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Near the
classrooms
in the dusty
schoolyard
of the
Chibok
Government
Secondary
School, the Whuntaku girls hold
court beneath the green lele
mazza tree. There is no sign on
the tree, no discernible
markings; everyone just knows
it’s their spot — where they
gathered in the mornings,
between classes, and after
school to hang out, talk about
boys, whatever.
A girl can’t just join the
Whuntaku clique; she has to be
from Whuntaku, a
neighborhood in Chibok, a town
in northeastern Nigeria that
most people had never heard of
before the “incident.” There’s
an unspoken code among them:
You could be friends with other
girls, but you always watch out
for your own. Earlier in the
year, for example, a senior
decided to haze a Whuntaku
junior. She had told the junior
to fetch her a bucket of water
from the pumps outside, where
the boarding school students
collect water once a day for
bathing. But when the
Whuntaku girl said she was
already on an errand for
another senior and would have
do it later, the senior yelled at
the junior, said she was being
“disrespectful.” She made her
kneel on the floor of the
bathroom for five minutes. The
toilet that day was filthy; it’s
where roughly one thousand
girls in the school bathe, and no
one had cleaned it. As the
junior balanced her weight on
her knees, she started to cry.
When the junior returned to the
room the Whuntaku girls
shared, the others told her to
forget it. “Forgive,” they said.
But the senior kept at it, always
catching the junior on errands
for other Whuntaku girls. She
would make her kneel. The
third time, the junior had just
had an operation on her ribs.
This is nonsense, the Whuntaku
girls agreed . They stormed out
of the dorm, found the senior,
and, without discussion, started
to beat her . They struck her
with their hands, their legs.
They chased her around the
dorm: “We will kill you!” they
said. They had no idea the
senior had epilepsy, “second
death” in the local tribal
language. “She did like she
died,” the girls later recalled.
But when the shaking passed,
they started again.
Chibok has a strict no-violence
policy, and everyone knew
suspensions were coming. That
night, the Whuntaku girls
ripped out a piece of notebook
paper and passed it around,
each one writing her name on a
line. At the school assembly the
next day, they simply handed
the principal the paper, lined up
in the order of their names, and
then turned and walked out as
they were called, heads held
high:
“Promise!”
“Doris!”
“Blessed!”
Everyone at Chibok Secondary
School got the message: When
you touch the Whuntaku girls,
you play with fire.
That mid-
April
Monday at
the Chibok
school was
hot and
languid, and
by the afternoon the
temperature crept up to 105
degrees — it was the hottest time
of year, when the Saharan
harmattan winds that crash
through the arid countryside
settle, but before the rainy
season ruptures the heat.
The school, a few miles from
Chibok proper, is a vast
compound of freestanding
buildings, classrooms, teachers’
quarters, and a dormitory,
ringed by a low wall with a
single gate. On one side, flat
brushland stretches to the
horizon; on the other, craggy
mountains extend skyward. A
few years ago, the all-girl school
was integrated, and now a few
hundred boys from town
attended classes during the day,
while girls from dozens of
nearby villages boarded on the
grounds. School had been
cancelled for a month due to
security threats from an
extremist Islamic group called
Boko Haram, whose nickname
translates as “Western education
is sinful.” That night, some 300
girls were on campus.
There wasn’t a girl at Chibok
who hadn’t heard of Boko
Haram, and none who didn’t
fear them. The stories of what
the group did circulated widely.
They would kidnap girls and
force them to marry, to cook
and maintain their bases and
safe houses. They would order
them to kill prisoners they’d
captured and brought back to
camp and, if a girl refused, Boko
Haram’s “real wives” would
volunteer to slit the prisoner’s
throat out of loyalty. If a
captured girl had a child with
Boko Haram — as all too often
happened — they would force
her to cook her own baby and
then watch as the fighters
devoured it.
The students of Chibok were
terrified. False alarms were
common. One night, a girl
thought she spotted someone
outside and led a screaming
stampede toward the front gate
— a pileup of sprained ankles
and scrapes and bruises all
because a girl had snuck out of
the dorm to talk on her cell
phone. After that, the principal
told the students never, ever to
run. The administration even
called the town’s contingent of
soldiers, who came to school
and told the girls the same
thing: If there was an attack —
they should stay put. The army
would protect them.
The summer before school
started, Boko Haram had been
pushed out of their stronghold
in Maiduguri, Borno State’s
capital, by a joint military and
civilian operation. The group,
which was started by students
in the late 1990s arguing that
only an Islamic state could fix
Nigeria’s rampant corruption,
initially got a foothold in the
impoverished, Muslim north.
