THE PIECES WE CARRY

The Road North

The idea would not leave Adinoyi's mind.

For several nights, he lay awake beside Zainab, listening to her breathing and thinking about the stories he had heard.

Europe.

A place where people earned in foreign currency.

A place where a man could work for a few years and return home with enough money to change his family's life.

He knew there were dangers.

But poverty had a way of making danger look smaller than it really was.

One evening, he finally told Zainab.

"I want to travel."

She looked at him.

"Where?"

"Libya first. From there, Europe."

Zainab's face changed.

"Europe?"

"I have heard people do it."

"You have also heard people die doing it."

"I know."

"Then why are you talking about it?"

Adinoyi was silent.

Then he said:

"Because I don't know what else to do."

Zainab looked down at her stomach.

She was already carrying their child.

"Adinoyi, you are all we have."

"I know."

"Then don't disappear."

He reached for her hand.

"I will come back."

Those words would haunt both of them for years.

He left with very little money.

The journey took him through northern Nigeria and into Niger, joining a growing stream of migrants heading toward Libya.

At every stage, the story changed.

What had sounded like a journey became a struggle.

What had sounded like transport became overcrowded trucks and dangerous vehicles crossing vast stretches of desert.

What had sounded like opportunity became hunger, extortion and fear.

The Sahara was nothing like the stories he had heard.

During the day, the heat was unbearable.

At night, the temperature could drop sharply.

Water became more valuable than money.

Food became scarce.

People who had started the journey together disappeared along the way.

Some were abandoned.

Some became sick.

Some simply could not continue.

Adinoyi kept moving.

There were moments when he wondered whether he had made the greatest mistake of his life.

But whenever he thought about Zainab and the child she was carrying, he continued.

Then came the day when the group ran out of water.

Nobody knew exactly how long they had been without it.

People became weak.

Some could barely walk.

Adinoyi's lips were cracked.

His throat felt as if it had been burned.

One of the men began crying.

Another collapsed.

Someone said they should turn back.

There was nowhere to turn back to.

In desperation, Adinoyi did something he would remember for the rest of his life.

He drank his own urine.

It did not save him.

It only gave him enough strength to keep moving.

Hours later, they finally found water.

It was dirty and warm, but nobody cared.

They drank.

That night, Adinoyi stared into the darkness.

He thought about Zainab.

He wondered whether she had given birth.

He wondered whether she was still waiting for him.

He had no way of knowing.

His phone had stopped working properly days earlier.

Eventually, he had pawned it to get money for food.

The last connection he had to home was gone.

When he eventually reached Libya, he thought the worst was behind him.

It wasn't.

The people who controlled the route were not interested in his dreams.

They wanted money.

And when he could not pay, he became a commodity.

Adinoyi was sold.

He was forced to work.

There were days when he worked until his body could no longer continue.

There were days when he was beaten.

There were days when he wondered whether he would ever leave Libya alive.

Months became years.

Zainab's face slowly became a memory he was afraid to lose.

He spent almost two years trapped in Libya.

Then, one day, an opportunity came.

There was a boat.

He was told that if he could pay, he could cross the Mediterranean.

He had almost nothing.

But somehow, he found a way.

He boarded.

There were too many people on the boat.

Everyone was frightened.

Nobody knew what awaited them on the other side.

Adinoyi looked at the sea.

For the first time in years, he allowed himself to believe that perhaps his life was about to change.

The crossing was terrifying.

Some people prayed.

Some cried.

Some remained completely silent.

Then, after hours of uncertainty, they reached Europe.

Adinoyi stepped onto European soil believing that the worst part of his journey was finally over.

He was wrong again.

He had no papers.

He could not properly explain his journey.

He barely understood the language.

Within a short time, he was arrested.

The accusation against him was something he insisted he knew nothing about.

But he had no money.

No lawyer he could trust.

No documents.

No family.

No one who could speak for him.

His irregular arrival became part of the story against him.

The court eventually sentenced him to prison.

Ten years.

Adinoyi stood there in silence.

Ten years.

He thought about Zainab.

He thought about the child he had never seen.

He thought about the promise he had made.

I will come back.

Now another ten years stood between him and home.

The prison gates closed behind him.

And just like that, another decade of his life disappeared.

When he was finally released, Adinoyi was no longer the young man who had left Lagos.

He was an old man.

The world had changed.

Technology had changed.

Nigeria had changed.

Lagos had changed.

And somewhere along the way, he had changed too.

He had spent roughly twenty-one years moving from one hardship to another.

But there was one thing that had never changed.

He still wanted to find his family.

He started from nothing again.

He sold newspapers and magazines.

He took whatever legitimate work he could find.

The people he had met during his years in prison became some of the few connections he could rely on.

Slowly, he built a life.

Then he built a business.

Then another.

Money began to come.

For the first time in his life, Adinoyi became wealthy.

But the more money he made, the more he realized something:

Money could replace almost everything.

Except time.

He could not buy back the twenty-one years he had lost.

He could not buy back Zainab's youth.

He could not buy back the childhood of the son or daughter he had never met.

So, one year, he made a decision.

He was going back to Lagos.

Not for business.

Not for investment.

Not for pleasure.

He was going home.

He had no idea what he would find.

But after twenty-one years, he was finally ready to find out.