Born on a Tuesday (3 page)

I lie on my back in the centre of the mosque, counting the number of squares on the ceiling. There are many people sitting in the mosque and they are all talking about the elections and the fighting in many places including Sabon Gari and Bayan Layi. People are outraged at the Big Party and the fact that the results of the elections have been changed. One man behind me says that it is our own people who have sold us out. He says this in response to another man with a tiny voice who said that the Southerners were attempting to take power away from our people, whose turn it is to rule. The man with the tiny voice doesn't talk again. The voice behind me continues.

‘Our Emirs and big men are greedy and are not interested in us or our religion. They only claim to be Muslim and Northern but side with those oppressing us. For them an infidel party that accepts all sorts of kufr is more important than standing with Muslims and with Allah.'

I turn to look at who is speaking because when he speaks, everyone listens and nods. It is the small bearded man with the big voice.

I feel my pockets and realise I no longer have the polythene wrap of money. My other pocket still has the change left after I had paid Chuks the doctor and bought kunu and bread. My head is going round in circles and my heart is beating faster. I get up and look round the mosque, scanning the floor. I check by the tap, look in the gutter. Nothing. The scramble for food! I run out to check where we knocked each other over for rice. I run towards every black thing on the floor that looks like the polythene. Nothing. Only grains of jollof rice and empty paper packs. Tracing my steps back the way I came, I walk slowly, thankful for the bright fluorescent light outside the mosque. Then I see something familiar. I dive for it. My heart sinks as I realise it is really my polythene bag. Empty! I can't breathe and my head is pounding hard. The polythene wrap slips from my hand as I walk back slowly to the mosque. I am holding myself back from crying. A man asks me if I have lost something.

‘Is it not you I am talking to?' he raises his voice.

I still do not answer. The man mutters something about ‘children these days' and walks off. Who can I tell that someone just took my seven thousand five hundred naira, which really belonged to a dead friend of mine who was shot by the police? How do I even start that story?

I enter the mosque and people are still discussing the elections. My eyes are tired from looking for my money and my head hurts. Perhaps if I wasn't so tired or sick or angry from having lost all my money I might have told them about Bayan Layi and the burnt Big Party office and the fat man that Banda set ablaze or Tsohon Soja, who Gobedanisa killed with his machete. I would not say that I was there, that I held a machete too or that I was the one who hit the Big Party man. I would say only that someone told me.

I lie down and block out all the voices. Flashes of blood and mangled bodies and fire are going through my head. Allah forgive me, but some wee-wee would be good right now so that I could forget these horrible images. If Banda were here he would have given me some; we would have sat down under the kuka tree and talked about things that didn't matter, until we fell asleep.

I wake up to a bitter taste in my mouth and the muezzin's call to prayer in my ear. My bones hurt so bad—my back, my knees, my neck, my arms—it feels like someone has beaten me with iron rods. I am trying to remember the dream I had. All I have are images that come and go. I saw Umma sitting on her little stool, with her back against the wall, beneath an old picture of Sheikh Inyass. She had dark circles around her eyes from my father always punching her in the face. She said many things to me which I can't remember. Her face was not happy. I saw Banda with a hole in his chest and blood around his mouth. It's the part about Umma I want to remember, especially what she told me. Maybe she has become old, I think, as I drag myself to the tap to perform ablution.

The small man with the big voice is at the tap, his eyes puffy from sleep. He is not talking and smiling like he was yesterday. He washes quickly and goes in to stand in front of the mosque behind the muezzin with the nicely patterned grey and black beard. Just before I go down on my knees, which still hurt a bit, I feel my pockets to make sure I still have my change left. A cold, light breeze blows from the door on my right just after I say, ‘Allahu Akbar.' It feels like Allah hears my whisper, and answers. I can feel His greatness this morning and I am feeling sorry, for the first time, for all I have done. For smoking wee-wee. For breaking into shops with the kuka tree boys. For striking that man with a machete. For questioning Allah on my way back to Sokoto.

I sit down after the prayer to listen to the man with the grey and black beard preach. The tafsir is well attended and everyone listens as he talks of our duty as Muslims.

