New Spaces
My dreams are strange. I dream that Sheikh has asked me to clear my things from my room in the mosque and move to one of Alhaji Usman’s many blocks of flats. The house already has a bed, a cupboard, a fridge and a table and chair. Inside the compound where the house is, there are two three-bedroom flats and three two-bedroom flats. Then there is a little apartment that has a bedroom, a small parlour, a tiny kitchen and a toilet and bathroom. Just when I lie on the bed I wake up from the dream and I am in my room in the mosque. But then, I realise I am still dreaming. I wake up from that dream and discover that the first dream is actually real and that all the things I am dreaming about are actually true. The only difference is that in my dream the colour of the walls is different. It is hard to explain. I just don’t believe it sometimes that all of this is real.
I cannot decide how best to arrange this room. This is the third time in a few weeks I am changing the position of the bed and the reading table. I think the bed right by the large window is best but I have been unable to sleep since I put the bed here. Thoughts of someone breaking in through the window and jumping onto my head or body make it difficult to sleep even though this bed is the best I have ever slept on. I have only ever slept on mattresses. Sometimes I am also scared I will roll over and fall onto the tiled floor.
I always thought, because of how Malam Abdul-Nur had a toilet inside his office, that I could never manage with the smell of shit inside a room, but I see now that having a toilet inside the room is not such a bad thing. All you need to do is close the door when you need to use the toilet. Using incense helps. I like the little pieces of wood soaked in essences from Maiduguri. Their incense is nicer than the cheap incense sticks from India, which make my chest hurt when I inhale a lot of the smoke. The toilet is narrow but everything in it is so white, sometimes I just go in there and sit down on the toilet seat to read an old magazine. On the right side, divided by a plastic curtain, is the shower.
I had come with nails thinking that I would need to hang a few things on the wall. But taking one look at the smooth, clean walls, I knew I could not bring myself to use nails. Moreover the cupboard has space for everything I have.
Sometimes I feel like I chose the wrong colour for this room. Sheikh had asked me when they were renovating the apartment before I moved in. White gets dirty easily. It is the same reason I am always afraid to wear a white caftan. You wear it once and by evening it is already dirty. Jibril likes to lie on the bed and suspend his legs on the wall. Every time, this leaves stains and when I tell him he gets upset and doesn’t come back or call me for two days. But I like Jibril. He doesn’t stay upset for too long. Good thing is, the walls are so smooth you can use a rag soaked in detergent to wipe off the dirt.
Going through my old newspapers, I stumble on that piece of paper with the phone number my brothers left behind when they disappeared. I stare at the paper so long, I start to see their faces. The faces are not the faces of people I know, who grew up with me in the same house. I want to call but I do not know what to say.
It is 9 p.m. when I hear the knock on my door. I realise it is Sheikh when he calls out my name. The room is a mess and I scramble to put things in order.
‘Salamu alaikum,’ I say to him as I open the door.
‘I have bothered you, ko?’
‘Ah, Sheikh, how can you bother me? You can never bother me.’
‘Why does the whole place smell like this?’
‘It is from the kitchen, Sheikh. I bought a new stove.’
‘A new stove? To set the house on fire?’
He laughs and pulls his grey beard.
‘I was cooking Indomie.’
‘Burning Indomie, you mean.’
I laugh and offer him a chair.
Since the shooting, his wrinkles and the grey hairs on his head have multiplied. He looks around the room and asks if I like the house. This is the first time he has come here since I moved. The place is perfect, I tell him. The only problem was the lock on the front door, which I have had changed. There is an expression in his eyes, the look of one with something heavy or unpleasant to say. He rolls his prayer beads.
‘Allah has blessed us,’ he begins. ‘A while back when I first mentioned the movement, people thought I was crazy. Now we have thousands of members and everyone wants me to do something for them. They all come under the cover of night to my house—commissioners, even the deputy governor. The last money I sent you to deposit—that was from him.’
He pauses and clears his throat.
‘But that is not why I am here. Sometimes we get carried away. I want to ask you a favour. These people around me, apart from Malam Yunusa, I don’t expect them to tell me the truth. They are all too loyal. Loyalty is good, but I want someone who thinks too. That is why despite all Malam Abdul-Nur’s atrocities I kept him. His thoughts may sometimes be evil, but he thinks. And for a while he kept everyone in line. It is he who organised most things around here. He knows how to organise. But you, I want to ask from you one thing. Tell me what you do not like or understand. Anything. I know you are loyal. But I also know that you think.’
