Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

  I inhale her sweet smell of onions and fried oil.

  “I’ll be back,” Mama says. “I promise.”

  Bang

  I STIR THE GROUND corn into the bowl of hot water, careful that the tuwo’s consistency is light and smooth, the way Papa likes it. He must not feel Mama’s absence in any way. He must not notice any discrepancy between her cooking and mine.

  I scoop a portion of the steaming dough onto his plate and pat it carefully with a wet spoon. My presentation must be perfect.

  I bear the steaming tray of tuwo and vegetable stew into the living room, where Papa waits, listening to his radio.

  I set it on the stool in front of him when I hear the first bang, cracking like the sound of distant thunder.

  “Thank God!” Abraham says. “The rains have come early!”

  “Wonderful!” Papa says.

  Hooray! I knew it was only a matter of time after Izghe.

  Jacob dashes past me, into the backyard. Soon, I hear him singing and dancing with the neighbors’ children.

  “Allah ya’kawo ruwa! Allah ya’kawo ruwa! God bring the rains! God bring the rains! Let the rains come! Let the rains come!”

  Early rains deserve a more zealous welcome from us than a visiting local government chairman does. And the children know it.

  “Allah ya’kawo ruwa! Allah ya’kawo ruwa! God bring the rains! God bring the rains,” they shout. “Let the rains come! Let the rains come!”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  More thunder.

  “Allah ya’kawo ruwa! Allah ya’kawo ruwa! God bring the rains! God bring the rains,” they shout. “Let the rains come! Let the rains come!”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Jacob rushes back into the house and clutches my thighs.

  “What is the matter?” I ask.

  And then the unmistakable sound of roaring engines not far away. And of screaming children. And of angry guns.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  And of ferocious men.

  “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” they shout. “Allah is great! Allah is great!”

  We scramble outside after the first firebomb lights our thatched roof. Papa reaches for his machete leaning against the wall in the veranda. The man on the motorbike fires his gun.

  Bang!

  No time for me to think or feel as Papa drops to the floor. The men on motorbikes are everywhere, firing their weapons in the air.

  Men, women, boys, and girls scatter out of their homes and toward the hills.

  Boko Haram is in our village.

  . . . And when all were in to the very last,

  The door in the mountain-side shut fast.

  Did I say, all? No! One was lame,

  And could not dance the whole of the way;

  And in after years, if you would blame

  His sadness, he was used to say,—

  “It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!

  I can’t forget that I’m bereft . . .”

  —Robert Browning, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”

  Gone

  IT IS DIFFICULT TO say for how long I have been traveling in the back of this dusty truck, but it is long enough for my well of tears to finally run dry. As the vehicle trundles deeper and deeper into the dark forest, the ugly truth finally sinks into my head.

  Papa and his repertoire of tales, stories of his childhood, of ghosts and witches, of hyenas and hares that could speak fluent Hausa like the rest of us.

  Abraham and his plan to find a good girl to marry by next year, if the harvest was good, and Elijah and Caleb and Isaac.

  Principal and all the knowledge from his dozens of books, his fluid English and his white-man ways.

  Malam Zwindila and his intolerance of anything but the correct answer, his joy at being a groom and a new father.

  Malam Isa and his love for Aisha, his prayers to Allah five times a day.

  All dead, slaughtered, gone forever, never to materialize again.

  And Jacob, my dear baby brother, inside a different dusty truck, on our journey into the unknown.

  Reasons to Thank God

  I THANK GOD THAT I am not alone. Papa and Mama and my brothers may not be here with me, but there are dozens of other girls packed into the truck, with Sarah at my right and Aisha at my front.

  I thank God that I am a girl. Girls fry the kosai and massa, then wait for the boys to have their fill before they eat what is left in the pan. Girls shred their fingers sore on the sharp stones and broken glass forgotten by the boys in their trouser pockets before they tossed them onto the pile of weekly laundry. But it was the boys and men that got called to one side of the building when the Boko Haram men gathered all the villagers they could capture and led us to the mosque, those who were not fast enough to run toward the hills and hide.

  It was the boys and men who were instructed to step outside.

  It was the boys and men who glanced backward and told their mothers, sisters, and wives not to be afraid.

  It was the boys who were lying in shallow puddles of red, while the girls and women and toddlers were marched into trucks, leaving only the elderly behind.

  I thank God that I still have one brother left, that Jacob and the other children are following behind in another truck.

  Peter’s brothers also have a lot to thank God for. They were the only male captives who did not run away but who did not get slaughtered by the Boko Haram men. Peter’s brothers may have led a hard life as a result of having one leg almost three times shorter than the other because of polio, but their disability is the reason why the Boko Haram men asked them to leave the mosque and limp back home in peace.

  I thank God that Pastor Moses fixed Prosper’s wedding this weekend.

  I thank God that Papa gave Mama the permission to travel to Jalingo with Sarah’s mother and the other women.

  I thank God that Success was not visiting his parents this weekend. I thank God that he is most likely still alive.

  First Step

  THE JOURNEY THAT BEGAN in the mild light of the moon ends in the dim light of late noon. Only a traveler who has come and gone along the same route a billion times could possibly recognize the way home.

