Born on a Tuesday (18 page)

Alhaji Usman walks away. Malam Abduljalal follows him.

Malam Yunusa moves closer to me. Soldiers begin to shout at people, asking them to leave and go home. They are hitting and pushing people. When one of them fires a shot in the air, people scream and start to throw stones at them. The soldiers shoot into the crowd. Some run away but most people stand their ground, pelting the soldiers with even bigger stones. I get down from the benches and pick up a stone. The crowd is closing in on them. The soldiers start to back away and then begin to run, shooting as they do. The crowd pursues. A large stone gets one of the soldiers in the neck. He trips and falls. As we all surge forward to where the soldier has fallen, I turn around to look for Malam Yunusa. He is there, a few feet behind me, lying motionless in the dust beside one of the boys of the volunteer guard. Tears well up in my eyes as I drag his body and lean it against a wall. By the time I reach where the soldier is lying, the crowd has torn off his uniform and smashed his head with stones and sticks. A human body without a face does not look like a human being.

I am back in my room, folding a few clothes into my bag, wondering if Sheikh would have listened to the soldiers and dispersed the crowd or continued speaking, if I have made Sheikh proud or disappointed him. I have never felt the ground tremble the way it does now under the armoured tanks that roll onto the street. The sound of the guns they are shooting now are different from the ones the soldiers who came to disperse the crowd were shooting. I will not wait until the soldiers start destroying the town and killing people.

I cannot reach my brothers on the phone. I dial Aisha's number.

‘I am sorry I haven't called you until now. I didn't know what to say.'

‘It's OK,' she whispers.

‘How do you feel?'

‘I'm fine.'

‘Are you at home?'

‘We just got to Kaduna. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. It all happened so quickly.'

‘Why are you whispering?'

‘Because there are people all around me.'

‘How long will you be there?'

‘Call me later please. My mum is here. There are people all around.'

‘I have to travel too. The whole place is hot now. There is a riot. I will call you when I get to Dogon Icce.'

‘May Allah forbid mishaps on the road.'

I am not sure if she heard me say there is a riot.

As I approach the motor park, I realise I have to fight for a bus. I put the strap of my bag across my chest and grip it as I run. The fare has doubled. I don't care. I just need to get out of this place. Everyone in the bus complains, some raining curses on the driver for taking advantage of a desperate situation.

‘Whoever doesn't want it can get out of my bus.'

We take dirt roads through residential areas. There is dust everywhere. The route is longer but the driver says it will avoid the checkpoints. He just returned from Dogon Icce, so he should know.

Everyone is telling him to stop as he tries to cross an open gutter. He tells us to shut up and that he is in charge, before running right into it and getting stuck. No one wants to help him push the bus but no one wants to remain here either. In the end we have to lift the bus and put stones and wooden planks beneath the two front tires before he is able to drive out of the gutter. Everyone is running away, but after defying the soldiers only this morning, I feel like a coward in this bus. Like a rat scampering through dirt roads.

If Jibril was able to make it out, he must be in Makurdi by now.

Towards the end of the last dirt road that leads onto one of the main tarred roads, the driver tells everyone to hold on. He wants to speed right into the road just in case there are any soldiers around the corner. He screeches onto the tarred road. In the distance there is a truck coming our way. As we come closer we realise it is an army truck. The driver slows down and tries to make a U-turn. The truck honks and the soldiers start shooting and screaming. People in the bus start screaming at the driver, telling him to stop. As soon as the driver parks on the side of the road, the two men in the front seats get out and begin to run. The truck pulls over behind us and several soldiers jump out, firing shots in the air. As we all get down from the bus with our hands in the air, four soldiers emerge from the dirt road with the two men who just ran away.

‘You are the people who kill soldiers abi?' one of the soldiers shouts at the two men. One of the men spits on the soldiers. A soldier from the truck kicks them both to the floor and shoots them in the chest and in the head. They order us to lie flat on the hot asphalt and they tie our hands behind our backs with wire.

