‘No one must ever know about this.’
‘They won’t hear it from me. I promise.’
She sighed. ‘So, why do they call you Reza anyway?’
He scoffed and moved away from her, turning his back to her. ‘It was a long time ago. I was young then.’
She turned and looked at his tight muscles and saw how well chiselled his body was, reminding her how young he was, and how old she had become. She drew the sheets over her bosom.
‘I have many brothers, from the same father, you understand.’ He cleared his throat, as if to cough away the dust the years had cast on these unvisited memories. For a while he was silent.
‘They always made fun of me, because my … because my … because I was different, you understand.’
She reached out and stroked his back, tracing the scythe-shaped scars.
‘They always said bad things about … you know, they were always saying bad things, you understand. So one day, when we finished from school, Bulama came to say things to me. He is older than me and he was always picking fights because … he was always fighting me because I allowed him to. But I had had some grass then, my first time, and I was feeling … you know, bold, you understand. So I gave him a good beating. He picked up a stone but I cut him with a blade, made a huge gash on his arm. His mother Talatu said that my father had given birth to an accursed razor. She started calling me Reza to mock me. But I didn’t mind.’
‘So that was how.’
When he turned and smiled, she saw how ruggedly handsome he was. They looked into each other’s faces, their eyes saying the things their hearts were thinking, things they would not voice.
Binta looked away first, thinking how insane it was that she had just slept with someone who reminded her of her first son, who was probably younger than Yaro had been when he died. She covered her face with her palms. ‘How far did you go, with school I mean?’
He sighed. ‘I was expelled in my final year in secondary school.’
‘Why?’
‘I broke a teacher’s nose.’ He shook his head. ‘He wanted to flog me on the assembly ground because they found me dealing weed to some students.’
‘So, what stopped you from going back and finishing up somewhere else?’
‘Too much metal in my head, too many knife fights, too much weed, too much … stupidity.’ He tapped his temple with his finger. ‘Ten years is a long time. There’s too much smog in my head now, you understand.’
When her silence, so profound, resonated with him, he glanced over his shoulder and found her with her palms over her face.
‘Are you all right?’
She could not tell him that some of her tears were for him. But that most of them, the ones gilded with reminiscence, were for Yaro. So she sniffled and wiped her face with the bed sheet. ‘You could always go back.’ Her voice was thick with remorse. ‘I went back. You could do it too. You are a man; it would be easier for you.’
‘You?’
‘I was taken out of school to marry a man I barely knew, Allah rest his soul. After I’d had my first two sons, I told him there was an adult education class in the neighbourhood and I wanted to join. He was reluctant at first, but I persuaded him. I studied while raising my children. I had my daughter Hureira, who is married now in Jos, and Zainab, who died at birth, and then I had Hadiza. All whilst studying for my teacher’s certificate. I was a primary school teacher for about twenty years in Jos. I had to quit when my son relocated me here.’
He looked at her with renewed admiration. ‘A gaishe ki, Hajiya.’ He tapped his right fist in his left palm, offering her the salutation of the ’yan daba thugs.
Binta threw back her head and laughed.
He watched her laughing, and wondered what his mother’s laughter would sound like, or if she ever laughed like this. When the sheet she was holding against her bosom slipped, exposing the mounds of her breasts, he wondered why he was sexually attracted to a woman who was older than his mother.
But whatever magic was manifesting between them at that moment was disrupted by his phone. The little device chimed and the choice of his ring tone, a rather bawdy pop song, caused him to hurriedly reach for the phone and press the receive button.
‘Afternoon, sir.’ He got off the bed and moved away from Binta.
She reached for a book on the bedside drawer and her hand fell on Az Zahabi’s The Major Sins. She withdrew her fingers, tainted by the fluids of her indiscretions, and instead put on her dress, pretending not to be listening to him muttering into the phone.
‘Sir, what about these people? The new man is giving me trouble, sir. All right, sir, all right, sir.’ He shoved the phone in his pocket and started looking for his shirt. ‘I’ve got to go. My boss just called.’
