A Gift from Darkness Read online

  Now a whole series of volunteers came forward, declaring themselves willing to acknowledge Boko Haram as the only true Muslims. The men were in a particular hurry. They probably saw it as their only chance of survival, as Boko Haram normally made short work of them. The mere fact that they were still alive was a miracle in itself. I understood their fear. My life is important to me too. Still, it would never have occurred to me to betray my religion. Did my fellow prisoners really think our Lord Jesus Christ would ever forgive them that? Did they think about anything apart from their damned fear, which was driving them into the arms of their murderers?

  I watched with quiet horror as more and more Christians stepped to the front and swore their loyalty to the terrorists. They were selling their souls to the devil. I despised them for their godlessness. But secretly I envied them too: how easy it was to take your head out of the noose if you had no scruples.

  And again it occurred to me that perhaps it was all just a test. That our God was putting us on trial to find out whose faith was steadfast. I fearfully pressed myself closer and closer to the wall of the building, as if by doing so I could become invisible, or disappear into the masonry. No, I wouldn’t waver, I promised myself.

  About half of our group converted to Islam—and to Boko Haram. Even two of the women I had come with from Gwoza, and whom I had often seen in church with their families, declared their adherence to the Muslim faith without batting an eyelid. As soon as they had done so they were allowed to wash and given a set of clothing in line with Muslim rules. More and more women disappeared under the black full-body robes that revealed only the eyes. And I didn’t really know whether to think they were being particularly clever or particularly stupid. At any rate, they were willingly jumping on the bandwagon.

  “You should do it too, you’d be more protected,” one of them whispered to me.

  “But how can we look our families in the eyes again if we do that?” I whispered.

  “Don’t think about that. They’ll understand.”

  But I couldn’t imagine that with the best will in the world. And I didn’t think we would be more protected by Muslim clothing either. Because wasn’t it a sign that we were freeing ourselves of our previous ties? Would they really respect us more? Wouldn’t it leave us totally unprotected and exposed to the will of an individual?

  The fighters greeted the turncoats, but weren’t dazzled by their numbers. They deliberately questioned each of us in turn. Each one had to give their name and the place they came from. Apparently they couldn’t keep track of which villages they had taken us from.

  “What about you?” asked the man who was writing down all our names. He looked a bit older and calmer than the rest of the troop. His clothes were clean and didn’t look as if he had spent the past few months as a militiaman in the bush. He also seemed to be of a higher rank than the others. Perhaps he was one of the ones who had been working for the group behind the scenes. In which case, of course, now that they had taken his hometown his time had come.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “My name’s Patience,” I answered shyly.

  “Patience like a hospital patient?” said a second, very young man. He slapped his thigh in great amusement. I think he was trying to flirt with me. “Ha ha, what a funny name.”

  “No, Patience, like, you know, patience, being patient.”

  “It’s a perfectly ordinary name,” said the older man and glared at the younger man. “Where do you come from, Patience?”

  “From Ngoshe,” I replied. It happened quite automatically. Because Ngoshe was the place my family came from. I still hadn’t internalised the fact that since my second marriage I lived in Gwoza.

  “From Ngoshe…you don’t say.” The older man gave me a penetrating look. He seemed to be thinking. “But aren’t you the daughter of Haruna Aiga?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, and looked at him in amazement. I was very surprised that the man could mention my father’s name so confidently.

  “Then you’re my niece,” he said. And suddenly I knew who I was dealing with. This was my uncle Amadou, my father’s oldest brother. Yes, he was a Muslim, I remembered. My grandfather and my grandmother had been Muslims. It was my father and his next-eldest brother, the one who lived next door to us in Ngoshe, who had broken with family tradition and converted to Christianity.

  I knew the reason for this from childhood stories. Apparently my neighbor-uncle had once had a car accident in which he had almost lost his life. Even though there was hardly any hope left, the people brought him to the mission hospital in Gwoza. And the Christian doctors there stitched him back together in a miraculous way. My uncle and my father were so impressed by their skill and helpfulness that they had gone on to assume their faith—out of gratitude, to some extent.

