A Christmas holiday visit takes a sinister turn in December 2023 when a
British-Nigerian man travels to Florida to visit an old friend and finds himself surrounded by darkness and mystery.
âWho kisses inside Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine?â is a story spanning over two decades of friendship, navigating through personal struggles, lies, deceit, and betrayal.
A Christmas holiday visit takes a sinister turn in December 2023 when a
British-Nigerian man travels to Florida to visit an old friend and finds himself surrounded by darkness and mystery.
âWho kisses inside Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine?â is a story spanning over two decades of friendship, navigating through personal struggles, lies, deceit, and betrayal.
My trip to Florida hung in the balance. The excitement of exploring American culture was overshadowed by uncertainty. My friend and host, Jameela, had not responded to my WhatsApp message sent a couple of weeks earlier. I sighed. I sent her a picture of a Florida travel book I came across in a local bookshop and asked if I should get it. No reply. I followed up with a phone call a couple of days after but still no answer. I panicked slightly as I knew my trip to Florida was conditional on hearing from Jameela. There is no way I will fly without hearing from her, I said to myself. As the departure date approached, I only sought confirmation from Jameela, whom I had informed about my travel plans four months earlier, which she acknowledged with little contact since then, although she did send me her address when I requested for it to enable me to apply for an ESTA.
The date was 10 December and it was less than two weeks to my flight. I phoned the one and only person I knew could help find Jameela, her twin brother, Jamal who is also a bosom friend of mine. However, no answer. About an hour later my phone rang, it was him.
âHello,â I answered.Â
âMr James!âÂ
âHow is it going?â I asked.
âSorry, I missed your call earlier. Is everything okay?â asked Jamal followed by a drawn out yawn.
âYou know my long anticipated visit to America is coming up, I will be travelling in a week, and I am staying with Jameela, but I haven't heard from her for some time nowâ. I said those words with very little concern, after all, it wasn't out of Jameelaâs character to go months without any contact.
âI haven't heard from her either. What day are you travelling?â Jamal asked.Â
âTwenty-thirdâ I answered.Â
âOkay, the first thing is to find out if everything is fine with her. Things are not right; I think things have gotten weirder. Do you remember that I told you that she and Kim went to visit our younger brother, Joe in Alabama a couple of months back after not seeing him for a long time. And when I spoke to him after her visit, he sounded worried about her, he said that she looked a bit shabby, like âsomebodyâs grandmotherâ, said Jamal.
âThat sounds disturbing, is she sick? Is everything all right with her?â I asked with some significant amount of concern this time around.
âI donât know honestly. But I know that you are very observant, maybe when you get there you can see what is wrong with her.â
Although I wasnât comfortable with the task that Jamal had just assigned to me and didnât think that it was my place to assess Jameelaâs wellbeing, I also couldnât turn down his request as he sounded concerned about his twin sister. Besides, I now had the opportunity of visiting and staying with her, something he wasnât able to do at the time, so I reluctantly accepted Jamalâs request.
âOkay, I will tryâ I said softly.
âI will contact her and ask her to reach out to youâ Jamal responded.
âIf I do not hear from her, I will not be going to Heathrow,â I replied in a blunt and direct manner.
âYou know she moved from to Florida recently, and I don't think it went well. She is struggling to find work in Florida.â
âOkay. Given the circumstances, if this trip isn't going to work, just tell me,â I demanded. âAlthough you know that I rather not spend the holidays here, I want to get out of town, however I don't mind spending Christmas with family in Manchester. Besides this trip has been anticipated for a long time.â
âLet me contact her,â Jamal reiterated.
âDo you have Kimâs number?â I asked. Without waiting around for a reply, I added, âplease reach out to her as well.â We concluded the conversation with the usual talk about work and what weâve both been up to recently.Â
The next day, I phoned my travel agency and discussed what my options were in the event that I couldn't travel.
