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.

I mentioned the boys at the back of the truck to the men, who were using leaves to fan Bilyaminu. The driver got up and ran to the back. I ran with him. We didn’t see the boys. Then we looked and saw blood under one of the planks still inside the lorry. I helped him lift the planks one by one. The driver screamed when he saw the legs of one of the boys. There was still a lot of wood piled up on their bodies. The second man, whose arm was broken, ran to the road to stop other cars to help us. Other lorries and buses stopped. The people from the village near the road also came out to help. When we had finally managed to remove all the planks I couldn’t recognise either of them. I cried, without tears in my eyes, until my chest hurt. They were both almajirai like I was, returning home from their Quranic school to help their parents with harvesting. I don’t know where they came from but they were not from Bayan Layi. Everyone agreed that it was best to bury the boys and that the driver, who said he knew their homes, would take the news to their parents. The villagers dug three graves not very far from the road and called their imam to say a prayer for the two boys and Bilyaminu.

The driver suggested that I join one of the other Sokoto-bound lorries which had stopped. As I washed up at a well in the village I realised I still had Banda’s polythene wrap of money, but I couldn’t find the other notes I had in my front pocket. I was glad that I didn’t ask the two boys their names. It makes it easier to forget.

I am dizzy as I walk through the motor park in Sokoto. My lips are cracked and bleeding. I can’t decide what to do or if I want to go home yet to look for my mother. There are mango trees near the shops inside the park and I go under one to lie down. It is cool here but there are many ants—the red ones that can make you scream and jump when they bite. I crush a few around me before Bayan Layi invades my thoughts. I bring out the wrapped money and count it, looking around to make sure no one is watching. I count in Arabic. This is one thing Malam Junaidu taught us well. Sometimes, during our lessons, he spoke only in Arabic and if we did not understand he would lash us with a whip made from old motorcycle tyres. I didn’t get beaten much for Arabic, because I learned very fast. I never forget a thing once I have memorised it.

I can’t believe how much is in this wrap. Eight thousand three hundred naira. The most money I have ever had is three hundred fifty naira, which Banda gave me from one of the rallies and even then I considered myself rich. I divide the money into three parts. Three hundred naira I put in my front pocket, five hundred naira I put in my right trousers pocket and seven thousand five hundred I wrap in the polythene and put in my left trousers pocket. My head is pounding and my bruises are getting sore. My whole body is trembling like when I was thinking bad thoughts towards Allah in the lorry. My stomach is twisting and biting. I think that I did not die in the lorry because I quickly realised my sin and said astaghfirullah many times. I wonder about those two boys, whose bodies were not even whole bodies when we found them beneath those wooden planks. But Allah knows why—it is all destined by Him.

I see an open chemist. I walk into the store and meet many other people there. Everyone calls the store owner Doctor but one man calls him Chuks. He is short and his eyeballs look like they are about to fall out. I wonder if the skin over his eyes can cover them completely when he sleeps or if there will still be some eye left. His fingers are short and fat and he scratches his large belly with his hand as he talks. He is fair-skinned, not fair like a city Fulani, but like the muddy puddles in Bayan Layi after it rains. I can’t stop looking at his huge nose, which seems to be divided into three parts. He must be breathing in a lot of air.

‘Ehen, what do you want?’ he says, breathing hard.

‘I am not well,’ I say.

‘You are not well? What is doing you?’ His Hausa is funny and the more I stare at it, his nose is like the nose of the thief who lied saying his name was Idowu.

‘My head hurts and I have thrown up and my stomach is turning and my body is trembling,’ I tell him. I remember the accident and I add, ‘and I fell from a lorry and hurt my elbows and knees.’

‘Do you have money?’

He looks at me from head to toe when he asks this. I am getting dizzier and irritated at his questions. I want to tell him that he should not mind that my clothes are dirty and my slippers are different colours and worn out—that I probably have more money in my pocket than he does in the little wooden box where he takes change from, that I can buy anything in his store. But I want to be treated so I just tell him, ‘Yes, I have money.’

