Just the other day, my little girl said to me, "What are you doing?" It was in the middle of a church service, so I looked around nervously and put a finger to my lips, "Shh! I'm praying." But she must have taken my 'Shh!' to mean 'ehm, let's communicate non-verbally', because she nodded and made a gesture with her palms. I knew it meant: 'Why?'
Honestly? I was not in the mood, but that question would have stayed on auto-repeat. So I whispered, "Because I have things to tell God."
She blinked a few times and did the gesture again. I stared at her. So she did it again, and again, and again. My brother, it was not that I didn't know what she was asking this time: 'What? What are you telling God, daddy? What?' But it had been about the lost girls of Chibok, those thoughts she'd interrupted. And suddenly, watching her, I found myself thinking: 'What would I do if someone took you away from me?'
Ah! My baby, if love was a billion candles, I would light each one; line them up like breadcrumbs, so if you ever got lost you could follow them home. It is true. I have gone there, with eyes tightly shut, to the edge of the Sambisa forest, and called out their names; to the banks of Lake Chad, and called out their names; to the highest peak of the Mandara mountains, and called out their names. And when there was still no answer, I wrapped my arms round myself and whispered, 'Where are you?' But I wasn't sure any more, if I was asking them, or if I was asking God…
Yes. For that was how my over-active mind interpreted her questions. Why do you still believe? Why? Will it bring back the dead sons of Buni Yadi? It is where I am now, you see; at the place where I stand over their bed and watch them sleep, watch their little chests rise and fall, and wonder what I got myself into. Did I really think it through; that to have a child is to take a soul in your hands, to protect it so it can grow strong, to teach it so when it leaves it will know enough to navigate its way to Paradise? Tell me, if you know, is there a future for these ones?
Because I have tried, with Google and the information Voyager 1 is sending back from deep space, to answer that question. Honestly. I have tasked my mind, twisted and contorted it, stretched it as far forward as possible, but Einstein says there is a cosmic wall beyond which it is impossible to see. And so it must be, for how else can you explain this, that even after we have blamed poverty for this madness, we keep bumping into people who will never – no matter how long since their last meal – feed on the flesh of children? How? My brother, it can only be because we have not yet wrapped our minds around the entire Universe.
Yes. There are still wells in the souls of men that go so deep they tap into rivers the sources of which we cannot find, even with our deep-sea probes and supersonic spaceships. And it is from these wells that they draw, these people that come to us with an insatiable thirst for blood. But! Do not despair, for the same resilience is available in every spirit.
So, I took a deep breath and told my daughter, "I do not have an answer to every 'why?' or 'what do we do now?' But if I am sitting here talking to someone you cannot see it is only because it leaves me with an ability to tell you things Logic cannot. We will win. And even if I am not here on the day it happens, you will be, or your children, or your children's children. Do you know why? Because you will teach them what I am about to teach you; how to hope against hope. For, ultimately, the only thing that keeps people searching for something they have never seen is the belief that it actually exists. Do you understand?"
Ah! Don't worry, my brother, I am not mad. Of course, I know; a four year old cannot understand this. Not yet. That speech was made in my imagination. On that day I did something much simpler, I bent forward and whispered: "You this girl…Just pray with me."
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