Season of Crimson Blossoms (6 page)

Hadiza returned from her overnight stay at Munkaila's to find Binta's place suffused in the aromatic incense her mother had lit in the corners of the house. It was some time before she realised that there was a muted ambience that the incense complemented. But aside from Binta's inexplicable coyness, something more befitting of Fa'iza than a woman well into her fifth decade, there was no sense of anything dramatic having happened.

Hadiza had returned with residual excitement from having seen Munkaila's two daughters and presented her mother with the new glasses Munkaila had bought for her. She had met Binta lighting another stick of incense and tucking it into a corner where one had just burned out.

Binta bashfully accepted the proffered glasses in their exquisite casing and put them down by her side. When she said thank you, her voice had sounded off-key.

‘Aren't you going to look at them?'

‘Oh. I will, later.'

Hadiza looked at her mother. Binta, sensing the probe, turned and flashed a smile at her daughter. She opened the case and put
on the glasses. Just as suddenly she took them off and replaced them in the case.

‘They are nice.' Binta glanced at her bathroom door. ‘I must take a bath now.'

‘You look so fresh I would have thought you had bathed. And your perfume is strong, Hajiya. How can you stand all that perfume and all this incense? One could choke on it all.'

Binta smiled and walked towards the bathroom.

Registering her mother's discomfort, Hadiza excused herself and went in search of Fa'iza, who she found in her room, lying prone on the mattress. Fa'iza, smiling to herself, was lost in the novella she was reading.

‘
Ke
! Put that rubbish book away.'

‘Rubbish book?'

‘Why is Hajiya acting funny?'

‘Hajiya? I don't know,
wallahi
. I just returned from school and met her like this.'

Hadiza leaned against the doorjamb. ‘I shall go back and ask her as soon as she is done bathing.'

‘Bathing? This should be like the third time she has had a bath in the last few hours.'

That was when Hadiza knew for certain that there must be something her mother was trying to enshroud in folds of fragrance, or wash away in her numerous baths.

She went out to the bed of petunias she had planted two days before to enliven her mother's yard. There were dry patches emerging so she watered the plants rather generously and sat by them, imagining what they would look like when they grew.

Binta emerged from the house to find her daughter meditating by the damp flower bed. She did not want Hadiza to catch a whiff of the objectionable smell of fornication she was certain she exuded. From a distance, she asked if Hadiza was all right. But when Hadiza turned to her, Binta averted her eyes.

‘Are you still leaving tomorrow?'

‘Yes.'

‘Stay a few more days.'

Hadiza chuckled. There had been little conviction in her mother's
voice. ‘My husband called earlier to remind me I had agreed to return home tomorrow. The kids are missing me, I'm sure.'

‘Yes. The kids.'

‘He told me Kabir had a cut on his hand. I should go see how he is faring.'

Binta envied her this liberty she enjoyed, this luxury of calling her first child by its name and holding it and treating it like one's beloved. Such affection she, Binta, had never experienced from her mother, nor dispensed to her late son Yaro.

‘Don't you ever feel … strange calling him like that? By his name? Your first son?'

Hadiza turned to her mother and laughed. ‘
Lallai kam
, Hajiya, this is the twenty-first century. I shall not subject myself and my children to the shackles of the old ways like you did.'

Her eyes misty and her heart heavy, Binta leaned on the pillar and turned her eyes to a bulbul hopping on the fence. Her daughter's response both pleased and saddened her. There were things she wished she had done differently. Such as showing Yaro some affection, protecting him as every mother should do her child. And here she was, fifteen years after his death, seeking him in the eyes of the miscreant who had scaled her fence. That felon she had shielded because she saw the shadow of Yaro in his eyes. The son she had loved, but to whom she had been forbidden to show love.

She had not meant for it to happen, the heady events of that afternoon. At least not exactly the way they had. It all seemed like a blur now. She remembered him looking at the fading scar on her neck and saying how sorry he was. The little spark of concupiscence deep within her had burst into a flame. She had seen its reflection in his eyes, the fire, blazing until he could no longer subdue it. Her heart had been racing. And when he had ventured to fondle her breasts, she had moaned and tried feebly to move away. He had put his arms around her, and she had found his lips.