‘This country is a slave to Jews and their usury,' he says. I am hearing of a World Bank and IMF for the first time. I understand the concept of a huge bank that gives loans to countries around the world but I don't understand what the IMF has to do with anything. Or what it is. Everyone else seems to know, because no one has asked and I am sure I will look stupid if I do. I just conclude it is a bad Jewish thing that helps the World Bank, who gives us money we don't need to enslave us.

‘This is why the West pushes our leaders to make laws that force us to go to Western schools at an early age, so that they can teach our children that this system of the Jews is the best and by the time they learn otherwise it is too late.'

He says all this without shouting or speaking very fast like Malam Junaidu. He mentions the elections and there is slight murmuring in the audience after which follows complete silence. His voice is gentle but his words are piercing, giving me goose bumps.

‘Allah will judge those who sell their brothers for money,' he says slowly, so that every word goes under your skin. The short man with the big voice walks in and whispers something into the ears of the Imam. Then the Imam says to us that Alhaji Usman has sent breakfast and those who want to eat can go outside. This Alhaji Usman must be very rich, I think.

I ask the man sitting next to me on the floor what the Imam's name is. Sheikh Jamal is the name of this man whose words have arrested my feet and gone under my skin. His deputy—the short man with the big voice—is Malam Abdul-Nur Mohammed.

‘Abdul-Nur is not a Hausa man,' he confides to me.

‘Really?'

‘He is a Yoruba from Ilorin. In fact his name was Alex before he converted, learned Arabic and memorised the whole Quran in just one year. There is not a hadith of the Prophet that he doesn't know.'

I want to ask this man who seems to know everything about this Malam Abdul-Nur how he came about this information but I don't want to upset him. I listen to Sheikh Jamal some more before I go out to get the free breakfast. A huge luxury bus is setting out from the motor park and there are little curtains drawn over its windows. Someday I will ride in one of those, wherever they go to, I tell myself.

The food is all finished when I arrive. Two girls hawking rice cakes in small transparent plastic buckets watch in irritation as people disperse from the jeep that has brought sacks of food.

‘Me, since they started bringing this sadaka, I have hardly sold much,' the bigger one says to the smaller one.

‘Me neither,' the smaller one replies.

‘I think tomorrow we should head somewhere else or into town.'

‘Or where the motorcyclists wash their motorcycles.'

I feel someone touch my shoulder. It is Malam Abdul-Nur holding a plastic plate and bowl. He is smiling again.

‘Did you get the food?' he asks.

‘No,' I say, avoiding his eyes.

‘Rinse the plates and bring them into the mosque when you finish,' he says, giving me the plate of kosai and bowl of hot koko.

He has taken many steps before my mouth can say ‘thank you.' I will thank him when I return the plates. These are good people and if I didn't have to go home to my mother, I would stay here. My stomach rumbles as the hot koko rolls down my throat into my belly.

Umma! This koko tastes just like hers—the one she used to sell in front of our house and by the market in the village when the rains were regular and my father's rented farm gave many bags of millet and maize. I can't wait to see her again. She will ask me how it was in Bayan Layi and whether my teacher treated me well. I will tell her that everything was good so that she will smile and not worry and get the pain in her chest that my grandmother used to say was from too much thinking. It confused me then how something in the head could cause pain in the chest and my grandmother would say that while men worry with the head, women worry with the heart. When I would ask again, she would say I was too young to understand. Today I think my dead grandmother is wrong. It is not only women who get that pain in the chest. I feel it now—when I think of Umma and Banda—in my stomach, in my chest, in my head, everywhere.

I rinse the plates by the mosque taps and take them in to Malam Abdul-Nur. He is sitting with Sheikh Jamal. They look up at me.

‘Yes, he's the one I was telling you about,' Malam tells Sheikh Jamal.

I give him the plates and say I am grateful.

‘Sit,' he says.

