by AC Alegbo
The gravel crunched rather quietly as Tolu reached me; he’d grasped every one of Ibrahim’s word as he’d spent his first years in Borno and had never lost the language. He applied gentle pressure on my shoulder as he turned me around, fingertips digging into my beginning of my back; he wanted to have a chat.
‘It is straightforward, Rez. They will help us to get started but we have to work hard too,’ he said taking too long for my liking to get to the point. ‘We need to pick out the best looking cars out of this lot,’ he pointed to a group of cars that were slightly apart, ‘and replace their faulty parts from those damaged ones.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ I said. ‘Are we looking at the same cars? How do you want to judge best looking from all of them?’ I moved my hand in a small arc as I indicated the fleet of cars we were to work with. Tolu quickly hit my hand down afraid someone would see and take this as a sign we were complaining about our task.
‘Don’t point like that,’ he said. ‘I know where the cars are. Look, Mallam said that even though it looks like all of them are very bad, that some are still better than others. Some can still be saved and we will be swapping parts from car to car.’
‘Is that all? Is this the amazing business we’ll be doing now? Where are these cars from anyway?’ I asked.
‘Rez, you didn’t bring me here for this; don’t start any detective rubbish now. Wasn’t it you who wanted to get into the real world and make some cool bucks? Well, this is the real world.’
‘Okay, relax,’ I said to pacify the boy. ‘I only asked a question or is that a crime now for you?’
He didn’t reply and began to look around for Mallam to give us our next orders.
‘But think about it,’ I said coming back to my fears. ‘We need to think about this in case of tomorrow – all these cars, where have they come from? Is there an accident depot where Mallam picks them up from or don’t you think that this people have stolen some of them?’
‘Rez, I told you before..,’ he began, stopped and began again. ‘Okay maybe some of the cars are stolen but not all,’ Tolu replied. ‘See how bad the cars look; I’m sure many of them would have been write-offs from other workshops. We don’t even know for sure if any is stolen. This is pure speculation.’
‘Well do you want us to go ask?’ I asked.
‘Didn’t you ask Musa about this on our way over here? And he said everything was legal.’
‘Yes but he also said there was no law in Nigeria,’ I answered back. ‘That sounds suspicious to me, not so? And now I have seen the cars, I am beginning to think again.’
‘Think again? So what if some of the cars are stolen Rez?’ Tolu asked spreading his hands open in a gesture of defeat. ‘So what? What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know, always keep our eyes and ears open to know when there is trouble in the air?’ I asked back in reply.
‘Okay then,’ Tolu was clearly ready to end our conversation and get to the business of the day.
‘But first, we have to find out for sure if any of these cars have been stolen,’ I repeated. Even to myself, I was beginning to sound tiring.
‘Look Rez,’ Tolu said with a little frown, ‘You can do that when you are ready. See the boys around you; you can go and ask questions but I know that you don’t get anything for nothing ok? Mallam Ibrahim organises these cars; how he does this is his business. Let’s just leave it there. What we need to do is make our money.’
‘Okay then, but how?’ I asked, changing the topic and getting back to the main point. ‘How are we going to do that?’
‘It is all about sales; Mallam Ibrahim said we will pick out our cars and his mechanics will help us point out the faults with the car. We pick out parts from the wrecked ones and build our car. The mechos will help us out but this is primarily our business. We find buyers for our second-hand cars and give Mallam a twenty percent cut. The rest is ours, easy.’
****
As the school year wore on, Ireneh indeed established himself fully as a thorn in Mrs Deji’s flesh and he was quite effective at this considering he only appeared on a handful of occasions. His absences became more and more frequent during the course of the year so that he was away from school more than most of us were present and became something of a rarity. He missed a lot of lessons and a few tests in the first two terms and it was beginning to look certain that he would not make it into Primary 6.
Of course, as well as his seatmates, Mrs Deji did not mind his absence; as a matter of fact, she must have wished that the boy appeared even less often than he did as the few times that Ireneh came to school were always chaotic. He’d fight with the girls, make a lot of noise, return late from breaks and spend a lot of time kneeling in front of the class as punishment.
The lady had already begun to show signs of frustration with the boy – she was fast running out of ideas. ‘Ireneh! Were you sent to torment me? Don’t make me send you to the headmaster. What kind of a child are you? I want to see your parents tomorrow. Do you hear?’ She would yell, the strain on her face vivid and painful to watch.
‘Yes ma,’ Ireneh would reply looking subdued and innocent like he had no idea what was happening.
But then again, such exchanges weren’t unusual. Ireneh never came with any of his parents; he rarely even ever came to school two days in a row almost like he was deliberately giving the teacher a day off, so that between one reprimand and another, Mrs Deji usually had forgotten all about her request.
