Season of Crimson Blossoms

by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

  Binta looked at his face that bore the evidence of sleep – swarthiness and bleary eyes. ‘You were sleeping.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, yes. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Are you sure? You look worried.’

  ‘Let me see your hands.’

  He was taken aback by the urgency in her voice and dumbly held out his hands, palms facing the morning sky. She drew a circle in the air with her finger and he turned the hands over, his face betraying his curiosity.

  ‘I thought you were hurt, from last night.’

  ‘Me? I’m fine.’

  ‘There was blood on your hand.’

  He turned his hands over and looked at them, screwing his face up thoughtfully.

  ‘You were in a fight, weren’t you?’

  ‘No, not a fight.’

  ‘You were. I saw the blood.’

  ‘Oh, just taught him a lesson, you understand.’

  ‘You didn’t—’ she couldn’t finish.

  But he saw the word in her eyes and smiled. ‘No, no. He just won’t be troubling anyone for a while.’

  ‘I don’t want you getting into fights, Hassan.’

  ‘Ok.’

  ‘You are sure you are not hurt?’

  ‘I’m all right, wallahi.’

  ‘Ok, I just wanted to check on you, and to say thank you.’

  When he looked into her eyes she bowed her head. She did not want him to see that she had agonised over him all night. ‘I’ve got to go now. I told them I was going to buy bread from the store.’

  ‘I want to see you.’

  She looked around, at the muddy gutter slinking past in the middle of the dirt road, at the strips of plastic bags sticking out of the damp earth, at the sodden mud about her feet. She sighed. ‘So do I.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He sighed.

  ‘You haven’t prayed this morning, have you?’

  He looked down this time.

  ‘Please, go now. Say your prayers.’

  He nodded. She turned and started walking away, chased by her desire to hold him in her trembling arms.

  Further up the lane, Abida glanced at Kareema and they turned to look at Jummalo, who had been watching over her shoulder. Kareema retrieved the twig and continued the business of flipping kosai in the pan with dedicated solemnity. The white smoke, as if terrified of the sullen mist about her, drifted away up into the vast heavens.

  Reza was shocked when he saw his withered father stretched out on the bed. He knelt down and held the old man’s hand. It felt weak, not like the hand of one who had grappled with bulls most of his life. He could not believe that in the twelve months since he had last seen his father, the old man could have been reduced to this decrepit amalgam of skin and protruding bones.

  He had been on the prayer rug that morning, offering supplications to Allah, when the call came. His sick father was calling for him so he had a quick shower and made the hour and a half journey to Akwanga, this place where he was born.

  The lanes had seemed narrower than he remembered. The buildings, too, seemed smaller. His father’s house appeared like a giant concrete coop with large patches of flaking paint. He had stooped slightly to get through the door. And with little patience, he had tolerated his father’s wives, Talatu and Lubabatu, as they feted him, offering food and drinks. He had looked at them, at their faces and the shifty eyes that betrayed their deviousness, and moved on to his father’s room.

  He sat holding the old man’s withered hand, waiting for him to wake up from his drugged sleep. Those hands had hoisted him into the air every morning and pressed him into an embrace. Now he watched the narrow chest rising and falling, drawing in breaths in staggered wheezes.

  Reza leaned back in the chair and was staring ahead into the space before his eyes when Lubabatu came in with a covered dish and placed it by the bed.

  ‘How is he?’

  Reza mumbled. He rubbed his eyes. ‘What did the doctors say?’

  ‘Dr. Linus said—’

  ‘What Dr. Linus?’

  ‘You know Dr. Linus, the one at the pharmacy.’

  ‘He is not a doctor, he just sells drugs!’

  Luba blinked rapidly and shifted on her foot. ‘Well … well, he said your father has chronic malaria.’

  ‘He doesn’t know crap about anything! He sells paracetamol and ampiclox and stuff. He doesn’t know crap about anything!’

  Her eyelids fluttered again.

