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- Herausgeber: CASSAVA REPUBLIC
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
From one of Nigeria's finest contemporary literary talents comes Elnathan John's highly awaited debut novel. Told through the irresistible voice of a young boy, Dantala, Born on a Tuesday is a masterful and haunting coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of extremist politi and religion in Northern Nigeria. Dantala is a naive but bright Quranic student, who falls in with a gang of street boys, surviving on a regime of petty crime and violence. After being paid to set fire to the local headquarters of an opposition party, Dantala is forced to run for his life. Still reeling from the trauma of events, he stumbles into a Salafi mosque where he quickly becomes the favoured apprentice of the Sheikh and finds stability and friendship. From his place of refuge, Dantala confronts the hurdles of adolescence, first love and the splintering of family life - as his mother becomes increasingly unstable in the wake of a family tragedy and his brothers join a rival religious sect. But as political and religious tensions mount, he is torn between loyalty to his benefactor, Sheikh Jamal, and adherence to the Sheikh's charismatic advisor, Malam Abdul-Nur. When bloodshed erupts around him, Dantala is tested to his limits. In this raw, authentic and deceptively simple novel, Elnathan John explores boyhood in the wake of extremism and fundamentalism. Born on a Tuesday delves behind the scenes of the media's portrayal of Boko Haram bringing us a powerful and intensely personal picture of life in Northern Nigeria today. "Anyone seeking to peer beyond the media's portrayals of Boko Haram must read this book, not because it offers a hopeful account but because it offers a human one." Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go.
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Born on a Tuesday
Elnathan John
For the boys who will never be known And the girls who become numbers— Stars without a name
A Star without a Name
When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,
it easily forgets her
and starts eating solid food.
Seeds feed a while on ground,
then lift up into the sun.
So you should taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.
That’s how you came here, like a star
without a name. Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights.
—Rumi
Contents
PART ONE
Bayan Layi
2003
The boys who sleep under the kuka tree in Bayan Layi like to boast about the people they have killed. I never join in because I have never killed a man. Banda has, but he doesn’t like to talk about it. He just smokes wee-wee while they talk over each other’s heads. Gobedanisa’s voice is always the loudest. He likes to remind everyone of the day he strangled a man. I never interrupt his story even though I was there with him and saw what happened. Gobedanisa and I had gone into a lambu to steal sweet potatoes but the farmer had surprised us while we were there. As he chased us, swearing to kill us if he caught us, he fell into a bush trap for antelopes. Gobedanisa did not touch him. We just stood by and watched as he struggled and struggled and then stopped struggling.
I don’t care that Gobedanisa lies about it but sometimes I just want to ask him to shut up. The way he talks about killing, you would think he would get aljanna for it, that Allah would reserve the best spot for him. I know why he talks like that. He tells it to keep the smaller boys in awe of him. And to make them fear him. His face is a map of scars, the most prominent being a thin long one that stretches from the right side of his mouth up to his right ear. Those of us who have been here longer know he got that scar the day he tried to fight Banda. No one who knows Banda fights Banda. You are looking to get killed if you do. I can’t remember what led to the quarrel. I arrived to hear Banda screaming, ‘Ka fita harka na fa!’ Stay out of my business! Banda never shouts so I knew this was not a small matter. Gobedanisa must have smoked a lot of the wee-wee Banda gave him. He uttered the unforgivable insult: ‘Gindin maman ka!’ Your mother’s cunt! Banda was bigger than him and had a talisman and three amulets on his right arm for knives and arrows. Nothing made out of metal could pierce him.
As Gobedanisa insulted Banda’s mother, Banda dropped from the guava tree branch he was sitting on and punched him right in the mouth. He was wearing his rusty ring with the sharp edges. Gobedanisa’s mouth started bleeding. He picked up a wooden plank and rammed it into Banda’s back. Banda looked back and walked off, to the tree. But Gobedanisa was looking for glory. Whoever could break Banda would be feared by the rest of us. We would follow that one. He picked a second plank and aimed for Banda’s head but Banda turned quickly and blocked the blow with his right arm. The plank broke in two. Gobedanisa lunged with his bloodied hands and hit Banda on the jaw. Banda didn’t flinch. No one separates fights in Bayan Layi except if someone is about to be killed or if the fight is really unfair. Sometimes, even then, we just let it go on because no one dies unless it is Allah’s will. Banda grabbed Gobedanisa by the shirt, punched him twice in the face and twisted his right arm, which was reaching for a knife in his pocket. He pinned Gobedanisa to the ground and with his right fist made a long tear across his cheek.
No one holds a grudge in Bayan Layi. Gobedanisa still has his scar but he follows Banda and does what Banda says. Everything that happens is Allah’s will, so why should anyone keep a grudge?
