“We Shall All Rise in Flames”

Osieka Osinimu Alao, Nigeria

Creators of Justice Award 2022 | Third Prize: Short Story

Osieka Osinimu Alao is a writer, teacher and activist from Nigeria. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. His scholarly articles have appeared in Dutsinma Journal of English and Literature (DUJEL), Gadau Journal of Arts and Humanities, and forthcoming in European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies. His poems have appeared in Arts Lounge Magazine, nantygreens, Requiem Magazine, The Web Poetry Corner and forthcoming elsewhere. His short story was one of the 200 longlisted entries for the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Twitter & Instagram: @osiekaosinimu. Facebook: Osieka Osinimu Alao.

 We Shall All Rise in Flames

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His eyes penetrate my face like spears. I look away. He treads forward, grabs my chin, plunges his face into mine. His breath smothers my drenched forehead. He shouts at me and my bladder balloons. I try to control it, if not, I’ll be mocked, like the last girl taken away yesterday—her face incised with fear, body shivered like leaf, wetted herself, and threw the camp into a laughing frenzy.

‘You’re doing it for the good of humanity,’ he roars, spits and steps backward. On my knees, my arms tied at my back, I begin to wonder what humanity is. But my mind is a junkyard muddled with the white tablets. I’ve been swallowing the tablets for a while and they make my senses float. Once I’m given the tablets, a man called The Sheikh comes to the semi-dark space where I and some girls are kept. As I lie on the floor weak, almost unconscious, yet fully aware, he chants, ‘You do as told... This for greater good...,’ and other jumbled mouthings. I find myself doing whatever is said, trancelike, dazed.

Sweat is dripping down my cheeks and splashing onto my shoulders and chest. We’re in a forest partitioned with deep green tarpaulin tents. The men in incomplete military uniforms are parading with sophisticated guns, some on foot, some in trucks. Tanks and RPGs adorn the landscape. These’re things I’ve seen only in war movies at my bestie’s house. I’ve not seen her in weeks. Maybe they’re readying her too. They’re agitated, waiting for something or someone. The sun is frowning on my skin.

The sun was nowhere to be seen the day our lives began to recede. It was a Wednesday morning, English lessons in progress. My bestie and seatmate, Aisha, and I were chattering, sharing jokes, and giggling whenever our teacher, Master Ahmed, was not looking in our direction. We were made to call our male teachers ‘Master’ and female teachers ‘Mistress.’ Master Ahmed, one of my favourites, was charming and vibrant, and always made learning English very interesting—unlike the Mathematics teacher who derived joy in making the subject difficult.

We were discussing verbs when a cold wind blew into the classroom. A man in a military uniform walked in, and as we had been taught, we stood up to greet him. At first, I thought he was a soldier, maybe a father to one of the girls in the class. But Aisha whispered to me about his uniform neither having a name tag nor rank. I’d also noticed his unkempt full beard. Master Ahmed asked who the man was and who he had come to visit. The question was replied with a heavy slap. Master Ahmed lost balance and staggered backwards.

Shrieks broke out. Men trooped in. Their faces dark with terror. They were the ones we had read about in the papers and watched clips on the news and internet. The ones whose wild stories rang ceaselessly in our ears. The ones who planted seeds of wickedness in the womb of the earth. They had come for us, to take us away. It was the beginning of the end of our lives.

Master Ahmed muttered but was muted by the butt of a gun—his body, a demolished statue. Our hearts shrunk like deflated balls, and we covered our mouths with our hands. Tears gullied cheeks and sobs permeated the silence. Squalls sprung from the classrooms, enmeshed in the thundering of incessant gunshots. People screamed and wailed and ran into the nearby bushes. We were loaded into trucks like cheap goods and carried away. As the trucks drove out of the compound amidst sporadic shots, bodies lay lifeless as dry leaves on the floor.

‘Commander! Commander!’ A squat man calls in haste, holding a phone which he hands to the Commander. He collects the phone, paces back and forth, urgency in his strides. He’s tall, quite muscular, probably in his mid-thirties, looking like fire inhabits his body. A black turban wraps his head; unlike the day he came to our school donning a beret. He speaks in Hausa for a few minutes. The last thing he says before hanging up is ‘Zata yua yawu Kua?’ meaning, ‘Will it still be possible today?’

