Born on a Tuesday (2 page)

Banda doesn't say anything. He brings out two long wraps of wee-wee and gives one to me. We call it jumbo, the big one. He also hands me two crisp one hundred naira notes. I have not seen crisp notes like these in a long time.

‘After prayers we will gather all the boys behind the mosque and give them one hundred fifty each. Then we wait. The party men will tell us what to do. Those who have their voters' cards will get an extra two hundred and I will collect all the cards and take them to their office.'

I am not sure why they have told Banda to collect the cards because I imagine they want us to help vote the Big Party out. But I want the extra two hundred. I am excited about the elections and the way everybody in Bayan Layi and even Sabon Gari likes the Small Party. They will surely win. Insha Allah!

Banda and I head for the polling centre between Bayan Layi and Sabon Gari even though we will not be voting. The day is moving slowly and the sun is hot very early. I hope the electoral officers come quickly so it can begin. Plenty of women are coming out to vote and the Small Party people are everywhere. They are handing out water and zobo and giving the women salt and dry fish in little cellophane bags. Everyone is cheerful, chatting in small groups. The Big Party agent arrives in a plain bus and takes off his party tag as soon as he gets there. I think he is afraid he will be attacked. He doesn't complain about the things the Small Party people are doing; he can't, because not even the two policemen can save him if he does. He knows, because he used to live in Bayan Layi too before he started working for the Big Party and moved to get a room in Sabon Gari. Banda says he hardly stays there and he spends most of his time in the capital where all the money is.

The voting is about to end and my wee-wee is wearing off, but I still have some left from the jumbo Banda gave me in the morning. I am hungry and tired of drinking the zobo that has been going around. I can't see Banda anywhere. I turn the corner of the street and find him bent over, coughing, holding his chest. He is still spitting a lot of blood. I ask him if he is OK. He says nothing, just sits on the floor, panting. I get him one sachet of water. He rinses his mouth and drinks some of it.

‘We will win these elections,' Banda says.

‘Of course, who can stop us?' We are talking like real politicians now, like party men.

‘Will they really build us that shelter?' I ask.

‘I don't like to think of that; all I want is that they pay every time they ask us to work for them. After the election, where will you see them?'

I am thinking Banda is very wise and I should stop expecting anything from the Small Party men. I light what is left of the jumbo and ask Banda if he wants some.

We hear screaming and chanting. The counting is over and as we expected, the Small Party has won here. I don't think the Big Party has more than twenty votes in this place. We get up and join the crowd, chanting, dancing and beating empty gallons with sticks.

I am exhausted. I slow down. I am still high and all these thoughts are suddenly going through my head—my mother who is far away, how I have hardly prayed since I left my Quranic teacher and how we only go to the Juma'at mosque in Sabon Gari on Fridays because there are people giving alms and lots of free food. But Allah judges the intentions of the heart. We are not terrible people. When we fight, it is because we have to. When we break into small shops in Sabon Gari, it is because we are hungry, and when someone dies, well, that is Allah's will.

Banda disappears again. He comes back early in the morning and says we have to be out again today after the morning prayers.

‘We have been cheated in the elections,' Banda says, coughing and frantic.

‘They have switched the numbers. We have to go out.'

I am still sleepy even though there is a lot of noise around. There are unfamiliar boys standing behind the mosque, shouting. I just want to sleep. My stomach is rumbling and my head hurts. This is the moment we have all been paid for. I had hoped all this would end last night. Unlike the other boys, I am not used to this breaking and burning business. Under the kuka tree, nothing is complete without some fire and broken glass.

‘These Southerners can't cheat us, after all we are in the majority.'

I don't know the boy who is shouting, but he is holding a long knife. There are no Southerners here, I think, why is he holding out his knife? We all have knives here. I suck my teeth. The crowd is agitated. Banda looks like he can barely stand and is walking towards a parked pickup truck—the same pickup truck the Small Party people came in the other day. I see him bent down talking to someone inside the truck. Banda is just nodding and I wonder what he is being told. He walks back with his hands in the pockets of his old brown jallabiya. He comes into the crowd and whispers to the boy waving his knife in the air. The boy starts calling the crowd to order.

‘We are going to teach them a lesson,' he says. ‘We must scatter everything belonging to the Big Party in Bayan Layi.'

I must ask Banda who this boy is.

‘Burn their office!' Gobedanisa shouts.

The crowd screams. I have always wanted to enter that office. I hear they keep money there. I scream with the crowd.

