Chapter 21
Broken Not a halal love story Complete · about 10 min read
Toronto, January 2011
here’s the blonde? Or are you bored already?” Edet asked as he
nodded at the bartender who dropped his usual in front of him.
The bar itself stretched along one side of the room, crafted in chrome and
gleaming brass accents. Rows of crystal-clear glassware, shimmering
bottles of premium spirits, and an array of meticulously arranged bar tools
faced them.
Ahmad dropped the short tumbler with some whiskey sour in it on the
polished mahogany table. “I’m done with university girls, man,” he said
over Edet’s laughter ringing out of the confines of the private cubicle of the
bar reserved for VIP clients. “No, for real. Check this out,” he raised his
hand to illustrate his point. “I took her out on Thursday, we had a good time
and started chatting over text, then –”
“Were there nudes?” Edet interjected.
“I didn’t ask her, but sent a few anyway,” Ahmad replied. He knew the
effect he had on women. He never had to try hard for their attention because
most of it came unsolicited; all he had to do was show up, and things fell in
place for him. “Anyway, we would chat and,” he shrugged, “I knew it just
wasn’t going to work.”
“Bastard!” Edet roared as he laughed at the familiar story. It was always
the same with Ahmad – he lost interest when he got things easily.
“No, we were just not on the same wavelength. She follows all the
Kardashians, man,” he took a sip of his drink again.
“Why is that such a bad thing?” Edet mused out loud. At some point, he
would have to tell his friend that his need for a challenge in every scenario
might require a sit down with a therapist. As well as his fear of
commitment. When Ezgi, whom Ahmad had been dating for years, started
talking about settling down, he ended the relationship.
“It’s not a bad thing. I just don’t know why she needed to tell me. You
should have seen her the day one of them liked her picture. She was over
the moon. Like, how is that the single greatest highlight of your adult life?”
“So, you dumped her because she was bragging about her Kardashian-
approved picture on Instagram?” Edet was enjoying this exchange, as he
did most of Ahmad’s girl-related stories. Being in a committed relationship
meant he had to live vicariously through the shenanigans his single friends
experienced.
“I was tryna let her down easy.”
“Mister let her down easy,” he laughed, “You haven’t changed at all!”
“Tell me why she texted me two days later, talking ‘bout “what are
we”?”
“We? Oui? Oh, you teach French now? That reminds me, the update in
French didn’t go through. The conversation casually changed to business.
Both of them had been working together since their university days, even
though they had been friends for over a decade prior to that.
A few weeks later, on Ahmad’s birthday, they were at an Italian
restaurant with some potential business partners when she walked in with
two other girls. They were all good-looking in their own right, but she stood
out. He recalled the way she walked, with grace and poise, her eyes: large
and soulful, full of depth and expressiveness. Her dark hair was pulled into
a sleek high ponytail partly covered with a floral patterned scarf delicately
wrapped around her head. There was something about how unassuming she
was and how she carried herself. It was almost as if she was unaware of just
how much her smile illuminated the room she was in, how her eyes that
sparkled with a hint of curiosity completely closed for a whole second
every time she giggled. Amidst the clinking of cutlery and murmurs of
conversations, he found himself constantly glancing in her direction,
wondering why she took forever to decide which meal to order. She must
have gone over the menu about five times before she eventually decided on
the first item on the menu: Seafood pasta.
She laughed easily, and her eyes didn’t wander. If they did, she would
have noticed him staring. When they got up to leave, he knew he shouldn’t
go after her, but couldn’t deny the burgeoning desire to talk to her again.
“Excuse me,” he said to the ladies and to Edet, “I’m just gonna go say
hi to someone I know.”
“Those are university girls,” Edet reminded him teasingly.
“No, it’s not like that,” he tried to ignore the knowing look on Edet’s
face. “That’s Afreen’s friend. I’m just gonna say hi.” He wore his blazer,
picked up his keys and phone from the table and headed for the door.
