Then the pelting started.
Missiles of damp mud struck the girl on her offending trousers, the imprint of dirt standing out starkly against the black of the nylon. She started crying, cowering and shielding her head from the missiles. The racket went up several decibels. Some women ran out and tried to dissuade the boys, but they were too many. In the excitement, they did not see Zubairu, who was not much taller than the biggest boys, until he reached out and grabbed his son. Like flustered bees, the boys scattered, dodging into neighbouring houses and running down slime-covered alleys.
Zubairu led Yaro by the arm back to the house. He stormed past Binta, who was busy washing the mortar in the compound. She turned it over and allowed the water to trickle out before wiping it clean with a piece of cloth. She poured in some damp guinea corn from the basin beside her and when she heard the flogging start, she began pounding. The harder the boy cried out, the harder Binta pounded, her pestle thumping heavily. Munkaila and Hureira abandoned their play to stand by the door, listening to the wails of their elder brother. Hadiza tugged at her mother’s wrapper, imploring her to intervene. But Binta would not stop pounding.
It was her neighbour Mama Ngozi who rushed into Binta’s room to rescue the boy. She led him to her room. But in the brief interval between fluttering curtains, Binta saw the raw welts on Yaro’s back and legs. She saw the blood dribbling down from them. She turned her head away and kept pounding, oblivious to the tears streaming down her face. Finally, she put down the pestle. ‘Hadiza, come let me see what is in your eyes.’
She knelt before her daughter and peered into the baffled little face. She drew the girl to her and held her tightly against her chest.
Zubairu sat on the sofa fiddling with the knob of his radio. Across the room, legs stretched out before them on the plastic carpet, sat Hadiza and Hureira. Their eyes were on Krtek, the wide-eyed silent mole going about his business on the 14-inch black and white screen in the corner. The volume was turned down because Zubairu was listening to the Voice of America Hausa service.
Zubairu hissed. ‘This country is going to shits, I tell you.’
Binta, sitting on the prayer rug, whispered petitions to God into her upraised palms and patted her face. She leaned against the wall and counted her tasbih once more.
‘Imagine!’ Zubairu was grumbling again, ‘Selling us off to the IMF! SAP this, SAP that! What nonsense structural adjustment? The kind of accursed leaders we have in this country—’
He went on ranting about SAP, about General Babangida and his proposed new constitution and illusory transition to civil rule. He went on about the bad roads, the cost of fertilizer, the unyielding taps and the wells that dried up once the rains ceased. He talked, but no one else said anything.
Patting his pockets, he heard the crackle of a plastic wrapper. He reached into his pocket. ‘Yauwa, Hadiza, come have a sweet.’
Hadiza looked from her mother to her sister and then down at her hands tucked between her thighs.
‘Come, come. Buttermint, eh?’
When he saw that she would not go to him, Zubairu got up and tapped her on the shoulder. She trembled at his touch. He considered her for a while and then unceremoniously dropped the Buttermint on her lap. He announced that he was going out and used a rag by the door to dust his shoes. The flapping curtain confirmed his departure.
That night, Binta lay beside Zubairu, irritated by his snores. Beneath his wheezing, she heard the wind whistling outside and, in the distance, a lonesome dog barking. She climbed out of the bed, crossed the room and opened the adjoining door to the living room where her children slept. The girls were on one mattress in the corner, their chests heaving. On the far side of the room, Munkaila was sprawled on another mattress. Beside him, Yaro lay on his stomach, shivering. Even in the faint light of the hurricane lamp, the welts on his back glistened from the soothing balm Mama Ngozi had massaged into them. Binta knelt beside him and felt his temperature. She was startled when he opened his eyes and looked at her, by the questions his eyes held.
She got up and fetched a cup of water and a foil of Cafenol and made him sit up and swallow the pills. When he was done, she took the cup from him and put it away. Then she did something she had never done before.
