Sundown

Chapter One The mornings in the Tango family are a chaotic one. We all wake up by 4 am to pray, I don’t know why life must be so hard. “Alaakubar!” Alhaji chants away without stress. All I have to do is close my eyes and steal some doses of sleep now and then before my mother slaps me on the back or does something really rude to wake me up. But before the end of the prayer, I am already awake. “Abubakar, after your food this morning, you and your brothers will follow me to the farm. I cannot harvest all the tomatoes on my own while you stay at home doing nothing” Alhaji said. “But we have to go to school”. Hold up now, I meant the Arabic school when I said that, It’s funny how we are encouraged to go to an Arabic school and very hard for them to let us go to a normal school. Here in the Tango family of six, where we mostly shared the same father and my father expects me to rationally think his other two wives are also my mothers is the height of comedy. So, all three of them are jointly mothering us. I am the first son of the family and I get to be reminded every day, my elder sister Aishat feels she knows better than I do, she is so annoying and she gets everything she wants apart from the old man she was betrothed to last year. She was lucky, my mother begged my father to let her finish her secondary school education before she is married off. That was funny though, I don’t care where she goes, as long as she leaves this house. Ismail and I are very close, we walk to the farm and Arabic classes, which happens to be at our community mosque in Yakari, but we are also probably close because we share the same father and mother with that crazy Aishat girl. I don’t know what she and her friends get to discuss all the time. “Alhaji will flog you today if you don’t get to the farm on time, food monger!” Aishat said. I have to leave the house before I kill this girl running her mouth at me I told my dear brother and the one from the other mothers “Ismail, Yusuf let’s go!” Aminu is still too young to farm, so, Aishat gets to drop him off at the Arabic school. On our way to the farm, we usually, walk with Farouq too, his father’s farm is not far from ours. “Farouq!” Yusuf called out, Alhaja, Inakwana” we both greeted. Farouq’s mother who was spreading groundnut outside the house. Farouq jumped out from the entrance of the house with his hoe on his shoulder. “Segobe,” Farouq said to his mother and we left to the farm like always. “Did you hear what happened? Alhaji came back from Alfa Danjuma yesterday and said that the youths in Kakuwa community are organizing a group to fight the government and that they are asking young boys to join too. I wish it was in Yakari, I would have joined. I am tired of working on the farm”. See, Farouq’s father is a false alarmist, he carries a lot of rumours and everybody knows him for it, I guess it’s rubbing off on the son now too. “Who said you will stop going to the farm if you join the group?” asked Yusuf. “I heard they will go through training like firing guns, go mountain climbing in the forest and shoot arrows. That sounds like fun compared to farming now”. Since I don’t like to talk much it is always stressful for me to give my inputs in discussions, it is even harder now that Yusuf asked me. “Mohammed, will you join if they ask young boys in Yakari to?” Why will he ask me such a question, as if I have a say in my own life, Alhaji’s farm will always demand his first son, besides I pray for lesser responsibility, why in the world will I want to go and climb mountains?  “No,” I said. “Farouq, if you don’t run down here before I open my eyes, you will not like yourself”. Farouq's father shouted. Alhaji Ali is a fat pot-bellied man who sweats a bucket of water for trekking two metres. I and Ismail secretly call him ‘Piggy’ when Farouq is not with us. Farouq hurried down the narrow path that runs from the main road into the farm, while I, Yusuf and Ismail kept walking to our farm where we will be for the next two hours and run to the Arabic class by noon.                                                               **************** The community mosque which also doubles as the Arabic School is an over-crowded place for different types of children, the ones who want to prove they are good with the Quran, the ones who are dull and the majority to just get a place to sleep and pray they are given alms to feed for the day. The truth is, the majority of people from my tribe are poor and yet somehow there are more children than cows or sheep.  My family is considered rich with nothing close to two plot of farmland where my father works his sons like donkeys and the previous night leftover for breakfast. That was rich, so I Abubakar, only mingle with the rich in the mosque. Sitting with my brother Ismail, Yusuf and Farouq and listening to Alfa as usual. Suddenly, two young men came into the mosque and asked to speak to Alfa outside. We stared on as the three walked outside, they must have talked for close to an hour, when Alfa suddenly told us all to go home, that the class was over for the day. We scattered as we all struggled to fit into the front door at once. Farouq was the first to think he has an idea about what was happening. “Yankari is next! We are becoming young soldiers” “So, in your small mind now, you think they will choose you to fight the government? Who will tend your father’s farm? Besides, you are the only child of your father he is not going to allow you to go anywhere talk more of becoming a soldier”. Farouq could only frown at me when I said this, he knows that is the truth, he can only wish. Probably, I lashed out at him because my father will also not allow me, but deep down I cannot separate one misery from the other. Farouq and Yusuf annoyingly walked in a two-meter distance ahead of me and Ismail while young Aminu running after us with the orange in his hands distracting his directions. Farouq is probably castigating me for being a bully. I am not a bully, I just don’t like people who cannot be real and use their brains when it is required. We got home and more chores await us. I am to go fetch firewood for my mother to make dinner and Ismail and Yusuf are to go fetch water, while Aishat helps at home with the cooking. But I could not help but eavesdrop on the women while I was setting down the firewood.  Fatimah, my father’s third wife was saying to my mother that men from Kakuwa community are in Yakari to discuss with elders to allow young boys to join their new army. “Army for Nigeria?” my mother asked innocently. “No, they say they are fighting the government and they want boys from this community to join them.” “Hehehe. My mother laughed at what Fatimah said. “How many of them can fight the government, do they want to die?” “Only God knows” was all Fatimah said to that. Farouq was right, the rumour is becoming true every minute. Only God knows when the meeting with the elders will hold and I am kin on knowing what my father thinks of all this and suddenly, my father screamed to us from the entrance of the house, “I am going for elders’ council meeting, I will be back soon”.  “Is it the Kakuwa community thing going on?” my mother called out back at him and he said, “I don’t know until I get there before I confirm the story”. Yusuf and Ismail got back and I told them that Farouq’s story might be true after all and that father has gone to the council meeting to confirm the story. We all ate that night in some kind of anxiety. Alhaji is yet to be back from the meeting and we can’t go to sleep before he returns. It’s not that we are that important, he only needs his wives to be awake but we were all waiting to hear the gist first hand. Alhaji got home around 10 pm and by then, Aminu and Mariam were already sleeping.  “It is true o” Alhaji said to us. “Alfa Danjuma said the men came to meet him in the mosque in the afternoon and asked him to call the elders and tell them that, young boys should join their campaign against the government and that they are kin on recruiting young boys who study in the mosque to join them tomorrow morning. So, as of tomorrow, I am going to register all my sons to the community secondary school”. “But who will help you tend to the farm?” my mother asked.  “I will hire men to do it and wait to get paid after I sell my tomatoes or my cows and the boys can still work in the mornings before going to school and the weekends too, but they are not going to join any army anything o. I don’t trust this ‘their fight of young men against the government.” “Tell your sons to get ready for school registration tomorrow. I don’t have many sons to feed to the dogs. Please bring me my food. I am starving.” My mother went to get my father’s food, while Amina the second wife told me, Yusuf and Ismail, to prepare for registration into secondary school the next day. Although, we already heard Alhaji saying this to them from the other room before she came in to tell us again. As I laid there on the mat, it dawned on me the change that is coming. New friends, school uniform and different rules now. I wish nothing is about to change, but we all know it is. People from my place have a fearless way of making something stay when they want to. I wondered if Farouq will be allowed to join or registered in a school like us. I think I know what the father of an only child will do in this case. I smiled at this taught in my head and waited for the change coming in the morning.