The number of people in front of her compound was daunting.
Salamatu Yakubu smiled as she thought of that word; daunting. She had seen it
in the newspaper at the principal’s office when she had gone to get chalk. She
memorized the spelling and got her teacher to explain the meaning. As usual,
her teacher had told her to find it out herself; urging her to search the
dictionary starting at ‘D’ and then, the next letter. She couldn’t help but
smile at how much she was learning, which was far better than her classmates and
especially, than ALL the boys in her class.
Her smile dropped when she got closer to her compound. There
seemed to be an air of sadness hanging heavily around the entire compound. Her
feet dragged, seeming to want to be spared the impending destruction to her
little cocoon.
Abubakar ran to her. He was her immediate younger brother
and a real pest in her life. She was about to warn him to stay away from her
when she saw his tear-streaked face. She squinted to see if he was trying to
play a fast one but saw that for the first time in his entire 12 years of
existence, he was genuinely sad.
‘What happened?’
she asked in English before remembering to switch off school mode and put on
home mode. She asked again, but this time, in Hausa.
Abubakar did something that shocked the shoes off her feet;
he crumbled into a heap at her feet, put his arms around her and wailed. She
dropped her school bag and bent to him. She was surprised by the flood of
emotions that came over her. She held him until the teary fits wracking his
body subsided. At that point, it didn’t matter that they had been taught not to
hold members of the opposite sex or that their mothers were different. What
mattered was that they had finally bonded over something she was still to find
out.
‘Ba…ba… Baba has died’
he said. The pain in his voice was not as a result of the sadness he felt
at the loss of his hero but from the emptiness brought on by pouring his heart out
in his tears.
Salamatu flinched. She was not close to her father; had
never been. That fact didn’t stop the temporary moment her heart clenched and
overwhelming sadness came upon her. She gently pushed her brother away, picked
her bag and started walking…walking away from her house…from the reality of her
shattered life…from the end of what she knew. She didn’t know when she started
running; running till her heart almost exploded in her chest.
Her brain led her feet to the school library; her safe
place. She paused long enough to check if there was anyone about before diving
in. She went straight to the third row of books, the place farthest from
the door. Unlike a true library, there were no sections with major headlines
and easy access. The community was too poor to afford that. A corps member who
had come in to serve was the one who built the library and got her church to
donate books. Since she passed out, no new book had been added to the library
and many had been manhandled.
Salamatu sunk between the shelves
and took the fetal position; the position taken by great and small alike when
they feel their problem is far bigger than they are. She began to cry in earnest
now. Her life was over. She was in deep trouble. And yes, she wasn’t
crying that her father was dead. In fact, he had been her biggest problem since
she started to understand what her life was about. She hated him and quite
frankly, was glad he was dead!
***
Mallam Suleiman Yakubu was an average farmer. He did what
everyone else did; planted crops in season, worked his farm, harvested and
waited for the next season to begin planting again. That was his life; simple
and straightforward. Or was it?
Mallam Yakubu had four wives and so many kids popping out
every 10 months, that at the last census, the number of his kids present at the
count was put at 40. Thankfully, he had more boys than girls who could help in
the farms and ensure that food was never a problem in his house.
He was very religious; studying the Holy Qur’an at least
twice a day. He said his five daily prayers on time and lived according to the
tenets of Islam. He was also against everything Western. He hated Americans and
Israelis– even though he had never met any of them – and he was against
everything they stood for, one of which was formal education.
He had sworn never to send any of his kids to the so called ‘school’.
The school had sent many entreaties to him and even the local community leaders
had asked him to send at least one child. They had all received the same
answer; NO! His boys had to be on the farm most of the time and his daughters
had to be prepared for marriage. He was not going to let anyone corrupt any
child of his with Western ideas.
