OF FORBIDDEN MAGIC AND OPEN SECRET

Of Forbidden Magic and Open Secret

This story is not one that glides out easily and unconsciously like the mistake of a bedwetter. It is one that struggles out like a baby out of its Mother.


Nine months ago, I marked my Twelveth birthday. My brother got his admission letter and came home so joyful. He dropped a secret seed of joy in me during our usual escapade. That day was the seventh year anniversary of our secret relationship.


After several threats to the end of his miserable living, my seventeen-year-old brother grew into almost a mute introvert. He was always having conversations with the inner demons that my parents had carelessly created in him. He has since age three listened to the voice of Mother moaning out load as the Gateman performs 'magic' on her when Father was away in his late night business meetings. Loud moans that competed with that of nursery school pupils reading ABC after their teacher.


"Our gateman performs great magic."
My brother would repeat Mother's words to father at the dining table at night, and mum would burst into laughter— a laughter that infects father's thought. "After all, we all thought our Uncles who concealed meats in their mouths were also great magician", Father would conclude without finding out what kind of magic the gateman performed. Mother has always hushed my brother with enticing chocolates and sweet lies whenever he saw the actual magic process. "It's part of the process, son. Don't tell your father about this, else your eyes would close and never open. You won't be able to eat your best chocolates too, anymore", she would say.


Father wasn't just non-challant. He was a key role model to my brother. Whenever Mother travels on her business trip, my brother would be left in the hands of Father who fiddled with his penis in the absence of Our Aunt who Mother doesn't know. Our Aunt whose elegant backside and gracious watermelons Father studies in the day with the thought of how best to handle them at night when they sleep together. She thought my brother to perform the Gateman's magic whenever Father wasn't around. He was always threatened never to tell anyone of his ordeal, else he'll find fire in the well.


My brother was ten when I was born. As soon as I was five, I had began to notice the carelessness and nonchallance of my parents. I spent most time of the week with my demon brother who performed everything he grew up learning on me. He repeated the same threats as he was given, but it didn't deter me from trying to report. But then, I had only the presence of Mother in Dubai and Father in a meeting at an undisclosed location to report to. It was as though I spent only the blink of an eye with my parents as I could barely recognise what they looked like.


My brother and I continued till it seemed like a norm to me. Our secrets were as safe as planted seed as long as our parent's nonchallence was there to coat it. Little did we know that the seed was soon to sprout and the secret would speak for itself.


Today, the result of our family's carelessness has been driven to the world through me. It looks us in the eye and refuse to cry like other babies as we bury our head in shameful regrets.

©Shomade Abdulazeez.

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