Tears of the Northeast Child: Coming from Sambisa

By Dan Kwajaffa

LITERATURE/FICTION

He fired her heartthrob and schemed to return her back to her erstwhile abductors in Sambisa Forest from whom and whence he rescued her but
In a semiarid region of Nigeria rose evil that reigned supremely but for a while. Just like the fifth century blood thirsty Attila-The -Hun who rained torture, rape and death on all who stood on his way in mediaeval Europe, his type, a Shekau, unleashed terror on the Northern Province of Nigeria almost unabatedly. At the same period, a Belquis, a Malala - a genius, a Princess of Sambisa Kingdom with unsullied beauty, love and vigor, rose to stardom when the quasi-Mujahedeen whose incursions on Africa, had her chauvinist boss and suitor, Batibci Hyelkuzuku, radicalized and conscripted for an idealistic objective with a repugnant nihilism. Batibci bedevils her relationship with architect Klara Jikamya, his archrival, but she never decided and he inferred. She lacks Sense and Sensibility. Could he be truthful?
*****
This eloquent page-turner, TEARS OF THE NORTHEAST CHILD: Coming from Sambisa is an exploratory epic a thriller, a daring tale. It boldly depicted love tussle, the hatred and barbarism from individuals and the terror group, and gave insights into the plights of IDPs and refuges in Northeastern Nigeria plus the worlds longing and strives with optimism for better days ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Dec 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482809602

Dan Kwajaffa

Author Dan Kwajaffa is an Architect, an altruist, a fiction and motivational writer. He writes this novel with the Aristotelian Mimesis praxeos concept and Kafkaesque’s narrative style. His novel is an inimitable tale, with expositions to historical facts - while possessing both old and contemporary settings. His artistic presentation in this book is also in the African and western English flavor via a stream of consciousness technique, which in trickles tickles the mind, provokes and evokes the desire for further readings and incremental changes in the society. His mazy style somewhat agrees with the playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan saying, easy writing’s vile hard reading. Dan Kwajaffa is a native of Kwajaffa village, one of the villages in Southern Borno, Nigeria, most hit by the Boko Haram aggression. He lives in Nigeria, writing on topical issues of interest, besides designing and erecting edifices of great integrity - copious residential and commercial structures within Nigeria. He had undergone studies in Tourism and Travels Management at the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), Nigeria; of which the knowledge he acquired reflects in both his writings and architecture. Dan holds a Masters equivalent degree (B. ARCH) in Architecture from the well-esteemed Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, A.T.B.U, Bauchi. He edited this prose, his second book and his first novel.

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Copyright © 2015 by Dan Kwajaffa.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Contents

Recognition

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

Author’s Note

For

The Nigerian Military.

BOOK ONE

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COMING FROM SAMBISA

Where are the leaders, are the emancipators the prophets? Where?

Where are the magicians, the securities, are the stiff-necked charging on the rednecks?

Where is democracy, since days of Abacha and its might be spoken then?

Our souls empty, our spirits and of many departed cry.

Shall we go mad in vengeance? To whom shall we throw our spears?

Faceless, faceless, they take the ostriches’ position.

Arise! Mother of our land and hug your child, and in dignity protect her.

Many days gone, tears endless drop, tears ended, lives lost, hopes in oblivion, love conquers all, peace! Be still.

Iniquity and Inequity

Kwajaffa Danny

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RECOGNITION

My deep appreciation to the staff of Partridge Africa, Penguin Publishers, particularly my Publishing Consultant and Publishing Services Associate with whom we all work assiduously to transform my manuscript into this beautiful novel of which I am proud you’re now reading. They encouraged me greatly with your motivational supports, in calls and emails.

I’m pleased to give an honorable mention to some of my meritorious Friends, Onjefu Odaudu, Engr. Mathew Shiga - of blessed memory, Sunday Davou Lokyeng – Tutu, Frank Bala Oscar, and others who had been of great encouragement to my writing and publishing endeavors. Big thanks to you all and, much more, to our gracious Lord Almighty.

Dan Kwajaffa

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PROLOGUE

T EARS OF THE NORTHEAST CHILD: Coming from Sambisa is an exploratory epic-thriller, which is both historically factual and shrewdly fictional.

A history of a people with very good culture is sandwiched in this story of a village-girl-made-good, from a rural-urban living amidst love tussle and the whirlwind of life, which could not deter her star from rising. The religious bigotry and an unholy politiquing which had taken the lives of too many in this ‘terrorist epoch’, a civilized 21st Century Africa is ‘seen’ in a Northeastern Nigerian enclave whose poise, rage and outrage had shadowed at some point in time. It’s a nation with pride over its rich culture which is now traumatized and so desirous of emancipations and of a ‘marshal plan’ and ‘reorientation’.