Shame had come much later, after they were done and lay side by side trying to catch their breath. She got up and pulled down her dress. When he had come to leave, he had halted before her as she stood by the door, eyes averted. Uncertainly, they had stood
like that, until he parted the curtains and went out. And when she sensed him gone, because she did not hear his footfalls, she had exhaled. She knew then that her search for Yaro in the eyes of a stranger had unshackled her long-suppressed desires and left the objectionable stench of fornication clinging to her.

‘Mother, you have not said anything.'

Binta sighed. ‘You girls are so lucky.'

‘Really?'

‘In my time, such things as a woman calling her first child by its name were frowned at. Some women didn't even acknowledge their second or third child.'

‘This is not your time as such, Hajiya.'

‘Well, make the best of it.' And this Binta said with such sincerity that Hadiza turned to look at her. But Binta had her face nestled against the side of the pillar, staring at the fence where the bird had been.

The evening breeze ferried a sweet fragrance to Hadiza. She savoured it for a while before deciding it had been applied rather too lavishly. ‘Your perfume smells nice, Hajiya.'

Binta was silent for a while. ‘Thank you.'

‘You have suddenly grown fond of perfumes and incense.'

‘Hmm. I have always been fond of perfumes and incense.'

‘Yes. But you have been burning incense non-stop since I returned.' She stopped short of mentioning the three baths.

Binta's silence stretched almost into disregard. Finally, she drew her hijab tightly around her. ‘You should talk to your sister Hureira. I fear she might end up ruining her second marriage just as she did with the first one.'

Their talk strayed from Binta's sudden infatuation with sweet-smelling things to Hureira's startling eccentricities. Until the gathering dusk ushered them in to make plans for dinner.

When Reza slipped his hand under her wrapper, he discovered, much to his surprise, that the clump of ancient hair he had encountered the first time was gone. She was amused by his startled expression and offered only the faintest resistance when he undid the wrapper and looked at her. She allowed him to sit her on the cushioned stool before the dressing table. When he knelt before her, she turned her face away and pressed her thighs together. But once he prised them apart, gently, and took his tongue to her, she held his head of minuscule anthills and quaked. And because they were alone in the house, because she had always wanted to, because she could not stop herself, she moaned. With his tongue, he unlocked something deep within her. She soared with tears streaming down her face.

When they were lying on the bed, still unable to look each other in the eye, Binta, her back to him already, moved further away. ‘I am not a '
yar iska
.'

Reza frowned. ‘Well, I never said you were. I think very highly of you, you understand?'

‘I don't want you making assumptions about me because of what happened. I am a decent, respectable woman, you know.
I have never been with any man other than my husband, God rest his soul.'

‘I understand that, trust me. I would never think of you in such a light.' He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. ‘I don't understand how this thing happened.'

She sighed. ‘Since the last time you came and … I have been thinking people could look at me and see fornication written across my forehead. Or perceive its smell on me.'

He chuckled. ‘You smell nice. And there is nothing written on your forehead.'

‘No, you don't understand. You may be used to such things. I am not. The first few days, I was overcome by guilt and shame. I couldn't attend classes at the madrasa for fear people would know what had happened. And when you didn't come back I thought you despised me for what had happened, what I let happen. And then a week passed and I thought oh, well perhaps I wasn't even good enough for him. What could he possibly do with a hag like me?'

‘No, no, you are not a hag, stop saying that.' He reached across the bed and put an arm around her. ‘And I don't despise you. I thought you despised me for taking advantage of you and I had no idea what to expect if I came back. I didn't plan for any of this to happen, you understand.'

‘No one must ever know about this.'

‘They won't hear it from me. I promise.'

She sighed. ‘So, why do they call you Reza anyway?'

He scoffed and moved away from her, turning his back to her. ‘It was a long time ago. I was young then.'

She turned and looked at his tight muscles and saw how well chiselled his body was, reminding her how young he was, and how old she had become. She drew the sheets over her bosom.

‘I have many brothers, from the same father, you understand.' He cleared his throat, as if to cough away the dust the years had cast on these unvisited memories. For a while he was silent.

‘They always made fun of me, because my … because my … because I was different, you understand.'

She reached out and stroked his back, tracing the scythe-shaped scars.