I like Banda because he is generous with his wee-wee. He doesn’t like the way I tell him things that happen when he is away in Sabon Gari in the centre of town. He says I don’t know how to tell a story, that I just talk without direction, like the harmattan wind that just blows and blows, scattering dust. Me, I just like to say it as I remember it. And sometimes you have to explain the story. Sometimes the explanation lies in many stories. How else can the story be sweet if you do not start it from its real, real beginning?
Banda gets a lot of money now that it is election season: to put up posters for the Small Party and tear off the ones for the Big Party or smash up someone’s car in the city. He always shares his money with the boys and gives me more than he gives the rest. I am the smallest in the gang of big boys in Bayan Layi and Banda is the biggest. But he is my best friend.
Last month, or the month before Ramadan I think, this boy tried to steal in Bayan Layi. No one dares to come steal in Bayan Layi. Because it is a small community, it is easy to detect a stranger who is loitering. The boy tried to take some gallons of groundnut oil from Maman Ladidi’s house. Her house is ba’a shiga: men aren’t allowed to enter. She saw him and screamed. Then he ran and jumped over the fence. I like chasing thieves especially when I know they are not from Bayan Layi. I am the fastest runner here even though I broke my leg once when I fell from a motorcycle in Sabon Gari. Anyway, the groundnut oil thief, we caught him and gave him the beating of his life. I like using sharp objects when beating a thief. I like the way the blood spurts when you punch. So we sat this boy down and Banda asked what his name was. He said Idowu. I knew he was lying because he had the nose of an Igbo boy. I grabbed a long nail and pierced his head many times, demanding his real name.
‘Idowu! I swear my name is Idowu,’ he screamed as the nail tore into his flesh.
‘Where is your unguwa?’ Acishuru, the boy with one bad eye, asked, slapping him across the cheek. He knew how to slap, this boy with one bad eye.
‘Near Sabon Gari,’ the thief said.
‘Where exactly?’ I shouted. He kept quiet and I punched him in the neck with my nail.
‘Sabon Layi.’
Then he just got up and ran, I tell you. Like a bird in the sky he just flew past us. We couldn’t catch him this time. Banda asked us to leave him alone. He didn’t reach Sabon Layi. Someone saw his body in a gutter that evening. See how Allah does things—we didn’t even beat him too much. We have beaten people worse, wallahi, and they didn’t die. But Allah chooses who lives and who dies. Not me. Not us.
The police came to our area with the vigilante group from Sabon Gari and we had to run away. Some hid in the mosque. Banda, Acishuru, Dauda and I swam across the river Kaduna, a part of which flows behind Bayan Layi, and wandered in the farms and bushes until it was late, too late to make it back across the river. Banda is not allowed to enter the river at night with his amulets. He says he will lose the power if the river water touches them at night and he cannot take them off because that too will kill their power.
Everyone is talking about the elections, how things will change. Even Maman Ladidi, who doesn’t care about much apart from selling her groundnut oil, has the poster of the Small Party candidate on the walls of her house. She listens to her small radio for news about the elections. Everybody does. The women in the market wear wrappers carrying the candidate’s face and the party logo, and many men are putting on white caftans and red caps just like him. I like the man. He is not a rich man but he gives plenty of alms and talks to people whenever he is in town. I like more the way he wears his red cap to the side almost like it’s about to fall. I will get a cap like that if I get the money, maybe a white caftan too. But white is hard to keep clean—soap is expensive and the water in the river will make it brown even when you wash it clean. Malam Junaidu, my former Quranic teacher, wears white too and he says the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, liked to wear white. But Malam Junaidu gives his clothes to the washman, who buys water from the boys who sell tap water. Some day, insha Allah, I will be able to buy tap water or go to the washman and have a box for all my white clothes. Things will be better if the Small Party wins. Insha Allah.
I like the rallies. The men from the Small Party trust Banda and they give him money to organise boys from Bayan Layi for them. Sometimes we get as much as one hundred fifty naira depending on who it is or which rally. We also get a lot to drink and eat.
