In the main square a hundred families jostle for space. Men in inky-black robes stroll through the crowds or stand in pairs around the perimeter. One of them greets my father and directs us. We settle, light fires, spread mats, erect screens and awnings. The sun is high, our shadows like small pools of black wax. In the shade of the canopies we rest, we wait.
I am sure I am too excited to sleep. I put my head in my mother’s lap, breathe. I feel her stroking my hair, her fingers rustle when she touches the rim of my ear. Dream fragments float past behind my eyes. A bird woven out of string. Crows that shift shape into blackclad men. Staircases leading from cloud to cloud. And I sink through air as heavy as water, as if weighed down by sodden wings.
I am woken by a sound like a buffalo’s roar. All around me people are standing, getting to their feet. I scramble up, crane my neck. Nothing. I am too close to the ground.
‘Haidera! Haidera!’
Now I see him. Standing high up above the crowd on a platform: a man whose robes billow around him, even more full than those of my father, but plain, entirely unadorned. He wears a white turban. Around his neck an amulet swings on a leather cord.
‘Allahu Akbar!’
‘Akbar Allahu!’
People bow down, snatch handfuls of sand from the ground, rubbing their hands one over the other as though in water. Ahead I see my father wipe his hands across his face. He bows, kneels. My mother next to me, she does the same. I keep my eyes fixed upon my father as we pray under Haidera’s command: standing, bending, kneeling, stretching our necks like herons to touch our foreheads to the ground. The movements, the pattern, the rhythm, they are just like a dance.
Now we stop praying and listen to Haidera, whose voice is as thin and high as a bird’s, and like a bird’s it floats across the air so that even the people at the back can hear. He doesn’t speak the way we do, but with an accent from somewhere else.
‘I Am the Man Sent to All Worshippers in the Name of God to Tell You the Prophecies of Muhammad. My Song is Alla, Alla.’
Haidera talks. The sun arcs across the sky. It is hard to sit still so long. People cheer when he warns of false Mohammedans who come to trick us and take our money. They cheer again when he promises to stop them and to kill any who refuse to leave. The black-clad Shekunas carry sticks and short swords. I don’t doubt what he says is true. He tells us the terrible things that await those who do not follow Annabi. For them the rivers will drain into the soil, the rice harvest fail. His bird’s voice rises to a shriek, like the call of a peacock.
‘Those Who Will Be Saved Are Only the True Muslims.’
I touch my mama’s sleeve. She is wearing her best gown and she is beautiful. I pull her finger. I ask her if we are to Be Saved. Yes, she tells me and slides her hand out from beneath mine, strokes the back of my hand lightly.
I turn my head this way and that to look at the people listening to the preacher. People who come to Be Saved. People who have come to Be Healed, because that is what they say Haidera can do. There are families like ours, men with their wives and children. Here and there a lame leg stiffly extended; a gaunt figure propped up by the shoulders; a child’s inert frame wrapped in blankets; eyes that are opaque and unblinking. At the back are the beggars. Some have limbs that are missing. Others have limbs that are too big or too small. Some have limbs that are falling off. And there are poor people, who sit on the dry earth with none of the comforts we have brought with us: lined faces, scant clothing, lean and scarred bodies.
A way off: four people. Different from everyone else. Legs straight, hands clasped behind their backs. Standing when everyone else is sitting. And when the time comes to pray they alone do not kneel. Short-sleeved shirts and short trousers. Red round caps. Court Messengers who work for the pothos. There is one who comes to our village sometimes. The people greet him, but rarely invite him to eat. Sometimes my father calls for my mother to serve him a meal and I help her carry it out to where he sits on a stool outside the meeting house. He talks to my father and leaves again soon after. The Black White Man, they call him.
Out in front my father nods. There are sins Haidera has seen here with his own eyes. Big eyes, with lines above and beneath. ‘Promiscuousness.’ Drawing the word out, turning it into four words. Prom. Isc. Uous. Ness! His mouth snaps shut on the end of the word, the tongue disappears with a flick like a tail into a hole. My father bobs his head. ‘Slander.’ Bob, goes my father’s head again. ‘Blasphemy.’ Bob. ‘Greed.’ Bob. ‘Envy.’ Bob, bob. And my father looks around him now. His chin lifted slightly. ‘Gambling, cheating.’ My father nods firmly. ‘Usury.’ This time he doesn’t nod. ‘Excessive polygamy.’ The preacher’s voice whistles, sibilant, trembling. Something shifts in the air.
Ya Namina, of course; Ya Isatta Numokho; Sakie, my own mother; Ya Jeneba and Ya Sallay Kamara, Tenkamu, whose family name I never knew. Memso and Saffie, who are still young and under the tutelage of Ya Namina. My father’s wives are gathered around him with the exception of two who are new mothers. They have returned to their families and are not expected back until the children are weaned, two years from now. We are all here. My father sits at the head of us.
But I don’t have time to think any more about that. A ripple runs through the mass of people near the platform. The crowd splits apart. A man stumbles forward like a shipwrecked sailor thrown up on the sand. In his hands he holds a carved wooden statue. Other people follow. Each holding a figure, sometimes more than one. They lay them down in front of the platform. A mound rises. Some people turn and bow to Haidera. One man prostrates himself, the whole length of his person pressed to the ground, and stays there until two of the Shekunas heave him up by the arms. The crowd roars as each new supplicant comes forward.
Up on tiptoe I can see Haidera pacing back and forth. Now his disciples are taking carvings from people and throwing them on the pile. I can barely hear what he is saying. He gesticulates, points up at the sky with his left hand, his voice rises and falls. A few words carry above the noise of the crowd. He is talking about Blasphemy and Native Idols. The preacher bites into his lip, emphasises the word Native, the way he did when he talked about Promiscuousness. As though it were something Rancid.
From behind, a shout. I swivel round. A man dashes out of one of the houses around the square. In one hand he is holding a small soapstone figure, the ones the farmers bury in the fields when they plant the first seed. In the other hand he clutches a string of beads. He is wheeling around like a kite in the sky, like a crazy man. Now two more are rapping on the door of another house. No answer. They push at the door, which opens easily. In and out. More men join in. Not Shekunas. Those ones watch but do nothing. Ordinary men. Forcing their way into shops and homes, whooping every time they find an old god to confiscate.
Whose houses they are I cannot tell you, because nobody dares to utter a challenge. The mob tears around the square and down an empty side street, out of view. There are sounds: the rush of feet, splintering wood, the echo of voices.
The fire blazes into the night. Nobody goes near it. You might think it was a stinking cesspool instead of a warm fire on a cool, bright night. A night when the stars have come out to watch the earth. Nobody warms their hands. Nobody borrows a brand for their cooking fire. Nobody pushes a yam into the embers. Instead men with long sticks poke around in the ashes. And where they find a statue or a figure that has survived the heat, they set about smashing it into powder.
Some pieces went missing. I don’t know.