Trump Eric - Stolen Girls.

Also by Wolfgang Bauer

Crossing the Sea: With Syrians on the Exodus to Europe image-4JA07EIL.jpg

2016 by Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin 2016

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Translation 2017 by The New Press Photographs 2016 by Andy Spyra All rights reserved.

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Originally published in Germany as Die geraubten Mdchen: Boko Haram und der Terror im Herzen Afrikas in 2016 by Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin

Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2017

Distributed by Perseus Distribution ISBN 978-1-62097-258-8 (e-book) CIP data is available

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This book was set in Nosta and Myriad Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

The Forest

The Tree

The Cave

In the House of Sule Helamu

The Bone

The Child

Bibliographical Note

Notes

I become through the Thou. As I become I, I say Thou.

Martin Buber

The forest that became the symbol of terror in Nigeria is dark and nearly impenetrable. Those who enter never find their way out again. It is said an ancient curse lies upon it. The forest is so old that no one can say anymore what its name originally meant.

The Sambisa Forest is the last of its kind. Of all the great forests in northeastern Nigeria only the Sambisa has remained.

Its trees do not inspire awe; they are only a few meters high, gnarled and intertwined. The underbrush is full of thorns as sharp as claws. The forests canopy blocks the sky. The sun rarely filters down to its most interior spaces. The ground here does not offer a firm footing. Great rivers, with sources in the Mandara Mountains, flow not to the sea, but to the Sambisas swamps. Many predators inhabit the forest. The most dangerous of these are human beings. More precisely: men.

The highway that skirts the Sambisa is officially called A13.

Gray craggy rock pillars tower over it, the remains of ancient volcanoes. The highway initially brought progress to northeastern Nigeria. It was finished at the beginning of the 1980s and was the first road to open the region to modern commerce. Its two lanes unspool from Yola, in east Nigeria, heading over 350

kilometers north, to near Bama in the northeast. Its asphalt seems to attract people irresistibly, like iron filings to a magnet. Villages, brick houses, and round mud huts crowd along the highways route. In the past few years, settlements along it have grown ever bigger. They are called Michika, Duhu, Gulak, and Gubla. The road has until recently been a gateway for new ideas.

It brought doctors, medicines, and teachers to the people living along its route. Now this same road brings them suffering and sorrow.

Sadiya, 38, market woman, mother of five, was held hostage by Boko Haram for nine months in the Sambisa Forest. She was forced to marry and, at the time of the interview, was expecting a child from the man who tormented her.

Talatu, 14, Sadiyas daughter, was in the ninth grade at the time of her abduction. She was abducted with her mother and was also forced to marry.

Batula, 41, is the elder sister of Sadiya. Market woman, mother of nine, she was a hostage for nine months in the Sambisa. At the time of her abduction, she was pregnant with her youngest child.

Rabi, 13, the daughter of Batula, was in the fifth grade at the time of her abduction. She was abducted with her mother and forced to marry.

Sakinah, 33, is a midwife. Mother of six, she hid for several weeks in the mountains and was held hostage for two months. Her eldest daughter, eleven years old, died when separated from her mother while fleeing Boko Haram.

Isa, 23, a goat trader, is the cousin of Sakinah. He fled with Sakinahs husband into the mountains and hid there for several months. During their flight, they buried Sakinahs eldest daughter.

Rachel, 21, is the half sister of Sakinah. She is a farmer and was held hostage for several weeks by Boko Haram.

Gajar, 16, is a field worker who was held hostage for seven months. She was forced to marry and give birth to her tormentors son, Isa.

STOLEN GIRLS

Glory to God, our name is Jamat Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Dawah wal-Jihd. They call us Boko Haram. Glory to God, we have given up explanations; we have said everything that needs to be said.

...

Some people go so far as to say that we are a cancer, which is an idiotic illness. No, we are not a cancer, and we are not an illness, and we are not capricious people with evil intentions.

Even if the general public does not know us, Allah knows everyone.

Abubakar Shekau, April 2011

THE FOREST

Talatu: My name is Jummai, but everyone calls me Talatu because I was born first. Before they carried me off into the forest, I was in the high school in Duhu, in the ninth grade. My favorite subject is math. I like math because its logical. Once youve understood the logic of a mathematical rule, you can solve every task easily and quickly.

Hidden in the swamps of the Sambisa Forest are the headquarters of terrorists who in their cruelty seem almost without comparison. They are as modern as they are archaic. The world refers to them as Boko Haram, meaning Western education is forbidden. They call themselves Jamat Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Dawah wal-Jihd, meaning Group of the People of Sunnah for the Preaching of Islam and Jihad. They are fighting for the foundation of a caliphate in Nigeria, cooperating with al-Qaida in Mali and Algeria. By now, they have sworn allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria. In the summer of 2014, Boko Haram occupied a fifth of Nigeria in just a few months.