‘GOOD MORNING! GOOD morning! Time to get up! It’s time to get up and pray!’
My mother was always the first one up in our household. I woke every morning to the sound of her voice. It would be five A.M. and still dark out, because Muslims rise to pray before dawn. She’d come into our bedroom and switch on the light. I’d pull the cover up over my head and lie still for a little while longer. I’d listen to my sisters shifting and groaning above me, the birds starting to chatter outside, and the call to prayer wafting through the air. I’d lie there, letting it wash over and through me, drifting, floating. But there would be no sleeping through first prayers. My mother saw to that.
‘Get up now! Time to get up! Hear the birds singing? Even the birds are awake and thanking Allah for this day. Are you not as good as the animals? Get up now! Time for prayers!’
We’d drag ourselves out of bed and head for the bathroom to wash. Muslims always perform an ablution called wudu before prayer, washing face, hands, and feet in a specific order a specific number of times while reciting specific words.
Once my mother knew all of the children were finally moving, she’d go to wake up my father. She always woke him last, both because she wanted to let him sleep a little longer and because he was always the hardest one to rouse. He worked hard and was away a lot. When he was home, he really enjoyed the comforts of his own bed. On days when he was particularly sleepy, she’d place a stool in his bedroom doorway, sit down on it, and begin reciting surahs from the Qur’an. Loudly. My mother recites in an exquisitely clear, strong voice. It’s like music, beautiful to listen to and impossible to sleep through.
‘Amariya, don’t.’
She’d keep reading.
‘Amariya, don’t do that.’
She’d keep reading.
This would go on for a while, until finally he’d push back his blanket and sit up in bed. ‘OK OK, you can stop now. I’m up.’ He’d be annoyed, but only briefly. He didn’t want to miss first prayers, either, and would have forced himself to get up on his own if he’d had to. Like us, however, he knew he could count on Amariya to get him up in the morning, so he let her do the job. My father was the undisputed head of the household, but my mother was the religious heart.
Not including my father, there were seven of us that my mother woke for prayers every morning. Americans would call seven children a large family, but we didn’t. Women are expected to have lots of children where I come from. A woman without children is pitied. Women achieve status through their children, especially their boy children.
Ayisha’s the oldest child in our family, about fourteen years older than I am. She’s tall and plump and light-skinned, with a really lovely face. Ayisha is quite shy and hates to draw attention to herself. She is a very loving person, very thoughtful and considerate, always doing things for others. Whenever Ayisha would see Adjovi in the kitchen, she’d take over the cooking, because she thought Adjovi needed help. Sometimes she’d do Adjovi’s housework, too – if my father didn’t catch her at it – washing clothes, sweeping floors, changing the beds. A lot of people underestimate her strength because she’s so kind and self-effacing. But Ayisha was always strong, always determined to do what she thought right, whatever other people thought.
One of Ayisha’s projects was getting me to school each day. She watched over all her brothers and sisters, but she was especially motherly with me because I was the youngest girl. Each day she’d help me shower and dress, make sure I ate breakfast, iron my school uniform, pack my lunch and my books and anything else I needed, and then walk me to school across the border in Ghana, about half a mile away, because I was too little to go alone. Then, after school, she’d come get me and walk me home. I was a lot of trouble for Ayisha but she always took care of me. Always.
Narhila’s next in line in our family. She’s about eight or nine years older than me, and the exact opposite of Ayisha in personality. She never lifted a finger around the house. I didn’t either, unless I was asked to, and then I’d always ask for money. But Narhila didn’t even work for bribes. In fact the only time I ever saw Narhila work was when she was getting ready to go out for some special occasion. Then she’d wash and iron her own clothes to make sure they’d be perfect, because she was very vain. Narhila is tall and slender and athletic, the prettiest girl in the family and, especially when she was younger, very much in love with herself. My mother called her the queen of kwalisa, of showing off. She was always posing in front of a mirror wearing nothing but her underwear or a towel, admiring herself. ‘Oh, look at my arms. Aren’t they pretty? Oh, look at my legs. I really like my legs.’ It used to drive me crazy, so I’d tell her she was too skinny. She’d go right on admiring herself. ‘Excuse me?’ she’d say. ‘Are you talking to me, Balloon?’ She called me Balloon because at that stage of my life I was fat. I’d get back at her, though. I’d walk into a room after she had just ironed one of her dresses and put my dirty hands all over it. ‘Oh! Is this the dress you were going to wear tonight?’
She’d scream, ‘What have you done! I’ll kill you dead!’ Then she’d chase me and if she caught me, she’d hit me – boom! – hard on the back. I’d hit her back and she’d hit me back and we’d keep at it until our parents made us stop. When we weren’t fighting, sometimes we’d practice speaking English with each other. Narhila’s smart; I have to say that for her. She was always good at languages, and is fluent in both French and English.
