Ƙiyayyar Jini Part 1 Complete Hausa Novel

She stood like a soldier, staring at Ma’u the groundnut seller with complete shamelessness and stubborn insolence. She was dressed in a wrapper and headscarf that did not match, with another black scarf tied around her waist. Her face carried the kind of makeup village girls wore, the sort of girls just coming into youthful bloom. She had smeared a certain kind of face powder all over herself, and it sat on her skin in ugly patches. Her eyebrows had been shaved from the very beginning almost to the corners of her eyes, then the brow line was joined to the eye paint she had applied. She had drawn two strange marks on her face, and a black line had been painted above her upper lip. On her feet were worn-out slippers, filthy with dirt. Anyone who saw the slippers would swear they had never once been washed with water. She forced herself to dress up and look attractive, but the moment you saw her, you would be sure she was extremely dirty, one of those people whose uncleanliness is obvious at a glance. If she came close to someone, it would be hard for them to even breathe. Because of her filth, no one could easily tell whether she was fair-skinned or dark, nor whether she was beautiful or ugly. Anyone asked to describe her would say: ugly, rough-looking, dirty, and ill-mannered.
This was Jimmalo, Tani’s granddaughter, the girl no one in the village of Badarawa could control. No one, adult or child, dared cross her, because she had neither shame nor patience, not to mention the bold backing she received from Kanta Tani, who had now become both mother and father to her.
The whole time she stood there without moving, she was waiting for Ma’u the groundnut seller, who had gone inside her house to bring out some groundnuts for her.
Ma’u was a widow of the troublesome sort. Because of her difficult nature, her husband divorced her before even three weeks had passed. From that time onward, she kept getting married and divorced because of her extreme quarrelsomeness. Even in the village people were wary of her, but she was different from Jimmalo. If you did not provoke or interfere with her, she would never meddle in your affairs. But Jimmalo picked quarrels with everyone. Once she realized that people in the village feared Ma’u, she took it upon herself to challenge her. Whenever her troublesome streak rose up, she would head straight to Ma’u’s house and go scoop up her groundnuts just to provoke her.
Ma’u was much older than her, far from being her age-mate, yet because of Jimmalo’s difficult nature and shamelessness, she was cautious around her. Jimmalo had no patience at all, and she was fiercely stubborn in a fight, especially if she believed she had been wronged. She would keep pursuing a person until she got revenge for whatever had been done to her. She was only fourteen years old, but her behavior was far beyond her age. Yet with all these traits she possessed, she was also proud, arrogant, and boastful, with an especially nasty kind of defiance. There were times when, no matter how much someone tried to correct or advise her, she would simply refuse to listen.
Then she leapt over the wall of Ma’u the groundnut seller’s house and ran off laughing, seeing Ma’u coming after her with a pestle. Ma’u the groundnut seller watched her in furious anger.