DEATH SENTENCE

I will die tonight.

My cold, lifeless body will leave the place I have regrettably called home for the last seven years. The women will wash my body and whisper in hushed tones, commenting on the purple marks on my arms, the fresh red welts on my thighs and the small cigarette burns dotted all over my back. For the love and safety of their lives, they will shut their eyes and seal their lips. They will cover me with the white shroud and put me on a makara, the local wooden stretcher, completing their duty to me.

The men’s turn will come. They will stand in rows and pray over me, asking Allah to have mercy upon my soul and theirs. Then, they will carry me on their shoulders, to my final resting place and entrust me to the dark earth. Raliya will cease to exist.

If I stay, I will die tonight.

My heart hammered like a drum in my chest, my stomach churning as I wipe my sweaty hands on the thin blanket wrapped around my body. It was a full moon night, and the large compound was eerily quiet as I peeked outside from behind the repurposed grain sack that was my room curtain. The tall dogonyaro tree that stood in the center of the yard cast a long shadow that only served to increase my fear. The quiet stillness of the compound meant that everyone had gone to sleep. But I knew he would come still, and I knew I couldn’t wait for him. Waiting meant dying.

When the night was still young, I had spoken out of turn. No, I had done something worse, I had spoken out of turn and disagreed with Murtala in front of everyone. The shock was immediate and caught him off guard, his tiny, beady eyes bulged out of their sockets and I thought of a frog, looking at a juicy fly. Then they narrowed as he looked at me with eyes like a snake. He clicked his tongue, turned around, and breezed out of the compound, and I needed no telling of what was to come.

Now, as I snuck my battered and bruised body out of the small, windowless room that had housed my nightmares, I cursed and blessed the courage that had pushed me to do it. It has doomed and saved me.

I readjusted the blanket over my head and around my body, a pair of flip-flops secured firmly underneath my armpit. If I made it past the creaking door of the zaure, the rest would be easy. Running would be easy.

The contents of my bladder threatened to spill when I heard Murtala’s voice on the other side of the zaure door. I recognized the drawl in his voice. It was the one he usually had when he was drunk to a stupor.

‘Raliya ta, Raliya ta ,yau zaki ci ubanki‘. He chanted, about how his Raliya would suffer today. Sangami, our neighbor and Murtala’s partner in everything deplorable, was trying to guide him into the house. A jolt of courage ran through me like a live current. I would die where I stood, but I would never walk back with my legs into that room.

As fast as my sprained ankle-another one of Murtala’s gifts- would allow, I drag myself to the space between the mud wall of the entrance and the clay water pot that served as a wedge to hold the door open during the day. Every fiber of my being prayed for the trick to work. For the door, the darkness, and their drunkenness to hide me well enough that they don’t notice until I am long gone.

I thanked God a million times as I hobbled through the soft sand, for letting Murtala and Sangami get drunk enough to think that my welp of pain as the aluminum door hit my leg was the sound of a cat. They had staggered in, yelling profanities and cackling like witches on night duty.

Now, as I set toward my father’s house, my prayer changed. ‘God, please don’t let him send me back. For once, let him believe his daughter. Let him believe me.’ I prayed.

My parents lived a fifteen-minute walk away. With my bad leg, it took forever and when I finally stood in front of the locked doors of my father’s shop, the hot ball of tears that had been stuck in my throat finally set itself upon my cheeks, wetting them like a stream.

I walk to the back of our house, too agitated to laugh at the group of smoking miscreants who stumbled over each other in their rush to get away from the hooded creature hobbling toward them in the dead of night.

In what must be my ten millionth prayer of the day, I asked Allah to make it so that my mother was asleep alone in her room, and that only she would hear me whisper and let me in the house.

My father would raise hell otherwise. Not because his married daughter was so terribly battered and feared for her life enough to escape in the middle of the night, but because she – a married woman- had failed to endure what has been decreed for her by Allah and had rebelled against her husband and against God. It was blasphemy. It was a shame. It was the height of disgrace for Mallam Iro, my father.

But I knew he did it because he never loved me. I, the daughter he never wanted. The dent in his otherwise perfect image. The reflection of his crookedness staring at him like his own reflection in a mirror. His little unwanted Bastard. The one he wanted so badly to get rid of, he married her to the first man to ask, who was also the vilest and meanest of men. That, too, at the tender age of fifteen.

I breathed a sigh, relieved at the sleepy whispers of Mama as she responded, her voice laced with shock. She asked no questions. She did not need to. Instead, she held my trembling body, helping me along as we walked quietly into her room.

‘Is this not your path to Paradise?’ Baba queried in the morning, his brows furrowing in utter disapproval and hate as he sat on the small wooden chair in front of Mama’s room.

‘A good woman endures and does not leave her marital home for any reason, without her husband’s permission. He added, slapping his palms onto the concrete in a fearful display of anger ‘What did you do to him? I’m sure you did something. What is it?’

I felt faint, the strength of my sobs threatened to overpower me.

“Baba, wallahi I didn’t do anything.” I swore, barely whispering, my voice hoarse from crying. Mama was dying to speak. I could tell from her several ‘hmm’ and how the sides of her mouth twitched. But I knew she wouldn’t, for fear of the consequences.

My father would hit her with a reminder of her barrenness and how her support for me was a lie- even though she had given the best years of her life to him and the bastard daughter he brought.

My heart dropped to my stomach in a thud that rang through my head like a church bell when I heard the unmistakable voice calling out from the entrance to our yard.

“Gafara dai.” Please excuse me. Murtala never used the phrase; “Assalamualaikum” when he entered upon people.
Baba answered with a vigor and gladness that I didn’t realize he was capable of in the moment.

“Bismillah. Come in.”

I was hot and immediately wanted to pee. All of Murtala’s haughtiness seemed to have disappeared and in place was a solemn man come to take his wife. I prayed. Hard.

“Touch my father’s heart just once, oh God.”

Murtala was in a deep squat in front of Baba, offering greetings, his voice low and solemn. Bile rose to my throat as my teary eyes met his cold soulless ones and I stand to my feet as quickly as my sore leg allowed. I followed in my mother’s footsteps as she withdrew to her room as expected. To let the men talk.

This was how it always happened. Murtala would spend several long minutes with Baba. I would sob endlessly, my tears and snot soaking through Mama’s wrapper as she cradled my head in her lap and uttered the word “Patience” over and over again.

When everything was all said and done between the men, I would follow Murtala, like sheep, to the slaughterhouse.

I prayed to die. I prayed for Murtala to die. I prayed for my father to die. I prayed for divine intervention. It’s been seven years and whatever trick it was that Murtala pulled- as I hear them laugh heartily after what felt like forever- worked.

After all this time, it works.