‘I have never seen the General vulnerable to any situation. He is always in control’

Fatima told me once. Well neither had I, until it was my turn on the duty roster to clean his house. I spent a week and some days doing everything he asked me to. He didn’t speak much. The sharp contrast between who he was outside his house and his personality indoors was staggering. I came to the realization that he was human after all; and that was like a groundbreaking discovery for me.

He always drove me out of the room when he received a telephone call.

‘Nobody is allowed to remain in the HQ when I am on the phone’, he would say.

On the last day of my assignment to the General’s house, he received a call by his bedside while I was sitting on the floor dusting the numerous pairs of boots under the bed. He knew I was still there but strangely, he received the call anyway. Whoever was on the other end of the line seemed far more powerful than General Abubakar. After saying ‘hello’, the General froze and stared out the window as if he was having an out-of-body experience. Then he attempted to speak a few times, but the words came out incomplete. It was clear he was being cut-off by the caller with  every attempt he made at speaking. Finally, as if given the go-ahead now, he started mentioning cities in the Northern parts of Nigeria and some figures:

‘In Kano, 20. Maiduguri, 12. Kaduna, 11….’.  He choked for a while and then went on to say ‘No, we are not wasting your money Sir, we haven’t been too successful in our latest attacks because the government forces have been a thorn in our flesh’.

Sir? The General had a boss? The whole conversation began to make sense to me at that point. Those numbers he was mentioning were the death tolls from their recent attacks. I had already heard the numbers; I had heard them from the stories the militants told us when they arrived at the camp after each invasion. So I knew. Had the death tolls been lesser, I wouldn’t be any less devastated than I was already. Apparently, ‘Sir’ wasn’t too pleased by the small number of people losing their lives to Boko Haram invasions in the past weeks. He should have been there to see the militants gloat over their kills like some village boys retelling the story of their snail-catching expedition.

I wanted to know who ‘Sir’ was. I wanted to know the person whose voice made General Abubakar stroll back and forth in his own room with less confidence than even I would. I wanted to know who it was that was throwing money behind the terrorists. I really wanted to know. Was he the same person behind those trucks that marched into the camp at midnight almost every fortnight to deliver guns and all kinds of weaponry to the militants? All those sophisticated machines and cameras stashed away in boxes inside the General’s house, who bought them?

The revelation I had after eavesdropping on that telephone conversation left me more petrified. It was like a door had been opened right before me, revealing who the real enemy was, only that he was faceless. The deception of terrorism is that we often loath the puppets parading themselves on the internet and on the news without thinking who could possibly be the puppeteer. ‘Sir’ could be taking a stroll on a beach at Hawaii. He could be walking in the midst of the horde on the sidewalks of New York City or jogging with his dog down a sandy path in Saudi Arabia. Whoever he was or wherever he lived, we should all be scared because he is faceless. If ‘Sir’ was that nasal voice on the phone that could make even General Abubakar look like he needed to use the bathroom, then we should all be really scared.  I just couldn’t come to terms with the fact that a worse-than-the-General walked freely somewhere on God’s green earth yet the General was in the news because he posted videos on YouTube proudly claiming responsibility for every Boko Haram invasion. They are fooling us all. What hope do you have in a war when you don’t know the real enemy? The guy who claims to be behind the evil acts of Boko Haram is actually a front. That is very scary!

Early the next morning after the telephone incident, the militants came into our tents to wake us up. They came wielding assault rifles as if preparing for a war or another invasion. We would have known if they were about to embark on another attack. Before they left the camp for any attack, they were always taken through a series of rituals. I couldn’t tell whether the rituals were for fortification or a preparation for death – seeing that their whole psyche was conditioned to accept death for a ‘holy’ cause. Then out comes the Babalawo from nowhere. None of us had ever laid eyes on him on any ordinary day in the camp. However, the day before every Boko Haram attack, he would appear and lead the jihadists through a series of rituals. The atmosphere was extremely charged by their chanting and dancing. Baba blew white powder over each of them while hopping and throwing himself about as if possessed. He had this eerie appearance. He was barely clothed by the animal skin he threw over his left shoulder. Anytime I saw him, I made funny mental pictures of his appearance, because I felt he was too small to be of any spiritual use. A beaded dark imp was what I often pictured in my head. His whole demeanor spelled evil. The beads on baba’s wrists and waist rattled abruptly with each step he took and that made it easy to notice his presence even while we were half-asleep. Sometimes at night we could hear him reciting incantations outside our tent.

So it was obvious the militants weren’t preparing for another invasion. I was amongst the 30 girls selected and forced to get dressed as quickly as possible. We were packed in the bed of one of the big trucks. The truck took off right after the General took his seat in the front. It was quite a nostalgic moment for me when we drove through the gates: I was reminded of how they brought us in. We were driven to a secluded part of the forest where the grass was ankle-height. The militants went about setting up cameras, hoisting their flags and posing with their guns in front of the camera. Within a few minutes we were all before the camera. The General gave a lengthy speech about selling some of us into slavery and how his aim was to establish a caliphate in the northern parts of Nigeria. Even the Boko haram militants were oblivious to the main reason why the General was making those claims in the video. But, I knew it. It was all just a ploy to remain relevant in world terrorism. He had to do something to salvage his fading image as a sadistic terrorist leader. He wanted to get into the good books of ‘Sir’ again. Pathetic!

