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SEWA’S P.O.V
February 2nd.
I have been planning since January 5th.
Twenty-eight days of planning for a man who does not celebrate himself, who let his last four birthdays pass without ceremony, who told me once — in passing, the way he says the things that reveal the most about him, as if they are not revelations at all — that birthdays have always felt like other people’s occasions.
Not this one.
This one is his.
I wake up at 6 a.m. and the first thing I do is send a voice note.
“Happy birthday, Ro. Twenty-eight years ago today God made a very beautiful decision and the world has been better and quieter and more itself because of it. I have a whole day for you. Be ready by ten. Dress comfortably. Do not eat breakfast.”
I put the phone down and I go to the kitchen.
The beans are already soaking.
I started them last night. The black-eyed beans. The good ones. The ones I drove to three markets to find because ẹwà ibeji requires the right beans and I was not going to get this wrong.
I know the story. He told it once, the way he tells the things that matter. Without announcing that they matter, just placing them in a conversation and trusting me to receive them.
His first year at the University of Sussex. A Nigerian woman in his hall who cooked on Sundays and occasionally fed the floor. She made ẹwà ibeji one afternoon in November — the beans, the fried plantain, the specific palm oil base, the way it all sits together. He walked past her door and the smell stopped him and she invited him in and he ate two plates and has been looking for that version of it ever since.
He has never found it.
He is going to find it today.
I put on worship music and I begin.
He arrives at 10:02 a.m.
Two minutes late. For Romeo this is practically a different timezone.
I open the door before he knocks because I heard the car.
He looks at me.
Then past me.
Into the apartment.
The smell of the beans has been building since 7 a.m. and by now it has filled every room. The palm oil and the seasoning and the warmth of something that has been cooking slowly and with attention. The fried plantain is resting on the counter. Golden. The kind that has been done correctly.
Romeo stops.
He looks at the kitchen.
He looks at me.
“Evie”, he says.
“Happy birthday”, I say.
“Is that—”
“Ẹwà ibeji”, I say. “Yes.”
He is very still.
The exact stillness of someone receiving something they have wanted for a long time and did not expect to receive today.
“Come in”, I say. “It is almost ready.”
He comes in.
He goes directly to the kitchen. Not to look but to smell. He stands at the pot and he does what people do with food that means something to them, which is to just be near it for a moment. Receive it before they consume it.
I watch him.
The left eyebrow does the thing.
I say nothing.
I win this one quietly.
We eat at the dining table.
The flowers were delivered yesterday at 5 p.m. The February morning light coming through the windows.
He has two plates.
He does not comment on the second plate. He simply finishes the first one and I put more on the plate and he accepts it with the specific grace of a man who has decided not to perform modesty about something he genuinely wants.
“The Sussex woman”, he says after the second plate.
“Yes?” I say.
“It is better than hers”, he says.
I point at him.
“I knowwww. It’s Sewa Olowosibi na. Sewa Elewa. The beautiful Sewa. The beans chef Sewa”, I say.
He shakes his head.
“How did you find the recipe?” he says.
“I called my mother”, I say.
He stares at me.
“You called your mother.”
“She did not have the recipe”, I say. “But she knew a woman in Lagos who did. So she called the woman and the woman called me and we spoke for forty-five minutes and she sent me a voice note of herself explaining the process step by step in Yoruba.”
I pause.
“I played it seventeen times. Okay that’s way less. I don’t know how many times. I lost count.”
Romeo looks at me for a long moment.
“Tesoroo”, he says.
“Yes.”
“You do not speak Yoruba fluently.”
“I speak enough Yoruba”, I say. “And Google Translate speaks the rest.”
He is quiet.
The left eyebrow.
The whole face, actually.
“Thank you”, he says.
Quietly. The way he says the things that cost him something to receive.
“You are welcome”, I say. “Happy birthday, Ro.”
His phone buzzes at 11 a.m.
He looks at it.
“Juliet”, he says.
“Answer it”, I say.
He answers on speaker.
“ROMEO EMMANUEL TAIWO OLUSIJI.”
Juliet’s voice fills the apartment at a volume that is entirely Juliet.
“Twenty-eight years old. You are practically ancient.”
“Happy Birthday and Good morning, Juliet Emmanuella Kehinde Olusiji”, he says.