Shawana is the third child, about five or six years older than I am. Shawana and I both really loved studying and learning. It was one of our strongest bonds. Shawana also speaks a number of different languages, as do I. I speak Tchamba, Koussountu, Dendi, Hausa, English, and Twi, and I can understand Arabic. Shawana doesn’t speak Twi since it’s a Ghanaian language that I picked up only because I went to school in Ghana. But she speaks some other tribal languages that I don’t know, and really perfect French.
Shawana loved to teach me things before the teacher discussed the subject in class. When I’d run home from school to tell her how I was the only person who raised my hand to answer some question she’d prepared me for, it always made her very proud. She was my champion. Even though both my parents cared about education, it was to Shawana I most often turned for support and encouragement in my studies, because my father was away a lot, and my mother took it so much for granted that I would do well that she was blasé about my achievements.
Shawana was kind of a recluse when she was young. Although none of us girls went out often, Shawana didn’t even visit other girls at their houses or run occasional errands, the way the rest of us did. Maybe her sensitivity had something to do with her reclusive-ness. She was excruciatingly sensitive to people’s suffering. If she saw an old woman selling food in the street, she’d come home in tears. ‘Oh, Amariya, I saw this poor old woman today and she didn’t even have anything to sell, just this little bowl of spinach leaves from the farm. Nothing anyone would pay much money for. Oh, Amariya, I wish I had enough money to give her so she could go home to her family and never have to sell again.’ And she’d start crying. Most people just accepted the poverty in Kpalimé. But Shawana never could.
Asmahu is the fourth child, about four or five years older than me. Of all us sisters, she was probably the most outgoing and the least academically inclined. As far as she was concerned, the only thing school was good for was to see her friends. At home she was a terror, always on the lookout for an insult, always ready to start a fight. My mother said that once when I was just a baby, she laid me down asleep on a bed and left the room. All of a sudden I started wailing, and when she ran back to check on me, she saw Asmahu bending over me. ‘Asmahu! What happened! What did you do to her!’
‘You pinched her! Why?’
‘She eyed me!’ Eyeing is a way of insulting a person by rolling your eyes up and away when the person is speaking to you. That was Asmahu, just waiting for someone to laugh at her or look at her the wrong way, even a baby.
Next comes Alpha, the fifth child and first boy. Finally my father had a son. He’s about three years older than I am. My father always loved the new baby best of all his children, but he was especially excited to have a boy at last. He’s a handsome boy, a really handsome boy. He’s tall and dark with thick eyebrows and lots of hair like my father. Alpha loved all his sisters, but he especially doted on me because I was the only little sister he had. I adored him, too, almost as much as I loved my father. And he was always there to protect me when I did something bad.
Dancing was Alpha’s real passion. He lived to dance. From the time he was a little boy, he was always dancing. He danced when he was getting dressed, he danced on his way to school, he danced on roller skates. He knew all the dance steps from the Michael Jackson Thriller video and would dance in front of the television whenever that video was on. Later, when Alpha got a little older, he became the top dancer in our area. Shy as he was in every other context, he entered all the local dance competitions, and he always won. He was still dancing at clubs and parties the last time I saw him, though he wasn’t dancing in competitions anymore.
Alpha partly followed in my father’s footsteps and partly didn’t. The traveling aspect of my father’s business didn’t interest him, as he discovered when they went out on a few trips together, but the big trucks themselves did, so he went into the repair end of the business. Now Alpha lives with his boss’s family on the outskirts of Kpalimé, working as a mechanic for a big grocery store, where he repairs the trucks used for shipping produce.
After Alpha came me, and then, about three years later, the last child, my younger brother, Babs, whom we also called Baba. Baba was only thirteen the last time I saw him, but he was already almost my height, and still growing. He’s tall like my father, with my father’s hair and my father’s hands and fingers and feet. He even walked like my father with his right foot turned out.
Alpha and I were very, very close, but Baba and I were always fighting. He was my punishment for every nasty thing I ever did to torture my sisters. Everything I did to them, he did to me. He’d grab my bookbag and dump the contents on the ground, run off with my purse, use my soap and towels, try to steal money from my piggy bank, hide my clothes. Every time I caught him, I beat him, but it didn’t have any more effect on him than the beatings I got from my sisters had on me.
The two of us were always causing trouble for each other. He’d go to Yaya’s room to ask him something in private. But instead of finding him alone, he’d find me there too, because I used to follow Yaya around all the time. Once he went to Yaya to ask for money for a new soccer ball. Or so he said. I knew better.
‘Don’t give it to him, Yaya. He wants the money to rent a bicycle.’ Baba loved to ride bicycles, but Yaya didn’t want any of us riding bicycles because it was very hilly and dangerous where we lived. A lot of children fell off their bicycles and got hurt.
‘Is that what you want the money for?’ Yaya asked.
‘Then you don’t get the money.’
While I giggled mercilessly, Baba was overcome with embarrassment and anger. I was almost always in his way when he wanted to spend time with Yaya. That was the real reason Baba and I fought – because we were rivals for our father’s attention. Baba was jealous of me, and I don’t blame him. He had reason to be. My father loved Baba. He loved all his children. But we all knew that my father loved me best. By all accounts, I was Yaya’s favorite.