A Token From Grandpa...Chapter 11.

Mahmoud had always wanted to be rich.  He had a rough time with his father as a child and had grown up to hate anyone who gave him orders.  His grandfather owned a large herd of cattle but he also had grandchildren who nearly outnumbered his cattle.  Mahmoud and his numerous cousins were supposed to take turns taking the cattle out to graze.  He hated the task.  One day, when he opted to go play soccer with his friends instead of going with his brothers to tend his grandfather’s cattle, his father whipped him with a leather belt until his whole body was covered with bloody cuts.

Another thing Mahmoud hated was school.  Although he did well in all subjects, he didn’t like having to wake up early in order not to be late for school.  He also hated that teachers whipped you for almost every infraction.  You get to school late, you get six lashes.  You get one mistake in mental math, you get two lashes.  Whenever he could, he hung out with his friends at the Sakasaka Park, riding bicycles at his cousin Abukari’s bicycle rental joint.  Whenever the school had a soccer game, however, his friends knew exactly where to find him after extracting a promise from the teachers not to punish him for playing truant. 

One day, when Mahmoud was seventeen years old, his father heard that he hadn’t been going to school.  Ahmed was further shocked to find that his son’s truancy had been going on for a long time.  He had 15 other children with a lot of issues to worry about.  It had never occurred to him to worry about Mahmoud’s schooling since his academic report was always all right.  Ahmed felt like he had been outwitted.  He felt like a fool and he didn’t like that.  When Mahmoud heard his father call him, he heard something sinister in his voice.  He was nervous but he wasn’t scared.

            “Why haven’t you been going to school?”  Ahmed asked as soon as he thought he had Mahmoud cornered.

            “Because I didn’t want to.  I hate school.”

Ahmed was too blinded by rage to see this as an opportunity to reason with his son about why school was important.  He saw it as further proof of stubbornness and he thought he had what it took to stamp it out.  A horse whip known as ‘koboko’.  Mahmoud was surprised by the first two strikes.  When Ahmed raised his hand for a third, his son dove at him head first, throwing him to the ground.  The commotion brought Ahmed’s wives and other children out and the scuffle ended as quickly as it had begun.  Mahmoud’s  mother dragged him into her room and shut the door.  They could still hear Ahmed yelling for his son’s blood.

            “Mahmoud, why?  You want to fight your father?  Your own father?  What is wrong with you?  Who taught you that?”

            “I wasn’t trying to fight him.  I just didn’t want him to hit me again with that koboko.  I don’t want to go to school.  What is wrong with that?”

            “You don’t know why you have to go to school?”

            “I know why I have to go but I don’t have to go every day.  I pass all my exams all right.”

At that point, the door flew open.

            “Ahmed, please stay outside,” Mahmoud’s mother said sternly.  “The boy has sought refuge under his mother’s wings.  You know it’s a taboo to continue pursuing someone who has taken refuge.”

            “He wants to fight me, his own father.  Let him come out here and fight like a man!”

            “Don’t be ridiculous, Ahmed.  Mahmoud was not trying to fight you.  He wants you to talk to him when he is wrong.  He doesn’t want you to swing a koboko at him like an animal.”

            “O, so now I am the one who needs to learn, right?  Your son is disrespectful and stubborn but you jump to his side when I want to discipline him.”

            “Mahmoud is seventeen years old.  How old were you when you had your first daughter?  When your son is old enough to have a child of his own, you also have to treat him with respect.”

As his parents argued, Mahmoud sneaked out of the room and ran out of the house.

He spent that night in his grandfather’s house.  The next day, one of his cousins arrived with a truckload of charcoal bound for the South.  Ishak lived in Wa.  He was part owner of a charcoal making business.  They transported a truckload of charcoal to Accra every two weeks.  It seemed like a lucrative business but Mahmoud was not interested in the business.  He just saw the truck as a means to get as far away from his father and school as possible.  He joined Ishak on the trip and instantly fell in love with Accra.

