Zara John, 16, is still in love with
one of the Boko Haram terrorists who abducted her and impregnated her,
AlJazeera reports.
She was delighted to discover that
she was pregnant with his child following a urine and blood test carried out by
a doctor in the refugee camp to which she was taken after her rescue.
"I wanted to give birth to my
child so that I could have someone to replace his father, since I cannot
reconnect with him again," said Zara, one of hundreds of girls kidnapped
by Boko Haram during a seven-year insurgency in northeast Nigeria.
But any decision over the baby was
taken out of her hands. Her father drowned during flooding in 2010 so her
uncles intervened. Some were adamant that they did not want Boko Haram
offspring in their family - and insisted on an abortion. Others felt the child
should not be blamed for its father's crimes. In the end, the majority carried
the vote and Zara was allowed to keep her child, a son she named Usman who is
now seven months old.
"Everybody in the family has
embraced the child," Zara in a telephone interview, asking that her
location remain undisclosed. "My uncle just bought him tins of Cerelac
[instant cereal] and milk."
Zara was 14 when Boko Haram members
fighting to establish an Islamic state raided her village of Izge, in northeast
Nigeria, in February 2014.
They razed homes in the village,
slaughtered men and loaded women, girls and children on to trucks.
Two of Zara's brothers were out of
town when the assailants struck in one of a wave of hit-and-run attacks on
villages, as well as suicide bombings, on places of worship or markets.
Zara's mother fell off one of the
overloaded trucks but tried to chase after the vehicle that was ferrying away
her only daughter and her four-year-old son, but was unable to keep up as it
drove 22km to Bita.
At the time, Bita and other surrounding towns near the Sambisa forest were in Boko Haram control.
"As soon as we arrived, they
told us that we were now their slaves," Zara recalled
Her days were spent doing chores and
learning the tenets of her new religion, Islam, until two months later when she
was given away in marriage to Ali, a Boko Haram commander, and moved from a
shared house to his accommodation.
"After I became a commander's
wife, I had freedom. I slept any time I wanted, I woke up any time I
wanted," she said.
He bought me food and clothes and gave me everything that a woman needs from a man." She added that he also gave her a mobile phone with his number in it, and tattooed his name on her stomach to mark her as a Boko Haram wife.
Ali assured her the fight would soon
be over and they would return to his hometown of Baga, where he intended his
new wife to join his fishing business.
He told her he abandoned his trade
and joined Boko Haram after his father and elder brother, both fishermen like
himself, were killed by Nigerian soldiers.
In a June 2015 report based on years
of research and analysis, Amnesty International said the Nigerian army was
guilty of gross human rights abuse and extrajudicial killings of civilians in
parts of northeast Nigeria, calling for an investigation into war crimes.
Ali was not at home when the
Nigerian army stormed Bita in March 2015 and rescued Zara and scores of other
women, taking them to a refugee camp in Yola in northeast Nigeria.
The raid came as international
scrutiny on Nigeria increased after the high-profile abduction of 200
schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria in April 2014, which caused outrage
internationally and sparked the global campaign #bringbackourgirls. The girls
are yet to be found.
But Zara and Ali stayed in touch by
phone until Nigerian soldiers realised some of the girls in the camp were still
in touch with their abductors, seized their phones, and moved them to another
camp until they were reunited with their families.
Zara now lives with her extended
family and son in a town far away from Izge.
Her male relatives took over control
of her life again, with requests for interviews fielded by them and all of her
movements monitored by her family. But asked her opinion, she said she would
rather be with her Boko Haram "husband".
"If I had my way, I would
retrieve the phone number he gave me," she said, regretting not committing
his number to memory.
But Zara is realistic and knows the
possibility of being reunited with Ali is slim.
Instead she wants to return to
school when Usman stops breast-feeding and maybe then run her own business.
"I want to do a business that
is suitable for a woman, something that will not take me out of the
house," she said.
Source: ALJAZEERA
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