Must Read: Behind The Veil

Episode 7 years ago

Must Read: Behind The Veil

Five years ago. In the city of Kano, near a secondary school. Sadiq gazed back as he raced
with the girl on his arms. He was trying to get as far as possible away from the insurgent who was closing the gap. A loud sound took over his ear drum, the blast threw him forward like a piece of meat and the little girl he was carrying was thrown against a heap of construction sand! She stumbled and rolled. Sadiq wasn’t as lucky as she was. His shirt was on fire! And he was lying down motionless, gravely injured! The little girl was let up by a woman. The girl had little bruises on her cheeks and arms, but nothing severe.

Noticing that her daughter was okay, the woman rushed to where Sadiq was lying motionless. She took off her sky blue hijab and hit the fire on Sadiq’s shirt till it died down. She pulled the shirt off him, a light breeze blowing it till it landed on an unrecognizable dead body.

Some crowds of people started appearing gradually. Some their hands on their heads wailing, some covering their mouth in shook, their eyes seeing what they can never un-see again.

The few injured people were carried by good samaritan and rushed to the nearest hospital.

The woman held Sadiq’s hand, trying to find a pulse. When she was sure she felt one, she got
assistance from some of the passerby’s and they carried him into her car. And she drove off, her
heart beating, still shocked from what just happened and relieved that Sadiq saved her daughter.

She saw the whole incident. She had just arrived and was held back by some youth who told her
not to go near the school, alerting her of what was happening. She could see Sadiq from the
distance, in which she was standing, but she couldn’t see her daughter, she didn’t know her
daughter was lying on the floor not too far from the insurgent’s harm.

The moment she saw Sadiq running back to where the insurgent was, she was among the
crowd that shouted on him, that tried to stop him from walking into his death. They didn’t know
why he was going there, or what he was going to do there. But seconds later, when they saw him racing back with a little girl in his arm, her little girl…at that moment she was lost for words. She didn’t know him, but he risked his life to save her daughter. That moment she could have sworn that he was an angel sent to rescue her daughter.

She looked back at the back seat where he was lying down, his body shaking from the car’s
movement, but he was still unconscious.

Moments later she arrived at a private hospital and he was immediately admitted into the critical care unit. She followed the nurses to another ward where her daughter was being treated for her bruises.