Banda tells us there are machetes, daggers and small gallons of fuel in the back of the truck. We will get two hundred naira each for taking back the votes that were stolen. Two hundred sounds nice. I can buy bread and fried fish. I haven't had fish in a while.

We file past the truck to get our two hundred naira notes and fuel and matches and machetes. The man handing out the notes doesn't talk. He just looks sternly into our eyes and hands out the notes. He gives a hundred to the smaller boys. I push out my chest as I approach the man, raising my chin so I don't look so small. I want the two hundred. The man looks at me and pauses, assessing me to see if I should get one or two hundred.

‘We are together,' Banda says from behind me to the man. The man is not convinced and hands me a one hundred naira note. I take it—I never refuse money—and collect a machete from behind the truck. Banda whispers something to the man and then collects a note. He stretches it out to me—it is another one hundred naira note. I am glad and suddenly the sleep has cleared from my eyes. This is why I like Banda: he fights for me. He is a good person. He gives me something rolled up and wrapped in black polythene and asks me to hold it for him. It is money. I am not sure how much.

The first thing we do is set ablaze the huge poster of the Big Party candidate in front of the market. I like how the fire eats up his face. I wish it was his face in real life. The Big Party office is on my mind—I can't wait to search the offices and drawers and take whatever I can get from there before we set it ablaze.

I am the first to get to the Big Party office. The others are trailing closely behind me. They are excited, delirious, partly because we have been paid and partly because they hate the Big Party and are angry about the news we have heard.

We push the gate until we bring it down, together with the pillars to which it is attached. Tsohon Soja is the old man guarding the place. He tries to struggle with some of the boys, grabs one of them by the neck and blows his whistle. Another boy snatches the whistle from his mouth.

‘You are an old man, Tsohon Soja, we don't want to harm you. Just stand back and let us burn this place down,' I tell him.

This security man is stubborn. He is a retired soldier and thinks he can scare us away. He reaches for his long stick and hits one of the boys on the shoulder. Gobedanisa charges forward with his machete, striking him on the chest and on the neck. None of the boys wanted to be the first to hit the old man because they all know him. Now that he is down they strike at his body. Me, I think it's bad luck to be killing such an old man. But he brought it upon himself. I know Gobedanisa will boast about this.

I run into the building; a boy in front of me has already opened the front door. I hope there is some money in the office—there must be—why else would the security man be trying to fight a whole crowd? We all enter the place, destroying furniture, tearing papers and posters, searching drawers. We go from room to room. All I can get is a transistor radio in one of the drawers. Acishuru gets a really new prayer mat and a cap. I am disappointed.

Banda is holding a half-gallon keg of petrol and so is the other boy who was wielding the knife behind the mosque.

‘Get out, we are burning the place!' Banda orders.

I put the transistor radio in my other pocket—not the one with Banda's money—and it falls through to the ground. There is a big hole in my pocket. The radio has a little rope. I hang it around my neck and pick up my machete. I am also holding the matches, so I wait for them to finish pouring petrol while the other boys run out to the next building or billboard belonging to the Big Party.

‘Pour more, pour more,' Banda tells the boy.

‘No, this is enough; we need it for other places. It is petrol not kerosene.'

Banda concedes. I wait for them to come out. I strike a match and throw. The boy was right. I love the way the fire leaps out of the window and reaches for the ceiling. I remember when I was very small, my father almost beat me to death because I burnt a whole bag of millet stalks. That was before the rain stopped falling in our village and my father sent me and my three brothers far away for Quranic training. I don't know where they are now, my brothers. Maybe they have gone back home. Maybe they have decided to stay like me.

A fat man runs out of the burning building, towards me, covered in soot, coughing and stumbling over things. He can't see well. A Big Party man.

‘Traitor!' one boy shouts.

The man is running with his hands in the air like a woman, like a disgusting ‘dan daudu. I hate that he is fat. I hate his party, how they make us poor. I hate that he was hiding like a rat, fat as he is. I strike behind his neck as he stumbles by me. He crashes to the ground. He groans. I strike again. The machete is sharp. Sharper than I expected. And light. I wonder where they got them from. Malam Junaidu's machetes were so heavy, I hated it when we had to clear weeds in front of the mosque or his house or his maize farm.

The man isn't shaking much. Banda picks up the gallon and pours some fuel on the body. He looks at me to strike a match. I stare at the body. Banda seizes the matchbox from me. The man squirms only a little as the fire begins to eat his clothes and flesh. He is dead already.

