A Gift from Darkness Read online

  The same might also happen in the area around Gavva: wherever the population follows different religions and the suspicion of cooperating with the murderers is in the air, retaliation can follow. Retaliation that leads to further revenge.

  In our room in the evening Renate says to me: “The women can’t go back to our valley. Even if Boko Haram leaves them alone, there will be no peace there for a long time.”

  I agree with her. Gavva and the whole Gwoza district were at the center of a reign of terror. It will probably be years before normal life is possible there again. But what is the alternative? Maiduguri is bursting at the seams, and it’s hard to build up a new material existence here. And relations between Christians and Muslims in the city are more tense than they have recently been. “It could be a long time before the situation here in the north calms down a little.”

  “Maybe they should be taken to a different part of the country.” Renate looks at me searchingly. “What do you think of that idea?”

  “What do you mean exactly?”

  “Well, buying a piece of land further south! A piece of land where the widows can build their houses and work.”

  I bring my hands to my head. “Sounds good!” I say spontaneously. I don’t need to think for long.

  “I’ve got twenty thousand euros at most; that might buy me a plot of land in Jos,” she says.

  Now I can tell that the idea wasn’t as spontaneous as it seemed at first. Renate has quite concrete plans. Apparently she has been considering the idea of buying land for quite some time.

  “No man can set foot on that land,” she says. “Not even a guard. They will have to learn to defend themselves.”

  That can’t do any harm. But why is Renate being so severe, I wonder, and ask her.

  “Because he would immediately tell the women what to do,” the vicar explains. “That’s just how the culture is. Even if he’s just employed as a caretaker, within a very short time he’ll be in charge.” She wants to prevent that. All the more so given the brutal violence that many of the women have experienced from men. I begin to see her argument.

  “So, a kind of commune. A new home for the widows and their children.” It’s a brilliant idea, I think. Can there be a more permanent form of development aid than buying a patch of land for the women and making them its owners? They might be able to escape their terror in Jos.

  And then I think of Patience: how beautiful it would be if she got a place there too—and could finally leave Maiduguri with her baby. I hope the project comes into being!

  But Renate is curiously confident. She closes her eyes and seems to be consulting her contacts on high.

  Reunion abroad

  Mohammadu’s words made me shudder. But I was sure he was telling the truth. Sooner or later the fighters killed everyone for whom they had no use.

  I battled with myself over whether I should trust him. Could I risk telling him about my actual problem? In the end I gave myself a shove: I had to take the risk.

  “I’m pregnant,” I confessed.

  He looked at my belly. “Of course! Why didn’t I notice that?” he said at last. “It explains a lot.”

  “What should I do?”

  “You need to get away from here right now.”

  “Will you help me?”

  He said nothing for a long time. “You’re asking a lot.”

  “You could let me escape on the way to school,” I suggested.

  “Are you crazy?” he whispered furiously. “You must think I’m tired of life!”

  We spoke no more that day. In the evening, when I went to bed among the other women, I brooded for a long time about whether I had done the right thing—and I was racked with doubts. Had I been over-hasty in revealing my secret to one of the fighters? How could I dare to trust him? Just because he didn’t seem quite as reckless as his comrades?

  Now I was at his mercy. No, we were at his mercy. “Don’t let him use our secret against us,” I asked God in my prayers that night. “Save us as you have done before!”

  Some days passed. Mohammadu and I didn’t exchange a word. When he walked us to school he no longer tried to be near me. It was as if our conversation had never happened. Eventually I really thought he had forgotten it. Should I be disappointed? Or relieved? It mightn’t be the worst thing that could happen, I thought in a mixture of the two emotions: I’d probably just asked too much of him. I understood that he couldn’t let me escape, his comrades would inevitably have made him take the consequences. And I knew what they did to men who deliberately missed when shooting. No one who was fond of life could risk that.

  The more I thought about it, the more foolish my request seemed to me. It had been ludicrous to imagine that he would fulfill it. Only I could take that risk. And perhaps I would have to accept death as the possible consequence.

  In the evening men came to our compound again to choose women for themselves. Mohammadu wasn’t one of them. But his colleagues showed a growing interest in me. If one of them looked at me, I broke out in a cold sweat. Things wouldn’t go well for long, I knew. When would one of them take me? Or discover my pregnant belly? I was surprised that it hadn’t happened already. Were they blind? My life hung on a silk thread. I definitely had to do something, or my child and I would surely die.

  On one of the following evenings Mohammadu came through the gate to the compound. I was very surprised to see him. It looked as if he too was in search of a bride. I secretly watched him and his friends walking along the rows, making lewd remarks about some of the women. They seemed to be having a great time.

  Then they came to me. “Well, you’re still here, does no one want you?” Mohammadu said loudly. The other men laughed.

  I looked at him sadly. Was he mocking me too now? Was he laughing at my plight? “I wouldn’t take that one with the flat face either,” he said to his friends.

  Then they moved on. The men were already focused on the next woman. Then Mohammadu turned back to me. “During the tahajjud prayer the compound is unguarded,” he whispered to me.

  At first I was far too startled to understand what he had just said. It was probably just as well. Because before I could reply he was back with his comrades, and they were continuing with their game.