“Fai’za,” he called as he stepped out of the restaurant and towards the slim
silhouette a few meters away.
Abuja, August 2012
Ahmad had not shaved in weeks. He sat on the secluded table, barely
listening to the Burna boy song playing in the background. He called the
number again and listened to it until it rang out. No answer.
The past five weeks in Kano had proved to be more challenging than
finding a needle in a haystack. The last known address for ‘yar Agadez was
Minjibir. There, they were told that she had moved to Bichi. When they
found her house in Bichi, the landlord said she got a job at the Government
Girls Secondary School in Sharada and was living on campus. When they
got to the school, they received a black-and-white passport picture from a
dusty old file that came out after a couple of bribes. It was a picture, Zainab
was there to confirm it as well.
Finally, he had a face to blame. The longer he stared at the picture, the
more disconnected he felt to the woman looking back at him, which is why
he hated the importance that such tiny detail of his life was playing today. It
was over twenty years ago, for fucks sake. Why should it matter?
The process of securing ‘yar Agadez’s picture had taken about three
weeks. His driver had interviewed people who knew the old city of Kano
well and that was how he met Audu, a primary school teacher who
freelanced as government research projects. When he heard the monthly
salary being offered to whoever found this woman, he quit both jobs.
Ahmad worked most nights from one of his father’s houses in Kano to
code a mainframe for an aging app. His developers in Toronto finalized it
and the programmers in Beirut worked on developing an image of what the
woman in the photograph would look like presently. Armed with both
pictures, the three of them scouted for anyone who knew anything about
her, from Kurmi market all the way to Gidan Makama. Audu often took the
lead as he knew the butchers in the markets, the alhazai, the policemen and
the hisbah, Islamic law enforcers.
After the fifth week, Ahmad stopped accompanying his driver and Audu
on the search; he stayed at the hotel instead, redialing Fa’iza’s number
obsessively.
The more he hung out with her, the more captivated he was by her. Most
men would be; she was kind, innocent, and never turned down a challenge.
After a few weeks of playing tug and pull with Fa’iza, he realized that her
walls were higher than most girls he had encountered and that fascinated
him. He knew she had a crush on him and he decided it was worth
exploring. So, he turned on his charm and left no stone unturned.
“Ahmad, you know I don’t interfere in your personal matter,” his
mother had said the night they returned from the General Hospital. He knew
that she was aware of some aspects of his lifestyle even though she never
brought it up. “Amma wannan kam, I have to ask you to leave this girl, if
you don’t have intentions that you can look me in the eye and say.”
He had fallen in love with her. She fit right into his family and with her,
imagining a future was easy. They had the same passions and aspirations.
A couple of days later, he waited for his mom to turn up for their usual
coffee date on Thursdays at Balzac’s Coffeehouse. It was a tradition they
did whenever they were both in town. Between his back and forth to the US
and her frequent trips out of town, sometimes they only met once a month.
They usually met at noon, but he liked to go a few minutes early just to see
the joy on her face when she saw him waiting. She usually met him there
with both their orders on the table but this time, she found him sitting on an
empty table, playing on his phone. When the barista brought her regular
order, she asked why he wasn’t eating.
“I’m fasting,” he answered, “it’s Thursday.”
When he told her that he had been doing it consistently for over a
month, she said, “she’s really good for you.”
He knew that already. She was probably even too good for him. At the
beginning of the year, probably because of their upcoming wedding, she
had lowered her guard around him, and he saw no harm in it. He loved her,
and he was clear about it.
So, when he was expected to stop loving her based on a stranger’s
attestation, Ahmad knew that they did not comprehend how much. When he
could not reach her on that day, he drove to her father’s house at 2:30 am.
He had thoughts that drove him blind with rage, thinking up the worst
possible scenarios.
