by Isha Sesay
Chapter Eleven
LONG BEFORE BOKO HARAM EVER APPEARED, SAMBISA FOREST, HIDDEN away in Borno state in Nigeria’s northeast, was a part of Chibok’s collective consciousness, a place shaped by fear and fantasy. Once upon a time, it had been home to lions, leopards, and camels; they’d strode across this sweeping landscape of nearly forty thousand square miles while majestic elephants made their way to Sambisa from central Africa along corridors crisscrossing the sprawling enclave. Until 1960, when Nigeria was still under British colonial rule, Sambisa had been designated a game reserve. For years, up until the 1970s, excited tourists flocked to see the wildlife and admire the vistas, spilling out across five northern Nigerian states.
But in the decades since, most of the large game animals disappeared, their populations decimated by mismanagement and poaching. They live only as memories now, grandiose stories from another time when the forest was buoyed by the wonder and joy of those venturing along its overgrown paths. Today, Sambisa is the preserve of smaller fare—different types of monkeys, antelopes, gazelles, and myriad poisonous snakes.
It is also home to Boko Haram.
In early 2013, the terror group chose the harsh terrain as a base for its camps. The men suddenly emerged from the forest’s dense bushes, spreading out among its array of trees and winding through its caves and into the mountains—taking advantage of the tree cover and hidden spaces in their war against the Nigerian military. Since then, Sambisa has become a place where dangerous men perform wicked deeds, and the forest nights are the stuff of terrifying dreams. In this place, time has a different quality, shifting and buckling to create its own frightening, fragile reality.
These men slid into Sambisa with the stolen girls, though their captives were most likely unaware they’d crossed its threshold. There aren’t any signs or billboards to warn or welcome newcomers to Sambisa Forest—no announcements of arrival at ground zero for one of the deadliest terror groups in the world.
While almost two hundred girls were carried off in the vehicles that formed the slow-moving motorized procession, Mary was among the nearly one hundred girls who formed a convoy following on foot. She shuffled along while wearing just one blue-black flip-flop, urged forward by a phalanx of grim-faced men with their fingers resting on the triggers of long-barreled guns, which they seemed ready to use at a moment’s notice.
Sweat ran freely down her back as she tried to stay alert and avoid potholes that might send her tumbling. Mary walked with her mind wrapped up in thoughts of her parents, picturing them totally distraught at the news that their only child had been taken. She feared the loss would destroy them. Mixed in with that fear was a sense of foreboding that Mary couldn’t shake off, a distinct feeling that her life still hung in the balance. Every time this idea rose to the surface of her consciousness, it came with the question, What will I tell God if I am killed? She felt unprepared for death, uncertain she’d done enough in her short lifetime to give a successful accounting.
The day’s heat grew more intense as a fierce sun appeared in the sky and sapped her energy. Brutal vegetation spilled onto the path, scratching and threatening to block the way. One by one, the girls Mary was walking with began to tire. Then came a wave of despondency. She saw it touch each one and push them all down into an emotional spiral. But Mary looked deep inside herself for the strength to resist.
“The Lord is with us and for that reason we should not fear anything,” she reminded her schoolmates. There was no reaction from their captors as she spoke her words of faith. They barely acknowledged the girls, choosing instead to stay silent.
Mary had been walking for several hours when the cluster of bushes and savanna grass thinned out to reveal nearly two dozen crumbling structures. They were little more than shacks, with rough walls made from forest grass and roofs fashioned out of bits of plastic weighted down by heavy rocks. The settlement appeared abandoned, and as far as she could tell, there was no one around. The silence triggered questions that there was no one to answer: What had happened here? Who once lived in this place? What did they see that caused them to disappear?
