‘Your voice sounds distressed. What happened?’
There was some hesitation. ‘We need to talk, Hassan.’
‘Want to go to the hotel?’
‘No.’
‘I just got a call that my father is not doing too well and I need to go take him to the hospital but I could spare some time to see you.’
‘No, go take care of your father. When you get back then we see, ka ji?’
‘Are you pregnant?’ he laughed. Binta did not. When he noticed this, he stopped. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’
She said nothing.
‘I will be back tomorrow. Can we meet at the hotel?’
‘No. Come to the house. Hureira is gone.’
‘But the girls—’
‘I will send them off, maybe to Munkaila’s. But call before you come.’
‘OK.’
He put down the phone beside him just as Sani Scholar came in. And because of the rants he had been subjected to by Jummalo, Reza found himself examining Sani to see if he really was as pathetic as his mother seemed to think. Sani was small-framed but there was a steely disposition in his eyes that had given Reza the confidence to leave San Siro in his care while he and his right-hand men were away.
Scholar sat down and presented the money from the sales he had made. He had everything written down. The details of the transactions did not interest Reza, but he indulged his acolyte. And when Sani presented the money to him, he shoved it in his pocket without counting. He had resolved, at that moment, not to restock until he settled the affair with Leila, which he hoped to do in the next couple of days.
They talked about Mamman Kolo’s departure, which had taken place two days before.
As Sani recounted Kolo’s last day at San Siro, he noticed the distraction that had characterised Reza since he returned. It did not surprise him when Reza rose and said he was leaving to see his father who was fighting against old age.
Reza watched him close up his book and rise to his feet, he watched him walk to the door. ‘Scholar.’
When Sani turned back, Reza wondered if he should proceed with what he intended to say. ‘You wanted to become a doctor, not so?’
Sani laughed. But it was hollow and Reza recognised it as the sound of defeat. ‘Yeah?’
‘I need to retake my WAEC.’
Reza got off the mattress and walked out of the room. He locked the door and turned to Sani, who was standing beside him, his eyes gleaming with expectation. Reza counted out some notes and handed them to him. ‘Here, take this. Go and register for the exam, you understand. You will be more useful to your mother that way.’
Sani’s eyes widened and in them Reza saw emotions passing like the phases of the moon, graduating from one level of intensity to the next. Reza realised then that he loved the boy like a brother. Almost.
All that talk of the sea and planting trees and the certainty of his father’s demise, which he felt was closer than ever, was tampering with his constitution. And he did not like it. Not one bit.
He put his hand on Sani’s shoulder. ‘Scholar, don’t be like me. Go to school. Make something of your life. Don’t let someone else mess with your head, you understand? Now get out of here.’
29
The chicken is never declared in the court of the hawks
Hajiya Binta sat on the prayer rug shrouded in a sullen mist, long after she was done saying the Maghrib prayer. She could not keep track of the tasbih as her thoughts drifted between the divine and the worldly, where the words of the perpetual divorcée Ladidi and the accusatory glare of the madrasa women haunted her. She manipulated the prayer beads absently, the constant click of the plastic beads providing some rhythm to her despondence.
The thought of relocating to Jos, where she had lost everything, appealed to her now. She felt stifled by the events of the last few days and she needed to get away, away from the women of the madrasa and their judgements, away from Reza and his unintended allure.
The sound of the gate opening and the voice of a boy salaaming from without seemed to reach her from a dream. She hesitated until she was certain the persistent boy was real. Since Fa’iza had gone off along with Ummi to visit the Short Ones, Binta went to the door where the boy announced that there was a man outside asking permission to see her. She was shocked, upon enquiry, to discover that the man was Ustaz Nura himself. She was overtaken by panic. How would he view her now? Never had the thought of sudden death appealed to her more. People are more likely to mitigate the severity of their judgements on the dead.
