A VICIOUS LIFESTYLE: (A Glimpse at the dark world of crack addiction)

By Solomon King

Crack addiction is a growing cancer in many of our inner cities. Many of the individuals caught up in this vicious lifestyle feel helpless and powerless and, sometimes, despite all their aspirations, just give up in life. This is because crack, among other drugs, has some very unique characteristics that simply makes it the worst drug one can be addicted to.

Alhaji has just gotten himself entangled into this dangerous lifestyle of which he knows practically nothing about, drawn by the superficial glitz that dangles like trap bait inside this sordid lifestyle. As an amateur in the game, he knows very little about the lifestyle he has gotten himself into or the dangerous people he is bound to cross in this precarious lifestyle.

This is why he felt so fortunate the day he ran into a guy who happens to know everything about the disease of crack addiction. Camello has been living this lifestyle for so long that he has devised ways to not only thrive in this vicious lifestyle but also to profit from it. He decides to teach Alhaji how to thrive in the game, and Alhaji was very grateful to be his protégé. However, in the end, Alhaji will have to learn a bitter lesson about crack addiction-that some things are just too good to be true

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645841548

Book preview

cover.jpg

A VICIOUS LIFESTYLE

(A Glimpse at the dark world of crack addiction)

Solomon King

Copyright © 2019 Solomon King

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64584-153-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64584-154-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Acknowledgment

This book is dedicated to the three most important women in my life: my late mother, Maseray Kamara, alias Thara; my sister, Kadiatu Bah, the most hardworking woman I know other than our late mother; and, of course, the brightest jewel in my life, my beautiful African queen, the star that keeps me motivated to stay up all night, my one and only baby gal, Maseray Mansaray. The love I bear for these three women surpasses even the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Author’s Note

Dear reader,

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters in the book are fictitious. The events described in the book are generated from the author’s imagination for the purpose of good reading. Some of the places mentioned in the book, although they might exist, are used in the context of fictional story writing. Claims made by characters in the book are subjective opinions made to fit their roles and must be construed in no way as factual statements since this book is fiction in its entirety.

Also, the purpose of this book is not to glamorize an incorrigible way of life but an attempt to expose some of the factors that lure and captivate people into this dark existence.

If anyone gets offended by the events illustrated in this book, I would like to apologize. Please remember that the vicious lifestyle depicted in this book is a real and growing problem in our society, and I believe that one of the important steps in confronting the problems in our society is by understanding the problem and its causes.

So please enjoy the story. It is a work of fiction, but maybe it might help you recognize those around you that are silently crying for help.

Crabs in a Barrel

They are like crabs in a barrel

clawing and kicking each other’s head

as everyone seeks to reach the top.

They claw and kick each other’s head

as everyone fights to reach the top

and escape the life of perdition

that fate has harshly dealt to them.

No one wants to be the other’s footstool

So they pull down anyone on top of them.

Mothers ignore their babies

and babies fight their parents

because the world they know has passed.

The yoke that adjures order is broken,

and now only chaos rules the day.

It’s a battle of survival,

and only the fittest may survive.

To the world around, they are all dead,

just waiting for their turn to fry.

But the strong never yield to despair.

As long as they have a breath to spare,

they will kick and claw and fight,

stepping on the heads of those that folded

won’t go down without a fight.

And so the battle continues.

The Lord rewards perseverance;

and the valiant sometimes reaches the top

bruised and beaten, but surely grateful

that he finally beat the odds.

No reveling, no remorse,

just happy, thankful that he beat the odds

and escaped the cruel fate that awaits his peers.

Feeling grateful, he takes one last look back,

wishing there is something he could do

to help the miserable ones down there.

But then he knows he has to go

before someone pulls him back in.

So he gathers himself together

and takes the big leap off the rim,

lands hard on the ground

yet will not even sigh

happy to be alive.

Still a long way from home

but glad to be alive.

He’s never doubted his own valor,

but he knows there is something more.

A power greater than his own

that has helped him beat the odds.

Hope he knows the reason why.

Sure, one day he may find out why.

For now, just savor victory

for a battle that is well fought.

