A butterfly thinks itself a bird because it can fly
The first time Binta was woken by the ominous smell of roaches was in the harmattan of 1973. She was sixteen or seventeen. She could never be sure of her age because her mother, who had never attended school, kept dates by association, as did most people in Kibiya. Binta gathered, from conversations that did not involve her, that she was born the year the British Queen visited Nigeria.
She had woken up before sunrise that morning, all those years ago, and lit the hurricane lamp. She shook the mattress, drawing protests from her sleeping younger sister, Asabe, who grumbled. Binta picked up the lamp and searched the small confines of the hut, lifting the mats, probing the calabashes and the single kwalla containing their clothing. She found the crumbling moult of a spider in the first, and the remains of a long-horned beetle in the other. She gave up after prodding the major crevices on the wall with a broomstick and finding nothing of interest.
She went out, performed her ablutions and said the Subhi prayer. Then, as she had been doing for years, she joined her taciturn mother in the faint light of the awakening sun. Together they worked in silence sifting pap with a translucent piece of cloth. Her mother, who was Fulani, slim and dignified but bulging in the middle, hardly said a word to her. Binta was her first daughter and, as was customary, she rarely acknowledged or called her by her name lest she be deemed immodest. But each time Binta sneaked a look into her mother’s eyes, she glimpsed, before it was blinked away, a clandestine love she wished she could grasp and savour. She would have given anything to hear the sound of her name on her mother’s lips. Anything.
When the sun was up, she balanced the tray of kamu on her head and went out, her yellow veil tied around her swaying waist, hawking the kamu around the neighbourhood. As soon as she had sold out, she hurried home, washed, ate a breakfast of kunun tsamiya and kosai and hurried off to school, her school bag – a cut out sack with a shoulder strap attached – swinging as she went.
She walked by Balaraba’s house and met her friend waiting at the entrance. Together, they moved on to Hajjo’s and then Saliha’s. Saliha had not yet returned from hawking bean cakes so they moved on to Bintalo’s.
School was no more than a couple of raffia mats spread out under the ancient tamarind, on which a black board leaned. Mallam Na’abba, the schoolteacher, had often told Binta that she was smart. That she could, if her father consented, continue schooling and perhaps some day become a health inspector. Each time he said that, she would smile and chew on her forefinger, turning her face away from him. It was a far-off dream. She knew that much then. But Mallam Na’abba was passionate about its possibility. It was he who convinced her reluctant father to let her pursue her education for a while longer. That she could benefit the whole of Kibiya with her knowledge. Her father, skeptical as always, had agreed, but carried ridges on his forehead for days afterwards.
After school, the girls went home and met plump Saliha loitering under the moringa tree at the entrance to their house. When she was not hawking, Saliha had inexplicable bouts of headache, backache and a variety of fevers that conspired to keep her away from school most of the time. Her afflictions healed as soon as the prospects of attending class had been eroded. Since she did not seem to be suffering from any of those infirmities at that particular moment, the girls decided to play gada under the barren date tree.
They ran to the field laughing, piling their school bags at the foot of the tree. Because Bintalo was belligerent enough for the entire coterie, they started with her. They formed a semicircle and Bintalo leaned back into their waiting arms. They caught her each time and threw her on to her feet, singing and clapping. Saliha was next and then Binta, who felt the little buds on her chest jiggle each time they threw her, singing:
Karuwa to saci gyale
Ca ca mu cancare
Ta boye a hammata
Ca ca mu cancare
Ta ce kar mu bayyana
Ca ca mu cancare
Mu kuma ’yan bayyana ne
Ca ca mu cancare
Mallam Dauda, who had been standing at the edge of the field, stroking his greying beard and watching the little jiggles on Binta’s chest, asked why they were behaving like tarts. Did they not have things to do at home?
The girls picked up their bags and went home, wondering what business it was of his that they were singing about a prostitute who hid a stolen veil under her arm and were jiggling their little buds. They agreed to meet later that night under the leaning papaya tree to play tashe in the moonlight.
