Allah Have Mercy

A huge hand grabbed the back of my neck as I stepped out of the Rex Cinema, and, instinctively, I knew whose hand it was. “I beg you, forgive me, in Allah’s name,” I pleaded. Uncle Usama’s wide palm came down across my face, the force of the blow nearly capsizing me. “Shut up, you bastard child,” he shouted. With squinting, teary eyes, I watched the two friends I was with flee the scene, merging into the throng of cinemagoers. Uncle’s long fingers gripped my neck again, creating a noose of flesh and bone. “In Allah’s name, I beg for your pardon. I won’t do this again,” I managed to say amid dry sobs. I felt a throbbing pain in my head, and my legs began to buckle under the weight of his hand pressing down on my neck. Uncle must have noticed this; he released my neck and quickly grabbed my elbow, yanking me alongside him. I labored to keep up with his long strides, but kept falling behind and stepping on the back of his flip-flops. He gave me a slap each time this happened, then continued to drag me forcefully, the way goat sellers dragged their animals on the dirt roads of the city.

“Papa, please beg him for me. Please, Papa, beg him for me!” I directed desperate pleas at passersby, hoping they would come to my rescue, but the pedestrians only stared curiously at us before rushing on. Uncle’s massive build was enough to deter anyone who thought of intervening on my behalf. For some of the onlookers, especially the fruit hawkers and food venders who lined the front side of the Rex Cinema, this wasn’t the first time they had witnessed a helpless child being dragged by Uncle Usama, who was, in fact, the official disciplinarian of Zongo Street. Parents would send for him to punish their misbehaving children. He’d arrive in haste, wielding his infamous baranzu, ready to leave an indelible mark on the child’s skin. It was a service that Uncle Usama, a headmaster by profession, relished, and he rendered it free of charge to anyone who requested it. That was how he got the nickname Zorro, after the masked hero who used his bullwhip to fight the exploiters of his people. Uncle Usama knew about this nickname (which, of course, was used only behind his back), and he cherished the fear that it instilled in the children of Zongo Street.

Uncle was prone to emotional unrest and to meanness. He rarely laughed, and while most adults saw his erratic behavior as a sign of his education and intelligence, I—at twelve, his oldest nephew—viewed him differently. You see, his wife, Mma Asibi, was a difficult woman who completely dominated her husband. Many evenings during my Arabic lessons in their sitting room, I had seen my fierce and fearless uncle reduced to pleading with Mma Asibi when they had an argument. And though I was a mere child I was utterly convinced that Uncle Usama’s violent outbursts were the direct result of his inability to control his wife.

“If you don’t shut up, your punishment will triple when we get home,” Uncle Usama threatened as he dragged me past the long line of venders selling kelewele, fried yam, tchofi, and bread which stretched along the wide pavement of Zerikyi Road and past the group of mendicants who had begun to pack up their dusty mats, calling it a day. We walked alongside the happy kids playing bodi bo dibo in the yard of the BP petrol station, running frantically and looking for a place to hide. We made our way through the exuberant crowd of town people heading to the eight-thirty show at the Rex. We were aiming for Kofar Fada, the wide passageway that led to Zongo Street, but Uncle quickly swerved left to avoid having me address any pleas to the group of men who sat near the passageway. The change of route took us to a half-lit alley that led directly to the back entrance of our compound. Uncle walked even faster now, and his salty sweat dripped onto my already sweaty face, causing my eyes to sting.

Halfway down the alley, we saw Mma Zeenata, the old woman who lived in the compound next to ours. Not wanting her to realize what was going on, Uncle Usama slowly released his grip on my arm. I knew that this was my only chance to get out of the trouble I was in. So I started bawling. Uncle Usama squeezed my wrist, in an attempt to silence me, but the pain caused me to cry even louder. “Wayyo, Wayyo, Allah,” I screamed.

“Ina wuni,” Uncle said to Mma Zeenata.