But after a military crackdown
they’d become radicalized and
now they targeted politicians,
traditional community leaders,
and — increasingly — schools. At
least fifty schools were burned
over the past two years, and
another 60 had been forced to
close. In February, the group
attacked a boy’s dormitory in
neighboring Yobe state, locking
the doors and setting the
building on fire, burning 59
students alive. It got bad enough
that in March the government
closed all public secondary
schools in Borno State—they
admitted it couldn’t keep
students safe. Chibok had only
re-opened for seniors to
complete their college-entrance
exams. Everyone else stayed
home.
When a student saw the vice
principal pick up a piece of
paper on the floor warning that
Boko Haram was coming, the
girls started gossiping. Would
the principal cancel school?
Postpone exams? The
administration called the
students together. It was a
prank, they said — and it wasn’t
funny. Boko Haram wasn’t
coming, exams were. Everyone
calm down and keep studying.
Endurance
lay
studying in
her bunk in
Moda
House. She
was a
transfer
student that year and had met
Boko Haram before. The men
had stormed her old school last
year in the night, rounding up
the female students. “What is
the point of education?” they
shouted. The girls were silent.
“Why are you being quiet? Don’t
you know what to say?” the
men demanded. “What’s the
point of being here then?”
The fighters made the girls lie
flat and press their faces down
into the ground. Endurance
didn’t notice how long she kept
her eyes closed; she heard only
their parting words: “We are
going to leave you today, but if
we come back and see another
girl here, we’re going to kill
her.”
After that, her parents enrolled
her in Chibok — they thought it
would be safer.
Endurance’s family lived in
Askira-Ube, a town 15 miles
from Chibok, where her father
farms. Their house didn’t have
electricity or a television —
which made it hard for
Endurance to study or learn
English, the language of the
college-entrance exams. Still,
her parents had high
aspirations for their daughter,
the youngest of seven siblings
and the first girl, they hoped, to
finish school and go to college.
Endurance had come to Chibok
early enough to claim the best
bed in the dorm room—the one
in the corner, with the biggest
personal nook, where she
arranged and rearranged her
prized possession: biology
books. Endurance hoped to
become a microbiologist — a
rare goal in Borno State, where
most girls dream of family and
only 28 percent of children are
enrolled in school. Practicing
Biology, Key Points in Biology,
Modern Biology, Comprehensive
Biology, and Intensive Biology.
She kept them in her bed with
her. At night, she liked to stack
them under her head like a
pillow.
The bed next to her belonged to
her best friend, Mary.
Endurance saw her on the first
day, reading a book while
everyone else was playing,
foolishly. It turned out, Mary
was third in the class. Her
father was a pastor. Endurance
was prim and wiry, with close-
cropped hair — people joked that
she dressed like a “preacher’s
daughter.”
Together, they decided that this
year was the most important of
their lives. They weren’t like
the popular girls at school,
including the Whuntaku clan,
who always seemed to be
everywhere, walking around,
heads high, talking to boys,
laughing at inside jokes. They
spent hours reading and talking
about the Bible and how to live
their lives in a good way.
Endurance wasn’t sure how
Mary knew all the good advice
she gave — it was a gift God
gave her.
“We should be careful with the
life we live on earth. We should
be careful because some people
are going to come and say, ‘We
are God.’ We have to love one
another, because everyone is
going to start hating and killing
each other,” Mary told
Endurance, and Endurance
knew it was true.
The
Whuntaku
girls filed
out of the
Ghana room
which they
had
christened “The Golden Room,”
with a sign above the door.
Evening prayer was the only
time of day when Blessed and
Hadiza were apart. As a
Christian, Blessed stayed in the
prayer area at the center of the
hostel, while Hadiza, a petite
girl with full lips and an intense
stare, went to an empty
classroom with the other
Muslim girls. At the beginning
of last year, when Hadiza had
arrived at Chibok, there had
been no beds in dorm room, so
Blessed offered hers. From that
moment on they shared
everything—including a
mattress.
Blessed was the kind of girl
other girls followed without
really knowing why. Tall and
confident with almond-shaped
eyes, maybe her only social
downfall was her choice in boys
— specifically one called Cool
Boy. It started when he passed
her a note, saying he wanted to
be her friend. Cool Boy was one
of the most popular guys at
school; she couldn’t help writing
back “OK.” It took her longer
for her to let him be her
boyfriend. He gave her his
phone number on a piece of
paper, but she threw it away.
Then one day she came to class
and saw he had carved his
phone number into her desk.
“Now you can’t throw it away,”
he proclaimed with a loafing
grin. Blessed couldn’t help it:
That was cool.
