Rumors

Abstract

Rumors Vincent Ikedinachi (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution This Muslim girl attends a Koranic school where lessons are in Arabic. The board she carries serves as her writing pad. Sokoto, Nigeria 1989. © Betty Press [End Page 82] The insurgents had acted swiftly, killing all the whitemen they encountered as government soldiers attempted a rescue. The blood of the whitemen is not on the insurgents’ hands but on the government’s, because they were warned but refused to listen. The above I learned from Turaki, my only friend and a dedicated rumormonger. Though he’s older than me, we’re like twin brothers. We eat together from the same plate when the food is not enough to go around; we go everywhere together, even to the newsstand, where all the rumors emerge before travelling to every nook and cranny of Zungari. I’m yet to travel out of Zungari, but ancient tales testify that it’s a strategic town because of its geographical location. That gives it a very important status. From the front of the central mosque, one sees a lot of heavy-duty vehicles traveling in and out of Zungari. Turaki says the outbound vehicles are heading for the Federal Capital. He says the Federal Capital is only a hundred kilometers away—even though, to the best of my knowledge, Turaki too has yet to travel out of Zungari. Immediately after Suburi, the Morning Prayer, Turaki and I leave for the newsstand. The dawn breaks early nowadays, as always during Planting Season. We have to get there very early and position ourselves properly and then wait, or else, when the papers arrive, it becomes difficult to catch the fresh rumors firsthand and undiluted before they start to spread. All we do is read the headlines as much as we can and start discussing, dissecting, and deliberating over them. Then the rumors start building up in the crowd, gaining form and weight: developing limbs and wings and then start roaming and soaring over Zungari as the crowd melts in the heat of the rising sun. We do [End Page 83] not treat them lightly because, most times, they eventually come true through our actions. We return daily with a weighty load of rumors. These keep us busy all day, even in the fields where we hire ourselves out during this time of the year to help cultivate the land. Turaki can read the whiteman’s language; at least, he claims he can. I know I cannot, and I do not think I will bother my head with learning it. After all, I hear the insurgents are against the language—Western education, as they call it. The insurgents are powerful people, and I hear they have their own education—the very one Mallam Sarki teaches. Why should I bother to learn the whiteman’s language, when even Mallam’s own is proving too difficult for my head? I like Mallam Sarki—even though he hits me with his old walking stick whenever my head refuses to understand what he’s teaching—but Turaki doesn’t. He has stopped attending classes, citing lack of money for lesson fees. Mallam Sarki wouldn’t stop calling Turaki a discordant fellow with no traceable root. It’s true Turaki never talked about his past or family. Sometimes I’d want to ask him about it, but his face tramples on my confidence. I have seen him get angry and then fight. I’m a living witness to how merciless his punches can be, and I cannot afford a black eye like the boy who tested his patience last week at the newsstand. Turaki says the insurgents will push down every telecommunication mast so that no one will be able to use a cell phone. I heard that cell phones came from the whiteman’s education. This bothers me: first, because it shows that the whiteman’s language contributes positively to our lives; and second, because without the phones, Mallam Sarki would not have gotten the rumor that my father is now in the City of Excellence working as an Okada rider, ferrying people around on his motorcycle for money. My father...