Fatima crept into our tent that very night and slapped me on my back to wake me up. She whispered in my ears:

‘Isa, has agreed to help us escape. He will be here at 12 am. Stay awake. I’ll come for you’.

‘Ok’

I kept my eyes open for the next 5 minutes. I needed to stay awake to mentally process what had just happened. First of all, I was the one who was always talking about escaping. So if there was ever a plan to escape, I had to be the one to initiate it. The Lord knows how much I had to fight to maintain my relationship with Fatima because of the number of times I spoke about escaping. She simply didn’t want to hear it.

‘It wasn’t worth it’, she often said. I couldn’t blame her though. She had been a witness to the execution of so many girls and even militants who attempted to escape. The terror of those scenes had crippled her. To her, the mesh fence surrounding the camp was rather imaginary but the terror and confinement she felt from within were shackles she couldn’t shake off. This same Fatima was the one initiating our escape. How she got to convince Isa to be of help, I couldn’t tell. Isa was the water tanker driver; he sometimes drove into the camp with a truckload of drums filled with water too. I knew Fatima had an amorous relationship with him to some extent. She told me how he often expressed disgust at the activities of Boko Haram. Isa was driving the water tanker purely for the money and not out of principle. He was vehemently opposed to terrorism – but he needed the money. So it wasn’t much of a surprise that he was the one assisting us in our escape. What would make a man want to put his life on the line for two captives? We didn’t deserve any of this. I feared for his life because even if we were successful with our escape, he would be going back to the camp every other week to deliver drums of water. They might trace our escape to him and he would be executed. He of all people should have known this. And if the reality of that didn’t deter him, then nothing else would.

I must have dozed off. Fatima with her baby strapped to her back came calling again. I didn’t pick anything. We stepped out of the tent and there they were crowded around the truck. They were offloading the drums. I pulled at Fatima’s dress and told her ‘let’s go back inside, they will see us’. Apparently, she had a plan. We stood frozen in front of our tent, all that while Fatima looked away from the militants standing around the truck and focused her attention on the two conversing in front of the empty drums arranged a few feet away from the truck. I wanted to go back in. We would have been severely punished for staying up that late not to talk of standing outside the tent. When Fatima whispered ‘let’s go’ I knew it was time to run because of the urgency in her voice. The two militants had walked away so we ran towards the empty drums. The rest of them were standing at the opened end at the back of the truck. Our only option was to climb up from the side. Fatima let me go first. She unstrapped her baby from her back, handed her to me and then she joined us a while after. The two of us squatted in the midst of the empty drums while the militants packed more into the bed of the truck.

The engine of the truck started. The drums were shaking and knocking against each other. There was nothing to hold onto. Nevertheless, we remained still till the truck left the camp. Then Fatima stood up and span the lid of one of the drums open. In a single leap I entered the drum, Fatima handed her sleeping baby to me first and then she climbed into the drum slowly.  

‘Today is the happiest day of my life’

‘Ada, Me too oo’, Fatima responded.

She left the lid halfway open to let in some air. I thought of Mariama and the other girls and how I would miss them. But nothing could be compared to the sweet taste of freedom. We were crammed up in a drum, but we knew we were freer than we had ever been in the last few months.

‘It is their guilty conscience that keeps them away from Allah’s presence’

No, I do not agree with that! The cloths they loosely covered themselves with at night probably did a better job of pinning them to their beds and away from their maker’s presence than the guilt of their evil deeds – that is if there was even a hint of guilt in their hearts.

The heinousness of their actions was like a pungent smell attempting to choke you to death. So I feared the dawn and all the anticipation of daylight terror that it brought.  I was often either snapping out of a scary nightmare or in a limbo between sleep and consciousness, fighting gory images from the scenes I had seen the previous day and the stories I had heard told. Somewhere in between the fear of the known and the anticipation of unknown evil, I had made my bed. And that was how the dawn of every morning at Sambisa was like for me.

I remember vividly, the morning after our first night there, we were introduced to the ‘Boko Haram wives’. There were so many of them! Most of whom either had babies strapped to their backs or they carried them on one hip while slightly bending in the opposite direction. That was when I first saw her … Fatima. Fatima wore a long flowing hijab that almost touched her waist. The circle her hijab made on her face made her appear as one peeping at the whole world through a hole. Her facial skin resembled a stretched elastic material, the way it allowed pointy bones to protrude at the corners of her eyes and cheeks. Unlike the others, her countenance appeared heavy with concern and affection. Maybe we merely reminded her of herself. But you could almost feel the kindness radiating from her stare.