“Do not good morning me”, she says. “I have been waiting since midnight. Do you know what time it is in Lagos? Do you know what Tony said when I woke him up at midnight to sing happy birthday to you? Do you know what he said?”
“What did he say?” Romeo says.
“Nothing printable”, she says. “But he said it with love.”
A pause.
“Sewa! I know you are there. Is he misbehaving?”
“No oh. He ate two plates of ẹwà ibeji”, I say.
A shriek from the Lagos end.
“SEWA. You made him ẹwà ibeji? Romeo did you hear that? Romeo she made you ẹwà ibeji. Tony wake up. Tony Tonyyyy she made him ẹwà ibeji—”
Tony’s voice is distant and I hear the patience of a man who has been married to Juliet for three years and has made peace with every version of this,
“Tell Romeo happy birthday.”
“Tony says happy birthday”, Juliet says.
“Tell Tony thank you”, Romeo says.
“He can hear you, he is right here—”
“Tell him anyway”, Romeo says.
A pause.
Then Juliet, softer now, the twins’ register underneath all the noise,
“Happy birthday, my brother. Twenty-eight looks good on you.”
A beat.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Julie”, he says.
“Now give the phone back to Sewa I need to tell her something.”
Romeo hands me the phone with an expression that says, “Before she comes for my head.”
“Sewa”, Juliet says.
“Thank you. For seeing him. For today. For — all of it.”
Her voice is the real one. The one underneath the volume.
“He deserves to be celebrated. He has always deserved it. Thank you for being the one who does it.”
I look at Romeo across the table.
He is looking out of the window. Giving me the privacy of the conversation even though it is about him. This is one of his systems — the specific courtesy of a man who understands that some things need to be said without an audience.
“He does deserve it”, I say. “By God’s grace, I will keep showing up for it.”
“I know”, she says. “That is why I like you.”
“Just like?” I say.
“Love”, she says immediately. “Obviously love. I said like for dramatic effect.”
“Noted”, I say.
“I'll talk to you later, Sewa. I need to get Jacqee ready for school”.
“Happy birthday to you, Juliet. I am so glad to know you”.
“Don't make me cry right now. We'll talk in a bit. Ciao”.
She hangs up.
I put the phone down.
Romeo looks back at me.
“She loves you”, he says.
“I know”, I say. “The feeling is mutual.”
•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•∆•
The movies were my idea.
This required some negotiation.
Romeo’s relationship with films is the specific relationship of a man who reads for three hours a day and finds most cinema an inefficient use of narrative. He has opinions about this that he delivers with the gentleness of someone who knows the opinions are niche and does not need you to share them.
“Two films”, I said. “I think you will respect and love both of them.”
“Respect”, he said. “Not enjoy?”
“Respect first”, I said. “Enjoy will follow.”
He agreed.
The living room floor. Cushions from the bedroom because the sofa is good but the floor is better for long watching. His back against the sofa. Me beside him. Close enough that our arms are touching.
The Wait first.
The 2021 film. Nse Ikpe-Etim. Jimmy Odukoya. The story of waiting — for love, for purpose, for the thing God has that looks nothing like what you thought you were waiting for.
We watch in the quiet that is ours.
Romeo is still in the way he is still when something is reaching him. He is not checked out. He is more present than usual. I notice this twenty minutes in and I say nothing and I watch the film and I feel him beside me and I think about the specific grace of watching something true with someone who receives truth the same way you do.
Halfway through his hand finds mine.
Not a reaching. Just an arrival. His hand beside mine and then his hand over mine and neither of us looking at each other and both of us aware of it entirely.
My phone buzzes.
Ọrọ.
I answer quietly.
“Just checking in, ma’am”, she says.
“We are watching a movie”, I say.
“Good movie or—”
“The Wait”, I say.
A pause.
“Good”, she says. “Good choice. How is he?”
“Happy”, I say. “I think.”
“You think?”
“He is Romeo”, I say. “He processes happiness internally and reports on it later.”
She laughs.
“Okay. I am going. Call me after the second movie.”
She hangs up.
Romeo looks at me.
“Accountability”, I say.
“I know what it is nah”, he says.
“She means well.”
“I know that too”, he says and smiles as he draws me closer to himself.
We go back to the film.
After The Wait we sit with it for a while.
