<\/p>\n
Day of Terror<\/strong><\/p>\n THE day they took us was like watching a bad film. We heard gunshots in the distance. We did not know what it was or who was shooting. But there were so many guns firing. We were used to hunters shooting games in the open grassland, but it was never so many shots at once. This time it was different. Tatatatatata ratatatatatata ratatatatatatata<\/em>, the shots rang on and on; they seemed to go on forever. We were scared; I was really very scared. We were in the living room studying the bible that Sunday afternoon long after church service, as was our custom at home, when the gunshots began to sing. Father quickly finished the portion he was reading and Mother said a short prayer for the safety of us all and we hurriedly said \u2018Amen.\u2019<\/p>\n Father went outside to see what was happening; he joined other men in the neighbourhood. We could hear them talking in low tones, wondering who could be shooting. Mother told my brother and I to go into our rooms and remain still. We went inside and closed the door.<\/p>\n Whatever it was, we knew it was not good. We had been hearing stories of killings and destruction in neighouring villages. Damboa, which was not too far from us, had been completely destroyed and its emir killed. From what we heard, no house was still standing; their roofs had all burnt. No one was living in Damboa anymore since the killers started their madness many months ago. Boko Haram<\/em>, haters of western education, is what they called them. We dared not say the name aloud; we whispered it instead. We used the name to scare children into obedience. It was such a dreaded name. Mentioning it alone brought shivers to the bones. So, we just said \u2018killers for an impure god.\u2019<\/p>\n We are Christians and know how wrong it is to take another person\u2019s life. But these people fear no God or man. For them killing is a sport. It did not matter whether you offended them or not, whether you were right or wrong.<\/p>\n I was thinking these sad thoughts and speaking in whispers with my brother, John, when we heard gunfire spitting outside our house. Then a loud explosion followed and we found ourselves covered in dust and rubble. For a long time, I lay still. I did not know where I was. After some time, I began to hear voices faintly shouting orders in a mixture of Kanuri and Hausa for someone to search everywhere. I listened hard; the loud noise from the explosion made it difficult for me to hear well. Many whistling noises filled my ears. Everything came to me like an echo at first, as if I was in a long tunnel.<\/p>\n Then I began to regain my senses and it became clear that there were people around me. When my vision cleared and I could see properly, I saw that our beautiful house was gone. The open sky was the first thing that greeted my gaze. The roof was gone. My brother lay in a pile not far from where I was. I crawled to him and touched him; I tried to rouse him. He stirred briefly and groaned. Then the killers saw us. One of them came to us. When he saw that my brother was still alive, he aimed his gun at him and shot him in the head. My brother stretched and lay flat, dead, his blood splattering all over my body. I screamed and rose on shaky legs and flew at the killer and both of us crashed into the dusty pile.<\/p>\n One of the men came and dragged me away from him and held me tightly. My brother\u2019s killer got up and I could see fire in his eyes. Why did he have to kill my brother? John was only 11 years old. How had he offended him? And now, a mere woman had felled him. He came at me and dragged me out of the rubble of our house. And then I saw Mother. She lay in a heap and I flew from my captor and went to her. I knelt beside her and held her to myself. She was still breathing. I cleaned the dust from her body and she slowly stood up with me and we waded through the rubble and went outside.<\/p>\n That was when we saw Father and the other men in the neighbourhood. They were stretched out in our house front, all bloody and dead, shot and killed by the killers for an impure god! Women in the neighbourhood and girls like me had gathered and were wailing uncontrollably. All the boys in the neighbourhod also lay dead beside their fathers. It was like the end of the world. We had heard about these evil people and their wicked acts in other villages. But never would we have believed they were capable of this sort of evil. In just a few moments, they had wiped out almost all the men in our town, except those who were lucky to escape to the hills beyond and out of their reach.<\/p>\n They did not allow us to mourn our dead. They lined us up, the widowed women and bereaved girls, and asked us to march in the direction they pointed to us. As we marched on to where we did not know, we kept looking back at our dead, who lay in the pool of their own blood, sprawled on the dust. Our pain was worsened by the fact that there would be no one to give them decent burials. The thought of allowing our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons to rot away in the bleaching sun sickened us. But we were women facing a powerful enemy; those of us who tried to break away and run toward the dead were forcibly brought back into line to continue the march.<\/p>\n Then we got to a point where they parked their vehicles; they herded us into them like sheep and drove off. We stared at the hazy dust the vehicles raised in their wake and soon lost sight of our ancestral homestead, lost sight of the things that gave us life and sustenance. In short, we lost sight of who we were, as the demons drove us to whatever unknown hell they had prepared for us.