by Edna O'Brien
I WAS CROSSING THE YARD with a girl called Hadja. She did the washing for the wives and sometimes I was told to help her. We each had either handle of the big tub, with the washing in it. She pointed to the clothesline at the far end, on a hillock, which was not far from where they buried their dead. For all their bravado, they were superstitious. They believed that their dead oversaw everything and emboldened them in battle. A girl, who had gone into trance once and predicted that a great number of their battalion would be wiped out, had her tongue removed because of her audacity. It was the little girl Aisha and I had seen that first morning.
‘This is where you will be taken,’ Hadja said, steering me to a cement house at the far end, a distance away from the graveyard. It was called the Blue House, but it was almost black and the windows were gone. She said hunters lodged there in the old days, when the forest was still a game reserve. The inside walls were daubed with graffiti, tanks and guns and more tanks and more guns. The word OKAY sprawled in ignorant black lettering.
She was lame and had a speech impediment. She had been there many years and there was no telling the ordeals she had been through. Sometimes she told lies. I was not sure when she described men who came to her mistress’s cave with the blood of infants in vanilla essence bottles. These were infants whose parents had sold them, knowing they were going to be smothered. The woman craved this infant blood, believing it imparted the gift of youth. She wanted to keep young for when her husband came. He was a commander renowned for his ruthlessness and had many wives and many children in different camps. The woman and the men haggled over the money.
‘See there … see there,’ Hadja said with a strange, serpentine glint in her eyes.
I saw a long corridor with cubicles leading off it and in each one an iron bed and a naked bulb dangling down. This is where girls were brought. This is where she had been brought. It was always before battle, to get them fired up, so that they set forth, sated and battle-maddened.
I told my friends this gruesome story and we waited, not knowing if they would come, but certain that they would.
Then it happened.
Guards seized us and we were marched across to the Blue House. There was blaring music and lights shone from different parts. Men were moiling around, a riffraff, in military attire, guns everywhere, knives hanging from their belts and their flies undone. As I passed along the corridor I saw that the bulbs had been lit above each bed.
Two guards undressed me, scoffing that I was to serve one of the elites. He had noticed me come in. The hairs all down my body stood up in terror and they leant in over me, to have a look, excited and skittish.
‘She wants it,’ one said and the other repeated it, his face so close to mine that I smelt the onions on his breath.
I vowed that I would tighten myself into a knot, a buried bulb, deep in the earth’s hole and the elite man would claw and scrape like a badger, but he would not reach me. I would shut the doors of my mind. I was like some mad person shutting doors and windows, but even as I saw him come in, these doors and windows were thrown open. He was tall, bearded, with a manic look in his eyes. His aide took the gun from his outstretched arm, while a second one pulled his trousers down and folded them neatly. He did not speak. His power was in his silence and in his loathsome stare. As he lay above me, it was as if black tarp was blackly thrown over, smothering me, and shutting out all else. I knew that he would kill me if I did one wrong thing. I tried to accommodate my body to his needs, listening to him as he scraped and cursed, fuming that I am not open enough, that I am not conceding. My hands, of their own accord, go up to scratch him, to fight him and he erupts, still yoked to me, yelling at them to come. They knew what to do.
‘Hold her down.’
‘Subdue her.’
‘Open her legs.’
He is still yelling it, even though they know exactly how his desires must be met. I both died and did not die. A butchery is being performed on me. Then I feel my nostrils being prised open and the muzzle of the gun splaying my nose. I know now that within minutes that gun will explode inside my head. I will not wake from this, I will die with my scream unfinished.
Even as he was pulling out of me he was shouting for a kettle of water, to wash.
Others came, singly or in pairs, guffawing, feeding and foraging and emptying themselves into me. There was an urgency. The lorries were hooting in the yard. Before long they had coalesced into one being, not like men with human traits. I went in and out of reasoning but I was not dead. They made sure of that. They slapped life back into me with savage swipes. To whet their pleasures. The same was happening to my friends in the cubicles on every side, yet no one cried out. Quiet as corpses. I watched the flies on that stinking ceiling, convening around the dead ones.
The last to come was alone, outraged at having been kept waiting, and indignant at the mess that met him. He decided that only my mouth was clean enough for his ‘soldier’ and he levered the muscles of my jaws with a mercilessness.
Finally they were gone. I heard lorries pass through the open gateway, amidst triumphant yodels and cheers.
I sat up and wiped my face with my wrapper. Beyond the window the mass grave was drinking in its quota of dew and I wished that I too had died.
From the cubicles all around there is a deathly silence. My friends, like me, are sitting on their beds, waiting to see if they can stand, then face one another, and appear to be brave. There was nothing we would say, there was nothing we would ever say to one another.
Then sudden darkness as the generators are turned off and the music ceases. It is better that way. We will not have to look each other in the eye when we assemble in the corridor.
It was dark in the yard. We had banded together, but we were also alone, alone in a solitude so deep that it would never leave us. There was fog everywhere, in the sky, in the air and in our benumbed selves. Fatim teetered on her legs like a little Bambi and said that if she was going to have a baby it would be a girl, and that she would name it Jesus. Jesus would be a lady.