Counting Days

Day One

At first some things seem like a joke. I hear stories of things happening to others, I hear the words—people disappearing, people's hands getting chopped off, people getting beaten and people dying. The words produce pictures in my mind but it is nothing compared with experiencing it. When Sheikh told me about being arrested and being detained for eight weeks for involvement in a riot where a boy in his school was killed, it was just a story. Until I woke up with my hands sore from being bound tightly behind my back, none of it was real.

I am lying in a room with people pissing on themselves and throwing up and crying. One man has been lying still since they threw him in. A man I recognise from the motor park is bleeding from his right ear and falling in and out of consciousness. They must at least let us relieve ourselves or pray at some point. None of this makes any sense. I cannot tell where we are because we were blindfolded with rags on the way here.

The sun is high and I can see the steam rising from people's bodies. My throat is dry and it is painful to swallow saliva. My back itches terribly. I make my way to a wall and rub my back against it.

I can no longer hold back the urge to pee. Slowly I let the warm fluid trickle down my legs making the fabric stick to my skin. The man in front of me doesn't even shift his feet as the urine reaches him. Everyone is too traumatised to care about urine on the floor.

I have failed Sheikh and let the movement down. I have let my brothers down. I grit my teeth and struggle to free my hands until I have no energy left. My hands burn. My eyes burn. My heart burns.

At night the soldiers take turns banging the metal doors with sticks for nearly an hour. At first my head pounds but after a while I don't hear the sounds anymore.

Day Two

People are being taken out every few hours in groups of three.

‘The key to your freedom is in your hands,' a man with a megaphone says, walking through the hallway that separates the two rows of cells.

‘We will still win without you. All we want is to give the smart ones among you an opportunity to help themselves and their families.'

He tells us how people who cooperated and provided crucial information have gotten their freedom. There are thirty-five of us in a room the size of my office in the mosque.

Sale is thrown into my cell. His face is swollen and his mouth is bleeding. He nods at me.

‘Where did they pick you up?' I ask him.

He hesitates and then says: ‘At the mosque.'

‘What were you doing there? You know we were all running away after they started arresting people.'

He is silent.

He tells me how there is now a twenty-four-hour curfew in the state because of people everywhere on the streets protesting the heavy hand of the soldiers. That they have ransacked my office in the mosque and all the rooms and even the school. That they met resistance at the school because our boys refused to let them in. After shooting a few of them the soldiers demolished one part of the fence and broke into Sheikh's offices.

‘What of Malam Abduljalal?' I ask.

‘He tried to reach out to Alhaji Usman. But Alhaji Usman refused to get involved. He said we should all allow the soldiers do their work. They have already arrested the local government chairman for being one of the people giving the Mujahideen money.'

Politicians are all the same. Now that Sheikh is dead, Alhaji Usman doesn't see any need to protect the movement. He is more interested in winning the elections.

A boy keeps screaming, ‘I am not a Mujahideen,' in the cell opposite ours. They have still not given us any food or water.

I have just dozed off when they open the cell and throw in two men. One of them has been shot in both legs and the other's head is swollen and bleeding. I look again and the man with the swollen head is Mohammed Sani, the new Dariqa malam.

Day Three

Silence comes on the third day. The boy opposite is no longer screaming. Mohammed Sani is lying on his side, no longer breathing. There are no more whispers between the detainees. Our stomachs growl and rumble. The body of a man they brought in on the first day has started to swell and smell. I feel my body turning on me today. It feels like my stomach is eating and attacking itself.

The man with the megaphone passes by our cell and someone sitting by my side calls out to him.

‘I want to talk.'

‘OK. Talk,' the megaphone man says.

‘Not here. Take me out.'

‘You are sure you don't want to waste my time?'

‘No sir, I have information.'

‘Why did you not say so all this time that we have been asking.'

‘I was afraid, sir.'

