Night Road to Death

Only once have I ever felt in fear of my life. And no, it wasn’t the time when I was held hostage in the Middle East, nor even the time when I was chased through the streets of Kensington by a man wielding a bag of beef mince. It was the time when I took a midnight taxi ride from the airport in Lagos, Nigeria.

Lagos airport is situated about fifteen miles from the city centre and as we sped along the potholed concrete highway, I felt at first fairly relaxed. All the windows in the car were wound down so that the warm night air (tainted with the smell of raw sewage) could fan through the vehicle to cool us. After a few miles, the driver suddenly turned the car off the main highway without warning or explanation, and we started to head down a dirt track enclosed by high walls of dusty foliage. I asked the driver (who was no more than a boy) where we were going. He didn’t reply.

I felt a chill of tension start to stir in my stomach as the noise and lights of the highway disappeared into the muffled blackness behind us. The car slowed to a walking pace; the mud track became violently uneven and I hit my head on the non-upholstered roof of the car. The foliage brushed the sides of the vehicle; some of the huge leaves flicked in through the windows, almost slapping me in the face. There could be venemous mambas curled around those leaves, I thought.

We came to a small clearing in the jungle and the boy brought the car to a halt alongside a brazier burning by the trackside. Next to the brazier, half in shadow, a fat Nigerian woman sat silently on an upturned tea chest, her skirt around her knees; the sweat on her face glistening in the menacing light of the fire. She stared impassively at me. The boy got out. 'Where are you going?' I asked, trying hard to disguise the terror in my voice.

A stone whistled through the open window past my face and hit the opposite door panel with a sharp crack against the metal. Who had thrown it? I peered into the hot dense night but could see nothing. I could hear the boy talking in a low voice to the woman and saw her glance down at a dirty machete that leaned casually against the side of the crate. I thought of leaping from the other side of the car and making a run for it, but where would I run to in this impenetrable darkness? The noises of the jungle reminded me of Conrad. I felt so alone and I was convinced that this boy had delivered me here - fresh off the plane from Europe - to be killed and robbed to order. I reasoned that it would be easy to hide my body in the dense undergrowth where it would eventually be eaten by dogs, or pythons, or some such other wild animal. My watch, which I now twisted nervously around my damp wrist, would be sold to a local chief.

After a few moments the boy got back into the car and sat there in silence. 'Why have we stopped?' I said, again trying to sound self-controlled but failing. Then he turned to me with a broad smile. 'Sorry sir,' he said, 'I just stopped to buy some cigarettes. You want one?' He waved a packet at me across the seat, hopefully. I declined his offer and dissolved into a liquid mass of sweat amidst my immense relief. Oh, the joys of smoking!