My heart is beating so loud it feels like he must hear it. I do not want to think that he is testing me. Sheikh is not one to test a person.
‘Ya Sheikh, you have been kind and good to me . . .’
‘No, Ahmad,’ he interrupts, ‘I do not want to hear about my kindness and goodness. Tell me about my badness and about the things that worry you. Talk to me. Man to man. Tonight there will be no preaching. Only talking, man to man. Tonight I am just your friend.’
‘OK, Sheikh. Maybe the biggest issue in my mind is the money. Why do you take money from these people? Also, why have you kept Malam Abdul-Nur close? I know you have explained that, but I still don’t understand. Allah forgive me, but he is not a nice person.’
‘Good. I see our relationship will last long. The money. About the money. When I first started, I used to reject money. All of it. Even from Alhaji Usman. But you know what I have learned, Ahmad? Poverty does not make a man decent. Poverty is not piety. In the same vein, money does not make a man evil. A man’s character is not defined by what money he has or does not have, but what decisions he takes in spite of having or not having. There are people who have lived a life of abject poverty who will be the first at the gates of hell. But even now there are people whose money I cannot accept because they tie obligations to it. I can take your money, but you will never control me. If Alhaji Usman were to do something I thought was evil today, I would be the first to condemn it.’
He starts to cough, first gently then wildly. I fetch some water for him to drink. He coughs a little more before it stops.
‘And as for Abdul-Nur, our history is long. When I was a teacher at the College of Islamic Studies I went for a conference of Islamic Studies teachers in Ilorin. On the last day of the conference I was so fed up with the town and didn’t want to sleep in Ilorin even though it was late. On the way, just outside Ilorin our vehicle had a flat tire and we were attacked by some armed robbers. I got a knife wound and we all ran into the bush. I bled so much, I fainted. It was Malam Abdul-Nur who found me and took me into his house and they called someone to treat me with herbs until I got better. All the while everyone thought I was dead. It is Allah who destines all things but I could have died if it was not for Malam Abdul-Nur. I was in that village for one week. And as we kept in touch, we argued about Christianity and Islam until I convinced him that Islam was the right way. You see, it is hard to let go of such a person.’
I have never seen Sheikh like this. It is like something has been loosened within him, like he has stripped his skin to let me see the blood that flows beneath it.
‘I know,’ he continues, ‘I know that he sometimes takes our money. I know what he thinks about jihad. If you let him, he would attack this minute. But I try to keep him in check and let Allah judge him. I think in all of this, his heart is still good.’
I sigh and sip some water.
‘Do you have any more questions?’
‘Nothing else comes to mind, Sheikh.’
‘But promise me that if you are uncomfortable with anything, you will tell me.’
‘I will, Sheikh, I promise.’
‘We need to do something about you trying to burn down this house, eh?’
I laugh. He gets up to leave.
‘Seriously, Ahmad, this cooking business is not for you. I will ask them to keep a portion of food for you every evening. Just drop your food flask in the morning and pick it up in the evening.’
‘Ah, thank you, Sheikh.’
He smiles and as he walks out the door he says, ‘I cannot have an unmarried deputy, you must think about this and tell me if there is anyone in your mind, otherwise we can arrange something for you. You are young, but you are mature enough to marry. The earlier the better.’
I walk him out of the gate. His two guards are sitting on the pavement and get up as soon as I open the gate.
‘Think seriously about it,’ he says as he walks away.
Just after the early morning prayers, I am sitting in Sheikh’s office reading a Daily Trust newspaper from last week. I do not know why every newspaper needs to have a sport section. It annoys me to hear boys who can barely afford to eat fight over Arsenal and Manchester and Real Madrid. Does any one of those footballers or clubs even know they exist? Sometimes, especially when boys gather behind the mosque in the morning, arguing about which club is better, I want to come out and just pour cold water on their bodies. This is the one thing I cannot stand about Jibril: he loves everything about football. He knows the names of all the players and how much each of them earns. He has a huge stack of sports newspapers, which he buys without fail. I know that when he asks me for fifty naira, that is what he wants to buy. I have told him that I can give him anything except for money to buy sports papers.
