A snail will never claim to have horns where rams are gathered
‘Your phone is ringing.’
Binta looked at her phone, lying next to her on the armrest of the chair, and then at Reza who was sitting on the bed with a disappointed expression on his face. ‘I know.’
He chuckled, ‘Who is it?’
‘My daughter.’
‘Oh. When is she leaving?’
‘I really don’t know. I just want her gone. It’s bad for a woman to leave her husband’s house like that.’ Binta adjusted the salmon-pink veil around her neck with a casual elegance.
Reza found the movement titillating. And he liked her veil, the translucence and the flushed hue that, to him, was suggestive of a newly-wed. Of bridehood. The particular reason for that connotation did not interest him for the time being but he loved it. He loved that the veil made her look younger. That she was sitting down with him in that hotel room, even if she had refused to let him touch her.
‘Perhaps, if you take the veil off you will be more comfortable, you understand.’
‘Here, let me help you.’
‘Don’t come near me.’ Her voice was curt, but she was not sorry. She wanted to punish him. ‘You are not laying a hand on me, ever again.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Even lovingly?’
Binta hissed.
He sidled up to her and drew the footstool closer so that when he sat on it, he was barely a foot away from her. He attempted to take her hand. She slapped his away.
‘What do I have to do to win back your trust?’
‘Look, we need to get some things straight.’
‘What things?’
‘If ever there’s going to be anything between us again, then you need to be more responsible.’
‘How?’
‘First, if you ever raise your hand against me—’
‘I won’t, ever. I promise.’
‘Well, if you do, I will have my son beat you up and have you thrown in jail. I’m not kidding.’
‘Ok. Agreed.’
She sighed. ‘And you need to open an account. I am not comfortable keeping your money.’
‘Will you help me open it, please?’
‘No.’
‘Please.’
‘I said no.’
‘Haba, Hajiya.’
‘Look, Hassan. I’m serious here. We can’t go on like this.’
‘Ok, ok. I will. I will. Is that all?’
She resisted the urge to smile. ‘You have to take that exam and go back to school.’
‘Oh, mehn!’ He threw back his head. ‘Not that, please.’
‘Well, in that case, I suppose we are done then.’
‘Look, I can’t be doing that now, you understand. I’ve got commitments. Maybe later.’
‘Perhaps, when you make up your mind to do that, then we can see what happens, assuming you haven’t found a younger girl to occupy your interest.’
He reached in his pocket and found a joint. He searched for his lighter.
‘You won’t smoke that here.’
‘Come on, cut me some slack, saboda Allah mana.’
She stood up. ‘Well, you can have your weed, while I head home.’
‘You are making things a bit tight for me. I need to cool off somehow, you understand.’
‘No weed.’ Her face indicated that her resolve was absolute.
Groaning, Reza slumped on the bed. He was tempted to leave but he knew he would be haunted by the image of her terrified face as he had raised his hand to strike her. It was the image that had lingered in his heart since the incident, each time thoughts of her occurred to him. And such thoughts had been sequential, a conveyor belt of guilt, haunting his conscience. He never again wanted to see her eyes, hitherto always filled with adoration, inundated with fear of him.
‘Hassan, I am trying to help you. I care for you and I want you to get your life on track.’
‘My life is on track, you understand. My life is on track.’
‘It’s not and you know it.’
She sat down beside him and, as she would her own son, talked to him about the importance of education. Again. He got up, sat by the window, fetched a cigarette from his pocket and, without deigning to look at her, lit it.
‘I don’t understand why you insist on this going to school business.’
When his phone rang, he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen for a moment, then shoved it back in his jeans.
‘Answer your call.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s just Gattuso. My brother. My friend.’
‘Gattuso?’ Binta chuckled. ‘Where do you guys get your names from?’
Reza, smoking pensively, went and sat on the chair Binta had vacated not long before, where the depression her weight had made in the cheap foam still tarried. He sat down, one leg thrown over the armrest. ‘Why do you keep pushing and pushing and making demands like this? I am who I am, you understand? This is who I want to be.’
Binta fiddled with her fingers. ‘My husband, God rest his soul, was killed by some Christian boys he employed. They were people he called by their birth names and did business with. My sister’s husband and her son were hacked to death by their Christian neighbours because a woman urged them to. But my sister and her daughters were saved from being raped and murdered by a Christian woman whose husband had been killed by some Muslim youths.’
She dabbed her eyes with the corner of her veil, adding a damp patch, splotched with the blackness of her kohl, to the ruddy fabric.
Reza paused with his cigarette held inches from his ear. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
She looked up from her fingers into his eyes. ‘Because I want you to understand why I have not given up on humanity, and why I won’t give up on you.’
