by Isha Sesay
For the parents of the twenty-one girls, meeting President Buhari was clearly a nerve-racking experience. Given Nigeria’s highly stratified society, a struggling farmer from a place like Chibok would never in a million years dream of setting foot in the presidential villa, let alone be in the presence of the nation’s leader. And now here they were, standing mere feet away from him. The difficulties of day-to-day life in places like Chibok had left many of these parents looking haggard. They edged forward timidly, toward the bespectacled Buhari, who displayed no emotion.
A group of overwrought mothers dropped to their knees in front of him and, with arms aloft, thanked the president profusely for bringing back their daughters. The men from Chibok, meanwhile, bowed deeply. One young father dressed in a burgundy tunic and trousers fell to his knees and reverentially took the president’s hand as words of thanks rushed from his lips.
Next it was time for the girls to step up and meet the president. Villa officials directed them to make their way over to the front of the room. They looked every bit as uncomfortable as their parents, and they solemnly shook hands with President Buhari. Once the handshakes were out of the way, the girls were then arranged into two rows for a photograph. The president stood in the middle, flanked by his deputy on one side and baby Amos on the other. It was a joyless scene, without a real smile in sight. The twenty-one girls stared mournfully at the photographers who clicked away.
The only smile I spotted during the entire episode was on the face of the vice-president. He knew these were powerful images being created, especially for an administration that had been lambasted by critics and under pressure to do more to meet the needs of its populace. These photos held the potential of boosting the government’s standing both domestically and internationally. The event was a major feather in Buhari’s cap. He’d been able to achieve something that his predecessor had been widely assailed for failing. He was the one who’d brought some of the Chibok girls back. Still, the moment the photo-op was over, Buhari was gone.
The twenty-one girls were instructed to fall in line and move outside to board the waiting buses. I told Fabs to follow me, and we both moved quickly to get in beside the procession as it inched its way down the middle of the room. His camera was already rolling when I asked the first question.
“Will you go back to school?” I asked the girls.
To my delight, heads bobbed up and down and several of them said an eager yes.
“What do you want to study?” I asked one of the girls.
“Sciences,” she replied shyly.
As soon as we got outside, a beady-eyed official ordered me to step away from the girls. I pretended I hadn’t heard him and continued to wave to the girls from a spot they had to pass on their way to the buses. Many waved back hesitantly and smiled. I said “Bye” to each and every one of them. There were still those who looked away from me, refusing to be drawn in.
I lightly rested my left hand on the some of the girls’ backs as they moved along. What had happened to their bodies during their two and a half years in captivity was palpable, the feel of their sharp shoulder blades a reminder of the long and difficult road to wholeness for these girls. Meanwhile, the hovering officials wanted the girls swept from public view as quickly as possible. As soon as the last girl boarded the bus, the doors closed immediately, and they were whisked away.
Now my team’s sole mission was to rush back to the hotel so we could edit a report and I could make myself available to offer insight and analysis on this presidential villa visit for any of the shows on CNN USA and CNN International. Before we left the Aso Rock, we stopped by the lockers to collect our items. The same surly official was on duty, none the wiser about my secret phone.
Back in our car, I switched on my work phone, expecting a flood of requests for interviews, footage, and information about the girls. But no surge came. Nothing. It was early in the States, I told myself. Eventually my CNN bosses would want me live to discuss the visit and my impressions of the girls. After all, I was the only journalist to actually have gotten close enough to speak to the girls since their release. This was a world exclusive. Little did I know how wrong I was.
There wasn’t a single request from CNN USA. Election fever had burned away interest in everything else, even a story the network had been the leader on. In this new world order, the only thing that mattered was the razed-earth election unfolding. Even more disheartening was that CNN International, a channel dedicated to world news, was now airing so many of the shows from CNN USA that there were only a handful of live spots available for me to appear on. After years of reporting for the network alongside some of its finest journalists and winning countless awards for the quality of our work, this was a watershed moment. When one of the most significant moments in the Chibok story arrived, CNN looked the other way. The network wanted to focus all of its attention on Trump. It was galling.
