I worried that there may be no money to pay my fees for the next term, that I would be forced to drop out of school.
Thank God that the rains have come early to Izghe. If it has happened in Izghe, then it will surely happen to us.
Evil
TODAY’S CHURCH SERVICE IS different. Pastor Moses does not follow the regular program. Instead of launching into his sermon right after the praise and worship by Magdalene’s mother, he asks us all to stand and pray.
“Let us lift our voices in prayer for our brothers and sisters in other parts of Borno State who are being killed by Boko Haram,” he says. “Let us pray that God will deliver them from this evil.”
Men, women, boys, and girls raise their voices to God, a cacophony of pleas and heartfelt requests.
Sometimes, I wonder about Boko Haram. They want a new country, governed by Islamic laws. At first, they were known by their Arabic name, Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” But their hatred of education led residents of Maiduguri to start calling them by a Hausa name, Boko Haram, “Western education is forbidden.”
But Aisha told me that the Islam of Boko Haram is different from the one that she and Malam Isa practice.
“Their Islam is from inside their heads, not from the holy Quran,” she said.
For the past few years, Boko Haram has been attacking police stations and other government buildings in Maiduguri, and also bombing churches in major cities. More recently, they have been attacking villages and towns.
“Dear Lord Jesus,” Pastor Moses says, “we ask that You protect our brothers and sisters all over Borno State from Boko Haram. We ask that You send angels to watch over them and to keep them safe from harm. Please, deliver them from this present darkness. Let evil not prevail in our land, in Jesus’s name we pray!”
“Amen!”
On Our Way to School
“WHO IS SO UGLY that he only comes out at night?” I ask.
“The bat!” Sarah replies. “Who beats a child up right in front of the child’s mother?” Sarah asks.
“Hunger!” I reply.
“Who does the whole world fear; he doesn’t know mother from father, he can’t tell rich from poor, or strong from weak, he wakes you up when your sleep is sweetest?” I ask.
“Death,” Sarah replies.
Four Loaves of Bread
THE WOMAN IN THE pink van was not exaggerating. The pads in the pink packet protect like magic!
But each packet will cost Mama the same as four loaves of bread.
“I see them for sale in the big markets,” Mama says.
In that case, I had better save the remaining five pads for a more critical time, someday when we are writing tests or exams.
I pray that I will see the woman in the pink van again someday.
Love
“THIS BABY IS GOING to be a boy,” Aisha says. “Just look at how vigorously he kicks!”
I touch Aisha’s belly with my right hand. Kick, kick, almost as mild as a heartbeat. Sarah remains transfixed, eyes and ears sold out to the love story playing on the TV screen; the groom whispers into the ears of his bride, and a smile lights up her eyes.
“Have you heard anything about the scholarship?” Aisha asks.
I sigh. “Not yet.”
“I’m sure you’ll pass,” she says. “If you don’t, I don’t know who else will.”
But other contenders from all over Borno State were also the best female students in their own classes. Maybe my intelligence was just a monitor among lizards, while that of other competing students was an alligator or crocodile.
“Just look at how much she loves him,” Sarah says, her eyes still transfixed by the screen.
The wife in the romance film serves her husband’s breakfast on her knees. She picks his teeth after he is done with his meal. She sees him to the door as he heads out to work. She slips his shoes off his feet when he returns.
He hands her a pretty package that contains a glittering gold necklace that he adjusts around her neck. She beams.
“I want to love my husband like that,” Sarah says, her eyes twinkling like midnight stars.
Another Husband
PASTOR MOSES DOES NOT exit the stage after his sermon.
While the offering basket is traveling from hand to hand and pew to pew, he hovers by the lectern, grinning from ear to ear.
“This morning, I have a very special announcement to make,” he says. “God is blessing my family with a new addition. My son is getting married.”
My heart crashes. My face sinks. My world ends.
Maybe Success would have waited if I’d been granted the government scholarship, if he knew that I would be attending the special school in Maiduguri and then certainly going on to university afterward.
The rest of the congregation claps.
“The wedding will take place in Jalingo,” Pastor Moses continues. “You are all welcome to attend. I have asked Emmanuel to commence the travel arrangements. Please, put down your name with him at the end of the service, so that we know exactly how many to plan for.”
I remain sitting in my pew while the church rises at the close of service. Sarah takes one look at me and resumes her place by my side.
Together, we watch almost all the mothers in church gather around Malam Emmanuel, including Mama. The fathers know that wedding jollification is mostly a women’s affair, and that Pastor Moses’s wife will need as many hands as possible with the cooking and serving of guests.
Sarah clasps my hand and massages my fingers. But her attempts to comfort me do little to soothe my broken heart.
Success promised to bring me storybooks. Now I may never get to read about the girl like me who goes about solving mysteries.
“Don’t worry,” Sarah says. “God will find you another husband.”
Prosper
IT TURNS OUT THAT all my heartbreak is for nothing. Pastor Moses’s oldest son, Prosper, is the one getting married.