When one looks at it from some point of view, the book transverses, captures, allegorizes and satirizes Nigeria and its security challenges through the eyes – characters, lives, and times of three Construction Company workers. They were, a virtuous woman, a gentle man and a tough guy who was with a fanatical group, Quasi-Mujahedeen, whose interest and ideals they tried to force on a Nigerian society. Peace eludes every one with, imminently, alarming destructions.

The story readily dealt with Mujahedeen’s actions and likewise, the desired peace, freedom and strives for survival by IDPs and other well meaning people all over the world within and after the storm - until such societal ills are nip in the bud.

It points at man’s indifference to evenhanded justice, whose consequential effects load on fellow human beings and the physical environment vis-à-vis extremism and the modern day barbaric slavery.

This historical, philosophical, social, experimental and a science-fiction novel comes serially, with Coming from Sambisa as book 1 of 3 where it culminates in the third as a trilogy.

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1

November 2014

S he opened her eyes and the first figure she saw was a dark USO , unidentifiable stationary object. It appeared dark to her because she came out of a deep, peacefully dying sleep.

She tried as much as she could to blink but she couldn’t because the rheum from the longitudinal corners of her ‘grasshopper eyes’ had gummed her upper and lower eyelids, making it difficult for her to open-wide her eyes, which only gave her a blurred vision - everything was blurred and undecipherable to her. Then, the figure was sitting right beside her.

Could it be my mere imagination or some hallucination, as it seems? Rather, could it be a silhouette of a being I’m seeing or not. One thing I’m not sure of is to whether it’s something else real, even though it’s a 3-D image. She wonders.

In any case, she eventually concluded it’s an animal of a sort which looks like the type she used to see much often in her home place, her community, her village called Sambisa, a village in the Sahel savanna. Some call it The Sambisa Forest, which was the cradle and hub of insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria. There, she grew up knowing it as her home place.

Be it a forest, a hamlet or a village makes no difference to me. It’s the land of my birth and I’m proud of it. She often thought and encouraged herself.

As every natural thing around was pleasant to her, so the very strange image before her, in her bed, three feet apart, whence, she lay down, half-covered in her blanket; enjoying its warmth and defying the dry and windy harmatan in the tropical Sahara which was ice-cold and then freezing terribly.

She just woke up, even though she’s still motionless in bed and presently watching the dark and fully hairy being that looks like a human eye-balling her with his eyes that looks like an ill puppy’s, obviously weird.

His eye sockets were partially concave to a dent on both hemispheres. The nose was broad by its tip and dented midway between it and the forehead. The protruding mouth with its thick broader, longer upper, and shorter lower lips was quite outlandish, almost like the proboscis of mosquitoes that plagued the inhabitants of the province, long before the eras of Boko Haram or the Mujahedeen’s incursions on Africa and in Sambisa Land.

As she struggled to uncover such a jigsaw puzzle of a being, it remains inert with its heavily bushy eyebrows and eyelashes that never winked her, not even a bit – fair enough, she once in the forest came across a dark smallish monkey that winked her rapidly severally, just like a human but faster than a human and she marveled. This moment, the being in question has its set of teeth in its awful brown-black color, evidence of lack of tooth brushing.

Unarguably, it was an impression of an Orangutan in its ugly beautification that adorns a jungle, sitting next to her at that very provokingly close range.

Orangutans were some of her many pets and affable animals in Sambisa Forest. If only one of them were to be gigantic enough, a live episode of King Kong would have taken place. This time however, she’s uncertain about the identity of this very one, the impression she’s seeing seated in her bed. Could it be real or virtually a nightmare? She’s nonplussing some more.

No. It’s her brown fur jacket mimicking an orangutan, she realized. The one she wore the night before, on her outing, where she attended the Centenary Celebration at the Eagle Square Abuja. That day, when Sabianatra returned home haggard and worn-out like Hagar, she threw the jacket beside her, on the bed, to ease herself from its discomforting weight. Moreover, the jacket clustered itself in a strange form like the simian whose image sends her daydreaming about her village in the morning. She kept watching it until she came out of the bed with a start. Impressed by its mimicry, she jovially slapped the jacket and drew it to the wardrobe and walked out of the bedroom in her silky, pinkish pajama, which subliminally brings out her gorgeous seductive shape and looks and suitably tabled them to those who could dare her if she’s a single. And if, single and still waiting, for the man of her life as her custom stipulated for any girl from sixteen years of age and above, she would then welcome them via a due process.

She walked to the kitchen with her cell phone in hand, as she wanted to know the time, date and the missed calls. It’s 7:35am, and there’re five missed calls blinking from her Samsung cell phone’s screen boldly - all of them from Ya’gana. After that, she commenced her early morning’s routine of making the house neat and tidy. Most times, even from without, one could hear her hum some sweet songs while cutlery, plates, forks, knives and cups jangle and clank as she washes them; to transform the over used shabby kitchen and its utensils to a neat hygienic looking space of which anyone can be comfortable and proud.