So when it was time for them to teach us how to wear the hijab, I walked straight to her. She told me her name was Fatima and I told her mine. We made a connection right there and then. Fatima didn’t bother teaching me how to put on the hijab … she just did it for me.

‘Stiffen your neck Ada, or else the hijab will slip off your head’. She said.

I held still and made sure my entire body was stiff. She nudged at my shoulders and upon noticing how stiff I was, she giggled. By that, what should have been a madam-servant relationship melted into a friendship. Formality dissolved into cordiality. I felt I could ask her anything. When she pressed her hand on top of my head to hold the cloth in position, I felt the weight of her palm. Not like a burdensome weight but as an act depicting ownership. I was hers from then on. The other girls were being knocked and smacked in the face for not following the exact instructions given them. But Fatima gently wrapped the cloth around my head and pinned it beneath my chin.

‘I want mine to be as long as yours’ I told her. She giggled again and said ‘Ok’.

Her friendship came in as a timely relief. Mariama and I had grown distant after we arrived at Sambisa. I often saw her emerging from one of the wooden structures close to the fence at the far end of the camp. And anytime she saw me looking at her, she’d quickly look away and feign ‘busybody’. Mariama wouldn’t maintain eye contact with me for more than 5 seconds. She sometimes worked with the rest of us but for some reason she was often excused from fetching water from the tank to the quarters of the General and his men. I couldn’t believe the rumors, but with the benefit of hindsight I can boldly say she was married off to one of the high-ranked militants in Boko Haram. According to Fatima, Boko Haram wives are forced to reduce contact with the other girls. The rest of us were just human bombs waiting to detonate at some market place or school at the command of General Abubakar. Girls like Mariama were married off to high-ranked militants. They were the hens destined to lay and brood over eggs that would hatch to reveal the much anticipated foul fowls: a new generation of Boko Haram terrorists. The rest were also sold to some human traffickers and rich herdsmen from neighboring countries. Fatima had been with the militants for 18 months and knew the ins and outs of the camp, so I believed her.

‘I am a widow’

She told me once. Her husband died in kano. He was one of the militants. Fatima still spoke of him with such fondness that you would imagine they had a fairy-tale kind of marriage. They didn’t. She chuckled sarcastically when she said:

‘Alidu was only there to ward off the other militants who attempted to rape and physically abuse me so he alone could do that to me’

Fatima was confident in her guts. She believed Alidu was scared that night before he went to Kano. General Abubakar summoned all the jihadists the night before they left the camp. When Alidu came back to their wooden shed, he couldn’t look at her or their son. His last words to Fatima were, ‘… take care of your son’. There was a surge of mixed feelings that ran through my heart when she spoke about how the trucks came back to the camp the following day with fewer men than they left with. At the gathering where the militants were telling their stories and various experiences at Kano, she looked everywhere for him but couldn’t find him. I imagined the scene was just like the day we came: too chaotic for anybody to care to tell her the whereabouts of Alidu. The surviving militants took turns in mentioning names of those who had passed on to paradise. That was when Fatima heard Alidu’s name mentioned. The mixed feelings that must have hit her: news of the death of her husband and abuser. From that moment on, her life changed for the worse.

She was raped almost every night since then by different men.

‘Sometimes two. Sometimes three. Sometimes I didn’t know how many, because I passed out in the middle of all the torture only to wake up in a tent full of stinking snoring men’.

When she said this I could feel the tears sting at my eyes. Then she told me she sometimes even woke up in a different tent from the one she remembered being taken to. At this point I lost the fight to my tears; warm tears came streaming down my cheeks. I was scared. In my fear I yearned to comfort her, but words failed me.  What do you tell such a person? That it was going to be alright? In hell? I couldn’t lie to her even if I tried. I wish I could uplift her spirit but mine was quickly sinking into an abyss of despair and in need of urgent rescue too.

‘You have been through hell’. I finally said.

‘Yes I have.’ She heaved a long sigh.

‘It may be your turn soon. When they come for you remember to keep your legs wide apart, eh?’ She pulled at her left earlobe with her left hand while saying this. ‘And close your eyes till they are done’.

That was it? That was the drill? How was that supposed to make it any bearable? All the time I spent with Fatima revealed one thing: though she never mentioned it, she had no desire to escape. She never called Sambisa home, but she pretty much was at home there. And I felt she was walking me down that road too. I didn’t like it.

As our custom was, before we went to sleep, one of us would share her experience with the rest. Often sad stories. Often stories of rape and abuse. That was one way we bonded as fellow Boko haram slaves. One night Hawa narrated her ordeal at the hands of one of the militants to us; it was the saddest story I had heard told. Whispering to nobody in particular, she narrated her story knowing that she already had our ears without asking. Hawa’s made us all scared. Fear hanged in the room. The fear was so tangible, you could touch it. She recalled being hit from behind with the butt of a gun by one of General’s men. The heavy knock rendered her comatose for hours. The very moment her eyes were opened, she felt a sharp pain at the back of her head and the militant’s heavy arm resting on her bare back. Hawa turned around and saw the heaving hairy chest of the beast next to her. She panicked, but mastered the courage to get up. Finally she covered her nakedness with a cloth, stepped out and took slow painful steps to our tent in the dark.