‘Your headache and trembling, is it before or after you fell from the car?’

‘It was a lorry, not a car.’

‘Look here, is it me or you who is doing the treatment? What concerns me whether it is lorry or airplane or bicycle? Do you want me to treat you or not?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Before or after!’

‘Before.’

He hisses and goes into a wooden cubicle inside the shop. He comes out with a bag and asks me to come inside. I want to tell him that it really started when I thought bad thoughts towards Allah, but I am sure he is not a Muslim. He asks me to roll up my sleeves and trousers and uses scissors to dip cotton wool in a bottle. As the cotton wool begins to foam on my skin it stings me and I flinch and knock the scissors out of his hand. He screams at me saying that if I do not sit still he will send me away and I will still pay for the cotton wool he has wasted. I sit still, close my eyes and grit my teeth as he takes out new cotton wool and applies all the other things which hurt even more. Then he brings out a syringe and needle and draws out some medicine from three different little bottles until the syringe is almost full.

‘Have you eaten?’ he asks.

‘No.’

‘Are you a fool? Do you want to collapse when I give you this injection? Go and eat something outside now if you have money. Do you have another money?’

‘Yes.’

I walk out and buy a sachet of kunu from one of the girls in the park and then some bread from the store next to the chemist. There are buses going to my village, Dogon Icce; I hear the conductors shout for passengers. I think of my mother, who I left so long ago. I don’t know what I will do if I go back. My mind drifts from there to the kuka tree in Bayan Layi and I wonder if there are still policemen in the area. Chuks interrupts my thoughts and tells me to hurry up. I stuff the remaining bread in my mouth and go in.

I can feel the kunu rising in my stomach right after the injection and I run out to throw up. Everything around me is double and I feel a hand grabbing me before everything begins to fade.

I wake up and find that I have been sleeping on a bench inside the chemist. It is dark outside and I am drenched in sweat.

‘How are you feeling now?’ Chuks asks.

‘Better, but my head hurts still.’

‘Here, take this and make sure you eat something before you sleep. Your money is three hundred seventy naira.’

He gives me white tablets and tells me the entire treatment will finish in three days. Two more injections, he says.

Chuks reminds me of the fat man from the Big Party office. I think this as I pay him and then walk to the mosque in the motor park. There are taps there and I swallow the two large white tablets.

This mosque is nice. It smells newly painted. Outside the mosque there is smooth concrete pavement where the taps are. There are three doors, one in front for the imam, where he stands to sing the call to prayer, and two doors on either side. Inside at the back, there is a room with a wooden door which is locked. There are four ceiling fans and one big standing fan in the front right corner. The red wall-to-wall rug is bright and neat. I lie down in the mosque and begin to doze off until I feel a man tap me lightly.

‘Won’t you get up and say your prayers?’ he says and walks away.

It is a command, not a question. His voice is deep and his beard is grey and black in a pattern so neat as if he coloured it himself. It is he who sings the call to isha prayer. His call makes one want to stop and listen to the words, and want to pray. It is deep and loud but smooth and gentle on the ears:

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar

Allahu Akbar . . .

I do my ablution outside by the taps and rush in, attaching myself to the end of the long row that has quickly formed. Shoulder to shoulder. Toe to toe. I have not prayed like this since the last Eid. It feels nice. ‘Praying in congregation makes us equal before Allah,’ Malam Junaidu liked to say, ‘shoulder to shoulder.’ Even though of course he did not treat us like we were equal to him. My knees hurt when I kneel to pray but I don’t mind. I am praying next to a short person. I think he is a boy like me until I turn and see he has a long, thick beard.

The prayer is over and I am thinking of what to eat when this man who prayed by my side stretches his hand to me and says, ‘Salamu alaikum.’

‘Wa alaikum wassalam,’ I reply.