She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by noises from the gate. She knew it would be little Ummi, who always used all her might to open the side door of the gate, pushing it until it rebounded off the fence. She knew that Fa’iza would be right behind her. Binta scrambled across the bed and furtively peered through the window. Ummi entered, dragging her backpack on the ground, the front of her uniform dusty. Fa’iza strolled in behind her, swinging her hips for the benefit of a drooling audience of imaginary admirers.
‘Quick, my granddaughter is back.’
Reza found his shirt and threw it over his shoulders.
‘Hurry, out the back.’ She pulled her hijab over her head and stumbled towards the door.
‘My shoes are at the front.’ His alarm was conveyed not only in his voice but also in the expression on his face.
‘No time.’ Binta led him out through the living room to the kitchen. She opened the back door, shoved him out and closed the door. Through the keyhole, she spied him deftly scaling the fence and disappearing into the narrow alley behind. Fa’iza was salaaming at the front door. Binta sighed, patted down her hijab and re-entered the living room in time to see the two girls entering. There were dried tear-tracks on Ummi’s face.
‘There is a pair of men’s shoes outside.’ Fa’iza ushered in a stream of sunlight as she held up the curtains.
Keeping as far away from Fa’iza as she could manage, Binta hurried across to her room, locked the door, lit two sticks of incense and watched the alluring smoke curling up to the ceiling. But the unmistakable miasma of sin still prevailed. So she lit two more sticks and then headed to the bathroom to wash away her indiscretions.
The sun was a russet glow on the western horizon as Reza returned to San Siro. The noise and the pungent smell of weed greeted him from beyond the makeshift fence of roofing sheets that formed a curtain between San Siro and the thriving market that surrounded it. Reza stood by the entrance and looked at the dozen or so young men crowded into the small confines, some lifting weights, others smoking weed in the corner. On the veranda, by the four shops that had been converted to rooms, young girls sat, ogling the men, gossiping, giggling while pretending to be minding the cheap noodles swimming in palm oil or the sun-beaten, almost-expired alale and the danwake they were vending. Farther away, near the crude toilet hemmed in by the fence and the pile of yellow jerrycans that some of the boys used for their black market trade in petrol, Reza saw a boy fondling one of the foodsellers, who was laughing like a hyena.
Apart from the residents – the five or six people who had called San Siro home for years – there were many others who came for weed, or the other intoxicants sold on the sly.
‘Aha, Reza is here. Ask him.’
Babawo Gattuso jumped up from the worn jerrycan on which he had been sitting and was instantly at Reza’s side. ‘Reza, how many times has Milan won the Champions League? How many times?’
All eyes turned to Reza.
‘Seven.’
A raucous uproar greeted his statement. Some of the boys beat on empty jerrycans and whooped derisively.
‘I told you, I told you, you ass!’ Gattuso’s voice rose above the noise. ‘You don’t know anything and you want to argue.
When did you even start watching football, dan iska?’
‘You are the ass, you idiot!’ Joe shouted. He was a lanky fellow who wore a flat cap drawn low over one eye. When he first came to San Siro he had said that he was a student somewhere but he was drunk so often that no one was certain which school he was supposed to be attending, or even where he came from. He assimilated into San Siro until he became a fixture, like the mould on the walls.
Reza looked around him at the excited young men shouting, at those in the corners smoking pot and sniffing glue, at the boy in the corridor pawing at the breasts of one of the vagrant hawkers. ‘What’s the argument about exactly?’
A melee rose up in response. Reza tried to make sense of it but could not. He soon lost interest and tried to slip through the crowd of eager faces.
‘Man U for life!’ Dogo, one of the residents, shouted impulsively. His real name was Musa Danlami and he had been living at San Siro since his mother, tired of his thievery, cursed him and sent him out to the street. He had the knack for turning up at meal times, or just when his mother had put away some money for his siblings’ school fees, only to disappear with the money afterwards. It was said that he got his sense of timing from his father, an itinerant labourer, who turned up every other year to get his wife pregnant and disappear again ‘in pursuit of wealth’.
