Happy People Hub

This story is inspired by true events. 

On the 28th of November, 2020 dozens of rice farmers were beheaded by Boko Haram in Borno. This piece is a tribute to them and the heartbroken families they left behind. 

Day 1

I was just stepping into the room when Baba hands me the phone. "It's Nura." He says.  I switch the ice-cold bottle to my left hand and collect the phone with my right. "My Oga, yaya kake. Yaya Achan?  How is Lagos?" 

"Lafiya lou, Mutumina.  I know this is the only time you can be with your phone that's why I decided to call now." 

 "Gaskiya." I concur. 

"It's getting worse, Aboki na. Just last week, one man was taken. They were passing by when his phone rang out, They just bundled him into their van and drove off."

"Kai," Nura says in regret. I imagine him tutting, his head slightly bowed, swinging from side to side in pity.

"Why would he do that? Did he forget the pact?" Nura quizzed. 

"Aboki na, I don't know, maybe he didn't know the phone was in his pocket". I reply. 

"Haba, it's a lie.  No one can forget something so important. I bet he's one of those who call sojoji and disclose their whereabouts." 

"Why won't he call sojoji?" I flare up. "We're tired, everyone is tired. That's how, yesterday, one of them came to the village, entered one man's house, and demanded that the wife cook him chinkafa. When the man and his wife refused, he pointed his rifle at them and began swearing he'd kill them."

"So, we are the ones to cook rice for them now?" Nura interrupted, his tone rising.

"Yes, it's become very common now. The man was so angry, that while his wife was cooking, he called some villagers who attacked the intruder and bundled him over to sojoji." 

"The villagers handed him to sojoji?!" Nura's voice sounds crazed. 

I recognize the ambivalent feeling of pride and fear that stains Nura's voice and I feel an overwhelming need to quench the dryness in my throat.

I take a swig and the frosty-milky liquid glugs with force down my throat. The chilled tiger-nut extract tingles the walls of my throat and starts to quench the desert there. 

I click my tongue and let out a loud 'taaaahh', in satisfaction as I bring the bottle closer to my face, trying to inspect its refreshing content. 

"What are you drinking?" Nura asks. 

"Kunu Aya from Malami Aisha's shago." I pause, then I add. "It's cold. She just bought a generator."

"Kai, I haven't drunk good Kunu Aya since I came here. All the ones sold here are watery and sugary." Nura's voice is rueful.

"You made a mistake by leaving. You need to see the rice fields, Baba says we'll make millions  He took a loan from that microfinance bank in town and bought more lands and fertilizers.  There's so much to harvest, we can't possibly do it alone. As I speak with you, laborers just arrived all the way from Sokoto, we will begin harvesting tomorrow."

"Walahi, if I had known I won't have come to Lagos. I just thought they won't allow us to farm again, and I needed to raise money for my Aure.  I don't want that girl to slip through my fingers." 

"Mutumina, I always tell you, you're too hasty." I tease Nura. "It was the next day you left that the villagers met them and made the pact to allow us farm. It's not all of us that have uncles in Lagos that we can run to. Where can we go? This land is all we have, if we leave here we'll all starve to death."  

"Don't worry, I'll soon return. I've raised more than half the money. She's doing alright, bah?" 

"Yes, she is fine, I saw her yesterday, she misses you." 

"Kai, I miss her too. Don't worry Insha Allah, middle of January I'll return with enough money to marry her."

"Ameen."I chirp,  There's a long pause and I take more swigs from the bottle.

"Toh." I break the silence. "Sai anjima, Mutumina." 

"Yeah, Later," Nura replies. 

Some seconds go by and I make to end the call when Nura asks, "Sule, what if they find out?" 

"They won't find out." I object. "Nobody would talk. Everyone's fed up. We all agreed not to have seen him. They can't find out." 

"Let's hope so," Nura says. 

 "Yeah, let's hope so." I hang up. 

Day 2 

After rising from bed and doing my chores, I'm ready to go out into the fields. Harvest begins today and I'm eager to start gathering the chinkafa into bags. I wear my farm clothes and step out of the house when I see Baba sitting on a mat on the verandah, twiddling with his charbi. 

"Ina Kwana, Baba. An tashi lafiya?" 

"Lafiya Kalo, Mungode Allah." Baba replies.  

"I'm going to the farm."

"You can't go out today, Sule." 

"Why?" I question Baba. 

Baba looks at me. His sunken eyes are deeper than I recall, and the saggy bags around his sockets are now darker.

"I had a bad dream yesterday, I don't think it's safe." 

My face contorts. Old people and dreams. 

Wasn't it normal for a tiring mind about to leave the sphere of the living to begin catching glimpses of the afterlife in bland and hazy dreams?

"Who will supervise the workers?" I query. 

"We'd have to tell them to wait."

"Wait until when? Remember these workers traveled a long way from Sokoto fa" I snap my fingers thrice and point in the direction I think Sokoto is. "Ya na da nisa fa"

Baba traces the gaze of my index finger to the sun; a round blot of red palm oil staining the misty harmattan horizon.  "I don't like what I saw in my dream, I don't want you to go."

I'm tempted to ask what the dream is about, but I know it's a bait to stall me and scare me out of going. 

"Look, Baba, there's nothing to worry about." I take two steps off the verandah stairs, a move to show our debate's finality.

Baba shrinks, then whimpers, "okay call me after Zhur prayers."  

I frown. "You know I can't take my phone with me,  do you want them to take me like they did Umar?" 

 "Allah be with you." Baba submits. He raises his right arm and the prayer bead waves me off as it swings from side to side.  

