It has been 146
days since the Majlis sent word around about the coming of the darkness. The note
had come in scribbled Arabic; passed around from one compound, to hamlet. The scribe
seems hurried to jot his message. And then it came upon us. The dust in the
darkness.
That is what we
have come to call them, for that is how they come upon one village after
another after another. They raise a mighty black flag and leave behind, raging
fire, wanton destruction, the smells of death in the air, and silence in the
hearts of those who live till dawn.
And that is what
they have veiled my heart with – silence. For when Inna calls out, silence
answers. When the government people come to fight with those camera totting
people for verified numbers, though missing, silence answers.
I am Rifkatu, I’m
15 years old, and a Christian. Better put, an arniya, kafiruna as they have
chosen to call us here – pagans, infidels. Maybe they are right, for in despairing
silence of 146 days; of whispers in prayer, my God turned a deaf ear. Maybe
not. He did answer Israel’s prayer in Masar. And Ayuba? Wasn’t he tried, and
God commanded that his soul be spared? And Idris? Wasn’t he taken by God? The
only man never to see death? Oh, yeah, and Iliya who was ferried by chariots in
to heaven, after he escaped death
Well, Idris, my
Sunday School teacher saw death. We all cried the day he was carried away, and
then more wails when we finally found his headless body, decaying in the
searing heat of the Malawa Mountains.
Maybe like
Ayuba, this is my trial. Dragged all the way to that white pickup and loaded
like a goat. I could never forget the color of that pickup. It shone in the
cold night. The moon reflected off it and off the cold darkness that peered
upon my soul in that turban. He had the height of my big brother, Habila. But he
looked like he hadn’t eaten in a long while. He waived his gun at will, and
sent fear down the spines of every girl couched in the pickup.
