Born on a Tuesday (13 page)

‘In Sokoto? I didn't know you were here. I thought you were in Zaria.'

‘No. We came to Sokoto.'

‘Anyway, I am coming now.'

I head for Sheikh's office. I am tired in my body and in my head. Sokoto was not like this before. We used to hear of these things in Jos and Kaduna and Kano. It used to be as distant as the car bombs in Iraq and Lebanon. It didn't mean anything to me because this place was always peaceful.

At Sheikh's office I see Alhaji Usman's car. In the office Alhaji Usman is leaning against the window with his hands over his face. Sheikh is on the phone pleading with someone.

‘It is his son fa, think if it was your own son, haba Mohammed,' Sheikh says.

Sheikh walks out into the open yard. I feel very awkward seeing Alhaji Usman like this. When Sheikh returns about ten minutes later he says to Alhaji Usman: ‘He has agreed. Let us go.' He asks me to follow them. They are going to the hospital morgue, where they will meet with the big Shiite malam to collect the corpse of Alhaji Usman's son who died last night. The Shiites wanted to bury him because he was one of them and had been living with them. Alhaji Usman wanted his son's body.

‘What did you come to tell me?' Sheikh asks as we drive out in Alhaji Usman's jeep.

‘My brother was shot last night and he is in the hospital.'

‘Another shooting?' Sheikh cries out.

‘Where is he?'

‘General Hospital.'

‘OK, well we are going to the morgue of the General Hospital too.'

Sheikh makes three other calls in the car. He calls the head of the drivers in the motor park to meet him at the morgue, the grave digger to start digging the grave, and the deputy governor to inform him that the time for the funeral is 3 p.m.

‘What did I do?' Alhaji Usman whispers. ‘What wrong did I ever do?'

‘It's OK, Alhaji,' Sheikh says.

‘They said I should take it easy with him. I took it easy. He became worse. They said I should be stricter. He moved out and ran away.'

The new smell of this car is making my nose tingle. I sneeze.

‘Yar Hamoo Kallah,' everyone says.

‘Did you say your brother was shot?' Alhaji Usman asks, just realising I had said this five minutes ago.

‘Yes,' I reply.

‘What is this country turning into? Sheikh, what are we going to do about this?'

‘Don't worry,' Sheikh says, ‘you just worry about the funeral.'

At the hospital Sheikh pulls the big Shiite malam to the side and they have a long talk. Everyone watches them intently. They walk back and go into the morgue alone. Sheikh calls out to Alhaji Usman. He follows them. I call Hussein again. He says that they have finished the procedure and that Maccido is sleeping. I ask if he has seen him and he says no. He tells me which ward they are in.

The Shiite malam comes out first and together with his people they walk towards the main hospital complex. Sheikh comes out with Alhaji Usman, who is wiping his face. They talk to the morgue attendant and Alhaji Usman begins filling out some forms.

I walk with Sheikh and we ask where the Accidents and Emergencies ward is. When we get in, the Shiite malam is there talking to Hussein and a few other men.

‘We meet again,' the Shiite malam says, ‘do you have a patient here?'

‘It is my deputy, whose brother is here. He was shot by soldiers.'

‘What is his name?

‘Maccido,' I reply, ‘Hussein is my brother too.'

They all stare in amazement.

‘I knew his siblings were Shiites but I didn't know they were your boys,' Sheikh says to the Shiite malam.

‘How small the world is. How small it is!'

‘We need to meet with a few of the other malams because it seems we have common problems,' Sheikh says.

I learn from Hussein that they were all in the same private bus when the soldiers harassed them last night. Alhaji Usman's son Al-Amin was driving and Maccido was sitting in the back. A soldier slapped Al-Amin for not turning off the engine when they stopped. They were asked to all get out of the bus and they refused. The soldier shot through the door, wounding Al-Amin in the hip. He started the bus and drove off. The soldiers fired a few more shots, which wounded Maccido and one other man sitting in front. Al-Amin didn't stop driving until they got to the mosque, where he fainted. At the hospital, the nurses tried in vain to stop the bleeding. There was no doctor available that night and by the morning, when the Shiite malam was able to get a doctor he knew personally, Al-Amin was dead.

This is all too much for me. Fear and anger and sadness and tiredness are competing for space in my body. I feel like I have lost weight in just these few hours. The doctors are not letting anyone see Maccido yet. Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to go in.

Hussein comes with us to Al-Amin's funeral. He does not say anything to me.

After the prayers, Sheikh and the Shiite malam speak to the crowd. While the Shiite malam is speaking, Sheikh whispers to me.

‘We are marching to Government House to demonstrate about this. You must go back to the mosque and stay there.'

‘I want to come too,' I protest.

