by Uwem Akpan
AFTER WHAT FELT LIKE an eternity, Jubril heard an approaching commotion. By their shouts and songs, he was sure they were Muslim. As the mob surrounded the house, the Pentecostals shut up like croaking toads whose ponds have been invaded. The image of Musa and Lukman loomed in his mind. He was so afraid that he could not pray anymore. He thought about standing up to flee, to deny his two friends the joy of finally killing him. But when he realized that the Christians who had prayed moments before, as if the whole earth belonged to them, did not move, even to defend themselves, he calmed down. It was just as well, because when he stretched his leg a bit he realized that he was still too weak to stand.
He waited for the door to burst open, for his fellow Muslims to rush in and kill him. He waited for their torches to fill the darkness with momentary light that would be followed by the eternal darkness of death. The mob seemed to have gone past the house and run farther into the savannah. He breathed again, and after some time he heard footsteps in what seemed to be a corridor next door. Listening hard, he picked up the low but unrelenting whispers of Hail Marys. They actually sounded closer to him now than the earlier ecstatic prayers had. He thanked Allah again that he had not moved when he first heard the Muslims. Who knew what these whispering Christians would have done to him?
He was still trying to figure out where he was when the mob came back, its chants louder and its numbers greater than before. When the leaders demanded to see the owner of the house, Jubril almost fainted.
“Quick quick, bring out de inpidels!” someone commanded the man. “You dey hide dem por your house.”
“I get no stranger for my house,” the man said.
“One last time, we say bring dem out o.”
“I say I no get visitor for house.”
“Some feople say you dey hide feople por your house. Dem tell us say you do de same ting during de last riots, two years ago.”
“I be Mallam Yohanna Abdullahi,” he said. “I be teacher, serious Muslim.”
“We know.”
“So why I go hide infidel for house?”
“Because some of us Muslims be traitors.”
“Some of us dey helf dis souderners escafe when Allah done give dem to us to wife out,” said another man.
“Dis Igbo feofle,” said another, “dis delta feofle, dis Yoruba feofle, de whole menace prom soud, all of dem must die!”
“Dem no like us Hausa feofle,” said yet another.
The mallam said, “Me, I be Hausa man too. . . . How can I protect anybody who no like my tribe, you understand?”
“Well, if we see dem por your house we go kill you o.”
Jubril could not believe what he had heard. It shocked him that his host was a Hausa Muslim. It sounded like a play, and he waited for him to crack under the pressure. They lined up his sons and warned them that their mob had already killed many Hausa Muslims who attempted to hide the infidels. But the sons of Abdullahi were all as courageous as their father and insisted that they had no strangers in their midst.
When the mob came in to search the house, they were a drove of locusts in their destructiveness. They said they were going to be rough on Mallam Abdullahi and his family because they had been informed that he had protected Christians and southerners in past riots. They searched for infidels in the kitchen, fighting over the food; they looked for infidels in the barns, looting yams and bags of peanuts. They hunted for infidels in the inner chambers of the man’s house, abusing his wives and daughters to avenge the fact that Mallam Abdullahi had helped people in the past. Nobody in Jubril’s room could pray aloud anymore. Like Jubril, they were all storming heaven silently, asking God to give more courage to their host.
The door to the room burst open, and a gust of wind swept in. But nobody entered. Mallam Abdullahi was by the door with two men who harassed him and pushed him around. He was barefoot and wearing a jumper. Jubril could hear another group approaching, chanting war songs, and closed his eyes and waited.
“Wetin dey inside, mallam?” asked one of those with Abdullahi.
“Notting,” he said.
“Sure?”
“Just some prayer mats. Yes, for my entire family. . . . You want make I open de window for you?”
He attempted to enter the room, but they dragged him away.