She went back inside and sprayed herself with perfume, then regretted it immediately. It would give the impression she was trying to seduce the good man of God and worse, Ustaz Nura had taught them not too long ago how women who tempt men with their perfumes are no different from fornicators. It was a hadith. And yet, the abominable smell of fornication, for which she had been taunted by that waif-like Ladidi, was, at that moment, more pronounced in her mind than ever.
She lighted incense and tucked the sticks in the corners of the rooms so that the entire house was soon suffused by wispy white smoke unleashing a rich fragrance. When she went out, she found Ustaz Nura standing just inside the gate, caressing his beard. She waited for him by the bed of Hadiza’s petunias and watched him walk towards her, the hem of his pants blown about his shins by the passing breeze.
He graciously declined her invitation to enter the living room and asked her not to bother when she offered to fetch the mat so they could sit on the veranda. His business was brief, he assured her.
When he commenced his speech with the pious preamble, ‘Innal hamda lillah …’ she knew for certain he was there on matters pertaining to her sins. She listened to him praise Allah and his Noble Prophet and appeal for refuge from the accursed Shaytan, whose obnoxious handiwork seemed to be manifesting in her garden like a plague of weevils. She bowed her head while it lasted. Then she fiddled with her fingers beneath her hijab as he launched into a discourse of his encounter with Fa’iza the previous day. About how the symptoms of trauma were unlike those of demonic possession, and how only a brash woman of Hureira’s ilk would mistake the two.
‘She is not possessed, Hajiya Binta, she is traumatised. I am surprised you didn’t notice how much she is suffering.’
Binta bowed her head further.
‘From my little understanding of psychology, masha Allah, Fa’iza is in need of prayers and support. She needs someone she can talk to. That’s all. In other climes, she would have gone for what they call professional help, seen a psychiatrist and all that.’
‘But Ustaz, these things happened two years ago. Why is she … acting up now?’
‘Well, I think her mind shut that bit of memory somewhere, buried it. But now it’s resurfacing and she is finding it hard to process. Haven’t you noticed all these things she’s been going through?’
Binta was shocked when he eventually told her that Fa’iza had forgotten her brother’s face. She did not know that such a loss, the worst sort imaginable since it went without notice, was possible. For the loss of a loved one, tragic as it is, does not, in any way, compare to the loss of the memory of who they were.
‘Masha Allah, there is some other thing I have been meaning to discuss with you.’
Binta’s heart skipped. And when he launched, as delicately as he could manage, into talks of rumours about her rendezvous, Binta wished the earth would grow a mouth wide enough to swallow her in one great gulp. He assured her that he believed nothing of those ‘filthy rumours’ because the Prophet, peace be upon him, had encouraged one to think only good of the faithful. But regardless, he would rather she did not put herself in such positions as to compromise her integrity as a good Muslim woman, a mother of decent children who were all older and more refined than that ‘sleazy hemp dealer’.
‘But Ustaz, wallahi, these rumours are untrue. I am … erm—’ Binta covered her face with her hijab.
‘The rumours are not without cause, Hajiya. If, for instan
ce, on my way here, I saw Reza sneaking out of this house, or see you talking with such a famed dan iska, subhanallah, that would arouse some suspicions in me, don’t you think? If someone else had seen him, he could say, oh! I saw him and her doing this and that, subhanallah. That would do great injustice to your dignity, you see.’
Binta wiped the tears from her eyes.
Ustaz Nura, experienced in handling such matters of sin and remorse, allowed the moment to linger, allowed her to feel the full weight of her turpitude upon her heart, which the honey-coated lance of Shaytan had pierced. ‘Masha Allah, Hajiya Binta, I hope these tears are cleansing your heart. Whatever you have done, or not done, you will find Allah most forgiving and most merciful. Repent and you will find His arms open to receive you.’
Feeling very sorry for her, and with a certainty that she had indeed been swayed by her lonely heart into the path of mortal sin, Ustaz Nura took his leave as the muezzin’s call for the last prayer of the day rent the nascent night.