“Lafiya lau,” she responded, indicating that her evening was just fine. Then she carried on in her frail voice about how stubborn the “children of today” were, and how one had to “exercise patience in dealing with them.” Uncle started to reply to her. But I wasn’t going to let the opportunity slip by. Before he could finish his sentence, I had reached the entrance of the alley and was heading back toward Kofar Fada. With the old woman watching, I knew there was no way that Uncle would chase after me. I ran with a sprinter’s zeal, my flip-flops making a pat-pat sound with every stride, a rhythm that matched my rapid heartbeat.

On reaching our compound, I headed straight to my parents’ quarters. Mother and her best friend, Mma Zakiya, sat on nylon mats on our adjoining verandas. With Father constantly travelling and Mma Zakiya neglected by her husband, the two women spent every evening on their verandas, in the company of their two servant girls, my younger brother, Haris, and my sister, Salima. They chatted when they had things to chat about, and remained silent when they had nothing to say to each other. At those moments, they would stare blankly into the starry sky, as if meditating on the stars—Mother probably wishing that her husband were around, and Mma Zakiya wishing that Allah had blessed her with a child. Eventually, one of them would start to doze, and then each would ask for the other’s forgiveness before retiring to her chambers.

I sat down next to Mother, placing my hands in her lap.

“Yaro, what is wrong?” Mother asked.

“There is nothing. I was just playing outside,” I replied. Mother didn’t know that I had sneaked out to the cinema with my friends. She ran her fingers through my hair. I sighed with relief, though my heart continued to beat fast. I was aware that my daring escape had made Uncle look like a fool, and I knew that from that evening on I would be in the crosshairs of his vengeance. The slightest wrong I committed would draw the harshest punishment I had ever suffered from him.

A few minutes later, I heard the banging of the mosquito-proofed door at Uncle Usama’s quarters, up the hill. For every kid in the compound, the sound of that door was a cat’s meow to a family of mice. It told us either that we could resume playing outside (if he was entering his quarters), or that we should run for our dear lives (if he was stepping out).

In the weeks following my daring alley escape, I did everything I could to be on my best behavior. I arrived at Uncle’s quarters as soon as I’d finished supper, and made sure that the bread I purchased for his and Auntie Asibi’s breakfast was soft and moist and freshly baked. Then one unlucky night, nearly two months into my stellar-behavior effort, I purchased a loaf that failed to meet Uncle’s high standards. He squeezed the air out of the loaf, sniffed it, then threw it in my direction, nearly hitting me in the face. “This bread feels like it was baked a week ago,” he barked. “It is stale and hard. Didn’t you inspect it before you gave them the money?” He ordered me to return the bread to the seller, get the money back, and buy him a better buredi from a vender who carried bread from the Lawyer’s House Bakery, his favorite. I opened my mouth to tell him that I had bought the bread from the right vender but quickly shut it again, afraid to anger him further. I picked up the bread from the floor and ran out of the room.

When I reached Zerikyi Road, however, the vender swore that she would neither take back the bread nor refund the money.

“Do you think I’m the kind of fool who would take this back?” she said. She lobbed the loaf at me, and luckily I reacted quickly enough to catch it before it could hit the ground. After all the manhandling by Uncle and now the bread seller, the loaf looked bruised and broken. I imagined the trouble that awaited me if I returned home without a new loaf, and dug in my heels. I burst into tears, stomping my feet on the ground. At first the vender paid no attention to my tantrum, but soon she realized that that wasn’t a good strategy. I was driving customers away from her table.

“Listen, I don’t want any of your witchcraft, oh!” she screamed, pointing her fingers threateningly in my face. “That’s how you ntafuor people are, putting your beyie on people’s merchandise. Please leave my area. I have warned you, oh. And let me tell you once again: I will not give the money back to you tonight or tomorrow or the day after.” She shoved me away from her table, and as I stumbled the bread slipped out of the old Daily Graphic newspaper in which I had rewrapped it and fell noiselessly onto the dusty ground. I howled and quickly picked it up, then began to cry even louder, though I was certain by that point that all was lost.

Luckily, my performance attracted the attention of a few passersby, who stopped and inquired what the matter was. I explained my side of the story to a tall, muscular man, whose imposing appearance reminded me of my uncle, though he seemed affable, even kind. He listened attentively to my story, and as I spoke the bread seller fumed with anger, muttering curses under her breath.

