Born on a Tuesday (5 page)

‘Get up, Umma, see Dantala is here, he is back.' Khadija taps Umma lightly on the shoulder.

Umma rolls over, picks up her scarf and covers her head. Tears are rolling down my face.

‘Umma,' I say, my voice trembling.

She looks up at me, smiles and without saying a word gets up and leaves the room. I can't believe my own Umma will not say a word to me.

We follow her out to the little courtyard where she is now sitting, staring up at the sky. Khadija is crying and telling me this is how she has been. That she lost my sisters in the flood—she doesn't know where the water took them—their bodies have not been found. I learn for the first time that my twin sisters were called Hassana and Husseina. That they were fair and beautiful and looked like my father. That they comforted Umma after she lost my father and she loved them more than anything in the world since her boys had all left her.

I kneel down in front of Umma and call her name. She smiles softly when I do, like she used to, but does not look at me. Her wrinkles are many now and her eyes are sunken. There is plenty of grey in her eyebrows and her lips are dry. I hold her left hand and call her name again. She doesn't hold mine.

‘I have returned, Umma,' I say. Slowly her fingers close into mine and she looks down at me. I gaze into her eyes to look for my mother, my Umma, who told me to behave well when I was leaving for Bayan Layi, who taught me the Arabic that saved me from a lot of beating. I cannot see her. Still holding my hand she looks up again. I cannot help it, I break down and sob.

‘Umma, I am sorry,' I say, wiping the tears flowing from my eyes.

Khadija sits by her side, crying, asking if she will not at least say something to her son. There is a little smile on her face, but there is no Umma. This woman sitting here has her eyes, her smile, her dark circles but is not Umma. The Umma I know talks to me even when she is upset or worried, she talks to me even when she has to scold me, she talks to me.

‘Sannu,' Umma finally says to me. One word! Hello. She gets up and goes back inside to lie down.

‘Oh Allah, give her health,' Khadija cries, ‘Allah, give her health.'

My legs are weak and my head hurts. Khadija takes the polythene bags inside and tells me to go and clean myself. The well in the house is full because of the rains and it is easy to fetch from. I take the metal bucket into the bathroom. The floor is muddy but there are two long planks on which I stand and place the bucket. The water is cold. Water from a well does not allow soap to lather, not like the tap water in Sokoto. In some ways it is good because I don't need to use as much water to take my bath. I wonder what I can do to help my mother, to make her see me, remember me, talk to me. Allah knows best. Allah knows best.

Khadija gives me an old torn mat to say maghrib prayers. She is glad I have brought some grains because they had run short and were wondering how they were going to make it until Friday, when the government has promised to distribute food in the area. Since the floods the villages have been getting weekly rations from the local government but last week they didn't get any. The trucks just didn't show up. Allah brought me at the right time, Khadija says. I wish I had come earlier, I tell her.

Khadija tells me all that has been happening: how the floods came and how my father died. He had lost the farm because he couldn't pay the rent on the land. He started complaining of headaches and one day he didn't come out for the early morning prayers. When Umma went in to check on him, his eyes were white and his body was cold.

Khadija is afraid for my brothers. She says they joined a Shiite group in Tashar Kanuri and came back acting strange. She is sure they were brainwashed to follow the group, because our father was not Shiite. He hated the Shiites and all their practices—they insulted the other companions of the Prophet apart from Ali. Only a kafir does that, turning the Quran upside down, following hadiths fabricated for their own sake, she swears. She cries when she says my brothers have left the path of wisdom and of Islam.

I insist on sleeping out in the zaure when Khadija wonders where I am going to sleep. There are only two rooms in the house and her husband sleeps alone in one of them.

‘I am used to sleeping outdoors,' I tell her.

Shuaibu taps my legs.

‘Why are you out here?' he asks.

I rub my eyes and take off the wrapper Khadija gave me to cover myself.

‘Khadija,' he screams and walks into the house.

‘Why did you leave him out here?' I hear him telling her inside.

‘I am sorry, Maigida, he said he was OK out there and you weren't back yet so I didn't know what to do.'

