THE MAHMOUD MA'AROOF I KNOW
Muktar Gadanya
Part I: The Mahmoud Ma’arouf I Know (Childhood)
I couldn't sleep last night and went down memory lane recalling all I know and went through with Mahmoud Maaroof. I have seen many people say and write posthumously that he was kind and considerate. I know this more than anyone!
We first met as JSS 1 students in the then highly rated Kano Foundation Secondary School at the age of 11 years, and spent several hours fathoming what the various components of a "mathematical set" ("maths set") are meant for. The one that gave us the most headache (I still don't know its name) has two pointed ends. Mahmoud met me excitedly the next day to say that he has discovered it is meant to cut out pieces of circular paper from a sheet. We were amused and cut as many circular papers as we could on that day. He sat a desk ahead of me for the three years of our JSS education in Kano Foundation.
Later we met at Science Secondary School Dawakin Kudu for our SSS education, and as students of SS1B one evening decided, mutually, to "fight" physically over a trivial argument (we were then only 14 years old, so pardon the mindset). We "fought" for several minutes in the store of the class, and immediately afterward realised what ill-thought decision it was. We walked back to the hostels (me to Bartfield House, and Mahmoud to the adjacent Zungur House) together. Mahmoud asked me to follow him and collect Paracetamol to keep in case I have body pains at night, as he said "you took a lot of hits from me" (Not that in reality it was plenty or massive hits). Remembering that now I am in tears, and when people say Mahmoud was kind and considerate, I know I know that more than anyone else.
Part II: The Mahmoud Ma’arouf I Know (Growing up)
In our final year at Kano Foundation secondary in 1992 we had a fire disaster, likely from an electric heater which someone left on probably in fear of the usual morning “arrest and cane” of late comers by our then Principal Alhaji Ahmad Ishaq Karaye, of blessed memory. Half of the hostel got burnt, but luckily no one was hurt. While many of us were itching for an instant “holiday” to allow for the repairs of the burnt segment, the school had its own plan. Students in the affected rooms were asked to move to the corresponding rooms in the unaffected hall. Our hopes for a “holiday” were dashed. While some were content taking care of themselves and connecting to their families for new supplies of “contraband” (which the school forbids) food items our growing bodies needed, Mahmoud was concerned about how every other person is faring after the disaster: whether people were able to reach to their parents, whether they know the holiday will eventually come in few weeks, and thus their current disappointment is misplaced etc.
I was nauseated by the then commonly used powdered milk brands in circulation, but the school was making tea without an option regarding milk. That meant I either spend the whole morning nauseated or hungry. I later realised that extra-large amount of Bournvita added to the tea calms the nauseating effect. But that meant my “contraband” Bournvita finishes ahead of everyone else’s, and I was back to the Hobson’s choice I started with: all day nausea or all morning hunger. There wasn’t email, WhatsApp, SMS or mobile phone to inform home in 1992. It had to be a snail mail, or the serendipity of seeing someone who can pass the message home. This can take several weeks to fruition. I informed my then increasingly confidant colleague Mahmoud who then instantly claimed, I think, he had no much need of Bournvita and I can supplement with his own while I await further stock from home. It was a kindness I will never forget, and which typifies his approach to me, and many others.
Before the end of our JSS education we were so close that while we relish long holidays sometimes lasting up to 13 weeks, we also missed each other’s company for the period, and take school resumption with consolation regarding our re-union for continuing our mutual harmless “infantile” plans and strategies against those we then called “people who do not like us”. As many people said I was paranoid (which if really true, was perhaps from the “Fulani genes” that helped our nomadic ancestors survive the wilderness, rustlers and beasts of the jungle for centuries!), and perhaps I succeeded in making Mahmoud paranoid. Or perhaps, in his usual kindness, was just acting it along with me, and just being kind to me by agreeing. We were then too young for much rational thinking. He will later come call me frequently “the paranoid Gados”.
Part III: The Mahmoud Ma’arouf I Know (Learning diligence)
And when after SS1 at Science Secondary School Dawakin Kudu Mahmoud couldn’t come back after a holiday due to a sickness he later told me was typhoid fever and appendicitis, I missed him thoroughly and kept in touch during holidays, whenever that was possible.
He was someone who can dedicate time to understanding details of an issue and planning proactively and diligently. Not many people at that age, or any age, have these skills. His relatives say that he picked that from his father, a remarkable and enterprising gentleman, Alhaji Maaruf Yakubu, who was the first independent petroleum marketer in Kano State.
Mahmoud can work on a Physics question from the textbook called “Okeke” for several hours, and will not give up once the answer is not clear. He once broke a pin-drop silence of an evening prep class in SS1B with a shout of, believe me, “Eureka!!”. It went on to show in his favourite subject (Physics) grade when he scored 90%, in the end of term exams, clearly ahead of everyone in the school. Our then very competent Physics teacher, Mr. Monday Gbuzugbe, speaks in superlatives regarding Mahmoud. We learned from Mahmoud the value of foresight and diligence, rare at that age, and which helped me ever since. The one adjective I now admire most is “diligent”. Most colleagues fondly refer to him as “Saiti” or later “Saitoma” to characterize his rare orderliness, diligence and foresight.