It was only when they had been gone for a few minutes that Jubril realized that he was covered in sweat and his lips were quivering. Before now he would have hunted down the infidels himself, but the betrayal by Musa and Lukman had changed him and his outlook. The mere thought that he had been hidden beneath other people’s prayer mats was too much for him. He heard one or two people around him sobbing, and tears ran down his face as well. They were the first tears of joy he had shed in his life. He would never have thought of allowing an infidel to touch his prayer mat. He could not have asked the Abdullahi family for more, and even if one of the family members now gave them up, it would not have made much difference to Jubril, because of all they had sacrificed up to that point. He was filled with thanksgiving, with a mysterious pride that his fellow Muslims could risk everything for infidels. With one hand he held on to the prayer mats tenderly. He blessed Abdullahi, whose family prayer mats were holy enough for all.
THE WIND CAME IN and filled the room, and people scrambled to hold the mats in place. Then Jubril felt his mat being pulled down toward the floor on either side. He almost shouted in fear. The pressure increased gently but firmly, keeping the mats from blowing away.
“Hold the mats!” whispered a frightened Christian into Jubril’s ear.
“Abeg . . . no kill me, abeg,” Jubril pleaded instinctively.
As his unknown companions pulled the mats closer, he gingerly inched his pocketed wrist away from the pressure. In the darkness, he figured there must be at least five or six other praying and anxious strangers under the same mats. These other people kept calling on Jesus and Mary to save them, their supplications subsumed in the commotion of the mob outside.
“For Christ’s sake, hold the mats with two hands,” another neighbor admonished Jubril. “What is in your pocket that’s dearer to you than your life?”
“Notting,” he said to the Christians. “Just dey help me . . . I be one of you.”
“Lazy man, hold de mats!”
As they whispered back and forth, they knew that their lives all hung in the balance and that if anyone panicked, they would all perish—including Mallam Abdullahi and his terrorized family. Still unable to secure the mats with two hands, Jubril was relieved when his neighbors reached out to help him.
This joint effort to survive and Abdullahi’s courageous witness filled Jubril with hope. In that dark room, he experienced a joy he could not explain, a joy that he would feel later on informed his belief that Allah would protect him in a busload of Christians.
Lying there, he became awake to everything, like a Sufi contemplative, surrendering completely to Allah’s will. In his heart, he began to invoke the divine name of his creator. He would have loved to have broken out in wild celebration, but he held his body so still that his spirit seemed to expand, celebrating Allah’s grandeur.
He could feel his precious breath crawl through the hairs in his nostrils, then swell his stomach. He could feel a running sensation in his lower legs. The skin where his two knees touched, which had been numb, now had a throbbing ache. Jubril was present to the trembling in his neighbors’ hands as they helped him hold his mats in place, and he could sense the heat from the bare floor entering his back. He could feel his sweat fill up his pores, tumble out, and tie his body to the floor in long watery ropes, soaking his wounds and clothes. His wounds began to hurt afresh. Saliva, which had dried in his mouth when the fanatics struck, flowed again and tasted good to him. Even the smell of the mats seemed wonderful. He was fully alive. His whole body, except his cut wrist, praised Allah silently, in the manner creation celebrates its intricacy, in ways no mortal can fully comprehend.
He felt connected to his newfound universe
of diverse and unknown pilgrims, the faceless Christians. The complexity of their survival pierced his soul with a stunning insight: every life counted in Allah’s plan.
THEY WERE STILL BEGGING God silently, together, in different ways, when the mob began to pour gas all over the homes in one last attempt to teach Mallam Abdullahi a lesson. Two men came and stood by the door to the room, spraying the place. The fuel fell on the mats like the first raindrops on banana leaves. Jubril and his companions stilled themselves and waited for the flick of the matches as the fuel’s coldness, sharpened by the harmattan wind, stung his wounds. The raiders were so close that any movement could have given them away. Like a statue in the rain, Jubril did not blink. He felt the liquid hit his eyes. He waited for the kind of fire that he himself had set many times on the property of infidels in Khamfi . . .
Jubril felt someone tapping him on the shoulder and jumped.
“I did not mean to hurt you,” Chief Ukongo apologized. The pain on Jubril’s face made him look to the chief like someone who was dying to control whatever powers he hid in his pocket. “Well, son, whatever pocket juju . . .”