  As a child I had always taken it for granted that they were both Christians, even though the rest of the family clung to the Muslim faith. After all, there were many mixed-religion families. As I have said before, people often change religion for reasons of career or politics. There’s nothing unusual about that. On the other hand, their families were seldom sympathetic. The older relatives often saw it as a scandal when their children left the faith community. Perhaps, it was dawning on me now, that was why we had so little to do with the Muslim side of the family?

  The last time I had seen Uncle Amadou had been at my wedding, the first one. On that occasion he had come from Ashigashiya and even brought me a present: a beautiful fabric from which I was to make myself a dress. After that I had never heard anything about him and his family again. What an incredible stroke of luck it was, meeting him again here and now!

  “My dear uncle,” I said excitedly. “I’m so glad to see you again!” I spontaneously fell in front of his knees. He looked embarrassed.

  “Stop that,” he whispered. “Stand up.”

  “Please save me,” I pleaded, “tell them not to harm me, my dear uncle.”

  I didn’t know if he was a dear uncle or a wicked one. Only that he was my last remaining hope.

  “But child,” Uncle Amadou said in a reassuring voice. “No one wants to harm you. We all want the best for you.”

  He pulled me to my feet. What a curious remark, I thought. What did he mean by “the best for you”?

  “Your family has strayed from the right path. But I will make sure that you find your way back to the true faith. I want you to convert to Islam.”

  “But Uncle Amadou,” I said nervously, “you know that we’re Christians. I can’t just…”

  “Of course you can, and you will,” he interrupted. “Forget your past. It doesn’t exist anymore: join us and become a warrior’s wife.”

  “How can you say that? You know I’m already married.”

  “You’re a widow,” he replied frostily.

  I felt great fury welling up in me. So my uncle knew that my first man had died. Did he also know that his friends had murdered him? Had he perhaps even worked closely with them? I wanted to shout at him and tell him they were all murderers. That they had my mother on their consciences. But I bit my tongue. Don’t squander your last chance, I warned myself. With great self-control I said, “I’m not a widow any longer. I married again.”

  “An infidel?”

  “A Christian.”

  “That doesn’t count. That doesn’t matter anymore. The marriage is hereby annulled.”

  I glared at him furiously. Had my uncle no sense of honor? Did he want to ruin our family’s reputation completely? “Do you want to turn me into an adulterer?”

  “Not at all! It’s as I say: a Muslim woman cannot be the wife of a Christian.”

  “But I’m not a Muslim.”

  “Yes, from now on you are.”

  I was completely beside myself when he talked to me like that. My own uncle! What had got into him? I felt I was looking at an emotionally frozen stranger.

  “Say after me,” he ordered. “La ilaha illAllah Muhammadur—I declare that there is no god b
ut Allah, and that Muhammad is his messenger.”

  I held my tongue.

  “Say it!” he roared.

  Uncle Amadou slapped my face. I began to cry. Two of the men began beating me. They also jabbed me in the side. I was terribly afraid for my baby. Might it be injured by their blows? Or even leave my body? “Yes, I’ll say it: Illalala…”

  I deliberately came out with some kind of nonsense, certainly not the Islamic confession of faith. But they didn’t notice. Or at least they seemed happy enough.

  “You see,” said my uncle, “it’s fine. And from now on you’re not Patience anymore. Your name is Binto.”

  “Binto?” Had he completely lost his mind?

  “Yes, that’s your Muslim name. That’s the one you answer to.”

  I stared at my uncle and couldn’t work out what on earth he was saying. Did he really mean all that? Was he speaking out of conviction? Or was he afraid that they would kill him if he didn’t play according to their rules? For our family this was all a disaster. How would Uncle Amadou ever look my father and my uncle from Ngoshe in the eye again? As I have said, I didn’t know him well, but I had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t himself at all. Was he on drugs? I tried to study his pupils, but he avoided my gaze.