‘But you could have asked him to stay in my room.'

‘I am sorry, I didn't know if you would have liked it that way.'

‘I know we don't have room for him but he has made a long journey and at least should sleep well.'

‘Forgive me, Maigida, for Allah's sake.'

He hisses and asks me to go in. I drag the mat into his little room, which is opposite hers, and lay the mat on the floor.

‘He brought some millet and maize flour and we made you some tuwo,' she says.

‘Allah is King! May Allah bless it,' he replies.

He doesn't say much to me when he enters the room except to ask if I have seen my mother and prays that Allah should forbid worse things. I want to tell him about Sheikh Jamal, who asked me to come back if my mother let me; now that my mother isn't talking or listening to anyone, I can't ask her permission. The room is dark and I don't realise he is sleeping, until he begins to snore loudly. I lie down and rest my head on my folded arms.

I can't sleep. I wish I had someone to talk to. If Banda was here, he would know exactly what to do, how to do it. The thought of Banda wrapped in a cloth and buried under sand makes it hard to breathe. I wonder if Allah will grant him aljanna or if he will go to hellfire. He did not always perform salat, or fast and he drank haram, but he was kind to me and to many people. Allah judges the intentions of the heart. Allah knows. Malam Junaidu used to say that while we are still in our mothers' bellies an angel of Allah is commanded to write our destinies—how long we will live and how we will live and whether we will enter hellfire or not. Sometimes I get confused. All I pray is that Allah forgives him.

There is no adhan from a loudspeaker to wake me up and remind me that prayer is better than sleep. This is my favourite part of the early morning call to prayer:

As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm.

Prayer is better than sleep.

It is Khadija's husband who wakes me and gives me a little plastic kettle. The water in it is very cold because it was outside overnight. I close my eyes as I pour the water first over my face and grit my teeth as I feel a chill run from my head through my body. I do my ablution quickly, in front of Shuaibu's room and run after him as he heads out to the mosque, which is just a few houses away.

The breeze blows strong and cold in the mosque. It is just a square patch of land bounded by stones. I wonder why the Imam is in such a rush. The prayer is over very quickly and the men begin to talk about the flood and the government supplies that haven't come in two weeks. Some whose houses were destroyed have had to go to a camp set up by some foreigners for those affected by the flood to get food and drinking water. The food needs to get to those still remaining in the village, the Imam says, and he asks for volunteers to go and complain in the local government office. Four men volunteer and the Imam tells them to meet him in one hour at the mosque.

On our way back I speak to Khadija's husband.

‘I told my malam I will return soon,' I lie.

‘Who is your malam?' he asks.

‘Sheikh Jamal,' I reply, afraid he might know him.

‘Oh, the one at the motor park in the city. He is a good man, I know many people who have studied under him. Only be sure to return to see your mother often.'

‘He asked me to get permission from my mother. I don't know how to do that.'

‘Ah, you see, he is a good man. Not like the ones your brothers have decided to follow. They think they are grown men now and can do as they please. Nobody in their right senses follows the Shiites. But Allah knows, I have done what I can, I have spoken to them. They will regret their decision.'

I want him to tell me what to do but he is going on about my brothers and things I don't want to hear. Just say to me go, or don't go! I won't ask again. Even if Umma doesn't hear me I will tell her I want to leave. Allah knows my intentions. Insha Allah, when I come back she will see me. One day, insha Allah, I will take her out of this place to the city, where there are hospitals and bright fluorescent lights.