“Papa, tell me, would you allow this nonsense if it were you?” she jumped in as soon as I had finished. “For someone to buy food from you and return it after it has been touched and dirtied all over? If I take back this bread, who is going to buy it from me, eh? Look at it!” The man didn’t respond. He appeared to be in a quandary as to whom to sympathize with.

“I won’t take it back even if he cries tears of blood. And take your musuo somewhere else. Please, get away from my table, oh!” she exclaimed.

As I continued to sob, a few more people were drawn to the vender’s table. Among them was a Gao Muslim man. I knew this from the white djellabah he wore, and from his long goatee and his tall, lean figure. There were also two middle-aged women whose unctuous body smell told me that they were fried-fish venders from a few stalls over. Meanwhile, the muscular man was trying to reason with the bread vender. “Listen, he is only a child,” he said. “The fault is with whoever sent him. Imagine if he were your son and out this late. Please have pity on him,” he pleaded.

“The one who should have pity should be his stupid mother or father who sent him back with the bread,” the vender shot right back. “Listen, Papa, I respect you, but stop wasting your time. I. Am. Not. Taking. It. Back. Even if God himself comes down to beg me.” I lost every bit of hope on hearing this. But, after a brief silence, the Gao man, who had been quietly listening to the proceedings, stepped in. “How much did you pay for the bread?” he asked in broken Hausa.

“Five cedis,” I replied, between intermittent, rather fake sobs.

He reached into the side pocket of his djellabah and produced a crisp five-cedi note. He handed it to me, saying, “The matter is over now.” He took the bread from me and placed it on the vender’s table. She immediately grabbed the miserable loaf and hurled it into a nearby trash can. “Don’t leave your kramo juju and bad luck with me here, oh, abeyifuor! ” she screamed. It was clear that her insults—she had an Asante person’s typical prejudice against Muslims—were directed not only at me but also at the Gao man and at my Hausa tribe. She shifted from one leg to the other, as if daring us all to engage her in a physical fight. I didn’t wait for any such confrontation; I had got the money back and that was all that mattered. I ran all the way home. In my hurry to flee, I forgot to thank the Gao man.

When I walked into Uncle Usama’s sitting room his head was buried in the Tawrat. Uncle’s main area of theological study involved the long-lost books of Zabur (the psalms revealed to David), the Tawrat (the laws revealed to Moses), and the Injeel (the Gospels revealed to Jesus). Scholars came to him from all over our region seeking knowledge of the important manuscripts that were omitted from the modern Bible. I waited anxiously for Uncle to look up, so that I could tell him what had taken place on Zerikyi Road. A minute or so passed in silence, then, without moving his eyes from the book, Uncle suddenly bellowed, “Aha, where is the new bread?”

“All the other venders had closed and gone home by the time I got the money back,” I stammered.

“So you are telling me there is no bread in this entire city of Kumasi?” he screamed, and finally looked up.

I made a futile attempt to respond, to tell him that it was late and that there was only one vender left on Zerikyi Road, and that it had taken the kindness of a passerby even to get the money back. But before I could utter a word a vicious slap had caught the right side of my face. I felt my teeth move inside my mouth and tasted blood on my tongue as my legs buckled. I fell onto the couch, hitting my head against its wooden arm. Mma Asibi didn’t so much as stir or attempt to plead on my behalf. She remained seated on the carpeted steps leading to their inner chamber, breast-feeding my baby cousin Rajab. I forced myself to my feet, even though I was dizzy, and bolted out of the room before Uncle could strike again. I headed straight to the gate of the compound and made my way toward Zerikyi Road. Many kids were still outside, playing evening games. I tried to ignore the pain I felt in my mouth and on my face. The alleys were deserted now, and, after walking a few metres down the street, I got scared and retreated. Just a week before there had been rumors that children were being snatched and sold to Nigerian businessmen, who performed sacrifices that made them wealthy overnight. Not to mention that Dan Tchamado, the half-mad, half-destitute man who walked with his head tilted back so that he was facing the sky, had recently set up a cardboard house at the end of our block.