Those who were already asleep in the dormitory muttered their annoyance at being wakened. A few got up out of curiosity and in the fidgety gleam of one torch they saw us, our hands across our wrappers in shame, and they looked back coldly, they who had known much worse, because they had been there much longer.
When I lay face down on the mat, a girl next to me touched my hair just barely. She had nuts in her fist. She cracked them into small pieces and we ate them, almost in silence. Her name was Buki. It is how we became friends.
BUKI, SHORT FOR BUKOLA. Bukola, a blessing from God. They lived in a village not far from the Mandara hills. Her father had a small farm and along with farming, he went fishing every other weekend and stayed with other local fishermen in a tent. He sold some of the fish to a big hotel that had been newly built. As part payment, they were allowed to have two dinners in the hotel, where they were served yam porridge with lots of fried egg, and lemon sorbet afterwards. Her mother was not with them. Her mother had left while she was still a young child, went back to the South because it suited her better. The North, her mother said, were cattle breeders and she was used to a finer life. Her father reared her. Loved her:
One evening, just before dark, he came back from the farm to find me in a huddle with other girls from villages all about. Young men were lined up in a different group, also about to be taken. In the centre of the compound a pit had been dug and the old people, men and women, were packed in there, pleading for their lives. My father had a few naira inside his shirt, which he took out and gave to the Jihadis for my release. They took the money and then threw him into the pit with the older people, who had witnessed what he had tried to do and who despised him for it. Horses were brought on, the riders both spurring and holding them back. The horses were hesitant at first. They smelt blood. They smelt death. Their eyes were rolling, wildly. Once the pit was covered over and the horses led on top, they were made to prance. They soon got to like it, thei
r hooves clipping off one another, and in minutes they were delirious with the exceeding joy and frenzy of their task.
My father did not get to look at me. He always said that when you are gone, it is the soul that stays behind. He said the soul weighs nothing, being of divine origin.
BARBED WIRE ABOVE US and all around us in crazy convolutions. Loops of it on the ground to trip us up. It was called the swamp. It was where we went to ease ourselves, very early in the morning, while the men were still at prayer. An abandoned putrid patch, full of flies and mosquitoes, with tall grasses and half-grown trees.
We each searched for a place to be private, for although we were sluts to them and loathsome in our own eyes, we clung to the last tatters of decency. Each girl sought a private corner and afterwards a puddle or a stream to wash in. We were each praying for our menses to come. Girls ate roots or leaves so as not to be pregnant. The crimson glitter of blood on those high blades of grass was our one deliverance. I would stare at mine and give thanks. I thought of my mother and if I were at home, how she would be fussing over me with warm water and a towel, telling me it was nature’s course. I saw our kitchen, every iota, even down to the motes of dust swirling through the air and the hardened dust that had settled. I could never tell how far I was from her and from everything. The swamp was the only home we knew. It was where we tried to befriend one another.
Some of the girls from our school began to grow strange and withdrawn. The mad malaise of the compound had got into them. They were like sleepwalkers, distant, muttering and locked into themselves.
Spies skulking everywhere.
One morning a woman soldier came hurrying up the hill. Rumours had circulated that girls were plotting to escape. She had been sent to warn us. Many years before, she too had been abducted, along with four children, and a group of mothers, also with children. They had been taken from their village when the men were away. They were made to walk through dense forest, with nothing to eat except leaves and ditch water to drink. Each night, while their captors slept, they prayed and then tried to steal away, except they were soon caught. Allah had decreed their fate. They could not know at that time how enamoured they would become by their new life and how transformed by true enlightenment.
She spoke to each one of us, her eyes dancing with elation – ‘If you try to escape, you will be brought back. You will be locked for three days in a detention cell. You will urinate there, you will defecate there, then, soiled and besmeared, you will be brought out for your public lashings. Next time you will not be so lucky.’
Then she was gone.
*
Down in the yard there was some cheering. The three girls who had been separated from us early on were now seated on the back of motorcycles, and dressed for travel, their hijabs folded so winsomely about their faces, like princesses. The riders were standing impatiently, as if on stirrups, raring to go.
‘They’re going to be sold as brides to rich men in Arabia,’ Orpah whispered, and the rumour circulated. The Sect did it with the prettiest girls, to refurbish their coffers.
Orpah had been my friend from school. We made the long walk together home each evening and sometimes raided the orchards of the community centres. She had a knack of doing it, with a stick. I made a signal to her, but she ignored it. Not one of them acknowledged us. Instead, they looked away, to their new charmed lives, into an enthralled distance.
THE RAIN WAS TORRENTIAL. It was as if the sky could not disgorge itself quick enough and the ground was all squelch. Our flip-flops sank in it. It was very early. All of a sudden there was a command from a loudspeaker. We were to assemble at once beside the mosque. We thought it was an air raid and that our soldiers had come to rescue us, because although we were slaves we were also ransom money and could be bartered for big sums. They had rehearsed us in this. They had built bunkers underground and one day we were brought in small groups, put down there and buried. It was all dark and maggoty like a graveyard. We were unable to speak a word.
