Shock Warning

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Mobi Babangida was one of the richest men in Kaduna, from one of the richest families. Of course, here in Kaduna, about one hundred miles north of the capital city of Abuja, rich was relative.

“Babangida,” in the Hausa language, meant “master of the house,” and Mr. Babangida very much considered himself to be just that. Since the founding of the colonial city by the British in 1913, the old provincial capital had been a center of agriculture and trade in central Nigeria, and for a long time, so long as peace was maintained between the Muslims and the Christians, there were fortunes to be made.

But then came the troubles, the riots, the installation of sharia as the provincial law, and things had changed. Neighbor distrusted neighbor. When a newspaper columnist idly wrote of an upcoming Miss World pageant in Abuja years ago that even the Holy Prophet, Mohammed, peace and blessings be upon him, would be tempted by the contestants’ great beauty to take another wife, twenty churches were burned by the Muslims and eight mosques destroyed by the Christians. These were tense, unhappy times.

Still, Mr. Babangida felt no qualms or unease about moving freely between the Muslim north of the city and the Christian south, for in this it was a mirror of Nigeria itself. One could not be a prosperous businessman if one were not willing to visit both sides of town. Whether in mosque or church, Mobi Bagangida, the master of the house, was among his people.

Besides, that’s what well-armed bodyguards were for.

His first thought, when he saw the crowd gathered across from the petrol station at Mohammed Buhari Way and Independence Way, was that there was some sort of official ceremony going on, perhaps a procession coming down from Lugard Hall, where the Assembly met. But as he drew nearer, he could see that the people were looking up at the sky.

Now the sky was not where Mr. Bagangida normally looked. There was nothing to see in the sky except the occasional cloud or the planes coming in and out of the airport or the government helicopters monitoring the populace whenever another riot broke out and, occasionally, strafing them. But he looked anyway—

— and saw the holy Prophet, or someone who looked very much like him.

Mr. Bagangida had never seen the Prophet, except in a few ancient pictures from the infidel Iran. While it was not forbidden to show the sacred likeness, representations of the holy visage were frowned upon, as was representational art in general. The human form was the highest work of divine Art, and mere man could not hope to improve upon Allah. In fact, thought Mr. Bagangida, looking around Kaduna, there was not very much that man could get right; already parts of the city were returning to the nature that the British had found a century ago and, soon enough, he expected, much of the country would follow it into the countryside. The devil was afoot in Nigeria, but it did not much matter, for within a few years, Mr. Bagangida planned to be living in New York City.

Now, face-to-face with the Prophet, he was not so sure. Mohammed’s lips were moving, but no sound emerged; he seemed to be floating in the sky, shimmering yet corporeal, imparting instructions to the Faithful, instructions that Mr. Bagangida was not holy or purified enough to hear.

An imam from a nearby mosque must have come on the scene, because suddenly the crowd of men fell to the ground, many of them carrying their prayer rugs, and turned toward Mecca and began to pray while, above them, Mohammed kept talking.

And then — this was something Mr. Bagangida never would have believed had he not seen it with his own eyes — another apparition appeared, this one hovering over the Christian side of the city. She was a beautiful lady, standing atop a bed of fresh rose petals. She said nothing, but merely smiled a smile of a million sadnesses. Soon enough, people noticed her as well, and Christians poured out of their houses by the hundreds to see the holy sight.

And here was Mr. Bagangida, caught in the middle.

He was not sure what to do, or where to turn. The streets were filling up with humanity very rapidly, and he had witnessed firsthand many times what happened when one half of an explosive and restive population came into contact with the other half. He was the master of the house, and so it was high time for him to put aside his business affairs for the day and retire to his domicile.

Now a roar came up from the Muslim crowd. He could hear shouts of “blasphemy” in several tribal languages; as luck would have it, at that moment his eyes turned back to the Lady. Something was happening to the rose petals at her feet. Something unseen was slithering through them, knocking them aside—

A snake. No, a dragon. But the Lady kept her feet on the dragon’s neck and, squirm though it might, she would not relent. Still with her smile, she was slowly crushing the life from the dragon, and its death throes were terrible to watch. The beast writhed in agony, but the woman was immovable, and a great cheer went up from the Christian crowd.

He turned back to look at the Messenger of God. A great rage had come across his noble and holy features, like the rage he felt when confronted with the stubbornness of the Jews of Medina. In response to his blessed wrath, a chant went up from the Muslims: “Kill the blasphemers. Kill the infidel. Allah commands it. Allahu akbar!”

The Muslim crowd rose to its feet. He could see many machetes flashing. Some had rifles. There was going to be bad trouble.

Surrounded by his bodyguards, Mr. Bagangida backed away, trying to get back to his car. He was very proud of that car. It was a splendid, if used, Mercedes-Benz that he had bought from a German for a trifling sum. It was in tip-top running condition, and he employed several of the neighborhood boys to keep it clean at all times. It would never do for the master of the house to be seen in a dirty vehicle.

He never made it to the car.

The enraged crowd swept everything before it as it rushed to attack the Christians. Bloodcurdling screams were the order of the day, and Mr. Bagangida fell with them echoing in his ears. His guards fired a few shots, but what were their pistols against numbers? A blow from one of the machetes sent him to the ground, minus one of his ears. He tried to pick up the ear — the doctors at the international hospital in Abuja could work miracles — but then he was hit again and lost one of his hands.

Mr. Bagangida had seen what was about to happen next too many times to have any illusions of escape. It did not matter that he was a prominent businessman, that he gave regularly to charity, that he employed many people, that he took no sides. When the crowd had the wind up, there was no stopping it, no begging or pleading that could affect the great beast. In this moment, being master of the house meant nothing.

He was trying to decide which prayer to utter when his head flew off his shoulders.

What happened next is a matter of historical record. More than seven thousand people were killed in the violence, many houses destroyed, businesses sacked, and even some government offices. The central government was slow to react, and so the conflict spread like a wild blaze, burning north to Niger, west to Benin, Togo, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast, east to Cameroon and Chad and into the Central African Republic. In less than two weeks, any place in black Africa where Christians and Muslim had lived together in uneasy coexistence was the site of a raging civil war.

What happened to the apparitions, no one could say. They simply disappeared.