Al'adun Wasu Part 1 Complete Hausa Novel

Mal Bashir and the Children in the Neighborhood
 
Mal Bashir, an elderly man of about fifty-eight, entered their street and the children immediately ran after him, chanting playfully, “Baban Yara!” Since they always did this, he never failed to bring them a small gift whenever he came. He slipped one hand into his pocket — the hand that had been amputated from the wrist due to an accident that severed the hand’s nerves. Despite the hardship and the doctors advising that the hand was dead and must be cut off, he never abandoned his occupation as a carpenter.
 
With his stump, he opened his pocket and used his good hand to bring out some prayer beads, then handed them to the children. They cheered happily and ran off to share them. As he walked farther, smiling lightly, his eyes met those of a young man in the street. Quickly, the young man nudged his companion, whispering, “Behave yourself, this is Baban Yara.” They both stood up respectfully dusting their clothes. “Good evening, Baban Yara,” they greeted when he approached. He frowned slightly.
 
“I won’t answer you, Sani. Please, won’t you stop all this drinking and smoking? Look at your big belly, Anas—do you want your father’s sickness to worsen because of you?” Anas shook his head. “Forgive us, if God wills, we won’t do it again.” Baban Yara gave a disappointed smile.
 
“May God help you stop. You are ruining your lives for nothing. Whether you know it or not, what a person does in youth follows him into adulthood. I am sure no one here would like to tell his son in the future that he once smoked marijuana.” Sani smiled slightly, and Baban Yara snapped, “Oh, you find that funny?” He twisted Sani’s mouth lightly. “If you don’t stop, one day you’ll end up in prison claiming it’s your destiny.” He walked away, still grumbling about the behavior of young people nowadays.
 
At the Shop and Inside the House
 
At the shop beside his house, he stopped and greeted Munkaila, the shopkeeper. Mal Bashir brought out a hundred-naira note and handed it to him. “Here, thank you very much.”
 
Munkaila asked, “What is this for, Baban Yara?”
“For the hundred naira you gave Zuhra this morning. I was about to leave when she asked me for money to collect her examination results. I didn’t have change, so I told her to take it from you.”
 
Munkaila returned the money. “But I haven’t seen her come out today at all.” Mal Bashir collected the money and entered his house, greeting as he entered.
 
Zuhra was chopping vegetable leaves when she heard her father’s voice in the corridor. Her heart pounded heavily; she sprang up and ran into the bathroom, dropping the vegetables in her haste. Her mother scolded her, “What is wrong with you?”
 
Mal Bashir entered the courtyard. “Where is everyone?” he called out, but no one answered, as if the house were empty.
 
Atine, her mother, said, “Forgive us, Baban Zuhra. I was scolding her, I didn’t hear you greet.”
 
He removed his footwear and sat on the mat spread in the yard. “She ran because of needing to urinate, right?”
Her mother replied, “Are you sure? We were talking, then you greeted and she suddenly jumped like she saw something frightening.”
 
Hearing this, Baban Yara felt uneasy. “Has she collected her exam results?”
Her mother replied, “I don’t think so, but there are some papers by the window that Hajara brought for her earlier.”
 
He stood up slowly to take them. He suspected she had not done well in school.
 
On opening them, he saw the disappointing results—48 out of 52 subjects failed. Anger filled him. He marched to the bathroom door.
“Zuhra! What are you doing there?” he yelled.
“Ehem… ehem,” she answered from inside.
“If you don’t come out now, I will open this door!” he warned.
 
Zuhra preferred staying the whole day in the bathroom than coming out to receive her father’s scolding. She repeated, “Ehem…”
 
He said, “Fine, we’ve turned this into a hide-and-seek game.”
 
After nearly five minutes, she finally came out, sweating. She looked at her mother, “If Baba had caught me today, I don’t know…”
 
Suddenly she felt a heavy knock on her head and dropped to her knees holding her head, tears flowing.
 
The Examination Results and the Confrontation
 
“If you don’t close your mouth right now, I’ll hit you again,” Baban Yara said. Crying, Zuhra stood up, pouting. “If not because of this knock, I would have tried harder. If you damage my medulla oblongata, I might run mad soon.”
 
“You are the medulla yourself,” he replied irritably. “You memorize a few English words and come threatening people like someone who knows what she’s doing.”
 
She continued crying until her mother scolded her. “If you gather neighbors here today, you’ll regret it,” her mother warned. Zuhra then started jumping and crying louder, but when her father said he would get his phone charger and “teach her a useful lesson,” she immediately swallowed her tears.
 
He began checking the exam papers one by one. Some showed zeros. In Mathematics she scored forty-eight, in Arabic ninety-four, and in Hausa seventy-one — the only subjects preventing her from being last in class. She was also good at handwriting, neat and impressive.
 
As he continued checking, he noticed how she wrote her name. He shook his head in frustration. Even with only SS1 level education, he felt he would outperform her in class.
 
“Come here!” he shouted. Slowly she dragged her feet and knelt at a distance.
“These are all your papers, right?”
“Yes, Baba. Check the names I wrote.”
“I did. Some you wrote ‘Zuhra Bashir’, others ‘Fatima Bashir’, just to mock your teachers.”
 
Continuing to flip through, he suddenly found another paper. He removed his slipper and smacked her with it. He raised the paper to show her mother.
“Look at her disrespect! She wrote ‘Fatima Basiru’! Am I Basirun??”
 
The way he said it made her mother laugh.
“Zuhra, I will deal with you today! You’re being scolded and you’re laughing?”
 
Zuhra shifted away, wiping tears. “But that’s how Kawu Sabiu and Inna Ajingi pronounce your name.”
 
Her father bit his lip in anger. “That’s a nickname they use. Have you ever heard anyone call me Basiru here?”
“Sorry, wallahi I’ll stop from today,” she said.
 
He gathered the papers, still grumbling. “How many times have you repeated a class? You’re nearly twenty, yet your brain is like a fish. I’m sure you and Hajara are the mothers of the class.”
 
Zuhra replied, “Not me, Baba — there’s also Hajara. You forgot we’re classmates.”
“How will I forget? Two grown girls in one class. Your only hobbies are eating fried bean cakes and flour cakes.”
 
Zuhra, whose mouth never stayed quiet, said, “But aren’t you the one giving me money to buy them?”
Her mother quickly cut in, “Just ignore her before your blood pressure rises.”