Letter to my Sisters MY DEAR SISTER, When you read this unusual letter, the news of my death will have saturated the atmosphere in our community, Fullah Town. As I write, I can imagine how the news of my death will be received. I can imagine so many things while I am alive and writing. I won’t be able to imagine anything when I am dead, because I don’t know whether dead people are capable of imagination, though our religion teaches us that there is life after death. I do know as I write these last words in my life that my death will cause a great commotion. As usual, I know how mother will wail. She will beat her flabby breasts. Breasts that have suckled eleven children. She will undo her long, beautiful hair and pull it apart. She will shout and ask what she has done to God that she should deserve such punishment. She will call my name countless times and she will ask why God should deprive her of her eldest daughter and the fifth of her eleven children, why only nine are alive. She will run about, crying and shouting, and many women will chase her and try to console her. Some will say that it is the wish of God, Allah, the Almighty, that I die. She will never believe that I took my own life voluntarily. No, she will never believe it because suicide is uncommon in our community. Poor mother, I know how she will feel. As for Baba (father), one can never be sure how he will react. In our society men are not supposed to weep. It is a sign of weakness. In any case, none of us ever saw Baba cry. He is such a hard-hearted man. He will feel sad, very sad. Then I know he will grab his prayer beads. And his peers, some of the neighbours will come and sit by him and say exactly what Baba is saying. But Baba will not weep. He believes so much in his manhood, his religion and God and the total submission of women to men and their parents. He will say I died because it is the will of Allah, the Greatest. He will tell people to hurry and bury me before it is too late. So the whole community will be busy. People will assemble in and around our house, talking about me and my accomplishments. Many will not accept my death as a finality. I know how you my sisters will react to the news of my death. You will cry like Mama. Your eyes will be red and they will bulge. I know how Intuma will sing while weeping. She will say she has lost her eldest sister. She will ask who killed our sister. She will talk about her sister who was the first female Muslim girl to get a university education and then to have gone to the white man’s country to become the first female medical doctor in the Fullah Town community. As for Amina, she will just gnash her teeth. She will probably go into a trance. It will take her a long time to believe. She will believe days later, after my funeral, otherwise she will think I will come back to life. After a while, she will say to herself that she must stop crying. That it is God’s will. Isha will take over from her. She will say that someone killed her sister. She will cry for a long time. In the end, she will lose her voice and her speech will be incomprehensible for some time. As for Ajaratu, she will leave the compound and run towards the stream. Then people will chase her for fear she might drown herself or do some other harm to herself. I know how all of you, my sisters, will react. As for our brothers, they are no different from Baba and all our uncles. But I think that the little boys will cry. They will all cry because they will remember what I used to do for all of them at the end of Ramadan month and on Christmas. They will miss the presents that I used to work so hard to get for them just to make them happy. The older brothers will probably hate me for killing myself. They will never stop to think, to understand and appreciate why I did what I did. But that is their business, they are all just like Baba, full of their manhood. The dailies will have various captions. I can imagine such headlines as, ‘Dr Dao commits suicide’, ‘Fullah Town has lost its first female doctor.’ Some will say, ‘Suicide, Dr Dao dead.’ Some papers will suspect foul play until the facts are known. But that is what should be expected. It is normal. In the hospital where I work, my colleagues and my patients will react likewise. Many of my colleagues have always said that I am too reserved for their comfort. Some think it is because I am a Muslim. Some think that it is because I am in a profession which is traditionally male. I never told them the reason for my apparent reserve. My patients would be shocked and baffled. I can imagine how Ya-Yanoh will feel. Remember sisters, I always tell you about Ya-Yanoh, the woman with a big ulcer on her left thigh. In her village they say that her ulcer is incurable because she is said to be a witch. She also believes that and has become very miserable. She is insulted by all and sundry and her situation is made worse by the fact that she is childless. When I admitted her, she narrated her ordeal to me and I told her I would help her to get well. She could not believe it. A t the time of writing this letter, she is in the process of getting discharged. Her sore is healed, completely. I remember when I used to go on my rounds in the wards. She was my favourite patient. I treated her like our mother. She told me I had restored her dignity and respect. So when she returns to her village, walking straight and confident, people will regard her as a human being. Before that she was treated with contempt and opprobrium. Sometimes, after listening to her stories, I felt like crying. She is a nice woman after all. One thing I remember about her is her teeth. They are very clean and almost intact. Because of this also, she said people accused her of witchcraft. According to people in her village, she said, a woman of her age ought to have few teeth. So her life was one full of torment. How she will cry when news of my death reaches her. Amina and Ajara will recall the lady who said that I am the only female doctor she ever knew and how happy that made her. She used to say that even if she died, she would have had the satisfaction of having known a female doctor. She was joking, of course. I like her all the same. She is one of my favourites. She appreciates the fact that we work hard and make lots of sacrifices, especially those who have night duty. But then she would say that had she been a doctor she would not have liked night duty because she wants to be with her husband. Then she would laugh and the other patients would join in her laughter. She is such fun. She too will cry and feel very sad. My dear sisters, I know that you will want to know why I took my life. Well, it is a long story. Partly, I am doing it for your sakes. I did it so that you can get freedom. For this, I have to sacrifice my life to set you free, you and your daughters and your daughters’ daughters. You may not understand now. However, as you read along, as you get to the end of this letter, I am sure you will understand and appreciate my action. You may not approve of this method of helping you to be free, to be women of dignity, pride and self-esteem. I am writing this unusual letter to justify my action to be free. I hope I am also helping women of my community. If I fail to tell you the reason for my action, some of you will never forgive me. This is why I am writing the story of my life to you, my younger sisters. I owe it to you as a moral duty, to tell you the truth, nothing but the truth. From the time I was a little child, Baba was always concerned about upholding the family name of the Daos. The upholding of the family name transcends everything in Baba’s life. The respectability and reverence which the name Dao enjoys should never be allowed to diminish. But from the time I can remember things correctly, it had appeared that the upholding of the family name was the sole responsibility of us girls. The fact that our great grandfather was among the few Imams of the mosque of Fullah Town has served to enslave us rather than make us free people. You know how people talk about us. We should not say certain things because we are of the Dao family. The things that normal people do we cannot do. We are a very religious family. But above all we are women; so we hold the family name in trust. As you know, we went to the Koranic school at an early age and finished in record time, before our brothers — both the elder and the younger ones. We always did better than they did. Baba, as you all know, was against our going to school to get Western education. He was more inclined to allow the boys rather than us. His argument was the usual and familiar one, to which our uncles, apart from one, also subscribe. Girls should get married and have children. Western education, he had observed, bred immorality, disrespect for elders and for tradition. That he finally allowed us to go to school was due to the influence of one of our uncles, Uncle Bubu. But th
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 13:48:31 +0000
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