Chapter 34
Broken Not a halal love story Complete · about 21 min read
hese days, it’s getting harder and harder for me to get out of bed; my
body just refuses to do anything that requires much movement. I
spend half my weekends in bed, drowning in a book or listening to a
podcast. It was a strange kind of fatigue that I blamed on how busy we’d
been these past weeks spent in court. I also blamed it on giving up yoga. I’d
tried to stay consistent since I moved back home; I downloaded aerobic and
meditative yoga videos on my laptop and for a few months, I had a routine
that I stuck to religiously. After subh, I would unroll my lime-green
workout mat which had pink letters that read: “Om is where the heart is”;
and spend thirty minutes in various poses and stretches before I took my
shower. Gradually, my daily workouts reduced from daily to twice a week,
then once a week. Now, I can’t even remember the last time I unrolled the
mat. I didn’t know if my exhaustion was why I stopped working out or if I
was always so exhausted because I stopped working out regularly. Or
maybe it was because I didn’t take vitamins. Afreen always recommends
holistic supplements and multivitamins because, as she says, everybody
needed them. But the hard-to-swallow big green pills she gave me months
ago were still unopened and tucked away in the bathroom cabinet.
My mind went to the text message I’d received from Afreen when my
wedding invitations and asoebi were sent to her and Aunty Mami: Allah ya
sanya alheri, Fa’ee am; May Allah bless your Union. An uneasy knot
formed at the back of my throat when I thought about my upcoming
wedding to Umar. From the first visit his parents made to our house for
gaisuwa, introduction, when I met his father for the first time to the one
when his aunties and stepmother came last week with the kayan lefe, it had
all been a big blur. It felt like a mistake. Every passing day made it feel real.
I was going to marry Umar and I could not explain what it was exactly, but
I felt like I was being unfaithful. But unfaithful to whom? Unfaithful to the
one from my past, the one who had moved on, the one who was forbidden
for me? Or unfaithful to the one I was marrying, as I replayed memories I
shared with someone else every night? All the sleepless nights were
probably why I was exhausted in the morning.
An hour later, after I finished the one episode of I said what I said that I
had on my podcast queue all week, I decided to make some tea and check
on Umma. On my way to her section, I met Atine carrying some incense in
a clay burner with balls and sticks of oiled incense and collected it from her.
When I entered her room, I found Umma sitting in front of her cabbasa, a
brown woven raffia basket we use to put incense on clothes by placing the
burner under it and clothes are draped over. As I placed the burner under the
cabbasa, I wondered about the engulfing the white swirls that could not
escape from the enclosure, leaving the clothes fragrant. That was what I felt
like sometimes, like I wanted to escape from this upcoming union, but I felt
trapped after agreeing to it. I had drafted multiple text messages telling
Umar that I thought we should wait a little longer, but all the messages were
erased halfway.
“Hmm,” Umma’s voice broke into my thoughts as she showed me the
newest batch of khumrah, liquid body incense. I watched as she selected
two bottles – one tinged in yellow and gold specks and the other, milky
white – and used the droppers to place a little on her wrist, she screwed
them back shut and used her fingers to rub the blend into her skin. She
inhaled appreciatively, undoubtedly pleased with her order, “come and
smell this.”
I walked towards her outstretched arm, sniffing the aromatic blend of
myrrh, musk and sandalwood. It was rich and unique, like the hard-to-place
scent I had grown to associate with Umma, yet I could never replicate.
“I love this, Umma.” I inhaled again, this time longer than I did earlier.
She laughed as she closed the box containing about two dozen bottles.
“Glad to hear that. They’re all yours. You should start using them from
today. After every ablution, apply a little, like I just did.” She showed me
different combinations for more potent scents and a green one I was
supposed to use only in the evenings.
“Nagode Umma; thank you,” I leaned in to give her a hug – an act that
was once strange and unfamiliar between her and me. However, since my
moving back to Nigeria, I found myself spending more time with her, even
more so now that the clock was ticking on my permanent leave from my
father’s house, from seeing her daily. I would be moving into a house that
Umar’s father had gifted him; it was a three-bedroom apartment in an estate
in Apo, which was a thirty-minute drive from my parent’s house on the
other side of Abuja. My aunts had been busy coordinating all the furniture
deliveries to the house and sending Umma pictures of my kitchen, bedroom,
and living room. Pictures of the place I would spend the rest of my life in. It
still felt like a dream and not the good kind; it felt like I was living someone
else’s dream. I was just happy I didn’t have to move to Kaduna like Umar
originally wanted us to. I told him I couldn’t not leave Abuja because I was
worried about the shelter and how it would thrive without me overseeing
the daily operations.
“I need to go to the office,” I said, draping Umma’s veil over the
cabassa.
“Isn’t it Saturday?”
“I just need to pick up a file for a case. We were supposed to go to court
at the end of the month, but the defendant had the case moved up to this
week, so I need to prepare.”
“Didn’t Magajiya tell you to avoid going out when the sun is so high up
in the sky?”
Magajiya was the woman who did my gyaran jiki, local spa treatments.