  When they left our compound, three of them had chosen new “wives.”

  Mohammadu glanced at me once more before he left. His face was completely blank. I didn’t show any emotion either. But I wanted to run after him and kiss his feet.

  My heart pounded strangely when the sun went down. The compound became quieter. But I was wondering how I could keep from getting tired. I couldn’t afford to miss the tahajjud prayer.

  This prayer isn’t one of the five obligatory Muslim prayers that Boko Haram made us women perform every day. It was, you might say, an extra prayer that only very pious people prayed, and happened some time in the middle of the night. Sometimes I heard the call of the prayer leader, and we women just went on sleeping. But the two guards who kept watch over our prison at night clearly took things more seriously. It had never occurred to me that they would simply leave us unguarded for those ten minutes.

  But if I interpreted Mohammadu’s words correctly, that was exactly what happened. What an incredible stroke of luck! I gauged the height of the mud wall surrounding our prison. Would it be possible to climb it? I would have to lift myself up with my arms, or…Or I needed someone to help me. Should I tell one of the women of my plans? I couldn’t tell too many, or our intentions would be in jeopardy.

  I looked around at my fellow prisoners. I wasn’t particularly close to any of them. But Lami Ali, a stout little woman in her mid-twenties, had always been nice to me. Unasked, she had made it her duty to ensure that I got a portion when the food was being handed out. She had been a mother several times over, and had been the only member of her family of seven who had stayed behind in Gavva because she hadn’t been able to run fast enough when Boko Haram came to the village. In my eyes that made her a fellow s
ufferer.

  “Lami Ali,” I said, drawing her gently toward the edge of the compound so that the other women couldn’t hear us.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m running away tonight,” I told her. Her eyes widened. She looked anxiously around. “Are you coming?”

  “But how are you going to do that?”

  “The compound is unguarded during the tahajjud prayer.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, it does. Our lives depend on it.”

  I understood that she needed to know what she was getting involved in. “One of them told me.”

  “It could be a trap,” she said.

  “No, I believe him. I think he wants to help me.”

  Understandably enough, Lami Ali was very suspicious. She gave me lots of reasons why we shouldn’t risk it. But of course she hoped that I would contradict them all. “If you stay here, you’ll get married,” I warned her. “Then you’ll never be able to see your husband again.”

  At last I managed to convince her. “OK,” she said at last. “I’m in.”

  I gave her a huge hug.

  Gradually all the women withdrew into the huts and lay down on the floor. We found a place among them right near the door. Soon we heard the quiet snores of the other women, who had gone to sleep straightaway, exhausted by the exertions of the day. But we were desperate not to fall asleep, so we had come up with a system. At regular intervals we would pinch and shake each other.

  That worked quite well for a while. I kept reaching out a hand toward my accomplice and she did the same thing. But I slowly realized that my hand was growing heavier and the intervals were getting longer. I listened to the noises of the night to distract myself and keep from drifting off into the world of dreams.

  Eventually I gave a start. Had I gone to sleep? I could tell from Lami Ali’s regular breathing that she had nodded off as well. What time was it? Had I already missed the call to prayer? I was annoyed, because I had completely lost my sense of time.

  Alarmed by my oversight, I sat up and forced myself to remember hymns. I tried to call their tunes to mind, and go through the words in my mind. But even using that trick it was difficult not to doze off again. At last I heard the prayer leader’s call, drifting over the village at night with its singsong chant.

  I immediately shook my companion awake. “Come on, it’s time,” I whispered.

  She rubbed her eyes drowsily. Then all of a sudden, she was wide awake. Very carefully and in silence, we tiptoed around the other bodies that lay stretched out on the floor. One false step and we would have woken the whole group. Then we were standing outside. I breathed in the fresh, cool night air; it was delicious, like a harbinger of freedom.

  I listened for the voices of the guards. But everything seemed to be quiet. We were about to make our way to the mud wall when I heard a sound in the hut. My heart almost stopped with fear. The outline of a woman had appeared in the doorway to the hut. I recognized her straightaway: it was Blessing. A shy young woman who sometimes looked a little clumsy and awkward, perhaps because she was so tall. People whispered behind their hands that she was pregnant too—by a fighter. But of course it was only rumors.

  “What are you two doing?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. What else was I supposed to say? I struggled to explain our nocturnal outing. “I wanted to go to the toilet and Lami…”

  “Are you escaping?” said Blessing. “Will you take me with you?” It sounded like a plea.

  Lami Ali and I exchanged a look. “Of course you’re coming too,” I whispered. “But hurry up. We haven’t much time.”

  We walked behind the hut to the wall, which was about six feet high. You had to make a bit of an effort to climb it, but it wasn’t impossible. That was why it was usually guarded.

  First of all, they helped me climb to the top: I stepped on Lami Ali’s knee, then Blessing pushed my bottom up. It was all quite simple. I sat at the top of the wall. Next Blessing crouched down and Lami Ali stood on her shoulders. Then the tall girl stood up. And since she was a giantess, she was able to get her to the edge without much difficulty. I helped Lami Ali to the top. And at last, when we were both on top of the wall—and with one foot in freedom—we somehow had to pull Blessing up as well. Of course that was a bit more difficult, because there was nothing down there that she could use as a support. And we were now all quite nervous, because the prayer had just finished, which meant that our guards could come back at any moment.