‘Murtala,’ she whispered and put an arm around his tensed shoulders, drawing his quivering body to hers. ‘My son.’ She felt his stiffness thawing, until he leaned on her body and they both wept quietly. She hoped that someday, unlike her, he would remember that his mother had once called him by his given name.
The next time she dared to call him by his name, years later, he was lying dead in her arms, his blood drenching the ground.
Little Ummi rushed in and whispered something to Fa’iza. Fa’iza shut the novella she was reading and hurried out of the room with Ummi following. When she burst into Binta’s room, they found browning pictures on the bed, an open album beside the pile and Binta poised with a photo in her hand. Fa’iza cautiously peered over Binta’s shoulder. She saw the picture she was holding. Even with Binta’s thumb on the young man’s face, Fa’iza knew it was her cousin Yaro.
‘Hajiya, are you crying?’
Binta wiped away the tears from her eyes and sniffled. ‘I’m fine.’
Fa’iza sat down and put her arms around her aunt’s shoulders. Binta shrugged her off and, holding her hand to her face, hurried to the bathroom.
11
A hyena cannot smell its own stench
After growing wings through indiscretion, Hajiya Binta, contrary to her expectation, did not transform into an eagle, but an owl that thrived in the darkness in which she and Reza communed. Yet, during the day, she was caged by her fears, wrapped in the perceived miasma of her sin.
On the day she decided to venture to the market, she doused herself in perfume, took a deep breath and headed out of the gate. Each time she walked past anyone, she looked down and held her breath. She would look over her shoulder to see if they were looking at her. Relieved, she would walk on.
She ran into Mallama Umma returning from the market clutching a plastic bag to her bosom with some spinach peeking out the top. The older woman stopped right in front of her. ‘Hajiya Binta.’
‘Mallama Umma, kin wuni lafiya?’
‘Lafiya lau. Where are you going?’
‘Oh, the market. I need to get some things.’
‘I thought Fa’iza did all your shopping.’
‘I don’t want her having trouble at the market. I need to get meat from the butcher and Fa’iza can’t stand that.’
‘Oh, too bad really. Perhaps you should take her to Ustaz Nura for prayers.’
‘You think that would help?’ Binta was mindful of Umma standing inches away from her.
‘Well, you have to try. It seems she’s getting worse.’
‘I will do something about it. But I have to go now.’ She hurried past.
‘Hajiya Binta, hold on a bit.’
She stopped and held her breath.
‘When are we going to see you at the madrasa?’
‘Oh, certainly one of these days, insha Allah.’
‘I hope so.’
There was a stream of people coming from the direction of the market and Binta walked towards them feeling as if everything was coming her way. She skipped round the muddy middle of the road where the barrage of motorcycles had trudged rainwater into the dirt, forming a slushy pool. She joined a crowd in front of the grocery shed run by the Igbo couple. The little bird-like woman was inside taking orders for ugwu, spinach and curry leaves. Her husband was outside, gutting fish and slicing them into plastic bags for customers. When the woman saw Binta she beamed. ‘Hajiya, long time O. What do you want?’
Binta bought fresh tomatoes and crayfish and moved on. At Balarabe’s shed, the glittering trinkets caught her eyes and Binta procured some cheap earrings for little Ummi. While she was buying beverages from Salisu’s shop, she realised how much she had missed the vibrancy and chattiness of the market. The co
lours; the green of the vegetables and the red of cayenne and tomatoes, the yellow and blue of plastic merchandise showcased outside shops, the smell of decaying vegetables cast into the middle of the dirt road, of smoked fish on wire mesh by the roadside, of drying ginger and tamarind at Mallam Audu’s spice shop where she bought garlic powder.
She thought of Fa’iza as she watched the butcher cut pieces of meat on his table with a scimitar-like knife. He packed the pieces into a transparent plastic bag, knotted it and handed it over to her. She put it in her bag and went to Nura Jangali’s grain shop for some measures of guinea corn.