Chapter 1

JFK Airport is the busiest airport in what is arguably the busiest metropolitan area in the world. Built around 1943 and located just on the outskirt of Brooklyn and not too far from the Jersey cosmopolitan, this airport plays host to over five thousand aircrafts, both private and commercial, on any single day. With all its myriad runways, taxiways, parking areas, businesses, even its own railway system, this airport can technically be described as a city within a city, the mother city, of course, being Brooklyn.

A plethora of retail stores, eateries, small offices, and other business entities creates a boisterous stream of human activity all over the place, but this still remains subsidiary to the greater commotion generated by the endless commute of thousands of frenetic travelers and their affiliates.

It has been almost an hour since my friend Camello boarded his plane, but I still feel very reluctant to leave the airport. Instead, I continue to meander aimlessly around the various sectors of the airport, attempting to enjoy the novelty of the situation since this is the first time I am visiting this historic airport. Visiting? Yes! But this is not the first time I have been to this airport, though, because if my traveling records are correct, it was at this very same venue that I landed my first footstep into American soil ten years ago. I will not count my visa interview at the American embassy in my country as stepping foot into American soil because, other than its political connotation, it is not. Thousands of people step foot into that office every year to apply for American visas and get turned down. Can you say those people have stepped foot into American soil?

Although it was only ten years ago, I have only a vague recollection of that crucial trip itself other than the emotional thrill I felt at the time in realizing that my lifelong dream of making it to the greatest land of opportunity had finally come into fruition. I also remember that the trip itself had been a very long one; it had lasted two days. We left my country on a Wednesday evening around 8:00 p.m. and arrived at JFK Airport in New York on Friday evening around the same time.

It was not actually a forty-eight-hour trip because there is a five-hour difference between the two time zones; plus, we had to lay off for several hours in Brussels as we waited to connect to the Delta Airlines plane that would eventually conclude that great transcontinental trip.

I remember feeling some trepidation when the plane landed at JFK, and I saw the huge crowd of people at the waiting area. I remember feeling slightly worried that, for some reason, my sister would not show up at the airport to receive us, maybe some family emergency or maybe she just had the date wrong and we had to be sent back to Africa on another plane. Something like that had happened to one of my friends before. The uncle that had sent for him was an illegal immigrant. He was scared to go to the airport to meet his nephew, so he had asked a friend of his to do it for him. The friend got the date wrong and did not show up to pick up the nephew who ended up being sent back to Africa.

However, that turned out to be unnecessary worry because although my sister had not been able to make it, the man she had sent to represent her was standing at the very front of the waiting area holding a huge signboard, like a demonstrator, with our names boldly painted on it. The sign was saying Welcome to America to the four of us that had traveled together.

I remember the immense relief we felt when we saw the man holding the white signboard with our names written on it. The man was a complete stranger, but we hurried toward him, and he escorted us outside to a blue Honda station wagon after introducing himself as a good friend of my big sister, Mariatu. I had never been to an international airport before, and I remember how confusing the whole melee of swarming commuters had seemed to me.

The guy that picked us up must have sensed our anxiety because he kept on denouncing the traffic in New York and the city’s high population density as he hurriedly hauled us into his station wagon and pulled off to join the other frenetic drivers on the highway.

I remember how awestruck my sister, Khadija, and I were by the twelve-lane Interstate 95 highway and the myriads cars that were swirling around us like some kind of high-speed chase. I had come from a country of one- and two-lane streets where the widest streets were four lanes with two going in either direction. That was the first time that we were riding in a car going over eighty miles an hour. At first we were very frightened to see five lanes of cars chasing after our vehicle at such high velocity. But then our driver seemed very relaxed, and he too was chasing down other cars, so we kind of got used to it. We held our breath in the beginning, but eventually we began to enjoy the thrill and novelty of the situation, burying the little ting of trepidation that we felt into our subconscious mind because it would just kill the thrill of the moment if we decided to focus on it, just like people do when enjoying the rides at an amusement park.

One more thing I can recall vividly about that first day is the astonishment we felt when my sister had asked the driver for the time in order to correct her wristwatch, and the driver had revealed to us that it was a quarter after eight in the evening. The sun was still bright outside as we rode from the airport, so we had assumed that it was still afternoon. Eight o’clock was always well into the night in my country where dusk always began setting around six, and it just felt very surreal to us to be seeing the sun at nighttime, which was how we felt at the time. With that, and the four lanes of cars whirling crazily around us, I knew right then that I was about to undergo a whole new cultural transformation, and this had heightened my anticipation even more.

