Voices from Kira || Moses Adie Uyang

The televisions they used in these centres were always powered by loudmouthed generators whose noise level matched that of the viewers. Even as they shouted and argued with each other, some also used this moment to catch-up with their friends. Football was a notable uniting force in Kira.

“Himkana, but you’ve been talking and I listened to you. Or don’t people ask questions in your holy group?”

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1.

Awakened from sleep by the sound of the blast, Isaac wobbled outwards.

It reminded Isaac of the Christmas season. Children Isaac’s age used to enjoy every bit of this season. They saved up money and bought firecrackers, which they called bangers.  For eleven year-old Isaac and his ten year-old friend, Ibrahim, whenever there was a banger blast, it signalled time for their own theatre of excitement. Now, it was the sound of gunshots mixed with the sound of banging doors and running footsteps.

“Don’t go out!” Isaac’s mother called out.

She rushed towards the zinc door that was covered with a stitched two-piece nylon bag. Her left hand held the wrapper covering her from her bosom down to her knees and she fastened the door with her free hand.

“Don’t go out!” She glared at Isaac. 

“You this boy, what did you keep outside? Make sure you stay where you are!”

“Where is Ibrahim?”

She peered through the keyhole.

After losing his mother to malaria, Ibrahim had been adopted by Isaac’s mother. The two women had been friends. Ibrahim also had an elder brother, Saly, who came to Kira to visit him every other week.

Isaac was too drowsy to know what to say.

Both boys had been seen earlier, barefooted and kicking a blue rubber ball around. Although Ibrahim and Isaac were ten and eleven, they already held on to claims of being fans of Liverpool FC and Blackpool FC. They had learned this from the much older Kira boys who enjoyed watching matches at football viewing centres during the weekend. The televisions they used in these centres were always powered by loudmouthed generators whose noise level matched that of the viewers. Even as they shouted and argued with each other, some also used this moment to catch-up with their friends. Football was a notable uniting force in Kira.

Isaac didn’t feel like playing anymore so he jogged home to take a nap. Having no one else to play with, Ibrahim had continued to play on his own. He dribbled the ball all the way down to one of the football viewing centres. A few minutes after he got there, the first BOOM! was heard.

“They’re shooting!” Someone shouted.

All combined, the flashing lights, crackling sounds and the surge of fright he felt almost made Ibrahim vomit.

“Stay where you are, I will be back.”

Isaac’s mother put on a red blouse, tightened her wrapper and went out in search of Ibrahim.

About two hundred metres from her house, Isaac’s mother found Ibrahim running towards her direction.

“Mama! Mama!”

Within seconds, they were united. Isaac’s mother wiped off blood from Ibrahim’s forehead with her wrapper and they began another sprint back home. They had just reached the house when a pellet pierced through her neck and she crumpled to the ground, lifeless, with no more race to run.

2.

Kira was a little settlement close to the outskirts of Potiskum. For a long time, people of different beliefs lived there together in peace. Commerce, marriage, religion, and, on some occasions, employment by the state government, saw this settlement become a haven to many. They were a people who took pride in their rich agriculture and their much unrivalled cattle business. Kira was governed by a village head who was revered, and the leader of the market women, Hajiya Zainab, a fearless woman. Everything had been always communal and peaceful for them until guns began to take the upper hand in the community. Now, markets shut down and buyers, sellers, and onlookers muscled their way looking for where to take cover. No one had expected the pandemonium.

It was during one of those much-loved football Saturdays that nineteen year-old Saly met twenty-one year-old Himkana at a football viewing centre. A week prior to the attack, Himkana had invited Saly to join his “holy” group.

“Look at you, Saly, you have no father, no mother. Why don’t you want to listen to me? Just a little training and that is done. You will get the cash for the phone you’re asking me for. You will have enough food and most important of all, you are sure of a place in paradise. You say you’re angry with the government; they don’t care about you, right? Just come and experience for yourself what I have been telling you.”

Himkana kept trying to persuade Saly.

“Himkana, what are these promises you’re throwing at me? Do you even have a job? How will you give me all these? Himkana, you know I told you I have no job and you also told me you have none but for the fact you belong to the ‘holy’ group. How far can a jobless man help another jobless man?”

“Enough, Saly! You small boy, you listen or keep your mouth shut.”

“Himkana, but you’ve been talking and I listened to you. Or don’t people ask questions in your holy group?”

“Look here, any more spillages from you again will earn you loads of regrets.”

Himkana took out a cigarette from the chest pocket of his green-almost-faded kaftan. He lit it, took a puff, and blew the smoke towards Saly.

“Himkana, I have to leave now.”

Himkana flung the remainder of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it into the sand. “Saly, you’re walking out on me?”

“No, I just have to go check on my little brother.”

“Well, as I have said, the group is a way of life approved by the Almighty and we hold his teachings to heart. I hope when we see again, you will have had a rethink. The Almighty is the greatest!”

Saly left Himkana quietly, pondering over the conversation they had just had.

Himkana had succeeded in recruiting a few boys from Kira and the neighbouring communities whose level of desperation were just as acute as Saly’s. He also got those whose desperation was not material but the desire to seek a spiritual path.

3.

Imam Zakari, or Imam as most called him, was a teacher and religious cleric in Kira. Tall, dark in complexion with hair almost grey, his teeth had a stained look. Many of the young people would always argue whether it was a result of too much kolanuts or his devotion to taking shayi. Imam was a respected man whose wisdom was never in lack of an audience. He picked a newspaper to read but dropped it. He couldn’t concentrate. He picked up his Qur’an, opened one of the passages, stared at it for about ten seconds and returned it to its place of origin.

