A Gift from Darkness Read online

  Still, I eventually reach a metal gate with an inconspicuous sign pointing to the seat of the Catholic community in Maiduguri. Got there!

  I knock hesitantly on the door. It is bolted shut. Inside I hear the voices of women whispering.

  “Who is it?” one of them calls at last.

  “Andrea,” I say. “I want to visit Patience!”

  I hear the metal bolt being slid aside. Then suddenly Patience is standing in front of me in the doorway. She looks every bit as exhausted as I am. She is visibly surprised to see me just turning up where she lives. “Hello,” she says in a friendly voice, and beckons me in.

  I step into a yard considerably smaller than that of the EYN church. There is a neem tree in the middle. The church itself is an unadorned building, painted brown and with a corrugated iron roof. Next to it is a shed with mats and woollen blankets on the floor: that is where Patience lives with three other young women and their little children.

  The women gather in a circle around me and look at me curiously. They are all wrapped in the traditional bright, printed three-piece costumes consisting of a long, tight skirt, a blouse and a headscarf tied at the back. Patience looks very contented. My visit is an honor to her; proud that I’ve drawn so much attention to her, she introduces me to her friends. I am painfully aware that Asabe isn’t with me to translate this time. But one of the women can at least get by in English, and is immediately given the job of interpreter.

  But of course we don’t go on with the interview straightaway. We talk about this and that. And the women welcome me with all due honors as a visitor. They bring me a chair, which they set up under a mango tree because it’s nice and shady there. I say lots of appreciative things about their courtyard and how pleasant it is. Of course I don’t touch the glass of water that they offer me, but they wouldn’t expect me to; it’s the gesture that counts. Water is always brought for guests as a matter of course.

  Then I am invited to visit the inside of the church: a barren hall with neon lights and plastic chairs. Above the altar hangs a giant neon banner, with the words of Psalm 46:10 in big letters and in a slightly altered form: “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted. I will be exalted in the earth (in Maiduguri).” I praise this highlight to the skies as well, as the laws of hospitality decree.

  “How is Gift?” I ask Patience when we are back in the courtyard. “Has she recovered a little?”

  “Yes, a bit.” She shows me the bag of medicines that she’s bought. Apparently she actually has visited a doctor, or at least been to a chemist’s shop. “Gift has problems because we lived in a damp shed during the rainy season,” she explains.

  As if by way of proof the baby coughs. “Will you help me give her some cough medicine?” Patience asks. As I don’t have any children myself, I don’t know exactly how it works. “You have to hold her nose shut,” the child’s mother instructs me. I do what she says, somewhat hesitantly. Gift, who is lying on her back, shrieks with fury. Patience takes advantage of the fact to pour some syrup from the bottle straight into her little mouth. Confused, Gift swallows it and then wails even more loudly. But Patience is contented. “That’s that done,” she says, and rocks the child, who quickly calms down again.

  We sit down on the chairs under the mango tree again. At last I summon all my courage and ask Patience why she hasn’t come to the EYN church compound over the last few days to continue our interviews. She looks embarrassed, but she still manages to tell me the real reason. “It’s hard for me to experience all these things in my mind again,” she admits. “That time was so bad…” Again that gaze into the void, into the hell within. “I’d really prefer not to think about it anymore.” She can’t sleep at night, Patience says.

  I can understand that very well. I tell her I’ve felt exactly the same over the last few nights. She is surprised, but comforted as well. At least she isn’t completely alone with the horror in her head.

  “It’s still important for the world to learn of these things,” I say.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she agrees. “Everyone should know what they do with us here—and help us.”

  She plays with the child, her mind apparently elsewhere. I don’t force the subject. At last she gives me the sign that the interview can continue. I take the tape recorder, which I’ve luckily brought with me, out of my bag and press the start button.

  “I’m proud of you,” I say to Patience, and I mean it. For her, the eyewitness, it must take a huge amount of courage to describe the barbaric things that she has had to see and experience. And she’s agreed to do so. For that decision she deserves the very greatest respect.

  Shortly before it gets dark I have to go back: curfew. I feel a little uneasy at the thought of walking back through the twilit streets to the EYN church. “Shall I come with you?” Patience suggests.

  “Certainly not.” Otherwise she would have to come back in darkness—and risk being ambushed or arrested. “You stay here.”

  I’ll manage, I encourage myself. The girls walk me to the gate. They give me a warm goodbye. “Come back soon!” they say.

  Then I step out into the road. Suddenly someone calls my name. Startled, I look into a shadowy face. I recognize the security man from the EYN church, the one who protested so violently earlier on when I left the compound. He followed me secretly and stood guard throughout the whole interview without my knowledge. He gallantly offers to come with me on the way back.

  “Thank you,” I mumble, ashamed. I am incredibly relieved to have him by my side.

  A friend in hell

  The sight of the bleeding woman was too much for me. I stared at her gaping belly and felt my eyes darkening. I probably fainted. At any rate, I can’t remember what happened next.

