Free The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold

shirt. “If someone attacks you, you have the right to defend yourself—call it jihad or whatever you want—but this was Christians attacking Muslims,” he continued. He believed the Christians were plotting to eliminate theMuslims long before the church attack. “The Christians came in the sense of crusade. By the nature of the attack and the weapons they used, they attacked with a view to eliminating the Muslim community and leveling the town.” Crusade, genocide—the goal was to eradicate a community, a people, a religion. Lawal lost everything: his family, his house, his cattle, his job as a headmaster. “There’s nojustice here; no one has been caught, punished, or arrested, so there’s no security.”
    He leaned forward. “We want what belongs to us: the right to education, the right to practice my religion—”
    Abdullahi raised his palm to clarify. No one was stopping Lawal from practicing his religion, Abdullahi explained, but the younger man wouldn’t listen. In his mind, Islam was still under attack, and therewas no dissuading him.
    In 2004, after this spate of massacres, Nigeria declared a state of emergency. But, as the Emir of Wase had said, the fighting really stopped because it was too expensive for either side to continue. Whole communities lay in ruin. Cows, cars, farms, shops—all gone. Since then, Abdullahi has attempted to bring several cases to the government’s attention, but as with thechurch massacre, the government has done little to investigate or to bring those involved to justice.
    He handed me a folder with depositions from one such case and wentoutside. About twenty minutes later, Abdullahi returned with two young women, Hamamatu Danladi and Yasira Ibrahim, who had survived the incident detailed in the files. Danladi, rawboned and wrapped tightly in brown batik patternedwith cowry shells, met my eye as she stood in the doorway; Ibrahim, with long, upturned lashes and a moon face, did not. Except for the fact that they had pulled the fabric over their heads to cover themselves, there was nothing about them to suggest they were Muslims. More often than not, my attempts to classify people according to skin color or height failed entirely. Abdullahi invited thewomen in, lowered his head, and left.
    During the Christian attack, the two young women and others took shelter in an elder’s guarded home. On the second day, the Christian militia arrived at the house. They were covered in red and blue paint and were wearing those numbered white name tags. The Christians first killed the guards, then chose from among the women. These two and others were marchedtoward the Christian village. “They were killing children on the road,” Danladi said. Outside the elementary school, her abductor grabbed hold of two Muslim boys she knew, nine and ten years old. Along with other men, he took a machete to them until they were in pieces, then stuffed the pieces in a rubber tire and set it on fire.
    When Danladi and Ibrahim reached their captors’ village, they wereforced to go against their faith by drinking alcohol, eating pork and dog meat. Although she was visibly pregnant, Danladi said that her abductor raped her for four days. After a month, the police fetched her and Ibrahim from the Christian village and took them to the camp where most of the town’s Muslim residents had fled. There, the two young women were reunited with their husbands. They neverdiscussed what happened in the bush.
    “The Christians don’t want us here because they don’t like our religion,” Danladi said. “Do you really think they took you because of your religion?” I asked. The women looked at each other. “In Islamic history, there are times when believers and nonbelievers have fought,” Danladi said. “What happened here is part of this clash.” After the clash, she explained,their leaders foretold of a time of poverty and suffering. “That’s what’s happening now.” Soon, the world’s end would