His kids had a healthy fear of him. They cowered in his
presence….well, almost all of them did. His daughter, Salamatu, was defiant. She was the only child of her mother and she was very stubborn. She refused
to be afraid of him. In one incident, she shocked him by questioning why they
needed to pray five times daily. When he told her she must do so because he
said so, she told him that if he had said because Allah said so, she would have
accepted it. She went further to say that his word was not absolute, as he was
but a man. He remembered how he beat her to unconsciousness. That was not the
last time either. She found ways to rile him up with her constant questions and
opinions. If Salamatu had not been a spitting image of him, he could have sworn
that she was not his child. She questioned his audacity to marry off his
daughters as early as 9 years. She questioned her mothers on why the boys had
to eat first and the girls make do with the remnant. In general, Mallam Yakubu
decried the fact that Salamatu had a mind of her own and as such would pose a
problem to her husband. He beat her lots of times to try to break her bull-headed resolve in challenging their norms, but the more he beat her, the more
inquisitive she became. She once told him, ‘If you have to beat me to shut me up, then what I’m saying is true’.
It was no surprise then that at the next visit of the school
delegation, he agreed to send Salamatu to the school. He could not manage her and
if she was already questioning his authority, there was nothing worse the
school could do to her.
It came as a surprise to Mallam Yakubu that Salamatu became
calmer as soon as she started going to school. She was quieter, more respectful and always buried
in one book or the other. She also did her chores on time and stopped
complaining about the way things were in their community...at least, not to him anyway. Her only true joy seemed
to be in the books she read. If he wanted to punish her, all he needed to do
was seize her books and she would do everything he wanted. As time went on, she
learned to wake up earlier to do her chores, pray, eat and then go to school. He
wondered what she was learning but it would have been beneath him to ask about
the Western ideas. Soon he ignored her existence until her mother came to him
one evening to tell him Salamatu had seen her first period.
He summoned her to his hut the next day.
‘Salamatu’ he all
but bellowed.
‘Baba’ she
responded, staring straight into his eyes. He shook his head. None of his other
children – or even his wives – would have dared to do that.
‘You are a woman now. I
have told the Imam that you are to be married off. As soon as a reputable
family shows interest, we will throw you a wedding Fatiha and you will go to
your husband’s house’ he said; a final note in his voice.
Salamatu’s expression didn’t flinch as she said, ‘I am too young to be married. I want to
finish school and be a teacher. After that, I can consider marriage’.
‘You can CONSIDER marriage?! Are you mad?! I say WHEN you get married
and you DO AS I SAY!’ Mallam Yakubu knew he was shouting but he couldn’t
help himself. He didn’t have to do that with anyone else! He was rankled that
he had a daughter who had a mind. Why had he been so cursed!
She looked at him with such calm
resolve that he felt insulted. ‘I will
get married when I want to Baba…but not until I finish my school’. With that, she got up and walked away.
Mallam Yakubu simply got up, went
outside, called her brothers, told them to gather her books and burn them. As they
rushed to do so, Salamatu, like a banshee, wailed and cried and clawed and
fought, to no avail. Her books were burned in her very presence and with each
page that caught fire, she felt like dying a little more. She cried and cried
until her mother came to pry her from her brothers’ hands to cradle her to
sleep.
Mallam Yakubu warned her brothers to beat her
up if they saw her going to the school. And her brothers relished the
opportunity! They had been envious of her school attendance and they used any
opportunity to beat her up; after all, they had been given the mandate to do
so.
The news spread quickly. ‘Mallam Yakubu had a daughter who questioned his
authority and who challenged the place of women in their community’. The families
in town all warned their sons not to show interest in Salamatu. No one wanted a
persona non grata in their family.
It wasn’t long after the sad event that Mallam
Yakubu fell ill. What started up with coughs became fever, chills, fatigue, weight
loss, and then the final sign that he would never recover; coughing up blood. The
disease seemed to eat him more when family upon family turned down his request
to marry his daughter. He was confined to his bed for months, withering away
slowly. He refused to go to the hospital because he did not believe in them. And even though the traditional medicine was not working, he trusted them and continued to take them.
