WRECKED 8 7

Laraba vividly remembered the day a friend of her mother's had stopped suddenly on the way home from the market and grabbed her mother's arm. "My friend, listen to me, we are all going to die!"

Laraba, fifteen at that time, found that hard to believe. They had survived trouble before and they would survive again. Still, when the neighbouring town was attacked for the third time, she got very scared. Soon, families in her neighbourhood, even though they continued working in the day, slept in the bushes far from their homes at night, for fear of underhand tricks. Not hers, though.

The reign of terror in her home area began sometime in March 2013. Her family decided to leave the house when they heard their town was about to be attacked. They escaped in different directions. Her brother and a younger sister escaped to Monguno that afternoon. Laraba and her twin sister, Miriam, separated from their parents and hid in a trench behind a church.

As soon as darkness settled, the town of Chibok was caught up in horror. The gun and machete-wielding men arrived, slitting throats and opening re on residents. Cries and screams rent the fear-scented air; men shouted, women screamed and children cried. Intermittently, shouts of "Allahu Akhbar' disturbed the ow.

Laraba took a firm grip of her sister's hand and gave it a squeeze. In that moment, Laraba cherished holding her sister, Miriam, more than ever.

"Be brave. It will be over soon," Miriam whispered.

The terror raged for three hours; did not break until the gunmen seemingly ran out of ammunition and pulled back into the darkness.

The girls did not dare move, and when they finally left the trench at dawn, early rays illuminated a horrific scene of carnage through the lingering billows of smoke. They trod on a dead man at every step; ghastly bodies and glassy eyes; dead faces expressing supreme fear and terror. The angel of death and destruction loomed over Chibok, as most of the landscape now seemed obliterated by the hard hand of combat.

The girls seemed shell-shocked as they quietly took in the awful scene. Then Laraba stumbled and fell on a mutilated body. Miriam quickly helped her to her feet but Laraba could not bring herself to move, still feeling the warmth from the corpse. She had never seen much chaos happen before her eyes. She tried to think of it as a bad dream, but it was not. Everything was real and happening here and now. She could see fellow neighbours and friends, those who had survived, on the dusty road. Some lay helpless on the dusty road, while flies hovered around their wounds. Innocent people butchered. Laraba tried to imagine herself as one of the gunmen. It was difficult to think through this perspective, imagining herself slaughtering young children with a machete and screaming the name of Allah. She could not get the gunmen's voices to stop ringing in her ears. It would never go away, she thought.

But it did, for a while, as Miriam tapped her and pointed to their parents running towards them.

****

Laraba tried in vain to sleep. She lay on the bed thinking and trying not to think about it all. Her home felt violated just as she did, even though the men had not reached their home area. She could feel their presence everywhere. She got up, went to the bathroom and scrubbed herself again, from head to feet, trying to get the feeling of the dead man o her. For a full thirty minutes, she stood there shivering, unconsciously letting the water dry on her body.

She finally brought herself to leave the bathroom. She dressed up, walked to the kitchen and boiled water to make tea. It would help the shivers, she thought. The sound of voices coming from the next house was curiously soothing, and she was able to sit on the family's worn-out couch and relax. When the shivering subsided, the tiredness overtook her and she drifted o to sleep. The sound of sirens startled her, jerking her awake. The military. Now they came, but it was too late. Homes had been destroyed, lives lost.

The tears began to ow, and she curled into the corner of the couch, trying not to cry too loudly, listening for noises in the house, signalling the rise of the sleeping ones.

It was noon when the trembling and the tears finally began to ease o, Laraba forced herself to stand up and stretch. She limped to the kitchen as her parents came out of their room, looking grim but alive. She filled her cup with more water and walked into the bedroom where Miriam still lay facing the wall, probably lost in her own morbid thoughts. Laraba opened the curtains fully so that she could see the trees moving in the wind when she lay down on the bed. She watched the branches swaying, dancing, the grey clouds behind them scudding along at a merry pace. The top of the branches waved at her, lying wretched and shivering to pieces under the faded blanket.

All she wanted to do was stay alive.

****

After three weeks of not hearing from Laraba's brother and sister who had gone to Munguno to stay with Granny, her parents presumed they had been killed, along with Granny and other relatives, and they were never to hear from them again.

So now, it was just Laraba and Miriam, her sister and best companion. Like most twins, they were facially identical. That was where the resemblance ended. Miriam, ample-bosomed, fiesty, was everything Laraba wasn't. She even had grander dreams. She was studying hard to get admission into a university to study medicine, desperate to get out of their boring village and move to any of the better cities. Lagos, Kaduna or Abuja would suit Miriam, Laraba thought. Already she was too bold and vivacious for Chibok. Her cheerful disposition set her in bold relief against the dreary village life.

Laraba didn't have those fancy ambitions. She wanted to pass her secondary school certificate exams and teach in the Community Primary school. Stay close to her parents, marry a good man and have a family of her own. It was a favourable and unselfish ambition since her father could only afford to pay the JAMB fees for only one of his daughters.

Miriam came into the kitchen with a little squeak of delight and sat on the small stool.

"You look like you've got some news," Laraba said, dropping chopped onions into hot oil.

"Guess, Laraba. Guess!" Laraba took several guesses as Miriam hopped from one bum cheek to another.

A small frown furrowed between Miriam's neatly shaped eyebrows. "What's with all your failed guesses. How do you hope to be a good teacher if you can't think right?"

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"You tell me. Stop being tiresome." The excitement of holding her news in bubbled over at last and Miriam's eyes sparkled with delight.

"I passed my JAMB," she said, fishing out a print of paper from the inside of her blouse and waving it in the air. "275!" she screamed.

"Shut up! No way! Let me see." Laraba said in delight, snatching the paper from her screaming sister.

Genuinely thrilled, Laraba gave her a hug, as they squealed and jumped up and down.

"I'm getting out of this town. Finally!" Miriam said.

This is it…the time has finally arrived, Laraba thought. She would be left in Chibok while her sister went o to pursue bigger things.

I'd be looking to escape myself, Laraba thought, but my dream is here, in Chibok.

Chapter end