The First Cut

The morning light crept into Surulere like a hesitant visitor, filtering through the dusty windows of the house Oberi had bought six years ago. It was a good house—a three-bedroom bungalow with a small garden that his mother had once tended before the sickness took her. Now the garden was overgrown, the walls were too quiet, and the house felt less like a home and more like a monument to absence.

Oberi had not slept.

He lay on the bed in the guest room, staring at the ceiling, replaying the image of his father's hands—those swollen, shaking hands—counting crumpled naira notes in the middle of Oshodi. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the water sachets bursting under car tires.

Around 5 a.m., he heard movement in the house.

The shuffle of slippers on tile. The soft groan of old joints settling into motion. Then the sound of the kettle being filled in the kitchen.

Oberi rose and made his way down the corridor. He stopped at the kitchen doorway.

Dano stood at the counter, his back to the door, waiting for the water to boil. He was wearing a faded caftan that had once been blue but had washed to a soft gray. His movements were slow, deliberate—the economy of a man who had learned long ago not to waste energy on unnecessary motion.

He had not yet put on the armor of the day. Without the basin, without the sweat-soaked shirt, without the traffic, he looked simply like an old man making tea in his kitchen.

Oberi's chest tightened.

"Papa."

Dano turned. For a moment, something flickered in his eyes—uncertainty, perhaps, or the residue of yesterday's shame. Then it was gone, replaced by the familiar stoic mask.

"You are awake early," Dano said. "I would have thought a big businessman like you would sleep until noon."

"I could not sleep."

"Neither could I." Dano poured hot water into two ceramic cups, the steam rising between them. He pushed one across the counter toward Oberi. "Too many thoughts."

Oberi wrapped his hands around the cup. The heat was grounding. "I meant what I said yesterday. About the workshop."

Dano did not respond immediately. He lowered himself onto a stool, his movements careful, as if his joints were negotiating a truce with gravity. He stared into his tea.

"I have not held a plane in two years," he said quietly. "Or a chisel. Or a saw. My hands..." He held them up, examining them as if they belonged to someone else. "I do not know if they remember."

"They remember," Oberi said. "The body does not forget what the heart loves."

Something in Dano's expression cracked. He looked away quickly, but not before Oberi saw the sheen of moisture in his eyes.

"Your mother used to say that," Dano murmured. "When I would spend too many nights in the shop. She would come with food, stand at the door, and say, 'Dano, your hands have found God. Come back to earth and eat.'"

The memory hung between them, fragile and precious. Oberi's mother had been gone for...