  “Right, let’s move on,” he said, “I can’t waste my time with you forever. Even if you’re my niece it doesn’t mean you get special treatment.”

  He told the other men to give me a niqab. “You should be grateful to me,” he hissed.

  “But Uncle, I’m not Muslim,” I said, making one last attempt to bring him to his senses. “And I never will be!”

  “No, you are, Binto.” He stared at me antagonistically. And I lowered my eyes in shame.

  “Kill her if she misses deliberately,” Uncle Amadou told his companions. Then he turned to the next prisoner.

  Among butchers

  I didn’t put on the veil that the men had given me. And I didn’t react when they addressed me by the name of Binto. But I wasn’t sure whether I was saving my soul by doing so—or consigning it to damnation: wasn’t I imposing a death sentence on my child?

  The question troubled me a great deal. In the end I wasn’t just making decisions on my own behalf: I was deciding for two people, for two souls who were temporarily sharing a body. Yes, it was my body. But I had to treat the situation responsibly, I couldn’t afford to be selfish. God had entrusted me with the safety of the little creature that lived inside me. I was carrying a treasure, but a treasure that was also a burden. The fact that no one but me knew this secret, that no one could see my condition, made that burden even heavier.

  There was quite an agitated atmosphere in the yard. The new “Muslims” thought they were out of trouble. Some of them even knelt down and started praying in the Islamic fashion. I found their hypocrisy completely repellent. But they were probably driven by the same fear that had made me feel weak and say things that must never reach the vicar’s ears.

  “Jesus, forgive me,” I prayed, ashamed. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  The wildest rumors were circulating about what the warriors wanted to do with us. Neither the ones who had converted to Islam nor the ones who refused knew what to expect next. “I will never put that thing on,” whispered Jara, who had come with me from Gwoza. Like me, Jara, a young mother with a very plump figure, was still wearing the same clothes we had been kidnapped in—a skirt, a tight top and a headscarf tied at the back. In the presence of all those women wrapped in black the outfit suddenly looked like a challenge, if not a provocation.

  “Don’t you think they’ll have more respect for us if we veil ourselves?” I asked her, kneading the veil in my hand.

  “I think it’s dangerous. They just want us to become Muslims so that they can marry us and we can bring up their children as Muslims too.”

  “Marry,” I repeated. That was just another word for something that must never happen. No, under these circumstances I must never put the veil on. “I’m already married,” I confessed to her.

  “Me too,” she whispered.

  “And I’m pregnant,” I admitted.

  She looked at me in horror. “Don’t tell anyone!”

  “What are you two whispering about?” said a Boko Haram man. We moved apart. I crept into another corner of the yard. But Jara’s words echoed within me. They frightened me, they had sounded so urgent. Obviously she knew something about the way men treated pregnant women. Something that should worry me deeply. That much was clear.

  I just sat there like that for a long time. I wondered whether I should ask my uncle or another man for a drink of water. But in the end I decided against it. I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to myself. The less they noticed me the better.

  After a while a truck arrived. It stopped in the street and tried to reverse, flatbed first, into the yard. The Boko Haram people helped the driver maneuver, with wild gestures and noisy instructions.

  When half of the vehicle was in the yard, they left it that way. Two of them opened the backboard and ordered all the non-Muslim women to get on board. “Only the young women,” they said. “We’ll fetch the rest later.”

  My feelings told me that it would be better not to comply. Jara also looked at me suspiciously. “Where are you taking us?”

  “To a safe place,” the men said.

  “Safe from who? Isn’t Ashigashiya safe?”

  Instead of replying they struck her with the butt of a rifle and dragged her onto the back of the truck. “We’re going to a place where you’ll learn not to ask so many questions.”