Binta climbed off the bike, having been intercepted at the turn to her house by Mallama Umma, who stood and flagged her down. Binta paid the bike man and he zoomed away, making a dramatic turn as he went, his knees almost grazing the ground and his rear tyre firing up a storm of dust. The move upset the women, who turned their faces away and covered their noses, Umma with her hijab, Binta with her veil.
‘Dan iska kawai,’ Mallama Umma coughed.
They waved away the dust and exchanged pleasantries in the fashion of elderly women. They enquired after each other’s health and grandchildren and Mallama Umma, regarding with disapproval Hajiya Binta’s girlish veil, commented that her friend was ageing with grace. Binta observed prudently that Umma’s new hijab was both regal and quite appropriate.
Umma wondered, and this, she explained, was her reason for flagging her down, if Binta would be interested in visiting Laraba, a much younger classmate at the madrasa who had just put to bed. Her fifth, Umma said, and fortunately without complications. So, although unprepared, Binta found herself walking along with Mallama Umma to a barka visit.
As they walked, two women in the afternoon sun, past the houses and power poles defaced by campaign posters, Umma attempted to channel the conversation they were having about the health merits of moringa leaves to a subject that had been causing her some irritation of late.
Binta had forgotten, and it did not really matter to her then, how the conversation had started, but she found it engaging. Perhaps because Mallama Umma was such an easy person to talk to.
‘Oh, I do take zogale juice, at least once every Friday. And I have introduced my son, Munkaila, to it. He takes it every time he comes.’
‘That’s very good, Hajiya. It will serve him well, and his children too.’
‘Yes, I always serve them kwadon zogale each time they visit. They love it, the little ones.’
‘Yes, and you know how all these educated children have been saying we are old-fashioned and eat useless leaves. Now they are the ones researching and discovering that our parents who raised us on these things weren’t entirely clueless.’
‘Wallahi kuwa, Mallama Umma.’
‘Hajiya Binta, there is something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’
Binta noted the weightiness with which Umma ushered in this aspect of the conversation and she felt a deep sense of foreboding.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, not that I believe all these things, but I feel it is only fair to ask you concerning what has been said and is being said. All these … rumours.’
‘Rumours? What rumours?’
But as they made the turn to Laraba’s house, they spotted Kandiya walking towards them from the other end of the lane in the artless manner peculiar to her. They watched her flip-flops rouse small plumes of dust, her arms swinging.
Kandiya greeted them, Mallama Umma more reverently, Binta observed. But then again, Umma was older, more learned in the deen and perhaps more deserving of veneration from the younger Kandiya, whose manners had always been questionable anyway. Binta imagined that she caught a gleam of disdain in Kandiya’s eyes and in her tone of voice when she addressed her.
Together, they went into Laraba’s house and from the door Kandiya announced: ‘Salamu alaikum, we’ve come for barka!’
‘Wa alaikumus salaam, your felicitations are welcomed. Come on in.’
In Laraba’s tiny room, warmed by the embers in the kasko placed in the middle, they found Murja, Ustaz Nura’s wife, occupying one of the seats in the room, cradling the newborn. Laraba sat on the bed, all puffy-faced with a tired smile on her lips.
‘You are welcome.’
The women took turns holding the baby, a boy Binta felt squirmed like a clay animation and yowled like a young goat. They made observations about his sallow eyes.
When Binta prayed for the child’s good health and prosperity, Murja chortled.
‘See how people turn into saints overnight. They don’t realise you need to come to God with a pure heart before He answers your prayers. Qalbun saleem. That’s what the Qur’an says.’
The sarcasm did not register with Binta and she handed the baby to Mallama Umma unperturbed. An uncomfortable silence followed, until the baby started crying again.
Umma unfurled the shawl and examined the baby’s pallid, sagging skin. ‘This boy is afflicted by jaundice. He needs medication.’
‘Haba!’ Laraba sat up. ‘I mentioned to his father last night that there was something wrong with this boy. He said we should take him to the hospital.’
‘Yes, take him to the hospital, but herbs will cure him better.’ Umma tugged at his skin. It felt as if it would peel off. ‘It’s definitely jaundice.’
Murja seemed impressed. ‘How do you know such things merely by looking?’
Umma only chuckled smugly.
Binta stretched her neck to observe the child. ‘No wonder he has been shrieking like a demon. That’s why it’s always important to have babies checked out in the hospitals first.’
Kandiya’s laughter was shocking, not only for its spontaneity but also for its supercilious tone. ‘Hajiya Binta shagali!’
Binta looked at her, baffled.
