Season of Crimson Blossoms (29 page)

‘So you are the man.'

‘I am, sir.' Baleri was awed by the little man with boyish eyes. He had been stunned when he had first got the call from the senator four days before. He had immediately thought it was a scam, until he had been asked for his account number and had got confirmation of his account being credited.

‘Well, you must understand we are in the middle of campaigns. We have the primary elections tomorrow and all these people won't let us rest, you see.'

‘I can see that, sir. I have been waiting to be let in for almost two and half hours, sir.'

‘Oh, really, officer? I am so sorry to hear that. You know how these things are.' Senator Maikudi wondered if he had made a mistake reaching out to this man, but it was an act of desperation. Now he had to find a way to get rid of him. To get ahead in politics required the ability to make such instinctive decisions and he knew Baleri was not a keeper. He didn't know why and was not inclined to bother figuring it out at that moment. He did not feel it necessary to invite Musa to serve tea to this policeman.

‘Like I said the first time we spoke on phone, there are no permanent friends in politics but permanent interests. I can see you are an ambitious man. You remind me of myself when I was your age.' He leaned forward. ‘So let's work together and see how we can be of benefit to each other. What do you say?'

‘I am very honoured, sir. Very honoured—'

‘Now, you know, I have asked you to do something. Perhaps I should explain the expediency involved in this matter. I want these boys found. I don't want them interrogated. Never. I suppose you know what to do.'

Baleri smiled. ‘I've already got one, sir. The others I will find.'

‘Yes. So I have been informed. Good job.'

‘Even …'

‘Yes?'

‘Even Reza, sir? Considering you have a special relationship with him.'

The senator leaned forward and held up one finger before his face. He froze in that pose for so long that Baleri wondered if he was having a heart attack.

‘He is the priority. He must never be allowed to talk. If you can ensure that never happens, I will make sure you are set up for good.'

‘I understand, sir.' A smile spread on Baleri's face.

The senator simultaneously appreciated and resented the greed in that smile. He reached for the briefcase by the side of his couch and opened it. He counted out a wad of notes and put them on the coffee table between him and the policeman. He summoned his assistant Moses with a buzzer.

‘Moses, fetch us an envelope, will you?'

‘Right away, sir.' Moses adjusted his tie and went out.

The policeman eyed the bundle of money on the table as discreetly as he could. He wondered exactly how much was there. He needed that new car and with this, and whatever he would earn from getting Reza, he was sure to get a decent vehicle that he could drive to Christy and show her the incalculable folly in turning him down. He would show her he could be a success.

Moses returned with the envelope but went round to whisper in the senator's ear. The senator nodded and cleared his throat and smiled at Baleri. ‘I'm afraid there has been a development, officer.'

The senator thought Reza looked very much like the fugitive he had become. Fortunately, he had asked for him to be let in through the rear. He didn't, under any circumstance, want his association with Reza to be known. ‘You look terrible, my friend.'

Reza caressed his haggard beard. ‘That is the least of my worries, sir.'

‘Indeed. Indeed.'

Musa came in with the tea tray and put it down on the rug just in front of the senator. He knelt down and poured two cups. When asked, Reza said yes, he would like some milk. The notion
of having tea without milk was incomprehensible to him. In that particular instance, he wasn't opposed to the idea of tea at a quarter to midnight. It would be the first decent thing he had put in his mouth in five days.

The senator watched Reza savour the beverage and felt a tinge of remorse. Reza had been loyal, and would continue to be, he knew. But he had become a liability.

‘Reza, I am not happy with you, you know.'

‘My apologies, sir.'

‘A simple task like this, you and your people messed it up. You got the wrong person. And then you lost the wrong person.'

‘My apologies, sir.'

‘I am not happy with you at all.' He sipped his tea and reclined on his leather cushion.

‘I will make it up to you, Alhaji. I promise.'

‘And how will you do that?'

‘We could get her back.'

The senator laughed. ‘As if she was any use to me in the first place.'

‘Then I shall do anything you desire, sir. Anything. Just give me another chance.'

The senator mulled the offer, whose sincerity he did not doubt. Someone with Reza's skill was an asset. He could get in the gutters and do the dirty jobs. He sat up and took another sip.

‘You see, Reza, these things we do, the struggle and agitation and call for justice, is it not for you, the masses?'

‘Indeed, sir.'

