do anything, Mikey, " Kunle replied and chuckled.

"Bro, these kids don't joke around. They're crazy, " Mike asserted.

"We'll be okay, bro. Don't be so worried about it, "

Kings lane, just like Hell's gaze was another crime-filled neighborhood. It was run by the 666 Street mob, so Mikey knew a lot of their young members. He was an only child and he was raised by his mother, after his father, who was a taxi driver got shot by a police officer when he refused to bribe the officer. All his mother wanted was to make him better than she and his father were. Mike was a skinny boy, he was even skinnier than I was back then, and we went everywhere together. God, we had big big dreams back then, we dreamed about traveling the world and seeing places we only saw on our neighbors' televisions. A lot of these dreams came true of course, but not the way we had planned.

On my way back home the same day I noticed being followed by some boys. Their leader was a guy called "one-eyed" Sunday. He was a big kid with one bad eye, he got one of his eyes broken when his gang attacked other boys in a rival gang in our school. Rival gangs clashed all the time back then, and the violence had extended to secondary schools too. Most of the kids in school during those days belonged to one gang or another, and whenever these gangs clashed in the streets, it automatically would spread into the schools just as school fights always got taken to the streets too. I remember one of such incidents, when the 666 gangs and another gang clashed on some dumb shit, and that afternoon as we sat in class and we were being taught by a teacher called Mr. Gadaffi, "Mr. Gadaffi" as he was popularly called was one of the very strict teachers, he was a tall bearded man with a stern, look and a no-nonsense attitude to back it up. We heard shouting and we all rushed out to see what was going on, I already was expecting a fight to break out that day because Kaz had informed me of a beef between the 666 and the other gang earlier in the morning that day, he had tried to keep me from going to school that day, but I had refused to stay back home because I did not want to miss Mr. Gaddam's class. The man was feared and disliked by most of the students in school back then, but I was one of the few ones who loved his seriousness and I loved the fact that he knew his shit, he taught us sciences and I would wish for his class to never end. Mr. Gadaffi was the first to discover what had happened, he ran into the class where the shouting emerged from and he immediately ran back, shouting and warning us to run, I can't forget the look he had on his face, the stern look had disappeared and was replaced with pure terror and disgust. We all scattered in different directions as we found our way out of the school. Later that night I heard on the news that a gang clash in the school had resulted in the butchering of two male students in a class. That was what Mr. Gaddamn had seen, the boys were macheted into pieces. After that day, Mr. Gadaffi never returned to school, maybe he skipped town or something, but nobody could tell, he just vanished. But rumors had it that he had seen the boys who did the killing, and they found him later that night.

So, when I saw Sunday and his gang, I knew I should have taken Mike's warning seriously, I had seen Sunday in action before when he chased another boy around with a dagger, trying to stab him. I tried to walk on quickly, then I started to run but it was too late, they attacked me in an alley, and when Sunday held me by my shirt all I could do was stare into his bad eye. He whispered into my ears and the stink of his breath made me nauseous:

"Na you dey form brainy boy, yes?"

I wanted to say something but my mouth felt so dry and the words wouldn't come out. I suddenly felt a blow to my stomach. It felt like I was getting the air squeezed out of me and I landed on the ground. Like this was a signal for the other boys, they all started kicking me. I felt crushed under their might, and they weren't going to stop anytime soon, then I used all the strength I had left to scream:

"Do you know who my brother is, you bastards?" I roared.

Sunday stopped the other boys and paid attention to me where I was on the ground, bleeding, and still holding my hurting stomach.

"Who the fuck be your brother and why should I care?" He asked in his thick voice and the other boys giggled.

I stood up from the ground, and with suddenly found confidence, I said:

"My brother is Kazeem the butcher, he runs with the warlords and, I guess knows what happens when I tell him what you did to me. He's going to kill all of you and your fucking families, you dumb cunts!"

One of the boys rushed at me but was suddenly stopped by a blow to the face from Sunday. That was a signal to them not to touch me. He then walked up to another boy and asked him:

"Why didn't you tell me who his brother is, you fool? Do you want to die?"

He then waved his hand and like zombies, they all dispersed.