“The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strongest . The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions.” ~ Dave Smalley.
The following events took place in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria, and are based on a true story.
“Killings in Jos wear a veil. Sometimes, it has a religious bent. In other times, it is ethnic. But the people know that it is both ethnic and religious and that it can spread to other regions of the country.
Following the 2004 violence in Yelwa of Plateau state, reprisal killings in Kano State left 200 Christians dead. Muslim attacks against Christians in the northern city of Maiduguri in 2006 led to reprisal killings of more than 80 Muslims in eastern Nigeria.” Vanguard newspaper.
Somewhere in Jos, Northern Nigeria, 2012.
Friday, August 10th;
2:47 pm
The streets were crowded, densely populated, this Friday afternoon, the central mosque filled with worshippers and Islamic fanatics. This caused a major holdup, and the traffic was annoyingly slow. Car horns blared sporadically by impatient drivers of private vehicles and public transit. Homeless kids also known as Almajiri were playfully running here and there, weaving through the thread of static automobiles.
The eleven year old twins, Dora- short for Adaora and Amanda- short for Chimamanda, sat at the back of their mother’s car, seatbelts strapped in. Dora was asleep, her eyelids fluttering subtly, her chest rising and falling with slow, even breaths. Amanda sat in silence, playing with her doll, her eyes occasionally glancing out the window.
Amara, nestled behind the wheel, stole a quick look at her girls from the rearview mirror. Her sharp, brown eyes scanned the crowded environment, fingers drumming absently around the steering wheel.
One thing this woman had in abundance was patience. And that was one of the qualities that attracted her late husband, Akam Isong. Unfortunately, he passed away about a year ago, leaving her with two kids to cater for.
She heaved a sigh, rubbed her forehead, and then wound down the window. Her gaze shifted to the radio and having nothing better to do, she turned it up. Perhaps something on the broadcast would keep her distracted.
While other drivers cursed and yelled, some honking loudly, she just sat there, calm with a fascinating sense of composure. Amara wasn’t one to talk much, she was the kind that listened more than she spoke. Very perceptive, very brilliant and very beautiful, she was. The 36 year old woman had a height many thought to be rather intimidating.
Even her late husband sometimes used to feel threatened by how she would easily tower over him. She’d tease him about being taller and having access to the middle of his head. Their height difference was never a big deal for the couple, what mattered was how much they loved and respected each other.
After his burial, Amara decided to shut out all of his friends whom she already knew never genuinely cared for him but were only after what they benefited from him. ‘Selfish bastards’, she called them.
She missed her husband and wished he was still alive but if wishes were horses, wouldn’t beggars ride? He was gone and there was nothing she could do to bring him back.
The news on the radio snapped her back to reality and she immediately turned up the volume. The newscaster was reporting an incident of a suicide bombing that happened in a market square a day ago and how the killing spree on Christians in the city was rising. The level of insecurity in Jos was becoming alarming and many, especially Christians could no longer sleep fine.
Two weeks ago, Amara had witnessed the barbaric nature of some Islamic extremists as they gruesomely murdered a young man and set him on fire just because he made a comment that seemed offensive to their faith. She knew better than to get involved, so she drove past, bitterly weeping in her heart. No one deserved to die like that. She could still hear his screams as they set him ablaze with his hands tied together and a tyre around his neck.
She remembered the way the young man’s mother wept at the sight of her son, burning helplessly while the perpetrators of that inhumane act were chanting;
“Allahu Akbar!”
They roamed the streets, rejoicing, boasting, like they hadn’t just killed a defenseless man.
“Mun kashe shi, dan iska!” This proud proclamation could be interpreted in English as; We’ve killed him, the bastard.
Today, while sitting in her car, her gaze swept out the window. And that’s when she caught sight of them amongst the multitude– the same guys from the other day. They were chattering, laughing on their way out of the mosque.
How could they possibly live with themselves after what they did to that innocent man? She wondered.
The presenters on the radio urged everyone out there to stay safe and always be vigilant.
The road soon cleared and she drove home.
Saturday, August 11th;
1:37 am
She awoke so suddenly to the sound of a thunderclap that rumbled through the thick dark clouds accompanied by lightning streaks. Soon, a heavy downpour began and the road was patched with potholes and gullies.