  I found myself among the girls again. Jara was fanning me with her bare hand. “It’s all over,” she said reassuringly, “nothing happened.”

  Nothing happened? “But the woman…her child…”

  My former neighbor put her finger to my lips. “Forget her,” she said and looked around nervously. “There’s nothing we can do for her.”

  I knew that Jara was telling the truth. As on other occasions when they had forced me to witness their cruelties, there was nothing I could do but stay silent and put up with it. Anything else would have cost me my life. But it’s very difficult to accept that. I could do nothing but feel guilty for the death of the woman and her child. I don’t know if my friends felt the same way. We didn’t talk about it. Each of us tried to digest the monstrosity of what had happened in our own way.

  But the event brought me to the edge of my endurance. I was afraid that I would go mad if I saw any more terrible things like that. Or was I mad already? Did this terrible world really correspond to life as I had once known it? Or was I delusional and imagining all of it?

  Having been abducted from Gwoza, I had been slung into a world in which nothing was as it should have been. All the fundamental rules that normally apply among people had been abolished and turned into their opposite.

  The only friends I had left from my old life were Hannah and Jara, along with a few women I knew from Ngoshe. They were something like an anchor for me, living proof that things had not always been as they were in that terrible camp. That the other, normal world out there had really existed—and probably still existed, unless Boko Haram had destroyed everything.

  “Do you think I’m going mad?” I asked Jara.

  “No. What makes you think that?”

  “Just a feeling. I can’t believe that they’re really doing these things…and I’m watching.”

  For the first time since I’d been in the camp my eyes filled with tears and I couldn’t control myself. Jara touched me gently on the cheek. “We ran into the arms of a group of criminals,” she said softly. “But we aren’t the crazy ones, they are. May the Lord protect us from them.”

  “Do you really think he will do that?” I asked her dubiously.

  “I’m sure of it.”


  But I couldn’t believe it anymore. I couldn’t erase the image of the bleeding woman from my mind’s eye. Where, I wondered, had our God been when he should have been protecting her? Would he abandon me too?

  “Jara, do you remember what I said to you in Ashigashiya?” I asked her quietly.

  She knew exactly what I was talking about. Her eyes wandered to my belly and lingered there. “You mean…”

  “Yes, exactly,” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry, no one has noticed,” she said.

  “Yes, I know.” But how long would that be the case? My frequent nausea wasn’t giving me away, because it was a permanent condition in the camp: many of the women threw up before or after meals. But it was only a matter of time before my condition became visible in another way.

  “By then we’ll have been out of here for ages,” Jara said. But her confidence was false, so I couldn’t share it.

  “And if not?”

  “Then you’ll have to marry one of them.”

  I looked at the ground.

  “Patience!” She shook me to wake me up. “You’ve seen what’s happening. Don’t leave it too long.”

  I was at my wits’ end. It was clear to me that Jara’s cruel advice was correct. In the long term I only had two options: either I became the wife of a fighter, or they would kill me—or rather kill us, me and my child. I couldn’t help feeling guilty.

  That same afternoon they took Hannah away: even though she was ill, she had caught the eye of one of the fighters. Now he seemed to have been given permission by his superiors to make her his wife. He came with an imam, who quickly rattled through the requisite formulas.

  “But I’m not a Muslim!” Hannah protested, when she was instructed to repeat them. They jabbed her in the side with their rifle butts.

  “Do you want to be beaten on the first day?” her future husband said menacingly.

  Hannah, terrified, shook her head. After she had murmured something they dragged her away from us. From now on she had to live in a plastic tarpaulin shack under a different tree. We never saw her again, since from now on she always wore a niqab like the other Boko Haram women. At night I thought I sometimes heard her crying, but that could have been any of the women.

  Wherever I looked all I saw was horror and cruelty: people who forced us to “marry” them, and who chopped each other’s heads off or slit women’s bellies open. It couldn’t be true. Perhaps I had been possessed by a demon, or perhaps I was falling seriously ill.

  Jara felt my forehead. “You have a fever, Patience,” she said. “Take a rest and get your strength back. I will pray for you.”

  I had confused dreams that night. Jara kept bringing me water. In the morning I felt a little better, physically at least. Had my prayers been answered? Perhaps we all had to do a lot of praying if we were to get through this misery.

  I decided to banish all doubts from my heart, because I needed my God now, I needed him more urgently than anything else in the world. Whenever I had the opportunity over the next little while I talked to him. I knelt down, closed my eyes and started quietly praying. I begged my Lord to lead me out of hell and bring me home. I offered him every imaginable deal. I would put something in the collection next time I went to church. I would start praying three times a day, straightaway. I also asked for the other girls to be saved. “None of us betrayed you. We just pretended to pray to Allah,” I assured him on their behalf.

  Suddenly I wasn’t worried that the Boko Haram fighters or their henchmen, who were always somewhere around, might catch me praying and hold me to account for it. I had no future with them anyway. At best I would become a murderer’s wife—and maybe spend the rest of my life with him. That couldn’t be the solution for me and my child. The only solution for both of us lay with God. That was why I now dedicated myself one hundred percent to him.