Now the entire convoy was slowing, and Mary heard loud voices. None of the men surrounding the girls offered an explanation for why they were stopping. Not that she even cared. For her and the others who’d been walking, it was a welcome moment of relief, a chance to rest their bruised and aching feet a short while. The girls were finally offered something to eat and drink, and Mary glared at the men through narrowed eyes as they held out water and cookies. A low-grade rage burned within her. She accepted the water from their filthy-looking bottles out of sheer desperation. Mary was parched and longing for a sip of anything to ease the discomfort of her burning throat, but that’s where she drew the line. The cookies she would not accept, rejecting them firmly, without any hesitation.
The insurgents quietly chatted among themselves while Mary huddled with the other girls and nervously looked on, unsure of what was about to happen.
Then a loud voice.
Mary learned there was still a large distance to be covered; those on foot would never make it. “You must find space in these vehicles. If you fail, we will shoot you.” The threat left her more confused and afraid than ever. How were they all expected to suddenly find space in the same vehicles that had been unable to accommodate them just a few hours earlier?
Without warning, plumes of smoke suddenly rose into the skies above Sambisa. Desperate for space to accommodate the leftover girls, the militants had decided to burn the contents of three vehicles, food that had been stolen from Chibok town. As the bags of rice lay engulfed in flames on the side of the road, a terrified Mary looked on as the other girls were shooed into the waiting pickup trucks. When it was her turn, she dared not resist, dutifully moving in the direction of a pointing gun and solemnly climbing into the back of an already crowded vehicle. She wedged herself among the frightened-looking girls. There were close to twenty of them packed in the small space, leaving Mary folded in on herself and barely able to breathe. Only the tiniest movement was possible; anything more would make her wince out of discomfort.
Priscilla had also been walking and now watched as Mary and others were crammed into the three waiting trucks. Until that moment, the group she’d been trekking with had successfully hung back and evaded being loaded into any of the vehicles. Once more, to her relief, the cars were packed, too full to take anyone else. Priscilla stared at their kidnappers, whose eyes burned with anger at the sight of a dozen girls still standing amid the bushes. But there were no pronouncements of execution or punishment. Instead, the men talked among themselves before shouting, “Let’s go!” Engines started up and the cars edged forward, while Priscilla took a deep breath and followed on foot once more.
Less than half an hour later, Priscilla and the remaining girls still on foot heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. The pickup that came into view was largely empty. As the convoy slowed to a stop, the truck parked nearby. Now the men turned to Priscilla and the dozen walking holdouts.
“Get in the truck immediately! Anyone who refuses, we will just shoot you and go. You can’t just keep on walking. What if people are trying to follow us? Get in now!”
Priscilla didn’t move. Neither did the others. She struggled to gather her thoughts as her pulse quickened and she fought to catch her breath. Am I really going to enter this car? Priscilla feared that climbing into the vehicle would set her on a course from which she might never turn back. It felt like giving up on the possibility of freedom. She imagined the pain of those who would grieve for her.
“We will not go!”
“Get in the truck or we will shoot you!”
“We will not get in!”
“We will kill you!”
She pulled close to the girls as they argued with their kidnappers. Priscilla didn’t see one of the men break away from the group till he returned with a reed cane high above his head.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
The long c
ane made a whistling sound as he swung it through the air and she shrieked in pain as it made contact with her back and legs. With tears blinding her, Priscilla twisted and flailed, then scrambled into the back of the truck with the other girls, where they were promptly joined by five militants. She was still crying when the rumble of engines filled the air and the convoy of trapped girls took off.
Every available inch of the truck bed Priscilla sat in was occupied. The weight of the girl in her lap pressed her legs into the bag of rice and other food items beneath her. She was slowly losing sensation in her limbs, but the discomfort barely registered. Priscilla’s eyelids were swollen from crying and tears rushed to fill her bloodshot eyes. They came not simply because she was being carried away from all she’d ever loved. She also knew the devastation that would befall her family the minute they realized she was missing. She thought especially of her gentle, loving father, who doted on her every chance he got. Her abduction would break his heart.