Amara wasn’t entirely sure of what woke her up at this ungodly hour. Was it the reverberation of thunder rolls or the nightmare that left her damped in sweat, terrified? Or was it a combination of both?
She exhaled sharply, fingers rubbing her eyes before getting out of bed. The marble floor was cool beneath her feet as she strode over to the windows. Her eyes squinted at the howling wind whistling in her ear from the rising storm outside.
Her window curtains danced to the rhythm of the breeze, showers from the dark sky sprinkling into her room. She struggled for a minute before finally shutting the window. It was a little too late by now, the books on the table closest to the window were already soaked.
“Great,” she mumbled under her breath.
And just when she was about to return to bed, she heard it; gunshots.
Amara stopped in her tracks, her heart skipping a beat. Maybe it was just the thunder rolls.
She heard it again, this time, a lot louder. Her breath hitched in her throat, eyes wide with terror when she heard the distant shout;
“Allahu Akbar!”
Jesus Christ! She called out in her mind, her hand flying to her chest as if to stop her heart from jumping out.
Rapid gunshots filled the air and soon, so did the horrifying screams of people-victims. She froze for a second, her head blank, a thousand thoughts tugging at her mind. Amara rubbed her eyes in an attempt to be sure that she wasn’t dreaming.
Outside, people screamed, gunshots coming from all directions. The entire town was surrounded.
Fueled by sheer adrenaline, Amara rushed to her window and looked out; some buildings were on fire and almost half of the people in the town were running pitter-patter, scared and confused.
“Anfara, anfara, anfara!” Someone was nervously yelling in the native Hausa language, saying; It has begun…
He hadn’t even run past Amara’s window when a bullet put him down. Her hand flew to her mouth with a reflexive move that sealed her gasp. She withdrew slowly, blinking back the tears that stung her eyes.
“Dora, Amanda,” she murmured, realizing how much trouble they were in.
Without wasting time, she took off to her kids’ room.
Amarachi burst the door open, panic setting in. Scared and nervous, she woke the girls up, her mind a tangled mess. She has wondered how she’d survive this attack with two twelve-year-olds.
There was no time to think, she needed to act fast.
One of the girls was still lazing around with sleepy eyes. Amara grabbed the girl’s shoulders, her grip firm. “Dora, wake up!” She shook the little girl, her voice tinged with urgency.
Suddenly, a loud bang brought down their front door, startling them. Amarachi immediately lifted both her kids at once with an incredible strength she didn’t even know she had. She shoved them into a closet, with nervous glances over her shoulders.
“Mummy, what’s happening?” Amanda asked, confused, oblivious to the danger that had just walked into their house.
“Shhh,” Amara shushed her, a finger pressed against her lips. “Stay here. Don’t make a sound,” she whispered, locked the closet and stepped away to the center of the room.
Two armed men walked inside, their boots pounding against the floor, each step quickening Amara’s pulse. They found her lying flat on her stomach, face against the rug as she trembled. They shouted at her in a language she assumed to be Arabic. Fear glued her face to the floor that she dared not look up at their faces but from the sounds of their voices, she could tell that one of them was a boy, a teenager maybe.
She felt a sharp pain as one of them stepped on her wrist amidst their rapid movements around her. Their footsteps were loud and heavy, so heavy that she thought her wrist had broken.
Amara realized now that they were repeating the same words in Arabic over and over again. It was almost like some kind of code that she needed to respond to. But the woman was completely lost. Maybe they weren’t sure it was a Christian home, at least not until they saw the crucifix on the wall.
The older one then instructed the younger one to kill her because she was, according to him, a pagan. He discovered the kids in the closet and they screamed at the top of their voices. He forced them out to lay beside their mother who wrapped both hands around them as she begged for their lives. Even with her head lowered, she discerned that the older one had retreated, leaving the other one to finish the job.
He gripped his gun, as if bracing himself before aiming it down at her.
She begged him with a trembling voice and quivering lips. But all her pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears.
He recited something that sounded like a prayer.
Daring to steal a glance at her attacker, she raised her head slightly and observed that he was struggling with his gun. Her eyes narrowed and a crazy thought came to her.
