'I kissed my teeth and rolled over to the cold side of my bed, Kabir’s side hoping that the comfort of the cool sheets against my skin would somehow take my mind off the raucous coming from the church building right outside my window.

How long would this rubbish last?

“First it was fragrance,” Sometimes I wonder if they realize they’re rarely ever on key. As I lay in surrender, facing the ceiling, I imagine the woman behind the microphone to be in her late forties, probably nurturing six 6 children that eat a lot of eba, I imagine her oldest to be 16 and her youngest, three. There was something tormented about her voice, perhaps it was her husband, who I imagined to be a confused lad, with brown, greying eyes, barely ever attending these cross-over services, barely ever getting up from the bed his whole body devoured, forcing his wife to join the kids on the thin mat.

“Then it turned to fire-BOOM” Instinctively, I threw my hands over my ears, yanked out of my thoughts when I heard what sounded like a bomb, accompanied with terrifying screams.

The music had stopped.

 The screaming did not stop, if anything there were two parties screaming loudly. I could feel the heat from where I stood.

I scrambled over to my window and peered out, I could feel my rapid heartbeat in my feet and hands once I saw the fire. The church was on fire, and so were the houses in its compound. I watched people scram out of the building, I could not make out faces because it was dark.

 I let out a scream when I watched a man fall to the ground after a shot, and then two, then three, and then a little girl. As I watched the tall men, all in white Kaftan’s, too many to count, drag people out of the already burning church, and fire at the ones that managed to escape from their burning homes, I thought how cruel it was that he stood before the lifeless body of the little girl, laying in her very alive mother’s arms. Why didn’t he kill her mother at once, and spare her the torture?He walked around them, and in that moment I wanted to avenge that child, and that mother who although she breathed, died along with the poor baby.

Although the church was some distance away, it was the terror of her scream that stood out, the cracking of her voice as she wailed for her child.'

I often thought about that woman for years, even when I begat my own children, when I would drop them off at school, or when they would come back from playing outside, without the last, who would always waltz in some moments later after picking out ‘flowers’ which were actually leaves, for me.

'It was then that I pieced it all together, the church was being attacked.

Although the shots being fired, quite literally matched the consistency of the wind at that point, I still flinched whenever I heard one. I rushed over to my bed, and picked up my phone with trembling hands, I needed to call Kabir.

As the phone rang, I begun to wonder if this hunt for Christians would make its way to my doorstep, would they kill me if they found out that I was the lover of one of their very own?

“Oge?,” He picked on the third ring, I struggled to articulate words, “Baby, what’s going on, where are you?” All I could do was cry. Perhaps it was because I feared that one day, he would be the end of me. Our relationship would cause my death. What if one day he chooses his devotion to this cause, over my head?

“Are those gunshots, Oge? Oge what is going on?” I sobbed into the phone, forcing every word that weighed heavily on my tongue, off it.

“The church…they a-a-a-a,”

“Attacking the church.” It was supposed to be a question, but it sounded more like a statement. I affirmed with a hum. There was movement on his side of the phone, then I heard him speak in Hausa with men I assumed were his two brothers, Jinkai and Dukiya.

“Wear one of your boubous, tie a scarf around your head, make it look believable, no matter what you do, don’t open the gate, and do not leave the house. I am coming.” Although

he spoke in pure and clear English, I struggled to comprehend what he said.

The line went dead, and I just sank to my knees, replaying his words over and over again, until I finally got the memo.'