‘The Americans, do you know that the president and vice president never travel together in the same plane? Do you know why?'

I shake my head.

‘Someone has to take over in case something happens to one person, no?' He pauses and then adds, ‘Sometimes you steal lessons even from the infidel. Go. Now.'

I push through the crowd. Jibril is standing behind, stretching to see what is going on in front. With my eyes I tell him to follow me. We walk away from the burial ground, our feet unconsciously moving at the same pace. We take the shortcuts we both know well, jumping open gutters, squeezing through very narrow spaces between mud houses, bursting into the open football field belonging to the government primary school and then behind the land which is now a maize farm opposite our mosque. I look at the slight swelling on his head and ask if Chuks treated his bites. He nods.

In the mosque I ask for Jibril's radio. He says he forgot it in his brother's house. I tell him that he has to be careful. He shows me some pills and says he got them from Chuks.

‘She cannot get pregnant,' he whispers.

‘Are you crazy? What if this hurts her?'

‘Hold on now,' he says trying to get me to lower my voice, ‘she has been using it before we started.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Since he started beating her and she lost one pregnancy, she swore that as long as he was beating her she would never get pregnant for him.'

‘She lost one pregnancy?'

‘Yes. You know she was pregnant when I first came. That one she gave birth to dead. It was the second one she lost when he was beating her.'

‘I didn't hear of this at all.'

‘Yes, he didn't tell anyone. He just called her sister, who works as a cleaner in a hospital in Ilorin. Her sister took care of her until she got better. He didn't want anyone to know. It was the sister who suggested the pills and got them for her.'

‘You just be careful fa!'

I lie down and doze off until Sheikh and all the others return just in time for maghrib. I ask Sheikh how it all went and he tells me the governor came out to see them and begged them not to act in anger.

‘But of course you know politicians,' he says. ‘He saw our numbers and the only thing he didn't promise was aljanna firdaus.'

He has eye bags like someone who hasn't slept in days.

‘What of the soldiers who shot them?' I ask.

‘I am told they redeployed them yesterday. But we have a meeting with the head of the Task Force tomorrow. You will come with me.'

‘What time Sheikh?'

‘They will call to confirm, but it will be after isha, insha Allah. Have you called again about your brother?'

‘Yes, he is OK.'

‘Well, Alhamdulillah. Don't forget to collect food from my house. I told them you will start coming to collect food'

I do not know why I lied. I could have just said I have not called Hussein since I left. The words just came out as lies. Is this the sign of being a bad person, lying without even thinking it?

I call Hussein. He tells me Maccido has woken up and they have just spoken. Maccido will be fine, he says.

It is just after isha and I am waiting inside the zaure of Sheikh's house. A little boy has gone into the house to tell them that I am outside. Less than a minute later, the boy runs out.

‘They said they are coming,' he says and starts to run off.

‘You didn't wait to collect the food for me,' I shout as he runs down the road, not even turning to listen to me.

The house has been renovated recently with a new large gate like the new houses in town and the compound I live in. But the house still has a zaure like the older houses.

‘Salamu alaikum,' Aisha says stretching out the food warmer.

‘Salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,' I reply wiping my hands behind my thighs.

I don't know why I am wiping my hands or why suddenly it is hard for me to breathe.

‘Thank you. What is it?'

‘Yam and eggs.'

‘Please forgive me,' I blurt, ‘but I keep wondering if you have any hijabs that aren't green.'

‘What does that mean?' She sounds upset.

‘Well I have only seen you wear green and now you are wearing green.'

‘How many times have we met?'

I pretend I do not know exactly how many times I have seen her.

‘Maybe three or four times?'

‘So three times is enough to know all a person's clothes?'

‘That's not what I mean,' I start to say before she turns and says, ‘I leave you well.'

I have that feeling again. Of wanting to step out of my body and slap myself really hard and watch myself scream in pain because of how stupid I have just been.

FAMILIAL

1. Common to families: of or relating to a family
   

When I first read this word in a newspaper, I am thinking it is another way of spelling FAMILIAR.

Now that all of my brothers that remain are in this same Sokoto, I don't know if I am happy or if I am not happy. I am asking myself if there is something that is the same in all families like something that all families must do. Something like liking each other. I know that Jibril does not like his brother. But it is because his brother likes to beat and wound people. Me, I don't know why I am feeling like this about my brothers. I am not feeling like and I am not feeling hate. I am feeling as if they are just some people that we entered the same bus with, people you will forget when you drop from the bus. Allah forgive me.

