Beneath the Tamarind Tree

by Isha Sesay

  When Saa finally returned to Chibok with an injured Blessing in tow, the town was still in a state of pandemonium. Residents were running about the place. The appearance of a handful of Nigerian soldiers had brought added chaos. The already traumatized locals mistook the actual military personnel for Boko Haram fighters, assuming the militants had returned to the town they’d ransacked just a few hours earlier. Eventually the situation calmed down and Saa found a man willing to take her and Blessing back to Askira on his motorbike for a fare. Luckily, Saa had the money they’d grabbed from their dorm just before the insurgents stormed their school. Due to Blessing’s condition, Saa knew she needed to take the suffering girl home first. They made their way out of Chibok just as her sibling was anxiously wandering through town searching for news of his little sister.

  The fear and tension that had taken hold of Blessing’s family melted away the moment they saw her arriving on that bike. Within moments, they were rushing toward the girls and the air was filled with excited shrieks and words of thanks for their loved one’s return. Amid their eagerness to sweep the girls off the bike, it took a few moments before anyone noticed that Blessing was injured. The joy in her mother’s eyes gave way to a stream of tears. She was still weeping when Saa and Blessing’s older sister carefully carried the wincing girl into the house. But rather than take her to the hospital, the family decided to summon the neighborhood’s “bone guy”—an old man known for tending to broken, sprained, and dislocated limbs. He showed up in due course and tended to Blessing’s swollen ankles. In the midst of all of this, Saa heard her phone ring. Though the Chibok telecom towers had been targeted and damaged in the raid, now that she was back in town, Saa’s cell phone spluttered back to life. The voice on the other end was her mother’s. She was tense and stern.

  “Where are you? Come home as soon as possible!”

  For a moment, Saa felt a measure of irritation at being spoken to that way after everything she’d just been through. Then she paused and listened carefully. What she heard then was love, anxiety, and a mother’s deep fears of losing her only daughter.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming home.”

  Even with that assurance, her family continued to call incessantly, seeking continued reassurance that she was safe.

  It was almost midday when Saa got to her house. The neighbors had spotted her as she approached on the motorbike, and now a crowd of people came rushing out and followed along as she traveled the last few yards home. Everyone in her neighborhood was overcome with emotion. When she finally walked through the door, seeing the pain and worry on her mother’s face made Saa’s heart ache. For Rebecca, it would take holding her daughter once more to convince her that Saa was real and not a ghost. As the entire family crowded around and cradled her in their arms, Saa felt as though she’d died and come back to life. The horrors of the night quickly receded, and soon there were no more thoughts. All that mattered were the surging feelings of love, joy, and gratitude that remained.

  Chapter Eight

  FEAR AND ADRENALINE POWERED EVERY FOOTSTEP ESTHER TOOK toward her daughter’s school. She moved oblivious to the sweltering heat that had already drenched her in sweat. Nor did she notice the clouds of dust being kicked up as she shuffled down the rock-strewn path. All that existed was Dorcas.

  Everything else faded into the background. Nothing but her perfect girl mattered. Not knowing the whereabouts of her child made her insides churn and her heart sit heavily in her chest. As she drew closer to the school, her head was pulsing. Where is my baby?

  The same panic and confusion was also swirling in the minds and bodies of all the residents of Chibok town. The nighttime intruders had come and gone, leaving most of the town physically intact. But more time was needed to fully assess the damage done to the heart and soul of this dusty place.

  The badly shaken locals all asked the same question: “What has happened to our children?” At the center of everyone’s thoughts were the girls. Concerns for them drew residents from their homes and hiding places, pulling them one by one to the school grounds to see for themselves.

  As Esther made her way there, she heard desperate wailing and shouting. They were sounds of anguish that made her heart lurch.

  “Our girls are no more.”

  “Our girls are no more o!”

  A group of distraught men and women who’d been to the school were now heading back to Chibok town, stumbling and struggling to walk. Their pain reached out to smother Esther.

