46 pages • 1 hour read
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Viviana MazzaA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In a truck with Sarah, Aisha, and dozens of other girls, Ya Ta realizes that her four older brothers, her father, her teacher, and principal are all dead. Jacob is in another truck, and Ya Ta has no idea where they are going. Ya Ta thanks God for the fact that her brother and mother are still alive despite most of her family being gone. She hopes Success is alive as well. She realizes that although girls and women live more arduous lives than men at times, it was the men who were killed. Ya Ta is grateful just to be alive.
When the truck arrives in the Sambisa forest, the girls are instructed to get out. With a voice “as calm as glass” (111), the leader tells the girls they are slaves and the property of Boko Haram now. He threatens them with his gun and warns that there are land mines everywhere. The Sambisa forest, which was once home to all sorts of wildlife, now belongs to Boko Haram.
The Boko Haram leader tells the girls they won’t be harmed as long as they convert to Islam. The girls who are already Muslim are taken away while the rest are asked if they are prepared to convert. Only a few girls agree at first, so the leader kills an elderly man in front of them. It is so shocking that Ya Ta and many other girls scream out that they will become Muslim. One girl named Magdalene is the only one to refuse, and as she sings prayers to Jesus, she is killed as well.
At night, Ya Ta prays she will not be eaten by some wild animal and thinks about her mother coming back to the village to discover her family either dead or missing. Ya Ta observes the women who have long since converted, who wear full niqabs that show only their eyes and hands. She notices that the women and girls who have been captured are like living dead people, and at night the Boko Haram men joke about how easy it was to kidnap them.
Anyone who tries to escape is threatened with murder, and Ya Ta has nightmares of Al-Bakura, one of the lead Boko Haram men, chasing and attacking her. Soon the girls meet Amira, a wife of one of the commanders who promotes the movement and whom Ya Ta notices is the only wife who does not have children. Ya Ta, Sarah, and the other girls are told they must wear hijabs from now on. Ya Ta cannot stand the heat, but Aisha tells her she will get used to it. Ya Ta is glad that Sarah is with her and holds her tightly at night. She wonders whether her papa’s radio survived the raid or not.
The girls are served a slop-like porridge that reminds Ya Ta of vomit, and neither she nor Sarah can manage to eat it. Aisha, who is pregnant, shovels it into her mouth quickly. Ya Ta does not sleep most nights and lies awake thinking of Magdalene, who was murdered singing for Jesus, and of her brother and mother. Despite living in the encampment for weeks now, she still knows little about the Boko Haram men. She observes they all have different appearances and come from different places, but all have the same beast-like odor. She and the other girls spend their days laboring for the men, fetching water and supplies, cooking, or being confined to their corner of the camp. Ya Ta starts to entertain the idea that some of her brothers may have survived the attack.
Ya Ta dreams of food she can no longer eat but refuses to resign to the idea of marrying a Boko Haram member so that she can eat better. Her old life seems like a distant memory now. In her classes, she only learns about Islam and recites passages of the Quran. She knows she is not a good student in this type of school and cannot help continuing to think about her scholarship. Al-Bakura tells the girls that Islam and Sharia are the only ways to live and that their families are infidels. Ya Ta and the other girls are forced to change their names to Muslim names and punished when they use their old names. Ya Ta’s new name is Salamatu, which means “safety,” and Sarah now goes by Zainab. The girls continue to braid one another’s hair, but with their new names and in a different kind of life. At night, Ya Ta is grateful that she is not selected by the men to be raped like many of the other girls are. Sarah comments that Magdalene, who is dead, is better off than they are now.
In the second half of Part 1, Ya Ta’s life is transformed into a living nightmare. Most of her family is dead, and she has no idea if her mother is safe or where Jacob is being taken. Despite everything that has happened, Ya Ta remembers to be Grateful in the Face of Adversity as she and her friends are carted off into the Sambisa forest. She is grateful that she is with Sarah and that Jacob is alive even though she does not know what will happen to him. Boko Haram uses fear tactics in the initial stages to break the girls’ will and prevent them from trying to escape. They are threatened with death if they do so or if they choose not to convert to Islam. Where Ya Ta was once braiding Sarah’s hair, now Salamatu braids Zainab’s hair because their names have been forcibly changed as well. These new names do not represent them, and make both girls feel like strangers to themselves. Ya Ta also observes that the girls who are already in the camp appear zombified, like they are no longer human. These are just some of The Effects of Abuse and Subjugation on Women and Girls that occur during Ya Ta’s time in captivity.
While living at the encampment, the girls almost immediately notice that the form of Islam being pushed on them is not the peaceful religion that Aisha taught them: “Slaughtering innocent boys and decapitating elderly men is certainly not the Islam that I have known and seen” (116).
Throughout the girls’ time at the camp, it is said repeatedly that Boko Haram does not represent Islam and that they have polluted the religion with their extremist views. Ya Ta and Sarah struggle to conform at first, finding the niqabs uncomfortable and the food inedible, but Aisha is already Muslim and seems to adjust more quickly. She does not need to change her name and seems to accept the poor quality of the food for the sake of her baby. Ya Ta cannot stand the smell of the Boko-Haram men, comparing them to beasts and noting that she can smell them before they even arrive in the camp. She notes the many lies that Al-Bakura tells them, including that their families deserved to die. Because of her intelligence and past experience, as well as what she is being taught every day in Quranic classes, Ya Ta knows that the Boko Haram men are not the same sort of Muslims as Aisha and her husband. The girls’ experiences in captivity represent the theme of Oppression, Terrorism, and Religious Extremism. Ya Ta is one of the only girls who is not raped at night, and she considers this a blessing of her temporary name, Salamatu, which means “safety.” The first weeks of living in the camp are the hardest, as Ya Ta cannot bring herself to adjust or accept this new life. At first, neither does Sarah, but this soon changes when the girls are forced to marry Boko Haram militants.