  ‘God! Don’t tell me you haven’t taken him to a hospital.’

  When he saw her eyelids fluttering yet again, he rose and walked out of the room. He went to the back of the house and lit a cigarette.

  He had been seriously ill once, long before he became Reza. His thirteen-year-old body, ravaged by typhoid and malaria while his father had been away grappling with bulls, lay for days on a tattered old mattress, wasting, wishing for death.

  In a delirious blur, he had seen his stepmothers shoving drugs into his mouth, pushing plates of food at him. He had closed his eyes and refused to open them until he was certain he was in heaven. But when, after an eternity, he felt himself levitating, he opened his eyes and saw his father’s one good eye, filled with love and concern, looking down at him.

  ‘Hold on, son, don’t die on me.’

  The next time he opened his eyes was in a hospital, with his exhausted father sleeping in a chair next to him.

  The old man woke up with a smile and held the boy’s hand. ‘Welcome back, Hassan.’

  ‘Father, I thought I was going to die,’ his voice was weak.

  His father squeezed his hand. ‘No, no. I won’t let that happen. You are going to grow up and be someone special. You will make me proud in my old age, my son.’

  His father had kissed him on the cheek that day.

  Reza took one last drag on the cigarette and crushed it underfoot. Then he went in search of a cab to take his father to the general hospital.

  Flanked by his mother and sister, Munkaila put his hands behind his back and went round the house, scrutinizing the fence in the manner of a politician inspecting a government project. Fa’iza and Ummi stood by the door watching him stamp his immaculate leather half-shoe every now and then.

  The smirk on his face deepened and he shook his head. ‘We will have to put razor-wire on this fence.’

  Fa’iza watched Binta look back over her shoulder at the fence and then down at her foot. Munkaila reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He punched the buttons and put it to his ear.

  The labourers came a little later. They perused the fence, then retreated to a corner to confer with Munkaila. He counted out some money, handed it over to them and they hurried out of the house.

  Each time the men came to work, Binta would retreat to the bedroom and lie on the bed with a book. On her bedside table, the novels and self-help books she had read continued to pile up on top of Az Zahabi’s The Major Sins. Hemingway was a favourite she returned to often. The struggle of the old man against the fish had taken on a new meaning in her mind because she could relate to him, to his battle against the ravages of impending senescence. She was him. In her heart, there was a part that would fight to stretch those golden years.

  ‘Hajiya, they are putting on the wires!’ Ummi shouted out one afternoon, her voice loud enough to wake her mother Hureira, who had taken to sleeping most of the day. Ummi held up the curtains, her eyes wide with excitement.

  ‘Get away from here!’ Binta hissed and turned her face to the wall.

  Mallam Haruna came that night and sat down with his radio on the veranda. Binta took her time coming out. This time she did not flap her hijab to herald her arrival but just sat down. When she did not complain about the radio, Haruna left it on, pressed to his ear. He was so involved in the news that he didn’t notice that she did not even greet him. She rested her shoulder against the column and waited.

  ‘All
ah ya kyauta.’ He sighed and switched off the radio. ‘There is so much nonsense going on in this country, I tell you.’

  She said nothing.

  Up on the fence, the cat was walking majestically through the wire loops as if they didn’t exist. It was the first time Binta had seen the completed work, this reinforced fence that imprisoned her scented dreams. The cat sat down, meowed once and began its chaperoning duties.

  ‘Can you believe what is happening in this country, Hajiya!’ Again, there was the inflection in his voice, towards the end of the sentence, which made his question come out like a statement.

  She said nothing.

  ‘Imagine these people, running around on motorcycles and gunning down local chiefs. These Boko Haram people, you must have heard about them!’

  She said nothing still.

  When he tired of waiting for her response, he cleared his throat. ‘And the governor in Borno State wants to ban okadas, so these people won’t be running around shooting down people like that. And you know, they told us they had suppressed these people, they had wiped them out, now see what is happening.’

  Binta grunted.

