For a Gone Brother

The last time I saw Abubakar was last year. On that day in late June, after
a lecture, he had hurriedly summoned the class to inform us of an impending
'calamity' that would soon befall our university. This calamity, he said,
was stemmed from the sinful and unlawful practices that students and
lecturers displayed. Everyone laughed about it. Like Abubakar, unperturbed
by jeers, had always made us laugh.

It was a bright sunny afternoon. But a gloom loomed in his eyes. The type
which spoke of a man who delirium had detached from the spinning world. A
man who had fallen sick.

I had an affable relationship with Abubakar in our days in 100 level. A
stoic-broad man with a broad smile. I was particularly drawn to him by the
boldness he wore in the classroom and an alluring spirit he exuded outside
the lecture halls. He  was often bold enough to attempt question no one had
a clue answering, even if it was wrong. Abubakar soon became likeable to
some of the lecturers who admired his courage; and some of us were
attracted to his simple, unassuming character. He was, in turn, opened to
those of us he trusted. He shared his stories; he had plans for the future.
He loved. But his demeanour didn't make him care whether he was loved in
return.

In 200 level, Abubakar started withdrawing. He withdrew from the class and
sometimes shielded himself with a week-long melancholy. Such inward battle
came with the price others around him had to pay for: a constant obsession
with an 'acclaimed lover', accompanied by hallucinations. He became
increasingly quieter, often wearing a cold, morose attitude. He nagged at
little altercations and hardly spoke in a class he once controlled with a
sense of humour he never knew he had. And was never told he had.

Abubakar is gone. He just left. And has been eight months gone. He left, I
think, after that afternoon he prophesied doom on our school. He left,
perhaps, out of the fear and paranoia that comes with dementia. He's been
sick, everybody knows, but nobody cares. Instead, we talk about him as if
he were here, as if everything was alright. We have forgotten, it seems,
about how normal a being he was, and still is. I marvel at how quick we are
to burn the bridge that links our past to our present.

Abubakar has a disturbing present that is fast erasing his gleeful and
promising spirit from our minds. We should help him connect back to the
world and this can possibly happen when we begin wishing him well. When we
begin to truly care.