Walking past the young men lifting weights in what would have been the front of the building but was now effectively a compound, he slid a key into the last shop and turned it. He hissed, replaced the key with another and was rewarded with a click. He had had to change the lock after the rather unusual events of the previous week. Their next-door neighbours, the police, under the charge of the new commanding officer, had raided San Siro and bashed in all the doors. And under the guise of police work, they had carted away sacks of premium and dirty weed, which later turned up with some other dealers elsewhere. Such an occurrence, commonplace as it was elsewhere, was as astonishing as it was unprecedented at San Siro.
He went in and slumped on the mattress that was pushed against the wall, beneath the huge poster of the entire AC Milan squad, whose grounds the place was named after. Because the rogue with spiky hair, lord of this San Siro, was a fan.
‘Reza, what’s up?’ Babawo, his friend and right-hand man, stood shirtless by the door, his knotted muscles glistening with sweat.
His friends called him Reza, a corruption of razor, a title he earned after weed had given him the courage to cut his half-brother on the arm with a blade he had been carrying for months under his shirt. That was eleven years earlier, when he was just fourteen.
‘Give me a stick, Gattuso.’ Reza pulled off his shirt, dumped it on the mattress beside him and collected the proffered cigarette.
Babawo drew back and waited while Reza smoked. Because he was short and stocky and kept a beard, they called him Gattuso, after the rugged Italian footballer. He had been living at San Siro since he was seventeen and had never, in the eight eventful years that had passed, talked about going back home. Home was a distant memory for him, a flickering image of him smoking hemp in the bathroom and his father coming at him with a belt. He remembered wrestling down the old man and running out. When the news caught up with him that his father had broken his hip in that encounter, it was easy for him to decide not to return, since his mother had died when he was two. He drifted for a couple of months until he arrived at San Siro and met Reza.
‘You understand, Gattuso, there is a reason for everything.’ Reza leaned back against the wall.
Gattuso assumed Reza was in the mood to dispense his peculiar philosophy, which often came on the wings of cannabis-scented meditation. So he leaned back on the doorjamb, scanning the room for something to keep his hands busy.
‘What happened?’ Gattuso slapped his feet together. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of hemp. He put it back and folded his arms across his chest.
Reza took his time puffing on the cigarette. Then he shook his head. ‘I robbed this woman who reminded me of my mother. She had this gold tooth, you know, just like my mother, you understand.’
Babawo’s eyes popped. It was the first time he had heard Reza mention his mother. He patted his pockets with accustomed agitation, and finally settled on cracking his knuckles.
‘Just go now. I want to sleep.’ Reza seemed tired of speaking. He picked up his shirt and dusted the mattress with it. Then he sat waiting for Gattuso to leave.
But Gattuso sat on the worn blue rug instead and yawned. ‘I think I will catch some sleep too.’
‘Go to your room!’
Gattuso sighed and rose. He slapped his pockets for no particular reason, and went out humming.
Hassan ‘Reza’ Babale was ten the first time he saw his mother. His father, sitting next to him in the car, turned to him every other minute, patting his head, asking if he was tired. He plucked the boy’s cheeks and turned his head this way and that, inspecting the hollows on his face with his one good eye, as he often did with the cows he traded in. Each time, a shadow would crawl across his face and he would urge the boy to eat more of the biscuit he was holding.
The boy had been in class when his teacher, with his usual animated gesticulations, announced that his father was waiting for him. That he could take his bag along and he wished him a safe journey. When he came out, his father was standing in the sun, beaming.
‘Come, we are going to see your mother.’ He took his arm and led him away.
They went home and his father made him take a bath and put on his finest clothes: the pale blue embroided kaftan from the last Eid. Then they got into a car heading to Lafia, to see a mother he had only heard whispers of.
The boy brushed away crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve and raised his innocent eyes to his father’s face. ‘Will she be staying with us now?’
