Forget Me Not

The cold was overpowering. It was the sort of cold that had you burrowing under your wrapper, body curled up like a cornered centipede as you sought to summon up heat from the pulsing organs of your body.

Yet the cold seeps through, your teeth chatters and goosebumps rise violently along the surface of your skin, so huge they could pass for some terrible plague which was possibly a consequence of an unsavory action you undertook in a previous life.

Juliana desperately wanted to sit up, stand up and stamp around. Shake off the cold and get her heart pumping fast enough to release warm blood to several vital parts of her body but she dared not. She would only be calling attention to herself, and in this place of despair, terror and evil, that could cost her her life.

She rolled her eyes to the left and met those of her friend Aminata. Aminata's eyes were wide open as those of a thief and Juliana's heart clenched in pain as she looked at her. Aminata had been unable to sleep since that dreadful night four days ago when the men came for her.

The girls had been sleeping close to each other for warmth, fingers linked for strength and hearts beating hopefully in tandem when Juliana was forcefully awakened by Aminata's scream as their hands were wrenched apart and three evil looking men had dragged the screaming, sobbing girl away into the darkness.

Juliana had swallowed a scream as the tears poured down her own face and her heart beat so hard she was positive that the other girls could hear her. Nobody had moved a muscle when Aminata was taken away but Juliana knew. She knew they were all awake.

And they were.

Juli lay quietly, thinking of her parents, her home and the fussy striped brown cat she had adopted a few weeks ago. She wondered idly if the cat missed her but it was doubtful. They were such aloof animals. It had probably moved on to another owner when she didn't return home.

Her thoughts finally returned to that day. They had been studying for their WAEC exams when the rebels had stormed in and kidnapped them all. She didn't know their number but she had surreptitiously tried to count them whenever they made camp and they were surely over 200 in number.

200 girls. Taken forcibly from the familiarity of school in particular, and the comfort of home in general. It had been months now but the memories were as vivid as if it was yesterday.

She was shaken out of her painful reverie when Aminata was carried back to her pallet hours later. Juliana lay with her eyes closed and heart exploding as her friend was dumped unceremoniously unto the ground and they left as stealthily as they had come.

She waited a few more minutes before crawling towards her friend and whispering to her "Aminata? Aminata, Kanade lafia?" But the girl was silent. Yet Juliana inched closer and as her eyes adjusted better to the dark, she could see that Aminata's long, modest skirt was torn cleanly in two and damp with seepage. Juliana didn't need to touch it to know it was blood.

She reached for the thin headscarf that doubled as her wrapper and ripped it apart. Hands shaking, she used a corner to staunch the flow of blood from Aminata's female parts, then wadded it up and pushed it under the girl's bottom to catch any stray drops.

With the other parts of the tattered scarf-wrapper-now-rag, she covered Aminata's body from the waist down as the girl stared unseeing into the distance, the tears rolling down her face, and into her ears, the only sign that she was still alive.

Juliana mourned silently with her friend on her terrible loss and painful violation, but when she reached out to link her fingers with the desolate girl's, Aminata shrank away so fearfully that Juliana drew back and lay down with tears clogging her throat.

The cold brought Juliana back to the present and as she met Aminata's eyes, her friend whispered brokenly "Juli, will he still love me now? Now that i am ruined? Will my parents take me back in now that i am a shamed woman?" Will we go back to school again? Will we ever see Chibok again?"

Juliana reached out in the dark and held on to Aminata's hand. It was as cold as hers and she clasped it between hers like a grotesque little sandwich.

"They will find us. It's been months but I know they're looking. They can't forget us. I know one day, we'll be free and your loved ones will be so overjoyed to have you back, that everything else will be unimportant"

"Aminata, whenever you want to give up hope, remember that God is with us. And he's always watching over us"

"Always?"

"Yes. Always and Forever."