While the World Slept

A story by EWA GERALD ONYEBUCHI

March, 2020

Our single-bedroom house is on a hill. I stand on the decked rooftop and scrub the cleft of my buttocks. While I scour my head with soap, a vulture sails a little across the sky and lands on a tree branch before me. I am temporarily arrested by its raspy, drawn-out hissing sounds, its grey stout neck, its black feathers.

For many months now, we haven’t experienced any attack from the terrorists, I think. And there are no dead bodies littering Borno Yassa, so why is it here? Before I’ve had time to process this question, another vulture lands on the branch beside the first. Then a handful of vultures gather on the lone branch. The branch snaps and falls to the ground, the vultures soar into the sky. 

Goosebumps invade my skin. Bad omen, that’s what my Umma calls them, these creatures of death. If you see one, she would say, no need to get yourself agitated, but if it’s a handful of vultures, something terrible will happen. I don’t know if I believe this tale as much as she does, but who am I to argue with adults? 

I’m still thinking about the appearance of the birds when soap slips into my eyes and mouth. I cough out the bubbles mixed with phlegm and splash water on my face. The more I splash my face, the more foam collects in my eyes. I want to scream for my Umma to come to my rescue, but I remember that I’m no longer a girl of eight. I am a big girl with nut-sized breasts flowering from her chest. I am fourteen, and by the end of this month, I’ll be fifteen. She’s warned me to stop taking a bath outside, but I prefer the tingling freshness of the natural air on my body to the suffocating heat that brims in the bathroom next to a pit toilet that never fully gulps our excrements.

I reach for the towel on the elevated stone slab by my left foot and rub my eyes with it. The world becomes visible again. I stare into the bucket and realise that it’s all soapy water. My blood boils. As it stands, I have just two options: dab my body dry and scurry towards the mosque where the neighbourhood well is situated, several kilometres away from home, or resign myself to bathing with this water. Option one is tempting, but I’d end up going late to Karatu. In the middle of contemplating my next line of action, my Umma strolls in, clenching a broom. An itch travels down my thighs, and I scratch it while greeting her. I hold myself from bursting out about the vultures.

She doesn’t respond or face me. The pots and plates clatter as she drives the broom between them. When she lifts her head, the features on her face are deeply set, like taut guitar strings. 

I wrap the towel around my waist hurriedly, step out of the puddle of dirty water that is draining into the hole in a corner, and inch closer to her. “Sai, anjima, Mama,” I say. 

She continues to move the broom around, raising clouds of dust in the air. Her silence stings. 

I cover my nose and stare at her, wishing she’d pause for a minute to look at me, jest, or even complain about the immodest way I tied the towel around my waist, like a boy. I wish she’d try to hurl something at me or command me to push the towel a little higher up my chest. Perhaps she’d begin her usual mantra of how a decent Muslim girl should dress, not only in public but also at home.

Inside, we are shawled in silence. The living room cups the smallness of our lives: our travelling bags crammed with clothes in a corner, shoes painted in dust, a dirty shelf containing books no one has read in years, our lone bed in another corner close to the window.

As I munch the stewed rice and crush the chicken bones, I am reminded that Umma sits across from me, and I am careful not to disrupt the silence with my mouth. Her gaze hovers listlessly around the house, at the walls smudged with dirt, as though searching for something, an imprint of her loss. Sometimes her gaze drifts towards me, but her lips do not make a sound, even as she chews on her food. 

She coughs. “You know that’s the last piece of meat in this house, so chew it wisely,” she says without meeting my gaze.

Her words infuriate me, but I don’t show it. Like the rest of the insults before, I swallow this one and let it sour my insides. Instead, I choose to think of the day she brought the bag of freshly killed chicken home and gathered its dismembered body into a kitchen bowl, humming through puckered lips. I had stood by the door, watching her, the brightness that swept across her face, the joy I’d never glimpsed in her eyes until now. Given that we had always had our meals without meat, I asked where the chicken came from, and she said, “A kind politician had distributed a bag of meat to everyone present at the mosque today; it was his small act of kindness in preparation for Ramadan.”