When Jangali bent over and was measuring out the grains, Laure, the petite whore from Magajiya’s brothel on Bappa Avenue, stormed in and pounced on him. Binta was surprised by the abruptness of the attack, and the ferocity of the little woman. Jangali overcame his initial shock and grappled with Laure’s hand. Binta stepped in and pulled the angry tart off the man.
‘Who is holding me like this? Allow me deal with this man dan ubanshi!’ But when Laure turned and saw Binta’s matronly face, she allowed herself to be restrained. Laure went on to issue warnings to Jangali, whose daughter had apparently been in a fight with hers.
When she was done, Laure disengaged herself from Binta and breezed through the crowd that had gathered, blocking half the road.
Binta picked up her measures of grain and headed home, transformed by the thought that she had held one of the famed whores of Bappa Avenue in her arms and the only smell she could perceive on her was that of cheap cocoa butter cream.
Reza now had to call each time he was coming so she could leave the madrasa at break time to find him sitting on the rear fence waiting. Sometimes they didn’t make love; they just sat on the bed and talked – about opening a bank account for him, about his going back to school, about sin and forgiveness and prayers, and God’s infinite mercy. Once, after she had told him she had never watched porn, he had come with a DVD of blonde women desperately slurping over manhoods as if sucking the milk of life. Disgusted, and aroused, Binta ran to the bathroom to spit and Reza ran after her laughing. As she leaned over the toilet seat, he raised her wrapper and took her from behind. Her cheery laughter rivalled the noises from the video in the living room and was barely masked by the generator, whose metallic drone reached them through the little window high up on the bathroom wall.
On another day, he came with lacklustre eyes and sat on the floor. He prepared a joint, licked the ends and lit it with a lighter from his pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ Binta sat up on the bed, alarmed.
‘Understand,’ he gestured with his hands as he puffed, ‘sometimes, life fucks us all.’
‘You can’t smoke that thing here.’
‘You want to have some?’
‘Hell, no! Put it out. Now!’
‘Someday, I will die.’ He looked dreamily into the distance. ‘And then they will say, oh the bastard is dead. And the boys at San Siro, they will sit down gloomily, roll up and light up and say, Oh! Reza, the motherfucker, he did this and he said that, you understand.’
‘What are you talking about?’ She was suddenly frightened.
He looked at her through the fog of odorous smoke rising to the ceiling like the tenuous fingers of time. ‘And you, maybe you will say, Oh, Reza? I used to know him, the dickhead. But you will be too embarrassed to mourn me, you understand, because I live in the shadows of your life.’
‘What are you talking about? Why are you talking like this?’
He smiled stupidly and waved the joint before his face, the smoke drawing dissipating patterns in the air. ‘My poor old father, you understand, he will say, Oh, that boy has always been trouble but he’s my son, and tears will come out of his good eye. And that woman in Jeddah, she will be too busy being fucked by some Arab she won’t even notice. The whore!’
Binta shivered, rattled by the anger in his voice.
He wiped away a tear and puffed on his joint, lay down on his back and watched the smoke coil up to the ceiling. ‘And God? He will have his angels question me. They will say, you, wretched son of Babale the one-eyed old man, you mugged this person and you did in this one, and slashed off that idiot’s hands and of course, dishonoured so and so person’s daughter and sold ganja to this other great dickhead, who went and raped his sister and broke open his father’s head with a machete.’ He paused. ‘Have you ever thought about it, Hajiya? Of Judgement Day?’
She sighed. ‘May God forgive us all.’
‘You know what I fear most?’ He paused and looked at her. ‘The moment I will be asked what good thing I have ever done in my life and I can’t think of any.’ He jabbed the air with his joint, as if putting an invisible full stop in nothingness.
‘There must be something. Please, stop talking about death.’
She reached out and he, disenchanted by the joint, allowed her to take it from his hand. She convinced him to perform his ablutions and say his Salat. He went through the motions with the impatience of one desperate to get on with other things, his forehead barely touching the tassels of her prayer rug.
