MY SAPIOSEXUAL LECTURER (Part 2)

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I returned home. I didn’t know how to fight anymore. This battle was not for me, it belonged to Allah.

I wasn’t expelled. I just sort of drop out, because I knew going back to that school would be a living nightmare. I knew how society treated men who were accused of rape. Even if you didn’t do it, you would fall under the trap of being guilty for calling a woman a liar. There was no way out of this.

I had to stay low for a while. Or for the rest of my life. Because this new-found humiliating fate I had come to was not worth living for.

I wanted to die but I didn’t want to die. I wanted to kill myself because I couldn’t bare the pain anymore. But I didn’t want to die because killing myself would only prove to them that I was guilty of what I was being accused of. I was so lost. I was so confused.

Most days, I could barely sleep. I kept feeling like someone would break into my room and stab me in the chest.

Until one unexpected evening, Nnamdi paid a visit to my house. How he found my address, I don’t know.

“Mallam,” He said to me, “they killed Emmanuel.”

My body froze that very moment. Emmanuel? Like, the Emmanuel that was the only witness and also a victim of Dr Anita?

“He tried defending you and telling everybody in school that Dr Anita took advantage of you and him. But the students went crazy and ambushed him. That is why I came here, to warn you not to return to school. They will kill you too.”

“I don’t understand. You mean, the students at Ivory University ambushed him?” I asked, still not believing my ears.

“The school is not as glamorous as you think it is. You’ve not stayed long enough to know the monsters living inside that campus.”

I looked away in disbelief. And the more Nnamdi kept talking, the more I could feel my body shake in fear. I could feel every bit of me shaking as I stared at the ground in front of me. Soon, I could not hear anything Nnamdi was saying anymore. I lost focus… and control.

“Are you okay? Mallam-”

“Get out!” I snapped at Nnamdi. He was confused and was about to say something, but I stood up and shouted, “Leave! Nnamdi, go!”

I kicked Nnamdi out of the house. I was too furious to look at him for another second. I ran to my room and locked all the doors and windows. I didn’t want any breathing human being near me again. I was tired of everybody’s existence. The world was a mad place. Maybe I was dead and I was already in Jahannam (hell fire) but I just wasn’t aware yet. How could God allow me to live in a cruel world like this.

I forced myself to sleep and begged Allah to wake me up in Jannah. But I woke up to something unexpected. Dr Anita in my house.

My room door was wide open and I walked into the parlour to see her sitting where Nnamdi sat yesterday. She was giving me that evil wry smile.

“Mr Mohammed, If Mohammed doesn’t go to the river, the river would come to Mohammed.” I heard her say.

I turned around and ran back to my room. Dr Anita was chasing me but I was quick to slam the door in her face.

As I curled up on my bed and covered my whole self while shaking under the duvet, I heard noises around me. The noise of a crowd surrounded in my room. My bed began shaking as some bodies climbed on top of it. I was too scared to remove the duvet from my face, despite I was sweating heavily.

A hand grabbed the duvet from my face and pulled it away from me. I saw a crowd of familiar faces from Ivory University standing over me. They were my classmates at school.

They were all angry and shouting. Some spat on me, some kept punching and stamping me with their foot as they shouted, “Rapist! Burn in hell! You deserve to die!”

There was a loud iron-scratching noise at the corner of my bedroom. Everyone stopped hitting me and shifted for this single noise maker to come through. It was Nnamdi. I saw him standing over me with a large cutlass in his hand.

He raised the cutlass up and gave me an evil grin, “O-Lord, make sure you give the demons in hell orgasm too.”

With that he brought down the cutlass to my face and I screamed.

My scream caused everyone to disappear. The place became silent for a second until I saw rays of sunlight flashing through my fingers. I opened my eyes to see I was outside, in a public place.

I sat up and looked around the familiar surroundings. I was in a mosque. The one my father and I attended every Friday. The one my father was kicked out from last week for having a rapist of a son.

I heard sounds of whipping behind me. I turned around to see a group of men gathered at a spot.

I went to join them, only to see my old father being tied to a tree, receiving haddi lashing. The imam and the men around kept chanting at how he deserved it for being the father of a rapist.

“Baba!” I shouted.

I went to stop them from beating my father but instead, they threw me to the ground and started flogging me too.

“I didn’t do it! I swear, I didn’t do it!” I screamed in between the floggings, “I didn’t rape her! I swear!”

Someone grabbed my throat from behind with a whip. I struggled to breathe and shut my eyes. The whip around my neck kept getting bigger and bigger and by the time I opened my eyes, I found that the whip had grown into a hand, a hand choking me from behind.

I glanced around to find myself lying flat in a prison cell, my body facing the gate of the cell. I didn’t understand what was going on behind me but I felt something hard entering my anus from behind, which caused me a lot of pain.

I moved my head but the choking around my neck got tighter and the pain in my anus kept increasing. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was getting raped by a man in a prison cell.

I heard the prisoner’s deep voice behind me saying, “You rape a woman, we rape you too.”, followed by the laughter of other prisoners in the cell.

I cried for them to stop. And kept telling them, “I did not do it! She did it to me!”

I kept screaming and telling them to stop. The room kept spinning. The more I screamed, the faster the room kept spinning.

It kept spinning and spinning until, I heard a familiar voice shouting, “Isah! Isah! Wake up!”

The spinning stopped and my eyes snapped wide open like a possessed man.

“Isah?” The familiar voice called my name again, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

I turned to the side to see imam Bello, the imam at our mosque, sitting next to me. He was holding me in his arms like I was about to fall. I was squeezing his shirt without realizing it.

I looked around to see Mama, Baba and Amina staring at me in worry. They all stood beside the mat I was lying on. I was in an unfamiliar place, probably the imam’s house.

My mother was crying all through and her cry worsened when my eyes met hers.

“What happened?” I asked them, “Where am I?”

Nobody said anything, they all glanced at each other. Amina rushed to bring water to my side while the imam gave praises to Allah for His goodness. I still did not understand what was going on.

“You scared us, Isah. We thought you were possessed by Jinn (demon).” Amina said while handing the cup to me, “You ran out of the room and started screaming and saying some strange things.”

“I don’t understand.” I said, staring at imam Bello’s room, “Why am I here?”

“You were having strange nightmares for the past two days.” She responded again. “You were going crazy, Isah. Imam had to pray for you.”

I stared at her in relief. I wanted to cry. Despite all the crazy things she just said, I was so relieved. Relieved to know that everything that just happened, from Dr Anita coming to my house down to the prison rape, was a dream.

But, the thought of Emmanuel’s death caused me pain once again. I knew that one was real.