For weeks leading up to my wedding, I was scheduled to treatments that
would scrub, pluck, and prune me to perfection. I started a weekly treatment
two weeks prior, but the regularity would eventually increase to daily
during the week of my wedding. During my first session, I was waxed
entirely from neck to toe with halawa, a sticky sugar and lemon mix, and
massaged with kurkum paste. The yellow tinge from the turmeric made my
skin unnaturally bright, and throughout the next day, my palms and feet left
annoying stains on my white bathroom tiles. My next appointment had me
sweating in a steam room, wearing nothing but a wrapper tied at my chest. I
sat on a wooden stool that had a hole, and the steam and smoke from the
burning pot below filled with aromatic herbs steamed my vagina. Our
culture and tradition said a bride had to be perfect for her husband. I refused
to have my hair buried in chebe mix that I was supposed to carry without
washing for two days; that was where I drew the line. It made my head feel
heavy, and I hated not being able to feel my pillow. I washed it all off in just
over an hour. Everything about gyaran jiki felt so intrusive and time-
consuming, and I wish I could just be left to dedicate my time to the case
files at the shelter instead.
“Just a quick stop. I won’t be long.”
“Alright then. Drive safe.”
As I got into my car, it occurred to me that Umma hardly went to Hajiya
Uwani’s house anymore. In fact, Hajiya Uwani had not visited our house in
a while; perhaps she was even busier than Umma with Sakina’s wedding
preparations. I never allowed my mind to think about their wedding. When
I finally started scrolling through social media a few days ago, I was not
barraged with announcements of the ‘wedding of the year’; I looked
through Sakina’s profile and saw that her account had been deactivated. I
couldn’t blame her; the thousands of notifications she got hourly must have
made it hard to use her phone. I could only imagine how stressed she must
have been. Anytime my mind drifted off to Ahmad – as it often did – I
drowned out those thoughts by listening to the radio. Today, Davido was
singing ‘30 billion for my account o’, and I sang along with him.
As I was leaving the office, I got a call from Umar asking if he could
come drop a brochure for our pre-wedding counseling sessions. I told him
to meet me outside the shelter and while I waited for him, I went through
the file, memorizing the names of the couple’s children and dates of the
assaults reported. Layla, a woman in her 30, and her children: 10 year old
Mamman, 8 year old Maryam and a toddler, Isa. Her husband, one Alhaji
Sani had married a teenage girl and he beat Layla his first wife to pulp after
she locked the door to the house and hid the key insisting that the man
would not go to spend the night with his new bride. I flipped the pages and
read her written statement from the police complaint. A few minutes later,
Umar pulled up and came out of his car. I did the same.
“Hajiya Fa’iza,” he crossed the quiet road between our cars and stood
by mine, peering into my vehicle. I honestly wished he would stop calling
me that.
“Na’am?” I answered. Our interactions were polite at best.
He started telling me about a burst pipe that had to be fixed in the
apartment in Apo, saying that he had to go meet the plumber before the man
left for the day. He gave me the paperwork from the counseling workshop
we signed up for, which had a PIN number I was meant to use to log into a
website to watch the recorded videos and take the personality quizzes. Our
wedding was going to be a low-key one, I told him I would prefer it that
way. I wanted a few, quiet events: saukan Qur’ani, Quranic recitations, the
nikkah and kai amarya, conveyance of the bride. I was not trying to
compete with the other lovebirds; if what I read on social media was true,
they were to have a week-long line-up of events from Kano to Abuja. Umar
and I also had no plans for a honeymoon; we never even discussed it. We
were both heading back to work the first Monday after getting married.
As Umar got into his car and left, I noticed a white Range Rover parked
a few meters away from me. I looked its way and the door opened. To my
surprise, Ahmad stepped out, wearing a white kaftan, a Hausa cap and
brown Hermes slippers. As he slowly closed the distance between us, his
scent engulfed me. I wondered if he had been driving this way and stopped
to say hello when he saw me outside the shelter. The previous month, after I
decoded Cain Mosni, Zee brought the final package that was going to be
mailed out to them for my final review. I brought out the cover letter,
scratched over the “Dear Cain Mosni Foundation,” and used my black pen
to write his name. When it read “Dear Ahmad Babangida,” I sealed the
envelope that contained our letter of gratitude and financial records and she
sent it to their forwarding address. He never acknowledged it.
“Assalamu alaikum,” I managed a smile. I hadn’t seen him since the day
he came by the house after his wedding announcement. I didn’t even give
him my attention then, and now I felt bad. Maybe we would have remained
friendly if he hadn’t kissed me that day at the residence, knowing we
were… knowing that we were… knowing about ‘yar Agadez. Could I ever
really be just friends with someone I was madly in love with? Maybe in a
few years, we could be cordial; we had to be. If we were all going to be in
Abuja, we would always run into each other at events and weddings of
family and friends. I wondered what seeing him and Sakina would feel like.
I wondered what their kids would look like. No, I don’t want to think about
that, I thought. I hope we never run into each other again. Maybe moving
to Kaduna with Umar was not such a bad idea, after all.
“Who was that in the Honda?” There was something off about his voice.
“One of your staff?” His hands slowly went into his pocket.
“Staff kuma?” I chuckled as I adjusted my veil, suddenly conscious of
my bare face and the simple black Abaya that I was wearing. I didn’t care
when Umar saw me like this but there I was, wishing I was wearing
something better for Ahmad. I looked up to meet his gaze. “That’s – That’s
Umar.”
