Born on a Tuesday (4 page)

There is a pain deep in my nose because I am holding back my tears.

‘Thank you,' I say snuffling.

Malam Abdul-Nur motions to me to leave. I get up. But I have to know what Malam Junaidu said.

‘Please what did Malam Junaidu say?' I don't know where I get the boldness.

‘He said you know your Arabic well.'

I walk away, relieved.

The day is just getting bright and Chuks is opening his store. As he struggles with his many padlocks I sit on the blackened bench outside. I think of all I would have said if the Sheikh had asked me about my mother. I try to imagine Umma now, fair, long face, deep dimples and dark circles round her eyes. She said her teeth were brown from the water they drank growing up. Her slender fingers and feet always have dark lalle tattoos on them. Sometimes they are reddish. Unlike her mother, Umma is slim and tall. She says she gets it from her father. He fell from a date palm tree when she was little. Umma is quiet and doesn't spend her time gossiping with any of the other women in Dogon Icce. She laughs softly when she does but mostly, her eyes are sad. I wonder what she thinks about when she sits by the zogale tree inside the house watching lizards run around or when she absently waves flies away from her body. Often when she complained that her chest hurt, my grandmother would tell her, ‘You think too much. What is in this world?'

Chuks' shop is now open and I walk in. The thoughts of Umma make the pain not so bad when the needle enters my buttocks. It only matters now that I will be going home. To my mother. To her gentle smile and deep eyes.

Dogon Icce

I try to squeeze onto the makeshift seat in the middle of the Nissan bus. Because the seat usually gets hot, the bus conductor has some rags and plywood to sit on. He asks me if I am Malam's passenger and I say yes. He tells me to sit in front instead. The new motor park laws say that buses cannot have more than one passenger in the front seat. I have never travelled this comfortably before.

I have two big polythene bags, both from Malam Abdul-Nur and Sheikh: inside are three big mudus of millet flour, two big mudus of maize flour, a half mudu of sugar, a half mudu of salt, two used but still almost new caftans and three bars of soap. This is more food and possessions than I have ever had and I hold the polythene tightly refusing to let the conductor keep it in the back. Umma will be pleased. Her smile will be soft like she smiles when other women are jumping and screaming in celebration. She doesn't clap her hands or hold her nose to make that ringing noise that women like to make during weddings or naming ceremonies. The neighbours, unless they see me coming, won't know I am around from any noise in the house because her happiness will be in her face: I will see it in the wrinkles around her dark eyes, in the dimples in her cheeks. I don't know if she will hug me like she did before I left. I am much bigger now. Women only hug boys who are little.

Sheikh Jamal is standing at the motor park gate as we drive out.

‘May Allah forgive Malam,' the driver greets him, slowing down.

‘Salamu alaikum,' Sheikh Jamal replies stretching his hand to shake the driver's.

The driver receives the handshake with two hands, bowing slightly. Sheikh Jamal extends his hand to shake mine too and says, ‘May Allah forbid a mishap on the road.'

‘Amen,' I say and hear many people in the bus also whisper amen. Every prayer is important, especially that of an Imam. The road to Dogon Icce is horrible in several places and it is not strange to hear that there has been an accident.

On the way an old man starts talking about how his farm was destroyed by the rains and flooding. He has lost all his millet and maize, he says.

‘You should be grateful to Allah you still have a roof over your head,' a younger man says. His house crumbled under the water and his entire family is without a home. One of the women at the back starts to cry as she tries to relate that her little son drowned when the waters came. Two other women console her.

I have no stories to share. I want to ask if anyone knows my mother, Umma, the fair Shua woman from Maiduguri who used to sell millet gruel by the market. If I had a picture of her, perhaps I would show them. The driver is silent. I ask him when the floods happened, and he says more than a month ago, surprised that I hadn't heard.

‘Where have you been?' he asks.

‘Bayan Layi,' I reply. Perhaps I should stop telling everyone where I am coming from.

‘No wonder. The floods lasted many days: in fact we couldn't drive into Dogon Icce and all the surrounding villages until last week. Just two rains and the whole place is destroyed.'

People are dying of sickness, he complains. There is no water or hospital in Dogon Icce and many people, especially children, purge until they die. The water got contaminated after the flood and although the local government chairman promised to bring water tankers, they have not seen any yet.