‘They always said bad things about … you know, they were
always saying bad things, you understand. So one day, when we finished from school, Bulama came to say things to me. He is older than me and he was always picking fights because … he was always fighting me because I allowed him to. But I had had some grass then, my first time, and I was feeling … you know, bold, you understand. So I gave him a good beating. He picked up a stone but I cut him with a blade, made a huge gash on his arm. His mother Talatu said that my father had given birth to an accursed razor. She started calling me Reza to mock me. But I didn't mind.'

‘So that was how.'

When he turned and smiled, she saw how ruggedly handsome he was. They looked into each other's faces, their eyes saying the things their hearts were thinking, things they would not voice.

Binta looked away first, thinking how insane it was that she had just slept with someone who reminded her of her first son, who was probably younger than Yaro had been when he died. She covered her face with her palms. ‘How far did you go, with school I mean?'

He sighed. ‘I was expelled in my final year in secondary school.'

‘Why?'

‘I broke a teacher's nose.' He shook his head. ‘He wanted to flog me on the assembly ground because they found me dealing weed to some students.'

‘So, what stopped you from going back and finishing up somewhere else?'

‘Too much metal in my head, too many knife fights, too much weed, too much … stupidity.' He tapped his temple with his finger. ‘Ten years is a long time. There's too much smog in my head now, you understand.'

When her silence, so profound, resonated with him, he glanced over his shoulder and found her with her palms over her face.

‘Are you all right?'

She could not tell him that some of her tears were for him. But that most of them, the ones gilded with reminiscence, were for Yaro. So she sniffled and wiped her face with the bed sheet. ‘You could always go back.' Her voice was thick with remorse. ‘I went back. You could do it too. You are a man; it would be easier for you.'

‘You?'

‘I was taken out of school to marry a man I barely knew, Allah rest his soul. After I'd had my first two sons, I told him there was an adult education class in the neighbourhood and I wanted to join. He was reluctant at first, but I persuaded him. I studied while raising my children. I had my daughter Hureira, who is married now in Jos, and Zainab, who died at birth, and then I had Hadiza. All whilst studying for my teacher's certificate. I was a primary school teacher for about twenty years in Jos. I had to quit when my son relocated me here.'

He looked at her with renewed admiration. ‘
A gaishe ki
, Hajiya.' He tapped his right fist in his left palm, offering her the salutation of the '
yan daba
thugs.

Binta threw back her head and laughed.

He watched her laughing, and wondered what his mother's laughter would sound like, or if she ever laughed like this. When the sheet she was holding against her bosom slipped, exposing the mounds of her breasts, he wondered why he was sexually attracted to a woman who was older than his mother.

But whatever magic was manifesting between them at that moment was disrupted by his phone. The little device chimed and the choice of his ring tone, a rather bawdy pop song, caused him to hurriedly reach for the phone and press the receive button.

‘Afternoon, sir.' He got off the bed and moved away from Binta.

She reached for a book on the bedside drawer and her hand fell on Az Zahabi's
The Major Sins
. She withdrew her fingers, tainted by the fluids of her indiscretions, and instead put on her dress, pretending not to be listening to him muttering into the phone.

‘Sir, what about these people? The new man is giving me trouble, sir. All right, sir, all right, sir.' He shoved the phone in his pocket and started looking for his shirt. ‘I've got to go. My boss just called.'

She opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by noises from the gate. She knew it would be little Ummi, who always used all her might to open the side door of the gate, pushing it until it rebounded off the fence. She knew that Fa'iza would be right behind her. Binta scrambled across the bed and furtively peered through the window. Ummi entered, dragging her backpack on the ground, the front of her uniform dusty. Fa'iza strolled in behind
her, swinging her hips for the benefit of a drooling audience of imaginary admirers.

‘Quick, my granddaughter is back.'

Reza found his shirt and threw it over his shoulders.

‘Hurry, out the back.' She pulled her hijab over her head and stumbled towards the door.

‘My shoes are at the front.' His alarm was conveyed not only in his voice but also in the expression on his face.