‘If this country improves, is it not you and your generation that will enjoy it? I am old now, what more do I want from this world, eh?'

Reza nodded.

‘I make these agitations and fight this dirty war and the people I am fighting for insult me and insult my father, that poor, hardworking man. May Allah have mercy on his soul.'

‘Ameen.'

‘They insult us and we still fight for them. You know why?'

Reza shook his head.

‘Because they don't understand what we are doing for them.
It's like a sheep, you see, when it's raining and you try to get it under shelter, it might think you have bad intentions towards it. But is it not a kind thing you are doing for it?'

‘Indeed, sir.'

‘You see.' He posed dramatically, arms outstretched, mouth agape, beady eyes bright, holding an expression of hurt as if just realising that he had been under-appreciated for many years. ‘But we will continue to fight for them because they are our people and the future we fight for is for our children, not so?'

‘Indeed, sir.'

He raised his cup again and paused with it halfway to his lips. ‘Drink your tea Reza, drink your tea,
ka ji ko
?'

Reza drank, savouring the richness of the milk. When his cup was empty, he cursed the person who first thought that tea was best served in tiny cups. ‘Sir, there is a problem I was wondering if you could help me with.'

‘Yes, I heard about it. I have been informed that you were the one who got into a fight with Alhaji Munkaila and killed him.'

‘You know him, sir?'

‘Ah! Of course. He has done some business for me. He was a good man, Munkaila. May Allah illuminate his grave.'

‘Ameen. Ameen.'

‘
Kai
! Reza, you did not do well killing a good man like that.'

‘It was not intentional. I never meant for it to happen—'

‘I hear you were having a thing with his old woman,
ko
?
Kai
! Reza, you are a proper
dan iska
like this and I never knew.' He threw his head back and laughed. ‘And I was asking you to introduce your girlfriend to me. I should have said womanfriend.'

Reza was at first stunned by the laughter, considering his emotional stake in the whole tragic affair. But the senator was laughing about it. There could be some chance he might help.

He stopped laughing and became serious. ‘You are in a bad situation, my friend. A very bad situation,
gaskiya
.'

‘I know, sir. And I know you can help me.'

The senator was quiet for a while and Reza's anxiety grew. ‘You see, the trouble is that the man you killed, he has friends in important places. And they have an interest in getting you. But I have an interest in you too. You are my man, not so?'

Reza nodded eagerly.

‘I have spoken to my friend, the Assistant Inspector General. He said there is something he can arrange. They can get someone else in your place, you know, a scapegoat, but they have to pin this on someone. But he will need to see you first. Don't worry about anything, I have arranged for my men to take you and bring you back. When you go, tell him what you just told me, tell him it was an accident. You know how to cry
ai?
Cry and tell him how remorseful you are. He likes to hear such things. He will arrange to get someone else in your place, perhaps one of those condemned criminals or armed robbers.'

‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.'

‘Reza, all these favours I am calling in for your sake, they are costing me
fa.
And yet I said do this one job for me and you messed it up, eh?'

‘I apologise, sir.'

‘Go, Moses will take you to see the man. Cooperate with him, ok? And whatever happens, call me and let me know.'

‘Yes, sir.'

He asked Reza to summon Moses and wait for him outside. When Reza reached the door, the senator called his name.

‘Make sure, after this mess is cleared up, that you go back to school. Make something better of your future.'

‘I will. I will.
Nagode sosai.
'

The senator nodded in acknowledgement and waved Reza away.

Moses entered and closed the door. ‘Sir?'

‘Is Baleri in position?'

‘Yes. He is ready.'

‘When it's done, give him his money. I don't want to see him. I don't think I like him.'

‘No problem, sir.'

The senator nodded. And Moses nodded.

Reza, who had always wanted to punch Moses, admired how neat he looked even at midnight, with his shirt tucked in and his tie looking freshly pressed. Moses led him out through the rear door to the car park and to a car where three men in dark suits were waiting.

‘The senator says you should take him to the AIG. Thereafter, take him to where he needs to go. It is an emergency.'

‘You are lucky, the senator likes you.' One of the men put his arm around Reza and opened the rear door of the car.

By the time, the car started moving Reza realised he was flanked by two men. He looked back through the rear windscreen and saw Moses standing where they had left him, watching the car drive away. He suddenly noticed that the two men had their hands under their suits and realised, all too belatedly, that there was something very wrong.

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.