Back at the compound, playmates, oblivious of the trauma I was going through, begged me to join them in the last game of the night. I ignored them and headed straight to Kaka Sati’s quarters, knowing that my grandmother was the only one who could save my skin from Uncle Usama’s whip that night. My mother was powerless against him. In Father’s absence, his younger brother, Uncle Usama, was the one in charge.

After she had listened to my story, Kaka Sati said to me, “Stay here, and I’ll go and talk to him.” Kaka Sati was sometimes upset by the harsh punishments that Uncle Usama delivered to me and my cousin Hafiz, Uncle’s oldest son, who was two years younger than me. But, like my father, she was a traveller and was often away at the markets in Atebubu and Ejura.

“I have asked him to pardon you for this one,” Kaka Sati assured me upon her return to her chambers. “But first thing tomorrow morning he wants you to go to Lawyer’s House directly and buy him a fresh loaf. Did you hear?” I nodded.

“Now, hurry back to your mother’s quarters. She is waiting for you.”

As usual, Mother was sitting, legs stretched out on a mat, facing Mma Zakiya. From our veranda, there was a clear view of the entire compound. And I was quite sure that Mother had observed everything that had gone on that evening. She might even have heard the sound of the heavy slap and my fall onto Uncle Usama’s couch. My hunch was proved correct when Mother got up suddenly, excused herself from Mma Zakiya, and walked me into our chambers. One look at my face, and her eyes welled up. Without saying a word, she opened a container of shea-nut butter and rubbed some on my cheek, where the mark of Uncle’s fingers must have been visible. Using my tongue, I did a circumference check of my teeth. Luckily none was broken, though I could still taste blood from a cut on the inside of my upper lip. “I am sorry, my shehu, please take heart,” Mother said, as if she were the one who had assaulted me.

The following morning, after subhi, I recited the Quran and practiced my verses until the first rays of sun seeped through our louvered-glass windows. By six o’clock I was out of the compound and on my way to Lawyer’s House, in the Ocansey district, to purchase Uncle Usama and Auntie Asibi’s bread.

The week that followed was tense. Frustrated by her inability to protect me, Mother took to lobbing curses any time she heard the dreadful bang of Uncle Usama’s door. She didn’t greet him for a couple of days, but then feared that her belligerence might make matters worse for me. She decided to act friendlier toward him, but only when she had to. She did everything she could to avoid running into him in the compound. I overheard her saying to Mma Zakiya one night, “It is a heartless woman who sits and watches as other people’s children are treated the way her husband treats my child. Wallahi Allah, one of these days, if Kaji doesn’t talk to his brother, I am going to ask that useless man to keep his hands off my child. And if he doesn’t stop then he may just have to beat me, too.”

The relationship between Mother and Mma Asibi also grew sour that week, as Mma Asibi had somehow got wind of the curses being directed at her. Uncle Usama, sensing Mother’s hostility, took to pushing me around even more, a deliberate attempt to cause me to err, and thus provide him with a legitimate excuse to flog me. But I did everything perfectly. I abandoned the football field altogether. I bought the perfect loaf of bread every evening, and did so right after the Isha prayers. Mother advised me not to go outside and play after my Arabic lesson. “Don’t give him any chance to trap you,” she said with gritted teeth.

Mother’s new attitude was a big shock to me. She had a reputation as the quietest and most peaceful woman, and yet there she was playing face-me-I-face-you with the most feared man on Zongo Street. It was unheard of even for a woman to show sympathy for her child when he was disciplined by an uncle or an auntie, let alone defend the child the way Mother did publicly. And, as much as I admired Mother, I was afraid that, if the passive-aggressive tension between her and Uncle Usama escalated into an open verbal confrontation, it had the potential to get ugly. Uncle Usama would flog both Mother and me in front of the whole compound. I said special prayers for Allah to prevent such an incident, and was relieved, therefore, when after a fortnight or so the tension eased a bit. Kaka Sati sat down Auntie Asibi and my mother in her chambers one night and told them point blank to drop their “pettiness and act like responsible women.” But she said nothing to my uncle.

