Born on a Tuesday (15 page)

It is impressive how no one is late for the screening of the debate. We start at exactly 8 p.m. and the gates to the school are shut. All the men were searched at the gate as they came in. No knives or bottles are allowed in. I got one of the volunteer guards to set up a table where he would keep and tag, with masking tape, any knife or bottle that was taken away, so that the owner could have it back at the end of the film. I am chewing on my nails and panting like I have been running. Perhaps I should have watched the debate before showing it.

The film starts playing and Sheikh and Malam Abdul-Nur are seated, facing each other. Malam Abdul-Nur looks agitated. You can see that he is grinding his teeth. They each have ten minutes to speak and five minutes to respond.

Malam Abdul-Nur opens with a long Arabic quotation from a book by Bakr ibn Abdullah Abu Zayd. He then translates it into Hausa and explains how Islamic societies were self-sufficient and pious and progressive. The Europeans, he explains, needing to conquer Muslim people, sought to start by conquering their culture through worthless and sinful education. He says that if the Europeans had come with guns and ships, it might have been easy to fend them off. But they came with liberal ideas and education to slowly eat at the root of Islamic civilisation and control. He calls the modern Islamic universities ‘so-called Islamic universities' because they have adopted Western education. Then he takes a more direct hit at Sheikh by saying that the basis of the Nigerian government is kufr because democracy is ‘a disgusting, anti-Islamic, Western invention which seeks to introduce liberal ideas and kill Islamic values.' He adds that working for the cause of kufr makes a person a kafir. He emphasises the word ‘kafir' and says that it is the obligation of every able Muslim to forcefully challenge and remove ungodly, infidel rulers. Not through elections, because elections themselves are part of a system of kufr, but by force, because Muslims are bound by submission to the will of Allah.

The crowd is becoming uneasy and offended by the way Malam Abdul-Nur directly calls Sheikh an infidel.

I hear a commotion at the gate and run to see what is going on. When I get there, a policeman is pointing his rifle at one of the volunteer guards and shouting. His colleagues are holding him back.

‘What is the matter?' I ask Yushau.

‘It is that policeman. One of the boys saw him bring out a small bottle of alcohol from his pocket and told him not to drink it here. That is all.'

I walk over to the shouting policeman.

‘Please let us lower our voices,' I say.

‘Tell your boys to know how to respect a person wearing a uniform. I am not his playmate.'

‘I apologise for how he must have spoken to you. But please help us. We are the ones who want you here. You know this is a religious event and it is against the religion to have alcohol. Please, if you can just wait a bit, until we finish.'

The policeman glowers at the boy who challenged him, then looks at me.

‘OK. But tell them not to disrespect me again. Otherwise we will pack up and leave.'

‘Done. Thank you, officer.'

I want to speak to the boy directly, but I do not want to make Yushau look bad or weak in front of his boys. I take Yushau aside and explain to him that he needs to make sure he is on top of things and avoid any confrontation with the police. He apologises for not handling the situation well.

When I get back to the debate, Sheikh is asking Malam Abdul-Nur if he had ever been to any of the ‘so-called' Islamic universities he is condemning. He asks if Malam Abdul-Nur knows the curriculum of any of them. As Malam Abdul-Nur shakes his head, there are outbursts of ‘Allahu Akbar' in the crowd. They are relieved at the comeback.

‘To fight an enemy, you must understand an enemy. How do you struggle against those whose elements you know nothing about? Seek knowledge, the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said. Where are the Muslim schools for our children to attend? Have we built them? I have built one school. But of the millions of Muslim children, how many can go to a Muslim school? Should our people remain ignorant and keep being controlled by the same Western forces? Give me one hadith or Quranic verse that tells you that English itself is haram, even by analogical deduction. If there is, I would like to know. Osama bin Laden, did he go to an Islamic school? Al-Zarqawi, did he go to an Islamic school? Were they not all trained in Western ways? Is that not how they are able to struggle against the West? They learn the tricks of the West well enough to use those tricks against them. You cannot choose deliberate ignorance and claim to be fighting for the cause of Islam. The principle of darura, necessity, means that we use what we have to get what we want.'