Everyone is now talking at the same time and I can't follow anything. I think of Umma and her mud house and hope, insha Allah, that the house my father built when the millet farms gave many bags is still standing. I don't understand this flood business. The last I knew when I was in Dogon Icce was that there were no rains and millet was drying up in the farms except for the large farms owned by the brothers of one big man who had machines that pumped water from the rivers. Too little rain then, too much rain now.

There is a little old booklet on the dashboard. I ask the driver if I can have a look. He asks if I can read it, says it is a book in Hausa and Arabic. I smile. I want to tell him that when I was in Malam Junaidu's school, there were only three who knew how to read both Hausa and Arabic—I and two of Malam Junaidu's brothers, who sometimes taught us when he was away, that my mother speaks fluent Arabic though she cannot read, that I probably know it better than he does. I nod and pick up the book. The title is in Hausa:
100 Authentic Hadiths on How Muslims Should Conduct Themselves
. It is compiled by Mahmud Yunus. The pages on the left have the hadiths in Arabic while the pages on the right are in Hausa. I could memorise this book in an hour if I set my mind to it. It's been a long time since I did that; I have never memorised anything without a whip in front of me. As I start reading, it feels different. I look up to be sure there is no one holding a whip over my head. Reading is nice if someone is not forcing you to do it. The first hadith is familiar.

Actions are but by intentions and every man shall have only that which he intended. Thus he whose migration was for Allah and His Messenger, his migration was for Allah and His Messenger, and he whose migration was to achieve some worldly benefit or to take some woman in marriage, his migration was for that for which he migrated.

The driver looks at me in amazement as I read under my breath but loud enough for him to hear. I am doing this deliberately and look at him, expecting him to ask where I learned to read or who my teacher is. He only shakes his head and smiles.

The driver taps me as we approach Dogon Icce junction. I wake up, wiping saliva that has rolled down the side of my mouth. It is crowded as usual with people trying to make their way into the villages around. The roads here are not like the roads in town. They are mostly narrow bush paths cleared by the villagers. The main road was cleared by a member of the House of Representatives who was building a big house in the village. He only comes briefly during the big Sallah and shares a lot of meat and grain.

‘The motorcycles are not even agreeing to pass this road after the floods,' one woman with a baby on her back complains.

She and a few women are going to walk all the way to the village.

‘You have to even take off your shoes most of the way,' another woman with a sack of grain says.

I walk behind the women as they complain about their losses. The woman with the baby has just returned from the hospital in Sokoto where her daughter has given birth but is still very ill.

‘They say her waist was too small and she should not have gotten pregnant so early. I don't know what this world is becoming these days. When I had her, I was not up to her age. Did I even have breasts when I was married off? Yet I had all my children without any complaints. It must be the new fertilizer, I tell you. It's all poison, wallahi. When it was only cow dung, who heard about such things for Allah's sake? Imagine, they had to tear her open for the baby to come out! Even the baby is not doing well.'

The other women agree.

‘May Allah lighten her burdens,' the woman with the grains on her head says.

‘If only we had a hospital here, I wouldn't have to make this long journey back and forth to get her things, but no, if not buying cars, and sharing meat during elections and Sallah, there is nothing else they do. Tell me, for Allah's sake, what is a little meat when I have to travel to get to a hospital?'

If, insha Allah, I ever have the money, I will build a road to Dogon Icce and a hospital. And a nice mosque with a rug, like the new one at the motor park in Sokoto, but bigger. I would paint it completely white and build a concrete house for Umma by the side. I would give her all she needs and stop her from selling gruel or doing any work for that matter. Maybe then she would stop sitting and staring at lizards for long periods.

As we walk through a huge pool of thick muddy water the woman with the grain on her head slips and falls flat. The contents of her polythene bag spill into the mud. A few grains of wheat float while most sink to the bottom. It is too late to save any of it. She starts to cry as the other women take her by the hand to lift her up. There is nothing I can do to help her; both my hands are full and I am in the middle of the water. They are too busy trying to clean the woman up to hear me say sorry. I feel bad just walking past like this, without stopping. But Allah knows the intentions of my heart. That is all that counts.

I could have sworn my house stood here, where this mound of mud and thatch is. There is nothing I recognise. An old man chops off wood from a fallen tree ahead. The axe seems too heavy for him and he groans with every strike at the trunk of the tree. He stops when he notices me.

‘What are you looking for?' he asks.

‘My house. My mother's house,' I tell him.

‘Who is your mother?'

‘Umma.'

‘Umma, mai koko?'

They still call her the one who sells gruel. When I say yes, he looks away and sighs. I am scared. I drop the bags I am holding.