Mahmoud realized that charcoal was not the only merchandise on the truck.  Many of the sacks were not sacks of charcoal at all.  They were sacks of marijuana hidden carefully among the sacks of charcoal.  They also had kola nuts, shea butter and yams in small quantities for friends and family.  It seemed Ishak had a ready market for both the charcoal and the marijuana.  They spent their second day in Accra distributing the sacks of charcoal at various markets.  The sacks of marijuana were kept in a house owned by Ishak’s business partner.   It was where the truck driver and Ishak stayed whenever they got to Accra.  There were five families living in the house as tenants.  Mahmoud later found out that the tenants knew about the sale of marijuana in the house but kept their mouths shut.

When the time came for Mahmoud and Ishak to head back to the North, Mahmoud begged Aziz, the caretaker of the house, to let him stay with him.  He promised to work hard and find a place of his own as soon as possible.  Ishak tried to persuade him to come back to the North and join him in the charcoal business but Mahmoud would have none of it.  He was happy to be far from his father and he wanted to keep it that way. 

 Nii Darku was not really Mahmoud’s friend.  Nii Darku had no friends.  He had fans.  He was what you might call ‘an informal teacher’.  He was the grown up son of one of the tenants in the house.  He had dropped out of Secondary School at Form Three because his mother could not afford to pay his school fees after his father’s death.  He once found a job in a textile factory at the Accra North Industrial Area.  He started saving up to put himself back in school but he was laid off due to shortage of materials.  He still hoped to go to school again although he was in his mid-twenties and jobless.  He occasionally earned a small fee by running errands and doing minor administrative stuff for illiterates and those who were too busy to do them on their own.

Nii Darku knew things.  He spoke eloquently about everything from technology to politics.  He had erected a bench outside the house on which he sat every evening chatting with, and answering questions from, the youth in the area.  Mahmoud sat with these people and listened to every conversation, sometimes without even understanding a word.  Most of the people spoke Ga which was not very famous in the North.  He spoke many languages from the North but the only Southern language he knew was Akan.  Sometimes, people spoke Akan or English on the bench but Ga was predominant.  Nii Darku was the only one who mentioned school to Mahmoud without infuriating him. 

Thus, no alarm bells went off in Mahmoud’s mind when Nii Darku recruited him to take part in a mock kidnapping for a huge sum of money.  According to Nii Darku, a man wanted to play a prank on his friend by having his daughter kidnapped.  Nii Darku was supposed to recruit two friends to help him.  Mahmoud suggested Okota, an auto mechanic who had taught him to drive, as the third person. 

They were given a house and a car to use until they receive the ransom.  They were supposed to plan and execute the kidnapping without getting the police involved.  Nii Darku was in charge of the planning.  Mahmoud’s task was to follow the victim’s mother’s car to ensure that she does not contact the police.  He was also supposed to drop notes on the car when necessary without drawing attention to himself.  He had a note that informed the parents of the victim that the kidnapping was a ‘joke’ and showed them where to get their daughter back.  He was only supposed to drop that note if his instincts told him that the parents were about to contact law enforcement.  Okota was a Sunday School teacher at a small church his mother had started.  He was charged with babysitting the victim.

Mahmoud was parked about two hundred meters away from the Volvo.  He observed that Ato had gotten out of the car without the briefcase he had received at the house in Roman Ridge.  He waited for a few minutes, got out of the Datsun and started walking towards the Volvo.  A man emerged from the house so he continued walking past the Volvo without even glancing at it.  The man got into a Toyota parked in front of the Volvo and drove away.  Mahmoud waited until the Toyota turned the corner then he turned back towards the Volvo.  He could see the briefcase lying on the passenger seat.  He tried the door.  It was not locked.  His heart began to pound.  He took a deep breath and brought the briefcase out of the Volvo.  He walked confidently back to the Datsun and drove away.

TO BE CONTINUED...