He was quiet for a moment, then replied: " Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” I dragged out the last word, trying to sound as happy as I
possibly could. If only I could tell him that my marriage to Umar was just
to stop me from thinking about him, another woman’s husband, that this
was an attempt at moving on, at forgetting about him.
His eyes fell to my lips and back to my eyes. He looked behind us and
back to my face, “so, do you love this Umar guy? Are you in love with
him?”
Was there a tiny chance that he felt the same desperation I did?
Especially now that the cords of our separation were going to be cut finally?
Officially? I looked away. Ahmad could always read me and if I wanted to
sound convincing, I needed to avoid his eyes. I thought about how bland
everything was with Umar and how much I pined for Ahmad. But what use
was that? Our fate was sealed even before we met each other.
“Yes. Yes, I do,” I smiled, mustering all the strength I had in me for that
lie. I looked up at him and noticed for the first time how glazed his eyes
seemed.
He chuckled sadly, took his eyes off mine and looked at the ground,
nodding slowly. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m heading back in a
few days,” he exhaled. Was that pain I could see in his eyes? “I closed the
Canadian office and moved the headquarters to the States.”
I nodded. I still saw articles about him in Business Insider, about how
his company had grown exponentially. It seemed like both our dreams came
true, career-wise. “Oh okay. And then you’ll be back for…” I swallowed,
“the wedding?” It hurt to say that out loud.
“Actually, that has been called off.”
Oh. I didn’t know that. That explains Sakina’s absence on social media,
I thought. Out loud, I say “sorry to hear that.” I was not really sorry; It just
seemed like the right thing to say.
“Well, I’m not. There was nothing between her and me. It was just a
means to…” he hesitated, “I guess it doesn’t even matter anymore.”
My phone started ringing and I looked down to see Umma’s picture on
the screen. I had been out for longer than I said and the sun was beginning
to peek from behind the clouds. I excused myself, wishing him a safe trip
and got into my car, willing myself not to look into my rearview mirror as I
struggled hard to keep the tears away.
Monday morning came with a different kind of struggle. It was only a
few hours to lunch, and I had three doctor’s reports on battered women. The
latest one was of Anita, who came to the shelter after her husband of six
years beat her when she found messages of lewd chats between him and
different women and picture evidence of him cheating on her. When she
confronted him, he beat her black and blue until she managed to run out of
the house, stop a taxi and found her way to the shelter. The security guards
at the gate paid for her taxi and brought her indoors; she was transferred to
the clinic later that night, where she remained heavily sedated due to the
pain. I stood up and made my way downstairs to the finance office to give
Zee a copy of the hospital bill.
“I am going to check on her at the hospital after work,” I said to Zee as I
left her office, she was right behind me, I guessed she was going to fill her
water bottle from the water dispenser in the reception.
“Who? The Anita woman?” When I nodded, she added, “I’ll come with
you.”
“Assalamu alaikum.”
I looked up to see a man in his late thirties walk in, wearing a blue polo
shirt and blue jeans. He was dark-skinned and robust with a solemn look on
his face and fan-shaped tribal markings at the corners of his mouth. He was
carrying a black laptop bag.
“Wa alaikumus salam,” Zee and I answered as he stepped into the
reception. I kept my eyes on him as he moved closer, wondering if he was
the husband to the battered lady whose x-rays were displayed on my screen
upstairs.
“I’m looking for someone,” he brought out a piece of paper from his
pocket and read from it. “Her name is Fa’iza Mohammed.”
“And who’s asking?” I cleared my throat. With the recent bomb blast
attacks in Abuja, one could not be too careful anymore.
He smiled as he looked at me, raising his hands as if to show that he
was harmless. “Just me, Hajiya. I need a favor.” He looked earnest, and I
wondered how I could help him.
“I hope it’s something I can do.” Maybe he had a relative who needed
our help. Sometimes women in helpless situations didn’t leave such
situations until relatives, friends or neighbors nudged them to. And as
sympathetic as the situation was, our hands were tied if the woman didn’t
come in by choice; we couldn’t just go into houses to take abused women,
even though part of me wished that we could.
The man brought out a white office file from the laptop bag and he
moved towards me. " My name is Audu,” he said in Hausa. “Hajiya, I don’t
know you, but I’ve been fortunate enough to work for someone who does
and he has gone through a lot of trouble for the information in here.” He
handed the white file to me. He reached into the black bag again and
brought out a tape recorder and handed it to me too. “Please listen to this,
too.” He turned to leave.
“Excuse me, who do you work for, and what are all these?”
“He doesn’t know that I’m here, but all the answers you’re looking for
are in the file. Please read it,” he pleaded and with a slight nod, he was
gone.
I looked at Zee, who shrugged in confusion. I started making my way to
my office from the reception to read it properly. When I opened the file,
printouts of receipts from hotels in Kano from years ago fell out, with flight
ticket stubs to France and hotel receipts from Niamey. As I knelt down to
pick everything up, I saw a picture; it was Ahmad. But I barely recognized
him; he looked much thinner and had a full beard, wearing a dark T-shirt
and black jeans. It didn’t look like he knew the picture was being taken; he
seemed lost in thought as he stared away from the camera. He was sitting
on a wooden bench under a tree outside a mosque, a signpost behind him
read Minjibir.
