by AC Alegbo
‘Do you know how to fall like a dead tree?’ he asked as he tried to convince me to join him in the scouts.
‘No, what is that?’
‘You fall like a dead tree,’ he repeated like I did not hear the first time. ‘I will show you.’ He hunched up his arms, folding them at the elbows and resting his hands on his chest. He, then, let himself fall on the grass keeping his posture straight. He went down heavily on the soft grass, jerking his hands free at the last moment to break his fall. I fell on the grass laughing.
‘Why are you laughing?’ he asked like it wasn’t obvious. ‘It is not easy. I got scared but I know I can do it. I just need to pull myself together and concentrate,’ he excused himself.
‘Ha, ha, concentrate. Ha, ha. You should have landed on your arms like that,’ I mocked. ‘You would have gone home today without any arms.’
‘What are you talking about? I have seen people do this at our camp. It is quite easy; it is just that I am still learning. Give me a bit more time and I will show you what I can do.’
‘Yeah. Well done. Do that dead tree first and maybe I will think about joining your scouts,’ I said still struggling to stop grinning. This was a condition that could spur him on.
‘Ok. You will see. I will do it one day,’ he replied not biting. He certainly wasn’t ready to have another go at the stunt.
‘Ha, ha, yes, one day when you are an old man. I mean now, right now.’
‘I can’t do it now. I have not eaten. Let me get some strength first.’
‘Ha, ha,’ I laughed again. This was another example of a hilarious excuse to put off an unattractive prospect.
****
The robbers struck on the Tuesday of a new week. Tolu and I had both been putting finishing touches to our vehicles. There wasn’t a lot more to be done but our restless minds wouldn’t let us be; we washed our vehicle for the twentieth time while Tolu obsessively checked inside his for any unseen faulty accessory over and over again.
Tolu was actually on this routine when the marauders appeared. It was so unexpected that it took all of us a little while to go into the shock that usually accompanied an armed raid. In fact, I had taken at least two more steps quite calmly after the first shots had been fired by the robbers thinking that it was some sort of nonsense that would blow over. Maybe that reaction of mine was out of a deeper kind of shock arising from surprise than from fear. Usuman was the first to hit the ground as it became quite clear that this was no game. One after the other we followed suit. But our delayed reaction had had an effect on the robbers; at first, they too had seemed unsure looking around for the hidden defence we might have and perhaps, expecting to hear gunfire from any quarter of the garage. Then, Usuman broke the spell by going down and what I witnessed was a swift change in their mood from uncertainty to anger. I touched sand as I watched them sweep into the premises all masked with scarves tied around the lower part of their faces leaving only the eyes and brows exposed.
There were about seven of them and at least five carried guns. They ran in shouting at the top of their voices and cursing; I could understand. With the death penalty hanging over their heads if they got caught, they had been incensed at our audacity, that we had defied them. If we were not cripplingly terrified of them, the whole raid could be unsuccessful; they couldn’t let that happen.
Already, they were hammering the workers on the ground with sticks; I could hear loud groans and moans from all around and a few ‘Please! Please!’
I was partially hidden from view by the Jetta but I knew it was only a matter of time before they came to me. It was such a long time since I’d been beaten in any form and my stomach was doing flips at the prospect of being chastised by thugs. I can’t adequately describe the horror I felt; I can only recall that I felt feverish, my heart raced, blood pulsed harder to my brain and lying on the ground, I felt faint. I looked under the car and over at Tolu lying at the other side and when I saw his expression, I knew what he too was looking at. He was shrouded in a mask of fear, his eyes bulged and his face hung limply like a torn curtain. He turned his eyes away from me and at that instant, footsteps pounded close to him and amidst the shouting, he was hurled to his feet.
‘Are you mad!? Come here!’ I heard an angry voice as Tolu’s body was propelled upwards.
‘No master,’ came the whimper. And then a blow! The crunching sound of wood on bone made my heart stop beating momentarily. I closed my eyes and knew this was time to bring out the God I had kept unused for about a year now. Tolu fell. I saw and I prayed.
‘God please! Please protect me!’ I sincerely hoped I’d understand the Hausa the bandits would throw at me; it would be awfully dangerous to ask them to explain. Even as I thought about this, I worried the more and my fear intensified.
Then, I heard the thud of heavy footsteps; it sounded really close and before I could successfully faint from fright, rough hands grabbed my overall and dragged me to my feet. I looked into a dark and indistinct face with bright red eyes. He bawled at me in Hausa. I guess he must have been asking me to show him to the money. Another stood close to us; he held a machete and raised it at me. As my knees buckled slightly, I wondered what it was they expected of me; already, a group of four were hassling the workmen inside the workshop. They were bound to get more results from them and then, the voice came again.
‘Move!’
This I understood.
