Forgetting the girl: 10 to 17 years old; Nigerian; Suicide Bomber

Days ago, I read about the Boko Haram bombing in Nigeria. The news reports said that the bomb was attached to a girl, anywhere between ten and seventeen years old. I have been waiting to hear about her. I want to know who she was, where she lived, if she was a daughter—or if she was older, if she was a mother. I want to see a picture of her. I want to know her name. But no one is telling me.

I think of the girl, walking into that market. Did she know there was a bomb on her body? And if she did, did she have a choice in the matter? Maybe she was told to buy something. Though I’ve just finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, I have no idea what a young Nigerian girl might buy in a market. Furthermore, I know that Adichie’s upper-middle class Nigeria might be drastically different from this girl’s experience. Would she buy milk? Or eggs? A new scarf? Why was she there?

Maybe the terrorists bribed her with something. Or maybe one of them was her father. Maybe he told her to be a good girl, strapped a bomb to her body, and patted her back as she walked to her death. But maybe not. I don’t know her at all. No one is telling me. And whatever it was that she wanted in that market, or in her life, and whoever she was, Boko Haram has taken it.

No one has told me. No CNN, NPR, or BBC. No one at all. One said that there were satellite pictures revealing thousands of dead bodies. I see John Kerry on NBC. He tells me that these are “crimes against humanity.”

Bombings are always tragic. Shootings are always tragic. We cannot say that one is more tragic than another. There is no reason for that sort of discussion. But we cannot deny that this instance—this instance of the ten- to seventeen-year-old Nigerian girl suicide bomber—is a tragedy especially relevant to feminism. Her death is a “crime against humanity,” but it is a specific humanity, one of what the West calls a “developing country,” one of black skin, youth and femininity. She, and girls like her, are some of the most forgotten in this world, which is a crime in and of itself.

We have forgotten other Nigerian girls, kidnapped from their school last April, and others before and after that. In fact, a report today is saying that perhaps Boko Haram is using these girls for suicide missions. What is our responsibility to these girls? And to girls in our own country?

There are Twitter hashtags and videos on CNN. I can update my Facebook status. But what will these things do? If there is a thing called feminist paralysis, I am in it.

Maybe my obsession with this event is misguided. Is it my business to imagine a Nigerian girl’s life? After all, I cannot know it. Is a girl’s life more important than a boy’s? Is a suicide bomb more tragic than cancer? Are terrorist deaths mournable? But that is the thing: How can a ten- to seventeen-year-old girl be a terrorist?

Certainly, we live in world of hurt—of tragedy, of death, of pain. But, if we forget this girl, we only compound the tragedy. We forget the sanctity of human life, and more specifically, the value of Nigerian girlhood—a thing I cannot know, but a thing I believe in with all my heart. This world is quick to forget girls, especially black girls, especially black girls who live in Nigeria. But we should not forget her. If feminism has any cause in this case, it should be to remember this life, and if it can find a way, to protect others like it.

Header image credit: @FLOTUS