Born on a Tuesday (10 page)

‘I have been outside, ya Sheikh. Since yesterday. I came as soon as I could. It was Jibril who sent me a message.'

‘What were you doing outside?'

‘They wouldn't let me in.'

‘You could've just told them you are my boy. Anyway, how are things? I heard there was some disturbance here yesterday.'

‘Yes ya Sheikh. But everything is OK now.'

‘I hope people aren't too angry. I have told Abdul-Nur to give them my message. We must not lose our heads over this. You know what happened in Iraq? The enemies of Islam and of the people, after the Americans turned the country upside down, what did they do? They went to Sunni mosques and bombed Sunni mosques. They went to Shiite mosques and bombed Shiite mosques. And then people started attacking each other. Very easily they started civil war. Who gains and who loses? I have seen too much of this kind of thing. I know it. This will pass. We will not give them power by getting angry. I told Abdul-Nur no one must talk about this. We have buried our dead. Allah is greater than they are.'

I feel the pain in my nose. It would be a disgrace to cry here in front of these women. The girl in the green hijab takes the bowl of pap and a little plate of kosai and puts it on a tray that hangs from the metal railings of the bed. He spills some pap on his chest as he tries to eat with his trembling left hand. She cleans him up and tries to take the spoon from him.

‘Aisha, please let me try,' he says with a smile. He sits up and breathes heavily. After the third spoonful he turns to me.

‘How was the funeral?'

‘It was OK. They had finished before we got there.'

‘Allah forgive her. May Allah give her rest.'

He turns to the women in the room and tells them that my mother just died.

‘Allah Sarki! May Allah grant her repose,' Sheikh's wife says.

‘May Allah grant her repose,' Aisha repeats after the second woman.

‘You will do something for me,' Sheikh says. ‘Remind me please before you go.'

Aisha gets up from the chair and leans against Sheikh's bed. I shake my head and tell her she should sit. After going back and forth about it, I accept and sit down. Alhaji Usman opens the door, panting. He stares at Sheikh.

‘Please give us a few minutes,' Sheikh says to his wife. ‘Not you,' he adds when I get up too.

‘This one is my son,' he says to Alhaji Usman.

‘They have burnt down the big Shiite mosque on Balewa Way,' Alhaji Usman says. His eyes are red and he is raising his cap and running his hands through his hair repeatedly.

‘Do you know who did it?'

‘Who else? That one that you won't let go. He will be your ruin, wallahi, Sheikh.'

‘I gave him specific instructions not to even raise the issue.'

‘I don't even know if anyone died. But they torched everything, including the malam's house behind the mosque.'

‘Do me this one favour, Alhaji. He is stubborn as a donkey, but not useless. I still need him. A time will come to throw him away. But that time is not now.'

‘What do you want Sheikh?'

‘I will send him away to do some work for me.'

‘Where?'

‘Saudi Arabia.'

‘Even for me that is hard. And they will soon start looking for him. I don't want anyone to associate him with me.'

‘There is a way. He will go across by road to Kano and to Maradi, where he will lay low with an old student of mine. Then he will go to Niamey and travel to Saudi Arabia from there.'

‘OK. But Sheikh, I will not be involved in any more of this kind of rubbish. One more thing and I will have to insist that he goes.'

‘Please trust me on this. Just let's get him out today. Two, three months. He will calm down.'

‘What is your name?' Alhaji Usman asks me.

‘Ahmad,' I tell him.

‘Arabic and Quran, he knows very well, one of my best assets. He is even trying with English,' Sheikh adds.

‘Can he come work for us on the campaign?'

‘Ah no, not this one. I need him, especially now that Abdul-Nur will be gone. I am getting old, I need someone smart to stand with me.'

‘What do we do about the attack? I don't want retaliation and more retaliation.'

‘I know the malam. We disagree and do debates but he is a reasonable man. Let us call him. We will offer to rebuild their mosque.'

‘But you know what people will say if they know we are building a Shiite mosque.'

‘Yes, allow me to handle that. I will talk to him. We were at Barewa College together, I went to Cairo and he went to Iran.'

Alhaji Usman shakes Sheikh's left hand, drops a black polythene bag on the bed and walks out.

‘Open the bag,' Sheikh tells me.

‘Count it. Not everything, just the bundles.'