“Because of his job, he hardly comes home,” Sarah says. “He works in the general hospital in Jalingo.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“That’s what my mother told me.”
“Is she sure?”
“That’s what Malam Emmanuel told her. She said the woman Prosper is marrying works in Jalingo as well.”
Thank God.
Success still belongs to me.
The Voice on Papa’s Radio
“DISNEY ANIMATION FROZEN HAS become the top-grossing animated film in box office history. The musical film has now made $1.072 billion globally, beating Toy Story 3’s previous record of $1.063 billion in 2010. Frozen, loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Snow Queen, has made $398.4 million in North America plus $674 million at the global box office.
“About thirty-nine people are believed to have been killed in an attack by Islamist militants on a Nigerian town. Local residents said the attack on Konduga, in the northeast Borno State, lasted several hours, beginning shortly before sundown on Tuesday night with the arrival of gunmen in four-by-four trucks. A mosque and more than a thousand homes were razed to the ground, residents said. The region is a stronghold of Boko Haram that is waging an insurgency against the government. Konduga is thirty-five kilometers from the Borno State capital of Maiduguri. Boko Haram has been conducting a four-year campaign of violence to push for Islamic rule in northern Nigeria.”
Touching a Boy’s Hand
THE ROMANCE FILMS THAT Sarah and I watch with Aisha are usually similar to each other.
The main character is a boy whose parents must choose whom their son in the city should marry. They decide on a girl from the village who will make a good, obedient wife.
But there’s a hitch.
Their educated son is in love with an educated girl from the city, and he wants to marry her instead.
The family is angry with their son’s resistance. The boy is angry w
ith his family’s interference. A grand dispute ensues.
Always, the family wins.
The boy marries the village girl, but stays in touch with his true love from the city. Together, they go out to eat in places where meals are served on pretty tables in cozy corners; walk along the beach on sunny afternoons; sit on low fences and whisper into each other’s ears.
As soon as the boy and girl reach out to hold hands, the scene cuts, the screen goes dark.
Not even Malam Isa, who loves his wife more than any man on TV ever can, disrespects our Hausa culture by holding a woman’s hand in public.
But sometimes, I am tempted to ask Aisha questions about what happens when the doors are closed, when no eyes are there to intrude.
I wonder how it feels to touch the hand of a boy who isn’t my brother.
I wonder how it feels to hold Success’s hand.
I wonder how Success would feel about me if I passed the scholarship exam and then went on to university just like him, and just like the true-love girl in the film.
Human Flesh
NO FISH IN TONIGHT’S miyan kuka. Papa gave Mama enough naira, but she was too afraid to buy it.
“Everyone in the market is afraid,” she says.
They are afraid because the fish swimming in the basins of water in market stalls are all too large to be true, even larger than they were the other week. One banda alone could satisfy a family of five!
They worry that the fish might be feeding off the fat of the hundreds of corpses dumped into Lake Chad, people slaughtered by Boko Haram.
Naming
IT IS EXACTLY EIGHT days since Malam Zwindila’s wife gave birth to their first child. After school, we all troop to his house, merrily, like larks in a bright blue sky. Chairs with Christ the King Church etched into their plastic backs are lined up outside the thatched-roof house. Papa is already seated and so is Malam Isa.
Pastor Moses sits separately beside Malam Zwindila facing the crowd of chairs.
Sarah and I look around for Aisha. Sometimes, it is difficult to spot our friend among the other women and girls wearing hijabs. We find her on the back veranda, sitting on a straw mat with some other Muslim women.
As soon as Malam Zwindila’s wife appears with her bundle of joy, Pastor Moses stands. All the aunts, uncles, friends, neighbors, and church members stop chattering. The naming ceremony begins with a prayer and a short sermon.
“You must choose your children’s names carefully,” Pastor Moses says. “A name can influence a person’s behavior or circumstances. It can play a huge role in who or what your child becomes in life. Your child’s name is your child’s destiny.”
Mrs. Zwindila, a scarf sitting high on her head and her arms weighed down with bangles, gives the sleeping infant to her beaming husband, who then passes the baby to Pastor Moses.
“What name have you chosen for your first child?” Pastor Moses asks.
For a change, someone else is doing the asking while Malam Zwindila is doing the answering.
“The child will be called Divine,” Malam Zwindila announces with a smile.
“Praise the Lord!” the crowd chants.
When the clapping and rejoicing fizzles, Pastor Moses holds Divine up in his arms and prays.
“May Divine grow up to be as godlike as a human can possibly be. May God grant his parents the grace and wisdom to raise him up in the way he should go.”
“Amen!”
Apart from relatives and wives, Malam Zwindila’s students are the only children invited. The adults are served first, but the steaming jollof rice, laden with sliced onions and pepper, is worth the long wait.
I bite my piece of fried beef in half and save the larger piece for Jacob.
