Murdered Sleep

Me thought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast—[…]  Still it cried “Sleep no more!” to […]

Me thought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast—
[…]
  Still it cried “Sleep no more!” to all the house:
 “Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor
 Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”
-Macbeth from William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2
Dear readers, I have been sitting in front of my laptop screen all day, from morning when the sun comes through the window and gilds everything with an edge of light to night where I sit enclosed in grey fluorescence before beige curtains. I have been trying to write.
There are many things to write about: books and films to be reviewed. Prizes and publishers and translations to be discussed. An exciting new conversational card game called Kommon Sense developed by Jos-based Victor Dickson and Onotu David Onimisi. But when I put my fingers to the keyboard, it seems that the only thing that should be written about this week are those students, Vanguard says up to 78, murdered in their sleep in Gujba, Yobe, last Saturday night. Those students whose names are not posted on websites with tributes, whose faces do not peer out from our TV screens, whose relatives do not tearfully tell 24-hour CNN about the dreams they had for the days ahead. 
When I first saw the news on Facebook Sunday night, I thought somebody was reposting the news of the night attack on the secondary school in Mamudo, Yobe, in July. But when I clicked on the BBC report, I read how gunmen entered a hostel at the College of Agriculture, Gujba, and began slaughtering students. This comes a week after the massacre of over 140 killed in a Benisheik, Borno, and along the Kano-Maiduguri highway.
 As I read, I wanted to vomit.
I want to vomit every time I think of the killings. I am restless. I can feel my heart beating in my throat.
I crave hymns. I go online and download Ella Fitzgerald crooning: “I need Thee every hour / Most precious, Lord / No tender voice like Thine / Can peace afford.”
What can one say in such a time? What trite words of comfort can one offer when 78 students have been killed in their beds? When terrorists have murdered sleep in the northwest for over three years?
 I break my week-day social media fast and sit online. I find myself avoiding articles about Gujba and stuffing myself with other news. The Etisalat flash fiction contest that has vexed writers because winners will be decided by popular vote; a strange lake in New Zealand which turns animals to stone; the faceoff happening in America, where a minority group of rogue Congressmen have shut the government down and are holding the country at hostage to their demand to defund the newly passed Affordable Health Care Act. As an American, this is something I can grasp on to. It angers me, but it doesn’t fill me with the same hopeless despair. I can tweet at @SpeakerBoehner and post snarky links about idiotic Republicans. I can sign petitions and fume about how my sister’s salary will be delayed and my cousin is on unpaid furlough. I can rant about how politicians the world over are the same selfish, careless people, who are willing to let millions of people suffer without pay but continue to take home huge salaries and allowances. At least American congressmen are not paid quite so much as Nigerian “honourables.”  At least, while the Centre for Disease Control has been furloughed, the doctors are not on strike. At least, while parks and monuments have been closed, the electricity is still working.  At least, while government officials won’t be updating their websites, the phones still operate.  Gunmen go on rampages in America too. But less frequently than in Borno and Yobe, and when it happens, our loud American grief takes over the world. I tweet. I tweet. I tweet.
I let my mind brush over what is happening in Yobe. I wonder what kind of person kills students in their beds? What kind of person joins a death cult? What kind of person slaughters the children of the poor?  In the dark? While they are sleeping?
Why?
Last week, I said that in times like this, I turn to poetry. Shakespeare. Macbeth’s phrase “murdered sleep,” after he murders his sleeping guest Duncan in an attempt to steal his throne, echoes in my mind. May the killers in Yobe, like Macbeth, sleep no more. May their deeds haunt them to their graves.
I crave the soothing cadences of hymns. The ones I find are too cheerful, too upbeat. I turn them off.
Then there is silence, just the thrum of blood, and the purr of the computer, and the restless electrons racing along my skin, and my thoughts no longer covered over by sound: Why? Why? Why?
Kofi Awoonor speaks to me more than hymns right now. He was murdered last week too. His poem “This Earth, My Brother,” sounds like it was written in Yobe. Here, again, are fragments.
The dawn crack of sounds known
rending our air
shattering our temples toppling
raising earthwards our cathedrals of hope,
in demand of lives offered on those altars
for the cleansing that was done long ago.
Within the airwaves we carry
our hutted entrails; and we pray;
shrieks abandoned by lonely road-sides
as the gunmen’s boots tramp.
I lift up the chalice of hyssop and tears
to touch the lips of the thirsty
sky-wailing in a million spires
of hate and death; we pray
bearing the single hope to shine
burnishing in the destiny of my race
that glinting sword of salvation.
In time my orchestra plays my music
from potted herbs of anemone and nim
pour upon the festering wounds of my race,
to wash forever my absorbent radiance
as we search our granary for new corn.
There was that miracle we hoped for
that salvation we longed for
for which we said many prayers
offered many offerings.
In the seasons of burning feet
of bad harvest and disastrous marriages
there burns upon the glint edge of that sword
the replica of the paschal knife.
The sounds rounded our lonely skies
among the nims the dancers gather their cloths
stretching their new-shorn hides off offered cows
to build themselves new drums.
Sky-wailing from afar the distant tramp
of those feet in rhythm
miming underneath them violence.
Along the roads lined with mimosas
the mangled and manacled are dragged
to the cheers of us all.
We strew flowers at the feet of the conquerors
beg for remission of our sins…
[…]
A sudden silence fell
as the crowd pushed and yelled
into the bright sharp morning of a shooting.
They led them unto the mound
In a game of blindman’s bluff
they tottered to lean on the sandbags
Their backs to the ocean
that will bear them away.
The crackling report of brens
and the falling down;
a shout greeted them
tossing them into the darkness.
and my mountains reel and roll
to the world’s end.