I have never seen so many crisp notes in my life before. There are ten bundles of one thousand naira notes. He opens the small black purse by his side and pulls out two five hundred naira notes.

‘Take this for transport. You will go with the driver and one of those policemen to the bank. Unity Bank, the one just opposite the Juma'at mosque. Aisha will give you the account details.'

I protest telling him that I will not need the transport money since the driver is taking me. He ignores my protest and asks me to go. I am dizzy just thinking that I am holding one million naira in my hands.

Outside the ward, on the bench, Aisha writes down the account details on a sheet of paper. My hands tremble a bit as I receive it by the tip, careful not to touch her hand. She looks up at me and smiles showing one dimple on her right cheek. I cannot look into her eyes. I walk away quickly, the policeman following closely behind.

SHEET

I am happy that I know the difference of piece of paper and sheet of paper. It use to worry me. But now I know piece of paper is paper that is not complete that somebody tear to write something and sheet of paper is a full paper that is complete.

KOHL

The English word for TOZALI is KOHL. Jibril
say
said he has never heard the word before. Sheikh said he has never heard the word before. Nobody has heard the word KOHL before.

Brotherly Love

It is hard to understand how it is that big men feel safe with all the policemen around them. Since we started having all these roadblocks and these policemen, who search cars and make people push their motorcycles all along the road in front of our mosque, I have felt afraid.

I feel more unsafe now than the day our mosque was attacked, the week that Malam Abdul-Nur left for Maradi. I did not sleep that night. People threw firebombs over the fence starting a fire that gutted Sheikh's office and half of the mosque. I had my key to the office and everyone thought I was crazy when, instead of running out, I opened Sheikh's office to try and get some books out. But the heat and the smoke overwhelmed me. In all of the things that have been happening, it is this that made me angry—all those books from Egypt and Saudi Arabia and London, all gone. It would have been preferable if my room and all the other rooms got burnt but not Sheikh's office, which was packed top to bottom with books. That was the day my anger towards the Shiites began. But my fear, it began with those police uniforms, those guns, those roadblocks. My fear was fed each time by the petrified faces of motorcyclists, afraid of being made to do frog jumps for offences as little as looking too directly into a policeman's eyes. Or being made to roll in the dust while being slapped and kicked.

The day of the attack, Sheikh made one of the drivers take him from the hospital with all his bandages to the field where people had gathered, angry, ready to burn down every Shiite mosque and house. He winced as he screamed. He said he would rather die than have them start a war with the Shiites. At first they wouldn't listen, but he screamed until he found the words that made them calm, that made them pay attention.

Tomorrow is the big meeting. Sheikh made me get a new white caftan sewn even though I insisted that the one I was planning to wear was still fairly new. I am going with Sheikh to take notes, together with Malam Yunusa, Malam Abduljalal and Malam Hamza, who are all also trustees of Jama'atul Ihyau Islamil Haqiqiy. I am surprised Malam Hamza will be there. The last I heard of him, he was very ill at home. The deputy governor is the chairman of the reconciliation committee set up by the governor to settle the issues between the Shiites and us. All the other men proposed by the governor were rejected either by the Shiites or by Sheikh. The Shiites rejected the head of the Muslim Pilgrims Board because Sheikh was also on that board. Sheikh rejected Alhaji Usman, even though the Shiites themselves wanted him, because he didn't want anyone to say that Alhaji Usman was our patron and accuse him of taking sides at the end. And, when someone suggested that it would be wrong to hold any reconciliation meeting without the Sultan of Sokoto, everyone agreed that he should be an observer on the committee.

I have not been able to sleep since Sheikh told me that I will follow him to the deputy governor's office. The temptation to tell Jibril everything that Sheikh wants me to do with him is very strong but I keep quiet because I don't want it to sound like I am bragging. Especially now that I have started singing the call to prayer at the mosque. Wallahi, I love it more than I ever thought I would. Closing my eyes, covering one ear with my hand, holding the microphone with the other and singing:

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Ash hadu anla ila ha illallah

Ash hadu anla ila ha illallah

Ash hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah

Ash hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah

Hayya alas salah

Hayya alas salah

Hayya alal falah

Hayya alal falah . . .

