He Was Always Here
HE DRESSED IN THE DARK BECAUSE THE DARK WAS HONEST.
Tamunoemi West is the son every family prays for. First to arrive, last to leave. The one who settles the caterer's quarrel, carries the chairs, holds the wall up at every wedding. His mother named him "God knows me," and she writes his name on everything she feeds him.
He has spent his whole life making sure the name stays wrong.
Then, one crossover night in Port Harcourt, a stranger at a party asks him a question no man has ever asked, and the rule that kept Tami alive begins to cost more than it saves. A musician who takes everything and sees nothing. A boy who touches him in daylight. A voice from four thousand miles away that comes in under every wall he owns.
And a phone call, one November morning, that arrives too late to answer the only question that ever mattered.
On the ninth day after his mother's burial, Tami opens her chest freezer and finds a container of soup, labelled in her handwriting, cooked weeks ahead for a visit that will never happen now.
She named him God knows me. She died not knowing him.
Spanning Port Harcourt, Lagos, Manchester, and Toronto, He Was Always Here is a love story, a betrayal, and a grief with no name that is permitted to be said aloud - the story of a man hidden not in a drawer but in plain sight: structural, painted over, loved by everyone, known by no one.
For readers of contemporary African fiction and anyone who has ever heard someone moving around inside a room no one was allowed to knock on.
You knew him. You just never knew.
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