In Kroo Town in Freetown, Jabbie

watched the old tailor line lapels

in his shed beside the river,

and day by day the needle and the trade

moved closer to Jabbie’s hand. That pale

stub of chalk pressed shut between his fingers,

was to mark patterns and where to cut:

serious cloth with scissors with jaws

like young cutlass blades.

In the shop, where bespoke waistcoats

were stitched between steam iron and

ironing board. The radio, hung on a nail,

to treble and buzz, while Jabbie learned

to rim button holes by hand and flawlessly neat.

I found him stitching agbadas

on the Old Kent Road, as one of

two tailors working in that whirring

back room at ‘Afro Design’. He was

recommended, and as he showed me

the shirts he had crafted to mannequins,

he said,

‘Don’t worry Joseph, and I will make you,

something special.’

He measured my limbs, my neck, my hips

with hard fingertips from fingerless gloves.

‘And I will design you this myself,

no pattern, no book, no scheme.

Ah hah! Now you say Fela,

I know exactly what you mean!

Don’t worry, from jacket to trouser

go be fitting correct.’

And even though it took Jabbie three weeks to stitch,

when it finish plot it suit and fit me fancy in truth,

with epaulets and pointed collars, in Vlisco wax green

and blue, except the trousers, which were too

exact in length – as if that were possible,

and known to be shrunk when I wore them in rain,

walking from the stage to backstage in Brittany.

I found Jabbie a month later on Peckham Rye.

He had moved to a seamstress’s shop

in the covered market of little Lagos,

and was presser footing hard on his wasp waist machine,

among soon-finished dresses and scraps of fabric

shaved from gowns and wedding capes –

Jabbie, red eyed at his engine, with pins in his mouth,

he rubbed my shoulder and said,

‘You are my best customer.

They jealous me here for my customers,

they jealous me my skill, so now

you see me here, but another place,

maybe I somewhere else, I go be gone,

the next day. In any case,

I call you, when this finish stitch.’

 

The cloth I brought Jabbie this time was psychedelic

orange and brown, but three weeks gone

and Jabbie phone ringing down to flatline tone.

When I pass to see if my thing done sew, he say,

‘It nearly finish.’

But that man was now marking out the shirt back

with chalk. He even took my address and promised

to deliver the garment by hand that night,

that it was different, a special design, slightly looser,

longer, and fuller in the fit, the hem cut straight this time,

the pattern lining up at placket and button shaft,

and that’s the reason why it taking long time.

He also had twenty geles to stitch.

That night Jabbie never came to Camberwell,

but later next week the thing was made and fit

like he had sewn it onto my body. I had always meant

for him to build me a long red kaftan

with a Nehru collar and billowing sleeves,

something that Richie Havens might have worn

on a subway platform in old New York City,

but Jabbie was staggering on Rye Lane, that time.

And he took me by the hand,

he said, ‘Ask for me

in the chicken shop

and they will find me.

I stop working for people now.’

But his eyes stared out from a deep narcotic hum,

and the socket rims were waxed with dirt and black

sweat,

and that was the last time

I saw Jabbie.