‘Ok,’ I began but didn’t finish. The huge fist that came at me missed my jaw as I turned slightly to give my response. It hit the side of my left cheekbone and my head swung right quite involuntarily carrying the rest of my body with it. I bit dust and was dragged to my feet again. The hand pushed me roughly in front and made me lead the way while still clutching at my dirty wear. My face felt bigger and heavier as I moved. The blood had now changed direction and pulsed to my cheekbone instead of my brain. Did God listen, I wondered. I’d find out before the day was over. At this point, I reckoned I’d better got thinking. The hoodlums would kill me if I didn’t give them something constructive but I had nothing to give. I watched the workshop get closer and my fever intensified; when I’d prayed for protection, I’d meant protection from any kind of beating. Now, if only I’d stay alive…it sure would be easier for God if I lowered the bar.
We entered the workshop and it was chaos everywhere. Ibrahim’s desk had been overturned, papers strewn all over the ground; benches had been thrown around, some smashed up and several workers lay bleeding around the shop floor. Three members of the gang had a roll of notes in their hand and Shehu all bleeding and with a misshapen head stood with them. This was good for me. Shehu was Ibrahim’s second in command and as Ibrahim was not in, which was fortunate for the man as robbers are rarely gentle with heads, Shehu must have been identified by a tortured worker like me as the next best thing.
We stood watching the injured Shehu and the thieves for a few seconds before my captors remembered where they were.
‘Lie down!’ one roared and pushed me forcefully to the ground. So far, I’d been lucky to have bagged only one punch albeit a very good one. I lay on the dirty ground darkened by mixes of several oils which had seeped through at least a centimetre deep. So as my mouth and nose dug into the sand, I only discovered more oil.
One of my guards left and walked over to the others gathered around Shehu. From where I lay, I saw the bleeding man pushed into a little room with a rough wooden door that I’d often noticed but not paid much attention to before. Now I realised that must be the money room; it had been our snare all along. And what’s more, it would always be the snare of the workshop. What other option does Ibrahim have? Put his money in the bank? – The hassle that would present, given the regularity and frequency money came in and out of Ibrahim’s hands, would be enough to give anyone a hernia. Lots of people just didn’t bother with banks.
I’d been to a bank on one or two occasions - believe it or not, I didn’t have an account as yet - and between the different pieces of
coloured paper I was forced to fill for every word I uttered and the different cashiers I had to speak to for every one of the paper slips, it was a very tasking experience. Very often, in years gone by, when my father had brought out money for house use, the notes had had that telltale sign of lengthy storage – damp, musty and decaying. This couldn’t have been particular to my family alone; everyone stored money in their homes. Robbers knew that just as they also knew the chances of finding a good stash increased significantly with the strength of an individual’s business. They’d have known that a big business man like Ibrahim would be smarter than to go through bank hassle all of the time. He would bank a lot of his money his own way.
Several bangs, the sound of splintering wood, more shouting and some more loud pleas from Shehu later, the robbers were ready to leave. They had taken all they could find and stormed out of the little room looking satisfied if one could ever say that of robbers. The last of them came out dragging Shehu by the collar; that he was still alive seemed to be the only boon they were willing to grant him.
‘Lie down!’ they roared to the young man and as a reminder to us all. From nowhere, a bang rang out that rubbed the command in and chilled us all the more. The armed men skipped over us as they went out of the workshop with some order. They shot twice more and we were still recovering from the impact of the noise when they drove out of the compound.
****
By the middle of July, we had rounded off our campaign outdoors and the P.E teacher had returned to his ordinary duties. We found it a little difficult to adjust to class lessons which we now found even more boring. By this time, Ireneh was a full part of the class and I even found it difficult to recall the time he had been a little more than a dream. This didn’t surprise me though, not only because I, like others, didn’t notice the transition the boy made from outsider to class wrecker once again but also because this transition had been aided by the fact that there were always things at school that we were continually drawn to, our interest veering away from anything else. Notable among these, especially for boys in Primary 5, was the little circle of the band boys and their captivating art of drumming for the school.
The band boys were more fascinating to us now that we were within reach of membership in that talented closed circle. Drumming became the most coveted skill all of a sudden. We talked about nothing else. We practised different rhythms that went by a variety of names and we used everything we could find as tools – desks, cans, plastic water bottles, sticks, even glass panes.
‘See, you just keep beating, gbo, gbo, gbo,’ Oscar, the best drummer among us would direct, blowing out his cheeks and bringing tongue and palette together as he aspirated. At least, he was good for something other than terrorising other kids. As a matter of fact, he’d faded out of that category now, especially as his long time ally Jegbe had left our school.
If anything, Oscar was now like a big brother who helped keep the peace – a presence quite like the UN. Only he didn’t dabble into minor issues between seatmates and certainly not all of those issues involving the exasperating Ireneh. He restricted himself to the big time – times when more than two pupils were involved in a fight, when it’d seemed like we would have a free for all. Then, he’d barge in with large strides and big, long arms, the width of which when stretched sideways would part the warring parties so far, they’d barely hear each other’s screams. I always wondered why he was never made class monitor.
