HOOKED

Gripped in the forest of her nostalgic love diminuendos, her cellphone buzzed. She always enjoyed listening to her Sam Smith “Too Good at goodbyes”
ring tone. So she first let her slick Samsung phone ring itself hoarse! She then lazily stretched her agile and well-polished tender stealthy hands towards that nonchalantly inviting phone call.
“Hello there,” off went the mysterious voice on the other end of the line. “I’m Desmond. I’m sure you don’t know me because we’ve not met before but your friend, Amora gave me your contact. I’d fancy us meeting when you come to the capital some day!”
She heaved a mammoth sigh. She felt stranded like a lonely hungry hyena watching a lion devouring its catch. What was she supposed to say? She had never been the kind to talk to strangers but her pride would not let her be rude to the caller. She managed a hum and calmly massaged the end-call part of the screen. She resisted the urge of calling Amora and reprimand her. She simply brushed off the whole incident.
Incidentally, she was that evening aboard a bus to the capital to pay homage to her ailing grandmother. Her schedule was all set. Her one week break from the hustle and bustle of work was meant to be reinvigorating and refreshing. Enjoy the coziness of her grandmother and visit a few old friends and places. May be the gods had different plans for her. She then reluctantly picked out her headsets from her satchel and plugged her ears to listen to her favourite gospel playlist till she arrived home at the deep end of the evening.
Surely, there is no place like home. How she enjoyed the noise and dust of the city despite her adoration of the wild mountainous environs she worked in. They say a man who loves a woman will go overboard to get to her. While enjoying her best ice-cream at her favourite hangout, a clean shaven middle-aged man came sat beside her. It was on days like that that one would wish raindrops would fall.
“Hi Dorah,” the raspy voice bellowed out her name to startle her awake in disbelief how this stranger could have known her name. “It’s me Desmond. I called you two days ago.” She was astounded and shredded in thoughts of how he had managed to track her down. She, however, saved herself the burden of asking. She needn’t have asked anyway for words and explanations rained from his overstretched pair of meaty lips like water from an ill-fated fish net. He delved into his corrupt ingenuity of using his office equipment to monitor her movements by tracking her phone. This is when she pinched herself awake from her lost ball in the weeds nap. This was now a whole new ball game. She lost even the little interest she had picked in him and glared at him as though he was about as useful as a chocolate teapot! Desmond was a police officer and this became another of his Achilles heels.
The two had a Chinese wall between them. She felt a rocky ball in need of scratching coming up her throat but she voted against talking to him. This is because her heart reminded her that when you are alone and talking to some crazy person, it does not matter how good your reasoning is but the insanity of the other person! To Desmond, however, it seemed like time stood still. He looked into her dark eyes and realized that her lips were in dilemma of whether to laugh or frown. He felt he was in love – something older than humanity, more ancient than the world itself.
What Desmond felt at the moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life but she did not recognize the same thing. He had been told by his ancestors that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. This was his mission here. The past and the future became unimportant to him for this was the woman in the world he had been waiting for. Dorah was his twin soul that God had created him to make his dream meaningful. But would she requite his feelings? It was to the contrary. This interaction only helped her understand something she had not understood before; every blessing ignored becomes a curse! Sometimes, there is just no way to hold back the river…. This river was her feelings and adorations for the young man back in the wild mountains that she was letting cry his eyes soar for her love!
“Desmond,” she almost yelled, “it’s been nice meeting you. I pray you give me time to digest the implication of this meeting. We’ll keep in touch!” she was done grabbing her clutch and said the last sentence already on the move. Desmond was a little dismayed but thought it was not a bad start after all. He still had her contact and had now physically met with her. He would get his other chance. Meanwhile, Dorah’s mind wandered between her now former best friend, Amora and Desmond. How was she supposed to handle this? Back at university, Amora had tried hooking her up and she had done it again. Surely, anything that happens once can never happen again, but everything that happens twice will surely happen the third time. This Amora girl had to be put in her rightful place.
Dorah realized that she now needed to make a decision but she was afraid. She feared suffering but the fear of suffering is worse more than suffering itself. She consoled herself with the thought that no heart had ever suffered in search of its dreams because every second of the search was a second’s encounter with God and with eternity. She needed to get her Moses out of his misery and let the whole world know that he was the man she had chosen to settle down with. May be then these vultures would let her be. She was elated to learn that making a decision is only the beginning of things. When one makes a decision, they are really diving into a strong current that will carry them to places they had never dreamed of when they first made the decision.
This disastrous meet with Desmond had taught Dorah to understand the word of God – people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. We are afraid of losing what we have but this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and world history were written by the same hand, God’s hand. She resolved to go in pursuit of her dream man because her love with Moses was like the dunes and the desert – the dunes are changed by the wind but the desert never changes. She picked up her phone, formatted it back to default settings and blocked Desmond on all social media platforms. She called Moses and asserted to him how much she loved him. She felt a whole elephant burden had been lifted off her shoulder and slept off….. a smile icing her lips in elation and exaltation!