AFTER WHAT FELT LIKE an eternity, Jubril heard an approaching commotion. By their shouts and songs, he was sure they were Muslim. As the mob surrounded the house, the Pentecostals shut up like croaking toads whose ponds have been invaded. The image of Musa and Lukman loomed in his mind. He was so afraid that he could not pray anymore. He thought about standing up to flee, to deny his two friends the joy of finally killing him. But when he realized that the Christians who had prayed moments before, as if the whole earth belonged to them, did not move, even to defend themselves, he calmed down. It was just as well, because when he stretched his leg a bit he realized that he was still too weak to stand.
He waited for the door to burst open, for his fellow Muslims to rush in and kill him. He waited for their torches to fill the darkness with momentary light that would be followed by the eternal darkness of death. The mob seemed to have gone past the house and run farther into the savannah. He breathed again, and after some time he heard footsteps in what seemed to be a corridor next door. Listening hard, he picked up the low but unrelenting whispers of Hail Marys. They actually sounded closer to him now than the earlier ecstatic prayers had. He thanked Allah again that he had not moved when he first heard the Muslims. Who knew what these whispering Christians would have done to him?
He was still trying to figure out where he was when the mob came back, its chants louder and its numbers greater than before. When the leaders demanded to see the owner of the house, Jubril almost fainted.
“Quick quick, bring out de inpidels!” someone commanded the man. “You dey hide dem por your house.”
“I get no stranger for my house,” the man said.
“One last time, we say bring dem out o.”
“I say I no get visitor for house.”
“Some feople say you dey hide feople por your house. Dem tell us say you do de same ting during de last riots, two years ago.”
“I be Mallam Yohanna Abdullahi,” he said. “I be teacher, serious Muslim.”
“We know.”
“So why I go hide infidel for house?”
“Because some of us Muslims be traitors.”
“Some of us dey helf dis souderners escafe when Allah done give dem to us to wife out,” said another man.
“Dis Igbo feofle,” said another, “dis delta feofle, dis Yoruba feofle, de whole menace prom soud, all of dem must die!”
“Dem no like us Hausa feofle,” said yet another.
The mallam said, “Me, I be Hausa man too. . . . How can I protect anybody who no like my tribe, you understand?”
“Well, if we see dem por your house we go kill you o.”
Jubril could not believe what he had heard. It shocked him that his host was a Hausa Muslim. It sounded like a play, and he waited for him to crack under the pressure. They lined up his sons and warned them that their mob had already killed many Hausa Muslims who attempted to hide the infidels. But the sons of Abdullahi were all as courageous as their father and insisted that they had no strangers in their midst.
When the mob came in to search the house, they were a drove of locusts in their destructiveness. They said they were going to be rough on Mallam Abdullahi and his family because they had been informed that he had protected Christians and southerners in past riots. They searched for infidels in the kitchen, fighting over the food; they looked for infidels in the barns, looting yams and bags of peanuts. They hunted for infidels in the inner chambers of the man’s house, abusing his wives and daughters to avenge the fact that Mallam Abdullahi had helped people in the past. Nobody in Jubril’s room could pray aloud anymore. Like Jubril, they were all storming heaven silently, asking God to give more courage to their host.
The door to the room burst open, and a gust of wind swept in. But nobody entered. Mallam Abdullahi was by the door with two men who harassed him and pushed him around. He was barefoot and wearing a jumper. Jubril could hear another group approaching, chanting war songs, and closed his eyes and waited.
“Wetin dey inside, mallam?” asked one of those with Abdullahi.
“Notting,” he said.
“Sure?”
“Just some prayer mats. Yes, for my entire family. . . . You want make I open de window for you?”
He attempted to enter the room, but they dragged him away.
It was only when they had been gone for a few minutes that Jubril realized that he was covered in sweat and his lips were quivering. Before now he would have hunted down the infidels himself, but the betrayal by Musa and Lukman had changed him and his outlook. The mere thought that he had been hidden beneath other people’s prayer mats was too much for him. He heard one or two people around him sobbing, and tears ran down his face as well. They were the first tears of joy he had shed in his life. He would never have thought of allowing an infidel to touch his prayer mat. He could not have asked the Abdullahi family for more, and even if one of the family members now gave them up, it would not have made much difference to Jubril, because of all they had sacrificed up to that point. He was filled with thanksgiving, with a mysterious pride that his fellow Muslims could risk everything for infidels. With one hand he held on to the prayer mats tenderly. He blessed Abdullahi, whose family prayer mats were holy enough for all.
THE WIND CAME IN and filled the room, and people scrambled to hold the mats in place. Then Jubril felt his mat being pulled down toward the floor on either side. He almost shouted in fear. The pressure increased gently but firmly, keeping the mats from blowing away.
“Hold the mats!” whispered a frightened Christian into Jubril’s ear.
“Abeg . . . no kill me, abeg,” Jubril pleaded instinctively.
As his unknown companions pulled the mats closer, he gingerly inched his pocketed wrist away from the pressure. In the darkness, he figured there must be at least five or six other praying and anxious strangers under the same mats. These other people kept calling on Jesus and Mary to save them, their supplications subsumed in the commotion of the mob outside.
“For Christ’s sake, hold the mats with two hands,” another neighbor admonished Jubril. “What is in your pocket that’s dearer to you than your life?”
“Notting,” he said to the Christians. “Just dey help me . . . I be one of you.”
“Lazy man, hold de mats!”
As they whispered back and forth, they knew that their lives all hung in the balance and that if anyone panicked, they would all perish—including Mallam Abdullahi and his terrorized family. Still unable to secure the mats with two hands, Jubril was relieved when his neighbors reached out to help him.
This joint effort to survive and Abdullahi’s courageous witness filled Jubril with hope. In that dark room, he experienced a joy he could not explain, a joy that he would feel later on informed his belief that Allah would protect him in a busload of Christians.
Lying there, he became awake to everything, like a Sufi contemplative, surrendering completely to Allah’s will. In his heart, he began to invoke the divine name of his creator. He would have loved to have broken out in wild celebration, but he held his body so still that his spirit seemed to expand, celebrating Allah’s grandeur.
He could feel his precious breath crawl through the hairs in his nostrils, then swell his stomach. He could feel a running sensation in his lower legs. The skin where his two knees touched, which had been numb, now had a throbbing ache. Jubril was present to the trembling in his neighbors’ hands as they helped him hold his mats in place, and he could sense the heat from the bare floor entering his back. He could feel his sweat fill up his pores, tumble out, and tie his body to the floor in long watery ropes, soaking his wounds and clothes. His wounds began to hurt afresh. Saliva, which had dried in his mouth when the fanatics struck, flowed again and tasted good to him. Even the smell of the mats seemed wonderful. He was fully alive. His whole body, except his cut wrist, praised Allah silently, in the manner creation celebrates its intricacy, in ways no mortal can fully comprehend.