Minjibir, Kano? When was Ahmad in Kano and what was he doing in
Minjibir? I scowled as I hurried to my office and opened the file on my
table. What was this about? I thought to myself as I turned the picture and
saw the date at the back: July, 2012. That was the year Ahmad and I were
supposed to get married. I sat down and saw more pictures of the man I just
met, Audu, in different places at different times through the years; months
and years were scribbled in blue ink at the back of all the pictures. I started
flipping through the pages and they had screenshots of emails and daily
reports from a search. The daily reports then became weekly reports, then
monthly. For years, for so many years. My finger moved to the message
recipient line and saw that all the reports were sent to Ahmad’s personal
email and the subject was always ‘yar Agadez’.
My jaw dropped. Ahmad has been looking for her all these years? My
head started spinning. I found an envelope with a black-and-white picture
of a young woman in a hijab. I turned it around, and all it said was Hassana
Amadou. I flipped the page and saw another picture of two older women,
who could have been in their forties or fifties – it was hard to tell –but I
could tell that they were sisters from the resemblance.
Wait. I glanced back at the black-and-white picture. Could this be ‘yar
Agadez? There were two of them? My heart was pounding. I flipped the
next page, but all it had was a hurriedly scribbled note from a handwriting
that I didn’t recognize. “Please listen to the recording,” it read.
I pressed play on the tape recorder Audu had given me. It was only
static for a few seconds and then I could hear voices – a woman’s voice and
a man’s. It was an interview. I listened as the male voice asked the woman
how life in France was for her and her grandkids. And as I listened, I went
through the flight ticket stubs; there were two from Abuja to France. One
was for Ahmad, and the other was for Audu. Wait, Ahmad went to France?
I looked at the dates on the ticket stubs and they were just two months old –
right about the time he came by the house. All these years? Ahmad never
stopped looking? My palms were getting sweaty, and my throat was
parched. The recording continued and I listened with rapt attention. It was
her; it was ‘yar Agadez. She talked about working for Ahmad’s family in
Kano. My heart skipped a beat when she said she never suckled anyone
after him. Nobody. Tears started falling down my face. Nobody? Does this
mean…wait? We were not… we were not breastfed by the same woman?
Does that mean… Then how… If it means… I could not think straight.
Ahmad knew this when he saw me over the weekend and he didn’t tell me?
The interview continued and I heard her say that her twin sister worked
for another family. Two different women – sisters – breastfed us. I started to
feel faint. I needed to call Abba and Umma. I had to find Ahmad. I stood up
and made for the door and was halfway down the stairs when I remembered
that I didn’t take my car keys. I rushed back to the desk, got my bag, packed
up the file and ran out of the office. Didn’t Ahmad say he was leaving for
the States today? What if he’d gone already? I glanced at my wristwatch,
wondering what Abuja traffic would be like at lunchtime because it was an
odd hour for me to leave the office. I heard Zee asking if everything was
okay, but I could not form a coherent answer because I rushed into my car
and threw everything I was holding in the passenger seat, my hands shaking
and my head spinning as I pressed the ignition button.
Ahmad. My Ahmad. Where would I even find him? Oh my God. We
were never forbidden for each other. It was never haram. I started driving to
his parent’s house in Maitama, as I called Afreen. It didn’t go through. Ah
damnit! She was on her way to Dubai to shop for the baby. How would I
even reach him? I never saved his numbers when he called and I always
deleted his texts once I realized it was him. I’ve been so stupid! I thought. I
swerved as I almost got hit by a green cab and narrowly made it through a
red light but eventually, I made it to their street. My hands were still
shaking when I left Dr. Na’ima a voice message asking to be scheduled for
an urgent appointment.
The guards opened the gates of the ambassador’s private residence and I
drove through. When I parked, one of the security guards wearing a blue
uniform told me that only the staff were around.
“Where’s aunty Mami?” I asked, trying to keep my composure as I
looked around the white-painted exterior walls of the sprawling mansion
flanked by a beautifully landscaped garden, lush green grass, tall palm trees
and a water fountain.
“They’re in Minna, but they’re supposed to be coming back today.”
“What about Ahmad?” It felt strange saying his name out loud after
many years. His name was always on the tip of my tongue, but I never
uttered it; I never had a reason to.
“I don’t know if he is around,” the security man said. “But let me call
the house to ask if –”
“Don’t worry,” I said, running into the house. Please be around. Please
don’t be gone. “Assalamu alaikum,” I called out as I walked past the grand
entrance through the hallway leading into the living area.
Silence echoed back.
I went to the stairs and called out again. Silence. There was no sound
from the television, no clatter of pans from the kitchen and no vacuum
going off somewhere. It was so quiet and so clean, as though nobody lived
there. This was a stupid idea, I thought. If Aunty Mami traveled and there
was no one home, she probably gave most of her domestic staff the day off
and Ahmad wouldn’t be here. He told me that he was going to the US and I
started crying because I didn’t even have a valid visa to the US anymore.
And I needed to see him. I need to talk to him. I must tell him that I knew,
that I knew what he had been doing all these years. Oh, Lord. All these
years, he had been looking for her? That was why he asked me if I loved
Umar – and I said yes! Shit, I said yes. I am so stupid, I thought to myself. I
can’t marry Umar. I have to find Ahmad.
I came out of the main house, walked around the circular driveway and
went towards the guest chalets. It was also empty. How could such a big
house be left completely empty? I slumped to the ground, holding my head
in my hands and sobbing helplessly.
