Narrator’s Name: Jameel Shatima
V. Prison Break
Day: three days after Umar’s return
Abubakar and I had just arrived Dihaara when we got Saleem’s text message. I’ve known Saleem for seven years but he never ceases to surprise me. He wanted me and Abubakar to wait at the eastern wall of the palace at one a.m. to pick up Umar. This had a red flag written all over it but then playing with red flags is my forte so I got the job done – okay we got the job, albeit Abubakar was a bit reluctant, so yes one can say I got the job done. For a price, of course: That Umar gets Abubakar four new set of tyres. After all, he was the reason that giant of a man they call Junaid, stabbed our tyres to death. Getting four tyres is only fair, right?
You may be wondering how Abubakar and I made the trip to Dihaara even after getting our tyres stabbed. That was not a big deal; as I said playing with red flags is my expertise. What you should be wondering about is how did Saleem know we’d still make the trip even after getting our tyres stabbed. How did he know we’d be in Dihaara when he sent his instruction informing us to get his brother out of the palace!?
“What a view,” Umar said. I tasted the words with my eyes then my heart. It had been fifteen hours since we got Umar out of the palace and we had been exploring Dihaara since then. Now the three of us were standing on the peak of the highest mountain in Dihaara. We used to come here when we were younger. Umar, Abubakar, Adam, and I. Only this time, there was no Adam and we were older.
“It is something, isn’t it?” I said. It was lovely how the wind climbed up and down the mountain we were standing on. The wind was thick with softness. It was soft enough to brush its fur on you and thick enough to tickle you. It separated us and connected us. And the view – the beautiful view in front of us – we had seen so many times.
“These are but signs for those who ponder,” Abubakar said standing beside me. “All these little colors that we see represent people, houses, cars, trees, stories – lots and lots of stories trailing under this sinking sun in all directions possible. They represent the constant flow of time of the large and the small; and the new and the gone. Nothing measures beauty perfectly like time. It converses with us and converts in us and then, slowly, we are gone.”
“But it’s only beautiful because it’s far,” I said. “And because it’s far, the colors are unreachable. And because it’s unreachable, it seems flawless. But I bet you, more than half of that colors down there are broken, fed up, tired, and quite frankly too faded to matter.”
“Yeah. A sad truth, I guess. But I like to think that to matter is a matter of choice,” Abubakar said.
“Maybe,” Umar sighed. He clearly had something bothering him. Perhaps it had something to do with why he left the palace – we never asked him. We suspected what the reason was but we never asked. We were just glad he was with us. “Maybe,” Umar reiterated.
“It’s almost dark. We have to get moving.” I said.
“Where are we headed?” Abubakar said.
“Prison. Our next destination is prison,” Umar said.
***
We had gotten back in the car, and Abubakar drove us to what would most definitely be our doom. It was in the name. Prison.
“We are here and so we must meet him. I must meet him. I must meet Abba,” Umar said. “I understand the risk and I won’t blame you if you guys stayed behind,” Umar added. He was sitting in the front seat and I was at the back.
“Yes I agree,” Abubakar said. “But the moment we enter and give our names to see him, be rest assured that the king will be aware of where we are. And our effort of getting you out of the palace would be in vain. Plus, I don’t think it is visiting hours. So the only way we can see him is to break into the prison,” I was surprised Abubakar suggested that because that was unlike him. I guess being with me did that to him. Let the record show, I’m not proud of that (maybe).
“Prison break,” Umar said considering the idea. “We’ll make it work. We have to,” Umar added vividly looking worried, knowing the odds were against us.
“Yes but how?” Abubakar enquired.
“Since we are going to break into the prison, I should state that if we do manage to break in, you’d blow our cover,” I said looking at Abubakar.
“Me!!” Abubakar said. “How?”
“Yes, you. Your looks – they don’t belong in prison. You still look like a groom even though you’ve been married for almost a year.
“I didn’t realize that’s a crime,” Abubakar said. Umar who was now looking at Abubakar was trying hard not to laugh. It was nice to see his face this radiant. “How’s that a crime?” Abubakar said looking at me with a searing gaze through the rear-view mirror.
“That’s exactly my point. That’s not a crime and neither do you look like a criminal and so you’d blow our cover. Maybe if you did something with your beard.”
“No. My beard goes where I go. And intact. What is a man without his beard?
“A five-year-old boy?” Umar said laughing. “Okay, okay we don’t have to go that far. But in Abubakar’s defense, they are indeed a lot of grooms in prison too. Not all grooms are happy, good, and amazing.”
“Yeah, sure that should make me feel better,” Abubakar said glaring at Umar. “You still haven’t answered my question. How do we get in?”
“The Delivery Service – that’s our way in,” I said then leaned forward to turn on the car radio.
“The delivery service?” Abubakar said.
“Yes very few know of its existence,” I said grinning. As I told you before, knowledge was the bane of my existence.
“And how on earth are you one of the few who’s aware of it,” my cousin asked.
“That’s immaterial,” I said grinning at him. I was trying to find the radio station I was searching for. “Here’s how it works. There’s a radio station known as the DS radio station that has been out of service for several decades now. Only that it’s not out of service.
“DS meaning Delivery Service?” Umar interjected.
“Correct. When you tune in, you would hear a letter in the English alphabets followed by eight numbers, then the next letter in the English alphabet together with a different set of eight numbers. Like A-35891220, B-18834908, C… until they reach the letter Z and it starts all over again from the letter A. These numbers are phone numbers and the letters indicate the places they are located.
