To Set Love Alight by Saleah Yusuf

 

I set my husband on fire tonight. Say that once and the world rearranges itself around the sentence. Neighbors will say it was the gas. The police will say faulty wiring. Aunty Funke will clutch her chest and say, “Jesu, who do this?” The men at the filling station will joke later— if they joke at all— about how women these days. But you and I, we know what happened. You will, by the time I am finished telling you. I am in the hibiscus, the leaves pricking my knees. My wrapper is damp with dew and petrol; my hair smells like the filling station at dawn. The compound is awake in that small, noisy way compounds wake when the impossible happens: doors banging, lightbulbs swinging, children wailing because they don’t understand adults yet. Somebody is already recording with a phone. Somebody else is praying in a voice that wants to cover itself with certainty. Inside, the house is a theatre. The curtains are orange, then red, then gone. For a moment I think I see him at the window— he looks smaller in the firelight, like a child who has been taught to shout but not to run. He bangs at the glass with his palms; the sound is useless, like someone knocking on the body of a drum. I bought the fuel last week. I told the man at the station the generator was greedy. He winked and said, “God go bless your house.” Blessings come in funny packages. I bought the match in a wrapper nobody would look twice at. I walked home as if I had not been carrying a decision. People will ask later— if they ask— how I could do it. They will look at my face for the answer and find only a woman who looks like she forgot to laugh. The truth is simpler and smaller and harder: he had been practicing violence for years before he made it official. The first time he hit me, he said it was the gin. The second time he hit the dog, he said it was the dog’s fault. He apologized with things: a ring, a weekend away, a promise to change. Promises are cheap in our town. They are the kind of things that sound good until the quiet returns and you realize they are living on your shelf like unpaid bills. I remember the first slap because it was polite compared to the later ones. He apologized immediately, folded like a man surprised by his own hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, the words wet and perfunctory, then handed me a shawl so I could hide the bruise like a small sin in the folds. I learned then how to live in apology: to wear it like a scarf that muffles the scream. Tonight, the scarf came off. The fire ate the curtains first. It ran along the furniture like a child in a race. There was a small, satisfying sound when the TV blew. I had expected more noise when the gas cylinder went — something loud and final — but the world makes its exits in humble sounds: a pop, a clatter, a sigh. His voice from inside is a broken thing. Sometimes he calls my name and it sounds like a man trying to remember a password. Sometimes he curses. He always curses when he thinks someone is listening. Neighbors stand in the street with buckets and the confidence of people who have not been inside our rooms long enough to see what happens there. Aunty Funke is crying with a loudness that is more performance than pain. Her husband whispers for the police, because the police will give them a story that keeps their conscience neat. The night guard clatters the gate, voice high and urgent. I stay where I am because movement would make me visible and being visible is a small thing I am saving for later. You should know I did not light the match and run like in the films. I lit the match and watched. I watched like a person watching a mango fall from a tree you’ve grown tired of. There is a moment, before the flesh hits the ground or the roof caves, when the world seems to hold its breath — not for pity, but to see how you finish the job you started. That pause tasted like rain on my tongue. He had said once, loud enough for the street, “Even if you leave me, I will find you.” Men say these things believing they are God’s appointed possessors. They are wrong. You cannot possess someone who has already gone. You can only hold what you have until it burns. The roof caves like a giant mouth closing. Sparks fly at the palm trees. The compound lights look like stars confused by ember glow. Someone finally yells for fire service — too late, always too late for spectacle. The siren will come eventually, keening and official, to put a tidy end to what used to be messy. There is shouting from inside that is not the same as the shouting from the street. The street shouts for help; the house shouts for confession. I can still feel the imprint of his hand on my cheek like a small, heavy truth: the way a palm presses leaves its map. I had worn that map beneath my skin for years. Tonight, the map is burning out. When the roof goes, something raw releases. The sound is holy and brutal at once. People throw water that becomes steam and then nothing— a shameful, medicinal fog. Phones flash light into the smoke, creating quick, false daylight. Each flash is a photograph someone will use to say they were there, that they saw. They will tell the story of the widow who stood in her wrapper, and they will decide for her what kind of woman she is. I don’t wait for their verdict. I rise from the hibiscus like a creature that has remembered how to move. My shoes are absent because I forgot to put them on in my hurry to be a woman who decides. The ground is still warm where the fire has licked. I walk away before the first siren reaches the corner, because there is a small, private joy in leaving while the world is still guessing how to classify you. Behind me, the house collapses again, softer this time, like it has finally found the silence it wanted. In front of me, the street is full of explanations and gossip and people arranging the moral world into tidy cages. I will move through the cages like a rumor they cannot catch. For the first time in years, I am not afraid of the dark.

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Saleah Yusuf is a Nigerian writer based in Lagos. Her fiction explores grief, memory, and the strange edges of ordinary life. She writes stories that blur the line between the psychological and the supernatural. Find her on Instagram @ozaveeze.