I hurry out of the compound and onto the pathway to the farm. The cold from the night still lingers.  It mixes with the sun's warm blare and envelopes me in a feverish bubble.  I try doubling my place but the harmattan has my feet's sole sweating and slipping out of my palm slippers.

I think to Nura. If he were with me now, the journey to the farm won't feel so long and the rice harvesting would be much fun. I round one last turn as the morning haze starts to lift and can see from afar, the workers in the brown fields, clustered together like soldier ants. 

Aren't they supposed to begin work already? Wait… There are more men than I thought. 

As I move closer, I see pick-up trucks mounted with turrets. My eyes make out men with machine guns. It's them! What nonsense. We've not even harvested the rice and they're already on the farm.  The boiling in me pivots me straight to the first armed man close to me.

"We haven't begun harvesting the chinkafa yet. Some of these men are from Sokoto, they can't work comfortably with your guns in their faces. Please come back later." I  rattle.  

"We don't need chinkafa. We need some men to lift some heavy equipment in our camp." The armed man speaks through a face mask that muffles his voice to a low groan.

"And you need all 43 of us?" I retort. 

The armed man did not reply me, he turns his back on me and waves two others over. They spirit to his side, their heads bobbing as he gives them orders.  One of them begins to search the workers for phones while the other blindfolds and leads them into the pick-up trucks. 

They approach me and I want to shiver. But I remember the pact, and how certain farmers had been taken to work in the terrorists' camp and returned to the village the next day. I pray not to spend more than a day. We really need the money from the grains. 

My blindfolder puts a dark, dusty rag over my face and leads me by the hand onto the back of a truck. The truck revs and jerks forward, bumpy and bumping all through to the terrorists' den...

After what seems like decades, the truck finally halts. Salutes fly and a gate creaks open. The truck lunges again and coasts for another 10 minutes. Later, the vehicle's rear hatch opens, and a hand rips the rag off my face and shoves me off the truck with the rest of the workers.

My throat cracks from thirst, and I long for a chilled bottle of Kunu Aya, but I'd rather drink my piss than ask anything of these marauding and murderous scums. 

"Ku zauna!" A voice shouts from behind.

I sit on the parched earth, huddling together with the men like ruminating goats.

The sun is an angry ball of fire, scorching land and man alike and I could see tiny, imperceptible wisps of smoke rising from some of the men's heads near me. 

I look around and notice that more armed men, now unmasked, have encircled us. 

My eyes sweep the stifling circumference and I'm about to ask where the equipment are, when the mouth of the human circle opens opposite of me and a   burly, full-bearded man, in military camouflage with a large pregnant forehead saunters in. 

He doesn't bear a rifle like the dozen men helming us in, but he is brandishing a blade, having almost the exact length and curve of a mature plantain. 

He walks to the circle's center, points his weapon, and traces our faces in an arc.  

"I'm the commander here. Listen, you're all dead men. You'll meet your creator today."

My heart jolts and Baba's warning reverberates in the hollow of my brain. Don't go I  had a bad dream.  

"Why?" I blurt. We didn't do anything. We honored the pact, none of us are with phones. I sputter through trembling lips. 

"But one of you called the army on our man two days ago!" The commander's retort carries so much vent that I and the workers dissolve into ourselves. 

"It wasn't us, we weren't there." I get on my knees and turn my palms to the skies like I'm doing Dua. "Some of these men just came from Sokoto to harvest rice. Ask them."

I scatter my arm in their direction and the men nod and murmur feverishly. "Dan Allah, let us go. It wasn't us." My palms face up again. 

"We let you farm in peace so you won't starve to death." The commander scowled. "Yet you break the pact and call the military on us.  We don't care, you'll be scapegoats to others. Tie them up!"

The armed men close in on us and start tying our hands behind our backs. "Dan Allah, don't do this. Domin Allah, let us go." I plead. 

But the commander is running a finger along the blade's length and leering at us like a hyena. 

He charges forward and sweeps one man to the earth with a sharp kick. He kneels by the man's side, mutters something, then starts sawing through him. The man squirms like boiling spaghetti and his groaning is guttural like the sound of Katsina he-goats in heat. 

The commander stops and stands straight with his eyes to the skies, the sweat on his skin makes his coconut forehead reflect the sun's bright rays like a stainless plate. He

takes a deep, soothing breath and swallows hard. Then, he whirls in my direction and aims the crimsoned blade at me.

"You're next."

Rough hands grab me and send me face-first to the auburn-colored earth. 

I wring my neck sideways and cry out. "Baba! Baba!" If only I'd listened. The commander sneers, "you can shout from now till tomorrow. I'll kill you and nothing will happen."  

He pins one side of my face to the ground with his left hand and hot sand fills my mouth.  Saliva spurts out and it mixes with the harmattan dirt which curls up through my nostrils and makes me wheeze.  

I'm still wheezing when the blade singes my throat. It sears like the burn from a heated motorcycle exhaust: sharp, hot, and peppery all at once.  The blinding pain travels my body with lightning speed before hitting my spine, and then I start to wriggle as the blade dances deeper and deeper into my esophagus. 

I wriggle like earthworms do when Nura and I would decapitate them while working on the rice fields as teenagers. Frantically, at first, then slowly as the life ebbed out of them. 

I think of Baba and his frail health. How would he receive the news of my death?  What would he do when he sees me, my head severed like a chicken? My mouth agape, my tongue swollen and lodged between bared teeth like the head of a roasted he-goat. 

My mind races to Nura, had he not traveled he would've been with me here, preparing to lose his head. Smart Nura. He was wise to run to Lagos after all. 

The thought of Nura gladdens me. At least there's somebody to take care of Baba. At least there's someone to demand justice for my soul and souls of all the farmers who traveled far to fend for their families.