Mallam Dauda went on to have a talk with Binta’s father, Mallam Sani Mai Garma.
Her father returned from the farm that evening with the ridges on his forehead more pronounced than ever, and his limp, caused by his polio-sucked leg, even more obvious. Binta rose from washing the dishes to relieve him of the hoe slung over his shoulder. He brushed her aside and called her mother indoors.
Binta heard him thundering about how big his daughter had grown under his roof and how men now watched her jiggling her melons in public places, and how it was time for her to start a family of her own. He stormed out, kicking his food out of the way. Binta ran into the hut to weep at her mother’s feet. The woman turned her face away to the wall, her hand poised uncertainly over her abdomen.
Two days later, Binta was married off to Zubairu, Mallam Dauda’s son, who was away working with the railway in Jos.
This time, it was the sound of movement in the living room that woke her. She heard wood squeaking on the tiles like some oppressed animal and wondered what was happening. Then she heard Hadiza issuing directives to Fa’iza, who kept echoing each question.
‘Fa’iza, hold that end.’
‘Me? This end?’
‘Move it this way.’
‘This way?
‘Haba! Fa’iza, for God’s sake, what are you doing?’
‘What am I doing? But, Aunty Hadiza, I was only doing what you asked.’
Hajiya Binta, who had gone back to sleep after her early morning prayers, listened to the noises from the living room. She imagined she could feel the weight of her liver, imagined that it felt a little heavier. As she lay in bed, she listened to an unfamiliar birdsong floating in through her window. It was sonorous and confident and if she had not felt weighed down by her body, she would have gone to the window to see the bird.
The sound filled her heart with tranquility and she closed her eyes to savour the sensation. Images of her late husband, Zubairu, the stranger she had spent most of her life with, flitted into her mind. Every time she thought of him, he seemed to be smiling, something he had not been famed for doing so often. Memories of his touch were shrouded in a decade of cobwebs. What she recalled, albeit vaguely, was the sensation of his hands pressing down on her shoulders, his lower lip clamped down by his teeth to suppress his grunts as his body hunched over hers. She remembered how he used to chew his fingers before he told a lie, and how he always slapped his pocket twice before pulling off his kaftan. These memories were vivid. A strong arm around her, crushing her bosom. A strong body behind her. A bulging crotch pressed hard against her rear. Warm, desperate breathing on the back of her neck. A face, young, crowned with spiky hair. Binta realised then that her thighs had been pressed together, that she was moist, down there. Just a hint of it.
‘Subhanalla!’ She shook her head and saw the images dissipate like a reflection on disturbed water. Sitting up, she reached for the Qur’an Hadiza had placed on the nightstand the previous evening. She found that her cracked reading glasses were useless so she put them down. Undeterred, she flipped open the Qur’an and tried to read. The elegant curlicues of the Arabic letters blended into an indiscernible pattern before her eyes. Binta sighed, kissed the Qur’an, replaced it on the nightstand and went out to inspect the commotion in the living room.
Hadiza and Fa’iza were contemplating where best to place the framed painting of a waterfall ornamented with red blossoms that had been on the adjacent wall. Fa’iza held up the frame, while Hadiza, having made up her mind, hammered a nail into the tan-coloured wall.
Ummi stood beside Hadiza with a cardboard box of nails in her hand and a hopeful look in her eyes. ‘Aunty Hadiza, will you bring back our decoder?’
Hadiza, biting down her lower lip, continued to hammer in the nail. Ummi repeated her question and, when nobody said anything, she shook the box of nails. ‘It’s Saturday. I want to watch Cartoon Network.’
Binta stood by the door and observed the transformation of her living room. She thought of it as a minor calamity of sorts. Chairs had been rearranged, the TV stand had been snuggled into a corner and the cornflower-blue vase that had been by its side was now atop the TV. The sewing machine had been moved up against the wall in the dining alcove.
