The Smoker

_{Photo by Ahmed Zayan}

My hostel kinda placed a partial ban on people smoking (not really a ban but a rule was made that you can only smoke inside your room and not outside). I know that generally students shouldn't be allowed to smoke marijuana, but my hostel is located outside the school so everyone kinda do what they like with little or not consequences.

When the smoking rule was introduced, those of us who don't smoke got excited because the smoke coming from the marijuana has always been a problem for us. Unfortunately, there really isn't much difference between smoking inside of your room and outside, especially when your door is directly opposite mine.

Luckily for me, the only guy who smokes around here isn't even an occupant or a student here, he had come to visit his friend and was staying for a few days. So I decided not to complain and just let it slide seeing how it won't be lasting for long. But, I guess I have to thank him for today's post because as I sat in my room, trying to see how long I could hold my breath before I passed out due to the smell from the weed, I suddenly remembered one time I got whooped for refusing to help someone buy weed.

You see, as a kid, my dad had always warned us never to help anyone buy cigarette, talk more of weed. He would always tell us to come up with an excuse to not buy the cigarette or even run away if possible,so I took his advise. I always found a way to maneuver my way out of buying cigarette for anyone, until this particular day when this man with dreads had called me to his shop.

He was a well known man in my street, so I wasn't scared to go meet him, but when I got to his shop, I realized that the reason he had called me was because he wanted me to go help him buy some weed. Now this dude was scary looking with his dread and black lips, so I was scared to say no. What I did instead was take his money, and walked around for a bit before returning to his shop and lied to him that the guy who sells weed didn't have any.

I remember him being shocked by my response, maybe because he had been to the shop earlier and the weed seller had assured him that he had enough supply for that day. Well, I gave him back his money and left, thinking that was the end of it.

It wasn't.

Few hours later, a friend of mine had called me and told me to follow him. I did and few minutes later, I found myself as the man's shop with a belt in his hand. It turned out he had later sent my friend to go buy him the weed from the same shop I had supposedly gone to earlier and my friend returned with some weed, unlike me, so he found out that I had lied to him and he had whooped me with his belt.

Usually I would had reported him to my dad, but even as a child, I knew that man always moved around with dangerous people and I didn't want to cause any problems for my family, so I cleaned my tears and walked back home.