Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree

Ya Ta and Sarah go deep into the forest in search of food for the night’s meal while Al-Bakura watches nearby. They come across a baobab tree and swell with excitement at the thought of tasting their old familiar favorite fruit again. As they approach, they smell something rotten and find that the baobab tree is now a gravesite for dozens of dead. Each day, Sarah and Ya Ta grow more tired of their current existence, and Sarah starts saying she would rather die, but Ya Ta urges her to keep fighting. One night, Aisha is carted away to be raped as she screams and pleads. The other girls can do nothing to help, as they listen to the sound of her being beaten. When Aisha comes back the next morning, she repeatedly says, “This is not Islam” (155). Ya Ta considers this and everything else she has witnessed, comparing it to what she learns from the Quran. She finds a blatant hypocrisy and disconnect between Islam’s teachings of peace and charity with the actions of Boko Haram. She also notices that they claim to be against Western education but use Western technology.