PART TWO

Back to Sokoto

2006

Every time I stop to think that I have been happy these past few years in Sokoto, I kill the thought in my head because I am afraid that my being happy will jinx it. I have learned to tell lies to escape bad memories that come from telling my stories. It all started when I first came back. I did not say when Sheikh Jamal asked how my mother was that when I held her hand and told her I was leaving she didn't even look at me; that she preferred to look up at the sky or to the ground than give me her blessings or advise me to be good in Sokoto. I didn't tell him that every time I have returned to Dogon Icce for the Sallah celebrations I have found Umma looking more sickly and pale, that her fingers are bruised and bloody from her chewing on them, that her hair has turned grey and her skin is wrinkled, that Khadija feeds her like a little baby because she never eats and that they have now had to chain her to the bed in the room because many times she has gone missing, been found wandering aimlessly without a scarf or hijab in the village. I haven't told him how Khadija suffers alone with her daughter and Umma because her husband has abandoned her and built a little hut nearby where he lives with his new wife—the last daughter of the village imam. The girl has a son and is pregnant with another child. Every month, he sends Khadija some grain and once in a long while a little money, barely enough for a pot of soup. He has refused to divorce her and set her free, yet he does not want to keep her.

I just tell Sheikh that all is well in the village and try all I can to take grain and soap when I go. Khadija thinks that Shuaibu married another wife because he was tired of her spending so much time taking care of Umma. She says that nothing will make her stop and that after all, taking another wife is sunna for him. I feel guilty and grateful all at the same time. She shouldn't have to choose between Umma and her husband.

I found, when I first returned, that Sheikh was not only the imam but also a member of the committee that is in charge of running the mosque. The mosque committee is responsible for choosing the imam and his deputy and raising funds. Sheikh is the vice-chairman while Alhaji Usman, who is rarely around because he travels so much, is the chairman. Alhaji Usman built the mosque and still sends food for sadaka many Fridays. The three very old men who always pray in front, Malam Yunusa, Malam Abduljalal and Malam Hamza, are on the committee too. Malam Hamza is often ill and hardly ever around. Malam Abdul-Nur is not on the committee. A lot of people pray at this mosque and I have heard some people talk of expanding it. The land to the right of the mosque was also donated by Alhaji Usman. I wonder how much money he has, because it is hard to tell from the way he dresses. He wears the same type of white caftans that Sheikh and Malam Abdul-Nur wear. He does not wear gold teeth to show he has been to Mecca even though I hear he has been there many times. He has even performed the hajj on behalf of his sick parents, who couldn't travel.

Sometimes it is good to be invisible, to just go around the park doing my own thing and helping out in the mosque without anyone noticing me. Also I don't have to share any stories that will put me in trouble. When one talks too much, one exposes oneself. I remember a boy who would not stop talking and told everyone about robbing and injuring a policeman whose cousin was one of the men listening. The boy is still in prison.

I don't like sitting with the boys around the mosque or the motor park because all they do is talk about whose penis is big and whose penis is small and whose penis is curved like a fishing hook. And every time Abdulkareem is around everyone jokes about how he has to fold his penis three times before it can fit in his pants. I wondered how everyone knew what his penis looked like. Then someone told me that there was a time some boys wanted to see it when the rumours started going round. When Abdulkareem refused to show them, they all pinned and held him down, stripped him and stroked his penis until it became like a big fat sugar cane. Some people say it is a sickness to have such a big penis. I have never seen it. I do not want to see it.

Abdulkareem and Bilal, who, like me, used to sleep in the same little room behind the mosque, have both gone to Kebbi to work for Alhaji Usman's brother, who owns a large fish farm. Somehow I think Sheikh was happy to let them go. I am glad they have gone. They talked very loud and played very rough, like little children. Abdulkareem was a tall, fair boy with a lot of hair on his legs, hands and chest, whose father, mother and brothers had been killed in one of the riots in Jos. He had returned from the next village to find the burnt corpses of his family in front of the house. I am not sure of Bilal's story because he used to tell a different story every time. First he told me he ran away from his home in Minna because his father was wicked and didn't give him food. Then he said his father was fighting infidel Americans in Afghanistan, then he said Iraq, then both. His father has been both dead and alive, in Nigeria and out of Nigeria, a wicked man and a brave fighter. One of Bilal's eyes is half shut and has a scar above it. He had many stories for that too. He said once that he was looking up at a plane when some object fell from it and hit him in the eye. Then he said he got the injury fighting off four armed policemen with his bare hands. He was going to be a soldier if not for his eye. Bilal spoke fast and even though most people knew he was lying, they enjoyed the stories. I found that it was useless to contradict Bilal. He would quickly create an excuse for any discrepancy and patch up his story.