<\/p>\n The Long Journey<\/strong><\/p>\n IT was late afternoon when the murderers pushed us into their trucks and drove off into the dusty road that led to their den. We had no idea where they were taking us. But we had heard of Sambisa Forest as their hideout. It seemed such a distant place. I had never been there before. No one I knew had. With our hearts filled with pain at the death of our loved ones, we were ready for the worst. What could be worse than my beloved Father\u2019s death in the hands of these ruffians or that of my young brother?<\/p>\n We looked at them closely now, these demons who had just rendered our mothers widows and the children fatherless. Ruffians! They were just ruffians. They held their guns over their shoulders carelessly. Their clothes were plastered to their bodies with blood and sweat; they needed a bath. They smelled of dirt, blood and sweat. They looked horrible. Well, it was no surprise they could only inflict horrible things on other people. It did not seem as though they were capable of love. Only loveless people hurt other people the way these killers did for an impure god.<\/p>\n In our town, we had lived together peacefully with Muslims as long as I could remember in my 13 years of life. We did not know them to carry guns to kill other people. The Allah of these ruffians must be different from the one that other Muslims we knew worshiped. At both Muslim and Christian festivals, we would exchange food, visits and gifts and wish each other well. Nobody fought anybody; nobody killed anybody. In my school, we sat and played together. We quarreled only because we were children and we made up soon after. We did not quarrel because we were Christians and they were Muslims.<\/p>\n The journey before us stretched on and on. At a point I thought it would never come to an end. The terrain was mostly grassland. But at intervals, hillocks dotted the plains; at other times, it would be sheer rocks rising from the ground like ugly giants. This was dry season, although it was mostly dry up here even in rainy season. The grass and vegetation looked mostly burnt like a bad cook\u2019s pot, with only a small window of greenery from August to October. Otherwise, it was mostly dry with oppressive heat and dust and sand.<\/p>\n That was how the savannah plain stretched on before our eyes. I had never travelled that far from our town before and it seemed such a strange country before me. Although mostly flat plane, the few dips and rise of valleys and rock hills and bridges would have made it a fascinating view. But our situation was not that of tourists out to enjoy the countryside. We were prisoners of a terrible enemy. We had our many dead behind us that we could not bury or do anything about. In light of this, the scenery presented an unpleasant background to our suffering. We saw it, but we did not notice it. It merely added to our misery as a people being taken into slavery by an enemy ready to wipe us out of existence.<\/p>\n So that when the formidable Sambisa Forest came into view it was as though our fate had finally been sealed. We had heard how difficult it was for soldiers to venture into it to deal with these killers for an impure god. If the Nigerian army could not get past this forest to fight these ruffians, what would become of our fate in their hands? What did they want to do with us? Why take us, ordinary women, prisoners? It was hard for me to understand what their aim was towards us, all helpless women. But these were bad times for everyone, except these ruffians. From the look of it, there was nothing you could put past them; they had proved that they were capable of the worst form of evil. We just have to wait to see what they had in store for us. THESE were the thoughts on my mind, when we arrived in Sambisa Forest and the infidels drove us deeper and deeper into its dark bowel. And we felt like Jonah inside the belly of the great Whale, except that it was not voluntary escape from God\u2019s mission to evangelise. We were being held against our will and forced on a journey we did not know. The ruffians did not stop until we went deeper and deeper inside. By the time they stopped, it was dusk and we had no idea where we were. It was trees and shrubs all around and nothing more. Night had begun to set and it looked so strange. It was a bit cool here, too. The settlement was large and it teemed with life. Women and children and men were all over the place. They came to us when we alighted from the trucks and led us to what would be our quarters.<\/p>\n They took our mothers to different tents and the girls to other tents. They kept us apart from our mothers, who soon became the domestic staff in their den; our mothers joined other women to work for the infidels. As the days passed, our role as girls in the camp of the enemy became clear. The girls would be the wives of the infidels for an impure god. As it stood, we had no say in the matter. It was not what we chose. But what power did we have to resist them? We were in a place so far away from home and so helpless. There was no one to defend us. We were hopeless. Our mothers were not allowed to see us; other women attended to us. They advised us to be calm. That it was useless to struggle against these beasts; that it only led to instant death in their murderous hands. They told us there was no need to give them that satisfaction.