“Fa’iza?”
A
body just refuses to do anything that requires much movement. I
spend half my weekends in bed, drowning in a book or listening to a
podcast. It was a strange kind of fatigue that I blamed on how busy we’d
been these past weeks spent in court. I also blamed it on giving up yoga. I’d
tried to stay consistent since I moved back home; I downloaded aerobic and
meditative yoga videos on my laptop and for a few months, I had a routine
that I stuck to religiously. After subh, I would unroll my lime-green
workout mat which had pink letters that read: “Om is where the heart is”;
and spend thirty minutes in various poses and stretches before I took my
shower. Gradually, my daily workouts reduced from daily to twice a week,
then once a week. Now, I can’t even remember the last time I unrolled the
mat. I didn’t know if my exhaustion was why I stopped working out or if I
was always so exhausted because I stopped working out regularly. Or
maybe it was because I didn’t take vitamins. Afreen always recommends
holistic supplements and multivitamins because, as she says, everybody
needed them. But the hard-to-swallow big green pills she gave me months
ago were still unopened and tucked away in the bathroom cabinet.
My mind went to the text message I’d received from Afreen when my
wedding invitations and asoebi were sent to her and Aunty Mami: Allah ya
sanya alheri, Fa’ee am; May Allah bless your Union. An uneasy knot
formed at the back of my throat when I thought about my upcoming
wedding to Umar. From the first visit his parents made to our house for
gaisuwa, introduction, when I met his father for the first time to the one
when his aunties and stepmother came last week with the kayan lefe, it had
all been a big blur. It felt like a mistake. Every passing day made it feel real.
I was going to marry Umar and I could not explain what it was exactly, but
I felt like I was being unfaithful. But unfaithful to whom? Unfaithful to the
one from my past, the one who had moved on, the one who was forbidden
for me? Or unfaithful to the one I was marrying, as I replayed memories I
shared with someone else every night? All the sleepless nights were
probably why I was exhausted in the morning.
An hour later, after I finished the one episode of I said what I said that I
had on my podcast queue all week, I decided to make some tea and check
on Umma. On my way to her section, I met Atine carrying some incense in
a clay burner with balls and sticks of oiled incense and collected it from her.
When I entered her room, I found Umma sitting in front of her cabbasa, a
brown woven raffia basket we use to put incense on clothes by placing the
burner under it and clothes are draped over. As I placed the burner under the
cabbasa, I wondered about the engulfing the white swirls that could not
escape from the enclosure, leaving the clothes fragrant. That was what I felt
like sometimes, like I wanted to escape from this upcoming union, but I felt
trapped after agreeing to it. I had drafted multiple text messages telling
Umar that I thought we should wait a little longer, but all the messages were
erased halfway.
“Hmm,” Umma’s voice broke into my thoughts as she showed me the
newest batch of khumrah, liquid body incense. I watched as she selected
two bottles – one tinged in yellow and gold specks and the other, milky
white – and used the droppers to place a little on her wrist, she screwed
them back shut and used her fingers to rub the blend into her skin. She
inhaled appreciatively, undoubtedly pleased with her order, “come and
smell this.”
I walked towards her outstretched arm, sniffing the aromatic blend of
myrrh, musk and sandalwood. It was rich and unique, like the hard-to-place
scent I had grown to associate with Umma, yet I could never replicate.
“I love this, Umma.” I inhaled again, this time longer than I did earlier.
She laughed as she closed the box containing about two dozen bottles.
“Glad to hear that. They’re all yours. You should start using them from
today. After every ablution, apply a little, like I just did.” She showed me
different combinations for more potent scents and a green one I was
supposed to use only in the evenings.
“Nagode Umma; thank you,” I leaned in to give her a hug – an act that
was once strange and unfamiliar between her and me. However, since my
moving back to Nigeria, I found myself spending more time with her, even
more so now that the clock was ticking on my permanent leave from my
father’s house, from seeing her daily. I would be moving into a house that
Umar’s father had gifted him; it was a three-bedroom apartment in an estate
in Apo, which was a thirty-minute drive from my parent’s house on the
other side of Abuja. My aunts had been busy coordinating all the furniture
deliveries to the house and sending Umma pictures of my kitchen, bedroom,
and living room. Pictures of the place I would spend the rest of my life in. It
still felt like a dream and not the good kind; it felt like I was living someone
else’s dream. I was just happy I didn’t have to move to Kaduna like Umar
originally wanted us to. I told him I couldn’t not leave Abuja because I was
worried about the shelter and how it would thrive without me overseeing
the daily operations.
“I need to go to the office,” I said, draping Umma’s veil over the
cabassa.
“Isn’t it Saturday?”
“I just need to pick up a file for a case. We were supposed to go to court
at the end of the month, but the defendant had the case moved up to this
week, so I need to prepare.”
“Didn’t Magajiya tell you to avoid going out when the sun is so high up
in the sky?”
Magajiya was the woman who did my gyaran jiki, local spa treatments.
