Season of Crimson Blossoms (4 page)

‘I left them playing with their mother.' Munkaila, sitting on the couch, hunched forward and jangled his car keys around his finger.

Hadiza, sitting next to him, looked at the keys, at his chubby finger, and saw how it almost filled the key ring. The folds of flesh around his neck and his pot belly, which he patted intermittently, baffled her – things she could not explain as she could his dark skin. That had come from his father's genes. She could also explain his shortness but not the receding hairline that made him look older than his thirty-four years.

‘I don't understand how these rascals can break into people's houses and make off with things.' Munkaila jangled his keys again.

Binta oiled the shuttle and slipped it into place. She lowered the presser foot and it landed with a thunk. Putting down her feet on the treadle, she felt the machine run. Smoothly. From the huge carton beside her, which had once held a TV set, she picked a piece of cloth, slipped it under the feed dogs, and threaded the needle. She leaned forward to observe the stitches as her foot worked the treadle. But because she wasn't wearing her glasses, she had to lean further in so that her forehead brushed the machine. She adjusted the tension control and the stitch length and pedalled away until the stitches were no longer oily. She removed the cloth and picked up Kandiya's unfinished dress.

‘Hajiya, why don't you use your glasses? Or don't you like them?' Munkaila tapped his foot on the floor.

‘Oh, my glasses were broken during … when I ran into a wall.'

‘How come?'

‘It was dark. But I am fine. No need to worry.'

‘I suppose I have to get you another pair then. But you should be more careful, Hajiya, please.'

‘I will be,' she smiled.

The TV was on but only Ummi seemed mildly interested in it. Soon enough, she drew out a square of bubble wrap, which had been discovered during the rearrangements, and started busting the bubbles.

‘Alhaji, should we go out for a bit?' Hadiza stood up.

‘Ok.' Munkaila rose and together they went out into the yard, where he stood observing the house.

It appeared to Hadiza that the smirk on his face had become part of his comportment; he seemed so comfortable wearing it. She adjusted her headscarf. ‘Hajiya is straining her eyes too much, I guess. I was wondering if she could maybe stop this sewing business altogether. I don't like the way women come here and insult her over unfinished dresses.'

Munkaila sighed. ‘She's just doing that to keep busy. I take care of her.' He jingled his keys some more and as if Hadiza did not know the details already, Munkaila recounted how he had rented the house for his mother and relocated her from Jos when he reached the conclusion that the riots and killings would not end; how he had installed satellite TV and paid the monthly subscription so she would be comfortable in old age. ‘What else would she do with her time?'

While he talked, Hadiza wondered if she was the only one who remembered him as the scrawny undergraduate he had once been, with just one pair of jeans and a couple of spandex shirts to last him an entire semester. Those days at Ahmadu Bello University had been tough for him. When Munkaila graduated at twenty-five, with a degree in Economics, and could not find a job, he interned at Harka Bureau de Change. There, he made money buying and selling foreign currencies. He got lucky when he won the trust of some politicians in government who decided to run their foreign currency business through him.

‘Well, she could maybe go back to teaching. There are primary schools around here she could work with. Maybe even part time. She always enjoyed teaching.'

Munkaila's palm moved up and down his midsection for a while. The image Hadiza's words conjured in his mind contradicted the one he had of his mother living out her days in contented grace. In the fashion of a queen mother.

‘Look, I don't want her being subjected to all sorts of … indignities. She should be comfortable now. She shouldn't suffer all her life.'

‘Hajiya is not that old, you know.'

‘I know, I know. But still—' He shrugged.

‘I was thinking she could perhaps remarry.'

‘Remarry?!
Haba
! Hadiza, remarry?'

‘Sure, why not? Her age mates are remarrying all the time.'

Munkaila cocked his head to one side as if to consider the proposition. The prospect had no appeal for him whatsoever.

Hadiza read the expression crystallising on his face as that of a man who had by chance tasted bitterleaf. ‘Listen, I am a woman and I know how important it is to have a man around. Hajiya is lonely. She is open to the idea. She had mentioned before that there was a man here trying to court her.'

‘Ah-ah! Here?' His mouth dropped in horror. The thought of his mother with another man, other than his father, was shocking enough. He had never imagined anything so horrendous.

‘Don't worry, I won't be leaving until tomorrow so I will find time to talk to her about it. Whatever she says, I'll let you know.'

Munkaila sighed and jiggled his keys some more. He looked down at his shoes and stamped his right foot. Then he looked up at her. ‘Your husband is taking good care of you. Who would have thought you are a mother of three already?'

‘Thank you.' Hadiza bowed with the grace of a practised thespian. And they both laughed. ‘But all this smooth talking won't stop me from reminding you that you need to sponsor me to hajj.'