The problem was that Cool Boy
was Muslim. “You’re just not
supposed to be together,” said
Salama, a Whuntaku girl and
one of Blessed’s closest friends.
Blessed knew Salama was
probably right. Her parents,
even if they agreed to the
match, would never truly
approve; Blessed would have to
convert to Islam if they were to
marry. She was the only girl in
the family, and church is
important in Chibok — a
Christian outpost from the
area’s missionary past. She
thought her father, a police
officer, would be crushed.
All of her friends, except Hadiza,
were against it. Sometimes
Blessed wondered if maybe Cool
Boy hadn’t cast some kind of
juju on her to make her forsake
most of her friends in favor of
him. If he had, it had definitely
worked on her friendship with
Salama, one of the most proper
girls in the Whantaku circle,
and that sucked.
Salama settled herself on the
floor alongside Blessed in the
front of the room and tried to
concentrate on the prayer. It
was quiet as the girls took
turns. “May God keep Nigeria
safe,” one girl began. “May the
testing commission be kind to
us and show us answers in
advance,” another prayed. The
girls were solemn. “As we sit
and chill in the hostel and jest
with our friends, and we say
things about other people, may
God forgive us,” someone else
intoned. “May God keep us safe
tonight,” another said.
The Golden
Room was
lit by
torchlight.
There was
no
electricity at
Chibok, and after the sun set
over the beige bush land the
rooms grew dark and streaked
with flashlight beams. Girls
were draped across their beds,
enjoying the slight drop in
temperature, scattering their
textbooks and notes.
Exam stress was like a blanket.
Every sound was muffled. The
room’s prefect, a Whuntaku girl,
picked up a bucket. She started
to drum. Salama, shy and pretty,
always dressed immaculately,
was sitting on her bed; she
watched as Hadiza and another
girl started dancing in the
middle of the room. Blessed got
up next to join them. Others
rose, and suddenly the entire
Golden Room was dancing — the
girls twirling, slapping the balls
of their feet, clapping, kicking
their legs.
As the beat got faster, the girls
moved faster. Salama could feel
herself melting into the rhythm
— all the stress of the exams, of
school, of the future shed with
each stomp. Blessed danced
alongside her. Blessed was
always so confident, so at ease
in her own skin. Salama noticed
that she was matching Blessed
step for step. That made her
proud.
The girls danced for hours —
they didn’t remember ever
having danced like this before.
Exhausted and sweaty, Blessed
and Hadiza pulled their mattress
outside and fell asleep under the
stars.
It started
with a few
pops in the
distance
that became
a torrent.
Endurance
heard the
noise from her bed and jerked
up.
At Chibok there was one guard
for the gate and one for the
whole dorm. The dorm guard
slept across from Endurance
and Mary; they called him Kaka,
the respectful way to address an
elder male in Nigeria. Kaka was
ancient — wrinkled and walked
with a limp. It was impossible
to know just how old he was.
He rustled in bed. “I’m going
out to look,” he told them, then
shuffled away.
Outside, Hadiza was shaking
Blessed awake and the two girls
ran back into the Golden Room.
Inside, there was only
commotion and confusion.
Salama’s friend was shouting at
her: “You idiot! Wake up! Can’t
you hear what’s happening?”
Salama, still half-asleep, pulled
on her blue-checkered uniform
and ran to the Golden Room’s
doorway. The sharp sounds of
assault, like a thundering roar,
were everywhere at once — she
felt the earth shaking. Shadows
of girls scrambled past and
gathered in the darkness of the
prayer area.
Endurance couldn’t wait for
Kaka. Dressed in a T-shirt and
wrapper skirt, she ran into the
prayer room with Mary. They
stood against the wall;
Endurance took Mary’s hand
and listened to the whispers.
Mary’s breathing was heavy.
“Should we run?” the girls asked
one another.
“We should not run. We should
keep quiet. The principal said
we should not go anywhere.”
“What is happening?” someone
shouted.
Girls were crying.
“Is it them?” another asked. “Is it
them?”
“Are they here?”
“What about our parents?”
“Okay, everyone just sit down,”
someone said. “Everybody just
be quiet, maybe they will think
there is no one in school!”
Kaka came back and found
Endurance and Mary. “What are
we going to do?” he asked. The
girls looked up at him; there
was little to be done. “We’ll just
leave the rest for God,”
Endurance said.
Kaka knew what Boko Haram
did to men in situations like
this — girls they might leave;
men they kidnapped or killed.
“They may have more mercy on
you. They won’t have mercy on
me. Let me go and hide,” he
said and vanished into the
shadows.