He came one night, long after most well-meaning folks had gone to bed, and knocked faintly on her windowpane. She was frightened until she made out his whispered voice. Slithering across the bed, she parted the curtain.
‘What are you doing here? Are you crazy?’ She, too, spoke in hushed tones.
‘No, just wanted to see you.’
‘It’s two in the morning, what are you doing out so late?’
He grinned and held up a roll of papers and a paintbrush. ‘Just out with some of the boys sticking up posters.’
‘In the middle of the night?’
‘It’s the best time. No one to say, hey, don’t put that on my house, you understand.’
‘Whose posters?’
He put down the roll under his arm and held one out for her. In the dim light, she made out the face of the president with his fedora.
‘Allah ya isa!’
Reza laughed. ‘Hey, I don’t like him either but that’s what my boss paid me to stick up, you understand.’
‘Well, go now before the children hear you.’
He smiled, picked up his things and headed to the back of the house where he scaled the fence and went about his business in the dark, in the night.
The next morning, on her way to the flea market to buy thread for her sewing machine, Binta saw the posters pasted on trees and power poles and on the façades of houses lining the streets. On any space that was within reach. But most of the posters, having provoked the ire of house owners and those not particularly well disposed towards the president, had been ripped off, leaving only traces of where they had been. She couldn’t help feeling sorry that Reza’s overnight work had been ruined.
When he came that morning, she ran a hot bath for him to wash off the glue under his fingers and the leftover sleep in his jaded eyes. And, because he still would not open a bank account, each time he came his money continued to swell at the bottom of her suitcase, beneath the folds of her camphor-scented cloths.
At night, sometimes, she would sit down on the veranda and submit herself to the advances of Mallam Haruna, who had the noble intention of having her compete for his heart with his radio. He would dutifully switch off the transistor radio each time she came out and shook her hijab, liberating the scent of jasmine.
She would listen to him recount and analyse the news, how the politicians were depleting the federal accounts to run their campaigns, how the former vice president and the accidental president were slinging huge gobs of mud at each other. Mostly she just listened but once in a while she chipped in.
‘They won’t let Buhari win.’ She was candid. ‘They know he will deal with all of them, the corrupt bastards!’
‘Sure he will,’ Mallam Haruna beamed. ‘The General is a no-nonsense man, that’s why all these powerful men are ganging up against him.’
‘But we the people are behind him and we are going to
make sure he wins.’ Binta was enthusiastic.
Mallam Haruna laughed. ‘Don’t delude yourself, Hajiya, we all know how elections are held here. You vote, they announce whomever they want to announce as winners. You can go jump in the well if you don’t like it. Nobody gives a damn really.’
‘Oh, that was before. Now there’s an honest man at the electoral commission. He will make sure elections are free and fair.’
‘What can one man do against a corrupt system?’
‘Oh, you will see.’
But before he could say anything, the gate was pushed open and a woman came in lugging luggage. As her silhouette approached, Binta held her breath and tried to make out the figure.
Eventually, the silhouette became her daughter, Hureira. ‘Ina wuni, Hajiya?’
Binta looked at her daughter’s puffy eyes and turned her face away to the cat with its white-tipped tail and gleaming eyes chaperoning them from the fence.
12
A snake will always beget something long
For the third consecutive morning, Binta woke to the aroma of omelettes and the strong smell of café au lait. Hureira, having inherited her father’s affinity for coffee, amongst other things, had scoured the shops the first morning after her arrival. When she came back with three tins of Nescafé, a bottle of shampoo and a pack of sanitary pads, Binta knew that her daughter’s matrimonial strike would linger.
Hureira, desperate to apply herself, had scrubbed the kitchen units and made the floor tiles glisten. Binta returned from the madrasa the first day and was astounded by the sparkling whiteness of her bathroom fittings. When she ran her finger over the cistern, it actually squeaked. She was uncomfortable with Hureira cleaning up after her, in her room, where evidence of her fornication might be found. So she took to locking her bedroom door each time she went out.
Season of Crimson Blossoms Page 11
