Yusuf knew that they were both dead. Oh, they were still breathing, and his body, frozen mid-step, vibrated with adrenaline, and a will to outrun inevitable death, but it was a foregone conclusion.

  “Do. Not. Move.” he told the boy. The moronic youth, who put both of them into this mess, for once did the reasonable thing and kept perfectly still, not even blinking.

  Yusuf Baba Abdullahi, a forty-nine-year-old shopkeeper, father of five, good husband, helpful neighbor, and a faithful Muslim, was a pillar of the local community. He paid his dues, to the official government and the unofficial protectors who visited their village every now and then. He helped build the local school, and paid out of his own pocket to bring satellite internet connection to it. He appeared as a good Nigerian patriot, but not suspiciously patriotic.

  And yet, like a curse from an old wives’ tale, his past caught up to him. It started with the idle youths loitering around the produce market giving him weird looks. Then, there was gossip. He saw it spreading, even though all the hushed chitchat died abruptly in his presence.

  But the kids talked. Old women talked. And inevitably, once they were given enough hints from their wives, the men talked.

  Finally, the Headsman came by his shop, and rummaging through his papayas started asking idle questions.

  Questions like, where did Yusuf live before he moved here? What was his previous job? How did he get the money to start his business? All the locals knew was that one day, years ago, a heavyset slab of a man with a patriarch’s beard and hard, piercing eyes came to their village and bought a hut. As he came with money, spoke wisdom like an Imam, and had the muscles of an ox, all of which he would lend freely, he soon found friends and a wife.

  Nobody asked questions, because they did not want to face the answers. The country was still healing, and there were plenty of men running from something. Often capable, dangerous men, who one day decided using their wills, brains, and hands to kill in the service of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was not the life they wanted.

  Some simply started killing for money instead.

  Others buried the guns and picked reputable careers.

  Yusuf distracted the Headsman with polite smiles and roundabout non-answers, but he knew the man was not fooled. There was a perceptible shift in the people around him. He was no longer the harmless ox of a man and a friend they smiled at. He was not anymore the man of Faith that confused youth would seek to strengthen their understanding of the teachings of the Prophet.

  He was a stranger again.

  People avoided his shop and shunned his wife, who was considered guilty by association. Yusuf could not guess what they thought he was guilty of, he just knew they were either close to the truth or at least close to guessing the magnitude of his crimes.

  A few days later, his worst fears were confirmed. A group of young men, all nonchalantly disheveled, and all equally nonchalantly armed, walked into his shop. He leaned on the counter, his palm resting close to a tapanga he usually used to split and hull coconuts.

  The leader of the youth gang swaggered right up to him, his fashionable tracksuit billowing under the ceiling fan, golden sunglasses gleaming.

  “You da man, Baba?” He addressed Yusuf with a fake smile, and no trace of respect. “Heard a word you know your way around hot peppers, s’true?”

  “Yes, I do sell various hot peppers. Actual peppers, and other produce, what do you gentlemen need?” Yusuf answered slowly, and straightened, towering over the boy.

  “You sure of dis tin wey you dey talk so? Dis matter get k-leg.” The youth disbelieved him and cringed at his posh manner of speaking. But Yusuf long ago decided he would not speak pidgin with the kids. He was always of the opinion that if something merited saying at all, it merited being said properly.

  “Boy. Are you hard of hearing? I sell food. Vegetables. Fruit. If someone told you otherwise, they made a fool out of you.” He noticed a shift in the youth’s stance, a twitch in the elbow-

  “You reach for that gun, boy, and I will shove it up your ass so deep you’ll be bitin’ bullets.”

  There was a tense moment, when the leader of the gang balanced between his fear of the imposing man, and the need to posture in front of his posse.

  “Na so? Des mad amebo bout ya Baba.” The boy hesitated, code-switching to placate the shopkeep, and continued quieter. “De say you from Makurdi? Kno wer find some really hot pepper?”

  Yusuf froze. If the kids knew that much, then the truth was out, and he should be packing his family right now and leaving. Nineteen years ago, he was a Spec-man of the Seventy-Second Special Forces Battalion stationed in Makurdi. He got himself into a mess, where he could either out a group of idiotic teens who wanted to play at Jihad, and give Yola Brigade an excuse to torch the entire part of the city in a frenzy of collateral killings, or let the potential terrorists free.

  He took a third option. He beat the wannabe Wahabis black and blue with a truncheon, cuffed them, and had their mothers and their neighbors pick them up and deal with them. He then stole all the evidence of terrorist activity, the guns, the ammo, the explosives and the truckload of haphazardly put together IEDs and drove it out into the country, running randomly, until he found this little hick of a village and drove the truck into a nearby swamp, where it sunk with its deadly cargo.