He dialed her number all night, but it was unreachable. Security patrol
in the area tried to approach the vehicle he was in, but they backed off when
they noticed the number plate. He waited until he heard the call for prayer,
and he followed the few neighbors who came out of their houses to go pray
in her father’s masjid. When the morning prayer finished, he was able to get
Amin’s attention after her father went back to the section. Ahmad would
have found the look of surprise on Amin’s face funny if he were in a
different situation.
“You know that’s not possible,” Amin said when he told him he wanted
to see his sister.
“When last did you see her?” he asked.
“Last night,” he answered. “Just before Isha.”
“And how was she?” he asked. He couldn’t believe that they were not
checking up on her consistently.
“A little sad, but nothing serious,” Amin answered and that was when
Ahmad knew that they did not know how well Fa’iza masked her emotions.
Did they even know her at all? As well as he did? He wondered.
“I have to see her,” he said, “I’m not leaving until I do.” He meant it.
The two men stared at each other until Amin sighed. He knew a
determined man when he saw one. So he took him into the house and
warned him that if she was still asleep, there was nothing he could do about
that.
His phone rang. It was an unsaved number. Is Fai’za calling from a
different phone? He thought as he answered. Disappointment clouded his
face when he realized that it was Audu calling him from Kano. He was still
on the trail. Ahmad wondered if they had reached another dead end.
“Ranka ya dade, we interviewed former teachers from the school she
worked at and found that she moved back to Dag Manet in Niger. I have an
address with me,” he paused, “it seems fate has a sense of humor, afterall
because ‘Yar Agadez is back in Agadez.”
Ahmad smiled for the first time in weeks. That should have been the
first place they checked. “Okay, get ready,” he said as he stood up, leaving
the booth and getting the keys to his car. “We’re leaving for Agadez in the
morning.” As he ended the call, he looked at the picture of Fa’iza on his
phone screen. It was a picture he had taken of her at the Caribana festival
the previous summer in Toronto. That was how he wanted to remember her
– full of life and laughter.
“I’m gonna fix this,” he said to himself as he drove back home to
Maitama.
Back in the club, the bartender wondered why the shot of vodka laid
untouched.
T
here’s the blonde? Or are you bored already?” Edet asked as he
nodded at the bartender who dropped his usual in front of him.
The bar itself stretched along one side of the room, crafted in chrome and
gleaming brass accents. Rows of crystal-clear glassware, shimmering
bottles of premium spirits, and an array of meticulously arranged bar tools
faced them.
Ahmad dropped the short tumbler with some whiskey sour in it on the
polished mahogany table. “I’m done with university girls, man,” he said
over Edet’s laughter ringing out of the confines of the private cubicle of the
bar reserved for VIP clients. “No, for real. Check this out,” he raised his
hand to illustrate his point. “I took her out on Thursday, we had a good time
and started chatting over text, then –”
“Were there nudes?” Edet interjected.
“I didn’t ask her, but sent a few anyway,” Ahmad replied. He knew the
effect he had on women. He never had to try hard for their attention because
most of it came unsolicited; all he had to do was show up, and things fell in
place for him. “Anyway, we would chat and,” he shrugged, “I knew it just
wasn’t going to work.”
“Bastard!” Edet roared as he laughed at the familiar story. It was always
the same with Ahmad – he lost interest when he got things easily.
“No, we were just not on the same wavelength. She follows all the
Kardashians, man,” he took a sip of his drink again.
“Why is that such a bad thing?” Edet mused out loud. At some point, he
would have to tell his friend that his need for a challenge in every scenario
might require a sit down with a therapist. As well as his fear of
commitment. When Ezgi, whom Ahmad had been dating for years, started
talking about settling down, he ended the relationship.
“It’s not a bad thing. I just don’t know why she needed to tell me. You
should have seen her the day one of them liked her picture. She was over
the moon. Like, how is that the single greatest highlight of your adult life?”
“So, you dumped her because she was bragging about her Kardashian-
approved picture on Instagram?” Edet was enjoying this exchange, as he
did most of Ahmad’s girl-related stories. Being in a committed relationship
meant he had to live vicariously through the shenanigans his single friends
experienced.