The raid in Kira was causing weeks of mental instabilities for Imam. His house of worship had been targeted by Himkana and his group. Some worshippers had been injured and about five were sent to an early grave. Imam was a strong man by nature but he had been traumatized during the attack.

He called out to his daughter.  “Hadiza.”

“Na’am Baba!”

 The contemplative look on her father’s face reminded her of her own fears from the day Kira was stormed.

“Our religion is love,” Imam began, as he once again reached for his holy book.

Hadiza kept quiet. She immediately brought out her phone to record him. She liked to record her father’s sermons. Her father had on different occasions noticed her recording him but hadn’t said anything.

“See, we say our prayers five times daily. I want to believe these people say theirs too.” Imam continued.  “Do we have different gods? How do you lie to young people to kill for a God who is most merciful?”

As usual, Hadiza shared the recording on Whatsapp and Facebook. It was a thing of pride and joy for her to share her father’s recorded words with her friends on social media.

4.

Two weeks had passed. Himkana, who was among those that planned and executed the attack on Kira, was now on his way to Maiduguri. He kept on staring at the long empty dry land along the way. He sat in a fast-moving silver-coloured Toyota bus, sober, gazing at a lonely baobab tree standing at a distance. This was a commercial vehicle. Most times, along this Damaturu-Maiduguri road, some regular commuters had argued that security personnel always would see all the passengers as potential terrorists as well as potential victims of terrorism. There were checkpoints at different locations on this road. On some days, the search was intense while on other days, fatigue took its toll on these security agents.

The driver blasted loud music in the bus but Himkana’s mind was elsewhere. He had met Amina and fallen in love with her before he was recruited. With her bright-coloured smooth skin, pointed nose, hypnotic eyes, and a tall slender figure, one couldn’t be too sure if she was Kanuri or a Fulani from Chad or the Republic of Niger. The last time they had communicated via phone call, Amina had promised him marriage if he left the group. Now, he was returning to familiar terrain, not for Amina but to deliver an urgent message to a sponsor. His smartness had caught the attention of the group’s leadership and without delay, they had made him their intelligence gatherer. But Himkana still loved Amina and was thinking of her.

“Oga driver, driver, abeg close the noise from that your radio. You no see say we don dey close to dem security?” One of the passengers spoke up. He was not a local.

“E be like say dem never beat you before, abi?”

Almost everyone knew the rules when at any of the security checkpoints – no loud noise, no phone calls. Just a few metres to the checkpoint, a security guard swung his right hand upwards and then downwards. He repeated this more than once and the driver parked the bus by the side of the road.

“Everybody, come down! One by one, show your ID card.”

“You over there, come this way. ID card.”

Himkana was already holding his in his hand. Hand outstretched, he gave it to the

guard without looking at his face. Meanwhile, those that were cleared were already going

back into the bus. The security guard bent, looked at the ID card, raised his head again,

looked at Himkana’s face. Himkana had also raised his head at this point.

“Are you Baba or Imkana?” The security guard asked, pronouncing Himkana’s name without the ‘H.’

“Himkana Baba,” Himkana said.

“Go.”

His colleague hadn’t succeeded the last time he passed through this road. Relieved, Himkana hopped back into the bus and the driver sped off.

5.

The people of Kira gathered to bury their dead. A month had gone since Himkana and the twenty-man gang attack on Kira. Isaac’s mother’s burial drew a huge crowd. The village head of Kira, the leader of the market women, Hajiya Zainab, Imam Zakari, and Rev. Johnny, who presided over the burial as well as a host of others, came to pay their last respects. It was a hot dry afternoon and most of those who came around were teary.

Ibrahim and Isaac held each other. Isaac’s father was still as distraught as on the night that he had come home to meet his wife’s lifeless body. He had stayed a little longer in his farm on that fateful day, harvesting some crops for his family, but he came home to meet a reduced family. He had not been able to come out of his farm that day as he had taken cover there when the gunshots began.

“Good morning, Reverend. All is set for us to begin.”

Rev. Johnny went through the burial rites.

“From dust we came, unto dust we shall return.” Rev. Johnny prayed as he emptied sand into the grave where Isaac’s mother’s body had been lowered.

6.

As time passed, the people of Kira struggled to get used to the violence birthed from the zealous excess of a few villagers. They lived each day in fear of what the day held and what the next would bring. The people of Kira knew a few members of their community who had joined the group but had not seen them in town for a long time.

The village head of Kira, the market women leader Hajiya Zainab, and the two well-known religious leaders in Kira held a town meeting and insisted that everybody be present.

The village head spoke first. “My dear people, this is one of the methods of these people. When they see we are living in disunity, they find it easy to attack us. I know, some of you know, that even with our different beliefs or backgrounds, we have lived in Kira in peace for a long time until many of our young people started believing in emptiness. Their promises are empty. I have seen seventy-nine years on earth, and with the privilege of being your leader, I can tell you this. They are empty promises.”

After him, Hajiya Zainab took over.

“Seeing this crowd here today makes me glad,” she began. “Thank you all for coming out. Mothers, fathers, and children. If we all say NO to the violence around us, our NO will stand.”

The crowd cheered.

After Hajiya Zainab spoke, she invited other elders and respected Kira inhabitants to speak. Many of the young people also had the chance to have their say. The long silence from these leaders in the past had given voice to the different factions of religious fanatics spreading lies, hate and violence. The meeting effectively did what had been left undone for years. From then on, they began to resolve issues regularly and the practice restored a people almost destroyed by silence and ignorance.

END