<\/p>\n But the thought of giving myself over to these evil men paralysed me. At 13 I stood in the tiny line between being a mere girl and a grown woman; that is how it is in our part of the world. It was my religion that stressed education of the girlchild, which stopped me from being married off. So, I could not claim ignorance of what the infidels of an impure god wanted of me and the other girls. Besides, we heard our mothers tell stories of how they started out at an earlier age \u2013 some a little over 10, 11 and 12. Not just that, we have seen films, read books and listened to young adults in the neighbourhood talk about what happens behind closed doors between men and women. So, I wasn\u2019t such a child any more. My fear was not so much that I was ready, but of other things. Being pure, in the real sense of it, unlike these ruffians, was my concern. Their uncleanness of heart and action made them the embodiment of evil to avoid.<\/p>\n From age 10, I have had the vision of a great wedding to the handsomest man I could find in our town and the entire neighbouring villages, who would be the first and only man I would give my flower to and who would love me forever for my precious gift to him. How then would these ruffians take my flower without as much as a \u2018thank you\u2019? What was worse, right here in this bush? It occurred to me that no violation could be more total than what awaited us, the blossoming flowers of the desert soon to wither in the scorching heat of these infidels.<\/p>\n God in heaven, please come to the help of your children, I prayed! God, are you really in heaven and watching us and seeing what these men have done to us and whatever else they plan to do to us? God, arise with fire from heaven as in the days of Elijah and deal with these men the way they have dealt with us so they would see your glory and give praise!<\/p>\n I silently prayed many prayers and asked God to take revenge and rain fire down on our enemy and rescue us from what evil these men were plotting for us. But either God did not hear my earnest prayers or He was too slow to act on our behalf or He was simply too busy in other parts of the world dealing with similar or worse problems! It was one of the things those who did not want to believe in the gospel of our Christ always said: Why does God allow evil to befall His children? Why does He not respond quickly to their cries for help? And no matter what reasons you gave, they always seemed not satisfied. Now we had a bunch of infidels taking the matter out of the hands of their \u2018god\u2019 and fighting and killing and maiming just to get the laws of that \u2018god\u2019 obeyed at a heavy cost on other people. What then is the right way to go about believing?<\/p>\n I was angry with myself. I was angry with God, who seemed to have abandoned us here in the hands of an enemy of His children. When was the right time for His salvation for us in these bad situations? Perhaps, I was not thinking right. Our situation was enough to make a good man bad; it could not be worse.<\/p>\n If our horrible experience in our town earlier in the day made it seem we were singled out for suffering because of the faith we practised, then I was wrong. All around me in the camp were young girls of various ages. Some of the girls were obviously from the faith these infidels pretend to be fighting to impose on everyone. It did not look as if they came to the camp of their own free will. They too were forced like us to be their slaves. But why, I saw myself asking no one in particular? Did they also kill their fathers and brothers like they did to ours? If they did, who would be left to practise the faith these ruffians desperately want to impose on others? Were they so stupid? At 13 I could see how hopeless their mission was. If their mission were true, why force people against their will to be part of it when simple evangelism could successfully work?<\/p>\n I was thinking these thoughts when a young girl my age, who was heavily pregnant, walked up to where I stood surveying the miserable camp that would be my home for how long I could not tell. I could see suffering written in her large, round eyes. Inside of me, I felt a knife cutting deeply through my intestines. Who could have done this to her?<\/p>\n \u201cYou just arrived?\u201d I heard her ask and I nodded. \u201cWhich village did they take you?\u201d<\/p>\n I did not know why, but I felt drawn to her, a kindred spirit bearing the burden of these infidels.<\/p>\n I just made some noises in my throat and gestured wildly. She nodded as though we were bonded together by our collective suffering.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, not far from my place. Mife!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I know Mife,\u201d I said. \u201cHow long have you been here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOver a year now,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is the result.\u201d<\/p>\n And she indicated with her hand, pointing at her rounded belly. I hesitated, not sure whether what I had to say was right. But curiosity got the better of me.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you have to do it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo what?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, whatever got you like this,\u201d I also pointed at her belly.