This is our system. We do not immediately fill the space after something that requires processing. We let it breathe. Romeo taught me this without teaching me this. By simply doing it consistently until I understood that th8e silence after a meaningful thing is not emptiness but digestion.
“The part where she almost settled”, I say. Eventually.
“Yes”, he says.
“Because the waiting had gone on long enough that settling felt like wisdom”, I say. “Like she had redefined her own standards down to match what was available.”
He is quiet.
“I did that”, I say. “Not consciously. But the Inshallah Man. The Seven-Year Settler. I was not settling for less. I was redefining less as enough.”
“I know”, he says.
“Does it—” I stop. “Does it bother you? My past?.”
He looks at me.
“No”, he says. “The past is what brought you to the Tuesday. Everything that happened before the Tuesday was preparation.”
He holds my gaze.
“I am not interested in a version of your story that has less of you in it.”
I look at him.
“Reo”, I say.
“Yes.”
“That is the second cheesiest thing you have ever said.”
“It is accurate”, he says.
“Accurate cheese”, I say. “We established this.”
He smiles. Then, he laughs.
We put on War Room.
By the time Miss Clara builds her war room Romeo is sitting forward slightly, elbows on his knees, the posture of a man who has been captured by something and is not pretending otherwise.
By the time Elizabeth prays in the closet I have tears on my face that I did not plan for.
By the end we are both quiet for a long time.
Emeka calls into the silence.
Romeo answers.
“Happy birthday, Oga”, Emeka says. “How is the day?”
“Good”, Romeo says. “Very good.”
“Sewa is there?”
“I am here”, I say.
“Sewa make sure he eats well oh”, Emeka says. “He forgets to eat when he is working.”
“He ate two plates of ẹwà ibeji”, I say.
A pause.
“Romeo”, Emeka says.
“Yes.”
“She made you ẹwà ibeji.”
“Yes.”
“Romeo.”
“Emeka.”
“Marry her fast fast oh. Women like this are not many in Nigeria”, Emeka says, and hangs up.
Romeo looks at the ceiling.
I put my hand over my mouth.
“What did you take from War Room?” I say.
We are on the kitchen counter now. I am making tea. He is sitting on the counter beside the kettle. Not on the stool, on the counter itself, which is a version of Romeo I have not seen before and which I am filing for later.
“The prayer closet”, he says. “The specificity of it. She did not pray generally. She prayed by name, by issue, by Scripture. Every person. Every situation. Targeted.”
He pauses.
“I already pray that way but watching it dramatised—” he stops.
“It reminded me why.”
“Ọrọ prays like that”, I say. “She told me. She has a list. I even saw it once. Actual names. Actual situations.”
“Mautin too”, he says. “I know because he told me at the wedding that he prays for Ọrọ by name every morning. Specific issues. Not general covering.”
I look at him.
“Do you pray for me like that?” I say.
He looks at me.
“Yes”, he says. Simply.
“What do you pray about?” I say.
A pause.
“That God would complete what He has started in you”, he says.
“That Tìtọ́ would be everything He showed you it could be. That you would know — in the way that goes deeper than knowing — that you are loved.”
He pauses.
“By God first. And then by me.”
The kettle boils.
I do not move to pour it.
“Reo”, I say.
“Yes.”
“You pray for me by name every morning.”
“Yes”, he says.
“While you are sending me the verse.”
“Before”, he says. “The prayer is before the verse.”
I look at the counter.
At his hands beside mine.
The ring on my finger.
Inside: this is the man I am going to marry.
Not because he is perfect.
Because he prays for me before he sends me the verse.
Because he soaks in War Room and sits forward with his elbows on his knees and does not pretend it has not reached him.
Because he sat on a kitchen counter on his twenty-eighth birthday eating ẹwà ibeji that a woman drove to three markets to make for him and he received it with the specific grace of someone who is learning — as I am learning — to let love in without managing it first.
How did I ever get so lucky?
I pour the tea.
Then we moved in to watch basketball.
This was my idea and I want credit for it.
I know nothing about basketball. I have attended zero basketball games in my life. My relationship with the sport is limited to the awareness that it involves a ball and a very high net and extremely tall men who are somehow also extremely fast.
Romeo is a different person when basketball is on.
Not dramatically different. Subtly different. The quietness shifts. He becomes alert instead of restful. His attention is the same quality but the direction of it changes. He leans forward slightly. When something happens that is good his whole face responds before he can manage it.