Endurance heard the sound of
motorbikes. Two men in
military uniforms walked into
the dorm. “Don’t worry. Don’t
run. We are with you,” one of
them shouted. “Gather together!
Gather in one place!”
In the prayer area, Blessed’s
heart steadied. They were here
to protect the school, just like
the principal had promised.
The girls muffled their sobs and
sat down.
In an instant, everything
changed. More men charged
into the hostel. “Allah Akbar!”
the men shouted. “Allah
Akbar!” The soldiers poured in,
more and more of them,
holding huge guns. It was dark
and the girls couldn’t see them
clearly, but the smell of sweat
and adrenaline filled the hall.
“Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!
Allah Akbar!”
These men are not soldiers ,
Blessed thought.
After the
last time,
they had
haunted
Endurance.
The dreams
always started the same: white-
clad angels singing beautifully,
then her view shifted. Suddenly,
there were dark shapes, people,
monsters; she couldn’t make
them out. They were screaming
and shouting, and coming fast.
She used to wake up before the
monsters got too close. But now
they were here.
“Everyone quiet!” one man
yelled above the chaos, his face
hidden by shadows. He must be
the leader , Endurance thought.
“Where are the boys and the
men of the school?”
“They do day school,” someone
answered.
The men weren’t there to
intimidate. They wanted
supplies. They wanted
machinery — things that were
impossible to get in the bush,
where they made their home.
“Where is the machine for
making bricks?”
“There’s no engine,” the girls
whispered. “There’s no machine
for making blocks.”
“You are lying! If you don’t tell
us where it is — you know what
we did to other towns, what you
heard happened there will
happen here.”
A group of men took two of the
girls to lead them to the food
stores. The other girls were
commanded outside, past the
lele mazza tree, and over to the
gated entrance.
Endurance watched as the men
divided themselves into three
groups. One group guarded the
girls; another loaded cars with
sacks of rice, beans, pasta, and
maize. The third started
torching the buildings. It was all
so practiced and efficient.
Within minutes, the classrooms,
the teachers’ quarters, and the
storeroom were all bathed in
orange flames.
Again the leader spoke up. “Go
get your hijabs!” he shouted. A
few of the girls riffled through
book-bags for head scarves;
others stood up, moving toward
the hostel, which was so far
untouched. Most of the girls
remained seated.
“What about you Christians,
don’t you have scarves?” the
leader asked. “Are you all
Christians?” The girls nodded.
“So does that mean we should
just kill these — take them and
burn them, too?” Endurance
heard a man ask.
“No. Just mix them together,”
the leader said. “Let’s go!”
Finally, the men set fire to the
hostel: Everything the girls had
known was now gone.
The leader wasn’t satisfied.
“Where is the brick-making
machine?” he shouted again.
“I’m going to shoot this gun. If I
shoot it four times, you are all
going to die!”
The man shot. Once, twice, a
third time.
A girl stood up: “It’s on the
road!” she said. They dispatched
her to show them. Salama felt
her legs shaking.
Endurance started to pray, her
eyes open as she sat in the
dusty courtyard. She could feel
Mary trembling next to her. She
could hear screams and
gunshots from the town, then a
big explosion in the distance.
Maybe one of the petrol drums in
the market, she thought. The
girls next to her where sobbing:
“I’m the only child of my mom
and I’m never going to see her
again!”
A lone voice asked: “If I die,
what am I going to tell God?”
Endurance’s left hand gripped
her friend Christina’s, one of
her other close friends from
Moda House; her right hand
held Mary’s. Christina held onto
someone else, Mary did the
same, and those girls held onto
other girls, who held others.
Endurance could feel their
hearts beating as one.
The Holy Spirit told Endurance
to pray. “If I have longer days
on Earth, the Lord lead me out
of this. If this is my last day on
earth, let me see God,” she
mouthed silently.
Christina’s body was still, taut
like a spring; Mary was shaking.
Endurance was calm. It will be
like last time. They are going to
tell us to go home now, she
thought. Endurance willed
herself to project calm on Mary,
on all of them. She saw more
men coming to the gate. “Get
up!” they shouted, “Get up and
follow this road!”
They are not going to let us go.
Endurance stood up and said a
prayer: “God give me direction
of how to get back home. I am
not scared.”
As the girls walked out of the
gate, they were still linked.
Endurance put one foot in front
of the other, her eyes open, her
mind clear. She focused on
walking, one foot, then the
other. They were careful to stay
together in their web of hands
— girls linked to girls linked to
girls linked to God.