I walk around the airport some more trying to see if I can recollect anything from ten years back, but I cannot find anything familiar because, honestly, I can hardly remember anything else about that great day, other than the overwhelming joy I had felt from setting foot on American soil, the exorbitant ego that came with that realization, and a huge sense of vindication and gratitude to the great Lord for rescuing me from a poverty-stricken existence.

I come from Sierra Leone, one of the least developed countries in Africa, which, by default, then makes it one of the poorest places to live in the world. When people over there dream of prosperity, they would envision themselves migrating to more affluent countries within the African continent like Nigeria or Egypt where they hope to get more job opportunities to make a livelihood for themselves and their families. Only a few people would dream about leaving the dark continent and traveling overseas because that, simply, would be an overreach; the cost associated with that was just too astronomical. Even those that attempted to dream that far often limited the scope of their expectations to countries in Europe, in most cases, Spain, which many knew could be accessed through a costly marathon of dangerous road trips and ferry rides. To set foot in the United States of America was the zenith of all dreams that most would never even dare to contemplate.

I had done pretty well in my first few years in the United States. I got a job as a line cook at the Willard, one of the most prestigious hotels in the nation’s capital. The Willard was also one of the best-paying employers in the city at the time. So within a short period of time, I was able to save enough money to rent a room from an old lady and move away from my sister’s house since my sister, for some personal reasons, seemed resentful that I had found full-time employment. I also enrolled for morning classes at a community college since I was doing evening shift at the hotel.

I was thirty years old at the time, older than all my classmates in most of my classes, but that did not put any dent on the joy and excitement I felt from going back to school. I had been very smart in high school. I had scored As and Bs in most of my classes, except arts and crafts, which, to this day, continue to be my Achilles’ heel. I had scored pretty high on the WAEC exams, which is the equivalent of the SAT in America. However, despite my ardent desire for a higher education, there was very little I could do but stay home after taking the WAEC exams.

For me and 90 percent of other students that were able to complete twelve grade in Sierra Leone, WAEC was always the end of the road. The cost of going to college was astronomical, and only students with good family connections were able to win government scholarships. These scholarships, although they were supposed to be merit based, always ended in the hands of the rich people’s kids.

First of all, the ordinary kids were never made aware of the existence of these scholarships. Information about these study programs remained well-guarded secrets even from the day they were presumably published on the bulletin board at the Ministry of Education at Tower Hill. Tower Hill was a part of the city that was developed solely to house government facilities, and the majority of students did not even have access into these government buildings. The brass in these office often peddled these scholarships to those that could pay the most for them. Even the school principals often got the news about these scholarships with students’ names already attached to them. Of course, some sugar got thrown their way for their compliance in executing these scholarships, and sometimes they were even allotted a spot or two to fill on their own since it was assumed that they too might have children that they wanted to give a higher education.

So after high school, I had done what many other high school graduates did at the time. I became a drifter. Some of my friends liked to call themselves businessmen. But how can one be a businessman without any financial assets, money, or capital?

What we did was roam around the marketplace the whole day, looking for people that had something valuable to sell: used watches, worn-out sneakers, electronics that might work or need some kind of repair, used household items like glass dishes—anything. We took the valuables from the owners and have them wait for us at our spot while we went out to seek buyers for the products. Many of us had regular customers, mostly market women that always had cash and were always looking for cheap bargains, so we often flipped these products and returned to meet the owners with their money without any protracted period of waiting.

The more accomplished drifters had sponsors whom they could borrow money from when they wanted to make a big deal as long as the goods stayed with the sponsors as collateral. Having a sponsor when you were drifting was always a good thing even though, sometimes, the sponsors demanded a share of the profit from the drifter because of their investment in the goods. In many cases, the sponsors themselves ended up buying the goods from the drifters. Even when they did not, it was always good to have money to send the owner away so the drifter could seek potential buyers at a more leisurely pace.