“But you don’t like politicians. You say they’re corrupt people.”

“And so?” She raised her voice, widened her eyes and wedged both hands on her waist. “I should have rejected the meat from him because I hate politicians, abi? When was the last time we ate meat in this house?” She clicked her tongue.

The muezzin’s cry infiltrates my thoughts, and instinctively I look at the clock on the wall and notice that the tiny hand is static. Damn clock! I check the hour on my wristwatch. 8 am. I throw the last contents of my plate into my mouth, and say, “Nagode, Ma.” 

Her silence is a living thing that follows me across the room. 

I nudge the door open and dash out of the house.

I zip past the rows of houses on both sides of the dirt road, scrunch my nose at the child stooped over a mountain of excreta buzzing with flies, whistle a song and feign ignorance at the women bent over large pots of garri mounted on a kiln, making faces and hurling words at me because I did not greet them. Who cares? A boy sticks out his tongue at me while his mother sponges his back. I stick mine at him. The boy does it again, more furiously this time. His mother slams his head with her knuckles. The boy cries. I laugh like a mad woman until tears pepper my eyes. 

When I arrive at the junction opposite an abandoned building devoid of windows and doors, I pause to watch a group of boys playing police and thief with sticks in place of real guns. Their euphoria is infectious, but I resist the force pulling me towards them and race on.

I halt in front of the cashew tree, unable to move my limbs. Tears prick my eyes as I gaze at its rich green foliage and large gnarled feet that still house memories. The thing restraining me gives way, and although I am late for Karatu, I saunter towards it, wrap my arms around its trunk as though I were embracing bones and flesh. This is not my first time walking this road, but today feels different. I miss my brother Ahmed. Ahmed, the boy with a dose of my Baba’s sinewed spirit and stubbornness and my Umma’s meekness. But he seemed to have submitted himself more to the control of the former until it delivered him into the belly of the earth. I remember those times, before the world fell, before the carnage of war snaked in on us and turned us into rats scurrying at the meow of a cat. We were children, unperturbed by the worries of our parents. We would scale people’s fences to climb trees, in search of fruits, and when a voice blared out from the house, we jumped down from the tree, unbothered about breaking a bone or two, and zoomed off the way we had come. It was a period when I developed a penchant for climbing trees despite Mama’s worry that I could mangle a limb and no man would be willing to marry a limping woman. Like other things, Ahmed taught me how to climb trees. 

“One leg at a time, kachikwo?” he would say, with a mean face, both hands clasped behind his back. 

“Never attempt to climb a weak branch with both legs.”

This cashew tree used to be our perfect hideout from the day’s heat after foraging Borno Yassa for fruits and anything to brighten the dull shades of our lives.

The cry of a bird soaring above shoots cold shivers through me as I peel away from the tree. It’s a vulture—I think the same one from earlier on. It perches on a branch. There’s a knowing in its eyes as it glares at me, and I wonder if this second appearance is a statement, its way of conveying something I don’t yet know. 

“Ladi! Ladi!”Someone yells my name from behind. 

I recognize that voice. The bird scoots into the sky before I can meet its eyes again. I dab my face with my uniform and blow my nose. The voice grows nearer, and I turn around to find Musa and Sadiq bent over, breathing heavily and clutching their chests. They were Ahmed’s close friends before he died. Although only two years older than I am, at times, I find it difficult to address them by their first names, and they seem to be everywhere I go. Sometimes, I imagine that the only reason they’re in my life is out of duty or respect for their friend. Once they are fully collected, we perform the ritual of shaking hands and fist bumping. 

“Kai! Ladi, didn’t you hear me calling your name?” Musa says.

“I’m sorry, I was in deep thought.” 

Sadiq bows in mock reverence and doffs an invisible hat, his big forehead glistening with sweat. “Sanuu, madam deep thought,” he says. 

I stare briefly at the small tear in his trousers, running across the knee. Musa hovers around me contemplatively, his hands tucked behind him. He smells of talcum powder and something else, something sweet I can’t place a finger on. I swallow saliva, hoping he doesn’t find anything.

He stops before me. “This girl! You have been crying. See tear lines on your face.”

