My story began not with a beginning but with an end; an end to normalcy; and end to what we hold dear. For here the beautiful chaos created by man doth lie before me, not like a raging inferno house but like an unquenchable pyramid of burning coal.
My home, oh my home! I stood watching with hopes dashed – like I am an abandoned festival – at the sight of the clouds made cloudier by the hazy smoke emanating from the only place I knew as home until it was mercilessly burnt by Boko Haram the previous night, Oct 18th 2012.
The previous evening was pretty much like any other, I was out with two friends like Yobe big boys would, until my ears found themselves invaded by a sound that has now learnt to force itself in – against my will and without my consent –gunshots! This signalled that the bragging rights wouldn’t be with any big boy but with Big Brother and his boys that day. Each of us ran to his house.
I grabbed the controller of my PlayStation in a bid to stop the fear of the unknown from getting a hold of me. Playing it proved harder than it has ever been, failure, frustration and the fear of a great perhaps I absolutely couldn’t answer got to me and my fear-fear heart. I gave it up and lay on the rabbit hole that is my bed and with it set sail for wonderland. The trip was rudely brief. My snoring eyes were tapped awake by the persistence of my affrighted ears, who have heard something that is definitely not right.
”Open! Police search!” grunted a slim figure I just couldn’t get a grasp of as his military-grade torchlight had infiltrated my window and crippled my eyes. One thing I could very well recognize though is the instrument hanging on his arm and shining like the Saharan sand that has been consumed by the moon’s fluorescence. It’s definitely an AK or an Uzi.
“No! It is an AK, an Uzi is more or less a dual weapon.”
My mind was ready to go to war with itself, but is it worth it? Even if it was a toy gun, pointed at me then it is meant for just one purpose and it’s the purpose I am scared of rather than the craft.
His now visible face looked deep into my eyes and I dared not look back. Not because I was afraid of him but because at that point, fear had taken control of all my faculties. He is a bit light-skinned, had premature moustache and was roughly my age – I was 17.
He wore a black vest atop a brown Pakistani kaftan and his head was adorned with a rawani as dark as his eyes. He ordered that the door be opened; my immediate brother and I got up and headed for the living room. I tactfully stayed behind so I wouldn’t take the blame for letting a gun-slinging terrorist into the house. In my defence fear was in control of all my faculties.
Reaching the living room, I discovered that the entire house had honoured the writ of summons, so the blame game would be the least of our concerns. There were about 10 Big Brother’s boys, each with at least a gun. The family was lying on the floor, my brother and I joined without being told to do so. We were ordered to close our eyes. I shut my eyes to the best of my ability but I received a kick on the face for not using my hands to cover them. I dared not complain!
“Where is your father?” They asked in Hausa.
“He is not around!’ I answered, without raising my head, as the man of the house.
“Your father is an infidel; we will slaughter him if we get him.”
I didn’t answer that one, simply didn’t know how to.
They searched the house for him but instead found some things that would shift their version of infidelity from him to us – my mother’s ID card and my law books.
“This woman is a big infidel, she teaches our people the white man’s ways”, she was a lecturer of English Language at FCE(T) Potiskum.
At that moment I wondered what they would say or do to me if they found out I was a second year student of Civil Law. Luckily for me, my ID card was not found and they didn’t ask for an explanation for the books.
“Kuna boko?” they asked.
My siblings and I chorused a resounding yes.
“Wane makaranta?”
“FECOET” I quickly shouted the name of my secondary school – I had to before my younger siblings answer it for me.
“Boko is haram” they said “we are here to do da’awah for you” they continued. “God has forbidden it and has ordered us to kill you if you don’t stop”
They asked a lot of questions that fear made us answer hilariously; I told myself we would laugh at them the next day – we still haven’t laughed at them almost eight years after.
They asked for money, and asked for gold. I wondered when they would do the da’awah. They took what they could, put in a sack and told us to go outside so they could complete the plunder, impliedly.
I was in a dilemma – to run and get help or to stay put? My mind settled on staying put after seeing about 6 members of the Big brother crew keeping watch outside, and in their midst was a young girl kneeling down. We knelt just by the gate. They came out and gave us a sermon on our evil ways and told us of God’s unending doors of forgiveness. We thanked them. I stood up; my hands had barely touched the gate when I heard a voice “where are you going to? This is no longer your house.”
As if that was not shocking enough, “Can you do the work of Allah?” I was asked, being the eldest. My jaws dropped, my heart boiled, my knees screeched, my eyes cried and my mind disbelieved but there were reports of them recruiting boys even younger than I was to fight their battles. I looked at my family, and thought I had rather die than to leave them but I knew deep down I couldn’t say no to Big Brother if he wanted my services. So I prayed to God to take control.
“Stand up, let’s go” Big Brother said, I had no idea where to. About eight of them remained behind.
We kept quiet and followed them.
“You should show us the house of infidels.”
I didn’t know what he meant, by his categorization we are also infidels. So, we walked past the first house, then my friend, Sara’s house; we didn’t say a word. We stopped at the next one. It lights were on, which is a sign that it hasn’t been deserted unlike the two previous houses.