I was getting on well now with Eze and some of the other boys in the class; I did not hear as many bizarre stories anymore but as time went by I missed those less. I was beginning to get more grounded in some reality as the boys rarely ever talked about things that they didn’t have in hand or weren’t already doing. Our conversations now centred on ordinary things like cartoon programmes, football heroes, a super hero toy that some boy had brought in or a game that we all wanted to try out.
These were things I could relate with much more easily and readily but still a small part of me missed the dream world of Ireneh. Apparently, I was not as ready to live in the real world as I made myself believe and I missed the brief escapes his stories provided. However, I also sometimes wondered about his welfare. It was quite likely now that he would repeat Primary 5 or get suspended from school at some point for bad behaviour; selfishly, I was pleased there’d be Eze to take his place if that happened. Sometimes, however, I wondered more about what the reasons could be that he’d drastically begun to go off the rails.
Eze and I joined the debating society rather late in the middle of the year. It was held in the class used by Primary 6c and headed by their class teacher Mr Okpara who took charge of our assemblies more than other members of the teaching staff. Unlike others, he’d take his time in making long flamboyant speeches and always enthralled us with graceful, high sounding words. He’d been running the society since it was founded two years before and had made membership compulsory for everyone in his class in the first year.
Eze and I found a handful of our classmates in the society already and that was not any cause for surprise. Mrs Deji had hinted quite often how taking part in debates would help develop our command of the English language and how it would help us in our English tests and exams. For the sake of the latter, a few classmates went along to enrol. I entered the society out of curiosity. I had heard the fascinating tales from the others about how they had to prepare points for argument and the well rehearsed creamy openings that accompanied debate speeches. Dupe, the most boisterous of the society members in our class, had written two such lines and was spending a great deal of time committing them to memory. We stared in amazement as she came out with words like: ‘The truth is bitter but, like a pill, heals the mind of infectious ignorance…’
The first few days of our membership were uneventful and we discovered about a thousand variations that were flying around as ideal opening gambits to a debate. The issues that we were expected to debate over were quite c
onfusing as well, the kinds that could never really be resolved by words, much less, by points.
I was thrown out of my depth though when we were confronted with the topic ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’. That could not be fair I thought; it was easy enough to argue against the motion but there certainly was very little to say in favour. Perhaps, it was simply a test of our debating prowess and I would have to dig really deep to find suitable points to show how the pen could be more dangerous than the sword. Try as I might, I only found a few and as I cross checked with Eze, I saw we had similar ideas.
‘We could say that people can stab really quickly with a pen,’ I said. ‘Pens have a small point and so it will be easy to stab with it in tiny spaces like the eyes, the ears or the nose.’ I did not sound too sure.
‘Yes,’ said Eze, ‘but the sword can also easily just slice away the ear or nose and can also be used to blind and stab better.’
‘You are right but how many people can get a sword?’ I asked feeling smart. ‘Some people have never even seen a sword. It is much easier to get a pen than to get a sword.’
‘You sure?’ Eze asked unconvinced. ‘Because every family has a cutlass; cutlasses are common.’
‘A cutlass is not a sword. It does not have a pointy end like a sword and the debate topic says sword not cutlass. Not many people can get a sword full stop.’
‘What about a dagger?’ Eze asked still not convinced by my argument.
‘Daggers are still not as common as pens,’ I said thinking about Ireneh’s ake and wondering about the accuracy of my assertion. ‘Let’s just leave it as ‘sword’ otherwise, there is no way we can win the debate and after all a dagger is still not a sword.’
‘I don’t think they want us to win anyway; we all know that the pen cannot be mightier than a sword. I am sure they just want to test us,’ Eze said.
‘Yes. You are correct.’
Ireneh appeared the following day after my confusing conversation with Eze. He arrived a little late but Mrs Deji was too distraught to see him to make a case of it. ‘Get to your seat and make sure we don’t get any trouble from you,’ she said.
The boy went quietly to his seat looking a little rough. It was like he had been travelling all through the night before. I was glad to see him for a few reasons one of which was that I wanted to find out what contribution he could make to our debate topic. He spent the morning quietly, keeping quite to himself, much to the surprise of the class. His demeanour did not last long, though. He was a totally reinvigorated person by break time and led the crowd of boys again in rowdy banter.
At first, it hadn’t seemed like we would be playing class football that day. Someone must have forgotten to bring in the ball or maybe it was in poor shape. Instead we were one massive group chatting away and there was only one thing to talk about that morning. The country had been involved in the Saudi ’89 football event and had fought their way to the finals after eliminating the US a few days before. We’d all watched the match elated at the success of our team even though it took a lot to overcome the efficient goalkeeper of the opposing team. Everyone had talked about the keeper then and we were talking about him now.
‘That Keller is a real magnet; I have never seen any keeper like that,’ Ireneh shouted as the boys descended on the topic of the match.