Bilal and Abdulkareem were always coming out of corners or disappearing together. When they would reappear they would both be quiet for a long time and I would suspect they were up to no good. For a long time I tried to find out where they always went and what they were doing. At first I was sure that they were smoking something. So I would come very close to them to see if I could smell anything. I tried this a few times, but apart from the occasional mouth and body odour I would smell nothing. Sometimes one of them would smell like raw yams that had just been peeled.

There were two new toilets built behind the mosque and I was thrilled to be using a flush toilet for the first time in my life. In some ways it was similar to the pit toilet I was used to—we still squatted—only now, you could see your shit after you finished and it only disappeared after you pulled the rope connected to the flush handle on the water tank above. We also bathed there. Sometimes I forgot to pull the handle on the water tank, until I had gone out of the toilet. Then I would come running back to pull the handle. I liked the sound of the water as it ran down the pipe and into the toilet, making it white again. Abdulkareem and Bilal took turns to clean the toilet twice a day, while I organised the boys who swept the mosque. Many people didn't care about pulling the handle to flush the toilet; they just went in and did their business. When someone was caught he would complain that there was no water in the tank. But there were also buckets and a well outside the toilet. Eventually we decided to lock one of the toilets, which only Sheikh and Malam Abdul-Nur or their visitors used. That one was always clean.

I feel relieved that I don't have to see Bilal and Abdulkareem anymore because of what I saw one day. They had both disappeared as usual and I wasn't thinking anything of it. I had given up trying to find out what they were up to. I woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee badly and ran into the toilet without knocking. There was no electricity and I had my little torch with me. As I opened the door, loosening the rope of my trousers, someone almost knocked me over and ran out. I turned and from the back of his head I recognised him as Bilal. He wasn't wearing a shirt and was clutching at his trousers like they were going to fall. I flashed my torch in the toilet and saw Abdulkareem standing there, struggling to pull up his trousers and wipe his hands at the same time. His penis was huge and erect and he was panting like he had been running.

‘Stop flashing that light on me!' he screamed.

Suddenly the urge to pee disappeared and I shut the door. Only Bilal came back that night and I pretended I was asleep. I don't know where Abdulkareem slept, or if he slept at all that night. I knew that even though I had caught them, Bilal would try to lie his way out of it. Malam Junaidu said it was a sin fasting could not cleanse. I had heard of men being together, read many hadiths about sodomy, but I had never seen it with my own eyes. I wondered what they did before I came and how they did it. When I imagined how painful it was sometimes to shit in the toilet, especially when I ate a lot of bread, I wondered if Bilal didn't feel pain allowing Abdulkareem's penis inside him. I thought of the hadith that said that the earth trembles whenever there is an act of sodomy and wondered how many times they had done it and if I ever felt the earth tremble. It made me feel nauseated when I thought of it—Abdulkareem touching Bilal, Bilal bending over—how they could prefer themselves to girls? And there were many bad girls in the park if they wanted, girls who used to go into the backseats of empty buses at night and let men touch them. Sheikh used to say he would send away all those drivers from the park if he could and stop girls from coming in at night. He once spoke to the head of the motor park union, who said he would talk to the drivers, but nothing changed.

The morning after, I waited for them to beg me not to say anything and when they didn't I was angry and wanted to tell Sheikh. But I couldn't and found it hard to sleep with them in the room. The room was quiet for many nights. I resented them because they could sleep, and it was I who stayed up with thoughts plaguing my mind. Then one night, when I was finally able to sleep, I dreamt I was out in the bush with Abdulkareem and he pinned me against a tree and made me bend over and forced his huge penis into me. The penis wouldn't enter and I begged him to stop. But he kept pushing and pushing and laughing. I woke up with my penis erect and sweat all over my body.