“Who is that?” I say, pointing at the screen.
“Joseph Obasa”, he says. “Watch his footwork.”
I watch his footwork.
I do not fully understand his footwork.
“Why his footwork?” I say.
“Because most players his size do not move like that”, Romeo says. “The footwork is what separates the good from the exceptional. Anybody can shoot. The footwork is the intelligence.”
“The footwork is the intelligence”, I repeat.
“Yes.”
“That is the most Romeo thing you have ever said about sport.”
He looks at me.
“It is true na”, he says.
“I know”, I say. “It is true and it is very you.”
He looks back at the screen.
“Kobe understood it”, he says.
Quieter now. The specific quiet of talking about someone whose absence is still felt.
“Every element. The footwork, the angles, the reading of the defender. He did not leave anything to chance. Every movement was a decision.”
I look at him.
“You watched a lot of Kobe growing up”, I say.
“Every game I could find”, he says. “Dad had the DVD collection. We watched them on Sunday afternoons.”
He pauses.
“He was twenty-one years old and already the most deliberate player in the league. I was twelve watching that and thinking — that is what it looks like when someone decides to be exceptional on purpose.”
I look at the screen.
Then at him.
“You were twelve thinking about deliberate excellence”, I say.
“Yes”, he says.
“Most twelve-year-olds are thinking about lunch”, I say.
“I was also thinking about lunch”, he says.
I laugh.
He looks at me.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing”, I say. “I just — I like you.”
“You like me? After confessing love to my twin minutes ago. You’ve reduced mine, ehn?”
We both laugh.
“I love you, Reo.”
He holds my gaze.
“I love you too, Tesoro ”, he says.
Simple. Entirely his.
On screen Joseph Obasa does something with his footwork that makes Romeo exhale quietly through his nose — the equivalent, for him, of jumping out of his seat.
I watch his face watch the game.
I think about the twelve-year-old in his father’s study watching Kobe DVDs on Sunday afternoons and thinking about deliberate excellence.
I think about the Tuesday he was not supposed to be walking.
I think about twenty-eight years of a man becoming himself before I arrived to witness it.
Mautin calls at halftime.
“Happy birthday, brother”, he says. “How is the day?”
“Good”, Romeo says. “The beans were exceptional.”
“She made beans?”
“ẹwà ibeji”, Romeo says.
A pause.
“Ọrọ”, Mautin calls, away from the phone. “She made him ẹwà ibeji.”
Ọrọ’s voice, distant: “I KNOW I TOLD YOU—”
Mautin comes back.
“My wife is emotional about this. She says she trained you well.”
“She did not train me”, I say.
“I know”, Mautin says. “I am choosing not to correct her. It is easier.”
A pause.
“Romeo. You have a good woman.”
“I know”, Romeo says.
“Good”, Mautin says. “Don’t forget what we spoke about. Happy birthday.”
He hangs up.
Evening.
The day is winding into itself.
We are on the rooftop.
His birthday ends where most of our important things end. Up here, above the city, in the quiet that is ours. The February evening is cooler than January, the harmattan still present in the quality of the air, the sky the particular shade of harmattan grey that Lagos people complain about and Abuja people have made their peace with.
I made hot chocolate.
The good kind. Not the powder. The actual chocolate, melted, with the milk heated separately, the way his mother makes it. I asked Juliet, who asked Lady Aurora, who sent back a voice note in Italian that Juliet translated while laughing.
He wraps both hands around the mug.
He looks at the city.
I look at him.
“Reo”, I say.
“Yes.”
“What do you want?” I say. “From this year. Not for Aurora. Not for the foundation. For yourself.”
He is quiet.
The specific quiet of the question landing somewhere real.
“To finish the house”, he says. “With you. To walk through those rooms after we have filled them and feel—” he pauses. “Feel like the space belongs to us. That it knows us.”
“What else?” I say.
He pulls me to himself. Cups my cheeks and says
“To be married to you”,
I look at him.
“What else?” I say again before what he said actually dawned on me.
He thinks.
“To read the whole of Augustine this year”, he says. “I have been reading it in sections for three years. I would like to finish it.”
I look at him.
“Augustine”, I say. “You want to finish Augustine.”
“It is a good book”, he says.
“I know it is a good book”, I say. “You have been telling me it is a good book for six months.”
“Then you understand my aspiration”, he says.