It transports me to a deep place away from everything around me. The feeling is one of being lost inside myself, a dark, peaceful place. My lungs empty as I drag out each line: I breathe in to refill my lungs and empty them again. I am lost in that dark space until I say the last words ‘La ilaha illallah.' I try to explain to Jibril but he cannot understand how just singing these words can give me the best feeling in the world, a feeling that drives out all pain, all fear, all worry, all want. I made him try it in the room; I told him to cover his ear, breathe in, relax and pretend that no one was there, not even himself. He still didn't get the feeling. You can tell when a muezzin is enjoying the call or when he is doing it just because he has to, like Abu, who yawns into the microphone when he has to call the fajr prayers. If it was up to me, Abu would never call a prayer.

I spread out the white caftan on the bed and dust the black shoes that Suraj the shoeshiner polished last night. The plastic folder has plain sheets of paper, a notebook, a red pen and a blue pen. It will be a real disaster if I doze off during the meeting especially as I am there to take notes. My eyes are heavy from a night spent staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping.

Alhaji Usman has sent two of his new jeeps for Sheikh to ride in: one with tinted glass and one without. Sheikh resisted very strongly, saying he didn't want to go in a borrowed car. But Alhaji Usman told him that it was better to use the jeep just so we wouldn't have a hard time getting into Government House. The thought crossed my mind, that if Sheikh collects money from Alhaji Usman, using his cars for just one day shouldn't be a problem.

Sheikh is still at home. He went back home after the morning prayers to take a nap. Since he got shot, he has been sleeping much more. He cannot speak for as long as he used to. Last Friday, his tafsir was quite short and he was panting the whole time. Perhaps I just hadn't noticed but his beard seems to have grown greyer in the three weeks since he returned from hospital. I worry when I walk into his office and find him lost in thought. Sometimes he flinches or ducks as if something was flying in to hit him. The first few times I ducked too, until I realised it was all in his head.

When Sheikh arrives, we split into two groups. Sheikh, Malam Yunusa and I enter the jeep with tinted glass while Malam Abduljalal and Malam Hamza enter the second one. Behind and in front of us are buses containing some of the men who guard Sheikh when he goes out. The deputy governor has also sent a police car to escort us.

The car seats are new and cold. The air smells fresh, like the type of nice expensive chewing gum that Malam Abdul-Nur sometimes chews—the type they sell sometimes in go-slows, only better. It smells exactly like how I imagine it to be in London or Dubai or Cairo or Saudi Arabia. A screen on the dashboard shows what is behind the car when the driver tries to reverse. The dashboard is so clean I have a strong urge to touch it, just rub my hands over it. I do not know when the car is on or when it is off because the engine makes barely any noise and I feel no vibration at all. Kai! The cold is making me want to pee.

No one stops us on the way because of the police car. In the mirror, I see Sheikh sweating. He is breathing hard and leaning away from the door. I turn around and see him counting the beads on his wooden chasbi. He does not look well.

We are the first to arrive. I use the opportunity to ask where the toilets are. The tiles inside are not like the tiles in our mosque. Everything is so white and shiny and I feel like I will slip and fall. I am afraid to mess up the toilet seat so I squat over the seat and aim carefully. I could eat in this place.

The big Shiite malam comes with three men. Everyone shakes hands and does introductions. Sheikh refers to me as Malam Ahmad. No one has referred to me like this before and it makes me feel important. I am glad when the deputy governor walks in with the Sultan, because the silence in the room was very awkward and everyone was trying not to look at each other. I think for a moment about my brothers. One day, they will be Shiite malams too.

The deputy governor has so many people around him. He has someone holding his bag, someone pulling out a chair for him, someone holding his phones and someone writing when he speaks. I wonder why one man needs so many people as if he were a cripple. Sheikh does not even let me carry his bag.

It is hard to take notes when no one will speak straight. Everyone except Sheikh and the big Shiite malam speaks in circles and says many unnecessary things before getting to the point. I hope that the paper I have will be enough.

The men with the Shiite malam are all speaking so angrily. I am afraid that this meeting might end in a fight. I am afraid that Sheikh might get angry and the whole meeting will just be a waste of time.

‘I assume I know why we are here,' Sheikh interrupts one of the men on the other side, who won't stop talking.

‘I assume but I will only speak for myself. I am tired of the fighting and of having soldiers insult our people in the name of protecting us. I don't want to have soldiers around my mosque. I am sure you don't want to have soldiers around your mosque. If we fight, it is Islam that suffers. Of course I don't agree with you and the things you practice. But is judgement not for Allah? Let us go to the heart of the matter and stop the accusations. And I will start by saying that I agree that we are at fault in the way in which it began. I am not joking about this. We accept the damage to the mosque and to your house and I am willing to pay restitution. I do not ask for anything in return. I do not seek retaliation or restitution, for my mosque or for getting shot. I do not even make any accusations. I just want the attacks to stop.'