It came as a blessing when not long after, they both left for Kebbi to work on the fish farm. After a few weeks, it wasn't so strong in my mind anymore—I stopped thinking of them and being irritated every time I went to use the toilet or take my bath and I was able to sleep. I didn't mind that I had to clean the toilets as well as check on the boys sweeping the mosque; I was just glad that they were gone.

I miss my Umma. Especially in the morning after fajr prayers when I have nothing to do. It feels strange not having a father and having a mother who can't talk to you; it makes me feel alone and cold like standing without clothes in the rain. When I want to scream and cry I hear Sheikh Jamal's voice in my head: Allah knows why. Allah knows why.

Sheikh is kind. He is different from Malam Junaidu in Bayan Layi, who made us beg even after working on his maize farm. Working on a farm during planting and harvest season is better than standing by the road, chasing after cars and having people turn away from you like you are a huge mound of shit. It is better than fighting over food and money at the Friday mosque.

It feels like a faraway dream sometimes—leaving Bayan Layi, escaping the hunger, sleeping outdoors during the rains and harmattan . . . and the police guns that last day! I still hear the rat-tat-tat, the screaming, the smoke; still see the boys trying to dodge the bullets; still see Banda, coughing, telling me to run as he doubled over from pain in his chest . . . I still feel it—the feeling of a tight string that has snapped in my chest, when I saw him finally fall flat. These are the things I wish I could tell my Umma. Only her, because only my mother would understand that I didn't mean to do those bad things for the Small Party people during the elections; that when I struck the fat Big Party man, it was because I was angry and afraid; that in my heart I wished Tsohon Soja, who stood guard outside the Big Party office, hadn't been so stubborn. Then we would have just burnt the office and let him go.

Astaghfirullah, but I find myself still wishing Abdulkareem and Bilal would fall inside a well of soldier ants that will eat them up slowly. I hate them because even though I thought it was all gone, I still have these dreams. I hate them more because the dreams seem to go on forever and I wake up with my penis hard. I am afraid to lie face down when it is very hard because it hurts a bit and I wonder if it can break.

I cannot tell Sheikh about these dreams because I will have to tell him what happened. What if he thinks that I also like it because I am having dreams? What makes it worse is the way everything makes my penis hard these days.

Yesterday I cried. I cried because when Malam Abdul-Nur put his hand on my shoulder to tell me he liked the way I always got up early to take care of the mosque, I felt it again. The flashes from that dream; the flashes that make me go to a quiet corner to hide my erection. He touched me and it all came rushing through my head: Abdulkareem, his wicked grin, holding my waist, refusing to stop even though he could see it wouldn't enter. I wanted to go away when it started, but Malam Abdul-Nur decided this was the time to give me a long sermon about not joining the motor park boys who smoke cigarettes under the mango trees at night. He has never seen me smoke or sit with the boys who smoke and, wallahi, since I left the boys under the kuka tree in Bayan Layi, my mouth has not touched a cigarette. The feeling was worse than what I feel when I need to shit and there is someone in the toilet—you have to walk over five minutes to reach the nearest bush outside the motor park. When he finally finished his speech and let go of my shoulder, I walked away quickly. I felt dirty as I sat on the far edge of the culvert near the taps in front of the mosque. I struggled to block out all the images flying through my head: good thoughts clashing with bad thoughts clashing with guilty thoughts, chasing each other until I felt dizzy. My balls felt swollen and painful. I wished I could just cut off the whole damn thing. Allah forgive my thoughts, but I wondered at that moment why Allah put this thing in our bodies; I wished I was a woman. I went into the toilet and locked the door. Then, I brought it out. I didn't want to. I tried hard not to, but the feeling was strong and raging in my body like the fast running water in a river during the rainy season. At first I just held it. Afterwards I shut my eyes and stroked it, slowly, then quickly until a feverish cold passed all over my body and gripped me and made my legs wobbly and I needed to use my left hand to support myself against the wall. When it passed, I had made a mess of the toilet floor, my hands and my trousers. I peeped through the space in the door to make sure no one was waiting to use the toilet. Then I rushed to get a bucket of water to take my bath and cleanse myself. As I poured the water over my head, I cried. And hated that I enjoyed it so much.