<\/p>\n \u201cDo we have a choice?\u201d she asked. \u201cDo you think you have a choice here? You wait till they come for you. Girls who resist them end up being stabbed to death. You don\u2019t want to die like your father and brothers probably did, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n I was shocked. How did she know that?<\/p>\n \u201cOh, you\u2019re surprised that I know?\u201d she scoffed. \u201cIt happened to us, too. That is their trademark, to kill off the males and marry the young girls, who will produce their next fighters. But it may not be so bad. There\u2019s a chance I can escape with my child when I deliver him. He does not have to be like these animals!\u201d<\/p>\n I was shocked at Amina, which she later said was her name. She had it all reasoned out.<\/p>\n I spent two nights in the camp without incident. However, by the third night, I was summoned to a large tent. There were many men there. Without ceremony, the man who appeared to the leader pointed out one of his men to me. He said I should have been married off long ago, but these foolish, foreign ways our foolish parents had planted in our brains would not allow us to think clearly.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom now on this is your husband!\u201d he announced. \u201cYou shall go with him to his tent. If I hear of any trouble from you, you\u2019re dead!\u201d<\/p>\n He waved us away. The young man came to me without ceremony and held me by the hand and led me out. Outside, he paused and regarded me briefly and began to stride away. When he realised I still stood where I was, he came back and grabbed my arm again and pulled in the direction of his tent. I followed meekly; I didn\u2019t try to resist.<\/p>\n When we got there, he opened the tent and we entered. He drew the opening shut. The tent was bare, with just the basic things a man fighting a war would need. A flattened mattress, a log of wood for a chair, a few clothes scattered here and there, his gun and knives and other odds and ends. He motioned for me to take a seat. I stood. He looked at me and a faint smile came to his lips.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere did they take you?\u201d he asked at last, gently.<\/p>\n I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Perhaps, his gentility confused me. I did not expect him to be gentle. What they did to us two days ago was not gentle at all. So how could he be gentle? Perhaps, he was testing me\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be scared,\u201d he said. \u201cYou will be surprised, but I\u2019m not one of them. I didn\u2019t come here to defend any faith or plant a Caliphate. They forced me to fight for them. I was taken from Damboa. They killed our emir. I know you don\u2019t like it, but it will be better not to be foolish here!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo, why are you fighting for them?\u201d<\/p>\n I found my voice at last.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are not deaf, are you?\u201d he seemed angry. \u201cThese are very cruel people; they kill without thinking. The only thing they respect is obedience. Just obey and you will be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n I looked at him closely now. He was still a boy, although the life he now lived had toughened him and forced adulthood on him.<\/p>\n \u201cSoooo, what are you going to do with me?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey said you are to be my wife,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is what you must be!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat if I refuse?\u201d<\/p>\n He looked at me again and closed his eyes, like someone who was tired. In that moment, I too felt his pain. He could not be the young man he was created to be. Other men had taken over his manhood and his ability to do as he pleased. He was a toy in other people\u2019s hands. Instantly, I knew we were in the same plain of helplessness. My heart went out to him; I saw in him the young brother I had lost a few days ago.<\/p>\n I knelt down by his side and held his knees where he sat on the log of wood in the tent.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease help me, help us get out of here! This place is not for us. We must find a way out of here. But\u2026 my mother! How do I get to her to come with us?\u201d<\/p>\n THAT night Dikko was gentle with me. He showed me a side that was totally different from that of the infidels of an impure god. I believed him; I believed he was not one of them. If I had not met him in such terrible circumstances, I would have believed he was the man God sent my way as the only man deserving of my flower. He explained to me that he had to take my innocence as the only way not to put me in harm\u2019s way with the infidels. He told me they had spies everywhere who saw and heard things. And that if they as much as hear or see that he was being too nice to me, they could hand me to another man or a group leader who could be cruel to me.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t like that prospect. Dikko seemed genuine. Unlike the other girls from our town, I was the only one who came out with a warm smile the next morning after our intimate encounter with these infidels of an impure god. My friend, Esther practically ran out of her hut naked, with her \u2018husband\u2019 chasing angrily after her. Other girls had tears in their eyes while yet others had scars of the night encounter.