Still, I behaved as if I were living on the thatched roof of a mud hut, moving gingerly to avoid falling through. For his part, Uncle Usama acted as if all were well, as if he had forgotten everything. One afternoon he even bought some biyan-tankwa and pinkaso for me and Hafiz—something he rarely did. On another occasion, he asked Auntie Asibi to make us some fried eggs for breakfast, which she sandwiched between slices of the precious bread I had bought the night before.

Uncle continued to act so nicely that even the pupils at the madrassa agreed that a change of some kind had occurred. He actually went a whole month without whipping a student. He took to wearing his white djellabah more often than the red, black, and brown ones. (Each color signified a different level of his mental and emotional state. Days when Uncle wore red were called “danger days”: a simple mispronunciation during a recitation could draw six or more lashes on a pupil’s back.) Every kid in the compound, myself included, enjoyed the freedom that came with Uncle’s sudden change of character. We hoped and prayed that Uncle Usama had truly turned over a new leaf.

It was during this momentous period of détente that Hafiz and I felt emboldened to ask Uncle Usama for permission to go swimming at the University Pool at Tech. To our wondrous surprise, he granted it. He even gave us lorry fare and a little extra money to buy Fanta and biscuits at the pool’s refreshment center. For the first time, my heart didn’t speed up as I stood in front of Uncle; I didn’t have the persistent feeling that I had done something wrong. I felt an entirely new self-confidence.

For the two hours we spent at the pool, I kept an eye on the giant clock atop the refreshment center. The pool usually closed at five, and at four-thirty the lifeguards started making their calls for “last swim.” I wanted to beat the crowd that swarmed the Ayigya lorry station after the pool closed. More important, I needed to make sure that we made it home before six o’clock, so as not to miss the Maghrib prayers. It was a struggle to get Hafiz out of the water, but he eventually joined me in the dressing room. We quickly rinsed ourselves, dressed, and headed for the lorry station.

As Hafiz and I approached the compound, we saw Uncle Usama standing by the side entrance, his hands folded behind his back. I guessed that it was about a quarter to six, a good thirty minutes before the muezzin’s call to Maghrib prayers. With a pompous air, I waved to my friends, some of whom were clearly jealous of my newfound freedom. Hafiz walked behind me at a slower pace, and he, too, waved at our friends. I felt like a big boy, a hero, even, because Uncle had trusted me to take care of Hafiz, and allowed us to travel all the way to Tech and back on our own. When we were about three feet from the entrance, I prepared myself to go down on my knees to greet Uncle in the traditional manner. But as I leaned forward I felt a violent blow on the back of my head and neck. I fell face first to the ground, but quickly got up so that I could greet Uncle. It was then that I realized what had happened—that I had been struck by Zorro’s baranzu. Uncle’s hands, it became clear, had been behind his back in order to hide the bullwhip. Hafiz, terrified of his father, had probably sensed what was going to happen, which was why he’d walked so slowly as we neared the compound. He bolted as soon as the whip hit my head. I didn’t see Hafiz for a week.

Uncle followed the first blow with even more vicious ones, and each crack of the whip sounded like thunder in my ears. The sixth or seventh blow sent me crashing to the ground again, but Uncle did not stop. I wailed for help, even though I knew no one would dare come to my rescue. The only people he listened to were the compound’s three grandmothers, Kaka Sati being one of them, and the old women were in their inner chambers, getting ready for Maghrib prayers—which led me to believe that his attack at this particular time was calculated. Then I felt something that I had never felt during Uncle’s previous beatings: instead of being fearful, I was fuming with anger. “This is not fair,” I heard myself say. I stopped screaming and begging for mercy. I lay flat on my back and spread my arms as if I had fainted. I had thought of doing this before—feigning a collapse or a seizure, in the hope that it would scare off Uncle and perhaps keep him from beating me again. I don’t really know what convinced me to perform such a stunt, because it could have ended really badly. But I was angry, and, on one level, I truly wished to die at Uncle’s hands that evening, to leave him with the mental and spiritual torment of having killed a human being. Death would treat me better than he did, I thought, as another blow caught me on the chest, tearing my cotton shirt and slicing open my skin. “Laa ilaha illa llah”—I recited the Kalma-shahada. I had visions of myself in the Abrahamic lyceum situated in the special section of Heaven reserved for Muslims who died before puberty. I imagined all the fun I would have there with Munsulu, a cousin who had been crushed to death after a football match at the Kumasi Sports Stadium.