Princess Sabianatra Salvia came out of the kitchen afterward with dried dual paths of tears below her eyelids, perspiration on her nose and forehead; she’s frenzied and sneezing repeatedly. The onion she used to fry manshanu, cow fat - processed to a native butter, had sizzled and overheated, turning into the black burnt amorphous pieces of flakes, which emit smoke that makes one to sneeze and cough as if under attack of influenza. If she were not frying up something in her scullery, she would have rightly concluded in line with a native superstition: The sneezing is a hunch, which indicates a gossip might have been discussing badly about her or is after her. That wouldn’t have been an abysmal conjecture, anyway. ‘Bruce and Company’ is desperately needing her to mete out dollars in a, contemporarily, ‘fetish manner’. It wasn’t very different; Ba’tibci Hyelkuzuku is restless until he woos her to himself – he’s an enterprising person. However, the local superstitions did not tie down Sabianatra as it could before, when she was much younger and somewhat subservient to all cultural ethoses. Now at twenty-five and exposed, she discerns things faster and better. She discarded the dogmatic superstition as if by the wave of the hand.

Then, she had real tears, not the onion-induced tears-of-joy gushing out of her eyes like a stream of consciousness from the mind of Virginia wolf. Fresh tears ran down her cheeks again, at the recollection of some great moments she shared together with her family, which were no more, which the insurgents presumably wiped out, and which she missed greatly, especially her dad, King Purpu Salvia ll. He was the paramount ruler of The Kingdom of Sambisa, a descendant of Mai Idris Alooma - the emperor of the great Bornu Empire of whom she only ones, added the clause, ‘Of blessed memory’ after his name - with all due respect to their ethics. Because his people did not inter him - They didn’t find his body and he might resurface any time.

King Salvia was a strict committed father; he is an aristocrat, a teacher and a ‘friend’ to Sabianatra, his beloved daughter - since her childhood. She’s aged ten when her dear mom passed on.

King Purpu lavished affection on her, taking her to prestigious places that could give her some succor for the missing part of parenthood she never had. He took her out to places of amusements, parks and various sport arenas around and across Africa. She many times watched him played and emerged best in what he loved doing most at his leisure time.

He was a pro in archery and dart - games he mastered with his native bow and arrows and spears - years back, during their annual hunting expeditions in Sambisa Forest, while living natively before an American missionary named Bowman Snow sent him to school. He was so good in shooting that he could no longer continue to be a hunter. In his hay days, she eye-witnessed his collecting numerous trophies at the Lake Chad Club, Ashaka Cement and Naraguta County Clubs, Ikoyi Club, as well as in Las Vegas. It was much more; he takes her on a jaunt, walking the exotic streets of the ‘city of angels’ and New York’s Manhattan together; lunching and dining in the MacDonald’s and Taco Bell; allowing her to sunbath at that beach in Florida; it’s a sweet memory of a life-time to both of them, you know. However, it was an opened gossip in the village; he almost made her a spoilt brat - terribly pampered - all in an effort to make up for the affection she could have enjoyed from her late mom, were she alive.

She had leadership training from her dotting father and the collective moral inputs of her two stepmothers, so Sabianatra’s uncompromising and respectful disposition had earned her a place in the hearts and minds of the Sambisans.

Who didn’t hear of Sabianatra Salvia in Sambisa and its surrounding towns and villages? Even the duikers, derby elands and the pelicans around the forest must have heard about her. The village girls do either whisper her names or, sing her songs of admirations, with the accolades only meant for princesses like her - on their ways, with woods for cooking or water pots on their shoulders, to fetch or drink water from the brooks that unite men and beast in a shambalaic manner. The brooks whose source was a rift valley, a geographical product of plate tectonic gave rise to creeks where monkeys enjoy assorted fruits, jumping and swinging from one tree to another leisurely. Herbs and fire woods are harvested, water for domestic uses and, the Shadoof irrigation for dry-farming was practiced; feeding the villagers their hunger and their neighbors with carrots, melons, tomatoes, cabbages and lettuce; even maize were grown and fodders for their cattle. Not to forget too soon, the rats, squirrels and the hares that still feed and play around as they reminiscence Sabianatra’s capture by the insurgents and the hunting of their siblings and grannies by her people:

"It’s awful - men are demented’ one of the rodents, whose name is Birbur, cried; ‘we might never forget what they do to us until the day of reckoning.’"

Kalau: Yes, of course you’re right my brother. These beings call humans are weird. They don’t even seem to have sense of what they’re doing on this planet earth. They work hard every single day to survive and to improve their lives but oops! One day after another, they kill themselves; they die, leaving behind everything.

Birbur: Most annoying even was their interference with our lives. When their anger rises, they let it fall on us like a sledgehammer, killing us in mass. I think we need to map out some boundary adjustment to safe guard our lives and our