  “Our girls are no more o!” they lamented while their bodies shook as they wept. The words threatened to shatter the hearts of all who heard them.

  The group inched forward. Esther rushed toward them.

  “What happened?”

  The wracked sobbing suffocated their words, and those syllables that managed to break free threatened to destroy Esther.

  “Our girls are no more o!”

  “Nobody is in the school. The girls are no more!”

  The statements made her tremble. Esther stared at their tear-streaked faces. It’s not possible. She searched for her faith, her lifeline. She’d sat on the cold rock of that hill all night long, praying without end for God to shield her child from the killers in their midst. Her whole life, she’d been told to trust God, to hone her faith for life’s difficult moments. And she’d done so. She refused to now abandon what she’d learned and practiced all these years. She couldn’t accept the words of these distressed locals about the fate of her child.

  She needed to get to the school to see for herself. She was convinced her baby was likely hiding somewhere out of sight from everyone, unseen by these broken souls who now wrongly proclaimed all the girls were gone.

  At five thirty a.m. Esther finally stood in the school compound and faced the burning buildings where her fifteen-year-old had happily slept, studied, and played, and she felt as though she were being sucked into the charred structures. Unable to turn away, she watched as the flames lingered and clung to the hostels, the storage room, the staff quarters, and the principal’s house, burning with an intensity that seemed almost impossible given the fact that the blaze had been lit many hours before. The fire burned with ferocity, occasionally spitting and hissing when it absorbed something that gave it more fuel.

  In that moment, Esther felt hopeless, but she willed herself to remain calm. She struggled to piece together what had happened during the overnight hours in the school.

  Looking around the compound, she knew there was no way her daughter could be in hiding amid the rubble. My Dorcas is not here. Her child, along with all the other girls, had simply disappeared. All that remained were mementos: an open notebook filled with swirly handwriting facedown in the dirt, a solitary shoe dropped midflight, a worn-looking school uniform quickly tossed aside. Proof that just hours earlier this was a place of learning, where hundreds of hopeful girls once filled its classrooms and dreamed about bigger, bolder lives, until Boko Haram appeared.

  What have these Boko boys done with my Dorcas? Esther was still struggling to contain her mounting panic when a fair-skinned girl wearing a disheveled school uniform walked into the compound around eight o’clock. The reaction to her sudden appearance was one of shock, rather than celebration.

  Esther rushed to her. “Do you know Dorcas?”

  The girl nodded. “We are in the same class.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “She went home.” The girl looked utterly confused by the question, but nonetheless nodded her head to emphasize her point.

  Eventually Esther realized the girl was in shock and had no idea what had happened to her schoolmates. She had undergone her own ordeal that night, different from the others. Esther learned that the girl had been unwell and curled up fast asleep in the hostel when Boko Haram arrived. Somehow she’d remained asleep while the men raised their voices and filled the nighttime air with endless cries of “Allahu Akbar.” She’d been overlooked when the men searched the hostels for hiding girls until the smell
of the burning school finally woke her. By the time she made it out into the compound, not a single girl was in sight. Everyone she knew was gone.

  But she hadn’t been completely alone. She could hear voices nearby. Panicked, she climbed a tree and from there watched as strange-looking men strutted through the compound and torched the various buildings. Soon the heat of the growing inferno made her hiding place unbearable and she clambered down quickly. As her surroundings burned, the girl made the split-second decision to scale the school wall, and once on the other side, she took off running in search of safety. Hours later she had come back to see for herself what had happened to her cherished schoolmates and her school. Before long, hordes of other fearful parents had surrounded the girl, besieging her with queries about their own missing kin. Esther never got around to finding out her name, and the two never spoke again.