The limited coverage of the girls’ release on CNN meant few people saw my reporting that day, but my mother was one of those who did. When we spoke later that evening, I could feel her immense pride. She has always been my biggest cheerleader. Even though the networks’ interest in the story fizzled out almost as soon as I arrived in Nigeria, my mother still believed it was an important trip. We were both thrilled that I’d been able to speak to the girls directly. I felt more determined than ever to keep the story alive. More than anything, my mother was relieved my Nigeria assignment was now over, and this time around, unlike countless times in the past, things had unfolded without any new episodes of danger or drama.
I figured it was best to keep the DSS episode to myself.
Chapter Twenty-One
WHENEVER ESTHER LONGED FOR HER DAUGHTER DORCAS, SHE DUG out her cell phone and gazed at a photo of her firstborn. Unlike in real life, her child appeared at such moments without fail. Frozen in time on the cusp of her sixteenth birthday, Dorcas was forever a picture of serenity with a vivid purple scarf that concealed her hair from view. The faintest trace of a smile could be seen on her darkly outlined rosebud lips. Her narrow-set eyes always looked back calmly at her mother. Esther sought solace in this image hundreds of times a day.
For the first three months after her daughter’s disappearance, Esther refused to eat. In due course she developed a stomach ulcer and high blood pressure. She lived between two realms, preferring to be in her mind among her memories and long-cherished dreams of her baby than with others out in the world. Every day that passed in this painful new reality in which mother and daughter were kept apart, another crack opened up in Esther’s heart.
On the second anniversary of the girls’ abduction, Pathfinders Justice Initiative, an international NGO working with survivors of sexual abuse, shared letters written by Esther Yakubu, Martha Enoch, and Rebecca Samuel to their missing Chibok daughters. In an accompanying video, Esther reads her letter aloud, her face soaked with tears as she struggles to beat back emotions, to give voice to her grief, a pain still every bit as intense as the day in 2014 when she first learned her beloved was missing.
Letter from Esther Yakubu to Her Daughter, Dorcas Yakubu
Dear Dorcas (Maida),
It has been long I heard from you. How are you and your friends, wherever you are? Hoping that you are doing better, or managing life, and I know that the angel of the Lord Almighty is with you, and He will continue to be with you wherever you are. You don’t know—you don’t have any idea of the plans I have been planning for you all this while. Since from birth, I’ve been planning for you, your life, your education, your health, before you were kidnapped. Before marriage, I wanted you to go to the university, because I have not been there. My hope is that you will be a fashion designer, as a woman. I have even bought a sewing machine for you, and a traveling bag, and some set of clothes. But up till now, for two years, I have not seen or heard anything from you. But I would like to advise you, wherever you are, please be strong in the Lord and He will see you through. I know I miss you, but I have the heart and
I have the hope that one day I will see you again. I believe that one day I will fulfill my promise to you, and I will see you again, and my happiness, my joy, my life, will be complete with you and I will be a happy mother again. The Lord is your strength, and I have that hope in me that I will see you again and I will rejoice in the Lord Almighty.
From your mum,
Esther Yakubu
Letter from Martha Enoch to Her Daughter, Monica Enoch
Dear Monica,
Life has been difficult without you these last two years. My life is in discomfort and I have been living with hypertension since they stole you from me on April 14, 2014. We miss you whenever we remember the role that you played in our family, especially your sisters. You were so kind and so special because you touched the lives of everyone that met you. Our prayers have never ended for you and we still sing your favorite choruses that you would sing in church. We sing them every morning and every evening in Hausa and we remember your voice. I always end up in tears. I wanted you to be a doctor and in fact, we have nicknamed [our other daughter] “doctor” because of you. Your father had a dream where he saw you walking up a ladder to heaven. My hope is that I will see you here on earth again but if I do not, I know you are in heaven. Please serve God faithfully and I pray that God bring you back to me. I miss you, my daughter.