DERBY

1. an annual horse race run on the flat at Epsom
   
2. a similar race held elsewhere
   
3. Local Derby: a football match between two teams from the same district or area.
   

I am always seeing Derby in Jibril football newspaper that he like to buy every time. Sometime I am thinking of Malam Abdul-Nur sermon when he talk of why football and going to viewing centre to watch football is haram. I don't like football. I know that to be mixing with men and women in the
staduim
stadium and the betting that some people use to do for football is haram. But is buying the football newspaper haram? And me that is looking at the one that Jibril is buying, am I doing haram? I don't want to ask Sheikh or Malam because maybe they will know that somebody is buying the newspaper and Jibril will not be happy if I ask.

Cholera

Since the cholera outbreak in many villages, our movement has been supporting the volunteers going round talking to people about open defecation, hand washing, boiling or purifying water and washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly before eating. A lot of people have died and relief from the state and local government either takes forever to come or doesn't come at all. The first time it happened the local government chairman came around with some materials and a lot of cameramen. I thought they would return but it was all a show. Movements like ours and the Dariqas and the Shiites are coming in to help with clean water, drugs and burying the dead.

Sale designed the images which we took to have printed on big polythene sachets with the name of our movement and logo and the logo of Islamic Relief in England, which sends us water purifiers. Sheikh gave me eight hundred thousand naira to fill two thousand sachets with soap, rice and oral rehydration salts. We will add one water purifier and two hundred naira in each sachet. About half of the sachets are for our members and the remaining we will distribute to others. There are also leaflets in Hausa about how to maintain hygiene and what to do when someone starts vomiting or stooling. I don't know how many people can read Hausa.

Sale is crunching fresh tiger nuts, pouring the chaff on the table. He chews like that prostitute I met behind the tipper garage.

‘Sale, you shouldn't leave that thing lying there, look at all the flies,' I tell him.

‘I will pack it,' he says, his mouth full.

‘No,' I say, ‘clear it now. I don't want flies in this place. This is how cholera starts.'

Slowly, he spits out the chaff from his mouth into his hand and puts it in an old polythene bag. Astaghfirullah, but I don't know why people like him don't get cholera.

‘Flies will still follow the bag, so tie it.'

He wipes his hand on his clothes and ties the polythene bag. I find that since the day I broke up the fight between Jibril and the driver, no one even tries to challenge me around here. It is interesting that it is not Sheikh saying I am his deputy that has made people respect me but me flogging and slapping two grown people in public. I think that is why Malam Abdul-Nur had so many people following him. He never hesitated to hit or slap. I don't understand people.

I am with two volunteers on the way to the first village outside Sokoto city to deliver relief materials: two hundred sachets and a hundred bags of pure water. We are using a new Hilux truck, which was donated by Islamic Relief and has the same driver who fought with Jibril.

Travelling in this truck is better than using the buses especially because of the areas with bad roads. You don't feel the bumps so much. Also the radio has really clear speakers and doesn't give me a headache.

Everyone must be tired from packing and sealing sachets last night. We haven't even been travelling for thirty minutes and apart from the driver and me, everyone is dozing off.

The village looks deserted. But for two old men tilling a farm and two children rolling old bicycle tyres, we meet no one on our way to the village head's house. He has already lost one of his wives and one of his daughters to cholera. He takes us round the village as we distribute the items and talk to people about hygiene. At the home of one of our members we drop ten bags for him to share with other members we cannot meet. We do not let the village head see this.

On our way back to the village head's house, we hear screaming. We stop and follow the sound until we find the house where it is coming from. We say salaam and enter. There are two men, one young and the other older, on the floor, covered in flies, emaciated and barely breathing. Two women are kneeling over them, wailing.

‘It is cholera,' one of the volunteers says.

He goes back to the truck and gets gloves and face masks. The volunteers ask us to step aside and they carry the men out one by one and put them into the back of the truck. They prepare two oral rehydration salt mixtures and ask the women to make the men drink these as we begin to make our way to the health centre close to the city. The village head leaves us and bids us goodbye.

I cannot stop turning to look at the men in the back of the truck. They are throwing up as the women make them drink the solutions. This is the first time I am this close to someone who has cholera. There are tears in the driver's eyes. We almost run a goat over as we reach the main road. The driver looks at me like he expects me to tell him to slow down. I don't tell him anything.

By the time we have got to the health centre, the young man is no longer breathing. Two attendants come and take the two men and lay them on mats outside the building because there are no beds. They take the young man away to the back where they keep dead bodies. We stay at the health centre for thirty minutes while they try to get the only doctor to come around. The older man is throwing up and stooling at the same time. His eyes begin to go pale.

When the doctor comes, he feels the man's pulse and shakes his head. The doctor looks like he is going to collapse himself. When the attendants come to take the man's body, the two women resume wailing.

I walk to a tree away from the health centre, squat and let my tears flow.