His voice is bigger than he is and sounds as if it is coming from somewhere out of his body. I wonder if the beard is heavy for his face. He asks me if I have eaten and tells me that there is free food outside the mosque. I walk out to where the food is being shared and I see some men offloading sacks from behind a black jeep. The food is in small, disposable paper packs. Joining the rush to reach for food, I knock down a little boy. The man who dropped the sacks is shouting, asking us to wait, to calm down because there is enough to go round. No one is listening to him; no one wants to take a chance. Some people are taking as many as three packs. Others spill the contents of their packs as they try to run off with more than they can carry. I am able to get two packs before people empty the sacks.

The man was wrong. There is not enough to go round and many are left without. I walk back to the mosque with what I have got. Both packs have jollof rice in them but only one of them has a small piece of boiled meat. I see the little boy I knocked down, still on the ground crying. He didn’t get any food. The bearded man who told me there was food is outside the mosque entrance, his short arms on his waist, looking at me and at the boy on the ground. His eyes are saying many things to me, the way my mother’s, Umma’s, eyes said many things when I did something wrong. Those eyes of hers were more painful than the knocks from my father’s hard knuckles. I am ashamed and look to the ground avoiding the crying boy and the short man’s gaze of judgment. I can still feel his eyes as I reluctantly squat and tap the boy, whose head is buried in his lap. He looks up. I give him the pack without meat. He wipes his eyes with the back of his left hand and receives the pack with his right. My eyes follow him as he gets up and walks away from the mosque into the darkness where there are broken-down buses and cars. He doesn’t even say thank you.

The man is still standing there as I make my way towards the mosque, still looking at me, half-smiling now. His eyes are better, they commend me. I open the pack and eat the rice quickly before I will have to share it too. I chew hard upon a stone and it sends a shock through my body before I spit it out. There is hardly any salt in the rice and the meat is tough. It is easier to just swallow it.

The short man talks to me as I drink water at the tap.

‘Allah will reward you for sharing your food, as Allah will reward and grant the wishes of Alhaji Usman, who sent the food,’ he says and walks away.

My head is pounding and I feel like throwing up. I close the tap and walk into the mosque to lie down. There aren’t many mosquitoes here even though the mosque has two open doors.

I lie on my back in the centre of the mosque, counting the number of squares on the ceiling. There are many people sitting in the mosque and they are all talking about the elections and the fighting in many places including Sabon Gari and Bayan Layi. People are outraged at the Big Party and the fact that the results of the elections have been changed. One man behind me says that it is our own people who have sold us out. He says this in response to another man with a tiny voice who said that the Southerners were attempting to take power away from our people, whose turn it is to rule. The man with the tiny voice doesn’t talk again. The voice behind me continues.

‘Our Emirs and big men are greedy and are not interested in us or our religion. They only claim to be Muslim and Northern but side with those oppressing us. For them an infidel party that accepts all sorts of kufr is more important than standing with Muslims and with Allah.’

I turn to look at who is speaking because when he speaks, everyone listens and nods. It is the small bearded man with the big voice.

I feel my pockets and realise I no longer have the polythene wrap of money. My other pocket still has the change left after I had paid Chuks the doctor and bought kunu and bread. My head is going round in circles and my heart is beating faster. I get up and look round the mosque, scanning the floor. I check by the tap, look in the gutter. Nothing. The scramble for food! I run out to check where we knocked each other over for rice. I run towards every black thing on the floor that looks like the polythene. Nothing. Only grains of jollof rice and empty paper packs. Tracing my steps back the way I came, I walk slowly, thankful for the bright fluorescent light outside the mosque. Then I see something familiar. I dive for it. My heart sinks as I realise it is really my polythene bag. Empty! I can’t breathe and my head is pounding hard. The polythene wrap slips from my hand as I walk back slowly to the mosque. I am holding myself back from crying. A man asks me if I have lost something.

‘Is it not you I am talking to?’ he raises his voice.

I still do not answer. The man mutters something about ‘children these days’ and walks off. Who can I tell that someone just took my seven thousand five hundred naira, which really belonged to a dead friend of mine who was shot by the police? How do I even start that story?