  By eleven o’clock, other dazed-looking girls started to appear. They arrived tired and bedraggled, some in groups of twos, some alone, while others showed up in clusters of five or eight, and they would continue to arrive over the course of the next two days. Every one of them had escaped from the convoy and hidden in the bushes of Sambisa Forest until it felt safe enough to attempt the journey home. On that first day, Esther scanned every face, desperate to spot her beautiful daughter among them, each time praying for a moment of instant recognition. Esther peppered the girls with questions about Dorcas. A handful confirmed her worst fear: Boko Haram had carried her daughter away.

  Some of the escapees said they’d been sitting with her child inside the nine-eleven truck. Dorcas’ slightly older cousin Lydia told Esther she’d been by her side and had asked Dorcas to jump to freedom with her. Initially she’d said yes, but when the moment to escape presented itself, the younger girl had a change of heart.

  Esther easily understood her daughter’s behavior. Dorcas’s closest friends were still in the vehicle, and they were her only source of comfort and support. Plus the prospect of jumping from a moving truck several feet off the ground in the pitch dark would have been too harrowing for a fifteen-year old. As Lydia told her story, Yakubu, Dorcas’s father, stood by his wife’s side. The words of the traumatized girl drove both parents to a new low.

  Esther could see for herself that her daughter was gone, but she couldn’t bring herself to accept it. She started to sway. “It’s not true, it’s not true,” she bawled. “Lord, why did you allow me to see this day?”

  The compound was full of townspeople, and a small group gathered around Esther and did their best to urge her to accept what had happened. Their words made no sense to her. How could she accept? As with most families in Chibok, this mother had poured everything into her daughter with the understanding that Dorcas would surpass her parents’ achievements. She would go off to college, excel, and become a professional. In Esther’s case, Dorcas was going to be their family’s success story.

  Lord, how will my dreams for my baby come true, if she is nowhere to be found? Why would you keep me in this world without my baby?

  Esther couldn’t imagine a life without her child. With each passing moment her heart broke further, and eventually the despair sent Esther crashing to the ground. Her knees sank deep into the dust, and a wail from the depths of her soul broke free from her lips and filled the compound with her unbearable grief.

  It seemed as if the entire population of Chibok town was there, packed into that schoolyard. As the minutes ticked by, the sense of mourning deepened. Soon the collective sorrow was so great, it was nearly impossible to distinguish the anguish of parents whose daughters had been taken from the misery of the rest of the supportive community. Distraught parents, distressed family members, concerned locals, all of them stood together weeping and shouting in mounting confusion and anger.

  As the hours passed and the day’s heat intensified, rather than go home and rest, the grief-stricken locals remained on the school grounds, and their frustrations mounted. “Where are our girls?” they demanded. “Where have these boys taken them? Who has seen them?”

  But there were no figures of authority present to hear their pleas or to provide answers. The state’s governor, Kashim Shettima, was based in the state capital of Maiduguri, a little over two hours by road away from Chibok. For reasons never satisfactorily explained to this disconsolate community, he wouldn’t arrive for several more days. The handful of soldiers assigned to protect the people of Chibok had scattered into the night the moment the boys had arrived. Esther had seen several up on the hill among the rest of the townspeople. In the aftermath of the attack, they’d been spotted briefly before disappearing once more and remaining stubbornly out of sight. The people of Chibok had only each other to turn to for solace.

  All morning long, girls continued to emerge from the bush, bruised and wide eyed with terror. Some wandered first to nearby villages because they got lost on their way back; concerned villagers from those respective places brought them back to Chibok.

  For hours, Esther stood out in the sun, her eyes raw with grief, listening, staring, and holding out for anything that would revive her hopes. All the while her lips were never still, in perpetual motion, reciting an endless loop of prayers. “Please God, perform a miracle.”

  After many hours in the heat, dust, and smoke, families began to leave. The punishing grief had left people weary, and there was a need to return home for respite and to consider what should happen next.