Hawa had always attracted so much attention from the militants because she had a fine body. For obvious reasons, she was always sent for to run some errand or clean their wooden sheds. She couldn’t find the words to describe the torture but we perfectly understood her cries and cried with her. When she said her head still hurt, three girls drew closer to comfort her.  With a soaked rug, one of them massaged her head where it hurt. As if rehearsed, she dabbed at the back of Hawa’s head after each sentence she whispered. The incident inspired more than sympathy in us  – we were all petrified! I thought it was a case of paranoia at first when she said she suspected the Boko Haram wives had a hand in it.  But she went on to tell us how she had always been harassed by them.

‘You want to come and steal our husbands abi? We shall see…’

One of them had said this to Hawa a day before her bitter experience.

And as she walked through the dark after the rape, a bunch of them saw her and immediately started scoffing at her.

For this reason and many more, I was always grateful for Fatima. Her love and affection kept me sane. Sometimes I felt she went through all the pain for my sake, that I wouldn’t have to taste much of it. She taught me when to feign period cramps to avoid being whisked away in the night. Her predictions were so accurate, it was as if she knew the times the libido of the militants peaked. Yet, she still assured me that a time was coming when that trick wouldn’t work anymore. A harsh reality I had to face. But who am I to complain? In the middle of a God-forsaken forest, I found a sister and for that I was very grateful to God.

Mariama tapped my shoulder softly from behind and asked in a whisper:

‘Are you afraid?’

Am I afraid? Is there anyone on earth that wouldn’t be? She looked deep into my eyes like one looking for a trickle of water in a dried up well. Perhaps it was hope she was looking for. Or strength. Whether my honesty would comfort her or worsen her fears, I wasn’t sure, but I had to be honest.

‘I am afraid!’

I whispered back at her. As if new revelation of our predicament had just dawned on her, Mariama let out a loud cry. Two girls who sat close to us threw their arms around her in an attempt to comfort her. It was just a few hours ago that we had a conversation about how Oshevire deserved to die in Isidore Okpewho’s Last Duty.

‘He deserved every single bullet that hit him,’

Mariama had said. I agreed. We had planned to dispute Mr. Martins’ interpretation of that scene in the novel during our next Literature class. It wasn’t logical to say Oshevire was a victim when at the request of the rebels, he could have just stopped, and saved his life. No, he wasn’t a victim of circumstance. But were we?

Our beds were next to each other, so we usually had such conversations before either of us fell asleep. In hush tones, we would talk about Mr. Martins; his passion for literature; our passion for his course (maybe because we liked him so much); and how beautiful it would be to marry a man like him: handsome, attentive to detail and a lover of African novels. Mariama loved him more. I only admired his fluency and special ability to recall page numbers and quotes from the various plays and novels we treated in class. It was just lovely. Plus, I always felt something flutter in my tummy anytime he mentioned my name: ‘Ada Nnaji’.

We hadn’t been asleep for long. I jerked up out of my sleep to screams and the glow of flames through the windows. There was chaos outside and I could sense it. Mariama wasn’t in her bed. As I lifted up the mosquito net to step out, she came running. She headed straight to the corner of the room, unzipped her suitcase and started throwing her clothes over her head without a care of where they landed.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Ada, they are taking all of us away’.

‘Who?’

Just then there was a heavy knock that broke our door down. A soldier walked in pointing his big gun at all of us and saying in a loud voice.

‘Out! All of you! Out!!’

We all ran out of the dormitory to the lawns outside. Then I understood better what was going on. Jubilee House was burning. Large flickering flames gutted the building. The soldier commanded us to kneel down. Before we could comply, he was already pushing a few girls around him to the ground. There were many others kneeling down before we got there. Many of whom were still dressed in their pajamas.

They were everywhere; I counted about 30 soldiers. Chasing after some of the girls and pouring fuel into the burning flames. One of them walked into our midst and spoke some words in a language that sounded like Arabic. A few girls got up to their feet and took slow feeble steps away from us.

‘These are the Boko Haram militants,’ I thought.

I knew it because I had heard stories of how they would separate Muslims from Christians before meting out mean treatments to the Christians. Before long the rest of us were being packed into the Military trucks they brought. I saw one militant emerge from the bushes behind the drying lines; he was this gigantic being. He had caught a girl in the bush. She made several attempts to yank her wrist from the grip of his big hands to no avail. Then, in a single swoop, he carried her and rested her belly on his head. She was shouting and wailing, kicking into the air but he just wouldn’t stop walking.  He walked straight to the side of a truck and tossed her into the bed like an empty box. The trucks began to move. The wails got louder. In a single surge, ours set off so quickly and roughly. Soon we were out of the gates and I could see the school’s signboard receding.