  After a while Mallam Haruna caressed his beard. ‘Love is a wonderful thing, you know.’

  This time, she looked at him, her curiosity hooded by the shades of night.

  ‘Yes, yes, it is. Imagine what the world would be like without love. It would be terrible, you know. Terrible! People hating people, people killing people. Total chaos, I tell you, wallahi.’

  ‘Isn’t that what’s happening now?’ There was a sonority in her voice that came from not wanting to use it, a reluctance to speak.

  ‘What!’ Again, it didn’t sound like a question. But Binta was, by now, used to his way of speaking.

  ‘Are people not killing people now? These people riding bikes and shooting people, what else are they doing?’

  ‘Oh, but you know, that is a bit different. See me and you now. Is it not because of love that we are sitting, here! Love, I tell you, wallahi kuwa.’

  She looked at him, saw the stubble and the shadows the dim light cast on his face. She wondered what she was doing sitting in the night beside an old man who already had two wives and a radio. ‘You are too old to be talking about love.’

  ‘Me! Old! By Allah, wait until our wedding night, then you will see how virile I am.’ He winked at her and guffawed.

  ‘What the hell do you take me for?’

  ‘Hmmm!’

  ‘What kind of woman do you think I am that you will come here talking to me like that!’

  ‘Ah ah, Binta, I only—’

  ‘Iskanci kawai!’ She let out a long drawn out hiss that startled the cat on the fence. When she rose, she shook her hijab and gathered it about her as she headed into the house, leaving him alone with the alarmed animal, scratching at his grey stubble.

  In the silence of morning, Hureira slunk to the kitchen and made coffee and tea. She didn’t disturb the morning by making omelettes or potato chips. She arranged the cups and slices of bread on a tray and carried it quietly back to the room. She sat down with Fa’iza and Ummi, their legs crossed in front of them, and they ate in silence, their cups barely clinking on the saucers.

  ‘Mommy, can I—’ Ummi started saying but Hureira shushed her. The girl tried again but Hureira’s sharp look silenced her. Ummi looked from her mother to Fa’iza and couldn’t understand. Hureira gestured with her hands. Ummi pointed at the jar of sugar. Hureira frowned and shook her head.

  They heard Binta stomping out of her room. They froze – Fa’iza with her cup halfway to her mouth and Hureira with eyes wandering wildly. Ummi sat looking from her mother to Fa’iza. They heard Binta barge into the kitchen; they heard her banging utensils and hissing. They heard her come out. They held their breath and imagined her standing by the door, contemplating whether to intrude on their silent breakfast. Finally, they heard her footfall slapping the tiles as she walked back to her room.

  The girls crept about preparing for school. When they were done, on their way out, they saw Binta sitting on the couch in the living room and froze. She looked at them and turned away.

  ‘Ina kwana, Hajiya?’ Fa’iza greeted.

  ‘Hajiya, good morning.’ Ummi curtseyed.

  Binta grunted.

  Fa’iza held Ummi’s hand and together they crept out of the room, gently closing the door behind them. It was Hureira who had to remain imprisoned in the bedroom, away from Binta’s strop. Until the phone call came in the early afternoon.

  Binta showered, dabbed her face with powder and applied a dash of lipstick. She put on her fitted blouse and stood before the mirror, shored up her breasts and adjusted her bra. She put her purse and a make-up kit in her handbag and threw a hijab over her head. But heading out, she caught her reflection in the mirror and paused. She looked again.

  She removed the hijab and pulled a jilbab from the wardrobe and put it on over her blouse. She took a gyale and wound it around her head and torso. Then she picked her bag and locked the bedroom door.

  Outside, she walked as far away as she could from the house and hailed a motorcycle taxi. The okada man pulled up, revving his engine.

  ‘Do you know Shagali Hotel?’

  When he nodded, she climbed on the pillion with as much grace as her wrapper would allow and the okada man zoomed off.