Part IV: The Mahmoud Ma’arouf I Know (Medical School)
Mahmoud and the then-reformed me carried that diligence into first year as undergraduate medical students. We started the first year with a raging strike which meant that only some lectures were held, one of which was in Chemistry (I can’t remember the course code or course title now) and eponymously named after the lecturer “Dagari”. It was then we were told to forget all the elementary details about “ideal gases” and introduced to more complex equations on the real behavior of real world gases. We spent several hours solving associated questions to the new concept, and sometime claiming “copyrights” and “embargoed patents” for the hardest questions. We usually make “public release” of some of the “hardest” solutions loud. We needed the thrill of that to do more work. We were young, energetic and in search of academic “glory”, or “shine” as it is called in medical school.
In the final year of our pre-clinical training, we were joined by another remarkable honest colleague, Sharfudden Abbas Mashi, and we were three in the Bayero University Hostel room with number N39. We called one other “main man”. For example, Mahmoud will ask me where is our “main man”? and I would know whom he was referring to. We all had this “suspicion” that the two others were closer and “conspiring”. When we all realised later that was not true we had a good laugh and a philosophical reflections. Sharfuddeen felt because Mahmoud and I are both from Kano, then we were closer; I felt because outside the room, Mahmoud and Sharfudden move more together they were closer; and Mahmoud felt Sharfuddeen and I were “partners in intentionally disorganizing the room” and destroying his “saiti” (orderliness). Mahmoud said he came to realise, “from age and maturity” (we were all then 21 years) that nearly all suspicions were hardly true. It is a philosophy I still use 17 years later.
Part V: The Mahmoud Ma’arouf I Know (Qualifying as doctors)
We later all succeeded and moved into clinical and final stage of our training, and shared the common difficulties meant to last for 3 years (but which extended for more than 4 years due to strikes and other glitches). We shared the difficulty of extreme “lysis” (severe verbal reprimand) by our legion of senior colleagues during ward rounds. We got so tired and I can say at some time learned to be thick-headed.
We shared the difficult moment of final exams which would qualify us medical doctors. Everyone was telling us at that time “it will be well”. We took that as testimony to people’s perceptions of our “ability and record”, until when a gateman of one of our colleagues said the same thing, and we all realised that “you will be okay” is probably the default consolation you tell one who is panicking and having a huge task ahead. The exams came and we all passed and thereafter started life as medical doctors. Even at that time Mahmoud had a lot of first aid drugs (I fondly remember his topical analgesic Ben-Gay®), which he altruistically had for everyone suffering a body pain.
Part VI: The Mahmoud Ma’arouf I Know (Further trainings and education)
During the compulsory period of internship, we shared the same house and the challenges of transitioning from students to doctors, with the continuing “lysis” and hectic evening calls.
We went our separate ways for the one year National service (NYSC). It was becoming a recurring destiny when we all returned to Community Medicine Department of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital for our post-graduate residency, and when we went to London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (though some sessions apart) for our MSc degrees.
When I had to leave for London for an MSc it was Mahmoud’s usual altruistic self that came convincing my then very young wife to allow me to leave her and our three months old daughter for a whole year. He told her that she should let them, my friends, know when there is any problem. We all parted in tears.
He told me as a parting word “carry cash always, it is your life line!”. I remember very vividly a day I got lost in Central London and was having a frostbite in the very cold winter of 2009, and I called Mahmoud who asked “do you have your life-line?”, I said yes. He said quickly flag a taxi and give them your postal code of WC1B 5JB. I did, and within seconds I was within the warm embrace of a black London cab. The meter started reading at £2.00 and by the time I was home it has amassed £BP16 due to Central London traffic congestion. I paid and as I was alighting when Mahmoud called asking “where you able to meet the cost?” and he quickly added “please make sure you don’t insert your hands immediately into hot water due to risk of Reynaud’s phenomena”. As a doctor I know of Reynaud’s phenomena, but at that confusing moment I could have made the mistake.
Part VII: The Mahmoud Ma’arouf I Know (Death and closing)
I never knew how close people consider us to be till when he wasn’t at home on one day past 11pm due preparations for a fellowship examination, and his mother called me to ask for his whereabouts.
We continued residency for some time until when Mahmoud, after returning from London, nearly immediately commenced a DrPH program at the Texas A&M University in the United States. We had the same scholarship for the same school, but I was not able to go, as I was still smarting from the guilt of my earlier “abandonment” of my daughter and wife for a year in London, and was suffering a temporary switch-off of my academic zeal. Some colleagues then said I should not break the “recurring destiny” and leave Mahmoud in Texas alone.
The day (13th June, 2016) I received several missed calls from three different mutual acquaintances (Professor “Baba Isa” Sadeeq Abubakar, Dr Usman Bashir and Dr Rayyan Garba) it was late at night, and I was sleeping from exhaustion of a trip and all day fasting on a very hot day. Seeing the missed calls around midnight, I know I had to call back as certainly something should be wrong for people. I did, and that murdered sleep for the night, and triggered this memory of a good friend for almost three decades. I pray for aljannatul-firdaus to be Mahmoud’s final abode and I extend my condolence to all colleagues, family and friend. We have lost one of the very best of us, and whom I think I know more than most.
Concluded.
Dr Muktar Gadanya, MFR, wrote this from Kano and can be reached at gadanya@gmail.com
