海角大神

It was April 7, 2012, and on the dusty floor of his tiny pharmacy, Vincent Anibueze was waiting to die.

Outside, gunshots came like bursts of static from an untuned radio. He heard screams and heavy footsteps. 鈥淕ashinan!鈥� someone yelled. There he is.

Inside the little tin store, Mr. Anibueze lay face down where he had dived to the ground when the first shots rang out. Inches away, a man was slumped across the consultation table. Not long ago, that same man had walked brightly into the shop, gripping the hand of his young son, asking about this and that treatment.

Now, he was motionless. Only his lungs moved.

Anibueze thought of what Aisha would do when he was gone. She was quiet, his wife, but she was determined. Back when they first met and her mother had forbidden her to marry him, a 海角大神, Aisha had stood her ground. She wouldn鈥檛 let this destroy her.

A mile away, Aisha heard the gunshots too. It sounded to her like they were coming from the neighborhood of Gwange, the direction of her husband鈥檚 shop. Before she could register anything else, a neighbor ran up and gripped her arm. 鈥淏oko Haram shot someone in his store,鈥� she said.

鈥淲hose store?鈥� Aisha asked.

鈥淰incent鈥檚,鈥� the neighbor said, and Aisha鈥檚 vision went black.

***

This wasn鈥檛 how things were supposed to end. Not in Maiduguri, whose faded 鈥淲elcome to鈥︹�� sign proclaimed it 鈥渢he home of peace.鈥�

For decades, Maiduguri had been northeastern Nigeria鈥檚 melting pot: a brusquely cosmopolitan trade hub and occasionally raucous college town on the edge of the Sahel. Ancient bug-eyed Mercedes cargo trucks rumbled through the city carrying peppers, fish, charcoal, and cow hides from as far as the Central African Republic and Sudan. Along Babban Layi, the city鈥檚 main commercial drag, traders from Lagos, Lebanon, China, India, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon hawked everything from bananas to Samsung fridges, flicking through wads of naira notes under the awnings of their small shops. And on the campus of the University of Maiduguri, students from across Nigeria and beyond threw parties, crammed for botany exams, and聽debated feminism.

Though the city had always been mostly Muslim, for most Maidugurians, religion was never a social divide.

鈥淚t鈥檚 always been said of Maiduguri that you can come in the middle of the night as a stranger and no one will fear to give you a place to sleep,鈥� says Muhammad Muhammed, a local Muslim cleric.

For Vincent, that reputation was alluring. A devout Anglican from Nigeria鈥檚 southeast, he had worked for years in Kano, a mostly Muslim city in the northwest. But a series of violent religious riots in the early 2000s had begun to wear him down. 鈥淚 wanted to live in a free place and I heard Maiduguri was that,鈥� he says.

Not long after he arrived in 2005, he joined a local soccer team. At the house of one of his teammates, he locked eyes with the man鈥檚 younger sister.

鈥淧retty soon my friend got the feeling I wasn鈥檛 really coming to visit with him anymore,鈥� Vincent says.

Also: 鈥淗e was right.鈥�

鈥淚 didn鈥檛 notice him, not like that,鈥� Aisha says. 鈥淗e was just the pharmacist, honestly.鈥�

But after a few months, she began to realize she was lingering in his small shop long after she had paid, filling him in on what customers were saying in Kanuri, the local language, and offering bits of advice about his new city.

鈥淗别濒濒辞, baturiya,鈥� 聽he called her teasingly each time she walked through the door, using the local word for white person 鈥� a nod to her fair complexion. He got her to laugh, 鈥渁nd she could really laugh,鈥� he says.

Soon, both of them realized where this was headed. But for their families, a Muslim girl and a 海角大神 boy was uncharted territory. At first, Aisha鈥檚 mother told her no 鈥� absolutely not. He鈥檇 try to convert her, she said.

