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Finding Binta, My Binta

Nobody can recall when the last flight landed at what was Maiduguri International Airport. So my United Airline flight from Lagos landed in Yola, Adamawa state. It was early in the morning and the sun was yet to rise when I hired a taxi for my journey to Maiduguri. The driver and I set out immediately, tearing through rain-bearing wind. As we approached Borno state border, Savannah vegetation started to way to encroaching desert.

Nobody can recall when the last flight landed at what was Maiduguri International Airport. So my United Airline flight from Lagos landed in Yola, Adamawa state. It was early in the morning and the sun was yet to rise when I hired a taxi for my journey to Maiduguri. The driver and I set out immediately, tearing through rain-bearing wind. As we approached Borno state border, Savannah vegetation started to way to encroaching desert.

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At the border post, khat-chewing members of the paramilitary wing of Boko Haram mounted a security post. The sun was rising but the daylight was still far away. Sweat dripped down their faces as they searched my luggage, combing through every piece of paper.
 
“What brought you to Borno state?” asked one of the men with brown teeth and once colorful scarf now beaten up by sand and dust.
“I am the foreign correspondent of Blueprint magazine,” I said, as I presented my ID. “I’m returning from an assignment.”
 
A man with torchlight beamed it on my fake ID. He brought the ID closer to his eyes. It was a newly minted ID, the glue used by Ojuelegba boys to hold my picture might not have dried. He passed it to another man who fanned it in the air, robbed it on his kaftans.
 
“Here,” he said as he returned it to me.
 
I took it from him and quickly turned my face away from the odor gushing off the man’s mouth. I heard a 'hee-haw' sound. It was a donkey, the official vehicle of the Boko Haram braying. I understood that the motorcycles had all broken down and without spare parts dealers and mechanics to repair them the sect resorted to horses and donkeys.
 
One of the men pulled my beard without warning. His pull was so hard that I jolted violently. It wasn’t fake. I had spent the last six months growing the beard. I was told that it was one of the requirements for getting into Borno state.
 
My heart continued to pound. I had no answer for the Islamic purity test I heard they impose at the border. As we came close to the border, my driver had told me that they sometimes turned back circumcised men. It was too late for me to do anything about that.
 
I, therefore, exhaled when they waved us through. I turned back several times to make sure they were not coming after us.
 
“You’re not really a Blueprint correspondent,” my driver said.
“No, I’m not.” I answered.
 
I was going to Maiduguri to find Ms. Binta Yaya. I did not tell my driver that. I was not sure where his loyalty was.
 
Driving further inside Borno, I marveled at how it had changed since the last time I was there. On major intersections, I saw bearded men selling spinach, onions and tomatoes. It used to be women who sold such farm produces. The few women I saw wore full burqas. It made me wonder how I was going to identify Binta when I met her.
 
In my mind, I had prepared what to say when I meet her: “Ms. Binta, I presume?”
 
My relationship with Binta started in October of 1999 when Sharia took effect in Zamfara, I started a debate with Binta via the Internet. It began as an innocent disagreement on a message board over Sharia. It proceeded to encompass other wider issues like women’s rights in Africa; foreign religions and the erosion of indigenous African ways of life; cultural impediments to technological transfer; and other academic issues of that nature. Binta was writing from France and I was writing from the United States. Ten years after, we met in Abuja. We later published a selected volume of our emails, which had run into tens of thousands. We called the book: Zamfara: 20 Years after Sharia.
 
The last time I met Binta was in Zamfara for the book launch. I was also there to see for myself what Binta called Mount Buba Bello Kare Gaeke Jangebe. She had sent me pictures of this monument she named after the first man to lose a part of his body to Sharia. The monument is for every hand, every leg, and every head chopped off in the name of Sharia. Each one she had represented with a seven foot cross positioned to face Mecca. Several times, Islamic radicals who did not like to be reminded of the cost of Sharia had vandalized her Mount Buba.
 
As my driver and I made our way into the hinterland of Borno, he veered off toward The Gwoza Hills. He said he wanted to show me a profound site. The peaks of the hills that used to kiss the blue skies had worn out. Fluffy clouds that used to provide cover for the peaks had disappeared. At Jiffy falls, the plateau was dry and rusty. No drop of water was seen along the 50 feet height.
 
“What happened?” I asked my driver.
“The gods must be angry at what they had turned this beautiful land into,” he said.
 
I was disturbed when Binta decided to take her crusade into Maiduguri weeks after Boko Haram sect bombed the Aso Rock, the presidential villa. Once she attempted to run for Governor of Borno but an assassination attempt on her life by the Boko Haram sect forced her to be hospitalized abroad for months. When she healed, she stubbornly returned to Maiduguri. For the first four years after her return, she was able to smuggle out some handwritten notes to me. But in the last twelve months, I have heard nothing from her. Her silence smelled like violence in me. It triggered my decision to go in and find her.
 
As we entered Maiduguri, the Ngadde River reflected the morning sun. At the base of Lake Alou, horsemen and trumpeters practiced their craft. We were headed for the State Secretariat Conference Center. Just like the airport and the general hospital, they have been overtaken by shrubs. Animals in the nearby Sanda Kyarimi Park Zoo were said to have been eaten by Boko Haram members. One frail looking Antelope was left loitering about. Thick forests had overrun the once magnificent Botanical garden.
 
My driver stopped at a corner of Shehu Lamido Way and bought some fried grasshopper. I asked him where Mr. Biggs went. He said it had been converted into a mosque. I bought a cup of roasted groundnuts.
 
Looking as the devastation of the Shehu of Bornu’s Palace and the University of Maiduguri, it was clear to me that the ruin of what remained of the Kanem-Bornu Empire might be total this time. Even the Neem trees had wilted. As we approached what was the Open Theatre, I saw a huge billboard erected by Kashim Shettima that used to proclaim, Borno: Home of Peace. What was left of the sign was Ho of Peace. Buildings that were once churches had been converted into indoor goat markets. Maiduguri International hotel had been turned into an Islamic center.
 
My eyes were heavy from looking at a carcass of a city. I dragged them away from the landscape of ruins back into the taxi. On the door of my taxi, I saw a graffiti that said, “The beautiful ones are not yet born.” Beneath it, another graffiti writer added, “Because ugly ones like you have refused to die.” Beside the graffiti was a faded poster of Binta, without makeup and without headscarf. A slogan written under the poster said, “Election 2015: Vote Binta, vote Better.” I reached into my pocket for a pen. I wanted to change 2015 to 2020.
 
…And I woke up.

 

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