‘Are you then agreeing with the legitimacy of these systems of kufr over Muslims?' Malam Abdul-Nur interjects.

‘Look, I agree with you that the system of the Nigerian government is not a system known to Islam. What Islam knows is khilafa. But just as it is possible to do shirk or bid'a or haram in an Islamic government and be condemned to hellfire, so it is possible to be pious and righteous and uphold halal in an un-Islamic government and receive the reward of aljanna firdaus.'

‘So you are saying we fold our hands and do nothing while the West destroys Islam through our infidel government.'

‘I am saying, which is more injurious to Muslims, refusing to join the government and refusing to go to school and being sidelined by the government or going to school, pushing for separate classrooms for boys and girls, pushing for girls to wear their hijabs to school, joining government and the police and the army and eventually becoming strong enough to control the government? Look at what Obasanjo did to us—he reduced our numbers in the army and in the police and reduced our influence everywhere. Now you are saying don't go to school, don't be part of government—is that supposed to remedy it or make it worse? When our women and children can't read and write, is this supposed to help them take over Nigeria? Let me ask you a question and I want you to answer. If you got guns and men and tanks and defeated the Nigerian army, what is your plan for ruling this country, especially as there is a whole other half that is not Muslim?'

‘Sharia! I will use Sharia! The laws of Allah are self-sufficient.'

‘How do you plan to do that all around the country? I am interested to know.'

Malam Abdul-Nur is silent. After a few seconds, Sheikh continues.

‘You don't have a plan! You don't even have a plan for defeating the army. All you want is to give into your lust for power and get Muslims killed unnecessarily in the streets. That is what is ignorance—allowing your feelings to guide you instead of thinking of whether this will be good for Muslims or not. This is a dangerous thing you are preaching and if you have the interest of the Muslim ummah at heart, you will stop it. I will be the happiest if we can replace this government with an Islamic government. But we must work for it. I am still extending my invitation to you. Let us continue working together.'

For a few minutes the film continues playing but neither of them is speaking. It ends and the crowd begins clapping wildly and chanting ‘Allahu Akbar.' I take a microphone from the man controlling the projector and tell everyone that we are grateful that they came and that people should file out quietly after receiving their drinks and food, which are near the gates. Men will collect theirs on the right and women on the left, close to their respective exits.

I check my phone and see that Sheikh has sent me a text to ask if everything is going fine. I walk into his office in the school and try to call him. He cuts the call. Then he calls back.

‘What's the story?'

‘Wallahi, everything is just perfect, no rowdiness and the people loved the film.'

‘Alhamdulillah! Is there enough for everyone to eat?'

‘Insha Allah, Sheikh. I am sure it will go round.'

‘Give the policemen thirty thousand before they leave.'

‘Sheikh, isn't that too much? There are only sixteen of them. We can give them twenty thousand so that they can share at least one thousand per person.'

‘OK, if you think so.'

‘What of the volunteer guard?'

‘You know we don't give them money. Let them have as much food as they want and let the buses take them wherever they want to go. But we don't want to introduce money. The police, they are rotten because of this kind of thing. Our volunteer guard is good because they are not doing it for the money. When they need anything we provide it.'

‘OK, Sheikh.'

‘Go and sleep when everything is over. We will talk tomorrow. You will tell me what you thought of the film.'

‘Allah keep us, Sheikh.'

I see that Jibril has also tried to reach me. I know he said not to call him back but I do anyway. He does not pick up. He sends a text saying he will call me back.

I am tired and sit to rest a bit in the office before going home. I turn on the computer and wipe the dusty keyboard with the tip of my caftan. Sale is a really filthy guy. I don't know how he can work on a table as dirty as this. There is everything, food remnants from the Indomie he orders from the mai shayi near the mosque, oil, dust. I find a rag in the corner of the room and use some water from the plastic kettle to dampen it. I clean the computer monitor, then lift the keyboard to clean the table properly. There is a blank CD beneath the keyboard. I put it aside and continue cleaning.