‘Afraid of what?'

‘Please sir, just get me out and I will tell you everything I know.'

‘And how do you know what you know?'

‘Please sir,' the man starts to cry.

‘How do you know what you know?'

‘I was in the Mujahideen enclave!' he screams.

‘OK,' the megaphone man says, ‘I am coming.'

The man moves away from the rest of us as if he is scared that we will attack him. ‘Hypocrite,' an old man says and spits in his direction.

‘Who likes the Mujahideen?' the old man continues. ‘No one. But these people hate us equally. They don't care who is Mujahideen or Dariqa or Izala or Shiite. All they want is to oppress and kill Muslims.'

The man who wants to confess is breathing hard.

‘Maybe you like it here, but I don't. Let my children judge me. And you are not Allah. Let Allah judge us for our actions. But I will rather be alive to take care of my family than dead trying to be stubborn.'

‘Yes, because we here have no children or families ko?' the old man responds.

‘Do what you will, but let me be and let Allah judge us all.'

The megaphone man comes back with three soldiers and leads the man away.

In the evening the soldiers return. Flashing a large torch light on our faces, they pick a skinny man and begin to take off his trousers. He kicks and screams and bites one of the soldiers. After one shot in the chest, he stops kicking and they strip him naked. With the light they examine the man's body.

‘Look at it,' the one holding the torch says, pointing at the dead man's right thigh.

‘Bastard! He is one of them. He has the mark.'

They start taking off everyone's trousers and separating people into groups. Those with a scar shaped like a crescent on the outer part of the right thigh and those without. They move Sale to the group of two men with scars. He looks up at me and then looks down. If anyone had told me that Sale was a Mujahideen, I would have said it was a lie but I might have understood. But a part of the Mujahideen killer squad? I wonder when he joined or if he had always been with them while he had access to the mosque and to all our documents. I want to spit on him as they march them all out of the cell. They make two of the men carry out the dead bodies.

Day Four

My eyes are blurry and I need to focus hard before I can make out any object. Sheikh appears. Then Jibril appears. Then Umma. Umma appears on my left and Aisha on my right. Umma is silent. Aisha is saying I should make up a story so that I leave this prison. I wish I had something to tell the megaphone man.

They bring in a large bowl of water that smells like it was used to wash fish and several plates of dry beans.

Most of us have our hands bound with either wire or handcuffs so people knock heads and slam their bodies against each other. The soldiers stand and watch and laugh. I refuse to join the struggle.

‘You are too big for our beans ko?' one of the soldiers says to me, sniggering.

The old man who insulted the confessor yesterday was one of the first to grab a plate of food. He brings me a handful of beans. I shake my head.

‘Don't be stupid, you will die if you do not eat,' he says.

‘Thank you,' I say.

He gives it to the man to his right, who didn't get anything to eat. The man eats it out of his hand then crawls to the bowl of water and dips his head inside to drink.

‘You, I know you,' the old man whispers, ‘you are Sheikh Jamal's boy.'

I smile and nod gently.

‘My name is Samaila. I sell fried fish at the junction in front of the house where Abdul-Nur used to live.'

My ears shut down and I cannot hear him anymore. I am hearing Jibril say English words to me and laughing when I don't pronounce them right. I am hearing him say Arabic words and hearing myself laugh when he doesn't pronounce them right.

Day Five

By nightfall almost everyone in our cell has a running stomach and is throwing up. It looks like cholera. Samaila throws up just close to my feet. He has been stooling all afternoon. Now he is too weak to even move. At some point he stretches out his hand to me.

‘Boy,' he whispers.

‘Samaila,' I reply.

Day Six

The soldiers bring in four of the prisoners from another cell to clear out more bodies from our cell. There are fifteen of us left and three of them are very sick. They move those of us who aren't stooling and vomiting to a tiny cell at the end of the hallway.

‘I want paper,' I tell the soldier leading us away, ‘paper and a pen or pencil.'

