My Share of the Northern Cake

Chapter Eight

While the newscaster read her news, my mind drifted in and out of it. I couldn't make sense out of somethings she read, like when she would read of how one party took one case to election tribunal or to an appeal court. I wondered what election tribunal or an appeal court meant. Or when she would say that the electoral body of a particular state has declared an election held in that state non-and-void and or that the budget of the nation is said to have been padded. The terms used were not as familiar to me as they were being used. I thought it was ladies that padded themselves against the flow of blood from their vagina when they are menstruating, I wondered now what it was doing in a budget, talk more of a nation. The whole thing got me confused and Baba whom I always asked the meanings of terms used was not seating in his usual couch in the parlor where we always sat during and after dinner to listen to news until I won't know what happened next, because I would usually continue listening to the rest of the news in my dreams, I would usually be woken in the morning by voices totally different from those of the newscasters' only to find myself on the bed in my room, and I already knew whose handwork it was. It had been that I would sleep off and Baba would dutifully carry me to bed and then in the mornings, to show my gratitude, I would go to him and hug him and say inakwana Baba to which he would respond sanu my karamin nyarinya, yayade? And I would then tell him how fine I was or how unhappy I was over one thing or the other that was eating me up. It was at those times I usually would tell him if we were asked to come with or pay anything in school which he never refuted me, never refused giving them to me.

The newscaster has now begun to read a line that brought my attention back to the news sharply. The initial part of it I hadn't heard well because my attention was slowly captured. She continued reading that the medical teams have successfully brought back to life this morning a teenage girl out of the only humans that were brought with their complete parts from the ruins caused by the latest blast, making the total survivors three of a toddler and two teenagers. Others, which included a man, a toddler and a teenage girl, the medical director had confirmed dead by suffocation.

First it didn't shock me because it never occurred to me that the news was about me, about the six of us, the pack that had been together like a family through thick and thin. How could it be that any of us was dead? How could it be that any of us would not live to narrate his or her part of the ordeal as a tale of victory and conquest? It was disheartening to hear that any of us didn't make it; I hadn't seen nature as unfair to anyone until now, why did it have to end in this way? All through the night, I kept imagining the news and kept wishing that it won't be us the news had referred to until morning. Tea was served but I just sipped a little out of the mug just while the attendant was there. I couldn't continue when she left because I didn't have the heart to, didn't have the appetite. My companions were my priority and so they occupied my mind. They were my family and gave me the company and family shielding I needed. For them, I had little cause to worry over the loss of my own blood family. I had them, a couple of handfuls and although the pack had been through hard times, being with each of them had been fun all the while. Later on, the attendant came to clear the desk and informed me that a group of doctors were coming to see me. The doctors later came and did some checks, viewed my sight and checked my breathing and pulses. They seemed satisfied with what they read and how well I had come off from the hades to life. They were truly impressed, and they said it. After all the lots they said that didn't register, they finally told me what my spirit had been yarning for. They pressed a bell and a nurse led Haliru in carrying a baby in a well-stocked baby carrier. They made me know the baby had survived first because she hadn't suffered the suffocation for as long as the others had and to them, that was a mere miracle but to me, it was a miracle God had used my hands to do. The other baby, they explained, had died. What they said was the cause of his death saddened me. They said they had found me lying on him. That was the most painful of all the things I heard. Labaran, my child dead. It was the peak of my losses. They further explained that I had held him in what seemed like a protective measure against who knows what. Then they told Haliru and me that the man had died first, in a longer time before the others because he had long been exhausted and malnourished before that time, so he didn't have enough strength left to hold on a little longer. As for Rakia, they had said considering the whole thing, just as the baby survived, she too could have. They ended up by saying she died probably because she didn't have the will to live; she may have lost all hopes and every reason to hold unto life a little longer. I waited for them to explain everything before I could scream and cry. Haliru came to me and gave me the baby. He knew my weakness and my strength so he knew too well how to catch me and how to strengthen me. The baby on my hands would shut me up and give me the courage to seat up. I dared not appear weak in the eyes of a baby who just kept her gaze on me. I shut up, and a nurse helped me wipe off the tears, but I couldn't stop, couldn't hold back the vibration from the grief, I shuddered and cried inside. The doctors left and the medical director came to tell us later that our relatives were on their way to see us. It happened so. They were Zainab, Haliru's sister, and Rakia's father. Zainab narrated to us how she had escaped the den of her husband, Alhaji. She said Mallam Usman had made the mistake she had always prayed for him to make. She worked hard and played false loyalty to gain his trust and so as an answer to her prayer, she sent her out along others to go buy what they needed to celebrate Eid ul-Fitr. She deceived others in the market later by making them believe that she needed to toilet that they should wait for her in a spot while she did that. They waited and that was it. She ran off and looked for a home where she would be welcomed, and feel safe until she could find a better help. It was there she heard the new minister of Defense, Alhaji Doba giving out phone lines that he could be reached with to those who needed help or those who knew how the insurgents could be located and how they could be arrested and disarmed. She took the bold step and made the call, more for her own safety, and to finding his lost brother than for to help capture the insurgents, but she did them all when they eventually came for her, and series of interviews and assurances of her safety was made. With her help and directions, the insurgents' hideouts and camps were raided. At the moment, their hideouts and camps were still being raided and they were still being captured and disarmed by the military using Zainab's directions of how to locate their hideouts and know their camps. As for how we were found, she told us that she and the soldiers that were assigned to her have been going about combing bushes and lifting ruins looking for Haliru. It was on one of those outings that they decided to join the Red Cross Emergency Team that was lifting ruins looking for trapped people in the just bombed modern market, but the scream had come from exactly around where she stood wondering where to start from. First, it was one weak scream that she wasn't sure she heard clearly, and then it came again and again and again. Then another voice joined in, she didn't waste more time, she called on the team, and they started lifting things before they could lift the shed that had buried you people. Thank God there were medical personnel among the team. They administered first aid and we were rushed to military base from where we were flown here in an air copter.

For the first time, I saw a man and his wife cry when I told Alhaji Doba and Kaka, his wife, all that we went through. Haliru just could not talk because with what I saw, he isn't someone that likes letting his emotions show. If he talked, there was every possibility that he would burst so he let me do all the talking and confirmed the fact with a nod each time the family tried to sympathize with us. Alhaji Doba has no other child left now but her granddaughter. He and his wife simply settled at adopting us all including Zainab. Ordinarily, Zainab would still live in fear but she had seen the picture of her husband on the TV how his body was dastardised by series of targeted bullets, there was no way he would come back from the land of the death to torment her now, even his ghost would have bullet holes on its body so air would not let it move. My share of the northern cake is mixed with bitterness which was the part I ate first, and now, I think I'm about to start chewing the endless sweetness of saccharine, sugar and honey. I don't pray for anyone to have a cut of this kind of cake.

Some days later, I found Haliru looking puzzled where he sat.

"What is eating you up little Mr." I asked.

"A serious issue that I think I need to tell Baba, Alhaji Doba, about."

"What might it be?"

"I want to go find Mallam Danyaro."

"I see it's good, but I also see that there seem to be something else that goes beyond you finding him just to probably see him or perhaps thank him."

"Yes, the other reason is so that he will take me to my homeland and help me find that wicked uncle of mine, uncle Idierika. The government will have scores to settle with him."

"Hmm... Smart. I think you're right"