Without hesitation, she lunged at the boy, spearing into him with a brute force that nearly knocked him down. With both feet firmly planted to the ground, she struggled with him, wrestling the gun away from her attacker. His brows knitted, shock flickering in his gaze as he struggled against her incredible strength.
He squeezed the trigger and even as bullets came off, almost deafening her ears, she still didn’t let go. Amara directed his aim to the ceiling, holed with each shot. With all her might, she pushed forward and rammed his back hard against the wall.
On no account should that gun be lowered, she thought to herself as neither was ready to bend to the other’s strength. He stomped on her bare foot with his heavy boot but even that didn’t shake her off. She retaliated with a kick to the groin that forced him to release the gun for a second.
Amara snatched the damned thing and before she could use it, he unsheathed a blade and stabbed her in the leg. She groaned, staggering in pain and in that moment, an accidental discharge shot him in the arm. He grunted. She tried to shoot again but the gun was jammed so she yanked the blade from her thigh and jabbed it into the side of his head. His eyes popped, breath ceased and voices fell silent.
The veins in his temple throbbed, pumping out uncontrollable blood which sprouted on her body, staining her white pajamas. She left the knife buried in his skull and fell backwards, shuddering at what had just happened. Amara watched in shock as his now limp body slid over the wall and settled lifelessly on the floor. He was dead. She’d just killed someone.
She was a nurse and her job was to save lives not take them. But it was a death game tonight, kill or be killed.
She chose the former.
Groaning at her stab wound, she managed to stand, knowing it wasn’t safe to remain inside, especially now that she’d killed one of them. There was no time to dress the injury so she took her kids and ran out through the back.
It was chaotic out there, the rain was pouring heavily, drowning the sounds of rapid gun fire. The night was dark, illuminated only by the flames of burning buildings. She coughed, burying her nose in her elbow. Smoke filled the air, blending with the disturbing aura of death as a tornado of disorder and horror swirled the surrounding.
Dead bodies littered the streets, scarlet fluid flowed into the drains with runoff waters. Painful screams of dying men, women and children alike seemed to be the predominant sound in this wild environment. Some were gunned down, others butchered with axes and machetes. People’s brains were splattered on the ground, literally, skulls were cut open. Amara felt nauseated, not by the sight of blood, but by the sight of the stream of dead bodies that welled her feet.
She held her kids tightly in both hands and ran with a couple of others.
2:54 am
They were hiding behind a truck after so many futile attempts in finding a shelter from flying bullets and armed men with machetes. Amara checked her phone and there still were no bars. No network at all. She figured that they must have cut the telecommunication lines as they did the power.
She could still hear the muffled gunshots, resonating from a distance. She reassured her kids that all would be fine even though she doubted the possibility of that happening. Amarachi looked across the empty street and saw a man beckoning her to come over to his side.
He was with a couple of other people just like her, scared and confused. Their shelter was a grocery store which one of them was trying to open. Maybe he had the key or was struggling to destroy the lock, whatever the case, she figured staying with them would be better.
As soon as she attempted to join them, a military jeep cornered into the street, forcing her to hide back behind the truck. A masked man behind the machine gun on the same vehicle immediately opened fire.
The man who’d beckoned her was the first to go down and the others scattered, running for their lives, screaming. The vehicle chased after them with the machine gun pelting bullets around. Amara lifted her kids and ran in the opposite direction.
One of the assailants spotted and followed her into an uncompleted building.
Amara who had armed herself with a dagger she’d picked up from the ground a while ago was now hiding behind a wall; aware that she was being followed.
Unnerved, she tightened her grip around the hilt, waiting for him to walk through and he did.
That instant, she gutted his spleen with the knife, stabbing him in the same spot repeatedly to make sure that she punctured his splenic artery. She was, by the way, a nurse. Overwhelmed with resentful rage, she swung towards his throat and her blade cut through his pharynx. Both hands darted to his neck as blood squirted out of his slit esophagus. He choked on the blood that filled his mouth as the same thick red liquid from his throat trickled down between his fingers. He gagged, shaking with wide eyes until dropped to the ground. Dead.
Her chest rose and fell as she towered over his body, unable to recognize the woman she’d suddenly become.
3:14 am
Armed with her victim’s gun, she ran in the rain with her kids and didn’t stop until something caught her eyes across the street. Some Christian brothers and sisters were lined up and being executed, one after the other.
