Season of Crimson Blossoms Read online

  ‘Munkaila?’

  Binta was silent awhile. ‘The other one.’

  Hadiza’s eyes widened. ‘Yaro?’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder what he would have become had he lived.’ And then Binta allowed silence to swallow her thoughts.

  In the silence, Hadiza’s bafflement increased. Were they actually talking about Yaro? It was the first time since his death, fifteen years ago, that she had heard her mother make any reference to him. It had seemed to her, when she thought about him, that they had buried not only his corpse but also his name that was not a name. And memories of him as well. She shifted closer to her mother. ‘Are you all right, Hajiya?’

  But then Fa’iza breezed in. ‘Aunty Hadiza—’

  ‘Don’t call me that. How many times will I tell you to call me Khadija? That is the proper name. Say Aunty Kha-di-ja.’

  ‘Aunty Khadija? But everyone else calls you Hadiza, and you know, you are not really my aunt, technically.’

  ‘Lallai, this girl, you have no respect. Is Hadiza not a corrupt version of Khadija? And don’t forget, I’m not your mate, whether I’m your aunt or not. Technically.’

  ‘Ok, Aunty Khadija.’ Fa’iza sat down on the bed, sweeping her dress under her and posing proficiently with her hands on her lap like a queen holding court, a pose she had adopted from Kannywood home videos, which, along with soyayya novellas, occupied the bulk of her leisure time. She would not admit, not to Hajiya Binta especially, that they had become an obsession. A refuge from the shadows in her head.

  Fa’iza had been living with her aunt since her mother, Asabe – Binta’s younger sister – had returned to the village, having lost her husband and only son in the incessant turbulence in Jos. She had been embarrassed, when her mother decided to remarry, by the choice of a stepfather. This sentiment was inspired by her loyalty to her late father’s memory, by the fact that he was gone forever and would have no further need of his wife.

  Whatever she found worthy of scorn in the man who now paraded himself as her mother’s husband – his buck teeth and always-dirty feet, and the fact that he was, in the manner of country folks, less refined than her father had been – was born out of these sentiments. Fa’iza would not even visit. How could she possibly live in the village?

  But beyond the distraction she craved from the romantic life portrayed in the films and literature of Kano, which was an escape from the haunting memories of Jos, living in the village would make her less appealing to men in the class of Ali Nuhu. Manifestations of her teen infatuation with the film star were evident everywhere in her room in the form of stickers stuck in the corners of her mirror, on her varnished wardrobe, her cream-coloured walls, the door panel and windowpanes and on the covers of her notebooks. Even on the easel she had used for her fine arts practicals, which was now tucked away behind the wardrobe.

  Whatever would Ali Nuhu do with a village girl?

  Living on the fringes of Abuja, in the sprawling suburb of Mararaba, was not the same as living in the heart of the city. But at least, here, she could nurture her ornate dreams. So she would paint her face, stick up her posters, watch Kannywood films and read soyayya novellas in which handsome men in sedans fell in love with beautiful girls with moon-like eyes and aquiline noses. Women not unlike her cousin Hadiza.

  ‘I like your henna decoration.’ Fa’iza held Hadiza’s hands and marvelled at the intricate designs so pronounced on her delicate skin. She looked up and saw Hadiza smiling. ‘When I start writing soyayya novels, I’ll put your face on the cover.’

  Hadiza laughed. ‘Stupid girl, my jealous husband will kill you and burn all your novels. Who reads those things anyway?’

  ‘That’s all she reads, this girl.’

  They both turned to look at Binta, who had spoken.

  But Binta was looking straight ahead. ‘She reads them from morning till night, if she’s not watching films on Africa Magic. I was wondering where she gets them from until I realised the Short Ones supply them.’

  ‘Kai, Hajiya!’ Fa’iza protested.

  ‘What Short Ones?’

  ‘Some short girls she has made her friends. They live nearby.’

  ‘Sounds like you don’t like them, Hajiya.’

  ‘Those girls, they are too smart for their own good. I wish Fa’iza would stop associating with them.’

  Hadiza frowned. ‘Fa’iza! Behave yourself and keep away from bad friends, mara kunyar yarinya.’

  Fa’iza puckered her lips and turned her face away.

  ‘Anyway, now the decoder is gone, she won’t get to watch all those useless channels.’ Hadiza adjusted her scarf.

  ‘Useless channels? Haba, Aunty Khadija. Anyway, Alhaji Munkaila will replace what was taken, insha Allah.’

  ‘Was that what he told you?’ Binta’s voice sounded burdened by the weight of unrelated memory.

  ‘Me? No.’ Fa’iza was flippant. ‘Well, he brought these ones. Insha Allah, he will replace them.’