His own terracotta face is finely cut with a crop of hair jutting from his jaw like one of the shirtless male figures affixed to the front cover of those celebrity magazines at Sadiq’s that I used to pore over.

“Nooo,” I say in defence.

Sadiq joins in. “Yes, you have.” He scratches the middle of his ringworm-infested head and pauses at intervals to smell the white scaly patches lodged in his fingers before flickering them away.

My stomach turns.

“Are you sure you’ve not been crying?” Musa asks.

“No. I haven’t. Trust me.”

“You know we all miss him, too?” he says, his warm breath on my face. “Wait.” He steps backwards, and clasps his hands behind him, his facial features tightly woven. 

I know what he wants to do and my eyes are already wet with laughter. 

“Hey, comrades, on your feet, quickly! Laziness will not be tolerated in this camp. We have a long way to go.” He mimics Ahmed so well: Ahmed’s deep voice and mannerisms. This was Ahmed’s special role during the game of police and thief. Before Musa is done with his performance, Sadiq and I double over, laughing.

“Ok. That’s enough. How’s your Umma?”

“She’s still like that, sometimes silent, other times grumpy.”

“Hmm. Grumpy is good. At least it’s better than silence, abi?” He looks to Sadiq for confirmation. But Sadiq is kicking a stump beside the tree.

All I want is for my Umma to actually acknowledge my existence, but I nod.

On our way, I tell them about the vultures’ sudden appearances and what Mama thinks they portend. They burst out with laughter. Sadiq clutches his stomach as though its contents will spill onto the ground. 

“Sorry, but I think that your Umma is too superstitious,” Sadiq scoffs, still laughing. 

Musa kicks an empty container to one side and says, “Vultures are ordinary birds that feed on dead bodies when they see one. No need to be superstitious about their appearance.” 

I open my mouth to speak, but the words become watery and slope back into my throat.

*

I have not seen Umma since I returned from Karatu. Yet, there’s one place she might be. Hands stretched out, I grope in the dark of the kitchen for a spoon. My left foot slams against the pots on the floor. Power supply in this part of Borno has been inconsistent. Sometimes it comes in flashes. Other times, it lasts only for a night until it disappears the following day. We’ve not had a steady power supply for six months. Most times, I wonder if the world knows that we exist. The government, we never see them. On Musa’s television—that’s if his Baba decides to turn on their generator since he always complains about the hike in the price of petrol—the government never stops feeding the world with lies. They claim they’ve delegated people from the power holding company to Borno Yassa to replace the faulty transformer. Bloody government! I kiss my teeth and bump my feet into something strong, sending shockwaves through me.

At the table, I eat my tuwo masara without relish. It’s as if I am digging into a plate of stones. I sit stiffly, careful not to recline on the chair, aware of the ache travelling through my body. Upon my return from Islamic school, I had traced welts on my back, each one brimming with pain as I took a shower. I hate that Sheikh. If he were here, I’d strangle him. He couldn’t even go easy on me since I am a girl. I giggle as I recall the way Sadiq hoisted to his feet when the Sheikh shuffled towards him with the long twisted koboko. Still, he wasn’t fortunate enough to escape its wrath. It was the way he flogged Musa that pricked my soul. When Musa resisted, he lumbered towards him and planted a slap across his face and even threatened to tell his Baba that he had wilfully decided to come late to Karatu. Perhaps, if Ahmed were alive, he would have taken the strokes in my stead. A half-moon swims into sight through the open windows, casting a faint glow on the wall in front. I glimpse the pencil drawings on the wall: elegant animal drawings created by Ahmed. Maybe, if he had listened to Mama, he would still be alive. Maybe, if Mama had not spoken to him the way she had, with such a brash tone, as though he were still a child, just maybe, he wouldn’t have slung his bag over his shoulder and stomped out of the house. But Ahmed was only sixteen at the time, a child in every regard. What could he have possibly known about the world, about searching for a fertile soil to tend the seeds of his dreams? He was a flame that could not be contained. In the few years we spent together, he was always dissatisfied with the smallness of our lives, as he fought back at the many woes life hurled at him, trying to reach for things, a life of luxury, that kept sliding through his grasp.