The main
dirt road
was wide,
but
hundreds of
girls were
walking
together, placing one foot in
front of the other as they had
been ordered to. Endurance
could see girls spilling over onto
the side and into the bush. Boko
Haram gunmen had them
corralled like a frightened,
stumbling herd.
Maybe 15 minutes went by;
almost every girl in Endurance’s
group was holding someone’s
hand. “Why are you walking
like that?” one gunman shouted
at Endurance. She jumped.
Everyone dropped hands.
Endurance fumbled in the
darkness. She found one hand
near to her; it was Christina’s.
Mary had disappeared, gone in
the sea of girls and murmurs.
Endurance started planning. She
whispered to Christina: “If we
go where they are taking us, do
you think we will be able to
escape?”
“What do you think we should
do?” Christina asked in Kibaku,
the local Chibok tribal language;
counting on the fact that Boko
Haram — a group dominated by
Fulani and Kanuri men from
the northern part of the state —
would not understand them.
“Well, even if we try to escape,
and we get killed, at least our
parents will be able to see our
bodies,” Endurance told her.
“That’s better than to go there
and then have our lives
spoiled.”
“How will we know when to
run?” Christina asked her.
“The Lord will tell us the right
time.”
By Endurance’s count, they had
been walking about half an
hour when Boko Haram shouted
for them to sit down again.
There was a big tree on the side
of the road, and three trucks
and a car parked beneath it. The
fighters started re-packing food.
Blessed gripped Hadiza’s hand
tightly. She watched as the men
drove a lorry toward the group.
“Everyone who wants to live, get
in the truck,” the leader
shouted, “Everyone who wants
to die, step over there!” He fired
his gun in the air: pop, pop,
pop.
Blessed pulled Hadiza’s hand,
but Hadiza wouldn’t budge.
“Let’s go,” Blessed whispered.
“No,” Hadiza said.
“Do you want these people to kill
you? Let’s enter!” She pulled
her friend.
“I will not enter. Let them kill
me here.”
There was a crush to move.
Girls were pushing, jostling
forward.
“Let’s enter!” Blessed pleaded.
She could feel Hadiza’s
resistance; her best friend’s
hand was slipping away.
We are sleeping in one place,
always. We are fetching water
together; we are studying
together; we are together,
always. When we hear this thing,
she’s the one who wake me up;
she held my hand inside the
hostel. Then, from the time that
we came outside, we hold our
hands together, and then we are
moving. We are together, since
the beginning our hands are
together. Now, she left my hand.
Blessed was pushed to the front
of the lorry. She sat down. The
girls kept coming, crawling over
each other to fit in the truck. A
girl sat on Blessed’s leg, others
gripped her shoulders. She was
surrounded, suffocated by
bodies.
The truck began to move. Inside
the open-air container, it was
quiet. The girls fell into each
other, their bodies colliding and
falling apart — their weight the
only solid part of their
existence. It was quiet, so quiet.
An hour passed — maybe more,
maybe less — when Blessed
heard Hadiza’s voice:
“Blessed! Come! Let’s jump
down!”
“Hadiza, I am in the front! There
are people on top of me! I don’t
have a way to jump down.”
“Okay, Blessed. Please, if you
have a place to stand up — stand
up,” Blessed heard her best
friend plead. “Please, let’s go!”
“Okay, Hadiza, I’m coming,”
Blessed said. She tried to move,
she pushed up, but she couldn’t.
The girls had formed a cage of
limbs.
“Hadiza! I can’t stand!” Blessed
called. “Hadiza!”
“Okay, Blessed, until you
return…”
After that, silence. When
Blessed looked up, she saw only
stars.
There were
girls who
jumped and
girls who
fell. Some
grabbed
tree
branches that whipped across
the open truck and swung out
into the darkness. They leapt as
if they knew what was coming,
like synchronized swimmers
vaulting calmly into a practiced
routine they’d done countless
times before. Endurance
counted them go: One. Two.
Three…
Salama saw them, too. They
didn’t say goodbye — they just
fell away, melting into the
darkness. Salama struggled to
move. She wanted to get to the
edge and vanish as well. As she
tried to stand, a girl pulled on
her arm. “If you jump, I’ll
report you to them,” she said.
Salama stayed still.
From her spot in the truck,
Endurance could see the next
vehicle behind them in the
convoy. It was a motorcycle;
Endurance saw its lone beam,
bouncing in the darkness. She
measured the space between.
Endurance had promised
Christina that God would let
them know when it was time.
Where was God now? The
motorcycle beam got fainter.
Was the truck was speeding up?
Suddenly, Endurance realized
she wasn’t holding anyone’s
hand. Christina was gone — she
had jumped.