‘You want her to stay, don’t you?’ His father leaned forward, using his handkerchief to clean the child’s face, his damaged eye looming closer. The boy could almost imagine how the highwaymen had struck him with a club all those years before and how his father had desperately clung to his bag of money. ‘Tell her that; that you want her to stay and look after you, mhm?’
The fat driver yawned and threw a piece of kola in his mouth. He slotted a tape in the cassette player. Musa Dan Kwairo’s voice poured out from the device. They listened to the renowned praise singer lauding another royalty in some far-fetched place, a distant kingdom closer to that mystical shelter where the sun set.
The boy shifted on the seat. ‘Why did she leave, Abba?’
His father sighed and leaned into the backrest. ‘You will not understand.’
‘But Bulama said that his mother said—’
‘Shush. Never mind what your brother says about your mother. She is your mother.’
But he was tormented by the taunts of his half-siblings. Even Talatu, one of his two stepmothers, had said his mother was a ‘Kano to Jeddah’. There had been muted talks about her questionable liaison with dubious Arabs.
His father, Babale Mairago, had long been buying cattle from the Fulanis in the North and selling to the Igbos in the South-east. He had lost his left eye on one such trip when he and his friend Buba Mohammed ran into bandits on the highway. Regardless, his good eye remained fixed on Buba’s spirited seventeen-year-old daughter, Maimuna. And when she was forced to marry him, a stormy affair that lasted less than two years, she dumped their six-month-old son and caught a flight to Jeddah, for purposes other than hajj.
When Babale received news of Maimuna’s deportation from Jeddah, he decided to take his son to see her and help tame the wild flames she was infamous for.
The boy saw her; saw her supple skin, her almond eyes and long lashes, saw the diagonal scarification on her left cheek. She rode on a zephyr of musk towards him. When she patted his head and ran her hands down the sides of his face, his little heart did a cartwheel.
‘You have grown so big.’ Her voice caressed his ear like the evening breeze sweeping through a grass field. ‘You are in what class now?’
‘Primary six.’
She smiled and enchanted him with her gold tooth so that he stood lamely, waiting, hoping for her to smile again.
‘Do you know who I am?’
He nodded.
She contemplated him for a while as one would a feeble kitten, then pulled one of the silver rings from her fingers. This she clasped into his palm, pressing his fingers close around it. The elegance with which she performed the gesture mesmerised the boy.
She turned and was walking away, past his father, whose good eye had been on her the whole time, when the man reached out and held her sleeve.
‘Maimuna.’ His voice was husky, desperate even. His lower lip trembled but no other words came out.
She eyed him. ‘Get your filthy hands off me, dirty old man.’ She hissed and wrenched her sleeve free.
The boy ran after her and caught hold of her jilbab by the door. ‘Mother.’ He was uncertain, scared. ‘Take me with you?’
She looked down at him, a hint of sadness in her eyes. She bent down and gently, very gently, loosened his grip on her dress. Her fleeing footsteps echoed in his memory amidst the swirl of musk, the gleam of gold in her teeth and her beautiful face shimmering like an image under water.
‘Reza.’ A boy burst in
to the room while Reza was tossing on the mattress, his face buried in the pillow, absorbing the smell of his own sweat.
‘What?’
The teenager, who heard only a mumble, waited for Reza to look up.
‘Sani, what is it?’
‘You said to tell you if Ibro came back. I just saw him heading to the teashop.’
From the compound, excited voices streamed into the room. The concrete-weighted dumbbells the young men were lifting thudded on the ground, signifying someone’s capitulation, an occurrence always greeted with great euphoria.
Sani stood rubbing his palms together.
Reza grumbled some more. ‘You can go now. I’ll see you later.’
Sani shrugged and left.
Reza looked at his face in the fragment of a mirror he kept by his mattress and wiped the dampness from his brow and chin. He put on his shirt and strolled out of the door. In the compound, Babawo was lying on a bench, lifting weights, his muscles rippling. A group of five surrounded him, goading and cheering. Reza walked past them and out onto the market road.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Sani had broken away from the crowd and was looking hopefully at Reza.
