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NOSA'S WEDDING

  By

  Sharon Abimbola Salu

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Nosa's Wedding

  Copyright © 2012 by Sharon Abimbola Salu

  The Piano Book

  Cover Image from Shutterstock

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Nosa's Wedding

  About the Author

  Nosa's Wedding

  The hair dresser slid the last silver pin into Nosa’s hair. Then she began to adjust the curls and stray strands of hair on the head of the bride. Nosa yawned. How much longer was this going to take? Bisi, the hair dresser, had been prepping Nosa’s hair for more than two hours now. Nosa had been looking anxiously at the clock the whole time, wondering over and over again, just how long it would be before she would be done. For until Bisi was done, Nosa could not see the finished work. Such was their agreement when Nosa had selected Bisi to be the official hairstylist for the D-day. Nosa tapped her feet impatiently.

  “Auntie, I have finished,” Bisi announced triumphantly, simultaneously spinning the chair around to face the mirror.

  Nosa stared at her reflection in the mirror. She almost did not recognize herself, with the makeover Bisi had accomplished. Her hair was swept to the right, with large curls dominating the right side of her head. Some of them fell forward on that side of her face too, held in place by tiny bobbin pins carefully hidden away in her hair by Bisi’s skillful hands. Four decorative silver pins were placed strategically on the left side of her hair to provide visual balance. She looked stunning.

  “Ohhh! Bisi, you out-did yourself! In fact, I will have to pay you extra for doing such a fantastic job!” Nosa chirped happily, admiring herself in the mirror.

  Bisi just nodded and smiled in response. She had been doing this – styling brides for their weddings – for three years. If there was anything she had learnt, it was never to take any promises made by the bride, seriously, on the day of her wedding. Sticking to the contract price and terms was the best thing to do, and even that had its challenges. Often times, brides would receive services and abscond without paying Bisi’s balance. Those were some of the fall-outs of doing business involving highly emotional events like weddings. But, she would not have it any other way.

  “Thank God you like it, Auntie. What about your makeup?”

  Nosa turned to Mercy, her best friend and maid of honor. Mercy was also the only member of the bridal train, at Nosa's insistence. “Oya, Mercy come and prettify me,” she said snapping her fingers. Mercy obeyed, and as she was applying Nosa’s makeup, she joked about how ‘prettify’ was another word that Nosa had made up. Nosa made her stop what she was doing and asked her to fetch her old dictionary, which was gathering dust with a stack of books in a corner of her bedroom. After retrieving it, she confirmed, to Mercy’s surprise, that ‘prettify’ was actually a word that existed in the English language. Mercy hissed, mumbled something about Nosa being a show-off, and continued with her makeup application. Nosa chuckled and allowed her eyes to wander around the room.

  Her eyes settled on the picture of a man in his early thirties taped to the mirror. All over the room, in fact, lay pictures of Nosa and this man, transforming the room into a shrine of sorts. But this particular picture, the one where Osaze stood in a relaxed pose with his hands in jeans pockets, wearing a white muscled shirt, was the one she treasured the most. It was the picture he had given to her on the day they met. And every time she looked at it, she re-played that scene in her mind.

  Love never tells us when it will come. It just happens and lovers can either fight it or embrace it. Nosa and Osaze chose to embrace love. You see, before meeting Osaze, Nosa had been in a string of bad relationships. Really, really bad relationships. In fact, the last guy she dated before Osaze came into the picture was a real piece of work. He delighted in using his girlfriends as punching bags, and his philosophy was clear: boxing women was a dying sport, and he was the Messiah who was sent to revive it. Nosa was not spared, and for three months she suffered at the hands of this rogue. During that time, she found creative excuses to explain away the bruises and black eyes ‘Sir Box-a-Lot’ had used to decorate her body. It was only when this guy actually graduated from the university that their relationship ended, and Nosa was free to date again. By the time Osaze entered the picture, he had a lot of ‘clean-up’ work to do, as Nosa was understandably still healing from the previous relationship.

  Nosa was a 21 year old student, in her third year at the University of Lagos, studying English. Osaze was a postgraduate student, working towards his Master’s degree in Architecture. He was 28 years old, when they met. That Thursday morning, her 10 a.m. lecture had been cancelled because the lecturer had not returned from an out-of-town conference he had attended the day before. Of course, the students did not find this out until they showed up for the lecture. Not that they complained, either.

  As Nosa still had another lecture in the same building at 12 noon, she knew that going back to her room was out of the question. At Mercy’s suggestion – yes, the same Mercy who was applying Nosa’s makeup – they decided to go to one of the numerous campus photographers to take some pictures. In fact, Mercy proposed that they take what students popularly referred to as a ‘motion picture.’ It consisted of the subject walking slowly and deliberately towards the photographer, who worked ardently to capture the subject ‘in-motion.’ After settling on one photographer and explaining what they wanted, he took a few shots, and they headed back to his photography stand under a tree. It was under this tree that Nosa stood, with Mercy looking over her shoulder, at a portfolio of the photographer’s work, when they both spotted a picture of a rather attractive young man. The photographer looked amused as the girls speculated about the age of the stranger in the picture. Nosa had guessed at 25, while Mercy was convinced that he was at least 27. They were so engrossed in their argument, that they did not notice a tall dark figure walk up to the tree. He stood watching the girls without saying a word, waiting for a lull in the conversation. When the opportunity came, he cleared his throat and announced:

  “Ladies, there’s no need to argue. I am 28.”

  Whether it was the shock of seeing the person in the picture standing before them in the flesh, or whether they had thought he was a spirit, no one knows. Nosa and Mercy just stood there staring at him wide-eyed, mouths open. The stranger laughed at them. He joked with the photographer about how pretty young women should not leave their mouths open for flies. Mercy was still tongue-tied, but it was Nosa who began to apologize, until she realized she didn’t know what exactly she was sorry about. The stranger extended his hand first to Nosa, and then to Mercy, introducing himself as Osaze Felix Idehen.

  Each name rolled off his tongue with the palpable ease that exudes from a man who understands the meaning of his name. It was like he had been rehearsing for that moment, all his life. If Nosa did not know better, she would have assumed that he had christened his own self at his naming ceremony. It was this confidence with which he announced his name that first struck her. Not only was it unusual for a person to introduce himself using his full name, but Osaze spo
ke with the air of a man who knew his own mind. And Nosa was at a point in her life when she was just beginning to discover who she really was.

  They became friends from that moment onwards. Osaze who had come to pay for and collect the picture the girls had been gawking at, decided to hand it over to Nosa. He wrote his ECONET cellphone number on the back of the picture, but promised to call her himself. He did. By the time Nosa returned to class for her 12 noon lecture, her phone's address book held a new entry: the name and number of the man who would steal her heart away. And that was how their 3-year relationship started.

  Nosa's best features, according to Osaze, were her eyes. He would always lovingly refer to them as “the eyes of a goddess.” That Osaze treasured Nosa was an understatement, and no poem he ever wrote was complete without a tribute to her almond-shaped eyes. He was every bit a romantic, and took every opportunity to show it. Even when Nosa was completing her NYSC in Kaduna, Osaze visited