Was this God’s sign? Endurance
wasn’t thinking; she hunched
down and sprung into the abyss.
The sun
crept over
the horizon,
slowly
rendering
the dark
shifting
limbs into whole bodies and
recognizable faces. But light did
little to lessen the dull fear that
had settled over the group.
There was no expectation of the
unknown, just blankness.
Blessed had watched the truck
pass three villages. She had lost
track of time when there came a
clunking shudder — the truck
had broken down. They were on
a dirt road, with unfamiliar
bushland in all directions, just
flat and yellow, with a
smattering of deep green
Dogonyaro, acacia, and baobab
trees. “Get down!” the men
shouted, and everyone
scrambled out. “Sit there!” they
commanded, pointing to the
sandy ground under a large
tree. Now the girls got their
first real look at their
kidnappers.
They were more than a dozen
men, wearing mismatching
uniforms — police unit pants,
military camouflage shirts —
some with turbans covering
their faces, others with nothing
more than ordinary clothes and
a gun. A few of them took out
machetes and started cutting
bramble and putting the thorny
branches in a circle around the
seated girls. It seemed like they
had done this before.
The girls knew now that they
were in a race against time. The
longer Boko Haram held them,
the harder it would be to return
to their old lives. If anyone
found out what had happened to
them, they would be considered
spoiled. There were stories
about girls who returned home.
Their families would try to hide
the truth from their neighbors,
from outsiders — No, this didn’t
happen to us , they would say,
our girls have been here all
along. If found out, their
daughters would never be able
to marry. Their lives would be
ruined forever.
“I want five girls, now,” said a
man in a uniform. “Five girls,
for cooking!” he demanded.
Blessed watched as five girls
stood up. She fidgeted on the
ground. I need to find a way to
run.
The men finished building the
bramble barrier and went to fix
the truck. The few that
remained were stationed around
the perimeter. They had left a
small opening in the makeshift
fence, a small corridor, patrolled
by one man with a gun.
Blessed looked around and saw
a few other Whuntaku girls
sitting on the ground. She made
up her mind, stood up, and
walked to the corridor.
“Please, I want to ease myself,”
she told the man in Hausa, the
dominant language of northern
Nigeria.
“Go back and sit down, you’re
not going anywhere,” he said.
The man was young, tall, and
fair-skinned; he had long hair.
“Please,” she said. “I need to
ease myself.”
“Do it here,” he said coldly.
Blessed bent down and peed in
the sand. She walked back and
sat under the tree.
The men had gathered in a
group by the truck. Blessed
looked around; there were only
a few men left watching the
girls. She could hear faint
crying.
“Give me your scarf?” she asked
a girl sitting near her. It was a
small, black-and-white
checkered fabric, and she
wrapped it around her tiny
waist. Maybe they won’t
recognize me, she thought. She
stood up.
Her Whuntaku sister Salama
was watching from the ground.
What is Blessed doing? she
thought. Salama was tired and
hungry. She could hear nothing
and everything. Then she heard
only the voice of God: Stand up.
Follow Blessed. Then, Satan: Sit
down. Sit down. Wait.
The voices’ whirled around her
head like a tornado: Follow
Blessed; Sit down; Follow
Blessed; Sit down. Salama
wrenched herself up. She
followed Blessed.
“Please, I need to ease myself,”
Blessed asked the man again.
Salama moved right behind her.
Two more girls trailed after.
“Didn’t you just go?” he asked
Blessed.
“No, that wasn’t me,” she
replied. The girls stood silently
by.
“Okay, come back immediately,”
he said.
The girls didn’t speak. They
walked out of the corridor and
around the makeshift fence, past
some bushes where they bent
down.
“Okay, guys,” Blessed said,
drawing them closer. “This is
what’s going to happen now. We
have to run. If we run and they
kill us, so be it. But we have to
run now.”
The girls nodded. Blessed peered
out of the bush, the men had
their backs to the girls; they
seemed distracted by the food.
“Now,” Blessed hissed.
The girls ran.
The girls
ran without
thinking.
They ran
without
speaking.
When they
got tired, they rested briefly
under the sparse trees,
flattening themselves to the
parched earth and making
themselves very small. Then
they ran some more. They
thought they were deep in Boko
Haram territory; militants could
have been anywhere.
By the evening, Blessed and
Salama and another girl (the
fourth had run in a different
direction from the broken down
truck) took a break under a
tree. They heard a cow mooing
in the distance and saw a Fulani
herdsman’s hut. The girls
gathered. “These people are in
the Boko Haram area. What if
we go and they return us?”
Salama asked. But Blessed was
firm: They needed food.