For weeks leading up to my wedding, I was scheduled to treatments that
would scrub, pluck, and prune me to perfection. I started a weekly treatment
two weeks prior, but the regularity would eventually increase to daily
during the week of my wedding. During my first session, I was waxed
entirely from neck to toe with halawa, a sticky sugar and lemon mix, and
massaged with kurkum paste. The yellow tinge from the turmeric made my
skin unnaturally bright, and throughout the next day, my palms and feet left
annoying stains on my white bathroom tiles. My next appointment had me
sweating in a steam room, wearing nothing but a wrapper tied at my chest. I
sat on a wooden stool that had a hole, and the steam and smoke from the
burning pot below filled with aromatic herbs steamed my vagina. Our
culture and tradition said a bride had to be perfect for her husband. I refused
to have my hair buried in chebe mix that I was supposed to carry without
washing for two days; that was where I drew the line. It made my head feel
heavy, and I hated not being able to feel my pillow. I washed it all off in just
over an hour. Everything about gyaran jiki felt so intrusive and time-
consuming, and I wish I could just be left to dedicate my time to the case
files at the shelter instead.
“Just a quick stop. I won’t be long.”
“Alright then. Drive safe.”
As I got into my car, it occurred to me that Umma hardly went to Hajiya
Uwani’s house anymore. In fact, Hajiya Uwani had not visited our house in
a while; perhaps she was even busier than Umma with Sakina’s wedding
preparations. I never allowed my mind to think about their wedding. When
I finally started scrolling through social media a few days ago, I was not
barraged with announcements of the ‘wedding of the year’; I looked
through Sakina’s profile and saw that her account had been deactivated. I
couldn’t blame her; the thousands of notifications she got hourly must have
made it hard to use her phone. I could only imagine how stressed she must
have been. Anytime my mind drifted off to Ahmad – as it often did – I
drowned out those thoughts by listening to the radio. Today, Davido was
singing ‘30 billion for my account o’, and I sang along with him.
As I was leaving the office, I got a call from Umar asking if he could
come drop a brochure for our pre-wedding counseling sessions. I told him
to meet me outside the shelter and while I waited for him, I went through
the file, memorizing the names of the couple’s children and dates of the
assaults reported. Layla, a woman in her 30, and her children: 10 year old
Mamman, 8 year old Maryam and a toddler, Isa. Her husband, one Alhaji
Sani had married a teenage girl and he beat Layla his first wife to pulp after
she locked the door to the house and hid the key insisting that the man
would not go to spend the night with his new bride. I flipped the pages and
read her written statement from the police complaint. A few minutes later,
Umar pulled up and came out of his car. I did the same.
“Hajiya Fa’iza,” he crossed the quiet road between our cars and stood
by mine, peering into my vehicle. I honestly wished he would stop calling
me that.
“Na’am?” I answered. Our interactions were polite at best.
He started telling me about a burst pipe that had to be fixed in the
apartment in Apo, saying that he had to go meet the plumber before the man
left for the day. He gave me the paperwork from the counseling workshop
we signed up for, which had a PIN number I was meant to use to log into a
website to watch the recorded videos and take the personality quizzes. Our
wedding was going to be a low-key one, I told him I would prefer it that
way. I wanted a few, quiet events: saukan Qur’ani, Quranic recitations, the
nikkah and kai amarya, conveyance of the bride. I was not trying to
compete with the other lovebirds; if what I read on social media was true,
they were to have a week-long line-up of events from Kano to Abuja. Umar
and I also had no plans for a honeymoon; we never even discussed it. We
were both heading back to work the first Monday after getting married.
As Umar got into his car and left, I noticed a white Range Rover parked
a few meters away from me. I looked its way and the door opened. To my
surprise, Ahmad stepped out, wearing a white kaftan, a Hausa cap and
brown Hermes slippers. As he slowly closed the distance between us, his
scent engulfed me. I wondered if he had been driving this way and stopped
to say hello when he saw me outside the shelter. The previous month, after I
decoded Cain Mosni, Zee brought the final package that was going to be
mailed out to them for my final review. I brought out the cover letter,
scratched over the “Dear Cain Mosni Foundation,” and used my black pen
to write his name. When it read “Dear Ahmad Babangida,” I sealed the
envelope that contained our letter of gratitude and financial records and she
sent it to their forwarding address. He never acknowledged it.
“Assalamu alaikum,” I managed a smile. I hadn’t seen him since the day
he came by the house after his wedding announcement. I didn’t even give
him my attention then, and now I felt bad. Maybe we would have remained
friendly if he hadn’t kissed me that day at the residence, knowing we
were… knowing that we were… knowing about ‘yar Agadez. Could I ever
really be just friends with someone I was madly in love with? Maybe in a
few years, we could be cordial; we had to be. If we were all going to be in
Abuja, we would always run into each other at events and weddings of
family and friends. I wondered what seeing him and Sakina would feel like.
I wondered what their kids would look like. No, I don’t want to think about
that, I thought. I hope we never run into each other again. Maybe moving
to Kaduna with Umar was not such a bad idea, after all.
“Who was that in the Honda?” There was something off about his voice.
“One of your staff?” His hands slowly went into his pocket.
“Staff kuma?” I chuckled as I adjusted my veil, suddenly conscious of
my bare face and the simple black Abaya that I was wearing. I didn’t care
when Umar saw me like this but there I was, wishing I was wearing
something better for Ahmad. I looked up to meet his gaze. “That’s – That’s
Umar.”
He was quiet for a moment, then replied: " Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” I dragged out the last word, trying to sound as happy as I
possibly could. If only I could tell him that my marriage to Umar was just
to stop me from thinking about him, another woman’s husband, that this
was an attempt at moving on, at forgetting about him.