‘To do what with?'

‘Please I want something to write with.'

‘Do you even know how to read? Is it not you people who are calling school a sin?'

‘Please, just a paper and pen.'

‘Shut up and move!'

‘Please.'

‘Look, if you talk to me again I will shoot you.'

Today they bring us bread and I know that I have to eat it. I close my eyes and hear the old man's voice in my ear. I hate him now for telling me his name. Without a name, it is easier to forget. The mind is a crazy thing. The things you want to keep forever fade away and the things you want to fade away stick like cashew stains on clothes.

The image of Sheikh's body flashes and disappears from time to time like a heartbeat. I want to remember him whole, not like that.

They have taken off our handcuffs. I think they need them for new, stronger prisoners.

One of the detainees tries to talk to me. I refuse to look at his face. I refuse to have another dead person stuck in my head.

I wish I could write.

Day Ten

The megaphone man has stopped coming. I can recite what he says word for word. It is confusing how I can miss him.

The man who has been bringing food regularly for the past two days, who even brought food twice yesterday and looks at me every time he does, is here again. He knows my name.

‘Get up Ahmad. Let us go to my office.'

I am suspicious.

‘I want to help you,' he adds as he takes me out of the cramped cell.

‘Thank you,' I say.

‘You see, the president is now interested in this our crisis and has asked us to do everything necessary to end it. I am from Sokoto myself. I don't like seeing our people in here. It makes me cry at night.'

He holds me by the shoulders as we take many turns away from the blocks of cells. My bones hurt so bad.

‘You have been associated with Malam Abdul-Nur before, no?'

He drags a chair in a dimly lit room that smells like an abattoir and asks me to sit. There are three other men in the room.

‘He used to be in our mosque before he left.'

‘And?'

‘After he left for Saudi Arabia, I never saw him again.'

‘OK. But did you see any of his people?'

‘No.'

‘Are you sure about this? You see, I have been kind to you. It will be kind of you to make my job easier. In fact, I am thinking of moving you to a bigger cell where you will have water for ablution and everything.'

‘I swear sir, I do not know any Mujahideen.'

‘OK.'

He steps aside and nods to one of the men who ties my torso and legs to the chair I am sitting in, lifts me to a pillar in the room and ties my arms around the pillar. Then he is handed a pair of pliers. I am staring at the pliers. My head is telling me that it is all a joke and he will untie me and we will all laugh about this. My eyes become blurry and it makes the pliers look like a play object so that I start to believe my head about the joke. He whips out my phone from his pocket.

‘I don't know why you are lying to me. These text messages were sent to you from that camp. I just want to make sure and give you an opportunity to cooperate with us before we go in and clear them out of there. I am disappointed in you. I will give you another opportunity to talk. But you must first learn the importance of telling the truth.'

He reaches for my nails. At first I don't feel anything because my head is still stuck in the belief that this is all a joke. Then the pain comes gushing. I feel it everywhere; in my nose and in my scrotum.

As blood flows down my arms, I scream until there are no more sounds coming from my stomach. The shock of the pain shuts me down and after a few minutes all I can hear are bubbly echoes.

There is pain. And there is pain.

Day Fourteen

If you stare at a wall hard enough, you begin to see patterns. Your mind connects the stains on the walls to make a face, an animal, a letter or an object. When I shut my eyes and look again, the pattern changes.

Jibril's face appears on a large part of the wall. I do not want to see his face. I shut my eyes and inhale deeply. He is safe and far away from all this madness and happy. And I must forget his face. I must forget his face.

I open my eyes and stare at a smaller portion of the wall. There is something shaped like a small microphone. I miss the call to prayer. These days I want to whisper it, say ‘Allahu Akbar,' but it gets harder and harder as I wonder why we spend hours and hours saying that Allah is great when He abandons us in our time of need.

Does He abandon us?

Astaghfirullah.

Astaghfirullah.

Day Eighteen