  Then all of a sudden my uncle appeared beside me. His eyes were furious, he was clearly seething with rage that I’d disobeyed his instructions. “You get on there too,” he ordered, and grabbed me roughly by the arm. He dragged me to the truck, and I kicked and lashed out. But with the help of a few men who were already waiting on the platform, he pushed me up without any great difficulty. “You wouldn’t listen to me,” he said, “and now you’ll pay the price.”

  “I’m going to tell my father everything!” I shouted.

  But Uncle Amadou was completely unimpressed. “Really?” he said mockingly. “You’re hardly going to have much of an opportunity to…” And at that moment the driver turned on the ignition, and the rest of his words were drowned out by the loud clatter of the engine.

  We drove along the main road from Ashigashiya. Panic broke out on the truck when it became clear to us all that we were being taken away from our home. The women screamed to attract attention. But none of the local people seemed to notice the curious transport being taken from the town. Or at least no one was concerned about it.

  No, there was no quick awakening from this nightmare, that much was clear. I was in a world of my own, a world in which I was trapped, and in which only the needs of the terrorists counted. And there was no escape, no way out.

  We drove via Pulka toward Bama. Soon we had left the town behind us. The road ran further north through damp, barren territory. To the west lay the Sambisa swamp. After a few miles we turned off in that direction. There was swampy bush on either side of the road. Here no one could hear our cries for help.

  The road surface became worse and worse, and muddier. It was starting to rain now too. The lorry jolted through puddles and potholes that opened up in the track. At this time of year it was always a risk taking roads like this, because you never knew if you might suddenly get stuck.

  When the pickup slowed down a little, the other women and I began constantly looking for the chance to jump down from the back. But our escorts were careful to make sure that no one escaped from the group.

  After about half an hour we reached the little village of Kauri, where we stopped. Even from the back of the truck you could tell that there had been serious fighting in the village: the round huts had been wantonly destroyed, the terrorists had either looted them or set them alight. But where were the people who had lived here?

  “Get out,” the men
commanded. We women exchanged fearful glances. No one moved from the spot.

  “What on earth are we supposed to do here?” Jara asked me. I shrugged helplessly.

  “Right, now, down you come!” the men repeated, pointing their rifles at us.

  So we climbed down from the back of the truck, about a dozen of us. The men below formed a semicircle so that none of us could run away. They waited until we had all climbed down. “Now forward!” they said. “Move!”

  We staggered forward, encircled by the men. We actually expected that they would take us to some house or other. But it was soon clear that no one in the village was still alive. Instead the men led us into the fields.

  Agriculture in the swamp happens in precisely the opposite sequence to the normal one: it’s only at the beginning of the dry season that the farmers sow the seeds that grow and flourish in the damp ground without rain. But now, in the rainy season, the fields were uncultivated and stood partially under water; high grasses and weeds ran riot.

  Should I try to run away and hide in the wilderness? I studied the man with the rifle and the machete who was walking along beside me. I had to wait until he wasn’t paying attention. But I felt as if I had lead weights tied to my legs.

  “Hey, what are you looking at?” he said suddenly. “If you try to run away I’ll knock your pretty head off your shoulders.”

  His words cut me to the quick. It was as if the man had read my mind. I looked away and pretended I hadn’t heard. With my eyes fixed straight ahead, I walked on. I didn’t once dare to look in the fighter’s direction.

  After a relatively short march we reached a checkpoint. The fighters greeted their comrades, who were keeping watch. “Who’ve you got here?” they quipped as they saw us. They looked us up and down and grinned lewdly. “Something for all tastes,” one of them said.

  They let us pass. Not far from the checkpoint was a little clump of trees; a lot of men were gathered beneath them. They had built a ramshackle camp. I could identify some of them as Boko Haram people at first glance, because they carried guns and machetes. But there were also men who were obviously part of the organization but didn’t carry weapons. I guessed that they must be renegades of some kind, or people who had only just joined and who the fighters didn’t yet trust.