His face folds into a frown. He looks at me, waves of disdain arrowing from his reddish eyes, as though I’m the cause of whatever glitch they seem to be having. He tells one of his men to blindfold me. There must be bad-luck brewing in my eyes. A young boy, with a slim build a strong wind could knock down, appears with a black strip. He looks familiar, but I’m not too sure. Most of the boys here look alike.

As he bends to tie the strip, I see the scar on his temple. How could I miss that? Of course, he’s familiar. He gives me a cold gaze; maybe he can’t even remember me. There’re many of us, I guess. He was the one who raped me when we first got here. He was rash and rough, as he forced his way into me, pinning my back to the mat. I tried to resist but strength had deserted me. Our foods and drinks must’ve been laced with a substance making us weak and yielding. Even if I’d the strength, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fight back. After a brief struggle, I lay still and let him satisfy himself, grunting like a pig. He was the second person to ever know where my thighs met, and he did it without protection. He ties the black strip round my eyes. Darkness erupts. The type that engulfed me, cramped at the back of the truck, past the school gate, into the wild unknown.

We journeyed for hours. A heavy mass clogged my throat thinking about those I was leaving behind at home. They were my family, yet, emptiness enveloped me whenever I was around them. I didn’t know who my real parents were. I knew I was carried away from somewhere at a tender age but too little to remember. All I’d known was growing up in this house, assisting my aunty with chores. I’d been scolded many times to call her ‘mum’ but it didn’t feel right, and my yearning to belong was fraught with futility. 

As the truck travelled farther, the darkness thickened in my spirit. It was this same darkness that encroached my sanity the night my uncle spread my legs like mere pieces of wood. I was eleven and my aunty had travelled with their only son who was about six years old. My uncle barged into my room, covered my mouth, and undressed me. Initially, it was his finger, before the carnage. My body was a faucet of blood and the pain was as though a thousand rocks danced in my head. I cried for days, and when my aunty returned, my lips never moved. I didn’t want to end up like the little girls who suddenly went missing or were found dead. I lived with it—a misery burgeoning in my body.

‘Commander! Commander!’ I know it’s the squat man, his gruff voice stands out, as though a large lump is constricting his throat. The Commander receives the phone, speaks in a low tone for quite some time before ending the call. He says, ‘Yau ne yau!’ meaning, ‘Today is the day!’ A few cheers filter into the hot air. I’m given the tablets to swallow, and soon, my head levitates. I know The Sheikh is somewhere around.

Something is wrapped around my midriff. It’s cold, cylindrical, bound by an elastic band. Wires are connected or adjusted, and I hear a bleep shortly after. My heart races, but before it strays too far, the tablets capture me. The Sheikh’s voice cuts through my eardrums into my head: ‘You go to Central Market… Don’t stop…!’ He chants for a while before he leaves.

The rope tying my arms is cut and the strip removed from my eyes. I’m dressed in a free-flowing black purdah. I’m held and led to a white car. Before I enter, the squat man again comes running with the phone. The Commander speaks for a few minutes after which he hands the phone back to him. He rages and fires a couple shots in the air. Silence bites the atmosphere. He asks the man leading me to the car to take me back and remove the device around my midriff. He glowers at me. I turn away. He says I should be taken to ‘dakin zaman kadai,’ the room of isolation.

I’m taken to a room. There’re a few girls there, all wearing the ugly masks of sullenness. There’s a girl breastfeeding a baby, and another, carrying a baby on her back, tapping his bum to prevent him from crying. I find a corner and sit on the floor. I sit alone for a while, before someone touches my hand. It’s Aisha. I hug her and we cry. We sit in silence, holding hands, crying. After sometime, we look at each other as if to say, hang in there, there’s hope.

I know it’s evening when I perceive the aroma of food seeping in. Someone enters the room. It’s the boy with the scar on his temple. I try to hide behind one or two girls to no avail. He bends to talk to me and says, ‘Suna na Jibril. Zan aure ki,’ meaning, ‘My name is Jibril. I’ll marry you.’ I’m not sure what or how to feel, so I say to myself—maybe today’s not the day death will brag over me, maybe I’ll live, maybe I’ll survive.