On the rooftop, I freeze for a second when I find Mama on a wicker chair, legs outstretched, reading a book under the sharp glare of a phone torchlight. I haven’t seen her with a book before, or flip through its pages since Baba and Ahmed passed on.

“Barka da yamma, Mama,” I say. 

She nods, without lifting her eyes. 

“Mama, when did you start reading a book?”

She doesn’t answer, and I imagine that her silence comes next. Instead, she smiles and turns to me. Her face shines a bright brown, her eyelashes tinged with mascara, her round jaw and pointed nose so akin to Ahmed’s. Something keeps me in a chokehold, and I start to cough until whatever it is unclenches my throat. Why is she wearing make-up at this time of the night? Perhaps, the pain of loss has started nibbling at the threads of her sanity. 

“Mama?”

“Yes,” she says in a soft voice.

“Why are you wearing makeup? Are you going somewhere?”

She smiles again. “I just feel like putting it on, you know, for a change. Your Baba used to tease me for wearing make up at night only to wash it off before bedtime. Still, he never got tired of commending my looks.”

Silence from me as I gaze at her, trying to break the boulder of fear from my legs.

“Ladi!”

“Mama.”

“Don’t you want to know what I’m reading?” 

This must be the point where everything comes loose. Mama hasn’t called my name this way, with such softness in her voice, since my brother died. The gentleness in her tone forces saliva down my throat. 

She tells me it’s an old historical novel from Baba’s collection.“I found it today while dusting the pile of books in a corner of the room. You know, in addition to being a physics teacher, your Baba was an avid reader of books. Sometimes, I wonder if he loved me the way he admired his books.” She lets out a small laugh. “Still, I know he did. His love for reading was so strong and infectious that I think I caught the virus at some point and began to behave like him.”

I reel under the warmth of my mother’s story. I haven’t heard about this part of Baba before. 

All I know is that he was once an instructor at the Islamic school until he grew a simmering distaste for his job, with the needless massacres and decided to join the army, despite my mother’s resistance and incessant tears. One day he took his bags, stomped out of the house and never returned. A few months later, his body was found at the riverbank.

The urge to talk about the vultures wells up inside me, but before I can open my mouth, she cuts me off. “Do you know we once lived in Chibok before the killings and abductions? We were not rich, your Baba and I, but In sha Allah, we had a simple life with our loved ones and Allah catered for our needs. Chibok was so peaceful until 2014 when those school girls were abducted by Boko Haram terrorists. The eighteen they released all came cradling babies to their chest.”

“What happened to the other two?” 

She returns to her book. 

I look up at the sky and try to count the army of stars surrounding the moon as if trying to protect it from something. When Ahmed was here,  in the quiet of the night, I’d snuggle up beside him on the mat, our faces turned to the sky. In those moments, he was a fountain bursting with fresh water; he spoke about the future as though it were sitting in our hands. About the senseless massacres; how it stripped us of our humanity, turning us into beings with a dead conscience so eager to kill and destroy one another. About the government and their mountain of unfulfilled promises.

“One day, I will leave this place, Ladi. You’ll see. I will go to Lagos, where I don’t have to run and hide from the sound of gunshots. I will read political science and become a politician—a good one, Ladi. I promise.”

His face glistened under the moonlight, his eyes spangled with dreams. 

“I hope you’ll come back for Mama and me?”

He held me so close to his chest that I didn’t want to let go. “Of course. I will never abandon both of you for the world. Never.” 

Now, Mama faces me. “Nobody knows my child. Nobody.” Then she feeds her eyes to the pages.

“It’s nice to see you reading again, Mama, but why did you stop reading for a long time? What happened?”

Silence.

My heart quakes at, perhaps, the sheer carelessness of my question. A tear crawls down her left eye. 

“How do I read when loss mocks me? How do I find joy in living when death has stolen your Baba and Ahmed from us? What’s there to live for?”