He kept asking for Salamatu but
she refused to see him. When he asked if she was still going to school, he
was told that she wasn’t but he could feel they were lying. He called her
mother and made her promise she would ensure Salamatu got married.
A few days later, he called his
brothers and sons. He knew he was dying. He told them to ensure that all his
daughters were married to good families. He said if they could not get a good
family for Salamatu, they should accept anybody who showed interest. He told
them to swear by the name of Allah that Salamatu would be married off within
the year. When they had sworn to that, he reminded them of their
inheritance laws and he coughed one last time.
***
Salamatu was so engrossed in her
pain that she did not see her mother enter. As soon as she looked up, she
wanted to run but her mother held her back. When she got Salamatu pinned on the ground, she started talking.
‘You are my only child and I want you to be great. I don’t understand
what they teach you in that school but I believe that it will take you places. You
don’t know this, but my family were servants to a wealthy man before I was
married off to your father. He had daughters who were doctors, engineers and
one who had even vied to be a governor. I believe that you can be great!’
she loosened her hold on Salamatu and looked into her eyes.
‘As women in this family, we have no inheritance. Your uncles would drive us from this compound
soon. And worse, your father made them promise to marry you off to anybody. If that
happens, that will be the end of your life...and mine too’ she paused, weighing her next
words. ‘I have packed our things. We will
run away from this village and head to Kaduna. I have sisters there. They will
get me a job and I will ensure you go to school. Will you come with me?’
Salamatu didn’t even think about
it. She folded herself into her mother’s arms and hugged her; the first time
she had ever done that in her life. As one, they cried; cried for fate that chose their
gender, cried for their collective misfortune and finally, for Mallam Suleiman
Yakubu.
***
When night fell and the compound
was finally quiet, Salamatu’s mother woke her up and they snuck out of the
house. They walked all night and got to the village park just before dawn. Salamatu’s
mother had already bribed Balarabe (a driver) with all her gold – which wasn’t
much – to drive them to the city. The driver was nowhere to be found. The waited
and waited and soon, it was bright outside. People were beginning to come
around and the cloak of darkness was no longer a protection from the prying
eyes of the villagers.
Salamatu spotted her uncle –
Umaru Yakubu – just as he saw them. He was the youngest and meanest of her Uncles.
She tugged her mother’s hand, sending the message of fear to her. Her mother
looked at her and raised her gaze in the direction Salamatu was staring. He mother
froze in open fear. Then she loosened up and decided to run. Her mother had
just taken a step to run when Balarabe swung in front of them. They quickly got
into his car just as Uncle Umaru reached the car door. Balarabe sped off, the force of
which threw Uncle Umaru to the ground. Salamatu looked behind her and saw her
uncle staring at the dust kicked after them. For the first time in a long time,
she smiled! She smiled genuinely!
Her name is Salamatu Yakubu. She is
13 years old. And she just escaped what her teacher would have called ‘child
marriage’.
Highly responsive to a pressing societal issue. Even if this story is not true, it clearly painted a truth. Great work.
ReplyDeleteThank you dear! It may be fiction, but it is based on real scenarios!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe story waz awesome and have many lessons to be learn.
ReplyDeleteThough got confused as u said;
"He was very religious; studying the Holy Qur’an at least twice a day. He said his five daily prayers on time and lived according to the tenets of Islam"
then u said again
‘'As women in this family, we have no inheritance. Your uncles would drive us from this compound soon"
i think they are contradicting each other
Okay. Thanks for reading. The story is based on Lunguda culture and no matter how religious they are, they tend to prevent women from taking inheritance; whether they are Christian or Muslim. I did some research on the issue and have spoken to some people and they confirmed it. Plus, in the story, it is the father that is religious. It says nothing about his brothers.
DeleteOkey. Hope they can change.
ReplyDeleteWe hope so too!
Deletei was in the script.. This should be made into a movie
ReplyDelete