Price for Comfort

                                                              

I remember how it hurt seeing her hurt. What did I know: a seven years old nestling, still adjusting to a hostile world? Not much, maybe. Yet I felt it—the pain, its icy touch on my tender skin: a pain that was not exactly mine but hers; one that made her sob silently behind closed doors, like she feared it would reach out to me and wind its fingers around my little throat.

My name is Yisa Babangida, and I’m about to set my mother free from the shackles of pain.

I was born without a Father, with a mother and a sister who was two years older than me. I didn’t attend a school, mother was too poor to afford the fees, and neither did my sister. Growing up, it didn’t really matter much that I didn’t have a father, though I heard the other children’s whispers of how unfortunate I was for not having one—not until I began to notice painful nuances in mother’s behavior.

If I could put a finger on it, these nuances started when Aisha; my older sister, was given out to a man—who was probably in his late forties, in marriage. I could remember hearing mother comfort tearful Aisha behind closed doors, and later crying silently when she was taken away by this man; from then on, she cried every day.

She usually did the hawking of tomatoes and peppers—Aisha, but since she was gone, mother did it instead; her palms tightly holding mine as she moved from one street to another—tray balanced on a folded cloth on her head, calling out to potential customers. Now and then, she would sit on a street’s pavement and feed me with a loaf of bread, and a cup of gruel which we carried along from the house.

Sometimes, I would wander off to play with some children of the same age group, who were like me—bedraggled and poor: children who were called Alimangiris by the community people; the well-to-do children never allowed me into their play-groups, but rather laughed at me. Every time I did, mother would furiously scold me, asking me to promise not to hang out with them again. I never understood why she got so angry at me for doing that; those children were as unfortunate as I was, shouldn’t that mean something? I would ask myself as I sneaked off again to play with them.

I’m a fifteen years old teenager now, and for the past eight years, I’ve been a spectator watching mother’s torturous athletic run on the race track of life without being able to do anything about it—but not today. Today I’m ready to make mother smile, today I’m not a spectator but a player in life’s game.

Today began yesterday, when I and some of the Alimangiris accepted to strap bombs around our waists in exchange for our families’ comfort. Today I’d sacrifice myself, so that mother would cry no more.