It was Aisha鈥檚 grandparents who finally convinced her mother. This girl knows what she wants, they told her. Without her family鈥檚 blessing, she鈥檇 simply run away with him.

In 2008, the couple got married. And then, as if waiting for its cue, Maiduguri began to fall apart.

The rumblings of trouble had started several years earlier, when a local cleric named Mohammed Yusuf had begun preaching an angry, anti-establishment brand of Islam. Northern Nigeria had been abandoned by the country鈥檚 government, he said, and poisoned by Western education. It needed its own Islamic state. In a poor region with many listless men, that message quickly took root. Local observers dubbed Mr. Yusuf鈥檚 new group 鈥淏oko Haram,鈥� often translated as聽鈥淲estern education is forbidden.鈥�

At first, the movement was largely nonviolent. But in 2009, Nigerian police opened fire on a group of sect members, ostensibly after they refused to comply with a motorbike helmet law, setting off a bloody retaliation. Eight hundred people died in the fighting, and soon Boko Haram was flogging the city of its birth, indiscriminately attacking public spaces and bombing schools, hospitals, and mosques.

And in the middle of it all, Aisha was pregnant.

鈥淭hat was when I started begging Vincent to leave,鈥� she says. She鈥檇 heard rumors that Boko Haram was targeting pharmacists, and thought being 海角大神 alone seemed like wearing a target on your back.

But the community had always treated Vincent as one of its own, he reassured her. Their business thrived. Aisha gave birth to their first child, and then, two years later, their second.

鈥淧eople were surprised that our marriage worked,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ut I told them that when you come from different places, you have to be open to understand each other. You can鈥檛 have any secrets. It makes you stronger.鈥�

***

Fifteen minutes after the first shots, the men came back. This is my last moment in the world, Vincent thought as he lay on the cold cement. But then the attackers seemed to notice something. Hunched on the floor, weeping quietly, was a little boy. The son of the man slumped across the table.

Wordlessly, the two men with guns turned for the door. Vincent heard the throaty rattle of a motorcycle starting up, and then they were gone.

And a few seconds later, Vincent was too. He started running and didn鈥檛 stop until he reached a friend鈥檚 house.

Meanwhile, two police officers were knocking on Vincent and Aisha鈥檚 front door. It wasn鈥檛 him, they told her. The man shot inside the pharmacy, it wasn鈥檛 him.

She began to cry.

But it wasn鈥檛 over. The next day, Vincent left town, and then looters carried off what was left of his shop.

When he finally came back, a year and a half later, in late 2014, Boko Haram was mostly gone, driven out by the army and a civilian militia. But the couple was broke. And they were scared. When her grandparents asked them to send their three small children to stay with them in their village in Chad, they reluctantly agreed.

They had always promised, they reasoned, that their kids would one day live in all the places their families had come from.

鈥淲e always agreed, the kids won鈥檛 have to make a decision about what they are until they鈥檙e grown,鈥� Aisha says. 鈥淥ur job was just to expose them to everything.鈥�

And so, back in Maiduguri, the couple tried to carry on.

Vincent opened a new pharmacy. Aisha had another baby.

And the city around them seemed to be rising again too. The streets, once deathly silent after dark, filled again with shopping women and loitering teenagers. Freed from military curfews, families queued up at a Chinese-run bakery to buy sweating tubs of ice cream for dessert on hot Sahelian nights. On weekends, chaotic, colorful Kanuri weddings once again filled the streets.

Boko Haram still sporadically lashed the city, and many of the roads in and out of Maiduguri remained littered with explosive devices planted by the group. In other parts of the northeast, meanwhile, attacks and kidnappings continued, despite the government鈥檚 insistence that it had defeated the insurgents. Visiting the children was nearly impossible.

But still, it was something.

By last year, Aisha had begun to think of bringing the older children back. Vincent imagined that when the insurgency was over, he would train to become an Anglican priest and open his own church here.

鈥淚鈥檒l preach tolerance,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檒l tell people, marry who you love.鈥