Joe looked at him and hissed. ‘You know, Dogo, you are a goat, I swear to God.’
‘Man U for life, dan uban mutum! Useless drunk. You stink of beer and your words smell like shit, bastard dog!’
Joe would have hit him but was restrained by Dan Asabe, the carpenter.
‘You romancing me or what, faggot? Get your hands off me, dan daudu!’
Dan Asabe let go and retreated to a corner. There had been whispers about his sexual preferences. His liaison with Obinna, who owned a provisions shop down the lane, had fuelled these. Obinna had, on occasions, been accused of luring young boys with money. And when he got close to Dan Asabe – who had been caught several times spying on the other boys in the bathroom, and had never had Rita, who everyone else had had, or even been seen with a girl – everyone made assumptions. Every time allegations were thrown at him, Dan Asabe would sneak away and try to make himself unobtrusive.
Reza held Gattuso by the arm and led him to his room. ‘Gattuso, I have told you to keep this place in order. You know this new policeman has not been sorted out yet.’
‘Guys just came, you know.’ Gattuso tugged at a yellow plastic band on his wrist.
‘How much have you made?’
‘We sold everything. That guy, Johnny from the university, came and bought a lot.’
‘No credit, I hope.’
Gattuso reached into his pocket and put a thick roll of money in Reza’s outstretched hand.
‘Saved some for us? We need to charge up a little, you understand.’ Reza, with serious commitment, set about straightening out the notes, one after the other.
Gattuso, looking at his friend’s face, got the impression that Reza derived some pleasure from the task. ‘Sure, trust me.’ He waited for Reza to count and tuck the money away in his pocket. ‘The new policeman said he wanted to see you. He said he would be waiting.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘Don’t know. Corporal Bako has been here twice now. This man wants to prove stubborn, wallahi, he is playing with fire.’
‘Don’t worry about him, Gattuso. I have spoken to the boss about him, you understand. I’m sure that’s why he is looking for me.’
‘You spoke to the boss?’ This time, Gattuso scratched his glistening beard. His experiment with black dye on his browning, malnourished hair left it shiny and matted, jet black against his dark skin.
‘Yes. He wants us to prepare some guys. We are going for some rally.’
‘Elections are drawing near then?’
‘Yes, very soon. So get the boys ready, I have arranged for a bus to come for us tomorrow morning, you understand?’
Gattuso nodded, cracking his knuckles in his palm.
‘Is this all the money there is?’
‘Wallahi, that’s the whole of it.’
‘All right. Let me go see this idiot policeman.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, don’t bother. There’s nothing, no problem.’ Reza started heading out of the room.
‘How much for the new shoes?’
Reza looked down at his shoes and shrugged. ‘Not expensive.’
‘What happened to the old ones?’
‘Lost them.’ Reza hurried away before Gattuso could rattle his comfort with another intrusive query he would not be inclined to answer.
Assistant Superintendent of Police Dauda Baleri was sitting behind the scratched-up table in his little office when Reza walked in, grinding his teeth. From the way the policeman was crooning into the phone, Reza knew there had to be a woman on the other end. When Baleri looked up and saw him, he frowned and said he would call back in a few minutes.
The office smelt of fresh paint and Reza looked around to see the light glinting off the wall. There was something about police stations that he could never get used to, perhaps some intangible markers of illegality filed away in the dank air.
‘New OC, new paint.’ Reza sounded unimpressed. To him and the boys, whoever was in charge, regardless of rank, was the ‘Officer Commanding’.
‘Reza?’
‘OC?’