I am not thinking as we move on, burning, screaming, cutting, tearing. I don't like the feeling in my body when this machete cuts flesh, so I stick to the fire and take back the matchbox from Banda. At first we make a distinction between shops belonging to Big Party people and those belonging to Small Party people, but as we become thirsty and hungry, we just break into any shop we see.

As the crowd moves beyond Bayan Layi, they are stopped by the sound of gunfire ahead. I am still far behind taking a piss and I see the crowd running back. Two police vans are heading this way and they are firing into the air. As they get closer the policemen get out and start firing into the crowd. As I see the first person go down, I turn and run. I look back for Banda. He is not running. He is bent over, coughing, holding his chest. I stop.

‘Banda, get up!' I scream, crouching behind a low fence.

Everyone is running past him and the police keep shooting. He tries, runs feebly and stops again. They are getting closer—Banda has to get up now. I want to run; I want to hope his amulets will work. But I linger a bit. He gets up again and starts to run. Then he falls flat on his face like someone hit him from behind. He is not moving. I run. I cut through the open mosque avoiding the narrow, straight road. I run through Malam Junaidu's maize farm. There are boys hiding there. I do not stop. I run past the kuka tree. I will not stop even when I can no longer hear the guns. Until I get to the river and across the farms, far, far away from Bayan Layi.

Sokoto

Apart from a big renovated expressway leading into the capital, Sokoto hasn't changed much. Even though the rains have not started yet, the rice farms of Fadama farmers stretch out like a shiny green cloth. Sometimes we pass millet or tobacco fields. Sometimes it is just bare, dry earth, broken up like my dreams every time I fall asleep on the way. Every time we pass a camel, I feel like reaching out and touching its long, lean neck. Camels look sleepy to me, like they are being forced to do everything when they are tired.

I thought a lot on my way to this dusty city as I sat with two other boys behind the lorry that carried wooden planks of various sizes. Once I thought a bad thought, astaghfirullah. I am ashamed to admit it, but I thought that if Allah was going to take someone, it should not have been Banda. I thought maybe Gobedanisa, or even Alfa should have been the one shot in Bayan Layi. This thought stayed with me for a long time until suddenly a fear gripped me in my chest for questioning Allah and why Banda was destined to die. So I kept saying astaghfirullah, Allah forgive me, until I noticed the other boys were looking at me like I had gone mad: what I was thinking had left my heart and started coming out of my mouth, goose bumps were all over my arms and I was shaking like I had a fever. My head was heavy. My back was aching from sitting for many hours on wood on the bumpy road.

Then suddenly the lorry began veering from left to right until one of its back tyres behind came off and we started going down a slope and into the bush. We were all screaming because the planks were falling out of the lorry. I held onto one big plank as the lorry tumbled down. Next thing I knew, the plank I held slid out of my hands and before I could let go of it, I was in the grass on cow dung, with bruised elbows and knees. I got up feeling dizzy and saw that the lorry had been stopped by a tree farther down the slope. I walked over the many planks strewn all over the place to where the lorry was, on its side. The driver and one of the two men sitting in front, who both had blood all over their bodies, were trying to pull the third man from the passenger seat. His head had gone through the glass and he wasn't moving. They dragged him out and shouted his name.

‘Bilyaminu!'

Now that I think of it, I wish I didn't hear his name, because when I close my eyes, I hear his name and see his swollen head and all the blood. It makes me want to scream.

I mentioned the boys at the back of the truck to the men, who were using leaves to fan Bilyaminu. The driver got up and ran to the back. I ran with him. We didn't see the boys. Then we looked and saw blood under one of the planks still inside the lorry. I helped him lift the planks one by one. The driver screamed when he saw the legs of one of the boys. There was still a lot of wood piled up on their bodies. The second man, whose arm was broken, ran to the road to stop other cars to help us. Other lorries and buses stopped. The people from the village near the road also came out to help. When we had finally managed to remove all the planks I couldn't recognise either of them. I cried, without tears in my eyes, until my chest hurt. They were both almajirai like I was, returning home from their Quranic school to help their parents with harvesting. I don't know where they came from but they were not from Bayan Layi. Everyone agreed that it was best to bury the boys and that the driver, who said he knew their homes, would take the news to their parents. The villagers dug three graves not very far from the road and called their imam to say a prayer for the two boys and Bilyaminu.