  The back of the truck falls open and it is my turn to jump off. The truck with Jacob and the other children disappears farther into the forest. What are they going to do with my baby brother?

  I let go of Sarah’s hand and leap.

  My first step in the Sambisa forest.

  Slaves

  “YOU BELONG TO BOKO Haram,” the Leader says. “You are now our slaves.”

  His voice is as calm as glass. His face is as blank as a stone. His arm is drawn up to his chest with the long, black barrel in his hands pointing straight at us, a finger resting on the trigger.

  Scores of men stand a reverent two or three paces behind him. They also are wielding guns and wearing army camouflage uniforms with black boots and trousers that stop short of their ankles.

  “Don’t try to run away,” he says. “If you do, the land mines will blow you to pieces.”

  New Masters

  DANLADI ONCE TOLD US that the Sambisa used to be home to monkeys and antelopes, lions and elephants, all sorts of birds—including ostriches that laid eggs as large as a soursop.

  “Tweet-tweet, tu-whoo, hee-haw, dook-dook, everywhere you go in the Sambisa,” he said.

  The white people who came to see the animals could not venture too deep inside the forest. Only the most skilled hunters, such as his grandfather, dared enter certain parts of the Sambisa where the skin of human beings would be pierced by thorns. The animals’ thick skins made them immune to the poisonous prickles.

  Danladi told us his father said it did not matter that the Sambisa forest was so vast, stretching to so many states. “It belongs to Borno,” he said.

  After all, the Sambisa village from where the forest got its name was not too far away from Gwoza, a few kilometers from our own village.

  “It belongs to us,�
�� he insisted. “The Sambisa belongs to the people of Borno.”

  Not anymore.

  Boko Haram is its new master.

  Mad Man

  “WE DO NOT INTEND to harm you,” the Leader says. “We only want to make you good Muslim women.”

  Gripping each other’s fingers tight, Sarah and I shift to his left-hand side with the other Christian women and girls, while Aisha stands on the right with the Muslims.

  Like many of those in her group, the entire upper part of Aisha’s body is hidden inside a hijab; yet the Boko Haram men do not judge by sight alone. Three armed men stomp from one girl to the other, commanding each to recite her full name and a snippet of the Quran.

  With her eyes cast down upon her bulging belly, Aisha rattles off a lengthy text of the Muslim holy book in Arabic. Her rendition is fluent, as if she were reading from a slate in the sand at her bare feet.

  Malam Isa would have been proud.

  Now certain that Aisha and the rest are indeed followers of Islam, some Boko Haram men lead them away. Would they be allowed to go home, to whatever is left of their houses and families?

  The women and girls disappear toward the cluster of tarpaulin tents visible between the coarse trunks and scattered shrubs. The Leader grips the butt of his gun with his right hand; his left clutches the barrel.

  “Are you people ready to convert to Islam?” he asks.

  Silence.

  Except for the thumping of my heart against my chest—which must be loud enough to wake a sleeping child—no one makes a sound.

  “Are you ready to become Muslims?” he asks again.

  I clutch Sarah’s fingers tighter. She squeezes my hand.

  “Those of you who want to become Muslims should move to the right,” he says.

  He relaxes his hold on the gun and lets it dangle by a shoulder strap toward the ground.

  My heart stops galloping against my chest. I take a deep breath and relax my hold on Sarah.

  I have an idea what is coming next.

  Pastor Moses concluded some sermons in Christ the King Church by asking if anyone sitting in the congregation wanted to give their life to Jesus. He then asked them to rise to their feet.

  Sometimes, one person stood up. Other times, two or three. There was a particular Sunday morning last December when about five or six stood. These people who wanted to become Christians were then told to repeat a prayer after Pastor Moses, and then he welcomed them to the family of Jesus.

  The Leader most likely wants the new converts to say a prayer after him.

  But I am happy with being a Christian, never mind that I often wished that Pastor Moses’s Sunday sermon did not go on till eternity, and that I sometimes exchanged cheeky whispers with Sarah about the woman’s mustache whenever Magdalene’s mother stood on stage to sing.

  I remain standing on the left-hand side of the Leader. So do Sarah and dozens of other women and girls. Only seven or eight from our group shuffle slowly toward the right, their heads drooping.

  I wonder if Pastor Moses might be ashamed to see his committed members openly abandoning the Christian faith. I wonder if he might understand.

  The Leader catches the eye of one of the men at the back and nods his head ever so slightly. The man hurries off into the forest, the same direction as the Muslim girls.

  Through the stems and shrubs, the Boko Haram man hurries back. In his right hand, he waves a curved knife with a pointed blade that reflects the rays from the sun. In his left hand, he drags an elderly man dressed in a green Nigerian army uniform, whose wrists and ankles are bound with rope.

  “You do not want to convert to Islam?” the Leader says.

  As quick as lightning, the deed is done. I clap my palms over my eyes and scream.

  “We will kill all of you the same way if you refuse to convert,” the Leader says.

  We drop to our knees and beg.

  “No, please! Please, don’t kill us!”