‘Good, now, you – you beat du, du, dum, du, du, du-du, dum,’ he explained to the second group of us. ‘See, I will show you. Okay, you two there, start the gbo, gbo, gbo.’
They began drumming and Oscar tapped the beat he’d just instructed us on quite neatly so that it wove itself into the beat of the two gbo, gbo drummers. ‘See?’ He proclaimed triumphantly motioning us to do the same.
It did not end there. There were lots of other beats that had to be learned; the names were as varied as the beats were different – rolling drums, navy, march past, marshal. I did wonder where the boys acquired such knowledge but that did not affect my enthusiasm in any way.
We practised endlessly hoping to improve our skill measurably well in readiness for the latter quarter of the year when there would be openings for new band boys. There was going to be a skills test and everyone was dying to make it through. In a few weeks, Ireneh and I had expanded our skill-set and our drumming abilities evidently got sharper, however, it was Eze who made the huge leap among us. He had a natural talent for the art and made it look so easy. He picked it up so well and drummed so expertly that he made the efforts of most of us, when we drummed, sound like someone repeatedly thrown against a wall – that painful. By early August, he had an array of drumbeats at his finger tips and had even begun to introduce to us a new kind of beat where he would employ vibrations of his hand or thumb as he moved them over a desk surface.
‘Look, it is easy,’ he’d say as he slid his thumb over the desk, the finger bouncing along and creating vibrations. ‘Now try.’
‘I am trying but nothing,’ I’d reply frustrated as my thumb would simply slide smoothly over the desk. ‘It is not as easy as you think.’
‘See, oh see, I almost got it,’ Ireneh would sometimes announce jubilantly after he’d had a try. ‘Oh, I can’t do it again now.’
And sometimes, it was I who made that ‘almost got it’ announcement but we never quite managed like Eze.
We could recognise the genius he showed as he created and incorporated these vibrations into other beats but could not copy try as we might. He was definitely ready for any test by the band boys but we were not and so we practised on and on, focused on and distracted by nothing else – until Ireneh’s mother came to school.
The day before Ireneh’s mother barged into our classroom and created a drama, the kind of which none of us had ever previously witnessed, began the chain of events that brought to an end the peaceful lull the previous five weeks had been in the lad’s academic life.
He had come in late to school that morning; this was not unusual for the boy or for any of us but Ireneh had come in looking woeful.
It was easy to tell that he had been crying and running for some time before entering the classroom. His eyes were puffy and red, dried up tears tracked visible lines down his face on either side of his nose, his feet were covered in dust thick enough to lose a coin in and he was hot, sweaty and panting.
The teacher did not let him through this time. He paid his dues, kneeling until after roll-call and made to pick up the litter around the classroom and on the section of the corridor that ran alongside our room. As soon as I saw him, I knew he had been in trouble at home and I was eager to find out exactly what the problem could have been. I didn’t want to pry too heavily though; as Mama had said, I didn’t want to make his problems mine not especially when they could be linked with supernatural forces. I hoped that he’d tell me in his own time and so I tried to treat the day like any other.
But Ireneh was not in a very sociable mood the whole of that day and rebuffed all our attempts at a conversation. He did not join in the class football and didn’t contribute much in our usual loud banter. He wore a tired expression all day and his eyes that had betrayed his crying earlier simply looked uninterested. I left him alone after it became clear that was what he wanted and watched as he went about his day with drooping shoulders.
‘What is worrying Ireneh?’ Eze asked as we joined the queue for the kiosk at the back of the school building. We hadn’t come in too early and already the line of children was so long, it was depressing just to look at it.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. The way he’d asked, it wasn’t as if he was laying the subject on the table. It was much like he expected I’d know – like he was saying, ‘I’m the guy on the outside. You tell me what’s going on; I’d love to know; I want in.’ ‘I have not spoken to him today,’ I added. ‘Can’t you see how he doesn’t want to speak with anyone?’
‘Do
you think it might be those spirits again?’ he asked.
I thought it was a lame question. Since Ireneh had let slip about his problem, it was becoming easier for both of us to trace every little incident in his life back to the spirits. I didn’t think that was necessary. ‘Unless the spirits beat him up,’ I replied a little sarcastically. ‘Because it looks like he’s been crying this morning.’
‘Maybe the spirits beat him really,’ Eze said taking me seriously.
‘Oh stop talking rubbish,’ I snapped.
‘How is it rubbish?’
‘Do spirits beat people up? Has any beaten you up before?’ I asked in reply.
‘God forbid bad thing,’ he said crossing himself. ‘But yes, spirits do beat people o. Have you never gone to a healing mass before? Have you never seen where spirits fight with people?’
‘No I have never seen such a thing,’ I replied a little tired. ‘What kind of healing mass do you attend where you see spirits fighting with people?’
‘The ones at my Church.’
‘Which fada?’ I asked.
‘Our fada.’
‘So your fada fights with spirits?’ I asked incredulous.