When a titan called Sani fell

You see, Malam Idris was rich; wealthy beyond all the vaults of Swiss banks. His wealth was not the type to be locked away in strongrooms. His wealth was in the people he invested in – people in the highest of places and people in the lowest of places. He touched lives in the air-conditioned halls of power in Abuja, and lives in the wasted, sun-beaten hinterlands forgotten in the shadows of time.

His death was a tragedy, the worst sort. He died, April 5, the same day his third son was born. He never even set eyes on the child, this orphan who will now bear his name. He died two weeks after a gas tank exploded in his face, burning down half of the apartment in which he had resided.

They say he laughed when he they told him of the safe delivery of his son, that was when he was lying in Intensive Care of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital. They say he wanted to say something but couldn’t because of the oxygen mask strapped to his face.

We all thought he was going to live through this ordeal, as he had several others – through the interminable Jos crises, where he lost an eye to the missile hurled at him and had to suffer the pains for a decade; through a serious car accident several years ago that almost wiped out his immediate family.

He was a man of faith, Malam Idris, a hafiz who had raised other huffaz, my sister included. He grew beyond the petit squabbles of clerics in isolated mosques to the hinterlands, as far flung as the eastern shores and the desert fringes to spread the deen. He loved doing this and had won an army of souls scattered across the vast terrain of this country. I always envied this his achievement, this deed he always pursued with a passion, without showboating.

The last time I was in his house, March 18, just five days before the fire that would eventually claim his life, his wife, my sister, slotted in a DVD of a Da’awah campaign Malam Idris had undertaken to some backwater village. I was impressed with how he talked to those people, how he brought them to accept the deen in droves, how he went about giving them their new names. And I knew that because of men like him, lesser men like us can hide in the shadows, abdicating our responsibility to the deen, and live out our lives.

That same day, we went with him to the piece of land he was developing. He pointed out the different rooms to me. We discussed were best to place this and that, we discussed the wisdom of sacrificing a dining area for a study – he loved his books, you see, he loved learning and sharing wisdom. He pointed out where the flower beds would be. I remember this image of him gesturing and saying, “And this is where we will have some flowers.”

You see, he was himself a rare flower, we all knew that. We just never knew that he would blossom only a short while and distress us so much with his passing (may Allah rest his soul).

It is hard to imagine he would never live long enough to see that house completed.

He was just a common civil servant, you see; a staff at the National Assembly. As those who worked with him would testify, he shunned juicy appointments that would fetch him questionable wealth and preferred positions from which he could reach out to people in need. He cared little for mundane things, you see. Talks about worldly things quickly tired him. And from this moral platform, he was able to look highly placed people in the eye and challenged them on their misdeeds. They know, these people, they can testify to this.

He could part with his last kobo just to improve someone else’s live, he was that magnanimous, you know (may Allah rest his soul). He sacrificed his comfort without flinching just to make life better for others.

When, during the ta’aziyah, someone compared him to the legendary Sardauna, he was merely echoing the thoughts my grief had prevented me from voicing. Malam Idris was that good, only he did his things quietly, he did not delight in showcasing his accomplishments, of which there were many.

I remember his wedding day nine years ago, when I asked him not to betray our trust in him. I remember how he said, “Insha Allah.” He kept his word, Malam Idris. He never betrayed our trust.

Funny how little banters assume a new significance once someone dies. I just can’t get Sunday we spent together and those little things we laughed about out of my mind. Those trivial conversations we had now loom large in my mind, that little joke about this little thing or the other.

We submit to Allah, whose will supersedes our inconsequential plans. May Allah, in his infinite mercy, preserve a special place in Aljannatul Firdaus for him.

And to my sister widowed so young

My sister Salma, with what words do I comfort you as you nurture this newborn and mourn his father – this boy born on the day his father died?

Seeing how strong you are trying to be is comforting because you have surrendered yourself to Allah’s will, because He had decreed everything, because you know we exist to do His will.

But this is a painful trial, my sister. It is hard even for people of faith. I know how it must seem to you like an endless nightmare, how you wish you would wake up and find you husband beside you. I kept hoping so too.

I have been avoiding your eyes, my sister, because I do not want to see those things your fortitude has imprisoned inside – the agony, the despair and the disbelief. I see them, sometimes in your eyes, trapped behind the bars of your resilience and I wish I could take them away and cast them in the sea, so far away from you.

I know you loved your husband – I was there from the beginning, remember. I know how you adored this man who taught you to memorise the Qur’an and made you a champion of its recitation. I just don’t know how you will bear this loss, with those three little boys staring into your eyes, asking for their daddy.

How do you explain to them that Allah blessed them with a very, very good man for a father and took him away before they were old enough to see for themselves?

This may not be consolation in the lonely hours that lie ahead, but you should remember, Allah favoured you. Malam Idris may have lived a short life but it was worth ten times the full life span of lesser men. The lives he touched will bear me witness.

I have always had a way with words, Salma, but now, the magnitude of this grief robs me of my skill. There are no words to console you but we will keep praying, for his soul to receive Allah’s favour, for you to grow strong again and outlive this grief that may linger forever, for his sons to be blessed and grow up to be even half the man there father was.