"Omg!! Hey, watch where you're going!!"
A woman in her early twenties with straight brown hair shouted as a sudden collision jarred her backward, right outside the towering gates of Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium. This marked her historic first time setting foot on the grounds of the club she had fervently supported since her high school days in Germany. Hailing from Munich, her entire family bled the colors of Bayern, but she harbored a solitary, fierce devotion to this English football giant.
She had relocated to Manchester solely under the guise of her studies, but her true motives were split between her love for the club and a desperate need to escape a fractured home. Since her father's tragic passing in a catastrophic train accident a few years prior, her stepmother and two stepsisters had rendered her life an absolute misery. Left with no alternative, she seized the modest inheritance her father had secured for her and fled to the city where her favorite club resided. Thanks to her sharp intellect, securing a five-year scholarship had been effortless. Now, after years of yearning, she was finally here, standing outside Old Trafford—only for a stray passerby to nearly sweep her off her feet.
"Uhhm, I'm so sorry. I was shoved while trying to navigate the queue; I completely lost my bearings and didn't see you," stammered a handsome, light-skinned young African man in his mid-twenties, his hair falling in tight, neat curls.
He looked up at the woman he had crashed into, and his mind went entirely blank. The moment his gaze locked with hers—captivated by her deep, ocean-like eyes and the striking symmetry of her face—the chaos of the crowd dissolved. Time completely suspended its march. By the time he realized he had been staring for far too long, he noticed she was equally entranced, momentarily lost in a trace of her own.
Yep, that couple right there? That isn't me. That's my Parents Joseph Beckham and Maxie Dowman..... And how they met??..
You're probably wondering why a Nigerian man carried the surname Beckham??... According to him, after his mother passed away and his father remarried, he severed ties with his family entirely and legally changed his surname to honor his idol, the legendary winger wearing the Manchester United number seven shirt at the time. My mother, conversely, proudly retained her father's name, Dowman. Years later, my twin sister and I would inherit both, carrying Dowman as our primary surname, with our dad's name, Joseph, designated as our fourth name.
My parents crossed paths in 1999, right outside the stadium, during the club's most legendary and fiercely competitive era in English and European football history. According to their tales, that entire Treble-winning season was a tumultuous rollercoaster of anxiety, tears, and pure, unadulterated ecstasy. They spoke endlessly of those miraculous, heart-stopping comebacks—of trailing for ninety minutes only to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the dying seconds of a match.
My mom always maintained that she left Germany to study in Manchester simply to be closer to the club she adored. My dad had done almost the exact same thing; two years into his degree in Nigeria, he secured a scholarship to the UK, which he accepted in a heartbeat. The very night he landed in England, he bypassed London entirely and traveled straight to Manchester for a crucial Champions League tie. That was the night he collided with my mom.
Present Day: Road to Dortmund
The constant, low-frequency rumble of the bus engine vibrated through the soles of Tim's worn-out sneakers, a persistent reminder that he was finally moving forward, even if he felt completely hollowed out. Lost in the labyrinth of his own thoughts, Tim couldn't help but look back. He thought about the past, about his parents, about his twin sister, and the cruel suddenness with which they were stolen from his world..... this world. He thought about the bright futures he had once so vividly envisioned for themselves (Him a football Star playing for Manchester United, wearing the iconic number '7' shirt, finally living his dream and his sister, selling out stadiums on tours most especially, hosting one inside old Trafford stadium)... staring blankly at the rolling green landscapes of Western Germany. Tim pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window wondering how everything had unraveled so spectacularly. He went from a vibrant family of four, to three, then one at once..... him, just him now. Life strikes with unrivaled cruelty, dealing devastating blows without warning or reason. Such is fate, and that fate now is currently Tim's.
My name is Timothy Jeffrey Dowman Joseph, a 20-year-old Nigerian-German. I was born in Manchester alongside my breathtakingly talented twin sister, Treasure Jesse Dowman Joseph, but we were raised in Nigeria by our German mother and Nigerian father. How??... Well I was told my dad was deported back to nigeria when he was framed for a crime he didn't commit months before our birth --- Mom gave birth to us in Manchester and after six months, she took us to Germany where we lived our first two years of life before she took us to Nigeria to live with our Dad. My life is a tragedy written in scars, and the mere fact that I am currently on a bus bound for Dortmund without a legal travel documents and an 18 years old German passport speaks volumes.
