Fireproof, p.19
Dele Weds Destiny, page 19
At 4 p.m. sharp, she stood outside the hospital waiting for Damola to arrive. He told her that he would pick her up after the protest, which should have been over by now. It was supposed to have begun at 11 a.m., starting in the sculpture garden and then would make its way past the botanic garden and the drama village. Damola had even suggested going inside the lecture halls and dormitories, which seemed like asking for trouble, but what did Funmi know? All she knew was that Damola was supposed to come at four o’clock.
When fifteen minutes had passed, she took a danfo in the direction of the campus. Maybe in the excitement of the action, he had forgotten. She had exited the vehicle and was just rounding the turn that led to the main gate when she heard it. The faint pop of gunfire. And then screaming. She spun on her heels, unsure of where to turn. But then the mob of people running toward her made it clear. Trained from the various religious skirmishes that happened over the years not to question a mob, she ran back toward the hospital like she had never run in her life, the fear and the panic propelling her tired body forward.
She went straight to Aunty Buki’s house and knocked on the door frantically. Aunty Buki opened the door, surprised to see her niece. Then she saw the commotion outside. “I’m not sure what’s going on, Aunty. Please, I need to use your phone,” said Funmi.
“Yes, of course,” Aunty Buki said. She beckoned Funmi in and locked the front door behind her. The sounds of screaming were fainter here inside the brick house. With shaking hands, Funmi dialed Damola’s dormitory number. There was no answer. Her heart began to beat wildly. With mounting fear, she tried Zainab at her father’s house.
“Zainab, Zainab, are you on campus? What’s going on? What’s happening?”
“I’m not on campus,” Zainab said. “But stay clear. The police are there, there was some shooting earlier. I’m not sure of all the details. Have you heard from Damola?”
“No,” Funmi said quietly, and she hung up so she could try Damola’s dormitory again. The line to the dormitory had been disconnected. Aunty Buki, in an attempt to be useful, set a cup of tea down in front of Funmi. Funmi nodded gratefully, but she knew she couldn’t keep anything down right now. Her stomach was in violent knots. Something was wrong, something was clearly very wrong. She closed her eyes and willed Damola to call her, to appear on her doorstep apologetically with a bottle of groundnut as a gesture of goodwill.
* * *
—
Ousmane called Funmi later that night to tell her what she already knew. He was gone. Over the next few days, the story would emerge. The students had begun their protests as Damola said they would, in the sculpture garden and the botanic garden. They had then made their way through the lecture halls and then controversially through the female dormitories, where men were strictly forbidden. They gathered in one of the common rooms, and for their trouble, the university sent the Mobile Police their way, men who were army trained and bloodthirsty, always looking for ways to humiliate yeye university students with their uppity airs and penchant for causing disturbances. The university said a volatile student threw something at the police, sparking the shooting frenzy. But this seemed unlikely because the protest had been peaceful and held in one of the common areas—not outside. How could students have acquired rocks to throw?
No matter how the uprising started, by the end of it at least twenty students were dead (the official reports said eight, but this simply wasn’t true), their bodies slumped over in common rooms and dormitory hallways. Scores more were raped. The violence sparked a series of riots throughout the state. Students at the polytechnic attempted to burn down a police barracks. All of Kaduna was up in arms—outraged over the wasted lives. There was later an official investigation and a futile apology from the vice chancellor, who subsequently stepped down.
The burial was in Jos. She went with Aisha and Ousmane and the other students of their group. Ousmane drove Damola’s car there—a tense five-hour drive. They met Damola’s parents for the first and last time. They had no idea who she was of course, beyond a member of a group they had never approved of. Funmi had been surprised at how small and mild-mannered his parents were, how shrunken. And yet she could see the striking resemblance between Damola and his mother, right down to those honey-brown eyes, which were now constantly shining with tears. She saw the parents at the homegoing service, but they did not attend the actual burial because according to Yorùbá tradition, it is not right for a parent to see where their child is buried. Such a death upends the natural order of life.
Chapter 25
Zainab
November 1987
Zainab had been a wife for six months, one week, and three days. It was a title she was still getting accustomed to. Occasionally, she would be rinsing rice or hanging clothes to dry in the courtyard and her eyes would alight on the ring on her right hand and she would stare at the hand as if it did not belong to her. Even now, as she stood in their kitchen, molding the mounds of dan wake she planned to boil, she would stop occasionally to admire the flash of gold on her ring finger. Already, this hand had been used for purposes hitherto unknown to her. It had guided Ahmed into her on their first night as husband and wife, even as—especially as—it hurt. It had smoothed Ahmed’s furrowed brow as he graded student exams at their dining room table. And, now, lately, it reached for her stomach, soft but not yet full, budding with new life.
She was preparing lunch for Funmi, who was spending the weekend in Zaria. While Zainab had kept her promise about not doing her youth service after graduation, Funmi and Enitan had been conscripted—Funmi not too far away, in Bauchi, about a five-hour drive from Zaria, while Enitan had been stationed in a village in Edo State in the southwest part of the country, teaching maths at a school. While they still made sure to talk to each other when they could, once a week on Sundays, Zainab felt Enitan’s absence profoundly.