  16

  A hippo can be made invisible in dark water

  Holding the sheet about her chest, she looked around the tiny hotel room, at the ornate shell-shaped lampshades, at the ceiling fan that whirred indolently as if burdened by the weight of witnessed improprieties, at the little TV where a D’Banj music video was playing. She watched the sultry women dancing on the screen and marvelled at the audacity of their shamelessness.

  When Reza emerged from the bathroom, she looked at the scars on his torso before turning her face away. He seemed leaner and there were shadows on his face, in his eyes.

  He smiled at her. ‘You want to shower?’

  She looked in the direction of the bathroom and then back at him. ‘So, how many times have you done this? Bringing women to a hotel room, I mean?’

  He shrugged. When he said never, she knew he had just told her his first lie.

  She felt a little whirl deep down in her heart and she knew if she could have seen the wind that stirred, it would have been yellow. She was too old to rage over another woman. After all, she did not want to think of herself as one of his girlfriends. She shouldn’t. She shook her head. ‘This is my first time in a hotel room.’

  His smile was small but almost empathic. ‘It’s very private here. Everybody minds his business, you understand.’ He came and sat next to her. ‘Are you not hungry?’

  She reached out for the wrap of suya he had bought. He had arrived at the hotel ahead of her and booked the room. But when she came, her hunger – their hunger – had been of a different sort. She had barely waited for him to close the door when she covered his lips with hers, pushing him against the panel.

  Overcoming his initial surprise, he had responded with fervour, his hands reaching down to lift her dress over her head. Their tongues intertwined, their bodies entangled, their hands feeling each other’s bodies – as if to be sure that in the period of their forced abstinence they hadn’t changed. They moved to the bed and, because she wanted to, fought for it even, he let her sit astride him and ride him, her moans reaching up to the ceiling.

  She put a piece of spiced meat in her mouth so she would not blurt out how she had never wanted any man so badly. She savoured the meat; a bit hard, but tasty. ‘How is your father?’

  Reza nodded, suddenly sombre. ‘They think it’s his kidney. They have to do some tests.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Is he very old?’

  Reza looked up at the ceiling. ‘Seventy-two, seventy-five. I’m not sure.’

  ‘You care for him, don’t you?’

  It wasn’t a question anyone had ever asked him. He considered it for a w
hile. ‘My father, he used to travel to Potiskum, sometimes even to Sokoto to buy cattle and then travel to the east to sell them to the Igbos. He was the only one who ever cared about me, you understand.’

  He was almost choking now so she put her arms around him and held him to her, whispering into his ear that his father would be all right.

  They lay down again on the bed, listening to each other’s breathing. When next she opened her eyes, it was almost four in the afternoon. She nudged Reza and he woke up, wiping his eyes.

  She sat up on the bed. ‘I’ve got to go now. It’s late.’

  ‘Must you?’

  ‘Of course, don’t be silly.’

  She reached for her bag, fished in it, brought out a receipt and handed it to him. With her hands on her lap, she watched his face.

  ‘WAEC registration? For me?’

  She nodded and smiled.

  ‘Kutuma!’ He frowned at the paper, his expression transforming from amazement to delight, and then to one of profound thought.

  ‘I think it’s important you go back to school, Hassan.’

  His head was still bent at the receipt. ‘Wow! And you paid for me?’

  ‘I know if I asked you to pay you would dally, so I took the liberty.’ She reached again into her bag and fetched a brown envelope. ‘Now all you need to do is fill the forms, attend some classes and write the exams.’ She extended the envelope to him.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He folded the receipt neatly and put it in his jeans pocket. He covered his face with his hand and sighed.

  ‘You are not happy about this, are you?’

  ‘No, no. I am, I am. It’s just that, you understand, I just have to think about this.’

  She nodded. ‘I know. Think about it.’

  They were silent for a while.

  She wanted to say something to thaw the awkwardness. ‘The fence has barbed wire now.’ And she told him how Munkaila had brought the workmen to install the wire after the generator theft.