Chapter 37 Room 45: Inside A Match Box 7

• ON 18 MAY, SOMETHING UNIMAGINABLE happened. Three days after his conversation he had with Mathew Gozie on phone. Abram was watching the news televised by the British Broadcasting Corporation in his brand new LCD television he bought – four weeks before his love night in ‘Room 45.’ BBC reported that group of angry mob under the order of a religious cleric, beat to death with batons and sticks two ladies caught in an immoral act. News in other media houses also reported the same – two females between the ages of Twenty Six and Nineteenth year old, were caught in a toilet engaged in an act prohibited.
• According to the news, Abram wrote in his diary, Helen Linda (the news caster) said, “they came with stones, sticks and baton to beat two ladies to death. This barbaric death occurred in the Northern part of the country Nigeria, where the Islamic doctrine is the utmost institution. Listening to the news wholeheartedly with shock on his face, Abram quoted word to word the news caster broadcasting, “they were brutally murdered by the order of a cleric named Mallam Mustapha Dangosua, one among the powerful Islamic leader that is well respected, who according to him said they committed sacrilegious sins.”
• Hearing this part of the report – the brutal death of the two ladies – Abram wasn’t confortable. It was unbelievable to him that in this period of civilization, people still engaged in such barbaric act under the order of a cleric. That moment worries that a lot of questions pop up in his head, which got him to tune on to another station. This time, it was on a local station where the same report was given but differently, that the ladies killed were lesbians. That night, Abram was restless. Quickly, he called Mat on the phone to informed him about this ‘barbaric’ been reported all over the news.