<\/p>\n Amina\u2019s condition worried me. Would I be like that, too? How could one carry pregnancy in such horrid conditions? Where was the hospital to deliver one\u2019s baby? How could anyone survive in this torrid place with pregnancy? I raised these issues with Dikko who assured me it would not happen. I looked at him with questions in my eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you not notice how I emptied myself outside?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n I looked at him again, more confused. I was too inexperienced to understand such things. I had just been made a woman in a jungle where Nigerian soldiers feared to enter because of these ruffians. But when Dikko explained further, I understood a little and silently prayed there was no trick in what he said, that it was not another way these ruffians misled girls. But I half trusted Dikko; almost everything he told me so far had come out true.<\/p>\n DIKKO came back from their fight with the soldiers one day and became withdrawn. He took the food I gave him and ate silently. He did not respond to the many questions I asked him. Knowing that he did not talk too much I let him be. He was fond of telling me how the battles went, how much they lost, how many soldiers they killed and so on. When I once told him how much I feared for his safety, he told me it was not his war and so he would not die in it.<\/p>\n Yet I feared daily for him. I had grown fond of him; he was the only friend I had in a world so unfamiliar apart from Amina, of course. The other girls simply resumed their ordinary lives, as if they were back in their respective villages. They competed for the attention of these evil men. Sometimes, they even fought, claiming that one eyed the other\u2019s \u2018husband!\u2019 I felt so disgusted. How could they be so petty? How do you chase rodents when you carried an elephant on your head?<\/p>\n After Dikko ate and lay down for a while, he beckoned me to lie close to him. Then he held me close and offered a small prayer. It was the first time I heard him say a prayer. Fear gripped my stomach. I raised myself on an elbow and looked at him with many questions in my eyes, but I did not voice them. I just gazed at him for a long time. Then he started speaking gently but painfully.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people,\u201d that was how he liked to call them, \u201chave gone completely mad again!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat have they done now?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cThe soldiers are beating us badly,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cWe don\u2019t seem to have a chance against them as before. So, there is a new plan to use young girls like you and even younger ones to carry bombs to markets, mosques, churches, checkpoints and barracks!\u201d<\/p>\n My heart leapt into my mouth. These ruffians had shown themselves to be capable of great evil. But this one seemed a new twist to the totality of their evil. The frightening part of the new plan was what concerned me and which made him depressed. It was that girls like me who were taking long to get pregnant would be the first to be sent to die along with their victims. That night I tossed and turned in my sleep and it seemed that day would never break. Next day I had puffed up eyelids and red eyes from sleeplessness. Dikko was gone before I woke up.<\/p>\n When he returned in the evening, he looked sadder than the day before. He did not touch me either. By now I knew better than to ask many questions. So, I kept my peace hoping he would tell me what there was to his foul mood. But he did not say anything. The next day also, he was out again before I woke up. This time he did not come back at nightfall, not even in the dead of night. And for four days my Dikko did not return. My fear became real. Perhaps, he had been shot and killed or captured or simply surrounded as some of them had begun to do, when the heat of the war became too much for them to bear.<\/p>\n I was in a pensive mood and could not eat or do anything useful with myself. Perhaps for the first time I knew I really liked him. In fact, it almost felt like love, love for one\u2019s enemy, but a different kind of enemy. Dikko was the first man to open up my world to another possibility of life away from the madness these ruffians had inflicted on us. He was my first man and though it had not happened the way I dreamt it up in the innocence of my previous world, he came very close. Given the terrible circumstances, Dikko was a dream young man. Not even the difficult position he found himself made him behave madly like the rest. He was capable of being gentle in a very rough and tough world.<\/p>\n Although he belonged to the same faith or faithlessness as these infidels, he showed me that he had a heart and soul and was only doing what he did because he was forced to. I trusted in his assurance that he would not die in other people\u2019s senseless war. I prayed that he would not be disappointed in his wish. For me, it was mixed hope and despair. Hope that he would somehow return to me; despair that he might have fallen like so many of them.<\/p>\n \u201cBut God, you know Dikko\u2019s heart,\u201d I prayed in earnest yet again even though it appeared we were out of favour with our God and He had decided not to answer our prayers just yet. \u201cYou can\u2019t allow him to die like that!