I still recollect how she walked in, carefully. Her eyeballs hid behind the bold black goggles. Her long black jackets wrapped her in like robes, tying her up to her tiny wrists, you barely find her fingers. Though tall and elegant, beautiful and covered in pleasantly smelling perfumes from cologne, her voice trembled as she coughed a whisper of "good morning, counselor Timothy". Was she mourning the passing of a loved one? Had she been prey to the fleet of looters, scammers, and internet fraudsters who loom the web these angry days? What could have caused a beautiful and elegant woman as this so much agony? My troubled mind muttered, but my mouth uttered not a word as I dangled between personal opinions.

 

Mrs. Sarah George was a known colleague when I attended the teacher's college about a decade earlier. She was gallant and admirable. To be honest, many men including me admired her, but for lack of courage to approach, I mellowed. I learned she was from a humble background. Her father a manual worker at construction sites, helps with the parking of debris, these dirty carbon wastes, and gets paid. That way, he fed her humble mother and trained all his children in school with the goal of future social mobility. I learned that at one time, she and her siblings nearly dropped out of school because they could not afford their tuition for that year. Had it not been for the smaller incomes from momma and assistance from her maternal uncles, probably Sarah wouldn't have attained such heights in her academics. Notwithstanding her background, one feature ranked Sarah above her peers – it was not her great acumen for Mathematics and Statistics, neither was it her impeccable command of Elizabethan English; it was only her beauty – she was indeed a rose to behold. I admired her from afar but could not break the heart of a damsel whom I had met earlier before I met Sarah at the College; and, again, for the courage that failed me. Yet many men would compare Sarah to the woman standing beside them, many wished they had met her first. Sarah knew this, her parents and the whole world knew too.

Sarah's life was together until her father found a famous friend, or I should say, a friendly foe. Chief George was well known in town as a successful business tycoon. His hands dropped with grease. He had what men wanted – the cars, the gold, the silver, the fame, the influence, and, of course, many forced friends. However, he also had a thorn in his flesh – his only son and child, Mr. Famous George.  Famous was the opposite of his father. Twice, he had been incarcerated and arrested for drug trafficking, caught at two airports – the only times he could not successfully grease the palms of two stubbornly patriotic checkpoint officers who rejected his dirty offers.

 

The five years he spent behind bars for trafficking drugs and women brought his famous father no little shame. Famous, now in his late 30s, was flown abroad to study and return, perhaps, to return only when the boiling news of his misdemeanors had cooled off the hungry journalists' and masses' minds. It was two years after his cold return that his famous father Chief George arranged for him to have Sarah via her father. "What could be a quicker ladder to upward social mobility?", Sarah's father foresaw the wealth the welding of their kids could bring to the family, his family. Perhaps it was time for fortune to compensate for his years of hard labour with quick wealth on the path of gold. Despite Sarah's mom's sinister hesitations, her father believed it was nothing but providence to marry her up.

Sarah was in her early twenties and had both seen and shared the families' sour moments in the past. The glittering Chief George was the focus of her attention at one time when she, as an innocent teenage girl, attended a function in the company of her father in a company where Chief George was the CEO. Sarah's father had worked briefly at this company during the construction of their new extensions; but now, it's an end-of-the-year event where the company's loyal labourers and the other loyalists are rewarded. Stunned by Chief George's oratorical fluency and obvious affluence, Sarah innocently wished Chief George were her father. But perhaps, "it's too late" her childish mind fluttered forth and back as she hides behind her poor dad who could hardly append his signature on a contract form without adequate rehearsals and assistance from Sarah's momma. That was ten years ago. Now, she'd grown, a woman, 22 to be precise. She had been to the University and embraced campus life. She knew what class meant as well as hypergamy from a social science class in social inequality. Although she knew less about Famous, her father cared less to tell, and she, willing to test the waters and also get bites of wealth, succumb.

 

The wedding night was glamorous. Kins and kinds from both families embraced a common table. For the first time, Sarah felt human enough and honored. But the feelings soon began to fly away the first night Famous hit her with a hard object on her chest, for asking him to be double sure he had shut the door before flinging her to their matrimonial bed. She got same beatings three days later during their toxic "honeymoon".

 

It was barely two weeks after the wedding that Famous forbade Sarah from making contacts with her family and female friends. She was, after all, married to be a full-time housewife and seems to have "everything" she wanted. Under the pretense that he was giving her a new phase of life, he brought her a new smartphone with a new sim card he had preregistered and broke her old sim card – making her lose all her previous contacts. When Sarah's father began to suspect an unusual silence from her beloved daughter, he tried several times, unsuccessfully, to put a call through to her. The brief silence threatened him. Her father tried all he could to see his daughter in person but was denied entry into their new couple's compound. He later reported Famous to Chief George but was all to no avail. Three months after, a friend informed me he had bumped into Sarah and her infamous husband in a queue, as they were preparing to check in to a flight heading somewhere in the Middle East.Till date, it seems Sarah cannot be found on the radar. Her father had become a frequent outpatient visitor at a nearby government clinic for high blood pressure, and her momma, a diabetic patient, had become a shadow of herself. As a counsellor, I could only wonder how all this will end. "Where is she? And what has happened to her?" are two nagging questions no one has been able to answer. All I remember now from her was her gentle whisper, "all will be well, someday", the last time she visited my office and I had advised her to seek refuge wherever she could. Will Sarah add to the long list of the earth's trampled roses?

 

Since the last time I heard about her disappearance, I have not ceased to lament the tragedies of this world – this world of trampled roses, where petals are pestered and the beautiful are beaten, broken, and battered by revered beasts in human bodies. Sarah's angelic mind now bows to bestial beings. How I weep for the too many Sarahs scattered throughout this terrestrial ball! Perhaps, someday, Sarah shall be found, rescued, and caused to laugh again. But not until then will my mourning for Sarah cease!