I enter the mosque and people are still discussing the elections. My eyes are tired from looking for my money and my head hurts. Perhaps if I wasn’t so tired or sick or angry from having lost all my money I might have told them about Bayan Layi and the burnt Big Party office and the fat man that Banda set ablaze or Tsohon Soja, who Gobedanisa killed with his machete. I would not say that I was there, that I held a machete too or that I was the one who hit the Big Party man. I would say only that someone told me.

I lie down and block out all the voices. Flashes of blood and mangled bodies and fire are going through my head. Allah forgive me, but some wee-wee would be good right now so that I could forget these horrible images. If Banda were here he would have given me some; we would have sat down under the kuka tree and talked about things that didn’t matter, until we fell asleep.

I wake up to a bitter taste in my mouth and the muezzin’s call to prayer in my ear. My bones hurt so bad—my back, my knees, my neck, my arms—it feels like someone has beaten me with iron rods. I am trying to remember the dream I had. All I have are images that come and go. I saw Umma sitting on her little stool, with her back against the wall, beneath an old picture of Sheikh Inyass. She had dark circles around her eyes from my father always punching her in the face. She said many things to me which I can’t remember. Her face was not happy. I saw Banda with a hole in his chest and blood around his mouth. It’s the part about Umma I want to remember, especially what she told me. Maybe she has become old, I think, as I drag myself to the tap to perform ablution.

The small man with the big voice is at the tap, his eyes puffy from sleep. He is not talking and smiling like he was yesterday. He washes quickly and goes in to stand in front of the mosque behind the muezzin with the nicely patterned grey and black beard. Just before I go down on my knees, which still hurt a bit, I feel my pockets to make sure I still have my change left. A cold, light breeze blows from the door on my right just after I say, ‘Allahu Akbar.’ It feels like Allah hears my whisper, and answers. I can feel His greatness this morning and I am feeling sorry, for the first time, for all I have done. For smoking wee-wee. For breaking into shops with the kuka tree boys. For striking that man with a machete. For questioning Allah on my way back to Sokoto.

I sit down after the prayer to listen to the man with the grey and black beard preach. The tafsir is well attended and everyone listens as he talks of our duty as Muslims.

‘This country is a slave to Jews and their usury,’ he says. I am hearing of a World Bank and IMF for the first time. I understand the concept of a huge bank that gives loans to countries around the world but I don’t understand what the IMF has to do with anything. Or what it is. Everyone else seems to know, because no one has asked and I am sure I will look stupid if I do. I just conclude it is a bad Jewish thing that helps the World Bank, who gives us money we don’t need to enslave us.

‘This is why the West pushes our leaders to make laws that force us to go to Western schools at an early age, so that they can teach our children that this system of the Jews is the best and by the time they learn otherwise it is too late.’

He says all this without shouting or speaking very fast like Malam Junaidu. He mentions the elections and there is slight murmuring in the audience after which follows complete silence. His voice is gentle but his words are piercing, giving me goose bumps.

‘Allah will judge those who sell their brothers for money,’ he says slowly, so that every word goes under your skin. The short man with the big voice walks in and whispers something into the ears of the Imam. Then the Imam says to us that Alhaji Usman has sent breakfast and those who want to eat can go outside. This Alhaji Usman must be very rich, I think.

I ask the man sitting next to me on the floor what the Imam’s name is. Sheikh Jamal is the name of this man whose words have arrested my feet and gone under my skin. His deputy—the short man with the big voice—is Malam Abdul-Nur Mohammed.

‘Abdul-Nur is not a Hausa man,’ he confides to me.

‘Really?’

‘He is a Yoruba from Ilorin. In fact his name was Alex before he converted, learned Arabic and memorised the whole Quran in just one year. There is not a hadith of the Prophet that he doesn’t know.’