  Once a Boko Haram fighter watched me when I was praying. I was terribly startled when I became aware that he was standing next to me. He was a slight, thin man who belonged to the Fulani ethnic group. I was immediately struck by the fact that unlike the other men, who were always creeping around us, he didn’t have a leering grin on his lips. He looked rather shy, even though he was clearly one of them, because he wore the Muslim headgear as well as a rifle around his neck.

  My first instinct was to run away from him and flee to the shelter of the group. Because, as I have said, it was never a good idea to be alone with one of them. Unobserved, they could do whatever they liked with us.

  But something held me back. Perhaps it was his aura. He showed no signs of wanting to come closer, or to go away. He just looked at me. Then he suddenly said quietly in the Fulani language: “You’re doing exactly the right thing; do some praying for me too.”

  I don’t know if he expected that I would understand his words. Because we belonged to different tribes, and each of us had a different language, we generally communicated in Hausa. That is the general business language in northern Nigeria, which everyone learns in school. It was the language the Boko Haram members used to talk to us and to each other. So I don’t know why it suddenly occurred to this man to talk to me in Fulani. Quite honestly I had the impression that he was talking more to himself than to me.

  But I understood him. As Fulani nomads often passed through my hometown, many people in Ngoshe spoke a few phrases of the language. Otherwise it wasn’t very common.

  “Do you mean that?” I said.

  He looked at me in surprise. “You speak my language!” he said.

  I think we were each as surprised as the other by our unexpected conversation—and also a little startled. It was the first time a Boko Haram fighter had talked to me like a normal person. Normally they just roared orders at us. It was probably enormously risky for him to talk to me like that, I thought.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Patience.”

  “I’m Petrus,” he said. It was beyond doubt a Christian name. Had he been a Christian as well? Of course I didn’t dare ask him the question. We just looked at each other.

  “Praying is the cleverest thing you can do in this place,” he said seriously. “Don’t give up or you will lose your soul.”

  I left his words hanging in the air. I should have contradicted a Boko Haram member who said such a thing to me. But I thought I could tell that he wasn’t laying a trap for me. I wanted to ask him if he had lost his soul himself.

  But before we could exchange another word, more fighters turned up and Petrus turned away from me. He pretended to have been busy with something else. I hurried back to the group of girls.

  For safety’s sake I didn’t tell anyone what had happened to me. I could hardly grasp it myself. Had God sent me this man to show me that I wasn’t entirely alone after all?

  I couldn’t get that curious fighter out of my head. I watched him secretly. I wanted to be quite sure that I hadn’t been imagining things.

  I noticed that his comrades didn’t call him Petrus, but Abu Jihad. That was clearly his fighting name. He was a completely normal member of the group and went off on raids with the rest of them. For a few days I didn’t have a chance to talk to him. But then, when we were coming back from fetching water, I suddenly saw him sitting alone under a tree.

  I summoned all my courage. “Petrus!” I said to him.

  He gave a start. His hand darted to the gun that he always carried with him. When I saw his reaction I gave a start too.

  “Sorry,” I murmured.

  Then he recognized me and smiled at me. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, again in Fulani. It sounded as if we were old friends. “Did you pray?” What a question! I was really astonished that he was so open with me, even though we didn’t even know each other. “I asked you to!”

  “Yes, I know. I did,” I said, daring to expose myself. It was as clear as day to me that our conversation could be fatal to both of us, if anyone who understood Fulani was anywhere around. “Aren’t you scared to talk like that?”


  “I am,” he admitted. “I don’t know anyone here who isn’t afraid. But we can’t change our fate.”

  “And what is our fate?”

  “I don’t know what yours is. But since you pray so hard, I hope that God will hear you soon and bring you back home.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “I myself am destined for death.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

  “I’m on their list. Don’t you see how they cut a different person’s head off every day?”

  I nodded anxiously.

  “It will soon be my turn.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel it. You feel it when your turn approaches. I’ve only been killing people with half my strength, do you understand that?”

  “You didn’t want to kill any more Christians.”

  “In my former life I was a Christian myself, like you,” he said. “But then I denied my faith and switched to the wrong side: when I ended up in prison I was worried that they would kill me if I didn’t do it. But at least then I would have died with a pure heart. Now I can’t make it unhappen.”

  I looked sadly at Petrus. His confession shocked me—and I didn’t know what to say. What I really wanted to do was comfort him. At the same time I knew that he was a murderer. How many lives did this man have on his conscience? Had he killed people I knew?

  “If it happens, I would like you to pray for me,” he said, “and ask for forgiveness for me. Can you fulfill that last wish for me?”

  “Yes,” I answered hastily.

  “You promise?”

  I looked into his eyes, which were kind and sad, not at all like the eyes of a murderer. What did they look like when he killed a person? I couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine it. “Yes, I promise.”