  Blessing started feeling guilty, as she didn’t want to jeopardise our flight. “Just run, I’ll be fine,” she said, trying to drag herself up. But I knew she wouldn’t be able to do it all by herself.

  “Take our hands,” I said to her. “We’ll pull you up.”

  She didn’t seem to be able to imagine it. “No, run,” she wailed.

  “Take our hands and shut up,” I told her.

  Lami Ali grabbed one of her hands and her forearm, I took the other. Together we finally managed to bring her to the top. Then we heard the men chatting as they came back from their prayer. Damn!

  “Should we go back?” Lami Ali whispered.

  “No! I’m not going back!” I said firmly.

  “Neither am I,” Blessing agreed.

  “Then let’s go!”

  We jumped from the wall into the darkness, and landed in a stony field. The impact was so loud that the guards in the gateway heard it. I lost my slippers as we came down.

  “Hey, what was that?” one of the men asked his colleagues.

  “No idea. An animal?”

  “I’m going to take a look.”

  He shone a torch toward us, but didn’t spot us straightaway. But he was still trudging in our direction. Meanwhile, we pulled ourselves up and ran off. I was barefoot. We hurried as quickly as we could across a dark field within the village.

  “Hey, you there!” the man behind us shouted. “Stop right now!” I heard gunshots ringing out in the night. The man was shooting at us, or at least trying to. But in the darkness he didn’t know exactly where to aim, so he missed.

  “Ignore him, keep going!” I told my two fellow escapees.

  We hurried along the dark paths of Gavva. The guard stumbled along behind us. His gunfire made a lot of noise that brought other fighters running as well. But since there was no light anywhere neither he nor any of the others managed to hit us.

  Eventually the shots fell silent. We had left the settlement behind us—and apparently our pursuers as well. At any rate, we couldn’t hear them anymore. We still went on running, now across the fields. But we weren’t really sure in which direction we were headed.

  Blessing was the first to show signs of exhaustion. “I can’t go on,” she panted. “You keep going without me.”

  “Not far now,” I encouraged her, and she summoned her strength again. We ran on.

  We didn’t take a break until we were quite sure that we had lost the men. We were panting like hunted animals. But we were incredibly happy that our daring plan had actually worked. Lami Ali, and Blessing in particular, started crying loudly.

  “Are you crazy? Stop that right now!” I said to them. Startled, they tried to control themselves. But after everything we’d been through they found it very difficult. The relief was too great. Meanwhile I maintained my composure. I didn’t trust the peace. After all, I had already believed once before that I had escaped Boko Haram, and I knew that the feeling might be deceptive.

  “We’re not safe yet,” I told my companions. “Don’t forget that Boko Haram are everywhere around here.”

  They looked around uneasily. “Where are we?” Lami Ali asked. It was hard in the darkness to make out any distinctive features. The landscape, the fields scattered with trees that ran along either side of the village, looked pretty much the same even during the day. But at night everything seemed to blur together. However, I had a sense that the sky was slightl
y brighter on one side than on the other. Perhaps the sun was rising over there, which meant that was the east—and on the other side were the mountains. Or had the moon just set over there? It was quite confusing.

  “The mountains are over there,” Blessing said as if reading my mind. She pointed toward the darkest part of the night sky.

  “How do you know that?” I asked her.

  “I know that tree there.” She pointed at a dark outline. “My brother often used to rest there with his goats when he was going into the mountain.”

  “So we’ve been heading westward.”

  “Then let’s carry on in this direction,” said Lami Ali. “We may be able to get to the mountains before the sun comes up.”

  But I voiced my concern. “Are you crazy? The mountains are a blind alley. I’ve been trapped there before.” I told them about how the men had encircled us and caught us in the net. “I’m not going back up there.”

  “But the road and Gwoza are on the other side!”

  “There’s no safety in Gwoza either: I’ve seen with my own eyes that it’s been occupied.”

  Shocked, my companions said nothing. They had known that Boko Haram had taken over smaller villages in the area, but not that the group controlled the district capital. “But we can’t stay here waiting in the fields,” they said in despair.

  “We’ve got to turn round and head toward Cameroon.” I pointed into the mountains to the east, in the other direction.

  “But we can’t go back to Gavva!” Blessing objected.

  “We don’t want to go there either. We have to skirt the town.”

  “Patience is right,” said Lami Ali. “We’ll only be safe from them on the other side of the border.”

  “How far is it from here to Cameroon?” asked Blessing. “Can we get there before it’s light?”

  I didn’t know. “I don’t think so, but the earlier we get going the better. So let’s not waste any more time,” I said.

  In the end I managed to persuade them. So we turned around and walked back in the direction we had come from. Of course we gave Gavva a wide berth: luckily Blessing and Lami Ali knew the secret paths. But it wasn’t easy to keep our bearings, because we weren’t walking along roads, but marching across the fields.