Before They Arrived — Prose

Dear Farhan,

In the beautiful evenings of childhood, when I was a few years above the age you are now, your uncles and I used to attend Mallam Suleiman's madrasah. We would form a circle around him to learn the Qur'an and listen to his Islamic stories which were filled with morals.

We enjoyed these stories so much so that, in turns, we would retell them on our way home. We would buy sweet candies with the 50kobo Ummu gave us and would gift half of the candies to anyone who retold the stories best. Uncle Bala always won. In the month of Ramadhan, like we are in presently, we would stop at An-Noor mosque to enjoy part of the delicious iftar meals they made.

After your Ummu and I married and you were born, we moved to our house. Your uncles moved to their houses as well, but every eid festival we came together as one big family. I still have a vivid memory of your mother from one of those reunions, showing you the madrasah I talked about and your grandfather's expanse of arable land which he used for farming. I wish you weren't too young to capture how beautiful life was then.

Perhaps, if you were as old as you are now, you would have memories of kids playing hide and seek in the neighborhood without any worries even after sun set below the horizon; you would have memories of families eating together in a single big round tray under the moon-lit sky.

But that time is in the past now. How painful it is that all you have a picture of, now that you're old enough to make sense of our existence, is a bitter contrast of that time. 

Things began to change when the terrorists first arrived. They set up a religious complex, which included a mosque and an Islamic school. Then they infiltrated our local mosques and gave inflammatory sermons: The West is Evil. Western Education is Haram. Then, gradually, they began to recruit our young ones who bought into their ideology. Then the bombings. Closure of schools. Destruction of public amenities. Lockdown.

I sometimes wonder if you thought that bombs come from the sky same way rain falls from the sky. That home is an IDP camp — where we live now. That the ones amongst us who are brave enough to go into the bush to gather bushfires are heroes when they return, for, otherwise, they would be announced dead in a matter of days.

I can hear your mother whispering her duas as she observes her tahajjud this moonless night. "Oh Allah, when will come your aid?" She recites. Verily; the aid of Allah is near, completing the verse.

My son, I wonder if you hear my words in your sleep. I believe we would return soon to our previous lives and you, dear Farhan, would still love to have a memory of what peace and tranquility mean. Sleep well. Sleep tight. 

Aishah Tiamiyu is a final year pharmacy student of Olabisi Onabanjo University.