THE TOWER

By Mary Ini Okaka

In the days leading up to what felt like my death, the dreams came. They were weird and painfully slow with a tired Jew’s gait. They sat heavily like a pregnant woman on my confused memory when I woke up, and they would linger around, tasting like breakfast the morning after a hangover. 

There was a creepy consistency to them too. In many of them, I was running. Sometimes from strange animals with wicked eyes, sometimes from men with sticks, and sometimes from myself… 

In all of them, I was unhappy. 

It must have been the weather. 

In the days leading up to that misbegotten day, the clouds fled, and the Sun reigned alone, shining fiercely through the little high window, ruthless and constantly in a bad mood. 

The nights were worse. Some nights, I lay on the lone wooden bench and shivered through my dreams till daybreak. Other nights, I abandoned the bench for the coolness of the concrete prison ground, rolling around in the hardened solitude and wishing for death. 

It had been four months since I was torn away from my family at the beginning of “D’ Revolution” and thrown into this dungeon on charges of “prophesying against the government and inciting discontent.” Four months of staring at a concrete ceiling, wondering what was going on with Jacques and the girls, and waiting for that peppery broth and hard bread they served once a day here. Four months of wasting away…

I had been brought here blindfolded, but Cas, that kind warder, had informed me of where I was after generously gifting me with his drunk man breath and smelling spittle.

The Tower was the Government’s torture chamber. Originally built to address the country’s always worsening prison situation, it was reputed to comfortably contain over 1 million prisoners, and the Government made sure to fill it up, especially during this war. The hallways of this sad metal fortress were filled with the mournful echoes of the many “Hardened Criminals” who, like me, had spoken against the brutal policies of General Mori, our great omnipotent leader, in one way or another--Prisoners of conscience.

In the days leading up to that unfortunate day, I relied on snippets of nervous whispers between the warder and his assistant to know how the war was going. It seemed like the youth movement was succeeding--there was talk about politicians fleeing the country by boat and rumours of a prison break. 

In those days, time refused to move, and we remained stuck with it. Days and nights meshed together in an endless nightmare of concrete grounds and walls that swallowed our desperation and depression and smiled back at us, mocking our rapidly waning spirits.

On the D day, we were rounded up. Sixty of us in grey overalls, pasty and skinny, squinting at the open Sun with weak eyes, waiting for our death. It was supposed to be a straightforward execution, but the executioner had something twisted in his yellow eyes. Whatever it was, it reached into your soul with cold, long hands and gripped it tight, making you shiver with fear. And it wasn’t until he did what he did that we realized that what we had seen lurking behind his cruel, black teeth smile – was a demon.
Sergeant Kabiru – that was his name, ordered us to turn and run as though they were death hounds at our feet, and we did…

As I ran, my feet didn’t feel like mine. Instead, they felt like a separate mechanism somehow attached to me, pushing me forward away from the smoke of death behind me. The only thing in my ears was the singing of machine guns, the whooshing of the wind, and one madman laughing. The only thing in my head was family. 

That day, I was dying to live…


*

I would find my family three months from that day, after moving around like a broken zombie, living off the forced generosity of a few. I would find my family still together (Thank God!) but holed up in a decrepit refugee camp--spirits broken, hopes crushed. 

It’s been six months now. The General is still in power, the country is still in his chokehold, and my family still holds its breath for tomorrow. But we have life. And with life, we have hope--however small or crushed. We have survived. We will survive. And we will not be silent. We will not cover our mouths with our hands to speak up against what we know is wrong. The Autocracy must be toppled. 

I, Ibinabo King, say so.

Writer's Biography

Mary Ini Okaka is an over-imaginative writer with a "healthy love" for writing poetry and short fiction that dwells on pain, freedom, and the fight against oppression in our society. She has an English and Literature Education degree from the University of Benin and dreams of writing stories that would give a voice to marginalized people and winning an Oscar, maybe.

​Her favourite pastime is reading, especially if written by Nnedi Okoroafor, Chibundu Onuzo, or Ama Ata Aidoo. But when she isn't burying herself in books, you can find her researching, writing her soul out, working, or sleeping.