Some drifters actually ended up becoming successful businessmen owning their own stalls, and they did not have to worry about running around and chasing sponsors. They just bought stuff, cleaned or repaired them, then put them on display in their stalls. Some became sponsors themselves luring smaller drifters to bring more products to their stalls which they sold for higher profits since they now ran a legitimate business enterprise.

I knew some friends that were drifters who ended up becoming very wealthy businessmen dealing in gold and other fine minerals. However, such illustrious endings happened to only a very few. The vast majority of drifters, myself included, made only chicken change from their hustle, in most cases, just enough money to buy diner when they returned home in the evening and weed to stay stoned for the rest of the evening. That was our goal when we woke up every morning—make enough money for food and weed.

So just imagine the excitement I felt when I returned home one Friday evening after a long tiring day of meaningless drifting and received the news that I had won a lottery and would be going to the United States of America. Of course, initially I thought it was a joke

All my friends knew how fanatic I was about the United States of America. We used to argue about which country was the greatest country in the world. Some of my friends thought it was Russia or China, but I had studied about America in my senior high school geography class and had actual factual knowledge about the country’s vast economic resources, so I always argued passionately against that false claim to the point that my friends sometimes referred to me as Captain America.

So when they told me the news that evening, I initially thought they were just pulling my leg so I could start ranting. But after the people described the person that had come looking for me with the news, I knew it was my half sister, Khadija, and since her sister was living in the United States at the time, I began to feel some adrenaline rush. I could tell it was not a joke from the genuine excitement in their voices, and I could discern the reverence in their attitude. They were already treating me like some kind of folk hero.

It was a Friday night and many people had volunteered to take me out. I had a ball that weekend because people that had never cared a bit about me suddenly decided to be nicer. Great news like that traveled very fast in our community, so for that whole weekend, people were offering me free drinks and free weed everywhere I went.

Very early the following Sunday morning, I went to visit my half sister, Khadija, and she confirmed that the news was indeed true. She told me that our big sister, Mariatu, had played my name in the Diversity lottery the year before because her own name never got selected for the past six years that Mariatu had been playing it. In order to increase her chances of winning the year before, Mariatu had played the names of all the people she could remember in Africa. She even played some fictional names. Of all the names she played, only my name got selected. I felt both elated and extremely grateful to my God for such divine intervention.

I have always referred to Mariatu as my sister. She is actually my half sister, the oldest daughter of Mammy Fudia, my father’s first wife. In other societies, that would not make much difference at all. However, in our culture, there was a huge difference between siblings and half siblings.

In our traditional Muslim families, there was very little sisterly or brotherly love among half siblings. In most of these polygamous households, half brothers and half sisters considered themselves as rivals, and they fought fiercely among one another in just the same manner as their mothers did while contending for their husbands’ affection. All the wives raised their children to believe that the greatest threat to their livelihood in this world were the children of the other wives, their half siblings. This allegation, although it might sound very extreme to outsiders, often made perfect logical sense in these poor households where the different wives, with their kids, always found themselves engaged in fierce competition over the very limited resources that the husbands were able to provide. Dueling is actually a better word to describe what went on in these households, and fatal fights among household members were nothing out of the norm in these communities.

My own relationship with my half sisters was way better than average. We never fought with one another. In fact, when my stepmother, Mammy Fudia, died during Khadija’s birth, my mother had decided to act as foster mom to her newly born baby. Khadija and I were born only six days apart, so when her mother passed away, my mother raised us together like twins, sometimes dressing us alike even though we were of opposite sex. We were breastfed together with my mother often giving Khadija her right breast, which was bigger, since she had been born somehow premature and was so little. I had settled for the smaller left breast, but even in those early years, Khadija and I never wrangled over anything. We attended the same school, did our homework and house chores together, and, for the most part, regarded each other as real brother and sister.

Because of our age difference, I was not that close with Mariatu. She was my mother’s age, and because of that reason, she was closer to my mother than she was to me. They had had a tight friendship, and even though Mariatu was at constant war with her other stepmothers, she had always remained nice to my mother. Actually the two of them acted more like BFFs rather than stepmother and stepdaughter. Later, when Mariatu had gotten married, she kindly took me and my mother to live in her home after my mom ran away from our abusive father. Even after my mother died many years later, I had still continued to visit Mariatu at her husband’s home, where I helped her with household chores or babysat her little kids when necessary. And she sometimes gave me financial help too, which, though minimal, served as a reminder of the good relationship between our two families.