***
On the morning of Friday, 15 December, I woke up with a slight unease, knowing that I was supposed to be traveling in a weekâs time but still hadnât heard from Jameela. I started the day with my routine breakfast of instant coffee, sitting up in my double bed in my studio apartment while flicking through TV news channels. The thought of checking my phone crossed my mind, and I immediately reached for it on the bedside drawer, where I saw a WhatsApp message from Jameela. Finally! The message read: âPlease call me when you get off work.â It was barely after six p.m. when I wrapped up my tasks for the day and phoned Jameela.
âHey heyâ, answered Jameela. I immediately felt a slight sense of relief.Â
âHey, how are you?â I replied.
âGood, sorry Iâve been in hibernationâ.
âHibernation,â I thought to myself, âhmm whatever that meantâ. Afterall It was in her character to go on months without any contact and then out of the blue, a message will pop up alongside a half hearted apology for being M.I.A.
âI have been trying to reach you. You know I am coming in a weeks time, right?â I asked. âAre you expecting me at all?â trying to gauge if there was some level of preparedness on her part.
âOf course. I havenât forgotten. When do you fly?âÂ
âTwenty thirdâ I answered. âNext Saturday.â
âYes, thatâs fine. Keep me updated on your transit so that we can meet you at the airport.â
âYou still have my flight itinerary, right? I previously sent it to youâ I asked.
âYes, I still have it. I have to go now, Kim just came in, keep me updated.â
âOkay, say hi to Kim and looking forward to seeing you both,â I said.
âWill do. Bye.âÂ
Florida, it was happening. Little did I know that this journey would change my longstanding friendship with the twins.
As I looked out into the hazy horizon and into the Atlantic Ocean, the recurring thought of eggshells came to my mind as it has for the past couple of years.
The story takes place during the 23rd of December 2023 and the 6th of January 2024 and I did like how we weren't given a blow-by-blow account of everything that happened each day, but rather a selection of events that builds up the author's narrative. Waziri has a really interesting way to ground you in the moment and I really felt the tension rising the further into the holiday we got.
That said, it did take me a while to click with the narrative style. For the first 20 pages or so, I wasn't too sure why this book needed to be written. It didn't grip me and Waziri himself later tells how he's often been described as cold and blunt. That was how the book felt to me at the start as well. I also found there was some unnecessary descriptions and conversations appeared stilted. But on learning that Waziri is self-diagnosed as being on the spectrum, the narrative voice began to make sense to me. My almost four-year-old son is non-verbal and on the waiting list for an autism diagnosis and my older brother has been diagnosed with autism, so I'm familiar with the behaviour and thought progress of two very important people in my life who are on the spectrum and I really appreciated the representation Waziri gives in his account. The details he focuses on, the way he approaches group situations and his observations of people provide a useful insight for anyone who has someone in their life on the spectrum.
I loved seeing how creative Waziri is, how compassionate, and open-minded. It was really interesting to learn about the coping strategies he's developed over the years to accommodate to other people and to try to understand them. A lot of the tension in scenes came from Waziri trying to decipher between a person's actions and their words. While reading it was interesting for me to consider how someone else in the scene might be perceiving Waziri or how differently the events might play out in a different characters perspective. That's not to say I thought Waziri was being misleading or unreliable in his narrative, but we're of course only given his experiences and thoughts.
And, to an extent, many of his experience of Americans were similar to my own. When I travelled to the States I found it really difficult to be reliant on my host so much because you have to drive to go anywhere and when your host is not in a good mental state, that means you're forced into an isolated situation and your food, your schedule, every aspect of your day is set by your host. To be on the spectrum under those circumstances would be extremely stressful to say the least.
With that in mind, I did find January 4th onwards the portion of the book I struggled the most with. Waziri may be completely correct with all of his conclusions, and certainly he's unmasked some very poor friendships, but I did find a lot of what he supposes to be quite speculative and far-fetched.
But that doesn't take away from the overall effect this book had on me, which was that it was really eye-opening. I've included a portion of a quote that really struck me when he spoke of his relationship with his sister. Often Waziri's reflections were touching and I hope his family read his book and are able to understand him better.