After Ustaz Nura left, Binta said her Isha prayers and remained on the rug, sitting much as she had done before he came. The mist of sadness that had shrouded her earlier had grown in shades and was now scented with remorse. She dwelled in this stupor, teary-eyed and sniffling, contemplating her failings, until Fa’iza and Ummi returned from their visit. With her back turned to them, she mumbled a response to their greetings. After the girls left, she summoned the strength to do what she had to do.
She reached into the depths of her chest of drawers and pulled out her photo albums, two of them, bulging with memories. Her search for one particular photograph led her through the hazy labyrinths of reminiscence. She flipped from page to page, making infrequent sorties into a faded past: Hadiza’s haunting eyes on her first day at school staring back from the photograph; an image of Zubairu, much younger than when he had died, decked out in an elaborately embroided kaftan with palazzo pants, his zanna cap planted at a jaunty angle atop his thick afro. She remembered the little patch of prosperity he had traversed before the ravages of loss set in and his afro gave way to a more modest cut and a beard that eventually grew wild. And in that fashion, she wandered from the black and white photos to the ones whose colours had suffered the devastation of time, smiling in some instances and fighting back tears at others. She was surprised to see how young Hureira had seemed at her first wedding and how empty her expression had been in another photo as she held little Ummi in a fluffy shawl, her eyes bereft of that maternal glow. She chuckled at the sight of Munkaila’s scrawny neck sticking out of the top of the famous spandex shirt that characterised his undergraduate days, holding up the V-sign. She could not, at that moment, reconcile the balding, pudgy man he had become with the scrawny youth who looked every inch his father’s son. She smiled when she came upon a picture of herself in Medina, dressed in a pilgrim’s white garb and the Prophet’s Mosque behind her in the background while hundreds of devotees milled around. She prayed she would have another opportunity to go there and seek Allah’s forgiveness, before her eventual passing. She was delighted by the joy she saw in Hadiza’s eyes as she leaned on her then fiancé’s shoulder, a joy she was happy she could still see in her daughter’s face even after years of marriage.
And then she came upon that photo of her children lined up against the wall like bandits facing a firing squad. Her beloved Yaro, looking like a reluctant passer-by coerced into a family photo. She ran her thumb repeatedly over his face, which, as always, reminded her of her mother’s. Finally, she pulled the picture out of the plastic sheath and pressed it to her bosom, which was rocked with sobs and the chill of long-suppressed remorse. She fell back on the bed, called him by his birth name and told him she was sorry while she wept. That she wished she had told him she loved him even once. That she wished she could have just one more minute so she could tell him that and keep him close to her bosom where no bullet would find him.
Some time later, she found the picture that had set her off on that journey into the fields of wilting flowers in the first instance. She wiped her eyes clean and went to look for Fa’iza in her room.
She found her niece mixing paints on a palette sitting before a canvas mounted on her little easel. Her immediate reaction was shock. Was this another manifestation of the insanity that trauma had induced? Binta looked into the girl’s enquiring eyes, which exuded tranquility. It was a calm that Binta found as comforting as it was disquieting. There is nothing quite like fighting against loss and, despite one’s best efforts, losing all the same. She stood by the door and felt there was, beyond Fa’iza herself, some change in the room. Something she could not identify immediately. Shutting the door behind her, she saw Fa’iza’s eyes widen as she walked towards her and round the easel.
‘What are you doing, Fa’iza?’
‘Me? I am going to paint.’ She resumed mixing the colours that would best depict the tones of sepia that dominated her dreamscape.
‘Paint? Paint what?’
Fa’iza rolled her eyes. ‘What will I paint? You will see, Hajiya, when I’m done.’
Binta would have been worried but for the serenity Fa’iza was oozing. She wondered if she was misreading the signs. She stood uncertainly and Fa’iza, perplexed by her aunt’s presence in her room, stopped what she was doing and sat down on the mattress. Binta sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders.
‘I am sorry, Fa’iza, I didn’t realise what you have been going through.’
Fa’iza lowered her eyes and fidgeted with her fingers. ‘I’m fine now, wallahi kuwa.’