As we came across the yard the sight that met us was like nothing we had ever seen or imagined. A pit had been dug and earth flattened all around it. Men were gathering as for some great spectacle. Two other men, who we learned later were undertakers, stood stiffly at either side. Different workers wheeled on barrows full of stones, which were heaped and mute and malign. They were of every colour, grey, black, charcoal, with slashing edges, and had been especially picked for what was to be. There was a curious hush as before something ominous. The woman was led forward, and also pushed from behind as if she were a mule. She was the most beautiful woman in the whole compound. She was wife of the chief emir and word went around that she was about to be stoned for adultery.
I saw her one day in the little shop, where I had been called to unpack boxes, the booty just brought in from a village that the Sect had sacked. She was allowed first choice of the finery and trinkets and clothing. Slowly she drew on a gaud of bracelets, fiddled with them and admired them one by one. She was a haughty woman. A servant held a mirror up in order for her to admire herself. She laughed at the image of her own beauty and the status of being the chosen wife.
Then, men measured her and slid the rod down the pit, to ensure that the measurements coincided. They were very particular about it. She looked out at the miserable surroundings, the men, maybe even her husband, lesser commanders, wives, concubines and menials, almost abstractly. Then she was lowered into the pit, invisible to all except for her head and neck, which slotted perfectly above the rim.
The excitement was mounting. Men jostling and pleading to be given the honour of throwing the first stone. At the exact beat of a wooden clacker they all rushed to the heap of stones and aimed at her. The first stone struck, then bounced off the nape of her neck and she staggered within the confined place where she was held. She tried to elude the stones as they were being pelted at her from all sides, one side of her face all bloodied and then washed in the rain. She quailed helplessly. The stones were coming pell-mell, falling monstrously on what was once the most legendary face in the enclave. Strips of the other side of her jaw came hanging off and when she screamed, those screams transformed in the victorious yells of her executioners.
I wanted her to die, instantly, to be dead before they could deface any more of what had been, but broken as she was, she did not die yet, and her eyes flinched violently. She tried to move her head again and again, to escape her fate, and struggled to get her hands out in a last futile gesture of despair. But the slaughter was relentless. The blood was pumping heartily out of her veins. The stones themselves were smeared as they fell, but presently were picked up, to continue the onslaught.
She was like some ghoul now, a mimicry of who she once had been, bleeding on one side and shredded on the other. The men roared in triumph. It was evident that she was almost gone and her eyes, which she had shut tight in a clench, opened to a knowing, aghast goggle, before the neck hung off, heavy and harmless. The stones themselves, the accomplices of the act, were thrown onto the wheelbarrows, to be kept in readiness. The strangest thing of all was her hair, so long and luxurious, it seemed to bristle with life.
THE CAMP WAS ALMOST DESERTED. They’d gone in trucks earlier, bringing most of the girls to help with building makeshift huts in the forest, for newcomers that had arrived. I sit under the big tree to stretch my bones. I had done the preparation for the dinners. It was beef, roasting on the big fire and spitting its juices. An emir’s wife had brought me a set of new knives. They were in a cutlery case, with cavities for each knife.
Then I saw four men cross the yard. He was the most noticeable, eel-thin and cocky and wore a jazzy shirt. The music from their phones is belting.
All of a sudden he is running ahead and I am pulled out onto the open ground. He removed my wrapper, gesturing them to take pictures on their phones and then it happens. The slash of his zipper, the blast of his breath as he moves into me to the rhythm of music. They move too and take picture after picture on their p
hones – my head that he is holding down with his grimed hands, my face, my clenched teeth and his dancing, arching silhouette.
There is a black void within me, but not void enough to blank everything out. I take one of the knives and rip it down the length of his body, so that he is sliced in half. But he is not dead. Their bragging, the competing gliding of their cameras have emboldened him. At moments he slides out for the camera to peer in. They feed on his prowess, his hot desire and his detestation of me. They laugh at my screams as he judders my entire body on that sad earth.
Only when the last sound has died in his throat does he take his leave of me. But it is not over. They want pictures of my face, my face on that ground, blank, aghast, emptied of life. There is an extinction of all things then, except for the shifting black blobs that swam behind my eyes.
They have hurried away and the music blares in the distance.
A girl I barely know comes and stands above me. She puts my wrapper over me to cover the shame. The top of the big tree stands patient against the sky and the leaves murmur as before rain. Then a breeze from the forest, a cool breeze that heralds rain is blowing all over my body and down along my legs like silk. The rain came in great noisy squalls, sheets of it coming down to wash everything clean. Rain is fierce and sudden and merciful. Did God send the rain or did the Rainmaker. Did God witness what happened and did he write it into his big ledger for the Day of Judgement. Oh God, empty me of him. Is that too much to ask.
Will I ever know the language of love. Will I ever know home again.
A WIFE OF THE EMIR came to the dormitory as we were undressing and said to put hands up, who had their menses. I put my hand up, as did four others, but it was obvious, as the blood ran down our legs in rivulets. The rags we used were not absorbent and we had no safety pins to secure them with.