From your mum,
Martha Enoch
Letter from Rebecca Samuel to Her Daughter, Sarah Samuel
Dear Sarah,
You were only eighteen at the time of your abduction. By now you would be twenty years; that means it’s been two years since you have been taken from me. I am suffering, I am bitter, I cry every time and I am praying and fasting. Many things are hard and we are just managing life. I know and believe in God that if there is still life, one day we will see you again. People say that the [abduction] is a lie, but it is true. I want to tell them that if it were their children, how would they feel? The 219 children have not returned since then. If not because of God’s grace, we all would have died. Some of us [parents] got hypertension, while others got different illnesses because we are thinking about our abducted children. If you were dead, we would have cried and been able to move on. But we do not know if you are still alive or dead. That is why we are worried. I cry and my heart is bitter every night. I am praying that if you are alive, God should rescue you. I believe God will save you. As your mother, I am begging God for you to continue praying wherever you are. I want to tell you to be strong and continue praying. I lost everything, I lost everything when I lost you.
From your mum,
Rebecca
In a town as small and tightly knit as Chibok, everyone felt the pain expressed by Esther, Martha, and Rebecca. The entire community mourned with the parents of the missing girls, just as it had done from the very beginning. Many of the parents felt assaulted by the tragedy, and the tumult of emotions had a terrible effect on their bodies. Equally injurious was the indifference they felt from the federal government, the distinct sense that they and their poor children didn’t matter.
By the time that second anniversary came around, more than a dozen parents of the missing girls had died from stress-related illnesses. Of those remaining, like Esther, many continued to battle ill health and to ask the same questions they’d asked from the very beginning: “Where are our girls? What’s being done to bring them home?”
But at this point, Esther didn’t expect to receive an answer.
“I don’t think the government is putting in any effort,” she said. “It is in fact only because of the pressure placed on them by Bring Back Our Girls that they make a move. But if they stop, the government just stays where they are.”
Esther expressed this opinion loudly and forcefully in countless interviews with journalists from around the world. Her candor brought whispered warnings of government retribution from concerned friends and acquaintances. All of them were worried for her and her family, till finally Esther and her family fled Chibok and relocated in Abuja.
One Sunday afternoon almost four months after the second anniversary, Esther returned from church, feeling unwell. She took her blood pressure medication and retreated to bed. She was drifting off to sleep when her husband’s cell phone rang. Groaning with annoyance, she put a pillow over her head and willed herself back to sleep.
“They said they have released some of the girls!” Yakubu came running through the door.
Esther bolted straight up. “Ah! Ah! Which girls?” she demanded. Gone was her desire for sleep—Dorcas was the only thing on her mind.
The news came from Pastor Enoch back in Chibok, whose daughter Monica was also among the missing. The pastor had been trying to reach Esther. She now scrambled for her phone and immediately tried calling a local journalist she knew but couldn’t get through. Growing frantic, she quickly called Aunty Becky, a close family friend.
“Is it true that they have released some girls?” Esther’s voice was full of expectation.
Becky hadn’t heard that news. “But it will be on the Internet, so let me check and I will get back to you.”
A list of people to call ran through Esther’s head. One after the other, she dialed their numbers: first, Mallam Nkeki, the head of the Chibok Parents’ Association; then Madame Yanna, also part of the group, whose her daughter Rifkatu was missing too. Lawan Zannah, the secretary of the organization, was next. But the cell phone network in Chibok was known for being spotty, and she couldn’t get through to anyone. She tried her younger brother and couldn’t reach him either. She paced up and down, frantic, knowing her blood pressure was climbing. Then Aunty Becky called back.
“They didn’t release any girls,” Aunty Becky said.
Esther let out the breath she’d been holding.
“It is a video they released and it is showing about fifty girls. Let me put it on my laptop so you can listen.”