I sit slowly trying not to bend my knees. Sheikh Jamal looks into my eyes searching—for what, I do not know. I look at him at first but can't stand the weight of his eyes. Suddenly I am aware of all the sounds in the room: the whirring of the fans, someone washing at the tap outside, the revving of cars about to set off on long journeys, the bus conductors outside screaming to potential passengers, someone laughing loudly in front of the mosque. Perhaps he can hear the beating of my heart, because I can, in spite of the many sounds.

‘By what name are you called?' Sheikh Jamal's very formal tone breaks through all the sounds and blocks them out.

‘Dantala. But my father named me Ahmad.'

During the very long silence all I can hear is his heavy breathing and the crunching of the fresh lobe of white kola nut which Malam Abdul-Nur has just popped into his mouth. There is something about the Sheikh which makes my heart beat faster. Faster in a good way, not faster like when I broke Umma's large mirror and heard her coming into the room. I can't tell what it is.

He pulls at the tip of his beard freeing entangled strands of hair. I want a beard like this. Maybe not with the grey hairs, but I like the way it covers most of his face and neck.

‘You have a good name, the name of our Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam.' He dims his eyes when he says, ‘Peace be upon him.'

I nod.

Then Malam Abdul-Nur speaks, holding up his right palm like a slate, turning between me and Sheikh. ‘But Dantala . . . Dantala is not a name. To say someone was born on a Tuesday, is that a name? A name should have meaning. Like Ahmad, the name of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. You should stop using that Dantala.'

I keep nodding.

‘Where is your home, the home of your father?' Sheikh continues.

‘My father died, but he lived in Dogon Icce with my mother.'

‘Allah is King! May Allah grant him rest. May Allah forgive his bad deeds and remember his good ones. May Allah reward him with aljanna.'

I say amen after every prayer.

‘So what do you intend to do now?'

‘I want to go to my mother in Dogon Icce. I fell sick when I came back from being an almajiri in Bayan Layi and was taking injections with the fair man on the other side of the motor park. Chuks.'

‘Aha, the Igbo man. He is good. Are you feeling any better?'

‘Yes. Very much.'

He pauses again and whispers something to Malam Abdul-Nur.

‘What is the name of your teacher in Bayan Layi?' he asks.

‘Malam Junaidu.'

He turns to Malam Abdul-Nur and asks, ‘Is it our Junaidu?'

‘I am sure it is,' Malam Abdul-Nur replies and then turns to me and asks: ‘Isn't he very dark with a mark across his cheek?'

I nod. Sheikh Jamal takes out a phone from his front pocket. I am afraid. If he calls Malam Junaidu, then he will probably hear that I joined the kuka tree boys, who smoked wee-wee and didn't pray. He raises the phone to his ear and my heart beats faster, not in a good way.

He starts to talk and asks Malam Junaidu how he is, how his farm is going, and they go on and on about the rains and then about the violence and curfew in Bayan Layi. Then as if the question doesn't matter he asks if he ever had an almajiri named Ahmad who is also called Dantala. He describes me as quiet, not too dark, not too tall and very thin. As he listens to the reply, the ground on which I sit gets hotter and my stomach suddenly feels like my intestines are being tied together very tightly. I want to get up and run away. He nods and stares at me. After a while he says goodbye and lays down the phone.

‘So when do you want to go to your mother?' he asks.

‘When I finish the injections, I will go,' then I add, ‘and when I have enough money.'

I wonder where I will go if Sheikh Jamal throws me out of this mosque. It costs six hundred fifty naira to get to my village from the motor park. I don't have that much. I wonder what he now knows: if he knows about Banda, about our burning of the Big Party office.

‘Do you have anyone taking care of you?' he asks.

‘No, no one,' I say, the words barely leaving my mouth.

‘Do you like it here? Would you like to work with us?'

‘Yes,' I say without thinking. My heart is back to beating faster in a good way.

‘Finish your injections and go to your mother. Let her see you. The prophet teaches us to be kind to our parents, to help them. I am sure there are ways you can help her. Then ask her if you can come back. If she says yes, come back. But only if she says yes. We have two buses going to Dogon Icce: Malam Abdul-Nur will show you. You can join any of them when you are ready. He will give you some money to return also—if your mother lets you return. And if you decide to stay there, may Allah be with you.'