The cook who feeds the whole street
Big, kind and always cooking. He knew AJ before London, and he feeds him before he asks a single question.
Then eat first. Nobody prays well on an empty stomach.Chuks, to AJ
Chuks is a big man with a big pot. He stands at his coal pot on June 12 Street in an apron, stirring stew, sending somebody to the Afternoon Store for pepper and onions, and feeding whoever looks like they need it. He learned to cook from his mama. "A man who cooks never goes hungry," she told him. "She didn't say anything about running."
He and AJ were small boys on the same street before AJ's mother took him to London. When AJ turned up on the Iloro House veranda, bitten and bruised from the cell, Chuks did not ask what happened. He handed him a plate. Then he walked him around the estate and showed him how things work: where to go, how to read the map, which officers in the bush will lend you something, and that borrowing ends with a thank-you, not a disappearing act.
Chuks dreams of a buka of his own. Mama Bisola, head cook at Mama Shola Hot Stuff Restaurant & Grill, is his rival and, though he will never say so, his teacher. The owner of Prizm has noticed his suya.
Mama Shola owns No. 1 and runs its Hot Counter: warm, loud, sharp-tongued, in her fifties, and running a tab for nobody. Mama Bisola is her right hand in the kitchen, and the soldiers still have their tables in the Parade Room at the back. Mallam Sani runs the terrace grill and keeps his yaji spice mix to himself. Ronke, the waitress, brings plates to the hall and the canopy tables; she is not Mama Ronke, the mother in Room 1 at Iloro House.
Find Chuks at his coal pot across the road from Iloro House. Talking to him starts the optional walk around the estate, where every step can be skipped. He also walks to the Afternoon Store and back.
Chuks cooks for the whole of June 12 Street and saves every spare naira for a restaurant of his own. When his childhood friend AJ comes home broken, Chuks feeds him first, and then the owner of Prizm offers him the money he has always needed.
Deported from London, beaten in a cell, broke on a veranda bench. He has a plan, a London accent and a debt to the gate police.
A fifth-year medical student who leaves for LUTH at dawn and talks to AJ from her window at night, while her father keeps the door shut.
Thirty-one years at Kirikiri prison, now the owner of Prizm. He plays the big man, brokers deals at his table, and takes ten percent.
AJ Cities