‘In time, Hadiza, in time. My plan was for Hajiya to go first and
Alhamdulillah
, she went only last year. As for you and that crazy sister of yours, I'm afraid you will have to wait because of the house I'm building. It's taking all my money,
wallahi
.' He went on about how he so desperately wanted to live in his own house and stop paying the exorbitant Abuja rent. About how he wanted Hajiya to move into the quarters he was building for her,
how Hadiza needed to see the place to appreciate how much he was spending. And then he invited her to spend some time at his house, since his wife and two daughters had been asking after her. He stopped when Hadiza sighed.

‘What is it?'

‘She mentioned Yaro.'

‘She did?' Munkaila's face, dark already, darkened further. Unmindful of his sparkling white kaftan, he leaned back against the wall and held his chin in his hand.

In the grave silence that followed, Hadiza looked around and imagined what colours some hedges and flowers would add to the austere yard that stretched before her eyes like a patch of wasteland, like the last decade of her mother's life.

The next day, Hadiza threw aside the sheets and rose. She looked at the wall clock and saw that it was already a quarter to eight. Because of her two boys, Kabir and Ishaq, who had to be readied for school, and the little one, Zubair, named after her father, who insisted on having breakfast alongside his brothers, she was unaccustomed to sleeping late into the morning.

From across the room, Fa'iza's mild snores reached her. Hadiza saw that the girl had kicked away her sheet and her legs were thrown carelessly apart, one resting on little Ummi, who was too busy sleeping to notice.

She got up from the mattress and looked at her face in the mirror that had Ali Nuhu's face stuck at each corner. She observed the oily sheen of sleep on her face so she used her palms to wipe it off and went out to the kitchen. There, she searched the drawers and cabinets and came up with a pack of noodles. Uninterested, she put it back where she found it. She should ask her mother what they could have for breakfast.

In Binta's room, she found the clothes that her mother had slept in strewn on the bed. Her mother was having her bath, so she sat on the bed and waited.

When Binta emerged, she smiled at Hadiza and enquired how
well she had slept. Hadiza assured her that her night had been pleasant enough.

‘Is that an injury on your neck, Hajiya?'

Binta felt the spot where the rogue's dagger had punctured her skin. It was no more than a scratch that had hardened into a little black scab, which was peeling off of its own accord. ‘Just a scratch. Have you spoken to your sister?' Binta sat on the stool before the vanity table and looked at the healing wound in the mirror. In one swift movement, she peeled off the scab and examined the fresh skin.

‘No, not since I arrived. Should I call her?'

‘Perhaps not. Hureira is so much trouble, you should just let her be.' Binta applied lotion to her body. ‘Her husband called me the other day to complain about her tyranny. I promised to talk to her but she wouldn't take my calls.'

‘Hureira
kenan
!' Hadiza chuckled. ‘She should have been a man with that temper and rebelliousness.'

‘
Lallai kam
! She would have been worse than your father was, may Allah rest his soul.'

‘
Kai
! Hajiya.'

‘Well, you know it's true.'

Hadiza said nothing and after a while she stood up. ‘Well, I was wondering what you wanted for breakfast so we could send Fa'iza to the shops.'

‘How about masa?' Binta smiled as she powdered her face. ‘Tabawa makes the best masa in these parts. Fa'iza knows her place.'

‘Ok. Masa it is.'

When Hadiza got back to Fa'iza's room, the girl was already up, wiping sleep from her eyes with a cotton ball dipped in facial cleanser. Hadiza gave her instructions and some money from her purse while she went to the kitchen to heat a pot of water.

Fa'iza took time powdering her face and drawing lines around her lips with an eye pencil. When she was done, she pulled a hijab over her head, fetched a food flask from the kitchen and went out.

‘Hajiya! Hajiya! Aunty Hadiza! Come and see.' There was more elation than fear in Fa'iza's voice.

The two women rushed to investigate the excitement, Binta's hijab flapping like the wings of a desperate bird. On the threshold
was the missing decoder, sitting on the DVD player. And on top of them all was a transparent plastic bag containing a mobile phone and some jewellery.

‘Our decoder is back!' Little Ummi, eyes puffy with sleep, had snuck into the space between her grandmother and her aunt.

‘But this is not Hajiya's handset,' Fa'iza observed.

The whir of the electric motor filled the house. The power had just come back on and, knowing very well the vagaries of the power company, Binta sought to make the best of it. She had no more than some minor mending to do – having finally discharged her duty to Kandiya – and this she finished in no time.

