His sister and her friends had all just finished Senior High School and were finally allowed to grow their hair out – which meant that extensions, afros, and perms had become frequent subjects of discussion. 

He instinctively tuned out their conversation, focusing instead on  the water he was cooking the palm fruit with; waiting for it to turn a little less golden, for the sheen from all of the fibres to dull. 

He can’t tune the entirety of his sister’s conversation out, however. Anyone who deals with extensions, he imagines to himself, must have an exciting approach to fibrous foods, knowing exactly how to manipulate them for the greatest effect on the plate and on the head. He imagines that anyone who has to undergo the absolutely painful relaxing cream (there are many things he has to do for the privilege of the hang out), would really know how to cook anything that stretches into threads. Passing a comb through his hair every morning was in itself a hassle, so maybe fibre wasn’t for him.

The conversation about which relaxing cream was best continued undisturbed by his imagination, which had by now decided that the long strands of their hair were in fact stretching towards the future. How the smell of spicy beans and plantain clung  their hair, and would from here until eternity. If he ever left the house he hoped that on cooking an errant hair of his mothers wove its way into his jumper, something he could string between his fingers for comfort, twirling the memory of a domestic maternal past. The silver of his grandmothers, so much rarer, would be even more joyful still.

***

In a small room, peanut butter was simmering in a pan. He was older now. The wait for the oil to form was slow but he’d learnt patience long ago in his mother’s kitchen. 

He mixed in the pureed tomatoes and drowned them in boiling chicken stock. He split a bunch of basil in two with his hands, half to be chopped and the other ground. 

What his grandmother would say confronted with this green herbal mulch, spooned now into the boiling soup, made him laugh. He thought of his grandmother every time he cooked: at times, he imagined traversing through history to her childhood. How when he cooked he longed to see the world through the eyes of his ancestors! How confident he was, caught in the nose hairs of the long dead, of the presence there of the sweet scent of something good!  How well he felt he knew the feet that curled when the pestle slipped, and the absent hand quickly dodged! 

Oh damn, your slippery cassava!

It was in moments like these, in that tiny room, that hee  yearned to inhabit the small girl who bought kerosene from the stall on the junction of her street. Or the woman who roasts gari all day, tossing her product in a large iron pan. He wanted to be that other child he saw running to buy peanuts for her mother, or, as her mother, grind those peanuts with strong wrists until she forced something different from them.

Oh, those magical wrists…

He remembered his aunties teasing him as he tried to turn the banku: he couldn’t move the spoon at all. Those strong wrists that could move the toughest banku, or flip the stickiest fufu all with no more than a few droplets of water. 

And don’t these wrists make me a wrestler / don’t these wrists make me a wrangler / don’t these wrists make me a writer/ who wrestles words / who wrangles work / who always decides that / work must be violent and tense on the arms / carry me softly / carry me go / carry me go / carry me go.

All he wanted, in fact, was to fill this small flat with the smell of groundnut soup. All he wanted was to invite in the humid air outside and with it the smell of frying fish he recognised from childhood. 

The taste will be somehow/ the taste will be somewhere/ not here / shining like diamonds / elsewhere / or else / these ramblings I cannot seem to shake / they play in my mind / they play in the moments I step backwards in to the mukaase / into the kitchen / forward into the home / with even a slight notion of spice / how long will it last? / how long will it dance on the tongue?

The movements of his grandmother and mother slowed in the months before he left the family house. It was as though the kitchen – a space he’d always understood as belonging to the women in his family – opened up to him precisely when it knew he was leaving. He remembered the shift well, how he found himself  newly included in the preparation of food. The softness of his grandmother's fingers as they pushed his mouth agape he remembered best of all, sliding some fish or stew in to try before it was served. He remembers sitting with these women, slicing tomatoes for lunch. 

I shall go to the mountaintop / my grandmother’s house / praying to the herbs / to the peppers / all the godly things in her kitchen / in her garden / in her bra / wrapped in her cloth / wrapped like a summer dream / wrapped all nice and clean / bless me / in your shawl in late September / move all that you have of yourself on to me.

He stirs his soup again, satisfied with its consistency. He turns off the hob, and pours the soup into a larger serving bowl. He places two bowls on his small table, wipes the condensation off the walls: his living arrangements were so small that  this was a necessity after every meal. He cleans the kitchen methodically in a routine he has known since youth , and waits for his doorbell to ring.

I love to slow cook for my friends / that they might think me tender

I love the glint of soaked black beans in the moonlight

I love the smell of my shirt after cooking / the echoes of an evening / linger…