\u201d<\/p>\n Exactly five days after he went to fight, my Dikko returned with a heavily bandaged left arm. I held him tight and tears of joy poured down my face. I had never been so happy since I entered the devils\u2019 den months ago. He was the only consolation I had in our difficult situation; I had become so used to him and even grown fond of him. I didn\u2019t know what I would have done in his absence or how I would have coped with another of these devil\u2019s sons if they were to allocate me to another of their evil kind.<\/p>\n My happiness spilled over and surprised Dikko, too. He didn\u2019t know I was also capable of such tenderness towards him. Our relationship was a reasonably tolerable one until that moment. We lived like victims of unforgiving madmen and were determined to survive no matter what. For the life of one of us to be so close to being lost was an unbearable thought. He came close to losing his life but miraculously came back to me. A small celebration of the gift of life and being given a second chance was not a bad idea.<\/p>\n Inside our tent, Dikko also showed me how much I meant to him, too. He held me close and called me \u2018Mother\u2019 and told me what happened in their last outing. They had encountered the military earlier than their lookout had warned them. It became every man to himself, as they tried to shoot their way through to get away. It was in the heat of battle that he got shot in the arm; he said he was lucky to have escaped alive. Many of his fellow Boko Haram <\/em>combatants were shot dead in their numbers. He became lost in the forest and wandered for many days before he could find his way back.<\/p>\n He also told me how the infidels sent young girls to bomb markets and mosques in Maiduguri and Gombe just before their last operation. He feared that I might soon be sent out too although he didn\u2019t know when that would be. He was sorrowful about losing me to their terrible plan. He blamed himself for what might happen to me. He said he was sorry he had put me in harm\u2019s way by not making me pregnant as the infidels expected. He begged me for forgiveness for what he called his foolish action. What had it amounted to in the end? He could not forgive himself. At a point he broke down and cried and said he had betrayed his \u2018Mother\u2019 by his foolish action.<\/p>\n The Mission<\/strong><\/p>\n FOR my 13 years of life, I felt myself in a new kind of place. For a man to actually cry for what he thought would befall me was new. I had no experience of men and did not know how they thought or felt. I was close to my father before these infidels of an impure god came with their death and madness. Well, it was not the sort of closeness we see in the movies we watched. But I could never have suspected that a man was capable of being that soft. Dikko, an unwilling soldier for evil, showed his soft side when he cried and blamed himself for the deadly mission that awaited me.<\/p>\n I soaked everything in; I did not know what to say. I did not need to say anything. Dikko usually spoke so little. But this night, he had so much to tell me. It was on the night he returned from a deadly mission that almost claimed his life. Perhaps, his being so close to death gave him a voice as never before.<\/p>\n He started talking slowly, almost painfully, the memory of his mother seemed too heavy on his lips, as he recalled the horrible life he lived in his other life.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are what you call the outcasts,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody cared about us. My mother married too young; that is our custom, as you know and my father did not wait for her to grow up properly. He was in a hurry. His other wives failed to give him children. But my mother immediately became pregnant. When she had me, her body was not ready for a child. You know those women who live on the outskirts of town, who carry the curse of smell? That is where she used to live until these people came.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father\u2019s wives told me these stories, you know, out of spite, to let me know I was nobody and that my mother was evil and cursed. I was badly treated. My father was not always there. As the imam my father was too busy to care for me; he left me to his wicked wives. He was always going out, travelling and didn\u2019t know much about what happened in his household. The wives were in control and I was at their mercy. Whatever they decided was what happened.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did not have children of their own, you know. And my mother was a cursed witch, according to them. So, why should they bother so much about the child of a cursed witch? When I grew old enough, I went looking for my mother on the outskirts where women like her were condemned to live. I couldn\u2019t stay; the stench was too much for my young mind. But I saw my mother. She was a beautiful woman, even in that condition, and you look so much like her. When these people attacked our town, they burnt the place down along with the people there. And I was also taken prisoner to fight for them. I had no time to even cry for my mother; it was so cruel. It has been a very hard life since. Your coming has been the only difference. \u201cLike my mother, you are too young to be made pregnant. That was what happened to my mother. She was too young to give life to another human being. But our people do not care about such things. What they like is what they get. I came to learn later that her condition and those of the other women who were condemned to live on the outskirts of town was not because they were witches or cursed. She, like the other women, had me too early and I was the cause! How can I forgive myself for making her live that sort of life away from her only child?