ICC Note:

The following is a work of fiction based on real life events. On the night of 14 April, Boko Haram militants abducted more than 240 schoolgirls from their secondary school in Chibok, a predominantly Christian village in Borno state. The girls, some of whom have been forcibly converted, married to Islamist militants as child brides and sold into sexual and domestic servitude, are 90% Christian. Immediately after their abduction, the girls were driven deep into the Sambisa forest, a forest known to the villagers as an ominous place of dark magic not to be disturbed. This forest assumes the setting for the below. 

06/14/2014 Nigeria (Think Africa Press) – Several loud gunshots came from the vicinity of the school gate, followed by piercing cries from my schoolmates. Boko Haram. It was time to say our last prayers. I took what I intended to be one last look at the bed of my best friend and neighbour. Her eyes locked into mine and reminded me of our pact, our agreement of less than a week earlier. Our mates in the dormitory were screaming and running in search of a place to hide from death; under the beds, behind the wardrobe, inside the huge plastic bucket that stored water.

I saw the youngest girl among us hide inside a Corn Flakes box and cover herself with clothes, shoes and exercise books. The box was slightly torn at the side and I could see the wooliness of her hair. Two JS-2 girls hit the iron burglary-proof bars of a window with the rickety wooden chair with which we used to play hot seat on people’s birthdays. We had always felt protected by the burglary bars, but that day they imprisoned us. About seven brave students hit at the locked door with an iron bed. Our matron usually locked the doors and took the keys away at 9 pm. Only a gunshot would have brought that door down. My best friend and I ran towards each other, to hold one another and await the bullet, the knife, or both.

There were two policemen who manned the entrance gate during our examinations. We covered our fright with the joke that being inadequately armed, they would most likely be the first to flee should Boko Haram attack. Some disagreed, saying the policemen had walkie-talkies and if they sensed danger they would immediately call for reinforcement. Salamatu, whose father is a police officer, said we need not fear, that although we could only see two police men, that hundreds were hiding in bushes behind the school compound and that there were even more plainclothes officers mingling with villagers. She swore that the man who supplied corn to the canteen that morning was her father’s friend in the force. We believed her. We could either believe or drop dead with fear.

So we carried on normally. We pretended not to live in the same Borno state where several people had been killed or maimed. We pretended it was not in nearby Yobe state that several boys our age were slain at a similar Federal Government Secondary School. We pretended as if I, Zainab, had not read from the newspaper I borrowed from the government teacher that there were Boko Haram bases in the Sambisa forest not too far from our school. But then, the only thing worse than death, our literature teacher had once quoted, is the fear of death itself.

A week before that tragic night, Magdalene my best friend woke me up in the middle of the night.

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