I want to ask this man who seems to know everything about this Malam Abdul-Nur how he came about this information but I don’t want to upset him. I listen to Sheikh Jamal some more before I go out to get the free breakfast. A huge luxury bus is setting out from the motor park and there are little curtains drawn over its windows. Someday I will ride in one of those, wherever they go to, I tell myself.

The food is all finished when I arrive. Two girls hawking rice cakes in small transparent plastic buckets watch in irritation as people disperse from the jeep that has brought sacks of food.

‘Me, since they started bringing this sadaka, I have hardly sold much,’ the bigger one says to the smaller one.

‘Me neither,’ the smaller one replies.

‘I think tomorrow we should head somewhere else or into town.’

‘Or where the motorcyclists wash their motorcycles.’

I feel someone touch my shoulder. It is Malam Abdul-Nur holding a plastic plate and bowl. He is smiling again.

‘Did you get the food?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I say, avoiding his eyes.

‘Rinse the plates and bring them into the mosque when you finish,’ he says, giving me the plate of kosai and bowl of hot koko.

He has taken many steps before my mouth can say ‘thank you.’ I will thank him when I return the plates. These are good people and if I didn’t have to go home to my mother, I would stay here. My stomach rumbles as the hot koko rolls down my throat into my belly.

Umma! This koko tastes just like hers—the one she used to sell in front of our house and by the market in the village when the rains were regular and my father’s rented farm gave many bags of millet and maize. I can’t wait to see her again. She will ask me how it was in Bayan Layi and whether my teacher treated me well. I will tell her that everything was good so that she will smile and not worry and get the pain in her chest that my grandmother used to say was from too much thinking. It confused me then how something in the head could cause pain in the chest and my grandmother would say that while men worry with the head, women worry with the heart. When I would ask again, she would say I was too young to understand. Today I think my dead grandmother is wrong. It is not only women who get that pain in the chest. I feel it now—when I think of Umma and Banda—in my stomach, in my chest, in my head, everywhere.

I rinse the plates by the mosque taps and take them in to Malam Abdul-Nur. He is sitting with Sheikh Jamal. They look up at me.

‘Yes, he’s the one I was telling you about,’ Malam tells Sheikh Jamal.

I give him the plates and say I am grateful.

‘Sit,’ he says.

I sit slowly trying not to bend my knees. Sheikh Jamal looks into my eyes searching—for what, I do not know. I look at him at first but can’t stand the weight of his eyes. Suddenly I am aware of all the sounds in the room: the whirring of the fans, someone washing at the tap outside, the revving of cars about to set off on long journeys, the bus conductors outside screaming to potential passengers, someone laughing loudly in front of the mosque. Perhaps he can hear the beating of my heart, because I can, in spite of the many sounds.

‘By what name are you called?’ Sheikh Jamal’s very formal tone breaks through all the sounds and blocks them out.

‘Dantala. But my father named me Ahmad.’

During the very long silence all I can hear is his heavy breathing and the crunching of the fresh lobe of white kola nut which Malam Abdul-Nur has just popped into his mouth. There is something about the Sheikh which makes my heart beat faster. Faster in a good way, not faster like when I broke Umma’s large mirror and heard her coming into the room. I can’t tell what it is.

He pulls at the tip of his beard freeing entangled strands of hair. I want a beard like this. Maybe not with the grey hairs, but I like the way it covers most of his face and neck.

‘You have a good name, the name of our Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam.’ He dims his eyes when he says, ‘Peace be upon him.’

I nod.

Then Malam Abdul-Nur speaks, holding up his right palm like a slate, turning between me and Sheikh. ‘But Dantala . . . Dantala is not a name. To say someone was born on a Tuesday, is that a name? A name should have meaning. Like Ahmad, the name of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. You should stop using that Dantala.’

I keep nodding.

‘Where is your home, the home of your father?’ Sheikh continues.

‘My father died, but he lived in Dogon Icce with my mother.’

‘Allah is King! May Allah grant him rest. May Allah forgive his bad deeds and remember his good ones. May Allah reward him with aljanna.’