‘I will miss Government Secondary School.’ I let the thought linger for a minute in my head. When we were approaching the Catholic Church, some girls in the truck behind ours began screaming ‘Father!!! Father!!!! Father!!!’. A few in the other trucks joined in. I was too weak to even murmur. Their cries and calls faded away with the cold wind of the night.

‘Mariama, what were you looking for in your suitcase before the militant broke into our room?’ I whispered over my shoulders.

‘My tracksuits. The green one. I can’t run in my nightie.’

Mariama loves to dress for every occasion. I had never seen her inappropriately dressed to any school gathering. Not that she feared the punishment for doing otherwise; it is just who she is. But there was no time to dress for the occasion. None of us had the opportunity to change clothes before we were whisked away that night. It was a cold bumpy ride and our bodies weren’t fully clad by the attire we had on. My legs were warm enough because we had been crammed together in the bed of the truck. Nevertheless, I spent most of the time rubbing my shoulders and my arms.

It was almost sunrise. I could see the pale blue sky through the canopy of leaves above us. We were driving through a thicket. In our midst were two militants who paid no attention to us at all. Suddenly they appeared more at ease: laughing and bickering. I could sense it. We were getting close to our destination. As I pulled my head out to get a view of where we were approaching, I was greeted by my reflection in the side mirror. My hair looked like a piece of foam that had been pecked at by a cock. I didn’t care. All I wanted to know was where we were going. I could see the wire mesh gates; the fence was of wire mesh too. I saw two men dressed in military attire running towards the gate to open it. As our truck screeched to a halt like the others before it, all the militants except the drivers got down and continued on foot through the gates into what looked like a military camp base from my view.

‘It is a community here,’ I thought. There were small wooden structures scattered everywhere – as many as the army green tents that dotted the vast land. Our arrival seemed anticipated. As we drove through the camp, countless militants began emerging from their tents and wooden abodes to catch a glimpse of us. It felt like we were captives of a war arriving in the enemy’s camp. Soon a crowd formed and followed the trucks amidst shouting and clapping. Some were shaking hands and others pumped their fists in the air – as if to celebrate their victory. Victory over whom? It was never a war! We would have lost anyway… but it was never a war!

As the trucks stopped at what looked like the parade grounds of the camp, we were asked to get down, go on our knees and keep our hands behind our heads. By this time the throng had circled us. Then out came their leader. It was obviously him because of the fear-inspiring weight his presence exerted on everybody. The leader approached the center of the circle in the company of two escorts. He took slow steps while walking around us. He said nothing. He only inspected our body parts. I lifted my head to see his face. He had a turban wrapped around his head and the darkest shade of beard spread over the area around his ears to his chin. He was angry. He looked angry. Fear and tension were heavy in the atmosphere. The look on the faces of the militants spelled out fear too. One of them ran to him with a little transistor radio. The leader increased the volume and pointed at the radio set. A smirk cut through his lips then he said ‘Bee Bee Cee.’ The crowd of militants cheered loudly. Their cheers came to a halt when he raised his left hand.

‘… we are not quite sure yet, but it seems the Boko Haram terrorists abducted over 200 girls last night at…’. That was the penetrating voice of the BBC’s Nigerian correspondent from the radio set. The leader raised his right fist in the air and shouted:

‘We are worldwide!!!’

This received a thunderous roar from the militants. Some fired a few rounds of shots into the air while others rattled some words in Arabic. It was a really chaotic scene. We couldn’t be any more petrified, however, I was more scared then than ever before.

Once again, he motioned and the noise ceased. He turned to face us now.

‘I am General Abubakar. You are welcome to Sambeeza.’

‘Sambeeza… Sambeeza…’ The word rang in my head a few more times before I figured out he actually meant ‘Sambisa’.

‘This is hell,’ he continued, ‘it is hell for you. From this day, you are going to become Muslims. We will teach you the ways of the Holy Prophet (Peace be Upon Him) and the mothers of the believers. Jesus Christ can’t save you here. Mary is not full of grace here. Goodluck is a foolish boy for trying to fight us. Now you have to suffer.’

He nodded his head at the two militants he came with. They rushed out of sight and appeared dragging a prisoner to the center of the gathering. They pushed him to the ground. The prisoner landed on his bare chest because his hands were tied behind him. The two militants picked him up to his knees and handed a pistol to General Abubakar.

‘Do as you are told,’ he went on. ‘Don’t attempt to run away.’ While saying this he cocked his gun and pointed it at the prisoner’s head.

‘This is what happens to those who try to escape.’

Then he shot … it was a deafening sound. Birds on the trees fluttered away at the sound. The body of the prisoner dropped sideways. The blood gushing out of his head slowly crept underneath the carpet of leaves on the ground towards where we knelt.

‘Take them away,’ said General Abubakar.

‘Hail Mary is not full of grace here…. Sambeeza.’ These words echoed in my head throughout the rest of the day. We had been taken to different tents after the welcome parade. I didn’t even get to see where Mariama was taken to. It was like a scuffle the way they separated us and pushed us into our tents. Ours was a pyramid-shape tent. We were inside but the earth outside was still directly beneath us… no floor, just a couple of flat mattresses and mats scattered on the ground.  The scent of freshly cut grass filled the tent. One girl, a few mats away was still sobbing. The reality dawned on me at that moment: I was going to spend eternity here at the Sambisa forest.

‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…’

I probably didn’t finish reciting Psalm 23 before sleep snatched me away.   

There were ushers everywhere: directing traffic; welcoming people; and some were running here and there like headless fowls. Senyo whispered something about the organizational structure of the church. I didn’t quite get that because I was distracted. There was a humming sound coming from the church auditorium. People were praying. That made me smile. The moment the usher opened the door for us, the prayers didn’t sound like humming anymore. They sounded more like a multitude of people having a conversation on top of their voices. Well, that was just what it was. The room looked filled to capacity, nevertheless the usher managed to find two empty seats for us somewhere in the fifth row. We didn’t sit down when she took us to our seats. Everybody else was praying and we were supposed to be praying too. I felt Senyo shove something into my pocket. Before I could ask what it was he whispered into my ears ‘Dela, that’s a deodorant. Prophet asked us to bring one each for today’s service. I got you one too’.’ A deodorant? For what?’ I quizzed myself in my thoughts. But I didn’t protest; I let that thought slide away. Right after that, Senyo zoomed into prayer. He was praying on top of his voice. I could hear his voice over the multitude of voices in the room. It warmed my heart to see young men praying fervently. Just in front of the pulpit, a group of five men had circled one short man. They were praying to a rhythm by swinging their waists two times and then clapping twice. They repeated the cycle over and over again. Who on earth prays by alternating between pelvic thrusts and claps? Anyway I thought it was very funny. I literally had to cover my lips with my palm to contain the pending outburst of laughter.

The young man leading the prayer was spotting an oversized long-sleeved shirt; a hugely knotted flying tie; a white belt and a white shoe to match it. He was sweating profusely as he prayed – swinging his left arm here and there while holding onto the microphone with the right. He suddenly uttered an extended hiss, indicating that he was about to change the prayer topic. ‘Hallelujah! Oh Hallelujah!’ he said with an extremely hoarse voice. Even before the congregation could respond he went on to elaborate on the next prayer topic:

‘Brethren, we are going to pray against the shpirit of doubt: the shpirit that compels many of us to doubt the anointing on the head of the Prophet. You see, in the bible, Paul refused to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Until Jesus appeared to him and the rest of the disciples in the room they had locked themselves in…’

‘Paul? Paul doubted the resurrection of Jesus Christ? That was Thomas’ I thought to myself. But I shook off the thought and generously handed him the benefit of the doubt. I began to whisper a few words under my breath too. About two minutes into this prayer session I heard a few voices from behind me chanting ‘Baino! Baino!! Baino!!!’. Soon the entire auditorium was electrified as many began chanting ‘Baino!’ too. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I asked Senyo, who told me the prophet was making a majestic entry into the church from the back. I looked very confused. But with a smile on his face, Senyo explained, ‘The name is actually Prophet Binoculars. Many call him that because of his exceptional ability to see that which the naked human eye cannot see’. ‘So it is some sort of a nickname’, I retorted. The chanting went on and even gathered a lot of energy with each passing second. One could tell that this was a church tradition. The entry of the prophet was obviously more important to them than the prayer. I turned around to catch a glimpse of this glorious sight only to be surprised by the fact that it really was what I expected it to be: a glorious sight. He took slow steps as if he had no cares in the world. With raised shoulders and slightly pouted lips he waved his hands at the people who were cheering now. Prophet Bino looked angry – maybe just pompous. As he made his way past our row, I realized that the white velvet robe he wore swept the floor after him. The atmosphere was charged now. Many ran back and forth in the aisles as if possessed by the ‘Tazmanian devil’.

He motioned, and the room was as quiet as an examination hall. The very moment he took hold of the microphone he said with a deep voice, ‘you are welcome to the Christ Resurrected Nazarene Calvary Church, be seated’. ‘Christ what?’ the name of the church defies every single semantic rule in grammar. Just there and then he pointed at a woman in the front row. Ushers rushed to wrap a cloth around her waist. He said something about some yellowish liquid that had been oozing from the woman’s nether regions. She nodded in agreement – at this point she was standing right in front of the prophet. His thick left hand landed on the woman’s head in what appeared to be a struggle. He kept twisting and turning her head roughly while praying. After a while he declared, ‘I HAVE DELIVERED YOU!’. The cheers that followed this declaration were louder than the one that heralded his entry into the church. He shrugged and kept that posture while turning around: as if to say ‘you know me. This is nothing compared to the other mighty things I am known for’. Wow! I had never seen such a display of self-glorification before.