Reza regarded him and saw why the boy’s mother’s incessant lamentations were often inspired by his waif-like frame. These doleful monologues were a great irritation to Sani especially when he had to endure them as he helped her with her business of making and selling kosai by the roadside. It was not something he enjoyed doing, this business of tending to open flames and frying bean cakes that he thought was best suited to girls. But his upkeep depended on it. Having his mother point out how thin his arms were to strangers coming to buy kosai did not endear him to the task either. It seemed she had conveniently forgotten that Sani’s late father had been pint-sized as well.
When he was not fending off his mates, who taunted him for doing sissy chores, one could see in his eyes the wistful look of a boy who wanted to be someone else, somewhere else. But he had been trapped by the death of his young father years before, and a mother determined to live for her son. She wanted him to become a doctor or an engineer someday. He wanted to hang out with Reza and make the occasional quick buck.
Reza patted him on the shoulders. ‘No, I should be back soon.’ He noted the disappointment in Sani’s eyes and sighed. ‘There are things I want you to do for me later.’
In the gathering dusk, Reza walked past the bleak police post. The new commanding officer, Dauda Baleri, sat on the bench by the entrance, caressing his moustache and looking up and down the road. Reza turned his face the other way and walked on. He walked past Sani’s mother stoking the flame in the hearth before her as she prepared for the evening sales. He walked past the mosque where men were gathering, performing ablutions and awaiting the muezzin’s call for Maghrib prayers. He turned into a tapered alley and took several shortcuts that brought him to the tarred street. After a short stroll, he was soon in front of Mahmood’s teashop.
Looking through the large glassless window, he saw the men seated around the table crammed with loaves of bread and huge tins of beverages and milk. When he saw Ibro among them, lifting a steaming mug to his lips, Reza went in.
Some of the men mumbled greetings. Others looked down into the mugs before them or at the open flames on which Mahmood’s mammoth teapot was boiling.
‘Mahmood, give me a mug.’ Reza sat down next to Ibro.
Mahmood was deftly flipping hot tea from one cup to another. He shoved the mug to a waiting customer and started scooping powdered milk into another. Mahmood had been at this spot, doing this, for as long as Reza could remember. ‘Tea or Bournvita?’
‘Tea, Mahmood. Tea.’
Reza watched him fetch hot water, pre-boiled with ginger-spiced tea, into his mug from the great teapot hissing on a tripod. Then he turned to look at Ibro, hunched forward over the table, shoving bread in his mouth, his dim bleary eyes staring straight ahead.
‘Reza.’ Ibro, still unsmiling, put down his mug on the old, scratched-up table and stretched out a grease-stained palm to him. Reza slapped it. Ibro’s hand, much bigger than his, felt hard from all the years spent taking apart generators and putting them back together.
Reza’s smile was a brief flash. ‘Back from your trip already?’
‘Yes.’
‘So how are your folks?’
‘Oh, they’re all right.’
Mahmood placed a hot mug before Reza and handed him a thick slice of bread.
Ibro put down his mug. ‘Well, I’m done. Will be heading home now.’
‘Why don’t you stay a little, mhm?’
Ibro made to rise but Reza put his palm firmly on his thigh. ‘Stay, mhm? I’ll pay for your tea, you understand?’
Ibro sat still, his eyes turned from one corner of the shop to the other, his hands tucked between his knees. When Reza was done, he paid their bills and together they went out into the falling dusk. They stood side by side, Ibro taller, darker, in the evening breeze, watching the midges caught in the yellow glare of passing vehicles.
‘What about the phone I sold to you?’ Reza patted Ibro on the back.
‘It’s working fine.’
‘Do you have it here?’
Ibro frowned down at Reza, his large nostrils flaring. Reza, unfazed, stretched out a hand and Ibro grudgingly reached into his pocket and handed over the phone. Reza examined it. He shook it as if to weigh it and satisfied, switched it off, removed the battery and the SIM card, which he handed back to Ibro.