When they entered the one-
room straw hut, they found a
couple there in the evening
light. “Are you the girls Boko
Haram kidnapped?” the Fulani
man asked immediately.
The girls nodded.
“We heard you passing in the
night. You’re safe here,” he told
them. The girls weren’t sure
they believed him, but they had
no choice. The herdsman’s wife
gave them new clothes, to
disguise them, and plastic bags
for their uniforms. They
brought them water to bathe
and fed them maize for dinner.
That night, the girls cried and
prayed and slept on the floor
together.
The next day, the herdsman told
them to follow the road and to
ask people for directions home.
In the afternoon, after walking
all day, they rested beneath a
tree. A man walked by. “You
look really tired,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
“We are the girls who were
kidnapped from Chibok,” they
told him.
“Don’t say that!” he snapped,
“Boko Haram comes to this
village a lot.” He showed them
the path they should take.
Later, a man on a motorcycle
drove by and stopped. “What
are you doing walking on the
streets like this?” he asked.
“We want to go to Chibok,” they
told him.
The man looked at their plastic
bags. “What’s in there?” he
asked.
“Uniforms.”
“Are you the girls who were
kidnapped from the Chibok
School?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, get on.” Less than an
hour later, they were home.
Endurance
couldn’t
run. She
had hurt
her leg
jumping off
the truck,
so she
crawled. She saw the lone beam
of the motorcycle headlight, but
the machine didn’t see her.
Christina found her in the
darkness, but couldn’t lift her
up. So Endurance pulled herself,
with her arms, on her stomach,
on her back, dragging herself
through the brush. The ground
was jagged and hard like stone,
she could feel the rocks tearing
at her clothes, at her skin. She
thought she heard gunshots.
Her elbow was bleeding.
A man with a bicycle, then a
man on a motorbike, and finally
a man with a car carried
Endurance and Christina home.
When Endurance got to the
front door of her family’s small
mud-brick house, near her
father’s farmland, she saw her
neighbors and her family
gathered in the living room.
Everyone was in tears, as if
someone had died. When she
saw her parents, she started
crying, too. Her family told her
how blessed she had been. “You
should be serious, hold God
closer to you, take care of
yourself and live a good life,”
one of her brothers said.
The next day, her brother
Emmanuel took her to the
market to buy new clothes and
shoes — black, brown, and red .
Everything she owned had been
burned in the hostel, including
her books. The family took her
to the doctor to treat her legs.
Endurance had never been to a
doctor before. They had to make
sure Boko Haram hadn’t done
anything else to her. Afterward,
she cut off all her hair. Just like
that.
The dreams returned. But these
dreams were different. There
were no angels singing. She
dreamed only of the girls. She
dreamed about Boko Haram
coming back and locking her
into a room. Every blessed day,
if she managed to sleep, she
dreamed. Where is Mary now?
Was it right to jump and leave
her behind?
When Blessed arrived home,
Hadiza came to her house right
away. It was as if nothing had
changed, they clung to each
other and promised to do
everything the way they always
had. They would not go to the
village market or get water
without the other.
Blessed worried what Cool Boy
would think. Was she ruined
now? Would he still want her?
Soon, he came, too. He greeted
Blessed’s mother — she still
didn’t know he was Muslim —
and then found her. “I’m sorry
this happened to you,” he told
her. “I’m glad you are okay.” He
told he loved her and promised
to follow her anywhere.
When the
girls’
parents got
to the
school the
morning after the attack, they
found nothing but the burnt
shells of classrooms, matchstick
dormitories full of metal bed
frames and unanswered
questions: Where had the
teachers been during the attack?
What happened to the security
guards? How could a school be
re-opened during an emergency
closure without a security plan?
Where are our daughters?
In Nigeria, questions like that
hardly ever get answered. After
waiting for the government to
do something, a group of 100
fathers rode their motorbikes to
the edge of Sambisa forest, the
swampy national park where
Boko Haram had supposedly set
up their new headquarters in
the countryside. They didn’t
have guns, only machetes and
knives. The nearby villagers
told them to go back: “They
have armored tanks; they have
everything. They will destroy
you,” the villagers said. The
fathers relented.
It took president Goodluck
Jonathan, who is running for
reelection in 2015, three weeks
to publicly acknowledge the
kidnapping even happened —
and when he finally did, he
admitted that he didn’t know
where the girls were. He then
blamed the parents for not
providing a list of names and
promised to find them. His wife,
Endurance Jonathan, bemoaned
the kidnapping, vowing to join
the #BringBackOurGirls protests
that had mushroomed across
the country. Then she reversed
course and declared the protests
were merely an opposition-led
plot to embarrass her husband
in an election year. The first
lady said the protesters were
most likely Boko Haram
members themselves.
