Chasing Halima – Chapter 1

The café was louder than usual, the continued clicking of keyboards, the soft music looping under jumbled conversations, and the occasional hiss of the coffee machine. Kelechi barely noticed. His coffee had long gone cold and his fingers were frozen hovering over the keyboard of his laptop. He stared at the screen seemingly lifeless.

It was her, nestled in a low quality vertical frame of a tiktok video, surrounded by laughing dancers, she was wearing a blue boubou, standing out quite easily from the rest of the video…not because of what she was wearing or even how she looked at the camera, no. She stood out because she shouldn’t exist. She was dead, or at least she was supposed to be.

Halima.

The caption read: “The babe in blue no gree follow us dance 😂😂”

Kelechi watched the video five more times, leaning closer to his screen with each iteration. The way she moved, the unmistakable way her fingers brushed the corner of her mouth, it was her. Her smile looked a bit different and her skin looked a little darker because of the sun. But it was her. It really was her.

He leaned even closer, pausing the video right as she turned to face the camera, her eyes sparkled in the light from the camera flash. The moment was just a bit more than a second. But it struck him like truck load of bricks.

Halima was alive?

He fumbled with his phone, struggling to keep it still in his sweaty palms. His breath was shallow, seemingly fading with each moment. His mind was breaking, trying to rationalize it all, but it couldn’t. Dead people didn’t just randomly turn up in tiktok videos wearing blue dresses.

Three years ago, they had all buried Halima, or at least what was left of her. The fire had completely damaged the rented duplex she shared with two of her NYSC friends. There were no intact bodies, just scorched fragments of what used to be human beings. Her ID card was found on what they assumed was her mattress. Not much else could be said, the fire told the story.

But now here she was.

He stared at her face again. A little fuller, looking like she had put on some pounds. Less makeup. Her hair was wrapped under her signature scarf. Her eyes still held that unexplainable softness, a quiet awareness. She looked genuinely happy. Not ecstatic, not dancing like the rest, but just genuinely content.

He downloaded the video to his phone. Then he opened his WhatsApp and scrolled through the contacts until he found her cousin.

Fatima Mohammed. Last seen 4 hours ago.

He hadn’t spoken to Fatima in two years. Their last conversation had been at the burial ground, under the heavy rain. She was composed, holding her umbrella in one hand and a folded prayer mat in the other, but her eyes said everything.

He hesitated. Then tapped “Call.”

The phone rang five times.

“Hello?” Fatima answered, curious and guarded.

“Fatima,” he said, his voice hoarse. “This is Kelechi.”

Silence.

He could hear a child in the background, and maybe some cartoons playing on a TV or laptop. There was also the sound of a dog barking faintly in the background as well as honking cars.

“Kelechi… after all this time?”

“I think I just saw Halima. In a video. She is Alive.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. Then silence again.

“Are you mad?” she said quietly but slowly building into anger.

“I know how this sounds.” Kelechi continued

“See, I know that people grieve in strange ways, Kelechi. But please don’t drag me back into this.” She said, cutting him off.

“Please,” he said, softer. “Just watch the video. I’m sending it to you.”

Fatima didn’t reply. He sent the link anyway.

About thirty seconds later, her voice returned.

“Kelechi, what is this? Where did you get this?”

“I was just scrolling on TikTok. I think it was taken somewhere in Kwara.”

“kelechi, I swear… if this is all these deepfake ai rubbish…”

“It’s not Fatima. Look at the video again and check the advert on the billboard. It is recent”

Another long pause. And then: “I’ll be in Abuja next week. Can I come and meet you.”

“No,” Kelechi said. He was already grabbing his backpack and shutting his laptop. “I’m going to Ilorin tonight.”

He cut the call as all he needed from Fatima was the confirmation that he himself was not running mad.

The bus to Ilorin was basically empty by 7pm and Kelechi got a window seat. The air smelled faintly of fuel and roasted groundnuts from the vendor outside. He leaned against the window and waited pensively. As the bus rolled out of the park and into the night, his mind began to spiral in both excitement and fear.

He hadn’t thought about Halima in months, not consciously anyway. But grief had a way of embedding itself into his daily routines. She was in the playlists he avoided, the restaurant he hadn’t visited since 2022, the grey hoodie she used to wear, which he still hadn’t thrown away.

And now this.

He opened the video again.

Pause. Zoom.

In the far corner behind Halima, there was a vendor’s stall right beneath the billboard with a name painted in blue: “Alhaja’s Suya Spot.” He noted that. Fatima had been calling his phone but he was in no mood to talk anymore. He kept swiping the call away.

He started looking up possible places to find the Suya spot from the video and sending texts to the tiktok account that had posted it.

A woman two rows ahead coughed into her scarf. A man at the back was snoring gently. The bus lights flickered. Kelechi’s thoughts drifted back, further than the fire, back to when he first met Halima.

It was at a wedding.

She showed up wearing a silver lace gown, dragging a stubborn zipper up the back while arguing with a tailor on the phone. He made a joke and she laughed. The night evolved into beautiful conversations and three unforgettable dances. A week later, she asked him out. “You’re too shy for your own good,” she said. “So let me help you.” He couldn’t stop smiling for at least a week.

Everything after that moved really fast.

The late night walks, the weekend trips. Her poetry slams, the politics debates. She loved Zadie Smith and weirdly hated fried plantain. Who hates dodo??? He always took jabs at her for that.

And then NYSC came. They got posted to different states.

Then the fire.

And then… silence.

The bus pulled into Ilorin park at 11:46pm. He stepped off into the night, shouldering his backpack. He had no hotel booked. No plan. Just her name and a face he couldn’t ever forget.

A few taxis waited nearby. He walked toward one.

“Which side you dey go?” the driver asked.

Kelechi thought for a moment. “You sabi where Alhaja suya spot dey?”

“Ah yes na, which one you wan go?”

“How many of dem dey?”

The man grunted. “Dem be like 4 for this Tanke side alone”

“Take me go the one wey dey closest”

“Na 5k oga”

“Oya na, make we dey go”

Kelechi sat in the passenger’s seat.

As they drove through the city, he stared out the window, mentally replaying the moment she looked into the camera just for a second. Was it intentional? Did she see someone she recognized behind the phone? Was it a cry for help? A warning?

He didn’t know.

All he knew was that he would find her, or at least find answers, even if the answers killed him.