Sweet Dream
“CONGRATULATIONS!” SUCCESS SAYS. “OF course, I already heard the news about your scholarship. I always knew you were a smart girl. Well done!”
As he reaches out to shake my hand, I awake.
On Our Way to School
“BUT WHAT COULD BE delaying the scholarship exam results?” I say. “I wonder if Principal knows.”
“But he would have announced it by now if he knew anything.” She pauses. “Maybe the results have been released but nobody from this village passed.”
I feel as if I have been struck by a truck, as if I have been slapped awake from a sweet dream. But best friends must tell us the truth, no matter how painful.
Instantly, the mansions I have been building in the air collapse, the rubble forming a heap of quicksand at my feet.
“Don’t worry,” Sarah says. “Just pray that God will give your father enough money so that he can pay for your university by himself.”
Sarah Must Be Right
I MIGHT AS WELL forget about it.
I might as well stop dreaming.
I might as well invest all my energy in praying so that Papa will continue to afford my secondary school fees, and then miraculously find the money to send me to university.
Bad Mood
“ARGH!” I SCREAM.
Mama rushes from the kitchen, oil dripping from the ladle in her hand.
“Ya Ta, what’s the matter?” she asks.
“Someone spilled water on my textbooks!”
“Is that why you’re screaming like that?”
“These are the only books I have. If anything happens to them, Papa won’t be able to buy me new ones.”
Mama continues staring at me while I stomp toward the bedroom with my books.
Jacob jumps out of my way.
Come to Think of It
WHAT GAVE ME THE audacity to imagine that I would pass the scholarship exam, when no student from this village ever has?
The Voice on Papa’s Radio
“SUSPECTED ISLAMIST MILITANTS HAVE raided a Nigerian village and murdered dozens, according to witnesses. The gunmen reportedly rounded up a group of men in Izghe village and shot them, before going door to door and killing anyone they found.”
Papa is in the bathroom. The splashing of water ceases.
Mama is in the kitchen. The scraping of spoon against pot halts.
I am on the veranda. The preoccupation with myself and my misery stops.
We are frozen, all of us, by the voice on Papa’s radio.
Boko Haram is in Izghe.
Gathered Around the Well
“THEY ARRIVE ON MOTORBIKES and shoot in the air,” Musa, the welder’s son, says as he draws his pail up from the hole with a rope.
“They slay all the men and boys while they make the women and girls disappear,” Rosemary, the ice-block seller’s daughter, says as she lowers her pail into the well.
They are talking about Boko Haram.
The Boys in My Class
“THEY BUILD BUNKERS UNDER the Sambisa forest,” Danladi says. “When the soldiers come looking for them, they disappear into these bunkers.”
“That’s probably why the soldiers search and search but can’t find them,” Peter says, “no matter how hard they look.”
“Some of them are disguised as cobblers or mobile manicurists, hiding explosives in their toolboxes, then detonating them in markets, schools, and churches,” Ibrahim says.
They are talking about Boko Haram.
My Brothers
“THEY USE CHARMS THAT make them appear and disappear,” Abraham says.
“Many travelers have had their journeys cut short when men with bombs and guns suddenly appeared in the middle of the highway,” Elijah says.
“They load goats, cows, donkeys, and camels with explosives, then send the livestock wandering into public places where they would detonate,” Caleb says.
“That’s how they bombed the markets in Banki and Bama,” Isaac says. “And the market in Damboa.”
They are talking about Boko Haram.
Tales by Moonlight
“A CHILD BORN TO any of them would automatically share its father’s ideas and beliefs,” Papa says. “It will grow up to kill, steal, and destroy.
“It doesn’t matter whether the child knew or lived with its father. As long as it has the bad blood running through its veins, it will be the same.”
He is talking about Boko Haram.
On Our Way to School
“HOW DO THEY MAKE the women and girls disappear?” Sarah asks.
“Maybe it’s magic. Maybe they use charms.”
“But where do they go when they disappear?”
We are talking about Boko Haram.
Malam Zwindila
“THEY CLAIM TO BE fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria,” he says. “They don’t believe in democracy. They plan to topple the government elected by Nigerians.”
He laughs.
He marches to the chalkboard and draws a map of Nigeria, then shades a fraction at the top right.
“This is what the northeast of Nigeria looks like,” he says. “Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Taraba . . . This is all of us. An insignificant portion when compared to the rest of Nigeria. And, yet, this army of bandits, who are just in Borno and some parts of Yobe and Adamawa, imagine that they can somehow take over the rest of the country, all the thirty-six states?” He laughs. “Lack of education really makes people stupid. How much more idiotic can they be?”
He is talking about Boko Haram.
The Voice on Papa’s Radio
“THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT HAS come under a great deal of criticism over its handling of the Boko Haram menace. We are now joined by Nobel Prize winner Professor Wole Soyinka, the country’s foremost writer and social commentator, to discuss why the government appears so helpless.”
Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree Page 4