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Almost a year after she was rescued from Boko Haram captivity by the Nigerian army, 16-year-old Zara John is still in love with one of the Islamic militants who abducted her.
She was delighted to discover that she was pregnant with his child following a urine and blood test carried out by a doctor in the refugee camp to which she was taken after her rescue.
“I wanted to give birth to my child so that I can have someone to replace his father since I cannot reconnect with him again,” said Zara, one of hundreds of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants during a seven-year insurgency in northeast Nigeria.
But any decision over the baby was taken out of her hands.
Her father drowned during flooding in 2010 so her uncles intervened. Some were adamant they did not want a Boko Haram offspring in their family and insisted on an abortion. Others felt the child should not be blamed for its father’s crimes.
In the end, the majority carried the vote and Zara was allowed to keep her child, a son she named Usman who is now about seven months old.
“Everybody in the family has embraced the child,” Zara told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview, asking that her location remain undisclosed. “My uncle just bought him tins of Cerelac (instant cereal) and milk.”
Zara was aged 14 when Boko Haram militants fighting to establish an Islamist state raided her village of Izge, in northeast Nigeria, in February 2014.
They razed homes in the village, slaughtered men, and loaded women, girls and children into trucks.
Two of Zara’s brothers were out of town when the militants struck in one of a wave of hit-and-run attacks on villages as well as suicide bombings on places of worship or markets.
Zara’s mother fell off one of the overloaded trucks but tried to chase after the vehicle that was ferrying away her only daughter and her four-year-old son but was unable to keep up as the truck headed 22 km (14 miles) road journey to Bita.
ENSLAVED BY MILITANTS
At the time, Bita and other surrounding towns close to the Sambisa forest, were in Boko Haram control.
“As soon as we arrived, they told us that we were now their slaves,” Zara recalled.
Her days were spent doing chores and learning the tenets of her new religion, Islam, until, two months later, she was given away in marriage to Ali, a Boko Haram commander, and moved into from a shared house to his accommodation.
“After I became a commander’s wife, I had freedom. I slept anytime I wanted, I woke up anytime I wanted,” she said.
“He bought me food and clothes and gave me everything that a woman needs from a man,” adding that he also gave her a mobile phone with his number plugged in and tattooed his name on her stomach to mark her as a Boko Haram wife.
Ali assured her that the fight would soon be over and they would return to his home town of Baga where he intended his new wife to join his fishing business.
He told her that he had abandoned his fisherman trade and joined the militant group after his father and elder brother, both fishermen like himself, were killed by Nigerian soldiers.
In a June 2015 report based on years on research and analysis of evidence, Amnesty International said the Nigerian army was guilty of gross human rights abuse and extra judicial killing of civilians in parts of northeast Nigeria, calling for an investigation into war crimes.
Ali was not at home when the Nigerian army stormed Bita in March 2015 and rescued Zara and scores of other women, taking them to a refugee camp in Yola in northeast Nigeria.
The raid came as international scrutiny on Nigeria increased after the high profile abduction of 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in northern Nigeria in April 2014 which caused outrage internationally and sparked the global campaign #bringbackourgirls. The girls are yet to be found.
But Zara and Ali stayed in touch by phone until Nigerian soldiers realised some of the girls in the camp were still in touch with their abductors, seized their phones and moved them to another camp until they were reunited with their families.
Zara now lives with her extended family and son in a town far away from Izge.
Back with her family, Zara’s male relatives took over control of her life again, with requests for interviews fielded by them and all of her movements monitored by her family.
But asked her opinion, she said she would rather be with her Boko Haram husband.
“If I had my way, I would retrieve the phone number he gave me,” she said, regretting not committing his number to memory.
But Zara is realistic and knows the possibility of being reunited with Ali is very slim.
Instead she wants to return to school when Usman stops breastfeeding and maybe then run her own business.
“I want to do a business that is suitable for a woman, something that will not take me out of the house,” she said.
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