Prophet Bino instructed the congregation to take out their deodorants and rub it in their armpits. I didn’t want to be a part of what was going on at all. Many were mumbling a few words of prayer while doing it. Senyo was doing it with a special kind of zeal that he didn’t even notice I wasn’t complying with the instruction. At this point I was lost in thoughts. But I could still hear him say – well I heard it faintly – that anybody who was tickled by the rolling ball of the deodorant would know no sorrow and would laugh for the rest of their lives. The entire congregation roared with laughter at this point. I was far away from them. I was nowhere near the church. I could see scenes from my village square playing in my head. When I was 12 years old my mother took me to the village square for the very first time to witness the ‘Trogbor festival’. ‘Trogbor’ means ‘the return’ in Ewe. It is celebrated by the people of ‘Etodzi’ to mark the return of the spirits of dead relatives. Every year, these spirits paid the villagers a visit by possessing the fetish priest and his subjects. The fetish priest and his subjects would display several magical skills to the admiration of many as a result.  And when those gathered there clapped, he shrugged and kept the posture for a few seconds (so this was where I had seen that pose before). It was believed that the spirits of the villagers’ dead relatives possessed the priest and his subjects but one couldn’t tell whose relative was controlling which of them. They ran up and down like they had no sense of direction; occasionally crushing into each other and falling in the process. The villagers waved at them, in hope that they were waving at their departed kinsmen

I guess this was the connection between Prophet Bino and the fetish Priest: the conceited demeanor he exuded. I was literally deaf and blind to what was happening around me. Suddenly, I remembered the day I gave my life to Christ. I could almost still feel the rain water dripping down my face mixed with my own tears as I stood in front of the crusade grounds. The Evangelist who made the alter call spoke with such passion and fervency that many gave their lives to Christ that day. Somewhere in his sermon, he spoke about the eruption of false prophets and teachers especially in the cities. He spoke about how most of them are shepherding millions to hell. Anytime he mentioned ‘hell’ it was as if he was about to break down and cry. You could tell that he was grieved by the fact that some people would end up there. I now understood that that part of the sermon was about Prophet Bino and the many like him. I wondered if his followers ever read their Bibles to know what it said about such Prophets. Prophet Bino is nothing like Jesus. He isn’t meek, gentle or driven by compassion when he sees the multitude of people. Heck, from what I hear, he rarely preaches a sermon; he only shows up to display his ‘super powers’.

My heart was broken. I told Senyo I was leaving and handed him the deodorant: while trying to get up he held my arm, but I yanked it from his hands and walked away never to return.

Asabea, who had been staring at her husband through the half-open door decided to step into the dark room. She didn’t like what she saw. Her husband was sitting on the bed with a pack of cigarettes in his hand and his belly majestically resting on his thighs.’ Something must be wrong’, she thought.

‘You know I don’t like seeing you like this, Tony. What is the matter now?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Nothing? Then why are you sitting here on your son’s bed? I keep telling you this, don’t bottle things up! When there is a problem just tell me about it.’

Turning and looking in his wife’s direction now. ‘Trust me; it is nothing I can’t handle’, Anthony said. ‘Tony, just tell me what the problem is.’ ‘I wasn’t going to, but…’. He stares at the pack of cigarettes in his hand again: seemingly  to send a message to Asabea. But she, on the other hand, had seen him hold hundreds of cigarette boxes with the same level of protectiveness so she couldn’t really get the message. A lone tear found its way down Anthony Gasu’s left cheek. It gave away the gravity of the situation at hand. Asabea couldn’t recall ever seeing her husband in such a bad state – the entire 20 years that they had been married. Then Anthony finally mustered the courage to open up.

‘It is Selorm’

‘Yes? What has he done this time?’

‘I think he smokes.’

Lifting up the pack of cigarettes in his hand, Anthony said:

‘I found this in his drawer when I came in looking for my phone charger there.’

Asabea heaved a heavy sigh: loud enough to be heard outside the room. Suddenly she understood her husband’s frustration. But it was obvious that Selorm was no longer that sweet bright boy they knew. Selorm, the first of the Gasu children was always warm and friendly. He was excessively inquisitive and would gleefully interrupt  his parents’ conversation to ask the meaning of a word he had just heard them say. He always wanted to know. For him, his parents had always figured his future career; they said he would become a lawyer because of the interrogative demeanor he assumes when asking questions. They noticed a change in his behavior some time back when he came back home from boarding school. The vacation was all planned out by Mr. Gasu. He had planned to take the entire family to visit the Shai Hills and lodge at a hotel close by. He particularly planned this because of Selorm’s sudden interest in land forms and mountains which was birthed in him because of his introduction to Geography in class. When Mr.Gasu first announced the trip, it seemed that Homse and Edinam, Selorm’s younger siblings, looked more excited than he did. Homse especially was elated at the news because her friends, who were members of the Wild Life club at school, had visited the Shai Hills and told her a lot about it. She told her older brother Edinam about her friends’ experience. He too had missed a few of such trips because he wasn’t a member of the Wild Life club at school. The two of them were so excited. Selorm was clearly not enthused. He was indifferent. His parents observed him closely that vacation and noticed a huge change. He didn’t interact with his brother and sister like he used to. His parents remembered how he recounted his ordeal as a form one boy to his siblings. He even taught them some of the jargons he had learnt from his seniors. But he hadn’t done anything like that since his third term vacation in form1. Something had changed about him. This was the dawn of a new Selorm.