Laraba was uncomfortable. ‘Mallama Umma, what herbs should I get for him? I have never experienced this with my four other births.’
‘Oh, you will do well to take him to the hospital first.’
Murja sighed as she considered Binta. ‘I think the world is coming to an end.’
Kandiya turned to face Murja. ‘Truly?’
‘Of course. The sin of some people is enough to provoke Allah’s wrath and He will smite the earth overnight.’
‘Wallahi kuwa.’
‘Imagine all these shameless sugar mommies running after young boys, taking them to hotels and doing iskanci with them.’
‘Allah ya kyauta,’ Laraba squirmed. She wanted the conversation steered in a different direction. ‘One never gets used to labour pains.’ She chuckled uneasily. ‘I thank Allah for His blessings though.’
Kandiya waved away Laraba’s comments. ‘Murja, you speak as if these things don’t happen among us when some of our women are now doing such things. Running around with all these bloody junkies.’
Binta bowed her head. She placed a hand over her chest, feeling her pulse race. She closed her eyes and hoped when she opened them again, she would discover it had all been a dream, a really bad one. When she opened her eyes, the challenge became how to walk out of the room as the women looked at her and saw her for what she was – a fornicator.
She felt her breaths coming in spurts, so she sprang to her feet. ‘Toh! I will be leaving now, Laraba.’
Avoiding their eyes, she put some bank notes on the baby’s shawl.
‘Haba, Hajiya Binta, all this money for what?’ Laraba’s nervous grin could not effectively conceal her discomfort with the turn the conversation had taken, and the fact that it was happening in her room when Binta, sinner or otherwise, had come to felicitate with her and pray for her newborn.
‘Buy some baby soap. Allah ya raya.’ Binta raised the curtain and walked out into the sun. The walk home, though not long, seemed interminable. Her eyes were blurred with tears and the task of putting one foot in front of the other proved daunting. The only thing she was certain about was her earnest desire not to run into anyone she knew, so she kept her head down, dabbing her tears with her rose-coloured veil.
Binta had little time to contemplate what had happened for she returned home to major upheaval. Fa’iza’s state of mind, calm now, had been overshadowed in the interval by Hureira’s hysterics.
The fact that her husband had decided, in her prolonged absence, to take a second wife had set off a tempest within her. At first, she had only sat down and shaken her legs, but the more she thought about it, the more enraged she became. Eventually, the gale drove her to smash her phone against the wall and watch it splinter to the floor, after her husband, yet again, refused to take her call.
‘Kutuman buran ubannan!’ She cursed as she took a pair of scissors to a wax print fabric he had bought for her for the previous Eid. She felt triumphant after she had shredded it and the jagged pieces lay around her, like the aftermath of a confetti shower.
Binta returned home to find Hureira throwing her things into a suitcase, determined to stomp back to Jos and knock some sense into her husband in her own peculiar fashion.
‘Hajiya, sai na ci ubanshi, wallahi!’ Hureira promised as she threw clothes into the suitcase and hurled her toothbrush against the wall, somewhat disappointed that it was not breakable, and that the sound of something being destroyed had not eased her rage.
Binta leaned on the doorjamb. She had been unable to lock eyes with anyone since her return and there was nothing she wanted more than to bury herself in a cave and die. But there was a greater chaos in her home than her state of shame.
‘Your quarrel is with your husband, Hureira. Not his dead father. And I won’t permit the use of such language in my house, in front of the children.’
Much as she wanted Hureira gone, Binta knew that in that state of mind, fuelled by the fury which drives women and men to crimes of passion, no good would come out of Hureira’s departure. And it was late in the day already to be travelling to Jos. So she prevailed on her daughter to put off her return until the next morning, by which time she hoped her abominable temper would have simmered to a tolerable degree, and the roads would be safer.
Binta had heard only in passing what had transpired in her absence with regards to Fa’iza. But then Hureira’s antics had not allowed her time to process the information and act on it. And for the half hour Fa’iza had been sitting in the living room, curled up on the seat by the corner watching TV, it did not seem to Binta like the right time to discuss the circumstances of the girl’s mind.
So Binta retreated to her room wondering what she would do with herself, how she could bear to be seen in public. And when Ummi announced that Mallam Haruna was waiting to see her, outside, Binta said she was not available.
Ummi returned minutes later. ‘He said he would not leave until you see him.’
Outside, in the tangy breeze of the mild harmattan, Mallam Haruna sat on the veranda. He lifted his gleaming cap, scratched his head and replaced it. He stood up and paced for a short while before deciding instead to occupy his period of waiting by listening to his transistor radio. The BBC Hausa Service was talking about yet another attack by ‘unknown gunmen’ who had shot several men at a drinking place in Maiduguri.