One of them entered the house with a ladder and opened the door. They told us to kneel again and warned us not to run away and went into the house. From there I watched as my house was slowly being devoured by fired. Mission accomplished, the rest of the boys joined us and we waited patiently together.
I observed as my younger brother of about 7 years trembled in fear. “Enter the house and spend the night; tomorrow you can find where to go to.” They said after the other group came out from the house.
“You prostitute! Follow them” they shouted at the girl. We thanked them and went in.
At the house, there were three guys and a girl lying down, face stitched to the ground. We bade peace upon them, and entered. One after the other they got up with the unsaid thrill of having been left alive. One of them I recognized – Sudais, who sometimes leads prayers at the Shagari Estate Mosque. As a child, my friends and I would copy his way of recitation of the Holy Qur’an. We narrated our story to them; the girl too narrated hers.
She had taken a walk with her boyfriend when it all started, for their safety they hid in an uncompleted building. But were caught by Big Brother, the boyfriend’s head was shaved completely before he was slaughtered from the back of his neck until his head was completely detached from his body.
Then the house narrated its story. Three young guys and a young girl; Big Brother was convinced they had brought the girl to the house to spend the night with her. The truth is Sudais and the other guy had visited the owner of the house who got married to his young bride less than two weeks ago. They became trapped when the shootings started. This group too, for its safety had to pass the night here.
After convincing Big Brother, they were asked for ID Cards. One had a JIBWIS ID card, the second is a civil servant and the other had none. Being in the midst of dan Izala and a civil servant, the unidentified must be a DSS operative. Big Brother was convinced! He begged for his life and convinced them that he is a teacher at an Islamic school but didn’t come out with his ID card because they only came for a brief visit.
Big Brother took their phones and other valuables. The husband had a picture in a military khaki kept in his drawer. Luckily for him they didn’t see it. He brought it out and shredded it with his hands. A little too late for that, I thought.
My sisters, mother and the girl were given a room to sleep in while we (my brothers and I) alongside the husband and his friends slept in the living room; some on the sofa, others on the carpet. I was on a sofa by the wall.
That is when the actual nightmare started; my ears found themselves in the awkward position of being citadels to desperate gunshots, which is not totally dissimilar to a thousand-people striving to enter a large hall through a single, tiny door meant for a Lilliputian midget. I felt the wall vibrate like it was being opened with a drilling machine – it was the sound of anti-aircraft bullets being buried in a human being. I closed my ears to escape the horror but instead of wonderland, I see myself at the places I shouldn’t be – at my house, in the next house, on the street – with their guns pointed at me. I was like the boy at Diagonally instead of Diagon Alley, and with no Hagrid to save me.
I left my eyes open for the bullets to be the death of me. Somehow in the midst of it, I disappeared from the action and had a dreamless sleep. But the horror laden night stretched and shared its luck with the rising sun – I was awakened by the cries of childless widows and brotherless orphans. Boko Haram had killed 7 males in the next house, a father and his six children, with the eight bleeding to death. The house opposite it lost a father; he came out to look at the eight as they were being fired at. The families couldn’t cry until the morning because they feared that Big brother was watching them.
We trekked back to my house. I walked slowly, paying attention to the thumping sounds my whirlwind feet made as they drubbed the crispy Potiskum sand with such ferociousness seen only in the shanks of the stiffest Siberian tigers. And like a thief’s apprentice I watched every ray of light attentively and paid attention to every detail, thinking of what savvy creature may appear from this graveyard. It seemed to be the centre of attraction for tourists trooping in from all corners of our beloved milky way; their mission is to watch us, their dream to hear our story, and to probably sing the poetry of the fallen (with mournful glee.) We are natives of the street now and with it comes an undoubted celebrity status; celebrities of circumstance, or are we not?
They narrated how my elder sister had to be stopped from entering the house because she thought we were inside. Later, a neighbour told her she heard us leave but didn’t know where to. So she went with her husband to look for us.
That day – I watched my family cry; I watched my house burn; I watched my neighbours cry; I watched my neighbours die; I watched my neighbours mourn; and I watched the godless claim to be of God. I was made homeless but others were made orphans, widows or brotherless.
But it didn’t stop there, across Potiskum – houses were burnt; a father was killed alongside his eldest son that had just studied medicine from the UK; two boys were tied in their father’s living room and burnt alive because one of them had recognized one of the terrorists as someone that comes to their father to study and to collect alms.
The operation lasted for 12 hours; from 5pm to 5am yet nobody came, Potiskum was left to itself. The town basically slept with Boko Haram completely in charge but by the grace of God, the town survived. May we never go back to those dark days again.
#SundayCreativeNest #CounteringViolentExtremism #CVE
Gimba is a corporate lawyer, child rights practitioner, poet, essayist and an advocate of justice and good governance. You can find him on Facebook: www.facebook.com/BarrGimba/
#SundayCreativeNest is a weekly program of the Creativity Nest (a platform created by CoY-PCR for the preservation and promotion of indigenous wrtitings, Arts and culture) where contemporary societal issues are tackled through either of Drama, Prose and Poetry.
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