I am thinking of Microsoft Excel. Sale claims not to know how to use it. I do not know if he really doesn't know or if he just doesn't want to teach me. I lift the keyboard again and pick up the plain CD, open the CD drive and put it in. It is weird how much I like hearing the hum as the drive spins the CD. Windows Media Player comes up and the CD starts playing. The video begins abruptly and I almost jump out of my seat. A man is sitting down, naked, and a naked white woman kneels before him and starts to rub his penis. Then she starts sucking until she takes the whole penis in her mouth. At first it is disgusting how each time she appears to be about to throw up because of how he is pushing his penis deep into her mouth.

A chill is passing through my body. I shut the windows and close the door. My penis is getting harder and harder until I feel like my head is about to burst. I stop the CD, put it back under the keyboard and turn off the computer. Still my head and chest feel like they are about to burst and my penis is still getting harder. It has never been this hard before. Images from the CD flood my mind. All I can see is the woman with the man in her mouth. I loosen my trousers, pull up my caftan, suspend it with my chin and start to stroke. I close my eyes and I see the naked white woman then the naked prostitute behind the tipper garage and then my mind changes the woman's face to Aisha's and she is the one having me in her mouth.

I stroke harder and harder, and then the door just swings open. I freeze in the chair. Sheikh looks at me and steps into the room. My chin releases the caftan and it falls over my penis.

‘You know,' Sheikh begins, hiccupping, ‘if every man were to be instantly judged for their sins, there would hardly be anyone left standing.'

I feel like the earth beneath me should part and swallow me. It feels like walking through a wedding ceremony with shit on my face.

‘I will tell you a story,' he says.

I move in my seat and tighten my trouser slowly beneath my caftan.

‘Before people started calling me Sheikh, before anyone knew me in this motor park, maybe even before you were born, I had a wife. Not this one here with me now. Another one. My cousin. Asiya was her name. The one I loved before I knew anything. I loved her before I knew what a woman was.'

The room is suddenly very hot.

‘I didn't know what marriage was. My father had arranged my marriage and I took it all for granted. And what did I know? Even when I met Hauwa, who owned the restaurant near my house, what did I know? The first time it happened, Hauwa cried. For days. And she made me swear that I would never tell Asiya. Then she made me agree that I would take her as a second wife. And when I agreed and tried to meet her people, she refused, saying that she had changed her mind and didn't want to be a second wife. Of course I could not do that to Asiya, send her away after less than one year because I wanted to marry another person. And Asiya, who trusted me more than she trusted anyone in the world, didn't suspect anything. She would even beg me sometimes, when she was not feeling strong, to go to Hauwa and buy some food. I had promised Asiya when we were marrying that I would never take a second wife. She said, “No, don't make me that promise. It is sunna for you to take another wife. I cannot let you swear not to do something Allah has made halal for you. It is your right.” I said, “Yes, it is, but it is not wajib. I don't have to.” So I swore I never would. One day she came home earlier than she should have, you know it is not as if there was GSM then. And she caught us, Hauwa and me, in the living room, without any clothes on.'

Sheikh drags a chair and sits, facing me. I shuffle in my seat, and fold my arms across my lap. He is looking at the ground between us.

‘So.' I clear my throat. ‘What happened?'

‘I left her. Not she. I. Because I had breached a trust. And when I thought how each time I would go out she would suspect that I had been with another woman or always live in fear that I would take another wife, I could not go on like that. She forgave me. We didn't even have to talk about it. She just asked me: “Will you marry her?” and when I said no, all she said was, “Poor woman.” We never talked about it again but then each time, I saw that fear in her eyes when I needed to talk to her about something or when I returned home. She would stare deep into my eyes as if she was waiting for me to say I was going to bring another woman home. I could not just keep on paying for that moment and being with someone who would never trust me again. So I left her. And, you know, my friends, they insulted me—they said I was taking my wife too seriously. And they were right. I did take her seriously. She was not just my cousin. She was the best friend I had.'