People are shouting right behind the window of Sheikh’s office—they do this especially when Sheikh is not around. The commotion is getting louder and I walk out to see what it is. As I approach, I see boys in a circle around two people. I move closer and see that it is Jibril squeezing someone’s neck inside his arm and giving head butts. The other person is struggling, trying to use his knee to hit him in the stomach.
‘Kai! Kai! Kai!’ I scream, running through the circle.
‘Jibril! Jibril! Leave him,’ I scream, pulling his right arm. The other person is one of Sheikh’s new bus drivers in the motor park. Jibril’s grip is too firm. I get a stick and whip them both on the legs and back. They both let go and the driver falls to the ground; his eyes and lips are swollen and blood trickles from his nostrils. Jibril has bite marks on his right arm.
The driver is panting and shouting, ‘Bastard! Infidel! Stupid infidel! Offspring of an infidel!’
I walk over angrily and whip him three times on the back, until he stops screaming. Jibril points at him and says, ‘Next time I will kill you!’ I slap Jibril across the cheeks and just when he opens his mouth to complain, I slap him again, then drag him by the arm, away from the crowd. Everyone is silent and people begin to disperse.
‘Are you crazy?’ I ask as soon as we get into the room. ‘Do you see what you did to his face? What will I tell Sheikh now? That you blinded his driver?’
‘You heard what he was calling me! You heard him!’
‘So what? So what if he insulted you? Do we go blinding everyone who says something bad to us?’
He lowers his head, wiping the blood on his body with his torn caftan. I take a look at his bite marks. They are deep and ugly.
‘You should go and let Chuks treat those wounds.’
He throws the torn, bloody caftan on the ground and picks up the plastic kettle from the side of his mattress.
‘I am sorry I slapped you so hard. You know that if I hit only him, they will say that I was siding with you.’
He puts on his slippers and leaves the room. I walk out after him to look for the driver who was hurt. I find him sitting against a tree, with four boys talking and observing his wounds.
‘You need to go and have your wounds treated,’ I tell him.
‘Chuks has not opened yet,’ he slurs.
‘Go into the compound. He has his room there. He will come out. Don’t worry, I will pay for it. It will not be more than two or three hundred.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me. You should know better than to call a Muslim an infidel.’
‘It was what he was saying. He was supporting America. He was saying Osama should not have attacked America. That Osama caused the world to start hating Muslims.’
‘Is Osama your brother? Are you the one who sent him? Are you the one who decides who is an infidel and who is not? You have become Allah, no?’
The other boys are grumbling and mumbling things I cannot hear.
‘What did you say?’ I ask one of the boys mumbling.
‘Nothing,’ he says, turning away.
After the zuhr prayer I stare at the piece of paper with my brothers’ phone number again. I dial and stop it twice before finally letting it ring.
‘Salamu alaikum. Who is speaking?’ It is Hussein’s soft voice.
‘It is me, Ahmad.’
‘Ahmad?’
‘Dantala.’
‘Oh, sorry. Dantala, how are you doing?’
‘Fine. Why are you whispering?’
‘I am in the hospital. Maccido is injured. Soldiers shot at them last night.’
‘La ila ha illallah! How is he?’
‘I don’t know. They are trying to remove the bullets in his shoulder and arms.’
‘Where are you, what town? I can travel to wherever you people are.’
‘You don’t have to come, Dantala.’
‘Are you crazy? What do you mean I don’t have to come? Where are you?’
‘General. General Hospital here in Sokoto.’
‘In Sokoto? I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were in Zaria.’
‘No. We came to Sokoto.’
‘Anyway, I am coming now.’
I head for Sheikh’s office. I am tired in my body and in my head. Sokoto was not like this before. We used to hear of these things in Jos and Kaduna and Kano. It used to be as distant as the car bombs in Iraq and Lebanon. It didn’t mean anything to me because this place was always peaceful.
At Sheikh’s office I see Alhaji Usman’s car. In the office Alhaji Usman is leaning against the window with his hands over his face. Sheikh is on the phone pleading with someone.
‘It is his son fa, think if it was your own son, haba Mohammed,’ Sheikh says.
Sheikh walks out into the open yard. I feel very awkward seeing Alhaji Usman like this. When Sheikh returns about ten minutes later he says to Alhaji Usman: ‘He has agreed. Let us go.’ He asks me to follow them. They are going to the hospital morgue, where they will meet with the big Shiite malam to collect the corpse of Alhaji Usman’s son who died last night. The Shiites wanted to bury him because he was one of them and had been living with them. Alhaji Usman wanted his son’s body.