Her greeting, when it eventually came, was mumbled. ‘Sannun ku da aiki.’
They turned to her.
Hadiza contemplated her mother with a scrutiny that bothered the older woman. ‘Hajiya, lafiya ko?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. Why?’
‘You just look … strange, that’s all. Anyway, I didn’t want to wake you. But now that you are awake, I’m going to rearrange your bedroom as soon as I’m through here.’
‘No!’ Binta had not meant to snap. What on earth was wrong with her? She took a deep breath and added in a much softer tone, ‘No rearrangements, please. Just cleaning will do, thank you.’
Realising she was being grouchy, Binta sighed. The images she had woken up with had excited and vexed her more than she would admit. And to think that this moistening of her long-abandoned womanhood had apparently been provoked by someone who reminded her of Yaro was an added irritation.
Hadiza stood, hammer in hand. Ummi picked up a crooked nail from the box and stuck it in her mouth.
Binta made an impatient gesture with her hand. ‘Fa’iza, get me some water. I need to bathe.’
‘Me? Hot water?’
‘Yes, you, God damn it!’
The nail in Ummi’s mouth fell on the tiles and clicked-clicked several times, rattling the sudden silence. Binta turned and went back to her bedroom.
Before Hadiza and the girls could recover from the eruption of Binta’s temper, there was a sound at the gate, succeeded by urgent footsteps crossing the yard. A woman salaamed at the front door and admitted herself.
Fa’iza beamed. ‘Good morning, Kandiya.’
‘Where’s Hajiya?’ The woman’s puffy cheeks quivered. The edge of the khaki green hijab encircling her face was damp with perspiration. It formed a jagged-edged halo around her pudgy face.
Hadiza considered her with interest. ‘Is there a problem?’
Kandiya ranted about how Hajiya had promised to have her dress ready four days before and how nothing had been done about it. She breezed across the room and picked up the dress on the sewing machine. She held up an unattached sleeve between the thumb and forefinger of her other hand.
‘My dress has remained in this state for four days and I’ve paid her in full. I’m supposed to be at a wedding right now wearing it. And because she couldn’t fulfil her promise, she has been avoiding me.’ She observed the dress with considerable disdain and hissed. ‘Iskanci.’ She let the dress, and the unattached sleeve, fall to the ground. Then she stomped out, brushing Fa’iza aside as she went.
When Hadiza went to ask her mother about Kandiya’s dress, she met her huddled on the edge of the bed, her hijab gathered around her, her eyes, before she turned them away to the wall, dark and unfocused.
By the time her son Munkaila arrived, Binta’s mood had improved. She sat in the alcove oiling the Butterfly sewing machine and asked why he had not brought her grandchildren with him.
‘I left them playing with their mother.’ Munkaila, sitting on the couch, hunched forward and jangled his car keys around his finger.
Hadiza, sitting next to him, looked at the keys, at his chubby finger, and saw how it almost filled the key ring. The folds of flesh around his neck and his pot belly, which he patted intermittently, baffled her – things she could not explain as she could his dark skin. That had come from his father’s genes. She could also explain his shortness but not the receding hairline that made him look older than his thirty-four years.
‘I don’t understand how these rascals can break into people’s houses and make off with things.’ Munkaila jangled his keys again.
Binta oiled the shuttle and slipped it into place. She lowered the presser foot and it landed with a thunk. Putting down her feet on the treadle, she felt the machine run. Smoothly. From the huge carton beside her, which had once held a TV set, she picked a piece of cloth, slipped it under the feed dogs, and threaded the needle. She leaned forward to observe the stitches as her foot worked the treadle. But because she wasn’t wearing her glasses, she had to lean further in so that her forehead brushed the machine. She adjusted the tension control and the stitch length and pedalled away until the stitches were no longer oily. She removed the cloth and picked up Kandiya’s unfinished dress.