<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then you came, you who look so much like my dear mother! How could I make you go through what my mother went through? Yes, I\u2019m a man and I feel entitled to a woman because of the hard life we live here, but not in these circumstances. But having forced you on me, I knew there was going to be a limit. To be frank, I regret I had to do anything intimate with you. But that was the most I could do. Please, forgive me!\u201d<\/p>\n And he held me tight as though his life depended on it. He told me to be strong. He said there were young women who were sent out with the deadly weapons who were more sensible than others and who plotted their own escape. He asked me to be wise and to always think of staying alive because these people had no cause worth dying for.<\/p>\n Dikko told me many other things that night. That night I could not sleep much. Thoughts of my own mother filled my mind. I had not seen her since we arrived here about ten months now. What had happened to her? Was she well? Did she think about me? What task did they assign her? Would we ever see each other again, especially if these killers for an impure god were to send me on a suicide-bombing mission? Was this goodbye to everything that I knew and cherished?<\/p>\n Escape<\/strong><\/p>\n THE next morning, they came for me just like Dikko had predicted. They took me away and abused Dikko for not doing his job as a real man should. How could he be with a woman for ten months and not make her pregnant? They said he was becoming a liability to the jihadist cause. With the way they were losing men, how would they find replacements if all the men were as impotent as he was?<\/p>\n I listened to these charges with silent joy in my heart. What did they know? Did they know that there was more to a man and a woman having the same heartbeat than making a child? Of course, they would not know, blockheads that they were, since making jihad was all they knew and cared about.<\/p>\n Then they took me away to a big tent. A man was talking. He praised the wisdom in what they were doing. The jihad was a just cause, he said, and they needed everyone to play his part. The mission was to destroy all the strongholds of the evil government of Nigeria and replace it with sharia, the just government of their \u2018god!\u2019<\/p>\n There were older women in the big tent as well who were preparing the girls and cloaking them with the hijabs of death. My turn came and they strapped me with one. I felt light and heavy at the same time as I felt the evil object around my body. So this was it? I was going to die and there was no other way out? I held my breath for what seemed like a lifetime. Then I closed my eyes and exhaled.<\/p>\n Some of us were assigned to markets, some to army and police checkpoints and barracks while yet others were to be sent to mosques and churches. They told us the button to press that would take us to heaven. We listened to them telling us what to do, how we should evade capture and take as many people with us to heaven as was possible. We were all girls, young girls being sent on errands of death but they dressed it as if we were going to paradise.<\/p>\n Paradise? What paradise was that? Paradise of death? Why did they have to lie? What did they know about paradise? Only God took people to paradise, not bombs? Did they not have shame that they also had to lie to us? Was it to make it easy for us to do as they wished?<\/p>\n Some of the girls were sniffing, others were crying, but nobody paid them attention. They only told us to be strong and that it was for the good of their \u2018god.\u2019 They said their god had reserved a special paradise for us because of the \u2018holy\u2019 work we were about to carry out. Holy work? Good God! I thought these ruffians had brains. Did they imagine that we all belonged to the same \u2018god?\u2019 How could they be so stupid? How did they think I could ever join with them in serving their \u2018kind\u2019 of god, a murderous god? God forbid!<\/p>\n All these thoughts swirled in my mind as they prepared us for the deadly mission. We were the innocent lambs being led to the slaughter for an impure god. I knew my God even if it seemed He had forgotten me in my many months of trouble since they killed our father and brother and brought us here and separated me from my mother. I could never belong to their petty god.<\/p>\n They then put us in trucks and drove off. They drove for a long time. Then they stopped and changed us from their trucks to smaller cars that continued to take us to our destinations. After a while, they started dropping us off one after the other near our targets. Then I was the only one left in the car. They took me to a point in the road and asked me to get down. They pointed out a military checkpoint to me that was a bend away from where they stopped and ordered me not to fail as they had also ordered the other girls. They said they would be watching me and if anything went wrong they would shoot me dead. I nodded and turned in the direction they pointed.