‘What did you come to tell me?’ Sheikh asks as we drive out in Alhaji Usman’s jeep.
‘My brother was shot last night and he is in the hospital.’
‘Another shooting?’ Sheikh cries out.
‘Where is he?’
‘General Hospital.’
‘OK, well we are going to the morgue of the General Hospital too.’
Sheikh makes three other calls in the car. He calls the head of the drivers in the motor park to meet him at the morgue, the grave digger to start digging the grave, and the deputy governor to inform him that the time for the funeral is 3 p.m.
‘What did I do?’ Alhaji Usman whispers. ‘What wrong did I ever do?’
‘It’s OK, Alhaji,’ Sheikh says.
‘They said I should take it easy with him. I took it easy. He became worse. They said I should be stricter. He moved out and ran away.’
The new smell of this car is making my nose tingle. I sneeze.
‘Yar Hamoo Kallah,’ everyone says.
‘Did you say your brother was shot?’ Alhaji Usman asks, just realising I had said this five minutes ago.
‘Yes,’ I reply.
‘What is this country turning into? Sheikh, what are we going to do about this?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Sheikh says, ‘you just worry about the funeral.’
At the hospital Sheikh pulls the big Shiite malam to the side and they have a long talk. Everyone watches them intently. They walk back and go into the morgue alone. Sheikh calls out to Alhaji Usman. He follows them. I call Hussein again. He says that they have finished the procedure and that Maccido is sleeping. I ask if he has seen him and he says no. He tells me which ward they are in.
The Shiite malam comes out first and together with his people they walk towards the main hospital complex. Sheikh comes out with Alhaji Usman, who is wiping his face. They talk to the morgue attendant and Alhaji Usman begins filling out some forms.
I walk with Sheikh and we ask where the Accidents and Emergencies ward is. When we get in, the Shiite malam is there talking to Hussein and a few other men.
‘We meet again,’ the Shiite malam says, ‘do you have a patient here?’
‘It is my deputy, whose brother is here. He was shot by soldiers.’
‘What is his name?
‘Maccido,’ I reply, ‘Hussein is my brother too.’
They all stare in amazement.
‘I knew his siblings were Shiites but I didn’t know they were your boys,’ Sheikh says to the Shiite malam.
‘How small the world is. How small it is!’
‘We need to meet with a few of the other malams because it seems we have common problems,’ Sheikh says.
I learn from Hussein that they were all in the same private bus when the soldiers harassed them last night. Alhaji Usman’s son Al-Amin was driving and Maccido was sitting in the back. A soldier slapped Al-Amin for not turning off the engine when they stopped. They were asked to all get out of the bus and they refused. The soldier shot through the door, wounding Al-Amin in the hip. He started the bus and drove off. The soldiers fired a few more shots, which wounded Maccido and one other man sitting in front. Al-Amin didn’t stop driving until they got to the mosque, where he fainted. At the hospital, the nurses tried in vain to stop the bleeding. There was no doctor available that night and by the morning, when the Shiite malam was able to get a doctor he knew personally, Al-Amin was dead.
This is all too much for me. Fear and anger and sadness and tiredness are competing for space in my body. I feel like I have lost weight in just these few hours. The doctors are not letting anyone see Maccido yet. Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to go in.
Hussein comes with us to Al-Amin’s funeral. He does not say anything to me.
After the prayers, Sheikh and the Shiite malam speak to the crowd. While the Shiite malam is speaking, Sheikh whispers to me.
‘We are marching to Government House to demonstrate about this. You must go back to the mosque and stay there.’
‘I want to come too,’ I protest.
‘The Americans, do you know that the president and vice president never travel together in the same plane? Do you know why?’
I shake my head.
‘Someone has to take over in case something happens to one person, no?’ He pauses and then adds, ‘Sometimes you steal lessons even from the infidel. Go. Now.’
I push through the crowd. Jibril is standing behind, stretching to see what is going on in front. With my eyes I tell him to follow me. We walk away from the burial ground, our feet unconsciously moving at the same pace. We take the shortcuts we both know well, jumping open gutters, squeezing through very narrow spaces between mud houses, bursting into the open football field belonging to the government primary school and then behind the land which is now a maize farm opposite our mosque. I look at the slight swelling on his head and ask if Chuks treated his bites. He nods.