Uncle suddenly stopped. He walked away as if nothing had happened, didn’t even bother to turn around and verify if I had truly fainted. I closed my eyes and stayed where I was. After a while I heard voices around me; the kids I had walked past moments ago were crowded around me, whispering to one another.

I don’t recall how long it took, but eventually I lifted myself up to a sitting position. I was bathed in the street’s pervasive red dust. A cut on my cheek was still bleeding, and my shirt was streaked with blood from the cuts on my arms, neck, and back. I felt weak, yet I made an effort and stood up. A friend handed me the blue Adidas duffelbag that contained my swimming gear, which had gone flying when I was hit by the first blow. In my pounding head I kept asking, “But why? He gave us permission to go? What did we do wrong?”

Every eye was directed at me as I entered the compound. I did a quick scan of the courtyard for signs of Mother, but she was not on our veranda and not in the communal kitchen shed. I found her pacing back and forth in the living room, sobbing. When I walked in, she wrapped her arms around me, then pulled away to inspect me. She was alarmed when she saw the cut on my forehead. “Sit here,” she said, pointing at the blue artificial-leather couch. She ran outside and returned moments later with a bowl of warm water. She soaked a towel in the water, squeezed out some of the liquid, then, using an antiseptic, cleaned the blood and dust from my face, chest, and back. She put on a few bandages, gave me a fresh shirt and shorts to wear, and carried out the water and the towel.

My head felt very light, and my vision seemed to be flickering. A tall, lanky, old man appeared and started speaking to me. I sensed that he was Mother’s father, the imam, who had died long ago, when I was only three or four years old. Grandfather Imam smiled and held my hands and asked me to walk with him. He took me to visit Munsulu, who seemed happy, though where he was didn’t resemble the Abrahamic lyceum. It was, instead, a vast, misty void that appeared to have no gravitational force—we floated around like fish in the depths of the ocean. Grandfather suddenly vanished, Munsulu, too, and I felt Mother’s hands on my chest. I sat upright on the couch.

“Why are you crying?” Mother asked.

“Grandfather Imam,” I said, wiping the tears that were rolling down my cheeks. “Where is he?”

Mother’s eyes were wide with fright. She placed the palm of her right hand over my mouth and whispered, “Please keep quiet.” She lifted my weak body and walked about the room in a circular motion, the way mallams do to dispel evil jinns. She wept as she did so, then suddenly put me back on the couch and dashed out of the room.

The next thing I knew, half a dozen women were standing over me, including Kaka Sati. One woman said that an evil spirit had been on the loose the past three days, stealing children’s souls, and that my mother was lucky the bad spirits had accosted me while I was in the compound. “We would’ve been wailing on the streets searching for him right now,” the woman continued. A couple of the women blamed my situation on the heat, while others thought I was playing a trick of some sort on my mother, to avoid going to school the next day. Though the welts on my forehead and arms were visible to the women, none of them seemed to attribute my condition to the trouncing I’d received from Uncle Usama. They were perhaps being cautious not to meddle in my family’s affairs. And, besides, who dared to criticize Uncle Usama?

I wanted the women to leave me alone with Mother, who was still absent from the room. I wished Father were around, so that I could ask him if, like everyone else on Zongo Street, he was afraid of Uncle Usama. I badly needed to know why Father wouldn’t ask him to stop beating me.

An aunt barged into the room with a smelly paste that looked like a mixture of sawdust, ground myrrh, and incense oil. She began to rub the greasy stuff on my face and body, and very soon the sharp scent of the potion took over the room. Moments after that, Mother walked in with a bowl of dry-fish pepper soup, which she had apparently been preparing all this time. The soup was boiling hot, and its fragrant, spicy aroma instantly restored my spirits.