With words having fled her, Binta offered Fa’iza the picture she had found. ‘I remembered that I had this picture from when you were younger. It may help.’
Fa’iza looked at the picture taken during a distant Eid and the aroma of fried meat filled her nostrils. Her parents were seated on the couch and she and Jamilu sat between them. He was nine then, and she could see the face she had struggled to recollect. She saw that his eyes were set determinedly like a man’s, hooded by his brow cast in a half-scowl. And then she remembered how he used to smile, how the light would come on in his eyes and how the left corner of his lips went up first. Then she started crying, pressing the photo to her bosom.
Binta pulled the girl to her and put her arms around her.
Reza sat by his father’s bed listening to the old man wheezing as his ribs rose and fell. He was distressed by the sight of the man’s bony face, the lips hanging open and, worse, by the smell of sickness he emitted. The smell, mixed with the waft of disinfectant that filled the air, had a nauseating effect on Reza, who wanted to be elsewhere. And when one of the patients at the far end of the ward started coughing as if determined to spew out his innards, Reza patted his father’s hand and walked out into the night. He stood under the veranda, in the night breeze. He looked at the figures of women seated there, eating, chatting as they prepared for another night tending to sick relatives. He looked around for a quiet corner where he could enjoy a cigarette.
‘Reza.’
He recognised the voice of his stepmother Talatu, who had first given him this name. She beckoned to him and they sat on the edge of the veranda, braving the midges that assaulted them.
Talatu cleared her throat. ‘Your brother Bulama left to take his wife home.’
Reza regarded her worried face lined with crow’s feet and the wrinkles on her forehead. Time and worry would do that to anyone. He knew the only thing that bonded them was the old man inside. If he died, Reza doubted he would ever see this woman again, or worry about her son Bulama and his pregnant wife, who had served them half-cooked rice and stew that tasted like wet paper.
‘That’s ok. There is nothing for them to do here.’
‘It was a nice thing your mother Maimuna did today, calling to wish your father a quick recovery.’
Reza grunted.
‘It has been ages since we heard from her.’
He looked around and saw two women in the courtyard lawn setting up a camp st
ove; he marvelled at how sickness bonded people.
‘We didn’t always get along well, your mother and us. This co-wives thing.’ She chuckled. ‘We were young and stupid really.’
Reza looked away, first to his right, then to his left. ‘I will be heading back tomorrow.’
‘Oh, you have done well. May Allah reward you. The doctor said your father will be fine. Old age, you know, and hypertension.’
He nodded at her. ‘Yes, he will be all right.’
In the subsequent silence, he thought about Leila and her talk of the sea and planting trees. His mind drifted to San Siro and then to Hajiya Binta.
‘You know, Reza, I was thinking you could take your brother Aminu with you. Teach him some trade. He could help you with your business. He is a smart boy.’
Reza gaped at her, at her pleading eyes tinged with desperation, and only after a while did he realise that his jaw had dropped. ‘Look, Talatu, I have to go, you understand. I have to go.’
As he got up, his phone rang. It was Moses.
Reza walked away from his stepmother, who looked at him in evident shock, as he put the phone to his ear. ‘Yes?’
‘Where are you?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Where is the girl?’
‘Where she should be.’
‘Move her.’
‘What?’
‘Move her. The police have been tipped off about your location. They will be there in the next thirty minutes. She mustn’t be found. Move her. Don’t leave any evidence. Move her now. Then await further instructions.’
Reza stood for a full minute contemplating the best course of action in the circumstances. He was so far away there was hardly anything he could do but to trust his lieutenants. He dialled a number and put the phone to his ear.
‘Gattuso. Wara wara.’
‘And the girl?’ Gattuso sounded alert.
‘Drug her. Move her to San Siro. I will make arrangements for her to be moved elsewhere before I arrive. Don’t leave any evidence behind. Move now, Gattuso, move now, you understand?’
Season of Crimson Blossoms Page 26