When Binta, smelling of lavender and wearing a lavish hijab, came out finally, the speech he had memorised dissipated into the night, leaving him grasping for words. He was oblivious to Binta’s distracted air and assumed, from her hunched shoulders and occasional grunts, that she was as unimpressed by his small talk as he himself was. He fell silent, restraining his hand from reaching for his radio’s power button.
In the intervening silence, the cat with the white-tipped tail emerged from the night. It walked regally through the loops of the razor wires and paused only briefly to cast a somewhat bemused look at the elderly couple, as if gauging Mallam Haruna’s unease and Binta’s preoccupation with her thoughts. It arched its back and sauntered off, leaving the couple to their affairs.
Mallam Haruna cleared his throat. ‘You see these people are growing bolder by the day.’
Binta mumbled. Could he not see that she was covered in shame, or was his nose impervious to her smell of sin?
‘These Boko Haram people. Now they are hurling grenades and gunning down people out relaxing. It is in the news. They just killed six people. Just like that.’
‘Allah ya kyauta.’
‘Ameen,’ he smiled broadly. ‘You see, that’s why I like you. When you hear such disturbing news, you always say a good prayer. It is a great thing.’
She looked at him, and perhaps for the first time that night, noticed that he was indeed uncomfortable. The fact that he had tucked his hands between his thighs, which were pressed together, had seemed inconsequential to her. ‘Thank you.’
‘Hahaha! Oh, no need to thank me, it is the truth ai.’ But then, he seemed to have run out of things to say. In his head, he struggled to piece together that speech he had prepared for her. ‘Prayer is important, yes.’
Binta grunted.
‘Oh, it is, you must agree. When you have some mystery men running around and shooting down people or throwing grenades at them, sometimes you want them to just focus on the politicians and leave the masses to their poverty, but no. They kill the politicians and kill the poor folks. Anyway, when you have a situation like this, you just pray to God. Shikenan.’
Binta chuckled. ‘So you expect them to kill the politicians—’
‘The corrupt ones, the bad ones.’
‘You want them to kill the bad politicians and spare the others?’
‘Kwarai kuwa.’ He emphasised his assent with vigorous nodding.
‘Have you forgotten that when trouble comes, it affects all, not just the bad ones?’
‘How can I forget when Allah himself said so?’ When he said that, it occurred to him that the conversation was heading in a totally different direction from that which he had intended. This talk of God and His pronouncements would not help his cause in the least. He took some time pondering over what to say next.
Binta shifted and cleared her throat. ‘Well, I should be going in now. It is getting late.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t object to that, if I were not so enamoured with your company. You know, I was thinking, why shouldn’t we go out for a proper date someday.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you know, just go out, me and you, to somewhere romantic, just the two of us.’
She only grunted.
‘Haba! Binta, why not give me a chance? I am a match for any young man, wallahi, more than a match even. I am virile and I have experience.’
Binta gaped at him.
He was stunned by her reaction, by her glaring eyes. But he was on a roll; he might as well say what was on his mind. ‘Hajiya Binta, by the God who made me, I am desperate to … well, to taste of your sweetness.’
She contemplated his words and wondered exactly what he meant by this tasting of her sweetness. Was it possible he knew, or was he just being his usual thoughtless self? But who could prove anything? Who had seen her actually sleeping with Reza? Or was it not said that the mat of shame is rolled up with belligerence. ‘Mallam Haruna, are you high on drugs?’
‘Binta—’ He placed a hand on her thigh and squeezed. He savoured the tenderness of her flesh before she slapped his hand away and jumped to her feet.
‘Mallam Haruna! My God! What impropriety is this?’
He stood up and looked down at his sandalled feet with the innocence of a child being scolded, a child who knew with certainty that the reprimand was a great injustice being done to him.
‘Leave my house, and never set foot here again. I am a widow; it doesn’t make me a loose woman. Dan iska kawai.’ She stormed up to her door.
He felt guilty, at first, and then insulted that she had called him depraved, to his face, this woman he loved, this woman he wanted to marry, this woman whose sweetness he was desperate to taste of, this depraved woman garbed in the paraphernalia of virtue.
‘How dare you?’
‘Mallam Haruna—’
‘How dare you? When my two eyes are witnesses to your depravity, when I have seen you leaving the hotel with that insufferable bastard Reza?’
The night weighed down on her shoulders, shrouded her faculties in folds of darkness and pressed down her tongue, for some time. ‘Thank you for spying on me.’ She turned and shuffled away. She did not look back, even when he called her name with a voice laden with regrets, and a hint of unfulfilled desires.