I like walking around with Banda. The men respect him and even boys bigger than him are afraid of him. Banda became my friend two years ago, about the time I finished my Quranic training in Malam Junaidu’s Islamiyya. When I finished, Malam said I could go back to my village in Sokoto. Then Alfa, whose father lives near my father’s house in Sokoto, had just arrived at the school and told me my father had died months earlier. I did not ask him what killed him because, Allah forgive me, I did not care much. It had been very long since I saw my father and he had not asked after me. Alfa said my mother still left the village every Friday to beg by the Juma’at mosque in Sokoto city and I had twin sisters whose names he didn’t know. So, I told Malam Junaidu I was going back to Sokoto even though in my heart I didn’t want to go. I thought he would give me the fare. It was three hundred naira from the park not too far away in Sabon Gari to get a space in the back of the trucks which carry wood to Sokoto. Instead he gave me seventy naira, reminding me that my father had not brought any millet that year or the year before to pay for my Quranic training. I had been there six years, and when I told him my father had died, he paused for a moment, then said ‘Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un’ and walked away. It is not that I didn’t agree that it is Allah who gives life and who takes, it is the way he said it in that dry tone he used when teaching that made me sad. But I did not cry. I did not cry until that evening when I heard Alfa telling some boys I was a cikin shege. A bastard pregnancy. I don’t know where he got that idea from. They were sitting by the well near the open mosque Malam Junaidu built. I kicked Alfa on the thigh and we started fighting. Normally I would have just beaten him up but two boys held me down so Alfa could keep slapping me. I was kicking and crying when Banda passed by. Everyone in Bayan Layi knew Banda. With one punch, Banda knocked Alfa down and flung one of the boys to the ground. I ran after Alfa and kept punching him in the stomach until my hands began to hurt. The other boys ran away. That day, I cried like I had never cried before. I followed Banda and he gave me the first wee-wee I ever smoked. It felt good. My legs became light and after a while I felt them disappear. I was floating, my eyes were heavy and I felt bigger and stronger than Banda and Gobedanisa and all the boys under the kuka tree. He said he liked the way I didn’t cough when I smoked it. That was how we became friends. He gave me one of his flat cartons and took me to where they slept. They slept on cartons under the kuka tree and when it rained they moved to the cement floor in front of Alhaji Mohammed’s rice store, which had an extended zinc roof. I cannot say when I decided to join the boys under the kuka tree. At first I still wanted to go back home, but as each day passed, I lost the desire to do so.
Banda was never an almajiri like me. He was born in Sabon Gari like most of the other boys but didn’t attend Quranic school. Malam Junaidu had warned us about the kuka tree boys, who come to the mosque only during Ramadan or Eid days—‘yan daba, thugs, who do nothing but cause trouble in Bayan Layi.’ We despised them because they did not know the Quran and Sunna like us and did not fast or pray five times a day. ‘A person who doesn’t pray five times a day is not a Muslim,’ Malam Junaidu would say. Now that I am also under the kuka tree, I know they are just like me and even though they don’t pray five times a day, some of them are kind, good people—Allah knows what is in their hearts.
Banda is an old boy. I don’t know how old, but he is the only one with a moustache among us. I hate it when people ask me my age because I don’t know. I just tell them I have fasted nearly ten times. Some people understand when I say so, but others still ask annoying questions, like the woman during the census last year. But since the recent voter registration I have been saying I am nineteen, even though I have to fold the sleeves of the old caftan Banda gave me. The men in the Small Party asked us to say so and gave us all one hundred naira to register and even though the people registering us complained, they registered us anyway. My head was so big in the picture on the voter card, Banda and Acishuru kept laughing at me. I don’t like it when Acishuru laughs at me because he has one bad eye and shouldn’t be laughing at my head. He is so stingy he doesn’t even like to share his wee-wee.
‘We have a lot of work to do for the elections,’ Banda says, coughing. Banda hasn’t coughed like this before, spitting blood.
The Small Party has promised we may even get one thousand naira per head if they win the elections. They will build a shelter for us homeless boys and those who can’t return home or don’t have parents, where we can learn things like making chairs and sewing caftans and making caps.
Acishuru, Banda, Gobedanisa and I have been going with some boys from Sabon Gari to the Small Party office to talk about how to win the elections. No one likes the Big Party here. It is because of them we are poor. Their boys don’t dare come here because people will drive them out.
Banda is coughing and spitting out even more blood. I worry. Maybe after the elections, when the Small Party becomes the Big Party, they can pay for him to go to the big hospital in the capital with plenty of flowers and trees. Or, if Allah wills it, he will get better without even needing the hospital.
It is about one hour after the last evening prayer and the Small Party man’s brother has just driven into Bayan Layi in a white pickup truck with the party flag in front. He shouts Banda’s name. Banda drops from the guava tree and I follow him.
‘Which one of you is Banda?’ a man asks from behind the truck. I can’t see his face.
‘I am,’ Banda replies.
‘And this one, who is he?’
‘He’s my friend; we sleep in the same place.’
‘My name is Dantala,’ I add.
‘Well, we want just Banda.’
I am angry but I don’t say a word. ‘I am coming,’ Banda says to me, adjusting the amulets on his right arm. It is his way of telling me he will be OK. He hops onto the back of the truck and they drive off.
Banda appears just as the muezzin sings the first call to prayer. It is election day. I didn’t sleep because I was anxious and I knew they would give him a lot of money for the boys.
‘What did they tell you?’ I ask.
‘Nothing.’
‘What do you mean, nothing?’ I am getting irritated. ‘So they kept you all night for nothing?’
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.
