Shafinaz stood at the entrance of the University. No, she was not standing there as a student in a hurry to attend the lecture of a sadistic lecturer neither was she standing there as a fresher about to enter the world of her dreams. She stood there as a hawker, screaming out her formerly melodious but now hoarse voice, imploring on reluctant buyers to patronize her trade and buy a sachet of pure water, or rather a sachet of water as one could not trust the honesty of the label, not when Alhaji Umaru is the manufacturer. She chose that spot to sell her pure water despite the fact that the nearby market would have made a better selling point. The reason was not farfetched, rather it was inherent in her being. It was a passion that was burning within her, the passion to learn. She loved everything about the University. She loved the “handsome” boys that overdressed to class. She loved the book warms that punched scientific calculators on the way to class. She loved the ladies that came to school looking like ingenious works of art. The only group she didn’t like was the group of ladies that jumped into expensive vehicles at night as if they were going for a very important meeting. They usually came back the next morning on bikes, looking gaunt and exhausted. But she had long come to realize the fact that she didn’t belong to that side of life. She belonged to the side of life where she had to hawk for most part of the day so she could have a meager meal at night. She belonged to the side of life where her excess needs were usually met with the paucity of her resources. She belonged to the other side of life, where things never worked right, where she had to wear same clothes for a week.
Things however hadn’t always been like that for Shafinaz. She was a lively, very optimistic girl with the dream to become the first medical doctor in her village. Her dad, Mallam Isah was the headmaster of the girls-only boarding secondary school she attended. Because she lived in the school, it wasn’t really a boarding school to her. She didn’t have to eat the nauseating food served by the cooks who kept most of the ingredients for themselves. She didn’t have to serve the various corporal punishments dished out by vicious senior students to defaulting students, which could mean any student that met such seniors in a bad mood. All she had to do was read and pass and she did just that quite exceptionally. Her life was perfect until that night. She had woken up from sleep to use the bathroom when she saw the headlights of about five trucks speeding through the dusty terrains that marked the school. She instinctively took cover. Fortunately or rather unfortunately, from her hiding position, she saw the most cruel things a young pair of eyes could see. Two men jumped down from the vehicle, she could only see their silhouettes. In the darkness, she could see that they covered their faces with an Arabian scarf, and that they wielded guns. They spoke in hushed tones to another person in a camouflaged colored pickup truck before they opened fire on the security guard who had woken up from sleep and had come to inquire their mission there. They then opened fire, shooting sporadically and spontaneously into the air, disturbing the nocturnal tranquility that previously encapsulated the cold night. Just then, one of the men in camouflaged masked with Arabian scarf went to the girls hostel and ordered them out. Shafinaz can still remember the look on their faces as they were led into a nearby truck. One person attempted to flee but her speed was no match to the vicious velocity of the bullet, she was brought down after a spark from the blazing bayonet.
The most traumatizing moment of that ill fated night was when Mallam Isah, Shafinaz’s father attempted to stop the departing insurgents by standing on the way of the truck. The insurgents simply run him over, shattering his skull in the process. They then went ahead to complete their Mephistophelian adventures by setting the staff quarters on fire, Shafinaz’s pregnant mother and three siblings burned with it. Shafinaz still remembers that night, the night that marked the beginning of her current predicament. She was an optimist, she worked hard, but her little mind failed to comprehend why fate had been this callous towards her. She was momentarily buried in two lines of sorrow, the lost of her mates and the loss of her family. However, those incidents seemed to have a reverse effect on her, they strengthened her resolve. Her will was now kindled, she swore to herself that she had to be successful, it lighted in her a fire that seemed unquenchable, a will that feared no impossibility. She joined the other refugees fleeing from the insurgents then she found herself in Yola, three hundred kilometers away from her past, she didn’t know the future, but she had a steely resolve that she was going to make through school, but fate had other plans.