  In the past twenty-four hours, I have seen more blood and bodies to feed my nightmares for the next two thousand years. I have wished that death had taken me along with Papa and my brothers. But the sight of that soldier’s gray head resting a few inches from his bare feet, with the eyes and mouth frozen open, gives me a fresh desire to preserve my life.

  “I want to be a Muslim!” I cry.

  “Yes, I will convert!” Sarah wails.

  “I will convert!” others scream.

  Only Magdalene is left standing on the left-hand side, straight as a steeple.

  Eyes closed. Hands raised toward heaven.

  She opens her mouth and sings. “Jesus loves me, this I know / For the Bible tells me so / Little ones to Him belong—”

  For the first time, the Leader loses his aura of control. Back when he gathered us in the village mosque, he was guffawing like a hyena, mocking the fathers for allowing their daughters to waste Allah’s time by going to school instead of getting married, and assuring them that he would soon right that wrong.

  This time, he is as livid as a wasp. The mad man hiding inside him shines darkly through his swollen eyeballs.

  I wish I were bold enough to open my mouth and beg Magdalene to stop. Slaughtering innocent boys and decapitating elderly men is certainly not the Islam that I have known and seen; I wish Magdalene would stop being stubborn and convert along with us.

  The Leader stomps over and slams his fist into Magdalene’s mouth. “Shut up!” he barks.

  Magdalene crumples. She continues to sing.

  “They are weak . . . but He is . . . strong / Yes, Jesus . . . loves me / Yes . . .”

  He raises his gun and cocks it. He changes his mind and lets the gun dangle at his side.

  “. . . Jesus . . . loves me—”

  He stretches out his hand.

  “Al-Bakura, give it to me!”

  The man who dragged in and slaughtered the soldier hands him the murder weapon.

  I wrap my arms around Sarah. She folds her arms around me and buries her head in my neck. I shut my eyes and ears tight.

  Darkness

  ARMED MEN ARE SURROUNDING us, guards who have promised to deal mercilessly with anyone who attempts to escape. Yet, I still have space to accommodate another terror, to fret about the unseen creatures.

  Ruffling the tree branches above.

  Rustling the carpet of leaves underneath.

  Ripping the air with their squalls.

  Still stored in my mind are Danladi’s tales of hissing rattlesnakes and whopping crustaceans crawling about in the Sambisa forest, where the grass can be as high as a teacher’s table.

  I close my eyes and pray that all the animals out scouring for their meals prefer the taste of leaves or rodents to that of unarmed girls.

  I pray that Jacob is asleep and not afraid.

  I Imagine Mama

  RETURNING FROM JALINGO TO find that all the houses are carcasses, charred blocks and blackened metal.

  Passing building after building in horror, wondering how many lightning bolts could have struck the village.

  Footsteps quicken along the dirt road to our house. Soon, she breaks into a sprint.

  Lips move in emergency prayers, urgent requests for the disaster to have missed her home.

  Dinky traveling bag falls to the ground as the tragedy stares her in the face, her husband lying limp in the front yard and the rest of her family gone.

  The first scream that comes rolling out from deep inside her intestines, a sound that travels all the way across the village.

  Eyes expand in shock as the surviving villagers relay their version of events, those lucky to have fled to the hills.

  Breaking away from the thin crowd and rushing off to the village mosque in search of her sons, not believing everything she has been told. Her scarf comes loose from her head. The patterned cloth drops to the floor. Her shoes slip off her feet. She does not care.

  Falling over her sons and rattling their bodies to wake them up.

  Rushing toward the
Sambisa forest, hoping to find Jacob and me.

  Falling on her face amid the thorns and shrubs, realizing that it is nothing but a futile attempt.

  Begging God to bring her Ya Ta home.

  Weeping her eyes out of their sockets. For days on end, no word from heaven or earth would be sufficient to make her stop.

  If only I were there to remind Mama to always remain thankful, no matter in what situation she finds herself.

  If only she were here to hold me tight, assure me that there is a reason for everything.

  Surprised

  THE TEARS HAVE NOT yet finished. There are still more left inside my eyes.

  Inside the Sambisa

  THERE ARE BATTALIONS OF Boko Haram men everywhere, like ants in an anthill. Going, coming, sitting, standing, walking, chatting, praying, preaching, teaching, training.

  Their black flag, imprinted with white Arabic letters above and within a white circle, hangs almost as high as the tallest tree.

  Scores of vans and trucks and hundreds of motorbikes are parked in the bowels of the forest. Electricity generators churn. Electrical equipment buzzes. Tarpaulin tents are sprawled from east to west.

  Strolling in and out of the shelters are not only Boko Haram men, but dozens of women and children as well. The women stare stealthily at us new arrivals from time to time, as if they are afraid to be caught looking.

  But, no matter how hard we may stare back, there is little of them to see.

  Their entire bodies are hidden inside mauve niqabs, which allow me to see only their hands and flashes of their eyes.

  Mourning

  SO MANY WOMEN AND girls gathered in one place, yet hardly any laughing or chitchat.

  No new skirt or shoe to admire, no trader or vendor with whom to haggle.

  We are like dead people mourning other people who are dead. We are like ghosts stuck between the land of humans and the land of spirits.