<\/p>\n After turning the bend, I saw the military checkpoint and the soldiers guarding it. They were many, and held their guns ready as if waiting for me. I held my breath tight and felt the weight of the bomb strapped to my fragile body, but continued walking towards them. There were other passersby also going in different directions. I stepped in line with those going towards the checkpoint. I did not dare look back to see if my guardians of death were watching me as they had threatened. I walked on stiffly and offered silent prayers in my heart.<\/p>\n \u2018Dear God, this is not your hour for me,\u201d I said. \u201cI shall not do as these ruffians demand. So help me, Father!\u2019<\/p>\n Just as I got close to the checkpoint, I grabbed the man next to me and started shouting to the soldiers that he was a thief and that he had stolen my purse. There was confusion as people hurried away from us; they didn\u2019t want to be involved in any fracas with the soldiers so close. It was so unexpected. The man was in shock; he knew the implication of my accusation right in front of the soldiers. He started saying he didn\u2019t know what I was talking about, that he was not a thief. Two soldiers came towards us and separated me from the man. They then took us to the building behind the checkpoint. In the middle of the commotion, I cast furtive glances for signs of the Boko Haram<\/em> men who had brought me. I did not see or notice any of them coming towards us.<\/p>\n I was relieved when they quickly took us away from the road to the makeshift building by the checkpoint. My captors would have to force their way into the building past the soldiers to kill me, I reasoned, and then the soldiers would be ready for them. When we got inside, the soldiers asked me what happened. Then I told them to listen to me carefully, that I had only used the man as decoy to deceive my captors, who had sent me on a suicide mission. I pleaded with them not to shoot me because I was not on the side of the fighters and that I was innocent.<\/p>\n At the sound of suicide from me, two soldiers had their guns trained on me. The room was tensed with danger. But a senior officer in the room told them to stand down. He then asked me to tell them about the suicide mission I\u2019d mentioned. Then I pulled up my hijab and a gasp of horror escaped the soldiers as they fell back in alarm. In panic, one of the soldiers shot at me but missed and hit the right foot of the senior\u2019s officer. He aimed at me again but before he could fire, the wounded senior officer reacted fast and shot him in the right arm with his pistol. His gun fell from him and the senior officer ordered his men to take him away; he was quickly dragged out of the room.<\/p>\n I was in total shock. I was close to being killed in the hands of the men I had run to for help. I quickly told the senior officer my plight. I told him I did not want to die and that they should help me remove the bomb. I began to cry.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to die, please,\u201d I sobbed. \u201cPlease, help me remove this \u2018thing!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The senior officer commanded one of his men to sound the alarm bell. He asked another to fetch an officer named Obot. They both burst into the room a moment later. The new office looked at the bomb hugging my body like a lover and quickly told his boss that there was little they could do about it right there and mentioned some technical terms. His boss ordered him to get a truck ready at once. He asked me a few more questions about the men who brought me to the checkpoint. I explained as much as I could, how they said they would shoot me if anything went wrong and I failed to kill many people at the checkpoint. Then they wrapped me in army blanket and took me out of the building through the backdoor and put me in a truck.<\/p>\n As the truck sped away, other military trucks followed from behind with many soldiers in high alert, their sirens blaring, guns ready. Faintly, I could hear gunfire in the direction from which my guardians of evil sent me to die for their meaningless war and god. I shut my eyes as I was being sped to safety and uncertain future in the direction of Maiduguri. Only thoughts of Dikko and my mother floated in and out of my mind\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bride of the Infidels Day of Terror THE day they took us was like watching a bad film. We heard gunshots in the distance. We did not know what it was or who was shooting. But there were so many guns firing. We were used to hunters shooting games in the open grassland, but it was never so many…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4552"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4570,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4552\/revisions\/4570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nWives for All<\/strong><\/p>\n
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\nHijabs of Death<\/strong><\/p>\n
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\n\u201cSo, when I saw you, I saw my mother in you. I was in shock. It was as though she had come from the dead to comfort me. I did not see much of your face in the tent when the chief commanded me to marry you. But when you stood before me in this tent for the first time, I knew my mother had come back to me. I could not tell you then. The feeling was too much for me. And I knew I could not harm you, would never harm you.<\/p>\n