She took shelter behind some barricades and told her girls to cover their ears. They obeyed. Amara carefully aimed the rifle at the captors, her finger hovering over the trigger. She wasn’t a skilled shooter and so she had to be as focused as she could. One mistake and she’d shoot the wrong person. She heaved a sigh, her jaw tightening as she blinked rapidly, steeling herself.
The rifle was bigger than her and when she squeezed out the first round, the force from the gunshot shook her entire body. The attackers, shocked, raised their heads, their attention shifting toward her. But one by one, she shot them down. Soon, they were all dead.
Amara headed over there and asked if the captives were all right. Still in shock, they nodded. She instructed them to arm themselves with their captors’ guns and they all did, seven of them, one of whom was her pastor.
He would later ask how she learned to use a gun but right now, he had to focus on the task at hand.
For a while, they deliberated on whether to leave or keep hiding. But a majority of them were in favour of leaving because there was no place else to hide that they wouldn’t be seen. However, the big question was how they were going to leave town with all of those armed assailants swarming the place.
Amara sighted a bus across from them and head tilted to the side like she had an idea.
Pastor John traced her gaze to the bus and shook his head slowly. “Please, don’t tell me you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“Depends. What do you think I’m thinking?” She shrugged her shoulders.
“I think you’re thinking that getting on that bus would be a good idea, but you’re wrong. Ba ki da hankali ne?” He asked if she was nuts.
“Well, do you have a better plan?”
He was quiet. After a brief deliberation with the others, they all agreed to reach for the bus.
On their way, she saw a boy of about eight weeping over a dead woman who could be assumed to have been his mother. Everyone else threw their faces away including her pastor but she couldn’t live with herself knowing that she could have helped that poor boy but didn’t.
Amara entrusted her girls to the protection of the pastor and asked them all to board the bus and lay low while she went to get the boy. She was strongly advised against it but she ignored their words and rushed to the kid.
Seeing that she had a gun, the boy attempted to run away but she managed to convince him that she wasn’t the enemy. Amara hadn’t even finished talking when she took a bullet to the knee and another to her arm.
“Argh!” She fell into a small pond, feeling the unbearable pain coursing through her veins.
Her shooter came into view from within a thick blanket of smoke. He fired at her but his gun clicked empty. Amara struggled to stand, watching him tug at the trigger severally. She laughed mockingly, calling him a coward who couldn’t even fight a weak woman without his gun.
He frowned at her, rushed over and kicked her stomach a couple of times before lifting her effortlessly. A second later, her body splashed back into the puddle. He seized her head and forced her face into the pond of dirty water.
She was drowning, arms flailing. After a while, she gasped sharply as he pulled her head out and turned her over so he could look her in the eyes. With all his might, he pressed her down, watching her drown.
Her hands were slapping against his muscular arms as he choked her neck. She wheezed, groping the area on the muddy ground that her hand could feel. She touched a rock and pulled it into her hold with her fingertips. With a swift and powerful strike, she dented rock into his skull. He grunted and fell over to a side, holding his bleeding head.
Amara got up sluggishly, seized a rope from the ground and wrapped it around his neck. She choked him from behind, pulling that rope with every strength in her. His eyes bulged out as he struggled with the strain tightly gripped around his throat.
He choked. He gagged– wheezed. But she wouldn’t loosen her grip.
She saw some grenades amongst the gear he had on his belt. Quickly, she clutched one off and forced it down his throat. A second later, she dipped her hand inside his mouth and pulled the pin.
Amara kicked him away and jumped in the other direction as the explosion shattered his mouth, disfiguring his face. His body thudded into the pond of dirty water that soon turned red.
She dropped to her knees, damped to the skin by the rain. Blood washed off her wounds as water trickled down her body. Amara fell on her back, too weak, too tired to stand. She heard the sound of approaching footsteps splashing in the puddles.
“It’s over, Amara. They’ve retreated. Help is on the way,” pastor John said, carrying her in his arms.
She asked for her girls and was told that they were fine.
Sirens wailed in a distance as a line of army police vehicles came driving into the streets. It was now she concluded that it was indeed over…for that night anyway.
By the time the pastor checked his phone, it was around five in the morning.