“I was tryna let her down easy.”
“Mister let her down easy,” he laughed, “You haven’t changed at all!”
“Tell me why she texted me two days later, talking ‘bout “what are
we”?”
“We? Oui? Oh, you teach French now? That reminds me, the update in
French didn’t go through. The conversation casually changed to business.
Both of them had been working together since their university days, even
though they had been friends for over a decade prior to that.
A few weeks later, on Ahmad’s birthday, they were at an Italian
restaurant with some potential business partners when she walked in with
two other girls. They were all good-looking in their own right, but she stood
out. He recalled the way she walked, with grace and poise, her eyes: large
and soulful, full of depth and expressiveness. Her dark hair was pulled into
a sleek high ponytail partly covered with a floral patterned scarf delicately
wrapped around her head. There was something about how unassuming she
was and how she carried herself. It was almost as if she was unaware of just
how much her smile illuminated the room she was in, how her eyes that
sparkled with a hint of curiosity completely closed for a whole second
every time she giggled. Amidst the clinking of cutlery and murmurs of
conversations, he found himself constantly glancing in her direction,
wondering why she took forever to decide which meal to order. She must
have gone over the menu about five times before she eventually decided on
the first item on the menu: Seafood pasta.
She laughed easily, and her eyes didn’t wander. If they did, she would
have noticed him staring. When they got up to leave, he knew he shouldn’t
go after her, but couldn’t deny the burgeoning desire to talk to her again.
“Excuse me,” he said to the ladies and to Edet, “I’m just gonna go say
hi to someone I know.”
“Those are university girls,” Edet reminded him teasingly.
“No, it’s not like that,” he tried to ignore the knowing look on Edet’s
face. “That’s Afreen’s friend. I’m just gonna say hi.” He wore his blazer,
picked up his keys and phone from the table and headed for the door.
“Fai’za,” he called as he stepped out of the restaurant and towards the slim
silhouette a few meters away.
Abuja, August 2012
Ahmad had not shaved in weeks. He sat on the secluded table, barely
listening to the Burna boy song playing in the background. He called the
number again and listened to it until it rang out. No answer.
The past five weeks in Kano had proved to be more challenging than
finding a needle in a haystack. The last known address for ‘yar Agadez was
Minjibir. There, they were told that she had moved to Bichi. When they
found her house in Bichi, the landlord said she got a job at the Government
Girls Secondary School in Sharada and was living on campus. When they
got to the school, they received a black-and-white passport picture from a
dusty old file that came out after a couple of bribes. It was a picture, Zainab
was there to confirm it as well.
Finally, he had a face to blame. The longer he stared at the picture, the
more disconnected he felt to the woman looking back at him, which is why
he hated the importance that such tiny detail of his life was playing today. It
was over twenty years ago, for fucks sake. Why should it matter?
The process of securing ‘yar Agadez’s picture had taken about three
weeks. His driver had interviewed people who knew the old city of Kano
well and that was how he met Audu, a primary school teacher who
freelanced as government research projects. When he heard the monthly
salary being offered to whoever found this woman, he quit both jobs.
Ahmad worked most nights from one of his father’s houses in Kano to
code a mainframe for an aging app. His developers in Toronto finalized it
and the programmers in Beirut worked on developing an image of what the
woman in the photograph would look like presently. Armed with both
pictures, the three of them scouted for anyone who knew anything about
her, from Kurmi market all the way to Gidan Makama. Audu often took the
lead as he knew the butchers in the markets, the alhazai, the policemen and
the hisbah, Islamic law enforcers.
After the fifth week, Ahmad stopped accompanying his driver and Audu
on the search; he stayed at the hotel instead, redialing Fa’iza’s number
obsessively.
The more he hung out with her, the more captivated he was by her. Most
men would be; she was kind, innocent, and never turned down a challenge.