“To know the coverage of each letter, we need a map of the city. Luckily, I came with one. The twenty-six letters of the English language are divided into three rows and ten columns for the first two rows while six columns for the third to form a trapezium. These rows and columns are superimposed over the map of Dihaara. And with that, each letter represents a town or a village or a street with the phone number of unit of people manning the information stream around that area. Aha! Here it is. The Delivery Service radio station.”
I knew my friends had so many questions, and they were very invested in what I was saying. The computerized voice from the radio station kept calling out alphabets and numbers as I knew it would. “But the numbers aren’t Nigerian phone numbers,” Umar asked. “How then can you call?”
“Actually they are. They were made like this so that whoever stumbles upon this station won’t have an inkling of what the numbers or letters represent. So to call you’d first dial one of these four codes: 080 or 081 or 090 or 070 then you dial the eight-digit numbers. And since we have four codes that mean for every location, there are four people manning them. And after making the call you have to whisper these words: ‘wrong number, what is it you want?’”
“I get all that but how does that help us with breaking into prison,” Abubakar asked.
“They’ll tell us all what we want about the prison he’s locked up in. They’ll deliver real-time information that has a bearing on what step we’ll take to break in.”
“How do they get their information?”
“Abubakar, information is always available for anyone who really wants it. The Delivery Service has people who make their living compiling it,” I said. “Some of these people are retired soldiers and policemen; civilians, who by the nature of their job have become information-hubs like tea makers, and cobblers. These individuals are spread around different parts of the city. And this is just one section of the Delivery Service,” I added, the map of Dihaara was seated on my lap. “Here it is. N-74444321.”
“Let’s call them then,” Abubakar said.
“No not with our phones,” Umar said. “We can easily be tracked, you know?” Umar had told us to switch off our phones since we got him out of the palace.
We were now in the major city of Dihaara. The city’s light and voice hit you from all direction and apologized with the gentle breeze and the fluent sunset.
We stopped at a store and bought a recharge card. “That would be N500,” said the storekeeper.
“Here’s N3000. The extra is for your phone. I need to use your phone,” I said.
“That’s… too much. I just need the money for the recharge card. You can use my phone for free,” the storekeeper said handing the phone. I know I haven't lived long and, frankly, I know so little, but I know without an ounce of doubt that the most beautiful thing in the world is kindness.
I called the number and a man from the Delivery Service told us all about the prison. The way he was speaking it was like he was reading the information he was telling us from a book. He told us about the prison. About father: the cell he was locked up in; his routine; his friends – everything.”
“So how do we get in?” Umar asked after I hung up the phone, returned it to its owner, and got back in the car.
“I think the library is our best option. The whole building is impenetrable. But the library offers a unique chance. It is the only part of the building that’s glazed. Abba spends an hour there every day: one p.m. to two p.m. There’s a solar farm close to the prison. All we have to do is get into the solar farm to make quite a number of the panels to face the library so that they will reflect their light on the library’s glazing later in the day. The librarians and prison guards will be forced to report it,”
“Because of the glare?” Umar said.
“Yes and because books fade due to that and librarians, who I like to call book worshippers, won’t let that happen.”
“The prison would have to talk to the security man guarding the solar farm instructing him to do take action. The security man at the solar farm would most likely lie and tell the prison that his higher-ups wouldn’t be able to do anything at the moment but would like the prison to take care of it instead. He’d lie because he wouldn’t want his incompetence to be made known to his employers.”
“His incompetence?” Umar asked.
“His incompetence would be his inability to catch us at nightfall when we sneak in and play with the solar panels a little to achieve the needed glare.”
“While sneaking sounds fun, getting the solar panels to face the library between one a.m. and four a.m. will be the greatest challenge,” Abubakar said.
“Then we’d have to get all the panels to face the library,” Umar said. “My point is, we need to make sure the plan works.”
“Yes, but we don’t have to tamper with all the panels. The library usually opens only around that time as the man from the Delivery Service had just told us. So if and when the security man fibs about his employers’ stand, the prison will likely instruct those directly affected to take care of it. And the librarians won’t want discomfort caused by the glare and probably wouldn’t want the books to fade so they’d probably have the inmates do the hard lifting. The inmates would do as they are instructed, no questions asked. That’d include Abba because he’d be in the library at the time. I hope.”
“That’s a gamble,” Abubakar said. “It could work.”
“No, it will work. It has to,” Umar said, even though he knew that any plan in the future suffers the dice of time. Which is to say everything could go wrong.
“They say overconfidence kills,” Abubakar said. Abubakar was worried because he knew how dangerous I live my life and he was almost always the one to get me out of trouble if things went wrong. And sometimes they do. That was why my cousin was second-guessing my moves. Because this time, if things go wrong, he wouldn’t be able to bail me out because he would also be caught and because this is Dihaara.
“Yes, it kills. And yet I’ve survived it every time. With planning and with pleasure. Don’t worry, Cozz. Trust me.”
“Okay,” Abubakar said. “But even though the inmates would be made to come outside the prison to take care of the mess we’d create, there would be guards. With guns. And they’d spot us easily. They’d shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Isn’t it fun?” I said grinning and putting my arms around my cousin. It sure was fun.
“That’s actually the easiest bit. I know how we’d get past that,” Umar said. “Just stay tuned. And thank you for this. Thanks for helping out.”