‘Hajiya, why don’t you use your glasses? Or don’t you like them?’ Munkaila tapped his foot on the floor.
‘Oh, my glasses were broken during … when I ran into a wall.’
‘It was dark. But I am fine. No need to worry.’
‘I suppose I have to get you another pair then. But you should be more careful, Hajiya, please.’
‘I will be,’ she smiled.
The TV was on but only Ummi seemed mildly interested in it. Soon enough, she drew out a square of bubble wrap, which had been discovered during the rearrangements, and started busting the bubbles.
‘Alhaji, should we go out for a bit?’ Hadiza stood up.
‘Ok.’ Munkaila rose and together they went out into the yard, where he stood observing the house.
It appeared to Hadiza that the smirk on his face had become part of his comportment; he seemed so comfortable wearing it. She adjusted her headscarf. ‘Hajiya is straining her eyes too much, I guess. I was wondering if she could maybe stop this sewing business altogether. I don’t like the way women come here and insult her over unfinished dresses.’
Munkaila sighed. ‘She’s just doing that to keep busy. I take care of her.’ He jingled his keys some more and as if Hadiza did not know the details already, Munkaila recounted how he had rented the house for his mother and relocated her from Jos when he reached the conclusion that the riots and killings would not end; how he had installed satellite TV and paid the monthly subscription so she would be comfortable in old age. ‘What else would she do with her time?’
While he talked, Hadiza wondered if she was the only one who remembered him as the scrawny undergraduate he had once been, with just one pair of jeans and a couple of spandex shirts to last him an entire semester. Those days at Ahmadu Bello University had been tough for him. When Munkaila graduated at twenty-five, with a degree in Economics, and could not find a job, he interned at Harka Bureau de Change. There, he made money buying and selling foreign currencies. He got lucky when he won the trust of some politicians in government who decided to run their foreign currency business through him.
‘Well, she could maybe go back to teaching. There are primary schools around here she could work with. Maybe even part time. She always enjoyed teaching.’
Munkaila’s palm moved up and down his midsection for a while. The image Hadiza’s words conjured in his mind contradicted the one he had of his mother living out her days in contented grace. In the fashion of a queen mother.
‘Look, I don’t want her being subjected to all sorts of … indignities. She should be comfortable now. She shouldn’t suffer all her life.’
‘Hajiya is not that old, you know.’
‘I know, I know. But still—’ He shrugged.
‘I was thinking she could perhaps remarry.’
‘Remarry?! Haba! Hadiza, remarry?’
‘Sure, why not? Her age mates are remarrying all the time.’
Munkaila cocked his head to one side as if to consider the proposition. The prospect had no appeal for him whatsoever.
Hadiza read the expression crystallising on his face as that of a man who had by chance tasted bitterleaf. ‘Listen, I am a woman and I know how important it is to have a man around. Hajiya is lonely. She is open to the idea. She had mentioned before that there was a man here trying to court her.’
‘Ah-ah! Here?’ His mouth dropped in horror. The thought of his mother with another man, other than his father, was shocking enough. He had never imagined anything so horrendous.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t be leaving until tomorrow so I will find time to talk to her about it. Whatever she says, I’ll let you know.’
Munkaila sighed and jiggled his keys some more. He looked down at his shoes and stamped his right foot. Then he looked up at her. ‘Your husband is taking good care of you. Who would have thought you are a mother of three already?’
‘Thank you.’ Hadiza bowed with the grace of a practised thespian. And they both laughed. ‘But all this smooth talking won’t stop me from reminding you that you need to sponsor me to hajj.’
‘In time, Hadiza, in time. My plan was for Hajiya to go first and Alhamdulillah, she went only last year. As for you and that crazy sister of yours, I’m afraid you will have to wait because of the house I’m building. It’s taking all my money, wallahi.’ He went on about how he so desperately wanted to live in his own house and stop paying the exorbitant Abuja rent. About how he wanted Hajiya to move into the quarters he was building for her, how Hadiza needed to see the place to appreciate how much he was spending. And then he invited her to spend some time at his house, since his wife and two daughters had been asking after her. He stopped when Hadiza sighed.