Her words are daggers darting through me. I don’t know how I manage to stay calm, to swallow my rage. Still, I want to scream at her, to call her a selfish woman. Have I not always been her child? Haven’t I tried to tolerate her silence, the pain of being ignored? Tears cloud my eyes, and I blink them away. I turn to the door when she says, “While the world slept, we died.” “It’s a sentence from the book,” she adds. “Do you know that your brother would still be alive if only he had listened to me? Like his father, he was stubborn and thought I wanted to truncate his dreams. I, too, wish I could leave this place, that there was a safe haven waiting for me, somewhere. But nowhere is totally safe.”

I want to tell her that Ahmed was probably right in his defiance and desire to pursue his dreams. That Lagos may not be a safe haven, but anywhere else is better than this place that haunts our peace. Rather, I fold my arms and gaze at the sky, thinking about the scenario that led to Ahmed’s death.

The morning my brother left was like any other morning. The sky was a patchwork of white clouds and sea blue and birds zapping across the horizon. By cockcrow, Ahmed wriggled us from slumber to announce that he was set for his journey to Lagos; his bus was scheduled to take off at 9 am. On the edge of the bed where I lay, I touched my face, nudging off the remains of sleep, confused. He had said it the previous day, and I thought he was joking. Before Mama could clear the sleep from her eyes, Ahmed was sorting his clothes from a corner of the room into his bag. Mama sprang to her feet. “Who in his right mind wakes up one morning and begins a journey to nowhere?”

“I am going to Lagos,” he reminded her, “and I have been planning this for a while. You know that, Umma.”

“I know nothing!”

He continued to fold his clothes into the bag with accustomed ease. 

Mama knotted the end of her sagging wrapper to one side and inched forward. “Ahmed, I’m talking to you. I have the right as your mother to call you to order.” 

When he turned to her, his face was coloured with rage. “Yes, you’re my mother, but you have no right to decide how I live my life. I’m no longer a child, kachikwo?”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

And then, he swung his bag over his shoulder and disappeared behind the door. A few minutes later, a neighbour slugged our door to inform us that the terrorists had invaded a neighbouring town. With my brother’s name etched on Mama’s lips in a monotonous singsong voice, she clutched my wrist, and together we fled our house, into the nearby dense forest for safety, holding ourselves from screaming even as gunshots tore into the air accompanied by wailing. 

Two days later, another neighbour announced that some boys had been killed by masked men with machetes in Chibok, their bodies lined on the road. When we rushed towards the carnage and discovered my brother’s cold, lifeless body with a gash stitched to both sides of his neck, his tongue lolled out amidst the choir of flies and his eyes wide open to a world that existed without him, my mother crumpled to the ground until mucus and tears commingled and flushed down her face.

*

The following Saturday is dry and strewn with demands. I wash the plates, sweep the house, wash bales of clothes, and when I sniff the plate of food Mama kept for me in the kitchen, I lose my appetite. I don’t need to taste the jollof rice to know that it’s not sweet. I put it down and walk over to where Mama sits on the mat, legs buried under her long hijab. Head bowed, she fingers her beads and mutters a prayer.

“Mama, I am going out.”

She pauses. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

“What about the dishes and clothes?”

“Yes.”

She looks around, as though combing for something.

“Must you always go out with those boys? Don’t you know you’re a lady? Wait o. And why are you wearing Ahmed’s shorts and shirt?”

“Nothing. I just like them.”

This isn’t my first time wearing Ahmed’s clothes. Her expression hovers between nonchalance and the beginning of tears, but she doesn’t cry.

I fiddle with my hands, waiting for her to dismiss me.

“You’re not going anywhere, Ladi. Better go inside and recite your Quran if you have nothing better to do with your time.”

“No, Mama. I’m leaving this house. Besides, what’s there to do here other than stare around and listen to the birds and your boring––”

“Complete it, Ladi. No, say it.” She hoists herself to her feet, while I take some steps backwards. 

“You dare say, I’m boring? I don’t blame you. I blame death.”

She bends over to pick up her slipper, and I bolt out of the house, into the searing heat.

I have walked past the central mosque and the muezzin calling out for prayer, when I meet the boys. We shake hands and fist-bump one another. “Where are we going?” I ask no one in particular. 