His eyes fell to my lips and back to my eyes. He looked behind us and
back to my face, “so, do you love this Umar guy? Are you in love with
him?”
Was there a tiny chance that he felt the same desperation I did?
Especially now that the cords of our separation were going to be cut finally?
Officially? I looked away. Ahmad could always read me and if I wanted to
sound convincing, I needed to avoid his eyes. I thought about how bland
everything was with Umar and how much I pined for Ahmad. But what use
was that? Our fate was sealed even before we met each other.
“Yes. Yes, I do,” I smiled, mustering all the strength I had in me for that
lie. I looked up at him and noticed for the first time how glazed his eyes
seemed.
He chuckled sadly, took his eyes off mine and looked at the ground,
nodding slowly. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m heading back in a
few days,” he exhaled. Was that pain I could see in his eyes? “I closed the
Canadian office and moved the headquarters to the States.”
I nodded. I still saw articles about him in Business Insider, about how
his company had grown exponentially. It seemed like both our dreams came
true, career-wise. “Oh okay. And then you’ll be back for…” I swallowed,
“the wedding?” It hurt to say that out loud.
“Actually, that has been called off.”
Oh. I didn’t know that. That explains Sakina’s absence on social media,
I thought. Out loud, I say “sorry to hear that.” I was not really sorry; It just
seemed like the right thing to say.
“Well, I’m not. There was nothing between her and me. It was just a
means to…” he hesitated, “I guess it doesn’t even matter anymore.”
My phone started ringing and I looked down to see Umma’s picture on
the screen. I had been out for longer than I said and the sun was beginning
to peek from behind the clouds. I excused myself, wishing him a safe trip
and got into my car, willing myself not to look into my rearview mirror as I
struggled hard to keep the tears away.
Monday morning came with a different kind of struggle. It was only a
few hours to lunch, and I had three doctor’s reports on battered women. The
latest one was of Anita, who came to the shelter after her husband of six
years beat her when she found messages of lewd chats between him and
different women and picture evidence of him cheating on her. When she
confronted him, he beat her black and blue until she managed to run out of
the house, stop a taxi and found her way to the shelter. The security guards
at the gate paid for her taxi and brought her indoors; she was transferred to
the clinic later that night, where she remained heavily sedated due to the
pain. I stood up and made my way downstairs to the finance office to give
Zee a copy of the hospital bill.
“I am going to check on her at the hospital after work,” I said to Zee as I
left her office, she was right behind me, I guessed she was going to fill her
water bottle from the water dispenser in the reception.
“Who? The Anita woman?” When I nodded, she added, “I’ll come with
you.”
“Assalamu alaikum.”
I looked up to see a man in his late thirties walk in, wearing a blue polo
shirt and blue jeans. He was dark-skinned and robust with a solemn look on
his face and fan-shaped tribal markings at the corners of his mouth. He was
carrying a black laptop bag.
“Wa alaikumus salam,” Zee and I answered as he stepped into the
reception. I kept my eyes on him as he moved closer, wondering if he was
the husband to the battered lady whose x-rays were displayed on my screen
upstairs.
“I’m looking for someone,” he brought out a piece of paper from his
pocket and read from it. “Her name is Fa’iza Mohammed.”
“And who’s asking?” I cleared my throat. With the recent bomb blast
attacks in Abuja, one could not be too careful anymore.
He smiled as he looked at me, raising his hands as if to show that he
was harmless. “Just me, Hajiya. I need a favor.” He looked earnest, and I
wondered how I could help him.
“I hope it’s something I can do.” Maybe he had a relative who needed
our help. Sometimes women in helpless situations didn’t leave such
situations until relatives, friends or neighbors nudged them to. And as
sympathetic as the situation was, our hands were tied if the woman didn’t
come in by choice; we couldn’t just go into houses to take abused women,
even though part of me wished that we could.
The man brought out a white office file from the laptop bag and he
moved towards me. " My name is Audu,” he said in Hausa. “Hajiya, I don’t
know you, but I’ve been fortunate enough to work for someone who does
and he has gone through a lot of trouble for the information in here.” He
handed the white file to me. He reached into the black bag again and
brought out a tape recorder and handed it to me too. “Please listen to this,
too.” He turned to leave.
“Excuse me, who do you work for, and what are all these?”
“He doesn’t know that I’m here, but all the answers you’re looking for
are in the file. Please read it,” he pleaded and with a slight nod, he was
gone.
I looked at Zee, who shrugged in confusion. I started making my way to
my office from the reception to read it properly. When I opened the file,
printouts of receipts from hotels in Kano from years ago fell out, with flight
ticket stubs to France and hotel receipts from Niamey. As I knelt down to
pick everything up, I saw a picture; it was Ahmad. But I barely recognized
him; he looked much thinner and had a full beard, wearing a dark T-shirt
and black jeans. It didn’t look like he knew the picture was being taken; he
seemed lost in thought as he stared away from the camera. He was sitting
on a wooden bench under a tree outside a mosque, a signpost behind him
read Minjibir.
