The street poet in Room 8
The most dangerous man on June 12 Street and the one it loves most: a stare that stops a fight, a laugh you can hear from the gate, and a notebook of verses.
I told him the small boy is my brother. The rest he worked out by himself.Danger, after a taxi driver insulted Benny
Danger is Daniel Eze. As a boy in Ajegunle he fell off his uncle's kiosk, off the church wall into a wedding, and out of a mango tree so tall the whole street came running, and he got up every time. "That boy is a danger to himself," the neighbors said, and the name stuck. The fights he finished since, and the cell he walked out of at nineteen, quieter and more careful, are why it stayed. He has never said one word about what happened inside.
When he walks up to the gate, the waiting area goes quiet and officers find something interesting on their phones. He does not lower his eyes to a uniform or a big man, and he will say out loud, calmly, what everybody else in the queue is only thinking. He is also the man the street loves most: children follow him down the street in a line, and a page in Benny's notebook headed DANGER lists the cold water and folded notes he hands to old women on the gate bench and boys with no shoes.
He keeps a second notebook, full of verses written by candle while Benny counts, and a lot of them are about his mother, who sold pepper at the market for thirty years. When NEPA takes the light, he reads them on the veranda, low, and the whole house goes quiet to listen. He says he will not live to be old. Benny hates it when he says that.
Danger lives in Room 8 of Iloro House with Benny, down the corridor from AJ. Their door stays locked: they are out working.
Danger is the most dangerous man on June 12 Street and the one it loves most, a street poet with a notebook of verses. Benny can sell anything to anyone. Together they hustle at the gate and take any odd job going, no questions asked. Then a man with a London accent moves into Room 3, and the Warden's boys hand them a bag.
Small, quick and never short of a word. If it is moving this week, Benny has it, and it is written in a notebook with a rubber band around it.
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.
The hairdresser at Palmline, outside the main gate, and AJ's neighbor in Room 7. Everybody talks in her chair. She repeats almost none of it.
No room, no rent, no surname, no home town. A Rasta preacher with locks to his back who sings to the sea and sleeps wherever a door is open.
The smallest room, the emptiest pocket and the busiest door on June 12 Street. Nobody can explain it, least of all Benny.
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