The dominoes of sorrow began falling eight years ago, on May 22nd, 2015—just months after I and my twin birthday—when I lost my dad. It marked the inception of an unbearable era of grief. My father had always explained that a rare, incurable blood disorder plagued our family lineage, mysteriously laying dormant until it randomly claimed one twin from every generation. How this genetic curse originated remained a mystery he didn't have the answer to. He only knew its cruelty firsthand because he had lost his own twin sister "Josephine" to it when they were just fifteen.
My mother once told me and my twin that my father wept bitterly when he discovered she was pregnant with twins. They weren't tears of joy, but a profound, agonizing sorrow born from the realization that he would one day have to bury one of his children. He never guessed that we would bury him first. His passing shattered our world, hitting my twin sister the hardest, as she completely idolized him and was undeniably his favorite. It took six agonizing months to establish a fragile new normal, though no day ever truly felt complete without the jovial presence of the household prankster.
Eventually, time numbed the sharpest edges of our grief. Mom found her stride again, working tirelessly at the Private hospital she and Dad built and Estates they invested in, to raise us, with the promise that we would relocate to Germany after our high school graduation. It was precisely as we neared that milestone that the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe like a terrifying storm. And it was during this global nightmare that I lost my remaining anchors. My twin, whose fragile health had always been compromised by the genetic anomaly, contracted the virus and couldn't fight it off. My mother, a kind dedicated physician on the front lines, caught it before proper treatment protocols were even established.
She was swiftly quarantined, leaving my sister and me to endure the terrifying isolation of lockdown alone together, until my sister's symptoms worsened. I remember the sheer terror of calling the emergency protocol line and watching the paramedics wheel her away, just as they had done with my mom. Imagine enduring the suffocating isolation of a global lockdown for months, watching your family taken away piece by piece, only to eventually receive the news that they were gone forever. Brutal doesn't even begin to describe it.
General POV
A sudden hiss of the bus's air brakes pulled Tim from his thoughts. The bus had stopped at a major transit hub, and a fresh wave of passengers flooded down the aisle. Within moments, every single available seat was filled.
Tim looked up and noticed a young woman, 'probably in her late twenties or doesn't look her age' standing a few feet away in the aisle. She was visibly pregnant, shifting her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other as the bus jolted back into motion. Tim looked around. The surrounding passengers—mostly locals plugged into their headphones or staring blankly at their phones—didn't seem to notice.
Despite the throbbing agony in his back and the emotional numbness clouding his mind, Tim didn't hesitate. The core values of respect, empathy, and honor his parents had drilled into him back home were too deeply ingrained to be washed away by a rough sea crossing or a broken heart.
"Verzeihen Sie bitte!," Tim said in German, his voice low and raspy as he stood up, carefully bracing his core to avoid stretching his wound. He caught her eye and gestured to his seat with a tired, respectful nod.
"Please, take my seat. You shouldn't be standing." He said in English, since the woman seem lost for a second when he first spoke in German— but he could guess she was a local.
The woman looked up, surprised.
"Oh, thank you so much. Are you sure? You look..."
"I'm certain. Please," Tim insisted gently, stepping out into the aisle.
As the pregnant woman gratefully sat down, Tim grabbed onto the overhead handrail. The stretch pulled brutally at the barbed-wired cut on his back, and a sharp wince flickered across his face before he tightly closed his eyes to mask the pain. He leaned his shoulder against the plastic paneling of the interior, breathing heavily.
Despite the hollow ache in Tim's chest and the rawness of his grief, the core virtues his parents instilled in him remained intact. Seeing an expectant mother standing while he sat comfortably simply didn't align with who he was raised to be. He was slightly relieved that the woman speak and understood English, cause she seem to not had understand his German.
Opening his eyes, Tim broke into a small chuckle, a rare genuine smile appearing on his face as he remembered when his mom, Maxie Dowman Joseph, used to tease him about his German pronunciation and accent, being always clunky compared to his sister's flawless accent. His mother had made it a point to raise them bilingual, emphasizing that they must know her homeland. Even if her estranged step-family never bothered to reach out, Germany was still her home, and she wanted her kids to see and be part of it.
To be continued....