A small storm gathered on Baleri’s brow. He did not like this weed merchant who had just interrupted his talk with Christy, whom he had been trying to persuade to marry him. She had refused his advances first because he had remained jobless five years after graduating from the university. Then, when out of desperation he had applied to the police and had been taken on as an Assistant Superintendent, she was reluctant to marry a policeman. Baleri was getting desperate. And now he had to put up with this weed dealer, who was trying to make his first post uncomfortable. He watched the thug pull out a chair and sit down opposite him. Baleri’s frown deepened.
‘You, you want trouble, eh?’
‘No trouble, officer. You wanted to see me?’
‘Yes, yes. You are making trouble for me and I don’t like it.’
‘Me? Making trouble? How?’
Baleri thumped the table between them, attracting one of the officers sitting outside on the bench. ‘Problem, sir?’
The ASP shook his head and waved the constable away.
‘See, my DPO has been calling me, saying his boss has been calling him about this nonsense San Siro business. You want to make trouble for me, eh?’
‘You understand, OC, I don’t know where you came from, but before you, there have been OCs here and we never had problems, you understand. But you, you just came, raided my place, confiscated my goods, harassed my boys, took my money, locked me out—’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I know.’ Baleri tapped a biro on the table, pounding out the rhythm of his frustration. He looked up at the calendar on the wall for some time – three weeks into his new post and he had to negotiate with an insufferable weed dealer over the right to do his job. He turned again to Reza. ‘Ok, from now on, no more trouble. You do your business but don’t disturb the neighbourhood, don’t disturb my men and don’t disturb me. Every Friday evening, four o’clock on the dot, bring the small something for protection and you and your boys can go smoke yourself to hell. No fighting, no shouting.’
Reza shook his head and Baleri gaped.
‘You understand, OC? You took my money and my goods. I know your men sold my stuff to those boys at the junction. You took my things and sold them and you ask me to pay for protection. The others never took my stuff, that’s why I paid them. But not you, you understand? Not you.’
Baleri leaned forward, astonished by Reza’s audacity. ‘You want to spend the night in the cell? I will shoot you now and nothing will happen.’ But the impotence of his own words rang louder than his voice.
‘What sort of night ha
s the bat not seen?’ Reza delivered his words flippantly. ‘You want me to pay for protection? Bring back my money and my goods, you understand. We can’t be doing something while you are doing something too. It won’t work that way.’
Baleri snapped the pen in his hand. ‘Ok, don’t pay up and see!’
Reza shrugged. ‘OC, we’ve been in this business for long. Long before you even joined the police, you understand. We know people and you know it. What I say is only fair but if you think you can harass me, fine. Allah ya taimake ka.’ He pushed back the chair and was rewarded with the irritating screech of wood on concrete. He rose and looked down at the fuming officer before walking out, thankful to escape the nauseating smell he always associated with police stations. He paid no heed to the five uniformed men sitting outside, even when they made furtive gestures to draw his attention.
7
Evil enters like a splinter and spreads like an oak tree
When Hajiya Binta peeked through her window to see who had disturbed her gate, she saw the Short Ones letting themselves in and laughing as if they were walking into their own house. Kareema and Abida swayed their hips, just as Fa’iza was now in the habit of doing. Binta, peering through the curtains, wondered why the girls felt the compulsion to torment themselves in such a fashion, even when there were no ogling men to tease. She scoffed, pouting and clucking at the back of her throat, drew the curtains and lay down to rest her eyes, tired from watching the needle jumping all morning as she worked on her machine. Moments later, she heard them salaaming at the door.
Fa’iza emerged from her room smiling.
‘Kareema. Abida.’
The Short Ones smiled. They were in the same class as Fa’iza but were considerably smaller since Fa’iza had, of late, been sprouting like a reed. Kareema and Abida – born of the same father to different mothers – carried on like twins, dressing in matching outfits of different colours, Kareema persistently in the darker shades. They conducted themselves with the air of evolving women who knew, with a certainty bordering on arrogance, that they were beautiful. And they did not really care what the world thought of their height. Or what their mothers thought about their closeness.
Season of Crimson Blossoms Page 6