“Notting dey my pocket,” Jubril said.
“You know what I have in my pocket?” the chief taunted him. “If you deny your juju in public, he can’t defend you. I hope you know that. Anyway, yours can’t overpower mine. . . . If you try me, son, I’ll kill you!”
“Ah ah, Shief Resource Control,” Tega said, “leave dis boy alone.”
“First, you have cheated him out of his seat,” someone said. “Now you accuse him of hiding juju in his pocket.”
Monica asked, “Chief, you want steal his money too?”
“What money does this little goat have?” the chief said. “I was just tapping his shoulder to show him my bus ticket. . . . It’s now time for me to prove that I am not encroaching on his rightful seat. My only problem with this boy is his attitude.”
“Yessa,” Jubril said, nodding vigorously, for the prospect of getting his seat was close. He dug into his bag and brought out his ticket again, in case they would need to compare the two. People sat up or craned their necks to see the chief ’s ticket.
While searching in the bag on his lap, the chief assured them, “You’ll understand me better when you see my ID . . .”
“ID? We no want any ID!” Ijeoma warned him. “Come, make you lespect yourself o!”
“You don’t want to see my ID?” Chief Ukongo shouted at her, and tapped his chest repeatedly, as if his most sacred of rights had been desecrated. “Young woman, who made you the judge between a royal father and this rascal? You expect me to bring out my ticket . . . without even seeing my ID? Do you know who I am?” Having said this, he yanked out a huge talisman from his bag, plucked one feather from it, and blew it into the air. The people shouted in fright, and those who were near where the feather landed backed away. The chief broke into some incantation, his head shaking like the tail of a rattlesnake.
“Now, young woman, you can come and ask me for my ticket,” he finally said. “And you, young juju man, let’s see who is more powerful. Bring out what you have, and let’s see!”
Jubril asked the police, who had come onto the bus when they heard all the commotion, to settle the matter once and for all. But when the officers saw the situation, they left, saying they would come back when they finished drinking their beer.
The chief laughed at Jubril and told his challengers that they would suffer when the bus reached his domain. “Do you know who has been keeping the peace in the delta?” he said. “The police recognize my status. Do you know how I got onto this bus in the first place? You’ll regret inviting the police!”
But Jubril was not intimidated. He wanted justice.
“Our son, our son,” Madam Aniema said, “please, beg the police not to come into the case! We have suffered enough already on this trip. Please, what is your name?”
“His name is Gabriel!” the chief said immediately.
“Ah, Gabriel, our angel,” the lady continued, “are you rich enough for police intervention?”
“She’s right, young man,” Emeka said. “You moved too fast. You know these are extraordinary times. All of us were admiring your patience with the chief. Things would have worked themselves out, you know. You see how these policemen denied me a chance to know whether my cousin and friend died or survived the Sharia war in Khamfi. They are ruthless.”
“To invite police to help you for dis country,” one woman said, “is like farmer wey invite locust to his farm!”
“No sane parent want expose his daughter to rapists,” another said.
“Gabriel, you see, for dis country,” Monica said, “de police, de soldiers, no be norderners or souderners or Christians or Muslims—just plain rogues. . . . Dem no fit give you justice.”
“I warned you about mentioning the word Muslim, did I not?” the chief said.
“I dey sorry,” Monica apologized. “I forget.”
“How come nobody listens to royal fathers anymore in this country?” the chief said. “What is wrong with us?”
Emeka stood up and went to where Jubril was, stepping carefully over the chief ’s feather on the way, to explain things to him. “You see, Gabriel,” he whispered, “you know that, since this is a civilian government, we should try to settle our quarrels without bringing in the police or soldiers. The generals stole billions of our oil dollars during the years of military rule. . . . Now some of these generals have turned around in these democratic times to back laws that would cut off the limbs of poor chicken thieves . . .”