  With both the military and the Boko Haram pushers looking for him, he simply disappeared.

  He grew a beard, changed his name, changed his gait and even his accent, and in the process, Yusuf the Shopkeep was born.

  “You are mistaken, boy. You take me for someone else. Understand? Just an everyday mistake, notin spoil, abi?” He loomed over the kid, his stare burning holes into the golden sunglasses. “And no dey looking for no… hot peppers. Bad for your stomach.”

  “Don tear head, Baba, I undastan. I sabi, no wahala.” the boy acquiesced, and moved to leave, smirking.

  Yusuf locked the shop after them. Then he stood, frozen, for a few seconds. And then he slammed his fist into a crate full of mangos hard enough to splatter the ceiling. He wanted to scream, to roar, to tear his hair out.

  Just like that, his secret was spilled, and his life ruined.

  Allah seemed fit to put idiotic young men in his way, and have him destroy his own life trying to save them. Yusuf did not think for one second that the posse of armed dunces would not be trying to find the truck, and its horrific contents. And sooner or later they would succeed, there were just not that many places around where one could hide explosives, without a farmer plowing it out or a kid finding it.

  And he dreaded what would happen if the boys found the boot full of IEDs and landmines that had been rotting in the marsh for years, their triggers eroded to hair-thin scabs of rust. He fell on his knees and curled on himself, his powerful body deflated with anguish.

  "O Allah, I seek Your counsel through Your knowledge and I seek Your assistance through Your might and I ask You from Your immense favor, for verily You alone decree our fate while I do not, and You know while I do not, and You alone possess all knowledge of the Unseen. O Allah, …I… I, what should I do, oh Merciful God? I made a terrible mistake, thinking I was doing the right thing. And now I must do the right thing, but it feels like a mistake. If I go after the boys, and try to stop them, they might get hurt. If I don’t go after them, they will certainly get hurt, and may hurt other innocents too.

  But if I make that move, everyone will know me for the man I am, I will be apprehended, and my family will be cast out. Whether I succeed or not, my Alika and my children will suffer."

  He cried, for the first time in almost two decades.

  “...decree for me what is good, wherever it may be, and make me content with it."

  He did not hear his God’s answer, but he did not need one. He knew all along, that there was always only one choice he could make. He just wished Allah would bend the gears of the world infinitesimally in his favor this time.

  Despite his frantic efforts, it took him ages to reach the swamp. His trusty cargo van, which he used to transport the produce from the farms to the market, was reliable but not fast, especially not on the muddy road around the swamp. It was a road he drove on many times, yet never stopped by the spot where the truck full of explosives rested underwater. Only his eyes always lingered on it, willing it to remain hidden, or maybe disappear altogether.

  This time, when he reached the bend right next to where it met the marsh, he saw several dirt bikes abandoned right beside it. His heart skipped a beat and he got his car off the road and into the bushes. He only slammed the brakes when the front wheels had dug into the loose muck up to the axles.

  What he saw confirmed his worst fears. The gang of wannabe warlords stood in a half circle around a giant motley-green crate that they managed to fish out of the boot of the drowned truck using a winch.

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  Their leader screamed obscenities at two of his flunkies who were standing up the waist in water, and trying to break the lock on the crate open with a crowbar.

  “Stop, your damn fools!” Yusuf yelled running towards them. The boys raised their guns at him, torn between confusion and the joy of their find.

  “Please stop! Don't touch it, you idiots!”

  One of the boys made up his mind and raised his rifle to shoot at him, but the bullets missed him by a wide reach. Without slowing down, he slammed his shoulder into the shooter knocking him off balance. Another boy was about to shoot, but their leader slapped his hand away from the trigger.

  “Don shoot, you baka!'' The leader turned to Yusuf, who stopped, with several barrels pointing at him. The kid pulled off his golden-lensed sunglasses, and addressed him with surprising calm and sincerity. His thick pidgin was gone, replaced by almost school-English.

  “Don be kolo, Baba. You sa we fools, but it you is fool. We wan take da bombs, not for make money. We fight for da people. We kna you dey Spec-man, na so? Not da bad kind, da good kind? Come help us, Baba. ” the kid came to Yusuf and raised a hand. There was no more bravado in his eyes, only hope.

  “Bombs don solve problems, son.” Yusuf sighed, shaking his hand. “They make more problems. Look, whats your name?”

  “I’m Golibe, Baba. I dey Oga of dis posse.”