  Hadiza turned to her mother. ‘Well, has the break-in been reported to the police?’

  ‘The police?’ Binta chuckled. ‘It has been reported to Allah.’

  ‘Since when has Allah become a policeman, Hajiya?’

  ‘He will dispense justice in His own fashion. Even on the police who go about shooting innocent people. Allah will judge them.’

  Hadiza flinched at the virulence in Binta’s voice. It must have something to do with this sudden mention of Yaro, this exhumation of disregarded memories. ‘Well, I still think a formal report should have been made. You never know.’

  Binta conveniently observed that the muezzin had called for Isha prayers. ‘Go look for your sister, Fa’iza. I’m sure she’s playing next door.’

  ‘Me?’ Fa’iza shot up, without waiting for an answer, as if she had been sitting on a spring. She threw her veil over her shoulders and walked out, leaving a whiff of thick perfume in her wake. Hadiza savoured it for a while and then waved her hand, with a dismissive carelessness, in front of her face as if to dispel the scent. Her eyes wandered around the room and lingered on the mournful curtains, the heap of unwashed clothes in the corner and the litter on the floor.

  Hajiya, I think I’ll help you move your bed and re-arrange the room.’

  Swiftly, Binta picked up the Qur’an before her and handed it to Hadiza. She rose and recited the Iqama for her prayer.

  Hadiza sighed, replaced the Qur’an on the nightstand, on top of The Major Sins. She gathered her gown about her and left the room.

  Hadiza, plagued by pre-slumber agitations, turned over on the mattress. ‘What’s wrong with Hajiya?’

  For a while only little Ummi’s soft snores filled the room. Then Fa’iza, who was lying across the room on the mattress she was sharing with Ummi, looked up from the book she had been reading by the flashlight of her phone and sighed. ‘Hajiya? I don’t know.’ She buried her face in the pages once more.

  Hadiza turned again. ‘How long has she been like this?’

  ‘How long? I don’t know, since yesterday, I guess.’

  Hadiza sighed. ‘She seems evasive about this break-in, I don’t understand it. And I don’t understand why she is talking about Yaro all of a sudden. She has never talked about him before.’

  ‘Yaro? Your late brother?’

  Hadiza nodded, put her fingers on her forehead and scratched. ‘Her explanation about her broken glasses was just implausible. What happened really?’

  ‘What happened?’ Fa’iza sighed and put her book down on the rug by the mattress. The cover showed the face of a beautiful woman with large eyes, and Biyayar Aure written in bold across the top. The flashlight from her phone, which she placed on top of the book, expanded and chased the darkness into the corners. Having turned onto her back, she pulled the sheet over her bosom. ‘What happened was that I just came back home from school and saw the front door open and the decoder and DVD player were gone and Hajiya’s glasses were lying on the floor, broken. I took them to her room and met her sitting on t
he bed like this …’ Fa’iza paused and stiffened to demonstrate. ‘I asked her what had happened and she sighed like this … hmmm … and said a thief broke in.’

  When Hadiza said nothing for a long time, Fa’iza rolled onto her side and lay quietly. Little Ummi, too far gone in her sleep, made little noises and farted. They both looked at her. Fa’iza made a face.

  Hadiza, too, turned over on her mattress. A house without a man would look like easy pickings for fence-jumping miscreants of the sort that had broken in. Or was it possible that her mother was just lonely? How had she endured a decade without a man?

  ‘What about the man who is courting her?’

  ‘That man?’ Fa’iza scoffed. ‘That dirty old man, Mallam Haruna. He has two wives already, wallahi.’

  ‘Hajiya, too, is old, you know. Does she like him?’

  ‘Like him? Haba! How could she like him?’

  Hadiza said nothing for a while. When Fa’iza started snoring softly, Hadiza called her name and asked her to switch off the light on her phone.

  ‘Me? No, I don’t want to sleep in the dark.’ Fa’iza mumbled and was soon snoring again.

  Hadiza listened to the noises of the night. A cricket in a crevice somewhere struck up a solo. A cat, out in the dark, startled Hadiza with its meowing, which sounded like the cries of a human newborn. It kept on for a while and then there was silence. The hush was suddenly ripped by the racket two cats made fighting in the moonlight. Finally, staggered quietness ensued, punctuated by Fa’iza’s mild snores, which in time grew into agitated moaning.

  ‘No … No!’ Fa’iza thrashed about, arguing with the shadows in her dreams, and kicked off the sheet. Hadiza, horrified, sat up, torn between bolting and waking the girl. Fa’iza now started whimpering like a beaten dog. Eventually, she curled up into a foetal position. Soon enough, she was almost quiet, her mild wheezing strumming the night like tender fingers on a guitar.

  2

  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 t
he 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.