‘If he had been the keeper for Russia, we’d have lost 4-0.’ At this, a few of the boys shuddered. The greatest miracle of the competition had been Nigeria’s fight back from 4-0 against the USSR in the quarter-finals. The country had gone wild with joy and no one wanted to consider that the match could have had any other outcome.
‘Abeg don’t speak evil,’ one said. ‘Even if Keller had been the Russia keeper, we’d still have won.’
‘Hmm, you are just dreaming. Did you not watch the match? Did you not see how many goals Keller saved? We could have scored like twenty.’
‘Ehn, but after all that, we still lost in the final anyway,’ someone added dampening the mood. ‘So why all this argument?’
‘Was it not because the stupid manager took the boys out to drink the night before the final?’
‘How do you know?’ another asked.
‘Yes, how do you know?’ yet another joined. ‘Portugal simply played better than we did. That was why they beat us, period.’
‘They played nothing,’ this time, I was the one shouting. ‘Our boys just played total rubbish.’
Then the ball appeared, well, someone alerted us that we could now have a game and so from banter, we progressed to crowd football which finished with everyone in a pile. We resumed lessons all sweaty and dusty and for a few of us, hungry again.
The second half of class found Ireneh in a better mood; he was a sight more active and kept jumping from bench to bench crowding everyone else. He looked very much like his old self and already his seatmates were showing signs of worry. Mrs Deji was not in class and although the class monitor would be doing his usual jotting of the names of the noisy ones, Ireneh was the last person to care about the wrath of the teacher.
****
The Kano we’d only just arrived in was very unsettled. Even five days after the State adopted the Shari’ah law, the city hadn’t recovered from the protests that had caused. Admittedly, these protests came from the minority; Kano was about the most populous northern state and only about one percent of the people were non-Muslims. In support of the new penal code, millions of Muslims had turned out in celebration after the introduction of Shari’ah, sending a clear message to those who weren’t agreed to the idea. The State government didn’t think that any clear agreement was reached by the council of states to suspend Shari’ah and that the law was good for the majority of its citizens. But Kano didn’t go unscathed; in the days following the first announcements to bring in the Islamic law, lots of Christian traders left the north in fear of violent riots and inter ethnic conflict as predictably happened in Kaduna. They kept trooping out for months afterwards taking with them their services, their skills and their money, hitting banks hard as they withdrew their deposits running to hundreds of millions of naira.
Already for us in the city were signs of the changes to come even though the government had planned to bring Shari’ah into full force later in the year during the Ramadan. Under Shari’ah, men and women were to be kept separate in public as much as possible unless they were married. Women were not to ‘flash the flesh’ or do anything that might make that happen; they were to be properly attired at all times which always meant fully covered. Modes of transportation such as motorbikes that could lead to an exposure of a woman’s legs and/or thighs were to be clamped down on. In buses, the men would sit in front while women and children would sit behind. Single sex taxis would be introduced. Drinking in public and prostitution were banned; stealing carried a sentence of the amputation of the offending limb; for adultery, one could be stoned to death while for a variety of lesser offences some of which are mentioned above, one could be flogged.
It was a lot for us to take in since all of a sudden ordinary pleasures of life had become criminalised. I was partial to a drink and I was lucky that the law was not going to apply to non-Muslims as the government had promised. Tolu and I could therefore get access to whatever we wanted in Sabon Gari where those seeking refuge from Shari’ah found one. The district seethed with bars, hotels and brothels and was frequented by Christians and Muslims alike. As far as the people of Kano were concerned, while Shari’ah should stay in law to uphold Islam, they could count on the foreigners in Sabon Gari to keep them human.
****
Now, Ireneh was in full form, he took to bullying the girls he sat with again; before long, he had Bisi’s locker for his sole use and the girl had to keep her bag at the foot of the desk. Mrs Danjuma from 5d came in after midday and left us with class work in Social Studies that our teacher wanted us to complete; that kept us going for the next thirty minutes and even Ireneh had to calm down when everyone else was buried in work.
‘Arinze, what is the answer to number three question?’ Ireneh tapped me on the shoulder as he spoke in a tone quite louder than the whisper he meant.
‘It is in that line. Read.’ I helped out touching the sentence.
‘But I can’t read it,’ he continued. He did not bother with the girls now as the teacher was not in; he could ask me directly which was easier.
‘You need to learn to read. You are in Primary 5 now,’ I said as I read out the sentence to him. ‘Maybe you should follow me to join the debating society. It will help you with English.’
‘Arinze, I am trying to finish this work. I can’t talk to you now unless you want to help me finish the work,’ he replied cheekily.
‘I cannot help you; I don’t even know the answers myself,’ I said.
‘A-a-nh,’ he reacted in surprise. ‘You just gave me one answer.’
‘No, I showed you where to find it and I don’t know if the answer is correct or not and don’t ask me for answers again because I don’t want it to look like we are copying each other’s work.’