When surrounded by vultures, try not to die
Abida sat before her mirror applying a subdued tone of lipstick and puckering her lips to even out the pigment while Kareema, sitting on the bed behind her, flipped through some of the soyayya novellas scattered on the bed.
‘Abida, we are not going for a wedding you know.’
Abida put down the lipstick and picked up an eye pencil. ‘This is the sixth day. At least we can wear some make-up. It’s not like we are the chief mourners anyway.’ Abida paused, pencil in hand, thinking of how Fa’iza had seemed calm throughout the period of grief and wondered if it were possible for one to become inured to seeing loved ones being killed. She put down the eye pencil, wiped off the lipstick with a piece of cloth and sat staring at her reflection in the mirror.
Kareema adjusted the veil over her shoulder, picked up the TV remote on the bed and turned it on. The small 14-inch TV their father had bought for them came alive with some enthusiastic kalangu dance. She flipped the channel. ‘Abida, we are never going to get to the ta’aziya if you keep staring at your face in the mirror like that.’
They had spent the first three days of mourning with Fa’iza, sharing her grief and her mattress, being her voice as she kept silent for days, and wondering where her strength stemmed from. In subsequent days, after they had resumed school, they would change out of their uniforms upon their return and go over to Fa’iza’s, staying until nightfall, receiving condolences as Fa’iza sat staring into space.
‘Can you imagine what it would be like to have all your loved ones killed right before your eyes?’ Abida’s voice echoed from the field of imaginings.
Kareema sighed. ‘Amin is stronger than you think. It is Munkaila’s wife I am worried about. She seemed shocked, as if she would just keel over and die. Good thing she left after the third day. I mean, I would have if I were her. How could I stay under the same roof as a mother-in-law who had brought not only shame but death to her family?’
She flipped the channel once more and an image on the screen caught her attention. A young man, shirtless, was lying on the ground, obviously dead. Kareema turned on the volume.
‘… the suspect simply identified as Reza, a notorious criminal, was shot dead by the police while resisting arrest in connection with the murder of businessman Alhaji Munkaila Zubairu. The police spokesman said …’
The remote fell out of Kareema’s hand and clattered on the floor.
Abida turned to her sister and saw the beginning of tears in her eyes.
Binta wandered into Fa’iza’s room but discovered she could not remember why she was there once she looked into her niece’s eyes. She found Fa’iza setting up her easel, which she had put aside to accommodate the mourners. The death had not quelled her desire to daub the canvas with the colours of her dreams. Binta looked aimlessly about, her eyes avoiding Fa’iza’s, as the girl paused to see what her aunt needed.
When Binta’s eyes fell on the finished painting resting against the wall, she knelt by it. The canvas was dominated by shades of reddish-brown and, in the middle, a shocking violent splash of red, the colour that had often startled Fa’iza out of her nightmares.
‘What is this?’
‘This? It’s a painting I did.’
‘Oh.’
Binta inclined her head to one side and looked at the painting. Despite careful consideration, she was more confounded than enlightened.
Fa’iza regarded her aunt, the subdued slant of her shoulders, the defeated tilt of her head. ‘It’s abstract. Those used to be the colours of my dreams. I still dream like that sometimes, but it doesn’t scare me as much anymore.’
Binta sat down on the rug and studied the painting, the mix of reddish-brown pushed around in the background and that startling red splashed in the middle. Blood and sepia. Her fingers touched the edge of the canvas tentatively. ‘I was wrong.’ Her voice echoed from a realm her mind had wandered to.
‘Wrong? About what?’
‘About you. I thought you were fighting against loss and losing.’
‘Me?’
Binta had never been an art enthusiast and had never possessed the necessary awareness to decipher it, especially abstract paintings, which had always contrived to baffle her. The cheap poster of some blossoming flowers that had hung on the wall in the living room served merely decorative purposes and had been taken down in the days of mourning. Not being sufficiently informed as to judge the aesthetics of Fa’iza’s work, she was however astonished by how the girl had taken her fears and nightmares and made them into something beautiful.
‘It is me.’ Binta’s voice still reverberated with the timbre of introspection. ‘I was the one fighting against loss all the while.’
Fa’iza was bemused. She was familiar with grief-induced insanity and wondered if that was what was afflicting her aunt. She reached out as if to touch Binta but put her hand down beside her.
Binta chuckled. ‘You know, someone said life is like a dress. Some are made fortunate, others not so. So when it gets torn or stained, all you can do is wash it, mend it or cut it up and make something new out of it.’
She turned and saw Fa’iza’s baffled face, one eyebrow raised higher than the other, lips set at an angle, one corner slanting upwards. Binta wiped the tears from her face and patted the girl on the shoulder. ‘You won’t understand, I think. Not right away.’
Binta shuffled back to her room, where she searched through the camphor-scented clothes in her suitcase. There was the bundle of cloth Reza had bought for her. It brought back memories she was wasn’t ready to confront. It was easy to decide to get rid of it. But there were also all those wads of notes he had brought, still sitting at the bottom of her box.
Picking up the reading glasses by her bedside, she went out to the living room, past Hadiza and Asabe, who had Ummi sitting between her legs, her head resting between her thighs as she plaited her hair. Binta went to the alcove where her sewing machine remained, forgotten in the days of mourning. She sat on the stool and proceeded to oil the machine.
Hadiza and Asabe observed what she was doing and averted their eyes each time they thought she was going to look up. But Binta was oblivious and carried on with her task. She slapped down the feed dogs with mild irritation and the thunk jarred the other women. From the old TV carton, she fished out an old, blue dress. She cut it up and returned to the sewing machine, put on her glasses and put her foot down on the treadle. She pedalled away and the ferocity with which she went about the task made Asabe abandon Ummi’s hair, half-braided, and focus her attention on Binta.
Ummi felt the unbraided part of her head and patted the hair that was standing on end. When she saw where the women’s eyes were focused, she looked at Binta. ‘Hajiya, what are you doing?’
‘I am mending a dress.’ Conscious of the eyes turned on her, Binta looked from one face to another. Hadiza’s eyes gleamed with tears and Asabe’s with anxiety. And in Ummi’s eyes was curiosity. Binta bent her head and carefully lined the edges of the dress.
That was when she noticed the motifs on the printed fabric, of pretty, little, yellow butterflies captured in different phases of flight. She traced one with her finger. Carefully. It occurred to her then that in the final analysis, dreams can be dainty and beautiful, like butterflies, and just as fragile.