The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold Page A

times—but they still live in the Nigerian city of Kaduna, which means “crocodile”and is named for the river that runs through its center, dividing north and south. The tenth parallel also runs through the town, which is in many ways a microcosm of Nigeria: its population of one and a half million people is split in half between Muslims and Christians. The Muslim neighborhoods—nicknamed Baghdad and Afghanistan—are on the north side of town. The Christian ones—called Haifa, Jerusalem,and, inexplicably, Television—are on the south side. The inhabitants name the neighborhoods themselves. It is one more way to claim a place in a global religiousorder. Over the past twenty years, many of the city’s churches and mosques have been burned down, and thousands of residents have been killed.
    When I first arrived in downtown Kaduna in 2006, I climbed five flights of stairs in a nondescriptoffice building—the elevator did not work, as there was no electricity that day—to track down their Christian-Muslim Interfaith Mediation Centre. Outside, a small plastic plaque read, “Peace Hall.” Inside, Pastor James, a middle-aged man less than five and a half feet tall, had a terrible cold. Before he blew his nose, he wrapped toilet tissue around his bare right forearm, which did notmove. It was made of hard plastic.
    The pastor belongs to an ethnic minority called Gbagyi—some of Karl Kumm’s “border pagans.” Before they became Christians, they were aboriginal warriors who fought off Hausa Muslim slave raiders. The arrival of the British actually made things worse, as indirect rule strengthened Muslim dominion over the pastor’s people—much as Karl Kumm and other missionarieshad feared it would.
    “They were merciless, the Muslims who were ruling over us,” the pastor said. His people still call the Hausa Muslims
ajei
, which means “those who trouble us.” Pastor James grew up in a military barracks—his father was a soldier—and when he and the other barracks boys played war, their imagined enemies were their Hausa oppressors. As a teenager, Pastor James smoked cigarettesand wooed a long list of girlfriends. He also joined the Christian Association of Nigeria and, at twenty-seven, became general secretary of its Youth Wing. In 1987, the Middle Belt exploded. When fighting between Christians and Muslims reached Kaduna, Pastor James became the leader of the Christian militia. “We took an oath of secrecy,” he said. “We carried pictures of those who had been killed.We were martyrs: we felt that we were dying in defense of the Church.” The war, like the faith itself, became a struggle for liberation.
    “I used to say, ‘We’ve been beaten on both cheeks, there’s no other cheek to turn,’ ” he said, teaching others to justify bloodshed by relying on the literal, inspired word of scripture. Once it was the call to violence couched in self-defense. “I used Luke22:36—as Jesus said to the disciples the night before his crucifixion, ‘And if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’ ” When the pastor was thirty-two, a fight broke out between Christians and Muslims over control of a market. “That day, we were outnumbered,” he said. “Twenty of my friends were killed. Ipassed out, so I don’t know exactly what happened.” When he woke up, his rightarm was gone, sliced off with a machete.
    To understand Kaduna’s faith-based battle lines, I had to see them, Pastor James said, so he summoned an employee. This was the first time I met Haruna Yakubu, the former Islamic militant who now works as the center’s youth coordinator, and who would drive me around the Middle Belt in the minivan. That first afternoon, Yakubu drove me through the formercolonial city, where neem trees line the old roads like ghosts of the bygone British. The colonial polo fields were worn bare but still in use. Mostly wealthy Muslim horsemen play there—others do aerobics in the bleachers. American-style