  “You listen Golibe. Im old. I saw boys like you think that guns and bombs can help make things right. That if you shoot all the bad men, blow up some buildings, then magically the People will build a better world for themselves…”

  “Is different, Baba! All Oyibos, an Oyibo corporations, dey takin da land, suckin it dry. Poison da land. Poison da water.” he gestured at the swamp, which did indeed run a rainbow sheen from the mining spill-off as of late. “Oyibos dey poisonin da People minds to, no be so? Everybody dey speak like big city ajerbutter, goin maga to please the White-man, the Corpo man. You fink dis right?”

  It seemed to Yusuf that Golibe was not really trying to convince him, but convince himself, and his boys. He understood that what he took for a gang of wannabee criminals were likely well-intentioned, if extremely foolish, young revolutionaries. This made things both better and much worse. Better, because maybe he could talk them out of it. Worse, because if he failed, they might end up doing something far more horrific and violent than occasionally lording their power over some rural folk, who long ago ceased to consider men with guns to be more than a seasonal nuisance.

  “We agree to disagree, Oga Golibe. But let us leave that crate alone, abeg?” he pleaded, and placed himself between the box and the boy. “It was rotting in the water for longer than you were alive. The explosives are likely leaking toxic chemicals. And the pins dey rusty. Don try opening it. One bad move, and we all go gbosa, sabi?‘

  The kid looked at him, then at the locked crate that was slowly sinking back into the syrupy mud. Yusuf saw him psych himself for a decision. The kid's muscles tensed, he clenched his jaw and balled his fists until his knuckles whitened. He looked at his posse, seeing a mixture of doubt, hope, fear, and anxiety.

  And then to Yusuf’s horror, Golibe made the worst possible decision. He pushed him aside, pulled a gun, and shot the lock on the crate. Yusuf pounced at him, but the kid whipped him in the face with the gun, and pulled the trigger.

  The shot boomed right next to Yusuf’s shoulder, sending a wave of searing pain through his right ear. He tumbled back, and felt the other boys grab him by the shoulders and stab the barrels of their rifles into his back.

  Idiots!

  He could try to fight back. Most likely, the boys did not have it in them to pull the triggers, and he could easily bat the guns aside, and beat the lot of them to a mewling pulp. He had more years of combat experience than they had years of life, and outweighed most of them almost twofold.

  But…the kids were barely older than his oldest son. Hell, their leader was the only one sporting any kind of facial hair, a ridiculous whisper of a mustache to go with his ridiculous sunglasses, now lying broken and forgotten in the mud. They were children, play-acting the violence they saw on television or heard from their elders.

  And there was no way for him to turn them around from their suicidal plan, because they now saw him as a part of the system they wanted to fight against. Between that heartbreaking realization and the painful ringing in his busted eardrum, he felt his resolve vanish.

  “Please, boy. Do not touch it. Please.” he said, not even able to hear his own words over the tinnitus whine in his head.

  Heedless of his words, Golibe reached down into a crate full of rusted landmines, IEDs and shrapnel launchers, and pulled out a dull gray disk that leaked water like a sieve.

  “See Baba? Dis why I dey Oga here. I knew da peppers okey. I got good soji bout dis..”

  The click of the rusted pin breaking, and priming the anti-vehicle explosive was quieter than a mouse’s pip, but to everyone except Yusuf it sounded as loud as a thunder. Golibe’s face dropped, and he froze in place. His posse simply started to back off, until they were a few steps away and started running.

  Yusuf did not need to hear the primer to know what happened from the boy’s expression.

  “Do. Not. Move.”

  He slowly rose to his feet, trying to not even disturb the surface of the water. He knew his way around disarming explosive devices, but not ones that were rusted into a solid block, and sloshing with a soup of swamp water and chemicals. It could be that the repurposed mine was simply inactive, and safe. Military-grade explosives defaulted to safe mode if the triggering mechanism was damaged, otherwise storing and transporting them would be too risky.

  But he could not bet on that here, since this mine had been tinkered with. Someone tried to turn a regular anti-vehicle mine into an anti-personnel shrapnel launcher that could be hidden within a building and triggered by a person pressing on a tripwire. At least, this was as much as he could guess from the rusted and mud-covered mess.

  He inched towards the boy, and examined the mine. The pressure plate was welded shut, and someone rammed wires into the fuse through a hole drilled in the arming plug.

  For a second he felt detached amusement at human stupidity. Whoever built that contraption was suicidally brave.

  Steeling his will to prevent his hands from shaking, he reached over and under the mine, and gently grabbed it, keeping his fingers away from the mysterious wiring at the top.

  “Boy. Listen to me, but do not move yet. On a count of three, you will gently pull your hands away from it, and without making any sudden moves, crawl away. Do not try to run until you are at least ten paces away from me. ”

  “I sabi, Baba.” The kid stood stock still, but tears streaked down his face, mixed with the droplets of sweat running down his forehead.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  The boy pulled away, and rolled out of the swamp and onto the muddy shore. But instead of running, he just stood there, shaking.