“If we drag dese same generals go Charia court,” Tega came in, “what part of deir body we go cut? What part go remain? Still we no go recover our money. Charia cannot toush dese rish Muslims o! Before you know it, dem go run go Common Law court. Even de rogue governors who introduce am no go smell de so-called Charia court. Dem go run go ordinary court for immunity against de same Charia . . .”
“My sister, just take it easy,” Emeka pleaded with her. “Just allow me to carefully explain things to Gabriel.”
But she said, “My advice to all of una be say make we poor people dey learn to protect ourselves. . . . Gabriel, quick quick, go remove dis case from police hand.”
But Jubril was past hearing. His mind had drifted back to his woes as they analyzed the crisis. His vacant face wore a collapsed smile. His eyes were distant, vaguely transfixed on the ceiling of the bus, away from the TVs.
How will my father receive me when I reach Ukhemehi? he thought. What will I tell him about Yusuf? Would my leaving Islam for Deeper Life placate him and the extended family? Yusuf had said some of them had remained Catholic and some relapsed into their ancestral religion. What does justice demand of me? When would I tell my father the whole truth? Yusuf must have told him I was a conservative Muslim when he visited home. What do I tell them about my hand? How long could I keep it hidden? Maybe I should lie to my people in the delta, tell them that I did not steal, that I was forced to confess, that I never in my life supported Sharia. Maybe if they knew that, they would be more sympathetic to my situation.
He reached down into his heart and found some solace: maybe a full public confession would be the right thing to do, the kind that Yusuf himself preached about in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Jubril was ready to risk any consequence, even death. His flight began to assume the mission of going back to tell his father the truth, a truth he must do everything to conceal until he reached his destination. He was very sure of his father’s forgiveness and the hospitality of the village of Ukhemehi because of what Yusuf had told him.
“Gabriel doesn’t hear properly,” the chief said, chuckling, seeing Emeka and Ijeoma’s consternation. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Sometimes he even uses sign language.”
“Gabliel, you dey claze!” Ijeoma snapped, shouting so loud that the rest of the bus turned to look. “We dey beg you say no bling porice kill us, you dey smile and pose rike Gucci model . . . wid one hand for pocket.
” She grabbed him and shook him until his mind came back to the bus. “We say we no want porice to settle any case for dis bus!”
When Jubril looked around and saw everybody looking at him, he said, “Ah, no police again.”
“You be deaf?” Emeka asked.
“No vex,” Jubril said to them, bowing.
“My people, don’t worry,” the chief said. “I’ll tell the police not to bother, OK?”
“Yes, Chief!” they said.
“Tank you, Chief. . . . So you be real chief.”
“God bless you, Chief!”
Now that the police were out of the picture, the passengers relaxed again. Jubril listened to the banter in the bus about the power in the chiefs’ domains. Jubril could only compare the idea of being a chief to that of being an emir in the north, though from what he was hearing, he knew the emirs had more power.
Chief Ukongo rose to his feet and cleared his throat. “My people, now you’re talking . . . to me . . . your chief!” he addressed the bus. He thudded the floor with his stick and went to where the feather was. He picked it up as tenderly as possible and put it together with his talisman in his bag. “As our people say,” he continued, “the world is full of gods, but the important ones are called by their names. And also, do not forget: no matter how small an idol is, it is good to carry it with two hands. You see, my people, this is a period of national crisis. You should rally around your royal fathers. . . . The north is uniting around the emirs.” He asked Jubril to sit on the floor near him, where the feather had fallen. Jubril sat down immediately, near Monica. She smiled at Jubril; he ignored her.
The old man dropped some biscuits into Jubril’s lap. Jubril thanked him. The refugees who supported him a few moments ago did not even look at Jubril. His loneliness and fear came back, rising like yeast. He pushed his body against the seat of the chief to keep from trembling. The more he pressed against his sore muscles, the more he aggravated the wounds under his clothes. He came back to his senses when the chief asked him why he was not eating. Chief Ukongo sounded to Jubril as if he would not only deprive him of the food but might use his magical powers to turn him into a grain of sand. He ate quickly.