After a few weeks of playing tug and pull with Fa’iza, he realized that her
walls were higher than most girls he had encountered and that fascinated
him. He knew she had a crush on him and he decided it was worth
exploring. So, he turned on his charm and left no stone unturned.
“Ahmad, you know I don’t interfere in your personal matter,” his
mother had said the night they returned from the General Hospital. He knew
that she was aware of some aspects of his lifestyle even though she never
brought it up. “Amma wannan kam, I have to ask you to leave this girl, if
you don’t have intentions that you can look me in the eye and say.”
He had fallen in love with her. She fit right into his family and with her,
imagining a future was easy. They had the same passions and aspirations.
A couple of days later, he waited for his mom to turn up for their usual
coffee date on Thursdays at Balzac’s Coffeehouse. It was a tradition they
did whenever they were both in town. Between his back and forth to the US
and her frequent trips out of town, sometimes they only met once a month.
They usually met at noon, but he liked to go a few minutes early just to see
the joy on her face when she saw him waiting. She usually met him there
with both their orders on the table but this time, she found him sitting on an
empty table, playing on his phone. When the barista brought her regular
order, she asked why he wasn’t eating.
“I’m fasting,” he answered, “it’s Thursday.”
When he told her that he had been doing it consistently for over a
month, she said, “she’s really good for you.”
He knew that already. She was probably even too good for him. At the
beginning of the year, probably because of their upcoming wedding, she
had lowered her guard around him, and he saw no harm in it. He loved her,
and he was clear about it.
So, when he was expected to stop loving her based on a stranger’s
attestation, Ahmad knew that they did not comprehend how much. When he
could not reach her on that day, he drove to her father’s house at 2:30 am.
He had thoughts that drove him blind with rage, thinking up the worst
possible scenarios.
He dialed her number all night, but it was unreachable. Security patrol
in the area tried to approach the vehicle he was in, but they backed off when
they noticed the number plate. He waited until he heard the call for prayer,
and he followed the few neighbors who came out of their houses to go pray
in her father’s masjid. When the morning prayer finished, he was able to get
Amin’s attention after her father went back to the section. Ahmad would
have found the look of surprise on Amin’s face funny if he were in a
different situation.
“You know that’s not possible,” Amin said when he told him he wanted
to see his sister.
“When last did you see her?” he asked.
“Last night,” he answered. “Just before Isha.”
“And how was she?” he asked. He couldn’t believe that they were not
checking up on her consistently.
“A little sad, but nothing serious,” Amin answered and that was when
Ahmad knew that they did not know how well Fa’iza masked her emotions.
Did they even know her at all? As well as he did? He wondered.
“I have to see her,” he said, “I’m not leaving until I do.” He meant it.
The two men stared at each other until Amin sighed. He knew a
determined man when he saw one. So he took him into the house and
warned him that if she was still asleep, there was nothing he could do about
that.
His phone rang. It was an unsaved number. Is Fai’za calling from a
different phone? He thought as he answered. Disappointment clouded his
face when he realized that it was Audu calling him from Kano. He was still
on the trail. Ahmad wondered if they had reached another dead end.
“Ranka ya dade, we interviewed former teachers from the school she
worked at and found that she moved back to Dag Manet in Niger. I have an
address with me,” he paused, “it seems fate has a sense of humor, afterall
because ‘Yar Agadez is back in Agadez.”
Ahmad smiled for the first time in weeks. That should have been the
first place they checked. “Okay, get ready,” he said as he stood up, leaving
the booth and getting the keys to his car. “We’re leaving for Agadez in the
morning.” As he ended the call, he looked at the picture of Fa’iza on his
phone screen. It was a picture he had taken of her at the Caribana festival
the previous summer in Toronto. That was how he wanted to remember her
– full of life and laughter.
“I’m gonna fix this,” he said to himself as he drove back home to
Maitama.
Back in the club, the bartender wondered why the shot of vodka laid
untouched.
T