However, half-sibling rivalry tends to be an innate behavior in many polygamous household. Mariatu was the heroine in our family. During her youth, she had fought fiercely against our father when he tried to remove her from school and force her into early marriage. She had rebelled against our tradition by refusing to get circumcised when she was a teenager, arguing that female circumcision was a cruel and unnecessary feat. She had run away from home when she was sixteen and got married to the man she loved without seeking our father’s blessing. She was a fierce fighter, and we all revered her. She was now a very successful doctor in the United States.

Because of this, one would expect her to transcend the scourge of half-sibling rivalry and regard such insignificant family scruples as obsolete. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

One of Mariatu’s greatest commitment when she came to the United States was to bring her baby sister, Khadija, into the country. She loved Khadija fondly since she had raised her from the cradle. Her other sisters had gotten somewhat rebellious while they were living with her at her husband’s house and had moved on into early marriages, but Khadija, the youngest, had stayed devoted. She had gone on to finish high school which was not very common among female students in the country, so Mariatu was convinced that she, indeed, wanted more in life than to become a baby-producing machine for some rich old fart. Mariatu herself had faced the same challenges earlier in her life. She was able to overcome them, but not without great difficulty. Her goal was to make it easier for her baby sister to achieve any lofty goals that she had set for herself.

However, getting a United States visa for a sister or brother had never been an easy feat in my country. Mariatu’s husband was able to get her a visa to come and live with him in the United States three years after he arrived. That was because he got married to an American woman in order to get his green card and had to wait two years after the marriage before he could seek a divorce and begin the filings for his real family. It normally takes way less than that to file for spouses and children. Filing for other family members, on the other hand, depends mainly on luck, and it sometimes takes up to a decade for one to get success in that area.

Khadija was not lucky in that regard. All of Mariatu’s repeated efforts to get a visa for her failed miserably. Not even a visitor’s visa. Some people just have bad luck when it comes to getting visas, Mariatu finally concluded. She had tried her best. She had reached out to several schools to send her admission letters, hoping that would help her get a visa, but that had not worked. She had had her right leg put into a cast for almost a month, hoping that would get her a medical visa. That did not work either. And she continued to play several entries for her on the visa lottery using anybody’s name she could remember.

The first year she played my name, it got selected. That was very great news for Mariatu, except for the fact that Alhaji was not a girl’s name. So she could not direct her sister to make traveling documents in that name. Nobody knew about her efforts to bring Khadija to the United States, except Khadija herself. So nobody knew about me winning the visa lottery.

When Mariatu called her sister to break to her the good news, she wanted her to find somebody that could pay a high price to represent me on the filing documents. The person could then bring Khadija and her two kids as his wife and family

Khadija and her children had grown very attached to me at that time, so she explained to her sister that she would not be able to live with her conscience if her half brother got robbed of such a great opportunity.

But then I will have to spend more money to bring him too, Mariatu had complained bitterly, while, on the other hand, if I sell the package, I will have somebody that would volunteer to pay all the traveling expenses for you and your kids and still pay me big money to have their family included in the package.

Khadija knew that was very true. There were many rich people in the city who would pay a fortune if they were presented with such a deal. However, Khadija nicely insisted that her sister should give me a fair chance to come and explore my destiny in the United State. After wrangling over the issue for nearly two weeks, big sister finally relented because small sister was very adamant and even seemed willing to forfeit the golden opportunity if it meant betraying her beloved half brother. Mariatu loved her baby sister dearly and never wanted to deny her anything. So in the end, she capitulated and told her to go inform me of my good fortune.

Mariatu, however, conveyed her disappointment over the situation by giving me very strident conditions under which I could travel. She told me that the only persons that I could put on my traveling documents were Khadija and her two children. Khadija would be my wife and her two kids would be our children.

Despite the exhilaration I felt over the news, I was taken aback by the idea of leaving my own family out of this golden ticket. At that time, I had a girlfriend that I was very much in love with and we had a very young son whose growing up I wanted to be part of.

My sister was adamant over her conditions. Since I was going to be bringing my half sister Khadija as my spouse, I knew I would not be able to bring