Alioke, Favour Grace lives in Mowe, Ogun. This story was slightly edited for grammatical accuracy and to better serve TGF readers. The originality of the story is 100% intact. - TYWA 2020
The sun was standing still like the policeman at Ayikara junction, making your clothes wet with your sweats as Haija was weaving your hair into six backward cornrows.
Mama Halima ran into your compound, shouting, "Wuta! Wuta! Wuta tana ko'ina o! Fire! Fire! Fire is already everywhere o!"
Maybe you would not have believed it if you didn't see people running helter-skelter, some clustering into one another, some pushing others away; if you didn't stretch and see fire tearing down a building.
You jumped, as if frightened by a ghost, clasped your two-months old baby that was crawling on the floor, and started running too. You didn't even look back to check for Haija or Mama Halima, you just kept going where your legs were leading you, or perhaps, where the crowd was going.
Some bodies were already blazing, some were on the floor, unable to stand up, but who cared about them when everyone's life was in their frail and shaking hands?
Dust and smoke swirled into the air and mixed with everybody's daze and blurred your sight, but your legs were still moving. How would you surrender yours and baby's life to death?
You kept running and running till someone, probably, people, pushed you and you landed on the floor, inhaling dust and smoke. You screamed and struggled but the indistinct chatters swallowed your voice and your baby's cry.
You screamed again but someone stepped on you as he or she was running. A short hiss escaped your mouth. The dust started filling your nostrils and mouth. The crowd had already made you their foot mat. A drop of blood fell from your mouth when you coughed and everything started becoming black, but your baby's cry was still tingling your ear.
You opened your eyes and a fair lady in a knee-length white gown and nurse cap smiled at you. You looked sideways and saw injured people on the hospital beds. You tried raising your arms but pains clutched it to the bed and drip.
After the nurse adjusted the drip and helped you in sitting up, because you insisted on sitting up, you asked her what had happened and she told you some armed Fulani men attacked your village, Kimbori, and Apiashyim for an unknown reason.
You asked after your daughter and the smile on her face faded. She pouted and wagged her head.