I say amen after every prayer.

‘So what do you intend to do now?’

‘I want to go to my mother in Dogon Icce. I fell sick when I came back from being an almajiri in Bayan Layi and was taking injections with the fair man on the other side of the motor park. Chuks.’

‘Aha, the Igbo man. He is good. Are you feeling any better?’

‘Yes. Very much.’

He pauses again and whispers something to Malam Abdul-Nur.

‘What is the name of your teacher in Bayan Layi?’ he asks.

‘Malam Junaidu.’

He turns to Malam Abdul-Nur and asks, ‘Is it our Junaidu?’

‘I am sure it is,’ Malam Abdul-Nur replies and then turns to me and asks: ‘Isn’t he very dark with a mark across his cheek?’

I nod. Sheikh Jamal takes out a phone from his front pocket. I am afraid. If he calls Malam Junaidu, then he will probably hear that I joined the kuka tree boys, who smoked wee-wee and didn’t pray. He raises the phone to his ear and my heart beats faster, not in a good way.

He starts to talk and asks Malam Junaidu how he is, how his farm is going, and they go on and on about the rains and then about the violence and curfew in Bayan Layi. Then as if the question doesn’t matter he asks if he ever had an almajiri named Ahmad who is also called Dantala. He describes me as quiet, not too dark, not too tall and very thin. As he listens to the reply, the ground on which I sit gets hotter and my stomach suddenly feels like my intestines are being tied together very tightly. I want to get up and run away. He nods and stares at me. After a while he says goodbye and lays down the phone.

‘So when do you want to go to your mother?’ he asks.

‘When I finish the injections, I will go,’ then I add, ‘and when I have enough money.’

I wonder where I will go if Sheikh Jamal throws me out of this mosque. It costs six hundred fifty naira to get to my village from the motor park. I don’t have that much. I wonder what he now knows: if he knows about Banda, about our burning of the Big Party office.

‘Do you have anyone taking care of you?’ he asks.

‘No, no one,’ I say, the words barely leaving my mouth.

‘Do you like it here? Would you like to work with us?’

‘Yes,’ I say without thinking. My heart is back to beating faster in a good way.

‘Finish your injections and go to your mother. Let her see you. The prophet teaches us to be kind to our parents, to help them. I am sure there are ways you can help her. Then ask her if you can come back. If she says yes, come back. But only if she says yes. We have two buses going to Dogon Icce: Malam Abdul-Nur will show you. You can join any of them when you are ready. He will give you some money to return also—if your mother lets you return. And if you decide to stay there, may Allah be with you.’

There is a pain deep in my nose because I am holding back my tears.

‘Thank you,’ I say snuffling.

Malam Abdul-Nur motions to me to leave. I get up. But I have to know what Malam Junaidu said.

‘Please what did Malam Junaidu say?’ I don’t know where I get the boldness.

‘He said you know your Arabic well.’

I walk away, relieved.

The day is just getting bright and Chuks is opening his store. As he struggles with his many padlocks I sit on the blackened bench outside. I think of all I would have said if the Sheikh had asked me about my mother. I try to imagine Umma now, fair, long face, deep dimples and dark circles round her eyes. She said her teeth were brown from the water they drank growing up. Her slender fingers and feet always have dark lalle tattoos on them. Sometimes they are reddish. Unlike her mother, Umma is slim and tall. She says she gets it from her father. He fell from a date palm tree when she was little. Umma is quiet and doesn’t spend her time gossiping with any of the other women in Dogon Icce. She laughs softly when she does but mostly, her eyes are sad. I wonder what she thinks about when she sits by the zogale tree inside the house watching lizards run around or when she absently waves flies away from her body. Often when she complained that her chest hurt, my grandmother would tell her, ‘You think too much. What is in this world?’

Chuks’ shop is now open and I walk in. The thoughts of Umma make the pain not so bad when the needle enters my buttocks. It only matters now that I will be going home. To my mother. To her gentle smile and deep eyes.