Funmi had called to say that she had a free weekend coming up and would be spending it in Kaduna, and so Zainab invited her over for lunch. Ahmed was in Kano for the week, visiting extended family. It was the first time Zainab had been properly alone since she had married. She had gotten up early, thinking that maybe she would write, but she had sat at the dining room table, pen in hand, drawing concentric circles as she thought of baby names she would not be allowed to call her child. The firstborn was always named after the paternal grandfather if he was a boy, and after the maternal grandmother if she was a girl.
Zainab had just finished setting the table when Funmi knocked on the door.
“Coming,” Zainab called out as she opened the door.
“It smells good in here,” Funmi said by way of greeting, stepping inside the flat, her combat boots kicking up a maelstrom of dust, which Zainab made a mental note to clean later. Funmi stomped into the living room, then the kitchen, then craned her neck to see down the hallway, Zainab trailing her. She had moved into Ahmed’s flat when they married, but they were planning on finding a bigger place soon. This was not a space designed for a growing family. Zainab gestured Funmi over to the dining room table. “Can I offer you a soft drink?”
“Yes, Fanta, please,” Funmi said. Zainab came back from the kitchen with an open bottle and a glass. Funmi put the glass on the table and took the bottle from Zainab. She drank long and lustily. Zainab watched, amused.
“Did you run here?”
Funmi sucked her teeth, then belched for good measure.
“Goodness gracious,” Zainab said, sitting down at the table.
“Ahn-ahn? I can’t burp among friends? Na wa o.”
Zainab rolled her eyes. “How was the drive?”
“It was fine. I took the bus.” Funmi looked again at the bottle and then finished it. She placed it back on the table, where Zainab was certain a water stain would grow.
“You know Damola used to say we were like Coke and Fanta.”
“Oh, really?” Zainab said. She was surprised. Funmi didn’t talk about Damola often.
Those first few months after his murder had been brutal for all of them, no exception for Zainab. Though they had drifted apart since their romantic relationship had ended, she still thought of him fondly and had been gutted to hear of his death. But she recognized that her grief did not compare to Funmi’s. Zainab had expected impulsive weeping, hysteria, anger, eruptions. Instead, Funmi became very quiet, which in some ways unnerved Zainab more. She did not smile, did not laugh, had no sassy retorts. She lost weight. The old Funmi only began to make appearances during their last year of university. She had teased Enitan for crying on their graduation day and had bragged about how she would demolish all the other corpers during the physical fitness portion of their orientation.
“I don’t even remember why he brought it up. I think he used to say that’s what he thought when he saw us together on campus,” continued Funmi. “But now whenever I drink Fanta I think of him.” She laughed then, a short, bitter thing. “Isn’t that stupid?”
“I don’t think it’s stupid at all,” said Zainab softly. They were quiet until Funmi asked where the food was. Zainab went to the kitchen and brought out the dan wake and boiled eggs, the tuwo shinkafa with miyan taushe. She placed a bowl of warm water in front of Funmi so she could rinse her hands. She watched with satisfaction as Funmi began eating hungrily.
“They don’t feed you in Bauchi?”
Funmi rolled her eyes, her hand slick with palm oil.
“So what’s up?” Zainab asked a moment later. “Have you heard from that guy? What was his name? The one who said he wanted to marry you?”
“Yinka,” Funmi replied, her mouth full of soup. She had been doing her clinical shift at the hospital when the March 1987 religious riots had begun; Enitan and Zainab had already taken refuge in Zainab’s father’s compound. Holding his mysteriously acquired Russian handgun, Zainab’s father had strolled the perimeter of the courtyard while smoke from burning buildings—churches mostly—hung in the air like thick, unmoving clouds. Zaria would continue to smell like fire for many days afterward; the university’s grand chapel would have to be rebuilt. That was the result of a wave of cheap and senseless violence that was permeating the region more and more, with tensions between fundamentalist Muslims and Christians reaching a fever pitch as so many young, unemployed men with too much energy were happy to wield their power in destructive ways.
While Zainab and Enitan had fretted over what was happening outside, Funmi had apparently met some young army commander who lived in Lagos and had been sent to Kaduna to help stanch the violence and had gotten his hand cut and was waiting for treatment at the hospital. “He said he wants to marry me,” Funmi had told them wryly some weeks later when Funmi had visited Enitan and Zainab at Zainab’s compound. Enitan and Zainab had joked about him afterward, every so often reminding Funmi about her husband. But then Funmi had surprised them by saying that he had called Aunty Buki’s house a few times. So there was some interest there, perhaps.
“And has Enitan told you about her oyinbo friend?” Zainab asked.
“Charles?” Funmi laughed and sucked the meat off a piece of bone. “Of course not.”
They both began chuckling. It was exciting for Enitan that she had potentially met someone, though Zainab doubted it would go far. Enitan hadn’t been very revealing on the phone; she had just mentioned that the only other teacher at the school besides her fellow corper was an American man a few years older than them. Instantly, Zainab had begun to tease Enitan about it. “You like him, abi?” she would ask, and she could hear Enitan squirming over the phone, she swore it. But Enitan would never give a satisfactory answer.