“What did you rub on him?” Mother said when she noticed my oily face. She pushed a couple of the women aside and moved closer to me. “Please let me feed him before they kill him,” she lamented, her voice tinged with rage. The women were taken aback by Mother’s behavior—not so much because of what she had said but because of the anger with which she said it. This was unusual for her. “If I don’t make a stand and fight back they will kill my son for me,” she sobbed, and held the soup bowl to my face. The women backed away and filed out of the room. Only Kaka Sati stayed behind. I had never seen such a look on Mother’s face, and, while one side of me enjoyed her protection, the other just wanted to see her be her affable self.

“Give him some A.P.C. and rub some Mentholatum on his body afterward,” Grandmother finally said to Mother, who simply nodded and continued to feed me. I realized that Grandmother’s suggestion was the closest anyone had come to admitting that I had been hurt by the beating, that my state wasn’t the fault of any jinn or spirit. A little while later, Kaka Sati quietly left the room. Mother heaved a deep sigh when she heard the door close. “You will soon feel better, you hear?” she whispered, wiping the now dry concoction from my face with the end of her wrapper. That night was the most peaceful I had enjoyed in my young life. I was happy that I didn’t have to see Uncle Usama’s face, though I wondered who would get him his bread.

For a whole week after the beating, Mother refused to let me step beyond our quarters. She informed my teacher that I was sick. She said the same thing to Uncle Usama, so he didn’t expect me to get his bread or show up for my Arabic lessons. I was visited by many cousins and friends, who kept me company in our sitting room. It was a jolly time for me, that week, as I did what I most enjoyed doing: I reread all my storybooks, including “Nchanga and Enoma” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” Mother made all my favorite dishes: palm-nut soup with lamb, fried plantain and beans, and stewed taliya, the heavenly handmade spaghetti, which I shared with the boys and girls who came to visit with me. I asked about Hafiz, and was told that he had decamped to Asawasi, where his maternal grandmother lived, and that no one had seen him since the evening of the beating. How Hafiz had made it to Asawasi, a suburb six miles out of the city, all by himself, nobody knew.

On the sixth day of my confinement, word came to me that Hafiz’s grandmother had travelled on foot all the way from Asawasi to plead in person on her grandson’s behalf. The old woman knew that unless she showed up Uncle Usama would not withdraw his vow to give his son as many lashes as he had given me. My informants, whom I bribed with the special foods at my disposal, told me that Uncle Usama had sworn in front of the class at the madrassa that, no matter who came to plead, Hafiz, too, would receive his lashes. Uncle had even sworn to whip Hafiz’s corpse if he died before receiving his punishment. But Mother didn’t believe any of his declarations. She said of him, “Don’t mind that liar. He’s saying all that just to mask his shame. You wait and see, that useless man is not going to touch the boy.”

She must be really mad to call him useless in front of me, I thought. I was angry, too, but my anger wasn’t directed at Uncle, as there was nothing I or anybody could do to stop him from whipping me whenever he was in a bad mood. I was instead angry with Father for being gone all the time and allowing this to happen. I felt bitter that Hafiz had not suffered as I had, yet I didn’t want the poor kid to be beaten. Already, Uncle’s violent tendencies had turned my cousin into a nervous and subdued child. He stammered and was easily frightened by noises. The kids at school made fun of him. They called him Mad Hafiz, and joked that he was paranoid, or that he saw apparitions. At the time, I didn’t really know what paranoid meant, but I suspected that it wasn’t a good thing to become.

One day, when Hafiz was seven and I was nine, he had suddenly started talking to himself and to invisible people who seemed to be in his company. Kaka Sati explained to me that jinns were bothering Hafiz and “toying with his mind.” While playing with friends, Hafiz would curse and threaten to slap or kick other kids that only he could see. Two days after Hafiz’s first paranoid episode, Uncle Usama prepared a special rubutu for him to drink and to wash his body with. He also created a powerful talisman inscribed with all the ninety-nine names of Allah. The talisman, sewn in crocodile skin, was given to Hafiz to carry on his body at all times, to help drive away the bad jinns. But, in my own mind, I questioned whether any jinn was truly following Hafiz; I had a feeling that his behavior was a direct result of his constant state of anxiety caused by Uncle’s explosive temper. The only good thing about the episode was that Hafiz himself wasn’t aware that his schoolmates were mocking him; he seemed to be in a world all his own. Ultimately, whether it was paranoia or jinns, everyone in the family was happy that Uncle Usama’s potion and talisman were able to cure Hafiz and bring him back to us. Ever since that time, I had been protective of Hafiz, and prayed that nothing like that would happen to him again.