‘What is it?’
‘She mentioned Yaro.’
‘She did?’ Munkaila’s face, dark already, darkened further. Unmindful of his sparkling white kaftan, he leaned back against the wall and held his chin in his hand.
In the grave silence that followed, Hadiza looked around and imagined what colours some hedges and flowers would add to the austere yard that stretched before her eyes like a patch of wasteland, like the last decade of her mother’s life.
The next day, Hadiza threw aside the sheets and rose. She looked at the wall clock and saw that it was already a quarter to eight. Because of her two boys, Kabir and Ishaq, who had to be readied for school, and the little one, Zubair, named after her father, who insisted on having breakfast alongside his brothers, she was unaccustomed to sleeping late into the morning.
From across the room, Fa’iza’s mild snores reached her. Hadiza saw that the girl had kicked away her sheet and her legs were thrown carelessly apart, one resting on little Ummi, who was too busy sleeping to notice.
She got up from the mattress and looked at her face in the mirror that had Ali Nuhu’s face stuck at each corner. She observed the oily sheen of sleep on her face so she used her palms to wipe it off and went out to the kitchen. There, she searched the drawers and cabinets and came up with a pack of noodles. Uninterested, she put it back where she found it. She should ask her mother what they could have for breakfast.
In Binta’s room, she found the clothes that her mother had slept in strewn on the bed. Her mother was having her bath, so she sat on the bed and waited.
When Binta emerged, she smiled at Hadiza and enquired how well she had slept. Hadiza assured her that her night had been pleasant enough.
‘Is that an injury on your neck, Hajiya?’
Binta felt the spot where the rogue’s dagger had punctured her skin. It was no more than a scratch that had hardened into a little black scab, which was peeling off of its own accord. ‘Just a scratch. Have you spoken to your sister?’ Binta sat on the stool before the vanity table and looked at the healing wound in the mirror. In one swift movement, she peeled off the scab and examined the fresh skin.
‘No, not since I arrived. Should I call her?’
‘Perhaps not. Hureira is so much trouble, you should just let her be.’ Binta applied lotion to her body. ‘Her husband called me the other day to complain about her tyranny. I promised to talk to her but she wouldn’t take my calls.’
‘Hureira kenan!’ Hadiza chuckled. ‘She should have been a man with that temper and rebelliousness.’
‘Lallai kam! She would have been worse than your father was, may Allah rest his soul.’
‘Kai! Hajiya.’
‘Well, you know it’s true.’
Hadiza said nothing and after a while she stood up. ‘Well, I was wondering what you wanted for breakfast so we could send Fa’iza to the shops.’
‘How about masa?’ Binta smiled as she powdered her face. ‘Tabawa makes the best masa in these parts. Fa’iza knows her place.’
‘Ok. Masa it is.’
When Hadiza got back to Fa’iza’s room, the girl was already up, wiping sleep from her eyes with a cotton ball dipped in facial cleanser. Hadiza gave her instructions and some money from her purse while she went to the kitchen to heat a pot of water.
Fa’iza took time powdering her face and drawing lines around her lips with an eye pencil. When she was done, she pulled a hijab over her head, fetched a food flask from the kitchen and went out.
‘Hajiya! Hajiya! Aunty Hadiza! Come and see.’ There was more elation than fear in Fa’iza’s voice.
The two women rushed to investigate the excitement, Binta’s hijab flapping like the wings of a desperate bird. On the threshold was the missing decoder, sitting on the DVD player. And on top of them all was a transparent plastic bag containing a mobile phone and some jewellery.
‘Our decoder is back!’ Little Ummi, eyes puffy with sleep, had snuck into the space between her grandmother and her aunt.
‘But this is not Hajiya’s handset,’ Fa’iza observed.