From beneath the crush of tangled limbs, she watched her schoolmates struggle with the weight of their own fearful thoughts. As the truck bounced and swayed along the barely existent forest path, the girls’ heads hung low, their lips quivered, and the unstoppable flow of tears glistened their cheeks and lashes.
Priscilla and the other girls in the truck moved for hours toward an unknown destination with three men perched on the roof of the driver’s cabin and another two hanging off the back. The whole time the five pairs of glaring eyes remained fixed on her and the others. The legs of the young men seated up high hung loose, and their arms casually cradled AK-47s aimed directly at them. To her, the militants seemed to be without a care in the world. All five of them sported the same camouflage uniform worn by the Nigerian military, but each showed dusty, calloused feet in tattered flip-flops. Priscilla scanned their faces, taking note of the soft features. They looked more like boys than fully-grown men. But they displayed no traces of youthful warmth and ease, only sneers and defiant stares. They guarded Priscilla and the others without saying much. At times, she got the distinct impression that the young men cared not one bit if the girls lived or died.
There were other moments, though. For instance, when a spasm of grief took hold of the group and their guards’ eyes softened a little for a brief time and they tenderly urged the girls to stop weeping. “Come now, stop crying . . . crying will not solve anything.” Though once they were out of patience they quickly added, “Keep crying if you want, there is one day that you will stop.”
Priscilla was making this terrible journey alongside friends from school. Side by side in the lurching vehicle, they tried to comfort each other, though under the watchful eyes of the men they could do no more than smuggle whispered assurances past barely moving lips. Whenever words failed them, they pressed their bodies closer and clasped each other’s hands more tightly.
The convoy of girls moved through dense, thorny bushes and wild-growing trees so thick in places that the vegetation threatened to overwhelm the slow-moving procession. All the while, Priscilla’s contorted limbs shot sparks of pain through her body. No one in their vehicle wore a watch, so their relationship with time quickly unraveled. Hours, minutes, and seconds ceased to have meaning. Priscilla felt as if she were floating in a dreamscape. The further she traveled, the more lost and disoriented she became. The same whispered questions ricocheted among the girls.
“Where are we going?”
“Where can they be taking us?”
“What place is this?”
From the confines of the pickup, Priscilla stared at the shifting terrain. Her hopes had surged when she first noticed a number of crumbling shelters scattered throughout the bush, but she never made out another human being and those structures became less frequent before eventually disappearing altogether, giving way to an increasingly desolate-looking landscape.
The surroundings grew bleaker, and unidentifiable howls and screeches now signaled wild animals were nearby. As long as the sun was out, the beasts remained out of sight. But when darkness provided cover, a host of creatures appeared in the moonlight and stalked the convoy. Monkeys and antelopes suddenly emerged from the bush. Priscilla let out a startled scream. With the rest of the girls she lunged backward, praying for a gap to open up among the web of bodies crowding her so she might disappear. Fear, grief, and shock refused to allow her eyes to close for the first twenty-four hours she was in the truck.
A growing undercurrent of anxiety, meanwhile, ran among them. When the captors offered them something to drink, Priscilla’s eyes darted from their faces and the foul-looking water bottles they held in grimy outstretched hands. She quietly but firmly refused, even though her mouth and throat were agonizingly dry and the hunger pangs in her belly were sharpening.
The schoolgirls began to ask, “What is going to happen to us?” with increasing alarm. They passed this question back and forth quietly at first, but eventually it spilled out into the open with raised voices. Maybe the boldness came from hunger, or perhaps weariness had worn away their fears. Now Priscilla and the other girls peppered the men with the same questions that were tormenting them.
“Where are we going?”
“What is going to happen to us?”
The band of militants didn’t reply; instead, they stared back dispassionately. Met with silence, Priscilla returned to whispering with her friends. Before long, their questioning started up again and the reaction they received remained the same. When the men finally chose to speak, their words triggered instant dread in Priscilla.
“As long as you accept our religion, you will be fine.”