On the seventh day of my joyful incarceration, Hafiz came to our living quarters during his school lunch break. He told me the story of his gallant escape—how he had walked all the way to his grandmother’s house. Hafiz even tried to convince me that Uncle had sent four strong boys after him, “to capture me and bring me to justice, but none of them was any match for my blazing speed.” I knew he was exaggerating. But I focussed on another piece of news that he delivered before he went back to school. He informed me that Uncle Usama was out of town on a business trip to Accra, and wouldn’t be back until late that evening. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him, because everybody knew that Uncle Usama had no business of any kind away from the madrassa. And, on top of that, Uncle hated travelling, and would go years at a time without leaving Kumasi.

But I was so delighted by the news of Uncle’s trip that I promptly decided to end my imprisonment. And, by Allah, it felt good to be outside. That evening we played all kinds of games in the front yard. For the first time any of us could remember, we played in a carefree manner, as children are supposed to. And we were so engrossed in our games that we didn’t even notice when adults started gathering in the front yard. The women walked in a hurried, distracted manner, some without their veils, pacing back and forth in front of the compound. The crowd grew so large that it resembled a durbar. We noticed the grave looks on the faces of some of the people, and also the secretive manner in which they whispered to one another. Then we heard the sharp, shrill wailing of a woman, crying, reciting in a singsong manner, “Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un. Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un.” Knowing what those phrases meant, I froze, and so did every kid around me. The sad and piercing voice of the funeral crier continued, reciting the phrases over and over, and very soon the cries of women and children filled the night air.

I was in the company of Hafiz and five other cousins when this started. We ran to a corner of the front yard, where other kids had gathered, still clueless as to who the dead person was. The adults whispered about a car accident on the road from Accra to Kumasi. It suddenly dawned on me that Uncle Usama’s trip was to Accra, and that it would take the death of someone as influential as he was on Zongo Street to attract such a large group to our compound. But Uncle Usama cannot die, I thought. He is too powerful.

I never found out exactly how Uncle Usama died. All I heard was what was whispered that night about a violent car accident.

Our front yard swarmed with mourners, some weeping like children, others consoling the weepers, and the rest loudly reciting verses from the Quran, in memoriam to Uncle Usama. I looked at Hafiz, whose face had a blank expression, as if he didn’t know whose death had been announced. I didn’t cry, either. I watched as kids even younger than I was cried hysterically, as if they knew what death really meant. But, for some reason, I felt no emotion at all. If anything, I felt guilty, because we were taught at the madrassa to not, under any circumstance, speak or think ill of the dead, even if they were one’s worst enemies in life. We were taught to pray for the deceased, to ask for Allah’s forgiveness on their behalf, to beg for Allah’s mercy to allow them entry into al-janna on the Day of Judgment. With that in my mind, I put aside the bitter feelings I had carried all week.

“Allah have mercy on him,” I repeated quietly. And immediately I began to cry, as if those words had broken the barrier holding back my tears. When Hafiz saw me cry, he, too, began to wail, though there were no tears in his eyes. We hugged and cried until Grandmother Sati sent an aunt to bring us to her quarters. “The angels respond only to prayers, not tears, so stop crying and pray for him,” she said rather stoically. But each time I looked at Hafiz tears rolled down my cheeks again. “Allah have mercy,” I repeated, though deep in the pit of my stomach I felt that my cries and prayers were meant not for Uncle Usama but for Hafiz. For Allah to have mercy and keep the jinns away from my cousin, as Uncle Usama would not be around to defeat them the next time they tried to steal Hafiz from us. ♦