Chapter 5 Brown Envelopes

The money came quickly, in crisp euros wrapped in brown envelopes, thick enough to silence conscience. When Aisha returned from Germany a week later, she was ten thousand dollars richer. Victor had been smooth, businesslike - his hotel room clean and sterile, the extraction brutal but professional. They gave her painkillers, watched her for a day, then handed her a ticket back home and an envelope stuffed with cash. She was told she had done "exceptionally well". The praise thrilled her. So did the money.

Back in Lagos, she didn't return to the market. Instead, she rented a two-bedroom flat in Ogudu and gave her mother a new sewing machine, no questions asked. When the other market women whispered, Aisha just smiled and waved from the back of a tinted car. She began recruiting girls from the neighborhood-students, dancers, and single mothers desperate enough to risk everything for a piece of the dream. She was careful. Never too many trips. Never the same route twice. She learned to manage risk like a chess player. Every move planned three steps ahead.

Her favorite couriers were athletes (track stars) with strong stomachs and clean records. She taught them how to carry the product, how to walk with innocence, how to lie with confidence. They were paid well. She made more. Her network began to expand - Benin to Lagos, Lagos to Paris, Johannesburg to New York. It was no longer just a hustle. It was a system.

One afternoon, as she handed another brown envelope to a girl heading to Nairobi, Aisha looked at her and said, "You don't owe anyone the truth. Just get there, and come back alive". It was advice she lived by. Lies could buy freedom, if you were smart enough to remember every one of them.