For girls like her, whose parents had nurtured in their offspring the irrevocable belief they were indivisible from their Christianity, these words brought into focus a threat much greater than simply losing one’s life. As much as Priscilla most definitely did not want to die, her fear of death wasn’t strong enough to overcome what she considered to be a fundamental truth: that living without Christianity was no life at all. There was no way of separating this teenager’s faith from her existence.
So in unison with the other girls, she shouted “No!” to the idea of conversion. If their outright rejection offended their minders, they didn’t let on. The men merely sneered and shrugged.
But Priscilla wasn’t about to give up on her search for answers just yet. After a brief pause, she joined the others in lobbing the same questions at their captors.
“If we get to our destination, will you accept our religion?” the men asked again. “Nothing will happen to you. Will you accept?”
This time the no from Priscilla’s lips was louder and firmer than everyone else’s in the truck. She felt her heartbeat quicken as she waited to see if her boldness would land her in trouble, not that it stopped her from looking up and glaring at her abductors in open defiance. Undoubtedly sweet and gentle, Priscilla also possessed a resolute strength at her core that oftentimes shocked those trying to bully or take advantage of her, and on more than one occasion was as much of a surprise to Priscilla as to those she was challenging.
Now the men held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity. Meanwhile, the watching girls all held their breath, as Priscilla continued to stare them down. When the pack finally looked away, the captors collapsed with laughter.
At points, the thought of escape weighed heavily on the minds of the girls in Priscilla’s truck. They had no idea that dozens of their schoolmates who’d been loaded into the nine-eleven had already leapt to freedom. All Priscilla knew was that five armed men surrounded her and there was no chance of escaping her present situation. Even if her minders were somehow distracted, following close behind their truck were hundreds more militants riding a cavalcade of motorbikes. Now Priscilla cast her mind back to the trek she’d made from the school into the bushes before they started loading the girls into the vehicles. Could she have escaped then? She had to accept that the odds for success even then hadn’t been any better. She’d been completely surrounded by mi
litants. Even a cursory attempt to inspect her footwear had drawn bellowing warnings against any attempt to escape from their watchful minders. Fast-forward, and now all she could do was stare at the forest they were passing through and mourn the gap opening up between her and her family, growing wider by the minute.
The convoy pushed deeper into Sambisa. For Priscilla, everything became a blur. The only marker of the passing hours was when they stopped to allow the men the opportunity to pray. Five times a day, as required by Islam, the procession paused. No announcement was made, but she learned to read the slowing of the vehicles as a way to judge the passing of time. The girls stayed put, while some of the men got out and knelt in the dirt right in front of the vehicles. The others kept watch, trading places when the first group was done. Priscilla never saw prayer mats unfurled and put down; the conditions of the path never seemed to be an issue for the men. Wherever they stopped was where they prayed. With the religious devotions completed, the militants rose to their feet and calmly reentered the trucks filled with stolen girls and continued the journey through the seemingly unending forest.
For Priscilla, the truck became her entire world. The girls in the convoy were allowed out only for bathroom breaks, always accompanied by an escort. For the girls in Priscilla’s vehicle, they weren’t even permitted those moments of relief, because this clique of girls refused to accept chaperones. Trapped in their respective vehicles, the girls were victims to a host of emotions, from an overwhelming sense of helplessness to overpowering grief for all they were losing, and a debilitating fear of what lay ahead.
On the second day of their journey, when the sun was high in the sky, the vehicles suddenly ground to a halt. The girls were ordered out. Priscilla’s entire body ached, and the chance to move and stretch brought gratitude and sensation flooding into her bones. As she took in her surroundings, she noticed the tall grass thickly grown and blanketing the clearing. Their captors had chosen to stop where the thicket of vegetation did the work of a shield. This prevented the girls from seeing much of anything apart from their immediate surroundings, and likewise made it difficult for anyone beyond the clearing to spot the hundreds of schoolgirls.