In the mosque I ask for Jibril’s radio. He says he forgot it in his brother’s house. I tell him that he has to be careful. He shows me some pills and says he got them from Chuks.
‘She cannot get pregnant,’ he whispers.
‘Are you crazy? What if this hurts her?’
‘Hold on now,’ he says trying to get me to lower my voice, ‘she has been using it before we started.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Since he started beating her and she lost one pregnancy, she swore that as long as he was beating her she would never get pregnant for him.’
‘She lost one pregnancy?’
‘Yes. You know she was pregnant when I first came. That one she gave birth to dead. It was the second one she lost when he was beating her.’
‘I didn’t hear of this at all.’
‘Yes, he didn’t tell anyone. He just called her sister, who works as a cleaner in a hospital in Ilorin. Her sister took care of her until she got better. He didn’t want anyone to know. It was the sister who suggested the pills and got them for her.’
‘You just be careful fa!’
I lie down and doze off until Sheikh and all the others return just in time for maghrib. I ask Sheikh how it all went and he tells me the governor came out to see them and begged them not to act in anger.
‘But of course you know politicians,’ he says. ‘He saw our numbers and the only thing he didn’t promise was aljanna firdaus.’
He has eye bags like someone who hasn’t slept in days.
‘What of the soldiers who shot them?’ I ask.
‘I am told they redeployed them yesterday. But we have a meeting with the head of the Task Force tomorrow. You will come with me.’
‘What time Sheikh?’
‘They will call to confirm, but it will be after isha, insha Allah. Have you called again about your brother?’
‘Yes, he is OK.’
‘Well, Alhamdulillah. Don’t forget to collect food from my house. I told them you will start coming to collect food’
I do not know why I lied. I could have just said I have not called Hussein since I left. The words just came out as lies. Is this the sign of being a bad person, lying without even thinking it?
I call Hussein. He tells me Maccido has woken up and they have just spoken. Maccido will be fine, he says.
It is just after isha and I am waiting inside the zaure of Sheikh’s house. A little boy has gone into the house to tell them that I am outside. Less than a minute later, the boy runs out.
‘They said they are coming,’ he says and starts to run off.
‘You didn’t wait to collect the food for me,’ I shout as he runs down the road, not even turning to listen to me.
The house has been renovated recently with a new large gate like the new houses in town and the compound I live in. But the house still has a zaure like the older houses.
‘Salamu alaikum,’ Aisha says stretching out the food warmer.
‘Salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,’ I reply wiping my hands behind my thighs.
I don’t know why I am wiping my hands or why suddenly it is hard for me to breathe.
‘Thank you. What is it?’
‘Yam and eggs.’
‘Please forgive me,’ I blurt, ‘but I keep wondering if you have any hijabs that aren’t green.’
‘What does that mean?’ She sounds upset.
‘Well I have only seen you wear green and now you are wearing green.’
‘How many times have we met?’
I pretend I do not know exactly how many times I have seen her.
‘Maybe three or four times?’
‘So three times is enough to know all a person’s clothes?’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ I start to say before she turns and says, ‘I leave you well.’
I have that feeling again. Of wanting to step out of my body and slap myself really hard and watch myself scream in pain because of how stupid I have just been.
FAMILIAL
When I first read this word in a newspaper, I am thinking it is another way of spelling FAMILIAR.
Now that all of my brothers that remain are in this same Sokoto, I don’t know if I am happy or if I am not happy. I am asking myself if there is something that is the same in all families like something that all families must do. Something like liking each other. I know that Jibril does not like his brother. But it is because his brother likes to beat and wound people. Me, I don’t know why I am feeling like this about my brothers. I am not feeling like and I am not feeling hate. I am feeling as if they are just some people that we entered the same bus with, people you will forget when you drop from the bus. Allah forgive me.
DERBY
I am always seeing Derby in Jibril football newspaper that he like to buy every time. Sometime I am thinking of Malam Abdul-Nur sermon when he talk of why football and going to viewing centre to watch football is haram. I don’t like football. I know that to be mixing with men and women in the staduim stadium and the betting that some people use to do for football is haram. But is buying the football newspaper haram? And me that is looking at the one that Jibril is buying, am I doing haram? I don’t want to ask Sheikh or Malam because maybe they will know that somebody is buying the newspaper and Jibril will not be happy if I ask.