‘No time.' Binta led him out through the living room to the kitchen. She opened the back door, shoved him out and closed the door. Through the keyhole, she spied him deftly scaling the fence and disappearing into the narrow alley behind. Fa'iza was salaaming at the front door. Binta sighed, patted down her hijab and re-entered the living room in time to see the two girls entering. There were dried tear-tracks on Ummi's face.

‘There is a pair of men's shoes outside.' Fa'iza ushered in a stream of sunlight as she held up the curtains.

Keeping as far away from Fa'iza as she could manage, Binta hurried across to her room, locked the door, lit two sticks of incense and watched the alluring smoke curling up to the ceiling. But the unmistakable miasma of sin still prevailed. So she lit two more sticks and then headed to the bathroom to wash away her indiscretions.

The sun was a russet glow on the western horizon as Reza returned to San Siro. The noise and the pungent smell of weed greeted him from beyond the makeshift fence of roofing sheets that formed a curtain between San Siro and the thriving market that surrounded it. Reza stood by the entrance and looked at the dozen or so young men crowded into the small confines, some lifting weights, others smoking weed in the corner. On the veranda, by the four shops that had been converted to rooms, young girls sat, ogling the men, gossiping, giggling while pretending to be minding the cheap noodles swimming in palm oil or the sun-beaten, almost-expired alale and the danwake they were vending. Farther away, near the crude toilet hemmed in by the fence and
the pile of yellow jerrycans that some of the boys used for their black market trade in petrol, Reza saw a boy fondling one of the foodsellers, who was laughing like a hyena.

Apart from the residents – the five or six people who had called San Siro home for years – there were many others who came for weed, or the other intoxicants sold on the sly.

‘Aha, Reza is here. Ask him.'

Babawo Gattuso jumped up from the worn jerrycan on which he had been sitting and was instantly at Reza's side. ‘Reza, how many times has Milan won the Champions League? How many times?'

All eyes turned to Reza.

‘Seven.'

A raucous uproar greeted his statement. Some of the boys beat on empty jerrycans and whooped derisively.

‘I told you, I told you, you ass!' Gattuso's voice rose above the noise. ‘You don't know anything and you want to argue. When did you even start watching football,
dan iska
?'

‘You are the ass, you idiot!' Joe shouted. He was a lanky fellow who wore a flat cap drawn low over one eye. When he first came to San Siro he had said that he was a student somewhere but he was drunk so often that no one was certain which school he was supposed to be attending, or even where he came from. He assimilated into San Siro until he became a fixture, like the mould on the walls.

Reza looked around him at the excited young men shouting, at those in the corners smoking pot and sniffing glue, at the boy in the corridor pawing at the breasts of one of the vagrant hawkers. ‘What's the argument about exactly?'

A melee rose up in response. Reza tried to make sense of it but could not. He soon lost interest and tried to slip through the crowd of eager faces.

‘Man U for life!' Dogo, one of the residents, shouted impulsively. His real name was Musa Danlami and he had been living at San Siro since his mother, tired of his thievery, cursed him and sent him out to the street. He had the knack for turning up at meal times, or just when his mother had put away some money for his siblings' school fees, only to disappear with the money afterwards. It was said that he got his sense of timing from his father, an
itinerant labourer, who turned up every other year to get his wife pregnant and disappear again ‘in pursuit of wealth'.

Joe looked at him and hissed. ‘You know, Dogo, you are a goat, I swear to God.'

‘Man U for life,
dan uban mutum
! Useless drunk. You stink of beer and your words smell like shit, bastard dog!'

Joe would have hit him but was restrained by Dan Asabe, the carpenter.

‘You romancing me or what, faggot? Get your hands off me,
dan daudu
!'

Dan Asabe let go and retreated to a corner. There had been whispers about his sexual preferences. His liaison with Obinna, who owned a provisions shop down the lane, had fuelled these. Obinna had, on occasions, been accused of luring young boys with money. And when he got close to Dan Asabe – who had been caught several times spying on the other boys in the bathroom, and had never had Rita, who everyone else had had, or even been seen with a girl – everyone made assumptions. Every time allegations were thrown at him, Dan Asabe would sneak away and try to make himself unobtrusive.

Reza held Gattuso by the arm and led him to his room. ‘Gattuso, I have told you to keep this place in order. You know this new policeman has not been sorted out yet.'