I shake my head.
But I am smiling.
“Wait, did you say you want to be married to me… this year”.
“Yes, I did, My Woman”. He says as he kisses me on the forehead.
His phone buzzes.
A notification.
He looks at it.
Instagram.
Romeo has no Instagram presence that amounts to anything. An account exists. A profile photo. It has not been updated recently.
He has, however, been tagged.
In a post.
From Juliet.
I lean over to look.
A photograph I have never seen. Romeo at maybe fourteen or fifteen. His coily hair was longer then, the bone structure already entirely his,
He was wearing a Lagos Islanders basketball jersey and squinting into the sun outside what appears to be a secondary school building.
Juliet’s caption:
twenty-eight years of this one. the quietest person in every room and somehow the reason every room works. happy birthday, my twin. heaven knew what it was doing when it sent you first.
happy birthday, womb partner.
He looks at the photograph for a long time.
I look at his face looking at it.
Inside: twenty-eight years. twenty-eight years of becoming the man I get to spend the rest of my life with.
I put my head on his shoulder.
He does not move.
We look at the city below.
The harmattan sky above.
Abuja in February, indifferent and continuous and entirely ours.
“Reo”, I say.
“Yes, Evie.”
“Happy birthday”, I say. “Again.”
A pause.
“Thank you for today”, he says.
Quietly. The receiving voice. The one he uses when something has gone deeper than he planned for and he is not going to pretend otherwise.
“You deserve it”, I say. “You have always deserved it.”
He is quiet.
Then:
“The beans really was better than any I've eaten.”
I lift my head off his shoulder.
“Say that again”, I say.
“No”, he says.
“Romeo—”
“I already said it twice”, he says. “That is the annual quota.”
“Annual quota”, I say. “You have an annual quota for complimenting my cooking.”
“For complimenting anyone’s cooking above my mother’s until I am officially married… to you”, he says. “It is a respect issue.”
“It is an avoidance issue”, I say.
“It is a quota”, he says. “Final answer.”
I put my head back on his shoulder as we both laugh.
He puts his arm around me.
We sit in the specific warmth of two people who have found their register — the teasing and the tenderness and the theology all living in the same rooftop on the same February evening without competing for space.
His phone buzzes again.
He glances at it.
He puts it face down.
“Who was that?” I say.
“Emeka”, he says. “He says marry her fast fast again.”
“He has said that twice today”, I say.
“He is the king of consistency”, Romeo says.
I look at the city.
“He is not wrong”, I say.
Romeo looks at me.
I look back.
The rooftop.
The harmattan sky.
The city below doing what cities do on February evenings in Abuja — moving, indifferent, continuous, entirely beautiful from up here.
Two people on a rooftop who found each other on a Tuesday and have been building something careful and real and God-rooted ever since, sitting in the evidence of it.
One of them is twenty-eight today.
He did not know he wanted this day.
He knows now.
Narrator's Nook
Love is specific. It is not the grand gesture for the crowd. But twenty-eight days of planning for the right beans. The voice note to his mother’s contact. The forty-five minutes with a woman in Lagos who knew the recipe. The seventeen times playing the Yoruba instruction back. That is not romance. That is attentiveness expressed as action. The series’ argument for intimacy has always been this: to love someone is to pay attention to the details they mention once and never follow up on, and to act on what you find.
The accountability calls — Ọrọ, Mautin, Emeka — are not a joke. They are the architecture of two people who take their commitments seriously enough to build systems around them. The gentle shoulder contact. The hands finding each other during the film. The kitchen counter proximity. The rooftop in the evening. None of these things happen by accident. They happen because two people who want each other have decided to want God more, and have asked the people they trust to help them keep that decision.
And the basketball chapter of Romeo is a small, specific, entirely necessary revelation. The twelve-year-old watching Kobe DVDs and thinking about deliberate excellence. The footwork is the intelligence. That is not sports commentary. That is autobiography. That is the whole of how Romeo Olusiji moves through the world — deliberately, with attention to the elements that most people do not notice, because he decided at twelve what kind of person he was going to be and has been living inside that decision ever since.
The Intentionality is top notch!
Meanwhile, fellow community members, Sewa made me start drinking rooibos... Na rooftop remain.... the jury's still out on whether I like it or not......
My own is i want to be the person they make ewa ibeji for😔