She then went about dusting the TV, the DVD player and the decoder that Hadiza had put back on the stand before she had left for Munkaila's place the day before. While dusting the small pile of books shelved on the little cupboard in the corner, her eyes fell on Hemingway's
The Old Man and the Sea
. But Binta picked out a Danielle Steel novel instead and tossed it on the couch. With the little chores completed, and Fa'iza and Ummi at school, she sat down and started reading. The print was large so she could manage without her glasses. Her reading was interrupted by a knock on the door. Had she been so engrossed she did not hear the gate disturbed? She rose and opened the door.

Her assailant from the other day, looking less fierce, was standing at her door. ‘Hajiya, please, I'm not here to hurt you.' His spiky hair was covered by a black beanie so that only his sleek sideburns showed.

She threw her weight behind the door and was about to shut it when she noticed the way he fidgeted with his hands before him, the rings on his fingers gleaming in the morning sun.

‘I'll scream.' But her strained voice was no more than a low growl above the wild rhythm of her heartbeat.

‘Please, don't.' He stepped back and held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

‘What do you want?'

‘You understand, I don't want to hurt you. I just want to—'

In the fraction of a second their eyes locked, he reminded her of the countless new students who had stood before her during her teaching years, shifting from one foot to the other, desperate to run to the toilet but not certain how to go about asking permission.

‘I don't want to rob you, you understand?' When he saw she was looking into his eyes, he looked away. He took another step backward and was now at the edge of the veranda.

Binta pushed the door a little further.

‘I brought back your things: the decoder, DVD player, your gold—'

‘What was left of it.'

‘Yes, yes. I had already sold the others … but I'll get them back, you understand? I'll get them back. And your phone too.'

When she said nothing, he went on: ‘You understand? The person who bought your phone has travelled. But I will get it back. That's why I brought another one, in the meantime.'

‘I don't want it. Just leave me alone.'

She saw him standing awkwardly, not sure what to do with his hands. Her eyes grew soft because he reminded her then, more than ever, of Yaro, who had first tainted her perceptions with the smell of marijuana all those years before.

‘You understand? I want to apologise for what happened.' He rubbed his hands. ‘I am sorry. I will bring back the phone … and the other jewellery too.' He turned and left.

When she closed the door, she discosvered that her face was wet with tears – testament to the confusing sentiments that besieged her heart.

The assailant walked past the little police post to the next building, an uncompleted structure whose nondescript entrance was screened with roofing sheets. Someone who had stumbled into some money had thought it wise to build a multi-storey shopping complex. He obtained a piece of land big enough for several shops but had only managed to build the ground floor before the money dried up. The moss-covered bricks had seen many rains.

San Siro, as the place became known, was special. In the feigned ignorance of the neighbouring police post, its fame blossomed. In the evenings, it teemed with young men whose motorcycles would crowd the entrance and take up most of the street. The riders, and many others besides, would be inside enjoying thick joints and lively arguments about life seen through cannabis fumes. They debated football and ganja-inspired philosophies plucked gingerly from the precipice of inebriation. Dealers, too, came for the serrated leaves. At San Siro, the weed was supreme. On the side, some of the boys dealt other things – codeine, solution, tramol and other assorted mixures, but for the rogue with spiky hair, weed was
the
thing.

Walking past the young men lifting weights in what would have been the front of the building but was now effectively a compound, he slid a key into the last shop and turned it. He hissed, replaced the key with another and was rewarded with a click. He had had to change the lock after the rather unusual events of the previous week. Their next-door neighbours, the police, under the charge of the new commanding officer, had raided San Siro and bashed in all the doors. And under the guise of police work, they had carted away sacks of premium and dirty weed, which later turned up with some other dealers elsewhere. Such an occurrence, commonplace as it was elsewhere, was as astonishing as it was unprecedented at San Siro.

He went in and slumped on the mattress that was pushed against the wall, beneath the huge poster of the entire AC Milan squad, whose grounds the place was named after. Because the rogue with spiky hair, lord of this San Siro, was a fan.

‘Reza, what's up?' Babawo, his friend and right-hand man, stood shirtless by the door, his knotted muscles glistening with sweat.

His friends called him Reza, a corruption of razor, a title he
earned after weed had given him the courage to cut his half-brother on the arm with a blade he had been carrying for months under his shirt. That was eleven years earlier, when he was just fourteen.

‘Give me a stick, Gattuso.' Reza pulled off his shirt, dumped it on the mattress beside him and collected the proffered cigarette.

Babawo drew back and waited while Reza smoked. Because he was short and stocky and kept a beard, they called him Gattuso, after the rugged Italian footballer. He had been living at San Siro since he was seventeen and had never, in the eight eventful years that had passed, talked about going back home. Home was a distant memory for him, a flickering image of him smoking hemp in the bathroom and his father coming at him with a belt. He remembered wrestling down the old man and running out. When the news caught up with him that his father had broken his hip in that encounter, it was easy for him to decide not to return, since his mother had died when he was two. He drifted for a couple of months until he arrived at San Siro and met Reza.