  Despite the pleas of her husband and his brother, Esther refused to leave. “I have a right to be here, to welcome her home when she returns,” she snapped at them. As two thirty approached, she’d already spent more than eight hours in the school compound, and now her family feared they’d never be able to make her leave. Yakubu and his brother were growing increasingly concerned about Esther’s physical and emotional well-being. They approached her slowly.

  “Dorcas has made it back! She’s at home, now, waiting for us.”

  “Is it true?” Her mind was whirling. God, you have answered my prayers and brought my baby back to me!

  With words of praise falling from her lips, Esther took off running for home, without any thought of waiting for her husband. The only thing that mattered to her was holding her child in her arms. She had to see her child. I must hold my baby and make sure she is unharmed.

  By three o’clock Esther was home. “Dorcas!” she shouted as she came running through the front door. Her heart pounded. Her face wore a wide smile as she stood waiting for her daughter to respond.

  But there was only silence.

  “Dorcas!” she called out.

  Nothing moved and the house remained quiet. Esther headed quickly to her daughter’s room. Surely Dorcas was in there and had simply not heard her. But when she opened the door, she saw the room just as she’d left it hours before, full of Dorcas’s clothes, her bed, books, and table. There was no sign of her beloved girl.

  Panic stirred within her. Esther was moving faster now through the house—searching each room, pushing past furniture, yelling Dorcas’s name. In each room she found only more stillness and silence. Esther scanned every inch of the house. She muttered to herself. If her child wasn’t inside, maybe she was outdoors. She rushed through the front door, heading straight to the outdoor toilets and washing area. “Dorcas!” She was screaming now.

  Neighbors peering from their own homes watched with growing sorrow as Esther ran about her compound, calling her daughter’s name over and over, her face and blouse soaked with tears. By the time Yakubu and his brother reached her, Esther was overwrought. She was still searching for Dorcas, crying so hard she could hardly breathe. Her voice was hoarse by now and still she cried out, “Dorcas!”

  Yakubu gently led Esther back into their house. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Dorcas remains lost to us.” He’d lied to her, he explained. He could think of no other way to bring Esther home.

  Through her tears, Esther nodded. She stared at her beloved husband and felt only compassion for him. There was no ang
er; she understood why he’d done it.

  All she knew for certain in that moment were two things.

  Her child was gone.

  And life had lost all meaning.

  Chapter Nine

  AS WITH MUCH OF THE WORLD, MOST NIGERIANS HAD NEVER HEARD of the town called Chibok before April 14, 2014. Far from places like Abuja, the nation’s capital and nexus of political power, and Lagos, a commercial megacity, this small corner off the beaten track in the country’s northeast had never been the sort of place that crept into the conversations of the nation’s rich and powerful. In fact, with little of importance ever taking place there, it was just as unlikely to be a topic of discussion among the nation’s poor. Chibok was so far off the radar that in the minds of most, it simply didn’t exist.

  As news of the Chibok kidnappings emerged, Nigerians began to build a faint picture of the place. Details from domestic news outlets were sketchy and often contradictory, which made it difficult for most people to grasp what had happened. Unanswered questions multiplied rapidly. How could hundreds of schoolgirls have been stolen from a school in Borno, which was under a state of emergency? Where were their teachers? What were they doing in school anyway? Weren’t all schools there supposed to be closed? How were the terrorists able to round up hundreds of girls and carry them off in the middle of the night so easily?

  A day after the girls’ abduction, the Nigerian authorities claimed the number of girls taken was just over a hundred and most had been rescued, a lie intended to lessen the gravity of the situation. Almost three weeks went by before President Goodluck Jonathan made his first public statement about the tragedy. In a country where most of the citizenry take their cues from leaders when it comes to formulating an opinion on issues of note, the government’s relative silence spoke volumes. It also created a vacuum, one that was readily filled by skeptical Nigerians who’d come to the conclusion that the events in Chibok read like a fantastical tale, set in a place they had never heard of, with sketchy details that didn’t add up. Soon Nigerians from various walks of life, up and down the country, began to publicly muse that the mass abduction was a hoax.