‘I’ll give you back your money. I just need the phone, you understand?’ Reza put the phone back together and shoved it in his pocket.
‘But I’m using it.’
‘I know, I know.’ Reza looked up at the star-speckled sky and back at Ibro’s grumpy face. ‘Ok, don’t worry. I’ll get you another one. See me tomorrow’
He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed into the night, leaving a bewildered Ibro watching his silhouette, cast with lavish abundance on the street by the lights of passing cars.
He scaled her fence, as he had done twice already, at a quarter past eleven because he knew that if she had not gone to the madrasa, she would be alone. Having gone round to the front, he peeked from behind the wall and saw her watering the beds of petunia that had not been there the last time he had taken the liberty to invite himself in. He watched her scooping water from a yellow bowl and sprinkling it on the plants. She put down the bowl and straightened up, one hand on her back, the water dripping from the fingers of the other. She turned and their eyes met. He came out from behind the wall and she threw an arm across her breasts.
‘Good morning.’ His voice faltered, but he bowed briefly and held up his hands in front of him.
She placed a hand over her thumping heart.
‘I, uh, I just brought back your phone, you understand. As promised.’ He reached into his pocket, his other hand still held up, and pulled out the device. He held it up for her and she considered it for a while. She nodded. He moved forward, extending the phone to her.
‘Sorry about … everything.’ He watched her run her thumb over the phone as if to reassert her ownership, marking her possession like an animal would with its scent. ‘I don’t usually do this, you know, going into peoples’ houses … you understand. None of my guys will ever bother you again, insha Allah.’
She looked up at him and, because she was thinking of Yaro, there was a watery glint in her eyes. ‘Thank you.’
He nodded and turned to leave.
‘Wait.’
He turned to face her.
‘Your name? You didn’t tell me.’
‘Reza. They call me Reza.’
‘Reza?’ She rolled the word on her tongue like one savouring the taste of a new meal. ‘You must have a real one?’
He had had a real name, once. His lisping teacher with narrow shoulders used to call it every morning when he took attendance. ‘Hassan Babale.’ The name sounded like an echo from his memory. ‘But ever
yone calls me Reza now.’
‘Hassan. I will remember that.’
He nodded, mumbled something and made to leave again. She was fidgeting. Then she ran her fingers over her temple.
‘Would you like to … have some water or something. I mean, I’m all alone, here … for now.’ She was looking down at the damp bed of petunias Hadiza had so lovingly planted to add colour to the yard that hosted little birds at sunrise. That was the precise moment, Binta would reflect later, that the petals of her life, like a bud that had endured half a century of nights, began to unfurl.
4
Don’t bother looking at where you fell, but where you slipped
She first felt the unmistakable pangs of labour on 13th February, 1976. It was a memorable day for reasons quite unrelated to her circumstance. Her siesta had been truncated by contractions that took the form of giant fire ants gnawing at her innards. When the pain eased, she lay on the bed and listened to the voices of children playing in the courtyard. They laughed in more languages than she had ever imagined existed. She spoke Pidgin with her Yoruba neighbour, Mama Bola, who only knew a couple of offensive terms in Hausa. They were five, the women. Each with her husband; each speaking a different tongue. In that big house, mid-morning reveries were often interrupted by excited children who horsed around barefooted in the courtyard.
But that morning it was Zubairu who slipped in, shoulders slouched, his dark face long. She sat up, the springs of the Vono bed squeaking in protest at her movement.
‘They’ve killed him! They’ve killed him!’ Zubairu reached for the radio in the corner.
‘Who?’ Her hand was poised protectively over her belly.
‘Murtala, they’ve killed the Head of State.’ He was fiddling with the knob while static poured out from the radio. When he eventually tuned into a station, martial music blared over the static. Zubairu sat on the plastic carpet, legs spread apart, as if he had been personally bereaved. As if General Murtala Mohammed had been his blood brother. He removed his cap and slapped it on the floor. Beads of sweat dotted his head, scraped clean by the wanzami’s blade.
Season of Crimson Blossoms Page 4