“We should go and visit her as a surprise,” Funmi said.
“Yes!” Zainab had never been to Edo. Her hand reached instinctively for her belly. There was time to plan a trip, plenty of time.
“And how’s Prof?” Funmi asked.
Zainab smiled. “He’s wonderful.”
“In bed as well or—”
“For goodness’ sake!”
“What? I can’t be curious?” Funmi winked and laughed wickedly.
“Actually…” Zainab began, but then she felt shy. She knew it was so early. But she wanted to share the news. “I’m pregnant.”
Funmi shifted in her seat. Her eyes had unexpectedly clouded over. “Congratulations,” she said. “How many weeks?”
“Six. It’s still very, very early. But I’ve been dying to tell someone. You’re the only one who knows besides Ahmed, of course.”
“You haven’t told Enitan?”
“Not yet. I was going to wait until our next phone call.”
“Well, I’m flattered,” said Funmi, though she did not sound flattered. When she seemed to register that Zainab was not thrilled about her lack of excitement, Funmi said again in a more cheerful tone, “Seriously speaking, congratulations! You will be a wonderful mother.”
“Thank you.” Zainab smiled at Funmi. Funmi smiled back, though it was tight-lipped and pained.
“There’s no need to lie,” Zainab said, growing irritated. “If you have something to say, just say it.”
“Ahn-ahn! I said I was happy for you.”
“But you clearly seem upset!”
“Not everything is about you!” Funmi got up.
“What is it, then?”
“Abeg, no waste time,” she muttered, heading toward the front door.
“Why are you leaving?”
Funmi spun on her heels to face Zainab, her eyes lit with fury.
“You know I was pregnant once? With Damola’s child. Aisha helped me get rid of it. It was the right decision. But I can be upset. So leave me alone!”
“Oh, Funmi, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She put her hand on Funmi’s shoulder.
Funmi shrugged the hand off and her face closed in on itself. “It’s in the past.” She paused. “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t know how you would react. It happened more than three years ago now. Enitan went with me.”
Zainab nodded. She was calculating the timeline of when this would have occurred. She felt embarrassed suddenly.
“Please, Funmi, don’t go. Sit down and finish eating.”
Funmi stared at Zainab for a long time.
“All right,” she finally said, and she let Zainab lead her back to the dining room table.
Chapter 26
Enitan
January 1988
“I have a surprise for you.”
Enitan felt her cheeks grow hot at the sound of Charles’s voice.
She smiled in his general direction, still finding it difficult to look him directly in the eyes. They always held a look of sustained interest that made her squirm under the intensity of his steady gaze. He had caught her arm as she was walking past him toward the other classroom, pulling her close enough to him that his chin grazed her hair. “Come to my place tonight,” he whispered. She hurried away from him, mortified that the other students might see them and suspect something. The girls were already entirely too inquisitive, asking her why she wasn’t married yet and giggling to themselves about Mister Charles.
All day, as she made students recite their multiplication tables and gave them short assignments on the little chalkboards purchased by the missionaries, she remembered the electric current that had run through her body when he had pulled her toward him. She had never been that close to a man before. He had smelled like powder detergent and red clay. His houseboy must have just done his laundry.
The six months she had spent in this village, a three-hour drive from Benin City, had not been easy ones. She found it difficult to get along with her fellow corper, Ruth, an Igbo girl from Anambra State who was engaged and spent every waking moment, so it seemed, figuring out how to communicate with her boyfriend who was stationed somewhere in Jos. Enitan’s mother had been so thrilled to learn that she was going to be in Edo State, and not too far from Benin City where there were many Cele churches. Both Ruth and Enitan taught at the three-room schoolhouse built by English missionaries back in the 1920s. Enitan taught maths, Ruth taught science, and Charles, an American Peace Corps volunteer, taught English. She noticed him immediately; he was the first white man she had ever really been in close contact with. He made a point of talking to her, just pleasantries at first. Where was she from? Where had she gone to school? He had been interested in the fact that she had gone to the university in Zaria; he wanted to know more about the northern part of the country. He had asked her what food she missed most from there and she had told him about kilishi.
She found his attention bewildering and flattering. She ignored Ruth’s curt summation: “It’s because you’re the only single girl here.” No, there was evidently something about her that he liked. And she liked how he perceived her—as this smart, alluring, competent, and thoughtful woman.
That night as soon as it was dark, and she was assured that Ruth was still at the schoolhouse talking to her boyfriend on the school’s landline, Enitan grabbed her flashlight and went over to Charles’s place. She knew where he lived, because all oyinbo people who cycled through the village were habituated in the one building with an indoor toilet. That too had been built by missionaries.
The door was slightly open and a prism of weak kerosene light hit the step that led into the house. She pushed open the door. “Mosquitoes will get in,” she announced as she entered.
“What was that?” Charles said, coming toward her, holding wrapped newspaper in his hands. It was hard to see his face in the dull light; he was mainly just a hulking shadow, but she was sweating now anyway, knowing that he was looking at her.