The driver suggested that I join one of the other Sokoto-bound lorries which had stopped. As I washed up at a well in the village I realised I still had Banda's polythene wrap of money, but I couldn't find the other notes I had in my front pocket. I was glad that I didn't ask the two boys their names. It makes it easier to forget.

I am dizzy as I walk through the motor park in Sokoto. My lips are cracked and bleeding. I can't decide what to do or if I want to go home yet to look for my mother. There are mango trees near the shops inside the park and I go under one to lie down. It is cool here but there are many ants—the red ones that can make you scream and jump when they bite. I crush a few around me before Bayan Layi invades my thoughts. I bring out the wrapped money and count it, looking around to make sure no one is watching. I count in Arabic. This is one thing Malam Junaidu taught us well. Sometimes, during our lessons, he spoke only in Arabic and if we did not understand he would lash us with a whip made from old motorcycle tyres. I didn't get beaten much for Arabic, because I learned very fast. I never forget a thing once I have memorised it.

I can't believe how much is in this wrap. Eight thousand three hundred naira. The most money I have ever had is three hundred fifty naira, which Banda gave me from one of the rallies and even then I considered myself rich. I divide the money into three parts. Three hundred naira I put in my front pocket, five hundred naira I put in my right trousers pocket and seven thousand five hundred I wrap in the polythene and put in my left trousers pocket. My head is pounding and my bruises are getting sore. My whole body is trembling like when I was thinking bad thoughts towards Allah in the lorry. My stomach is twisting and biting. I think that I did not die in the lorry because I quickly realised my sin and said astaghfirullah many times. I wonder about those two boys, whose bodies were not even whole bodies when we found them beneath those wooden planks. But Allah knows why—it is all destined by Him.

I see an open chemist. I walk into the store and meet many other people there. Everyone calls the store owner Doctor but one man calls him Chuks. He is short and his eyeballs look like they are about to fall out. I wonder if the skin over his eyes can cover them completely when he sleeps or if there will still be some eye left. His fingers are short and fat and he scratches his large belly with his hand as he talks. He is fair-skinned, not fair like a city Fulani, but like the muddy puddles in Bayan Layi after it rains. I can't stop looking at his huge nose, which seems to be divided into three parts. He must be breathing in a lot of air.

‘Ehen, what do you want?' he says, breathing hard.

‘I am not well,' I say.

‘You are not well? What is doing you?' His Hausa is funny and the more I stare at it, his nose is like the nose of the thief who lied saying his name was Idowu.

‘My head hurts and I have thrown up and my stomach is turning and my body is trembling,' I tell him. I remember the accident and I add, ‘and I fell from a lorry and hurt my elbows and knees.'

‘Do you have money?'

He looks at me from head to toe when he asks this. I am getting dizzier and irritated at his questions. I want to tell him that he should not mind that my clothes are dirty and my slippers are different colours and worn out—that I probably have more money in my pocket than he does in the little wooden box where he takes change from, that I can buy anything in his store. But I want to be treated so I just tell him, ‘Yes, I have money.'

‘Your headache and trembling, is it before or after you fell from the car?'

‘It was a lorry, not a car.'

‘Look here, is it me or you who is doing the treatment? What concerns me whether it is lorry or airplane or bicycle? Do you want me to treat you or not?'

‘Sorry.'

‘Before or after!'

‘Before.'

He hisses and goes into a wooden cubicle inside the shop. He comes out with a bag and asks me to come inside. I want to tell him that it really started when I thought bad thoughts towards Allah, but I am sure he is not a Muslim. He asks me to roll up my sleeves and trousers and uses scissors to dip cotton wool in a bottle. As the cotton wool begins to foam on my skin it stings me and I flinch and knock the scissors out of his hand. He screams at me saying that if I do not sit still he will send me away and I will still pay for the cotton wool he has wasted. I sit still, close my eyes and grit my teeth as he takes out new cotton wool and applies all the other things which hurt even more. Then he brings out a syringe and needle and draws out some medicine from three different little bottles until the syringe is almost full.

‘Have you eaten?' he asks.

‘No.'

‘Are you a fool? Do you want to collapse when I give you this injection? Go and eat something outside now if you have money. Do you have another money?'

‘Yes.'

I walk out and buy a sachet of kunu from one of the girls in the park and then some bread from the store next to the chemist. There are buses going to my village, Dogon Icce; I hear the conductors shout for passengers. I think of my mother, who I left so long ago. I don't know what I will do if I go back. My mind drifts from there to the kuka tree in Bayan Layi and I wonder if there are still policemen in the area. Chuks interrupts my thoughts and tells me to hurry up. I stuff the remaining bread in my mouth and go in.