‘You understand, Gattuso, there is a reason for everything.' Reza leaned back against the wall.

Gattuso assumed Reza was in the mood to dispense his peculiar philosophy, which often came on the wings of cannabis-scented meditation. So he leaned back on the doorjamb, scanning the room for something to keep his hands busy.

‘What happened?' Gattuso slapped his feet together. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of hemp. He put it back and folded his arms across his chest.

Reza took his time puffing on the cigarette. Then he shook his head. ‘I robbed this woman who reminded me of my mother. She had this gold tooth, you know, just like my mother, you understand.'

Babawo's eyes popped. It was the first time he had heard Reza mention his mother. He patted his pockets with accustomed agitation, and finally settled on cracking his knuckles.

‘Just go now. I want to sleep.' Reza seemed tired of speaking. He picked up his shirt and dusted the mattress with it. Then he sat waiting for Gattuso to leave.

But Gattuso sat on the worn blue rug instead and yawned. ‘I think I will catch some sleep too.'

‘Go to your room!'

Gattuso sighed and rose. He slapped his pockets for no particular reason, and went out humming.

Hassan ‘Reza' Babale was ten the first time he saw his mother. His father, sitting next to him in the car, turned to him every other minute, patting his head, asking if he was tired. He plucked the boy's cheeks and turned his head this way and that, inspecting the hollows on his face with his one good eye, as he often did with the cows he traded in. Each time, a shadow would crawl across his face and he would urge the boy to eat more of the biscuit he was holding.

The boy had been in class when his teacher, with his usual animated gesticulations, announced that his father was waiting for him. That he could take his bag along and he wished him a safe journey. When he came out, his father was standing in the sun, beaming.

‘Come, we are going to see your mother.' He took his arm and led him away.

They went home and his father made him take a bath and put on his finest clothes: the pale blue embroided kaftan from the last Eid. Then they got into a car heading to Lafia, to see a mother he had only heard whispers of.

The boy brushed away crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve and raised his innocent eyes to his father's face. ‘Will she be staying with us now?'

‘You want her to stay, don't you?' His father leaned forward, using his handkerchief to clean the child's face, his damaged eye looming closer. The boy could almost imagine how the highwaymen had struck him with a club all those years before and how his father had desperately clung to his bag of money. ‘Tell her that; that you want her to stay and look after you, mhm?'

The fat driver yawned and threw a piece of kola in his mouth. He slotted a tape in the cassette player. Musa Dan Kwairo's voice poured out from the device. They listened to the renowned praise singer lauding another royalty in some far-fetched place, a distant kingdom closer to that mystical shelter where the sun set.

The boy shifted on the seat. ‘Why did she leave, Abba?'

His father sighed and leaned into the backrest. ‘You will not understand.'

‘But Bulama said that his mother said—'

‘Shush. Never mind what your brother says about your mother. She is
your
mother.'

But he was tormented by the taunts of his half-siblings. Even Talatu, one of his two stepmothers, had said his mother was a ‘Kano to Jeddah'. There had been muted talks about her questionable liaison with dubious Arabs.

His father, Babale Mairago, had long been buying cattle from the Fulanis in the North and selling to the Igbos in the South-east. He had lost his left eye on one such trip when he and his friend Buba Mohammed ran into bandits on the highway. Regardless, his good eye remained fixed on Buba's spirited seventeen-year-old daughter, Maimuna. And when she was forced to marry him, a stormy affair that lasted less than two years, she dumped their six-month-old son and caught a flight to Jeddah, for purposes other than hajj.

When Babale received news of Maimuna's deportation from Jeddah, he decided to take his son to see her and help tame the wild flames she was infamous for.

The boy saw her; saw her supple skin, her almond eyes and long lashes, saw the diagonal scarification on her left cheek. She rode on a zephyr of musk towards him. When she patted his head and ran her hands down the sides of his face, his little heart did a cartwheel.

‘You have grown so big.' Her voice caressed his ear like the evening breeze sweeping through a grass field. ‘You are in what class now?'

‘Primary six.'

She smiled and enchanted him with her gold tooth so that he stood lamely, waiting, hoping for her to smile again.

‘Do you know who I am?'

He nodded.

She contemplated him for a while as one would a feeble kitten, then pulled one of the silver rings from her fingers. This she clasped
into his palm, pressing his fingers close around it. The elegance with which she performed the gesture mesmerised the boy.

She turned and was walking away, past his father, whose good eye had been on her the whole time, when the man reached out and held her sleeve.

‘Maimuna.' His voice was husky, desperate even. His lower lip trembled but no other words came out.

She eyed him. ‘Get your filthy hands off me, dirty old man.' She hissed and wrenched her sleeve free.