The room is silent. Everyone, including the deputy governor, looks shocked. Even I am shocked. Sheikh leans back into his big cushion chair and rolls the beads on his chasbi. The Sultan has the same blank face he came with. For many minutes no one says anything. One by one, people lean back into their chairs, until no one is resting against their arms on the large round table except the woman writing what the deputy governor is saying and me.

‘Shall we go for a short break?' the deputy governor proposes after a while.

‘Ran ka ya dade, maybe not yet,' the Shiite malam says, ‘I want to say something.'

Sheikh smiles.

‘I see that all the arguments we brought have become useless. There is no longer any need to prove anything. If truly Sheikh means what he says, then this meeting will end earlier than we thought. And I thank him.'

‘If not for the destiny of Allah which separated us, we might have been praying in the same mosque,' Sheikh says to the deputy governor, pointing at the Shiite malam. ‘We used to play football together fa, only I was a much better player than he was.'

Everyone bursts into laughter, first nervously, then freely.

‘On the issue of who was a better player, Sheikh, we might spend all night without a resolution,' the Shiite malam says.

The deputy governor is shaking his head and smiling. Everyone is.

‘All that now remains, if you agree, is that the two of us, just the two of us this time, will have another meeting to discuss how we want to stop this from happening again and what exactly we need to do now to make sure that our people are on the same page with us.'

Sheikh agrees with the Shiite malam adding, ‘Of course, if His Excellency and the Sultan agree, we can end this meeting and start one between us so that we can free him and his people.'

The deputy governor turns to the Sultan, who nods slightly.

‘Alhamdulillah,' the deputy governor says. ‘You may use our premises for as long as you want. I will not be far away. If you have reached a decision you can just call my PA and I will come down.'

We all take a break to eat and pray before Sheikh resumes alone with the Shiite malam. Everything is so large in Government House. The ceilings are so high, the tables so big and even the food in the dining room has chicken pieces so large I wonder if it is really chicken or turkey.

As one hour becomes two, I walk out to where the drivers are sitting under the shade of dogonyaro trees where they parked our cars. I lie down on one of the benches. It is cool here and there are many birds around. The flowers are trimmed and look so full and healthy.

When I close my eyes I see the smiling image of Aisha with her green veil and dimple on her right cheek. My mind replays our last meeting, when she gave me Sheikh's account details and smiled at me. I keep wondering if she just smiled or if she smiled at me. There must be a way of seeing her again.

The drivers are listening to a programme on BBC Hausa Service which mentions the war that ended in Gaza earlier this year. They are talking about how Israel is always looking for ways to kill all the Arabs there so the Israelis can take their land. One driver says that if he had the chance, he would go to Gaza and join Hamas just so he can kill an Israeli soldier. I want the meeting over so I can go and sleep.

Three hours later, Sheikh and the Shiite malam emerge from the office. They are both smiling and laughing and patting each other on the shoulder like they are friends just coming from watching a football game in a viewing centre.

Sheikh asks me to get the deputy governor's PA.

When the deputy governor arrives he shakes everyone's hand. The Shiite malam gives a summary of what they have agreed on. They will issue a joint statement to end the fighting and to pledge their commitment to peace. Neither of them will insult the other whether in sermons or otherwise. Sheikh will renovate the burnt Shiite mosque but not their malam's house, and the Shiites will pay for the books and equipment that got burnt since our mosque has already been renovated. Sheikh agrees. Malam Yunusa does not look too pleased.

The deputy governor talks about how happy he is that there is a resolution to the crisis and how the governor is committed to peace in the state. He talks for so long, I lose track of what he is saying and for a moment I stop writing.

The sultan speaks for the first time.

‘I am here as an observer so I will not say much,' he begins, speaking slowly as if he is counting his words. I am dizzy looking at him and his big white turban. His outer robe has large patterns embroidered in gold thread. His face is clean: there is not a spot on it. There is neither a smile nor a frown on his face as he speaks and rolls the beads of his long white chasbi. It feels like he is not a human being. I almost forget that I need to write.