Edinam raised his head from time to time to look at his parents who were both eating their dinner absentmindedly. ‘They seem troubled. Maybe they had a big fight’, he thought. He wanted to break the awful silence at the dining table so badly. But he remembered his parents teaching them to be quiet at table during meals. ‘Homse, pass me the salt’, Edinam finally said. Mr. Gasu looked up at him and then at his wife then back at his plate. Obviously, Edinam had no use for the salt; he only intended to use the gesture to measure the depth of the seeming feud between his parents. Judging from his father’s reaction, and the fact that his mother was unconcerned about what had just happened, he concluded that it must have been a really big fight. He looked at Homse who was busily throwing morsels of the meal into her mouth at such short intervals. ‘Well, she said she was hungry’ Edinam thought. He turned to look at Efo Selorm, who was almost done with his supper, as usual; hastily so he could get away from the rest of the family and lock himself in his room. Edinam felt alone because it seemed he was the only one at the table who noticed what was going on.

Anthony finally mustered the courage to speak up.’Homse and Edinam clear the table and wash the plates’. Asabea gathered the last morsel of her meal and rested her fork in her plate at her husbands command. Selorm made a move to leave the table but was stopped in his tracks by his father’s voice, ‘not you Selorm, wait behind’. Homse got up and grabbed her parents’ plates. As she walked away Anthony remarked ‘good girl!’ in a sing-song manner. Edinam who was reluctant to leave the table was startled after realizing his father had been looking at him from the corner of his eye. He may have said ‘sorry’ while leaving hastily, but it just didn’t sound like it when it came out of his mouth. Or it just didn’t matter. Asabea looked extremely worried and was at the verge of shedding tears. She tightened the knot of her scarf as the pointed tip rested like a mini-cape down the back of her neck. Clearly, she wouldn’t be able to go through the second sentence without crying, if she were to address the situation. So she would let her husband do the talking. It was all planned before supper that evening.

Mr. Gasu, kept looking at the wall while rubbing his palms against each other – probably deciding what to say and how to put it. ‘Selorm, you’ve been smoking’. Mr. Gasu finally said… just like that. This came as a great shock to Asabea as much as to Selorm. She expected her husband to pose the question first. Selorm looked like he was looking for the right words to say on the dining table. He kept turning his head from side to side and finally said ‘Daddy…’ ‘Daddy, what?’  Anthony asked sternly. ‘Daddy I am sorry’. Asabea, folded her arms and looked down in an attempt to hide her tears. Anthony rubbed her back briefly. ‘Who taught you how to smoke?’. This was followed by a long silence – long enough to make Asabea look up at her shivering son. Her teary eyes demanded the answer. Selorm looked at them and remained quiet. Tears came racing down Selorms cheeks as well. ‘ I learnt how to smoke myself. I… I …. I sometimes picked up the broken sticks you left in the bin and lighted them and…’.  He bit his lips and looked away. At this point Anthony was speechless himself. Asabea interpreted Anthony’s silence as her cue to take over. Before she could speak, Selorm burst out at such a speed:

‘But Daddy I can stop if I want to! I am not addicted!’

‘Don’t deceive yourself boy! If you could you would have already!’ – Anthony roared from across the table. Before Asabea could utter a word, Mr. Gasu had already sent Selorm to his room.

That night in bed with his wife, Mr. Gasu lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Obviously he was deep in thoughts. Asabea lay next to him. She kept turning on the bed to distract him but Mr. Gasu was too deep in his thoughts to notice her.

‘Asabea’, he finally said, ‘do you realize that I am Selorm’s “Milky Jay”? Or even worse, because I suspect he smokes wee too’.

‘Don’t do this to yourself Tony, you are no such thing to your son’. Asabea said.

Milky jay was Mr. Gasu’s ‘school father’ in Secondary school. He was called ‘Milky Jay’ because of the milky puffs he usually made with the cigarette smoke oozing from his mouth. He could do countless tricks with the smoke in a way that made smoking look like an innocuous activity. He made it look appealing. It was him who introduced Anthony to smoking. He literally forced Anthony’s first stick into his mouth and lighted it for him. Anthony hasn’t looked back since then – even when he wanted to. He is addicted to smoking cigarettes now. He has been battling this addiction for over 30 years and seems to be making little headway. This fact alone has weighed heavily on his heart. Well, he thought it was a heavy burden till that evening. Till he realized he had literally nurtured a ‘milky jay’ by his actions and under his own roof. Compared to the weight of his addiction, that of his son was a millstone and his a feathered pillow. The fact that in the near future his son could loath him as much as he loathed ‘Milky Jay’ really disturbed him. He was bitter. Because his dearest Selorm was going to be the ‘Milky Jay’ of his school: leading many to this destructive addiction. Mr. Gasu finally heaved a heavy sigh, turned to his wife and said, ‘Good night Asabea let’s talk about this in the morning’.