Everyone has seen my nakedness! What have I done to deserve this after all I have suffered for my children?
What happened?
I work for a woman, an elderly woman who lives at Ijaiye, so I leave the house every day at 4am; if I don’t leave that early, I could never be able to get to my destination on time. You see, here in Ijora, it is a slum, we live in Amukoko, it is a densely populated area, if you need to be at your place of work, you have to be up early, if you slumber too much, by the time you get up, take your queue at the one bathroom that every one of us in this house uses…and there are 63 of us occupants, including children…though the young children bathe outside, on top of the clogged up gutter you saw in front of the house; we put a plank there for people to walk over to access the house, it is also the same wood for children to and upon and take a bath, so that their bath water can go straight into that gutter, never mind that the gutter does not flow.
So I would wake up early, put an empty bucket in the row of early risers to indicate my turn at the bathroom…most times, I would have to go and fetch water in front of the house because there really is no place to preserve water in my room.
This room, it is the one I share with my other four children; two boys and two girls; the girls sleep on the bed with me and the boys lay on the mat; once we shut the door, there really is no more room to take anything; you can see that our items clothes, kitchen utensils, all are in this same room, but we push them to the side and lay the mat for my sons to lie.
So as I was saying, I go out early and come back late; it has to be late because of the mad traffic everyday including Sundays…Ijora is densely populated and the roads are horrible, though the government is making attempts but as you can see, we need help.
So as I was saying, as soon I got down from the okada that dropped me at the junction to our street, I noticed an unusual crowd…on a normal day, even at 10.15pm, the streets are still full of people. People who don’t go inside their stuffy rooms until sleep has completely over taken them; people like my children, who know that once I lock my door, and there is no nepa, we would almost be suffocated because my room has just one window and that window faces a fence to the next house.
Why do I lock the door? I have young girls here; 19 years the other is just 15 years; armed robbers break in, you know, they rape girls. So that door must be locked!
So you see, it is a slum area, spaces are scarce, the people are plenty. Again like I said, I didn’t know that anything was wrong but I saw women, girls…usually, you would normally encounter young men this period of day, the elderly women, most responsible girls would be indoors but I saw everyone out…I tried to walk at the edge of the thick crowd towards our house then I noticed the crowd was thickest in front of our house…
A few people had noticed me, some of the women who lived on our street. One of them just shouted my name. Mama Maliki, mama maliki, they have burnt you with fire…they have stripped you naked…
I am mama Maliki. That is what everyone calls me. Even my children call me mama Maliki, after my first born.
What is it? My mind just collapsed…the crowd looked at me and they began to make way for me.
I knew something bad had happened to me.
In front of our house, on that plank I told you we used to cross into the house, where young children take their baths…they had laid my son, my second son; Ibro…he is 27 years. They laid him, he was naked from up, his trousers was loose…there was blood flowing into that gutter…his blood.
It was a fight he went to intervene…
He was mistakenly stabbed…
The boy who stabbed him has been arrested by the vigilante groups…
Mama Maliki, take heart…
Mama Maliki let me hold your hand…
Many women were crying my tears…they were crying the tears for me because I couldn’t cry.
Ibro is the one after Maliki. He was a quiet one; he didn’t do much schooling because he didn’t have the brain for school, so he learned trade; he used to sell pure water with me at the market; he would follow me to cook for women who need my services, wash their clothes, iron…that is what I do.
He and his younger siblings lived with me in our room.
They were all talking at the same time, I didn’t want my son on that plank. I wasn’t hearing them anymore…why did they even lay him on this dirty plank? This water logged plank oozing with slime and dirt?
“Please, help me carry him…” I was calling out to the boys hanging around me, they were preventing me from touching him…
“Please bring him inside…bring him inside…”
I was begging them…
They said they had, that the blood was pooling too much in our room, so they brought him out, so as to drain it. I wanted Ibro back in the room; that is where he lived…
They brough him back…I was surprised at the amount of blood in a human being…I was now in tears because no mother should see what I saw that night. No mother should have to mop blood off her son, who was stabbed in a fight he didn’t start; who was stabbed, not just once but twice in the stomach because the people he was trying to separate were two friends of his who wouldn’t listen to his voice of reason…
I don’t know what time it was anymore, I was just there, with the crowd in our room, all consoling me and asking that I spend the night in their rooms…I couldn’t. Most of the people asking me to come spend the night in their rooms too, lived with all their families in one room. We all had no kitchen but cooked in front of our rooms, our utensils and clothes and furniture lived with us in that one room…where would I stay? They had kids too, who would want to rest, I also had three other children, who have wept their eyes out over the killing of their brother…we had to stay in our room…with Ibro…until…
I was told the boy was later taken to the police station and the police came to look at Ibro as he laid in our room. It was way past midnight and we all kept vigil.
I kept hoping he would just cough and wake up…that he would open his eyes and tell me he was hungry and wanted food…Ibro laid there and ignored my tears.
We are Muslims and very active at our local mosque, so the Alfa came, spoke to me; what else would he say? That I should accept it as the will of Allah…do I have a choice? Will not accepting bring Ibro back? Make his cough and get up?
As for the boy who stabbed him? What have I got with him? Will he bring back my Ibro? The police can deal with that, I have no business with him.
They came with burial clothes…they came and took him away from the room and buried him…they said it is a taboo for a mother to know the burial site of her child…but Ibro is still lying on the floor…he had not been buried…his blood still flows around the room…they say I cannot leave the room, I must sit in and mourn the loss of my son…that is the nakedness I am talking about…the world has come and seen my nakedness, they have stripped me of my son!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)