‘That is her house you are looking at. Her sister-in-law took her to Katako. Do you know where it is?'

‘Yes,' I reply and pick up my bags. Katako is a bit far from here but there is a shortcut through Dogon Icce. As I walk away, he says something I do not hear. I do not stop. All I want is to see my mother.

The only houses standing are the few made of concrete blocks. Many trees have fallen, some uprooted from the ground. I hope, insha Allah, I find Umma well. Without walls or trees to climb, there are so many lizards on the ground looking like they have lost their way. My feet hurt from walking but I will not stop to rest. It is evening and I want to reach Katako before the sun goes down. There are flies everywhere and bloated carcasses of dogs and goats. The smell in the village makes my stomach rumble. Now I feel like I should have left for Dogon Icce as soon as I arrived in Sokoto. Only Allah knows why this happened, why my mother's house is now a huge pile of mud and thatch. I wonder if any of my brothers are back. If I had a phone like Sheikh Jamal or Malam Junaidu and I could get one for Umma and my brothers, I would have called them to know how they were and where they were. All I know is that when the rains first stopped falling and the millet dried up in the farm, my father sent them—Maccido, Hassan and Hussein—to become almajirai in an Islamic school in a place called Tashar Kanuri. A few months after, I was off to Bayan Layi because the malam in Tashar Kanuri didn't have space for more students. I wonder why Umma didn't send anyone to look for me when my father died or if my brothers knew. Allah knows. Allah knows what is best.

The day my brothers left for Tashar Kanuri, I was both sad and happy. Sad that suddenly I didn't have anyone to protect me from the bullies in the village but happy I had more space to sleep and maybe my portions of food would become bigger. The portions never got bigger. Maccido used to slap me hard for no reason, even though Umma used to quarrel with him about it. He never listened to her and was mean because he was the eldest and was bigger than all of us. Still, he beat up anyone who beat me or tried to bully me in the village. Sometimes I liked him. Sometimes I hated him. Hassan and Hussein, the twins, were quiet and fair like Umma. Many times I thought Umma loved them more than she loved the rest of us. Nobody beat or bullied them. Umma told us my father only beat them to make them change from being left-handed when they were very little. So they learned how to use their right hands but didn't stop using their left hands. I always wished I knew how to use both hands. Nobody believed Hassan and Hussein could do any wrong, so when they would go to play with Maccido and come back late, my father would beat only Maccido. My father wanted to send just Maccido and Hassan to Tashar Kanuri but everyone thought it was a bad idea to separate the twins, so he sent all three of them leaving me alone with Umma.

I stop and rub my palms together. They are red from carrying the two bags. I can see my aunt's mud house in the distance and my heart is beating fast. Tears are filling my eyes and my nose hurts. I can't remember the last time I was here but little has changed apart from the roof, which is no longer thatch but old rusted zinc. There is also now a reed curtain covering the door that leads into the zaure, the room at the entrance where male visitors are received.

‘Salamu alaikum,' I shout at the entrance.

‘Wa alaikum wassalam. Who is it?' The man who answers sounds angry.

The man walks into the zaure from the house and looks into my face. It is my aunt's husband, Shuaibu.

‘Allah be praised!' he shouts.

I smile.

‘Dantala! When did you get into town? But you have not been fair, wallahi. Are you the first to be sent away to be an almajiri? Your brothers have been coming, but you, no. What happened to you?'

I don't know which of his questions to answer first or why he is shouting at me.

‘Anyway, stop standing there like a stranger, go in and let them give you water to wash up.'

I walk through, more scared than I have ever been, sad that Umma might think I have let her down.

‘Khadija,' he shouts, ‘come and relieve Dantala, he has some things with him.'

‘Which Dantala?' Khadija screams and runs out of her room.

I cannot look into her eyes as she screams ‘inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un' several times. She grabs me, hugs me and starts to cry. She drags me by the hand into her room.

‘Come and let your mother see your face, maybe she will agree to say something. Since she lost her girls she has stopped talking or eating. We have to force her to eat.'

My eyes widen.

‘Oh Allah! You never even met your sisters ko? Cute little things, wallahi.'

I am too confused to say anything.

‘I am on my way out, I will be back soon,' Shuaibu says, standing outside the room.

‘Toh, see you later,' Khadija says, wipes her tears and opens the window for light to come in. The sun has just started setting. The first thing I see is Umma's legs. She is lying with her face to the wall.