At first Esther couldn’t hear the video clearly because the volume was low, but when Aunty Becky turned it up, Esther heard it: the voice she’d known for nearly sixteen years, one that had been silent for too long.
“That is my daughter!” she screamed.
“No, it can’t be,” Aunty Becky shot back. “They said this girl’s name is Maida.”
“My baby’s name is Maida!” Esther shouted. She’d lost all sensation in her body.
“Esther stop! Stop shouting!” Aunty Becky tried to calm her. “Esther! Esther, stop screaming! Your baby is alive. Now is not the time to cry.”
But Esther couldn’t have stopped even if she’d wanted to.
Was it true? Was it possible? Could that really be Dorcas? She needed to see the video with her own eyes. But how? Right then she remembered another local journalist and dialed him.
“I was just about to call you,” he said, picking up immediately. “Have you seen the video?”
“No, I have only heard it over the phone.”
“Okay, I’m coming with it now. Where is your house?”
He was at her front door within the hour with a laptop and his cameraman. Esther and Yakubu gathered around the laptop and then the journalist hit Play. The girl who appeared on screen was thinner, but she was unmistakable. It took only seconds for Esther to let out a piercing scream. The sound panicked her children Ibrahim and Missy, who immediately came running. They were utterly confused by the scene: Esther, Yakubu, the journalist, and his cameraman, all weeping.
Hearing her firstborn child beg the Nigerian government to make a deal for the release was searing. For Yakubu, the shock of seeing his painfully thin daughter standing next to an armed terrorist was a crushing blow. And yet he was relieved, because there she was, his child on the screen, alive. For more than two years she’d been out of sight, but now was right in front of his very eyes. Esther was unable to move on from the images of her daughter in that video; they were all she could think about and she retreated even further into her mind.
Almost nine weeks later, twenty-one of the Chibok schoolgirls along
with baby Amos were released, surprising Esther and the entire world. She’d gotten the news from an uncle, but it wasn’t immediately clear to any of the Chibok families which of the girls had been set free. Esther and her family spent a sleepless night praying for Dorcas’s name to be included on the list. But it wasn’t. And the news wounded her.
With all her might, Esther willed herself to be happy for the other Chibok mothers. “If I am a true mother . . . and I don’t get mine, but you get yours, I will rejoice with you. Then maybe another time will come and it will be mine to rejoice.” Still, the pain of her loss in the face of the other girls’ release was searing.
During the two-plus years since the abduction, Esther had refused to enter Dorcas’s bedroom, instead leaving it just the way it had been the day her child disappeared in 2014. She didn’t want to see any of her daughter’s possessions. Her bed, suitcase, books, school bag, and two brand-new school uniforms remained untouched. She forbade the younger children from taking anything out of there.
When Esther and her family moved to Abuja, they’d installed a lodger in the family’s Chibok home as a way to stop the numerous break-ins they’d suffered. Unbeknownst to Esther, in a bid for more space, the lodger had moved Dorcas’s belongings to Esther’s own bedroom in her absence.
A family trip home to Chibok a few months after the August 2016 proof-of-life video was released suddenly brought Esther into contact with Dorcas’s possessions for the first time in years. Esther felt the wind knocked out of her. After that one encounter, she moved her mattress into the living room and refused to enter her bedroom again unless absolutely necessary.
Meanwhile, mealtimes continued to be a source of anguish. The entire time, Esther would wonder whether Dorcas was also being fed and nourished. Not knowing if her daughter was being given food to eat left this mother struggling to eat anything herself. All that sustained her was prayer.
Esther and her family held tightly to their faith and willed themselves to believe that it was just a matter of time before the sound of Dorcas’s voice once again filled their home. Dorcas had always been the one who led her family in prayer. In her absence, Esther’s younger daughter Missy, who was starting to look more like her lost sister with each passing day, now took up those duties during morning and evening devotion. When the twenty-one girls returned, Missy began to alter the daily prayer she gave.