“Mango and cashew as usual. Then we head to my place for Tuwo shinkafa,” Musa announces. Sadiq rubs his stomach and smiles.

By the time we slip out of Musa’s place, our bellies are full, toothpicks between our lips. The sun begins its journey back home, behind the clouds. We arrive at the T-junction, leading to the dirt road and Musa asks if I can make it home by myself. I say yes, brewing with faux courage. “Make we better follow this girl before thief put am inside bag,” Sadiq scoffs.

Musa laughs. On our way, I complain about the biting cold, and Musa wraps his arms around me. My breath stalls in my throat. I haven’t come this close to him, so close our skins kiss, and the ensuing heat fills me with sweetness. Sadiq makes funny sounds as he walks ahead of us. “Make una take am easy o,” Musa yells at him to slow down. “Guy, wetin na? Can’t you see I am having a moment with my girl?”

“Your girl fa? Take am easy o.”

Musa’s words ring in my head. Private moment, my girl. I wonder if he meant them, if it’s just a ruse to shut Sadiq up. We halt at the side of the road, while Sadiq trudges ahead, whistling into the growing darkness. Musa scoops me into his arms, and I look at his face for confirmation. Instead, he plants a kiss on my lips. Sweetness bubbles within me. He holds me at arm’s length and apologises for his misconduct. But I’m neck-deep in the moment to collect myself as I crush my lips on his and push a hand into his shorts. He jerks away. “No. Not like this, Ladi. You’re not thinking straight. We’re still young and have the world to ourselves.” I hate the honesty of his words, but not his voice, the softness of it. Still, I pull away and begin to pick my way forward. 

“What is it?” he shouts from behind. “Wait for me.” 

I don’t turn around. He strides over to where I am, and almost immediately, someone screams from afar. My blood runs cold. “Who was that?” I say, glancing ahead into the darkness. The voice comes again, this time stronger, like someone being strangled to death. It dawns on me that I might know that voice. Allahu Akbar. Please, God, let this not be. I turn to Musa. “Where’s Sadiq?” His eyes are laced with fear as he says, “I don’t know.” 

Another scream. Just as we’re about to speed up, two motorcycles zoom out of the bush and halt in front of us, their engines still sputtering plumes of smoke. With the headlights still on, three men clamber down from the bikes and grab us, tugging us apart. Their faces are veiled, and they speak almost in hushed tones. Their Hausa is thicker than that of natives, but I catch some of the words. 

“Take the girl to the camp, hurry,” the man clutching Musa says to the other, gagging my mouth with his hands.

“What about the boy, what will you do with him?” The one holding me says. 

“I’ll probably kill him or get him to the farm.” 

“Hurry! No time to waste,” the third person whispers. I cannot scream under the weight of the cloth tied around my mouth. Musa squirms in the arms of the other man, his screams eaten by the cloth tied around his mouth. They put a blindfold on me and hoist me onto the seat of the bike and bolt off. 

When they finally peel off the blindfold, I am greeted by a makeshift awning with thatched roof in the middle of a forest; and, under its sprawling arms, a sea of wailing girls. Some are naked. Others clad. Some, half-clad. One of the men hurls me into their midst, into a commingling of smells. The girls stop screaming when someone with a mask steps forward to address us. The baritone in his voice sends shivers down my spine. 

“Forget your previous lives, your family and lovers. We are your new family. Some of you will be shipped off to Congo. Others, to Niger. The rest of you will remain here, to serve us, and if you’re lucky, we’ll pick a bride from amongst you.” He laughs. The others join him, and their voices reach me like a clap of thunder. My limbs grow weaker within that tight space, and my stomach turns, but I hold myself from retching all over. I ponder the reality before me, a reality that tucks me in the dark, completely erased from the rest of the world. I wish I had listened to My Umma and remained at home. I think about Musa, Sadiq and the possibility of their death, the bud of love that had begun to sprout between Musa and me, the ultimate death of it. A girl shrieks and dies beside me, and her body is rolled away before everything becomes a dark landscape, the vultures appear in the lines of my vision, with grins smeared on their faces.