That very day, the leader of
Boko Haram, Abubukar Shekau,
released a video saying he was
going to sell the girls. A few
weeks later, he sent out another
that showed 136 girls sitting in
hijabs reciting the Koran.
International media outlets
picked up the story, and
#BringBackOurGirls trended
briefly. Michelle Obama posted a
Twitter selfie holding up a sign
in solidarity with the protest
movement. Western
governments promised to
support a rescue operation.
Then, just as quickly, the world
turned away.
I meet the
girls in a
city in
central
Nigeria a
little over
two months
after the
incident. Blessed and Salama
had been to the governor’s
house in Maiduguri to help
identify their friends in the
latest video released by Shekau.
Endurance had been to Abuja to
talk to some foreigners about
that night. She stayed in a hotel
for the first time.
At first, the girls are all limbs
and awkward giggles. They play
on their phones and trade
Christian and Hausa pop songs
over Bluetooth. They’ve been
told interviews like this are the
only way to help the girls who
are lost, but they’ve never told
their story in detail. It’s
impossible to know what parts
of their tales are true, and what
parts they’ve heard from others
and repeated as absolute fact,
the way only children can.
There are moments where they
get frustrated. No one has asked
them about their lives before:
How is this relevant to Boko
Haram? How is this relevant to
finding our friends?
How they managed to make it
home and their friends didn’t is
a question they don’t know how
to answer. Sometimes they say
it was God’s will. Other times,
it’s something else. “The other
girls were so scared, they did
not have the courage,”
Endurance tells me. “I have
always had courage.”
This is undeniably true. The
courage these girls showed in
the face of men with guns is
almost beyond comprehension.
And yet the friends they
describe, the ones still in the
forest, are just as dynamic and
headstrong as they are. In high
school, friendships are blood
bonds, so intense that the guilt
of being free while their friends
are in captivity is everpresent.
The timing of their abduction
stays with me: They are 17,
soon to be 18 — the years that
mark the metamorphosis
between girl and woman. It’s
evident in the way they move
their newly acquired figures,
jutting out their hips when they
pose for photographs, self-
conscious and self-aware all at
once. What had been their
biggest year was now something
else entirely. They didn’t know
when they would retake their
exams. They aren’t sure if this
was just a thing that happened
to them, or something that will
define them forever.
At dusk after one of our
interviews, Endurance and I are
sitting in the den. The power
has cut — outages are frequent
across Nigeria— and the light is
fading from the horizon.
Endurance is showing me
pictures on her phone: her
friends, her house. She’s taken
a photo of us together and
photo-shopped a large pink
heart around us as a frame. She
smiles when she shows it to me.
“Beautiful!” she exclaims.
Suddenly, she isn’t beaming
anymore; she shifts her weight
on the pleather couch.
“How do you think we can bring
back the girls?” she asks,
looking up from her phone. It’s
as if she just remembered that
they are gone.
“Praying,” Salama interrupts.
“No,” Endurance decrees,
shaking her head.
“There’s nothing stronger than
prayer,” Salama lectures.
“I’m still praying, but… what
kind of help do you think the
government can do?”
“The government screwed them,”
Salama snaps, her prim
composure wavering. “What is
the government doing?” She
frowns.
“What do you think,
Endurance?” I ask her. I watch
her ponder silently. This is the
girl who spent most of the time
I was with her laughing and
breaking out into tiny jigs. She
thought seriously before
answering my questions
thoughtfully and at length. It’s
the first time since our initial
day together, when she broke
down crying about Mary’s fate,
that she looks small and fragile.
The international spotlight that
had illuminated Chibok for a
few weeks had faded, taking all
those promises with it. Since
the kidnapping, Boko Haram has
only gotten stronger; they have
taken over villages and towns,
raised the black flag and
declared their own caliphate.
They have kidnapped more
women. They have killed nearly
three thousand people this year
alone. The government has
recently claimed a string of
victories against the militants,
and rumors of a possible
prisoner exchange swirl, but
negotiations have yet to yield
results. Two hundred girls are
still missing.
Finally, Endurance responds.
“Their lives have already been
spoiled,” she tells me solemnly.
“When they come back…
Nothing, nothing can help them.
They’ll never be the same.”
All of the girls’ names in this
story have been changed. They
chose their new names
themselves.
This story was written by Sarah
A. Topol. It was edited by
Michael Benoist , fact-checked by
Taylor Beck , and copy-edited by
Lawrence Levi.
Source:medium.com
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