  “I no leave you, Baba. Can’t go till you dey kampe too. How do I help?”

  “Camot from dia, you fool!” Yusuf growled. But the look on the kid’s face told him he won’t be shooed away. “Go get a fire extinguisher from my truck. I can use it to foil the trigger mechanism. Go.”

  He hated lying to the kid, but there was no other option. He had to trick him to distance himself from the blast radius.

  Golibe turned to run, and Yusuf let out a microscopic sigh of relief.

  A sight that made his right hand tremble ever so slightly.

  The tremble made him move his index finger by maybe a millimeter, and brush the edge of the arming bolt.

  The world vanished.

  Yusuf found himself in Hell. It surely was the Jahannam that the Verses described, though instead of boiling water and fire eating his face, he was shot through with pain that was not unlike an electric current and was submerged in cold, murky water. For a split second, before his rational mind kicked in, he mused how unfair it was of Allah to punish him so. He was imperfect, but he was not an evil man, and his faith was always strong. His crimes were against the corrupt and heartless dictate of the government, but never against God. He did not do anything to deserve such fate, he spent his life trying to do the right thing, and simply failed. Was honest failure a sin as well in Merciful God’s eyes?

  Then the more animalistic and pragmatic part of his brain took over, and he realized he was drowning. That was surely part of his punishment, but he knew no theological reason why he should just take it without fighting back. He kicked up with his legs, and breached the surface, coughing.

  The second he did, he saw a giant tree toppling off the shore, and falling down on him.

  “Wetin? Fu…” he muttered incredulously, and instinctively pulled to the side, away from the path of a branch that would spear him through.

  In the split second before the tree hit the water, he thought he saw a naked human figure, pinned under the opposite end of the trunk, their legs spasming wildly as the giant weight crushed them.

  Then there was a loud splash, and a shockwave pushed him away from the shore, and into the current of what he found out, fighting to stay afloat, was a giant river.

  Yusuf was not much of a swimmer. He did pass the necessary tests during his induction and training into the Battalion, but he hasn't really used his swimming skills since then. Luckily, he grew a layer of fat on top of his impressive muscles over the years as a shopkeeper and a husband, and he just let it keep him floating.

  If this was Hell, it was not the kind that the Verses had him expect. The initial pain had all but vanished, along with the adrenaline.

  He surely had died, that was certain. He did not see the mine exploding, since blast waves traveled faster than his brain could have perceived, but he was certain it did. It likely triggered at least some of the loads in the crate, and the boxed ammo in the truck.

  Must have killed that fool boy as well. Even if he somehow managed to run out of the immediate blast radius in time, these things were built to send shrapnel in a wide and long cone that almost certainly enveloped him.

  And to pour salt on the wound, he was certain that the boy died again, right before his eyes, crushed by a tree. Can you die in Hell? Was this even Hell? Or was this just the first layer of Jahannam, a kind of twisted purgatory?

  Yusuf was on the verge of breaking his covenant with Allah. His death, the kid’s death, the fact that by dying he abandoned his family to an uncertain fate, and the wickedly blasphemous nature of this place made his blood boil. Floating aimlessly, he looked around. The bank on the right side of him was overgrown with thick reeds and impassable. The opposite shore was so far away, that it almost disappeared in the mists.

  Finally, the river spread widely, and the current pushed him onto a swampy delta and deposited him on a patch of silt overgrown with weeds. He climbed onto it, and breathed heavily. He was stranded in the middle of a river, which flowed through cold, alien wilderness completely unlike the swamps around Warri that he knew.

  “What is this, oh Merciful God?” he yelled at the sky. He was too incensed to perform a proper rak’ah addressing Allah. “What is this place? Why do you punish me so? Was it necessary for the boy to die as well? If I deserved to die…” he sighed, “so be your Will. But why is the place of my torment so…improper?”

  Then, ashamed of his own impious words, he bowed down and added, “O Allah! Forgive me my mistakes; protect me from the evil of my lack of knowledge, ignorance and injustice in my affairs and safeguard me from every harm and evil, of which You are aware far greater than I…” he dared to look up. “Forgive my foolish words, Most Merciful. I am confused and afraid.”

  And then his heart sank again, when he saw a dozen giant dark shapes swimming towards him from all sides.

  'Were those crocodiles?' He laughed to himself, in anguish. Of course, it would be crocodiles. Must be so, such was his luck. All his life, his unwise decisions and harsh words had insulted Allah, and he should not be expecting mercy now, when he was destined to receive his just punishment.