I can feel the kunu rising in my stomach right after the injection and I run out to throw up. Everything around me is double and I feel a hand grabbing me before everything begins to fade.

I wake up and find that I have been sleeping on a bench inside the chemist. It is dark outside and I am drenched in sweat.

‘How are you feeling now?' Chuks asks.

‘Better, but my head hurts still.'

‘Here, take this and make sure you eat something before you sleep. Your money is three hundred seventy naira.'

He gives me white tablets and tells me the entire treatment will finish in three days. Two more injections, he says.

Chuks reminds me of the fat man from the Big Party office. I think this as I pay him and then walk to the mosque in the motor park. There are taps there and I swallow the two large white tablets.

This mosque is nice. It smells newly painted. Outside the mosque there is smooth concrete pavement where the taps are. There are three doors, one in front for the imam, where he stands to sing the call to prayer, and two doors on either side. Inside at the back, there is a room with a wooden door which is locked. There are four ceiling fans and one big standing fan in the front right corner. The red wall-to-wall rug is bright and neat. I lie down in the mosque and begin to doze off until I feel a man tap me lightly.

‘Won't you get up and say your prayers?' he says and walks away.

It is a command, not a question. His voice is deep and his beard is grey and black in a pattern so neat as if he coloured it himself. It is he who sings the call to isha prayer. His call makes one want to stop and listen to the words, and want to pray. It is deep and loud but smooth and gentle on the ears:

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar . . .

I do my ablution outside by the taps and rush in, attaching myself to the end of the long row that has quickly formed. Shoulder to shoulder. Toe to toe. I have not prayed like this since the last Eid. It feels nice. ‘Praying in congregation makes us equal before Allah,' Malam Junaidu liked to say, ‘shoulder to shoulder.' Even though of course he did not treat us like we were equal to him. My knees hurt when I kneel to pray but I don't mind. I am praying next to a short person. I think he is a boy like me until I turn and see he has a long, thick beard.

The prayer is over and I am thinking of what to eat when this man who prayed by my side stretches his hand to me and says, ‘Salamu alaikum.'

‘Wa alaikum wassalam,' I reply.

His voice is bigger than he is and sounds as if it is coming from somewhere out of his body. I wonder if the beard is heavy for his face. He asks me if I have eaten and tells me that there is free food outside the mosque. I walk out to where the food is being shared and I see some men offloading sacks from behind a black jeep. The food is in small, disposable paper packs. Joining the rush to reach for food, I knock down a little boy. The man who dropped the sacks is shouting, asking us to wait, to calm down because there is enough to go round. No one is listening to him; no one wants to take a chance. Some people are taking as many as three packs. Others spill the contents of their packs as they try to run off with more than they can carry. I am able to get two packs before people empty the sacks.

The man was wrong. There is not enough to go round and many are left without. I walk back to the mosque with what I have got. Both packs have jollof rice in them but only one of them has a small piece of boiled meat. I see the little boy I knocked down, still on the ground crying. He didn't get any food. The bearded man who told me there was food is outside the mosque entrance, his short arms on his waist, looking at me and at the boy on the ground. His eyes are saying many things to me, the way my mother's, Umma's, eyes said many things when I did something wrong. Those eyes of hers were more painful than the knocks from my father's hard knuckles. I am ashamed and look to the ground avoiding the crying boy and the short man's gaze of judgment. I can still feel his eyes as I reluctantly squat and tap the boy, whose head is buried in his lap. He looks up. I give him the pack without meat. He wipes his eyes with the back of his left hand and receives the pack with his right. My eyes follow him as he gets up and walks away from the mosque into the darkness where there are broken-down buses and cars. He doesn't even say thank you.

The man is still standing there as I make my way towards the mosque, still looking at me, half-smiling now. His eyes are better, they commend me. I open the pack and eat the rice quickly before I will have to share it too. I chew hard upon a stone and it sends a shock through my body before I spit it out. There is hardly any salt in the rice and the meat is tough. It is easier to just swallow it.

The short man talks to me as I drink water at the tap.

‘Allah will reward you for sharing your food, as Allah will reward and grant the wishes of Alhaji Usman, who sent the food,' he says and walks away.

My head is pounding and I feel like throwing up. I close the tap and walk into the mosque to lie down. There aren't many mosquitoes here even though the mosque has two open doors.