Of Ziyad

“May the fingers of tyranny allow me some peace
When I dig and stay in a grave”.
So, dug a “grave” Ziyad did and goes to sleep “in peace”.
Or so he thinks, since he feels to be no longer a slave
of his environment, and of the politics of his state.
And so Ziyad goes and comes back to his chosen space,
Assured that his new found peace would not cease. 
He would stay in his grave and sleep as he so wish.
Questions were asked: “Why would Ziyad be such a cavefish?”.
“To live in a grave as though it was ones birthplace?”.
Busybodies convert his condition to a workspace.
Well, may such be someone’s headache, as for Ziyad
He strives and, at sunset, retires to “his grave”.

Nay, no freedom is there, after all, in “freetown”,
“Ziyad has abandoned his townspeople”,
the news adulteratingly filtered to the Crown,
Who ordered him to be dragged to the village steeple”.
Hauled he was, cloths tattered, blood smeared.
“How dare you intrude”, said Ziyad, “and disrupt
the Royal Council that I preside over , in my sleep, as a Sovereign?”
Laughed the King, who taunted Ziyad for 'hallucinating'.
“Laugh as you please”, a serious Ziyad rebuked the king,
“But mind your burden and your nauseating
insentience at the fragility of the powers you so cling.
While my fantasy ends as you woke me up from sleep,
Your reign withers off as you go to your final sleep”.

Mallam Ahmed Abdulkadir

And, these days, everywhere seems empty
except for frightened people and disarrayed countrymen,
who kneel to pray and wait for the intervention of the
Ever Watchful, before Whom neither Kidnapper escapes justice,
nor kidnapped is forgotten.
The perverse intrudes into privacies to desecrate
and defile the innocent and wreck belongings,
dispossess families of dignity and decorum
the manner of which no account is adequate
nor lamentation worthy the grief of the affected.
Ahmed Abdulkadir and Laila’s abduction
reverberates even in the ravines.
I cannot imagine the agony of a 15 year old
which, to the co-kidnapped father, traumatises
ever more than the infinite twinge they both are in.
We live with the thoughts of both of you,
and continue to pray, dear brother, for your safe return,
along with Laila and all seized countrymen.
“And We will surely test you with a measure of fear
and hunger and loss of wealth and lives and fruits,
but give glad tidings to the patiently persevering, Who,
when disaster strikes them, say, Inna lilLaHi wa inna ilaiHi raaji’un.
Those are the ones upon whom are blessings from their Lord and mercy,
And it is they who are the [rightly] guided”. 

The cold in December

I always feel to be strong against the cold,
Which makes Funtua ‘dreadful’ since time old.
With the heightened harmattan haze from November,
Funtua becomes the ‘coldest’ Hausa plain in December.
The natives cherish this peculiar geography,
As a distinct part of their history.
‘Funtua’, you would hear it being said,
Is ‘where the cold makes the night seem dead’,
This is where the umbilical code of cold was cut.

However, I have been to where crushing cold,
Would but make Funtua’s to hastily fold,
And retreat speedily in search for shelter,
 “Gaba da gabanta”, as everyone jostles helter-skelter.
‘For every  cold situation, there is another much severer’,
Cracks on my skin, which appear drier and clearer,
Stand like a colony of maps horribly drawn,
My children would giggle as we exercise in the lawn,
Seeing dad’s legs covered with such funny cuts.

I feel like to say, when I see how
The piercing cold squeezes every bit of Vitamin D
Off my friends, whose heads also bald for want of Vitamin E:
‘Oh, blazing sun! Your shiny Excellency!
How I long for your 38°C,
I swear I can do with your 40°C,
When I could freely bask and feel thirsty,
Then eat those foods that are truly so tasty,
And have a dessert of our coveted kola nuts’.