Who will bury their dead?

 “That the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared.”

In a city called Lano, the king died, and the people decided to abolish the monarchy and install a novelty: a mayor.

The position was on offer to the highest bidder. Muslims wanted their richest man Adamu to buy it and therefore enthrone Sharia. The Christians with their gung-ho bishops queued behind Isaac who was their plutocrat. If the Muslims knew Adamu with his liberal zakat offering, why could the Christians not praise the Lord for the munificence of tithing from their beloved Isaac?

It was hard to tell who was richer until Suleiman Solomon or Solomon Suleiman materialised. No one was sure of the name order. But this man who sometimes wore the Islamic turban or the Christian cross and who knew his psalms as well as his recitation of Islamic text, preened over his pots of money. He preserved the mystery of his name order by calling Solomon his last name when he supped with Christians and Suleiman his surname when with Muslims. He owed eternal debts to the father of the faithful for the two faiths he bestowed humanity.

Though he claimed his blessings came from his tithing and zakat, the elders of both faiths disavowed him and called him a corrupter of the faith. But the city elders who presided were moved by Solomon Suleiman’s campaign line: Muslim money for Muslims, Christian money for Christians. So, he promised that once he became the mayor, he would split the city’s money in half. Half of it would go to the Muslims and the other half to the Christians.

The fundamentalists were defeated and the majority tagged along with their new interfaith hero. He was equal parts god and equal parts the devil, noted the citizens. The Christians said the part of him that called Jesus belonged to God, and the Muslims said the part that worshipped on Fridays at mosques belonged to Allah. The other part, depending on whether you spoke to a Christian or Muslim, belonged to the devil.

The Lanoites went along in relative harmony until things began to unravel. One midnight, the two-year-old son of Nurudeen Mukhtar caught a serious fever, and in another part of town, the pregnant wife of John Jacobs was on the verge of delivery. They could not access their usual hospitals because of the distance. Mukhtar decided to visit Sacred Hearts Clinic. His son’s temperature had reached such a fiery point as he and his wife could not manage until the crack of dawn.

So, out of desperation, Mukhtar bore his son on his shoulder and hurried to the Sacred Hearts.

The frustration began early. On introducing himself to the nurse on duty to register his son, Mohammed, the nurse quickly replied, “but you should know that people with such names cannot receive treatment here. Why don’t you go to one of your hospitals? Even if I wanted to help, I would be in trouble.”

Meanwhile the little boy, more febrile and fragile by the second, looked with an eye that looked as though about to expire. The father cried, and begged, and asked the nurse to have mercy.

“It is not about mercy,“ declared the nurse. “It is about faith.”

John Jacobs’ wife, Elizabeth, had no option but to rush into Ansarudeen Hospital, which was the closest and only one within range. When he and his wife managed to enter the premises, they expected sympathy. His wife, already irritant and cursing her husband for choosing that time of night for her delivery, would not listen when the spouse begged for forgiveness.

The real forgiveness, however, was not forthcoming from the resident doctor who saw them and knew from their dressing that they could not be true believers. If he found out that they were believers, he would chasten them before reluctantly administering help. But the Jacobs did not want to forswear their trust in Jesus. So they both decided to say they were Christians and the doctor, a true believer, told them to go to the hospital of their God.

“Can’t you see my wife’s condition?” protested John Jacobs.

“Can’t you see that this hospital is named Ansarudeen? Even if we tried to help, you may die. The sovereign of cure is Allah, not Jesus,” replied the physician.

While both families tried to overcome their crises, commuters and travelers had to come to terms with their roads. Suleiman Solomon had constructed two sets of roads, one for Muslims and one for Christians. That very night a transporter was passing through Lano, and then he met a roadblock. It was a Muslim roadblock with policemen clad in peculiarly Muslim police uniforms. They asked the driver his name, and he said he was Hussein but the policemen discovered that about a quarter of his passengers were Christians.

They told the Christians to disembark, and that they were not allowed to take advantage of Muslim facilities. The Muslims remained on board while the Christians were ordered to walk a bush path for about seven kilometres where the Christian road began. They complied. After several hours of trekking they met the bus and the driver who obliged at the end of the Muslim highway, and found their seats. Before they reached there, they witnessed a dramatic scene. A very hungry beggar had Christian currency and wanted in that hour of night to buy tea and bread from a seller who catered to Muslims in the neighborhood. The Muslim would not sell and the Christian beggar wondered why he would not sell. “Can’t you see you have not sold anything all night? You get a customer and you say no,” the beggar intoned.

“Your money is sinful,” replied the seller.

But a Christian roadblock awaited them with Christian policemen dressed in Christian police uniforms. Hussein was not permitted to drive, so one of the Christian passengers took over the steering, while the Muslims entered the bush like the Christians and met at another intersection of Muslims. About two yards separated both roads, and it was called conversion pass. The Muslims rejoined them in the bus at about 4am and they decided to rest. But a strange and ravenous wind howled in and scooped the bus from the edge of the road and it rolled over into a deep ravine.

That night, not faraway, buzzed with a Christian party and people had had their fill of rice and stew and lots of drink. Somehow the word passed round that the tomato in the stew was purchased from a Muslim market. No one was able to authenticate it. Even when one or two persons came to deny the rumour, it was too late. Nausea had caught everyone and they ran to the conversion pass. They looked over the ravine and puked profusely. The throaty choir of retching, puffing, rasping, coughing, spitting resembled a coarse comedy if it did not sound like a dirge. It could have been a funny sight as all of them in their glorious shirts and dresses decided to retch on the road and into the ravine.

They did not know that a more terrible act of the devil had happened at the receiving end of their vomit. All the passengers and driver died as the vehicle caught fire and burned everyone beyond recognition.

The next morning, the question was where to bury the bodies. They could not identify who was Muslim or Christian, and they could not bury them in any of the available cemeteries because there were only Christian and Muslim cemeteries.

Even if they were to bury them, they could not put them in a casket. It was not acceptable to swaddle a Muslim in a Christian casket and vice versa.

Suleiman Solomon or Solomon Suleiman pondered these riddles. It became the least of his worries when the news also broke that a Muslim boy died outside a Christian hospital and a woman delivered a stillborn girl on the roadside.

- In Touch, The Nation newspaper, 02/06/2014