Baaji Joseph Aondoakura

My first episode occurred nearly seven years after Katoro. Afterwards, I would think about the futility of escape, and how distance was no barrier for trauma. The episodes began during Prof. Mcarthy’s Physics class, and were triggered by his lecture on chaos theory.

He spoke briefly on the butterfly effect in that nasal, wheezy and barely intelligible way of his—with words rushing out of his mouth like the flow of a river in deluge. “The flap of a butterfly’s wings in one end of the earth can cause a storm in another…” He rambled on as my mind drew a parallel between the whoosh of Policecap’s cane and the storm of violence that swallowed Katoro, before transporting me several continents and seasons back.

To our final year of secondary school, we were young, rebellious and invincible. On the day of the storm, we were bent over in feigned effort flogging the grasses rather than cutting them as we were meant to. The trick was in chopping the blades, then piling them on the much tougher base of the weeds.

Our green checks and green trousers created a picturesque image against the backdrop of the vast green shrubbery we were asked to reduce. Years and several attempts at blotting out this part of my life’s story had blurred the boundaries of my memory, and I could not, even if I wanted so desperately, to remember what made us stop.

But we did stop, and while some of the boys drifted away towards the taps behind the hostels we were clearing, the rest of us stood, or sat in clusters in the open field and discussed things boys our age loved to discuss. FGTC Katoro was an all-boys school, so girls were often the major topic of discussion, alongside football. We were happy, carefree, oblivious of what was to come.

We got carried away with our gist, completely ignoring the work. When suddenly, the quiet, boys our age attributed to the passing of angels descended on the open field. Then we located its cause. Just beyond the hostel blocks stood Mr. Polycarp our labour master, a short, stockily built, dark demon, who was nicknamed Policecap because of the coincidental homophonous similarity, and the shape of his head which bore semblance to the wide black berets worn by the police. He was a man feared and hated in equal measure by us students.

He steadily advanced, rage plastered on his face, his small eyes bulging out as though he was being strangulated by invisible hands. Two whips were held in either hand like samurai katanas, the whips though not lethal, were equally deadly weapons.The lucky few of us who went for a drink, sighted him and sprinted away leaving the rest to face Policecap’s rage. We were done for.

“SS3…” he began, menace dripping from his every word, “…So you think you are too big to do labour? You bastards need a reminder that you are still students of this school, until you graduate, Oya all of you go down.” They were a few grumblings and mutterings, some boys were already preparing to squat down; when someone hissed, he was unfortunate, and the sound which was meant to slither out silently, seemed to echo in the midst of the other guiltily silent boys. To compound his woes, Policecap’s eyes fixed firmly at him. “Ibrahim! Kai, at me?” he asked in disbelief.

By then, the other boys had wisely drifted away from the unfortunate scapegoat who Policecap approached with the deadly intent of a lion approaching prey. I watched as the boy luckily evaded the first of Policecap’s wild swings, which cut through the air whooshing as it struck nothingness before Ibrahim pushed him and bolted.

Policecap momentarily stunned, regained balance and gave chase. Ibrahim zigzagged away from the unsurprisingly agile Policecap who whizzed after, and repeatedly lashed at him. They ran past other groups of students who ceased their labour and in excited voices, urged him on and jeered at Policecap. None would have predicted the conclusion of the race which captured the attention of the entire school and ended at the mosque.

Ibrahim who had lost his slippers during the pursuit, bounded into the Mosque with Policecap hot on his heels, perhaps as an escape route he felt Policecap, a Christian, wouldn’t chase him into the mosque. How wrong he was. The man surges in after Ibrahim and having lost one of his canes, swung wildly at Ibrahim who had collapsed out of breath, while he whipped and the boy screamed, the first students to have gotten there interrupted the thrashing and dragged Policecap out.

I was there when the boys, Muslims, condemned him and accused him of disrespecting their religion by entering the mosque with shoes on. Perhaps still fueled by the adrenaline coursing through his veins, Policecap responded, “Which stupid mosque, I would have entered heaven sef, to teach that idiot a lesson,” they were his last words. One of the boys overtaken by righteous anger spat at him as he named Policecap an infidel. Then the Muslim boys, including Ibrahim who Policecap had just chased, surrounded him.

Gone was their fear, I could still taste the blood lust that permeated the air, and the hatred and the fury which remained long after Policecap had been reduced to a bloody llifeless heap of massacred flesh. The same rage that ensured the two unfortunate boys who had tried to stop the crowd met the same fate. Thus began the war between both religions in FGTC Katoro which spread till a dark storm of violence swallowed Katoro. The rest of my reminiscence was interrupted by a cloud of black; the carnage of those three days in Katoro had been buried in the darkest depths of my mind. Redacted. Prof. Mccarthy’s shouted in that squeaky voice of his, “Somebody call 911,” then I spasmed and collapsed to panicked screams of “Brahim.”

Baaji Joseph Aondoakura is a 22 -year-old writer and poet from Benue State who writes under the pseudonym ‘Baaji Akura’. He is a graduate of English and Literary Studies at Nasarawa State University, Keffi. Akura discovered his passion for writing in 2016 and has been writing since then. He can be reached at b_akurathabard on Instagram, and X.