Minjibir, Kano? When was Ahmad in Kano and what was he doing in
Minjibir? I scowled as I hurried to my office and opened the file on my
table. What was this about? I thought to myself as I turned the picture and
saw the date at the back: July, 2012. That was the year Ahmad and I were
supposed to get married. I sat down and saw more pictures of the man I just
met, Audu, in different places at different times through the years; months
and years were scribbled in blue ink at the back of all the pictures. I started
flipping through the pages and they had screenshots of emails and daily
reports from a search. The daily reports then became weekly reports, then
monthly. For years, for so many years. My finger moved to the message
recipient line and saw that all the reports were sent to Ahmad’s personal
email and the subject was always ‘yar Agadez’.
My jaw dropped. Ahmad has been looking for her all these years? My
head started spinning. I found an envelope with a black-and-white picture
of a young woman in a hijab. I turned it around, and all it said was Hassana
Amadou. I flipped the page and saw another picture of two older women,
who could have been in their forties or fifties – it was hard to tell –but I
could tell that they were sisters from the resemblance.
Wait. I glanced back at the black-and-white picture. Could this be ‘yar
Agadez? There were two of them? My heart was pounding. I flipped the
next page, but all it had was a hurriedly scribbled note from a handwriting
that I didn’t recognize. “Please listen to the recording,” it read.
I pressed play on the tape recorder Audu had given me. It was only
static for a few seconds and then I could hear voices – a woman’s voice and
a man’s. It was an interview. I listened as the male voice asked the woman
how life in France was for her and her grandkids. And as I listened, I went
through the flight ticket stubs; there were two from Abuja to France. One
was for Ahmad, and the other was for Audu. Wait, Ahmad went to France?
I looked at the dates on the ticket stubs and they were just two months old –
right about the time he came by the house. All these years? Ahmad never
stopped looking? My palms were getting sweaty, and my throat was
parched. The recording continued and I listened with rapt attention. It was
her; it was ‘yar Agadez. She talked about working for Ahmad’s family in
Kano. My heart skipped a beat when she said she never suckled anyone
after him. Nobody. Tears started falling down my face. Nobody? Does this
mean…wait? We were not… we were not breastfed by the same woman?
Does that mean… Then how… If it means… I could not think straight.
Ahmad knew this when he saw me over the weekend and he didn’t tell me?
The interview continued and I heard her say that her twin sister worked
for another family. Two different women – sisters – breastfed us. I started to
feel faint. I needed to call Abba and Umma. I had to find Ahmad. I stood up
and made for the door and was halfway down the stairs when I remembered
that I didn’t take my car keys. I rushed back to the desk, got my bag, packed
up the file and ran out of the office. Didn’t Ahmad say he was leaving for
the States today? What if he’d gone already? I glanced at my wristwatch,
wondering what Abuja traffic would be like at lunchtime because it was an
odd hour for me to leave the office. I heard Zee asking if everything was
okay, but I could not form a coherent answer because I rushed into my car
and threw everything I was holding in the passenger seat, my hands shaking
and my head spinning as I pressed the ignition button.
Ahmad. My Ahmad. Where would I even find him? Oh my God. We
were never forbidden for each other. It was never haram. I started driving to
his parent’s house in Maitama, as I called Afreen. It didn’t go through. Ah
damnit! She was on her way to Dubai to shop for the baby. How would I
even reach him? I never saved his numbers when he called and I always
deleted his texts once I realized it was him. I’ve been so stupid! I thought. I
swerved as I almost got hit by a green cab and narrowly made it through a
red light but eventually, I made it to their street. My hands were still
shaking when I left Dr. Na’ima a voice message asking to be scheduled for
an urgent appointment.
The guards opened the gates of the ambassador’s private residence and I
drove through. When I parked, one of the security guards wearing a blue
uniform told me that only the staff were around.
“Where’s aunty Mami?” I asked, trying to keep my composure as I
looked around the white-painted exterior walls of the sprawling mansion
flanked by a beautifully landscaped garden, lush green grass, tall palm trees
and a water fountain.
“They’re in Minna, but they’re supposed to be coming back today.”
“What about Ahmad?” It felt strange saying his name out loud after
many years. His name was always on the tip of my tongue, but I never
uttered it; I never had a reason to.
“I don’t know if he is around,” the security man said. “But let me call
the house to ask if –”
“Don’t worry,” I said, running into the house. Please be around. Please
don’t be gone. “Assalamu alaikum,” I called out as I walked past the grand
entrance through the hallway leading into the living area.
Silence echoed back.
I went to the stairs and called out again. Silence. There was no sound
from the television, no clatter of pans from the kitchen and no vacuum
going off somewhere. It was so quiet and so clean, as though nobody lived
there. This was a stupid idea, I thought. If Aunty Mami traveled and there
was no one home, she probably gave most of her domestic staff the day off
and Ahmad wouldn’t be here. He told me that he was going to the US and I
started crying because I didn’t even have a valid visa to the US anymore.
And I needed to see him. I need to talk to him. I must tell him that I knew,
that I knew what he had been doing all these years. Oh, Lord. All these
years, he had been looking for her? That was why he asked me if I loved
Umar – and I said yes! Shit, I said yes. I am so stupid, I thought to myself. I
can’t marry Umar. I have to find Ahmad.
I came out of the main house, walked around the circular driveway and
went towards the guest chalets. It was also empty. How could such a big
house be left completely empty? I slumped to the ground, holding my head
in my hands and sobbing helplessly.
“Fa’iza?”
A