Season of Crimson Blossoms (23 page)

She hesitated. ‘
Allah ya bada sa'a
.'

‘Ameen.'

‘You are not kidding, are you?'

‘Well, you wait and see.' With that he cut the call.

Hureira felt beaten by the determination in his voice, by the stinging indifference. She called him back and when he did not answer, she was certain he hadn't been bluffing.

She threw the phone beside her. ‘
Kutuman buran uba
!'

The girls were astonished, first by the expletive, and then by the manifestation of rage on Hureira's face, more comprehensive than anything they had seen her demonstrate previously. And when she suddenly burst into tears, crying inconsolably, they did not understand that she was being eaten, from the inside out, by the vicious jaws of jealousy.

‘Gattuso, she's dying!' Dogo stood at the top of the staircase, gripping the banister. He turned and ran back to the room where the girl was being held, leaving his voice ringing in the emptiness of the mansion.

Gattuso went up the stairs, two at a time, abandoning his meal of bread and Coca-Cola, which he had been enjoying shirtless, sitting astride the wooden scaffold that served them as a bench. When he got to the room, Dogo was bent over the girl, who was clutching her stomach and writhing on the floor, far from her mat in the corner of the room. She had knocked over the plate of
food purchased from a restaurant close to the park, which Dogo had brought up minutes before, and had made her already dirty kaftan dirtier. There were tears trickling out of the sides of her closed eyes.

‘What the hell did you do to her?'

‘Me? Nothing. Nothing. I just brought the food and found her like this.'

She lay still now, whimpering, lips parted, turning from side to side. Gattuso looked her over but couldn't find any visible injury.

‘What's wrong with her?' Dogo was peering over Gattuso's shoulder.

‘I don't know. She's faking it.' Gattuso straightened, not convinced by his own verdict. He considered Dogo, who also turned an expression of enquiry back on him. It then occurred to Gattuso that, in his hurry, he had neglected to put on his mask. But the girl's eyes had been closed since he entered the room. He retreated, and when Dogo went out after him, he locked the door.

At the edge of the balcony, from where they had an expansive view of the living room below, Dogo spoke in a whisper.

‘You really think she's faking it?'

Gattuso ground his teeth, as if chewing the question. ‘What the fuck do I know? Where the hell is Joe?'

‘Not back from his break. You think we should call Reza? Where did he go anyway?'

‘Said he had some business to take care of.'

‘Business?'

‘That's what he said.'

‘You really think there is something going on with him and that Hajiya?'

Gattuso punched his fist and turned his head until he heard the little cracking sounds of his spine snapping into place. He leaned on the banister.

‘So, you think we should call him?' Dogo asked again.

After some contemplation, in which his palm was familiarly brutalised by his fist, and a crude racket squeezed out of his knuckles, Gattuso shook his head. He fished in his pocket and, to his disappointment, discovered not joints but a cigarette. He lit it and they took turns smoking, in a portentous silence.

And just when peace, in little instalments, was returning to their minds, and to the house, the troubled girl started knocking on the door. Weakly. Then urgently. They looked at each other. Gattuso turned away and continued to smoke, but he was visibly agitated by her repetitive pounding. He threw down the stub and watched it fall all the way down to the living room.

They opened the door and found Leila on the floor, one hand clutching her abdomen, the other on her head, tugging at her hair. If she was faking it – and Gattuso suspected she wouldn't have such acting talent – she was doing so convincingly. He knelt by her to hear what she was saying.

‘Do we take her to the hospital?' Dogo leaned in, his hands on his knees.

‘Are you out of your mind?'

‘Then where the fuck is Reza?'

‘Your phone is ringing.'

Binta looked at her phone, lying next to her on the armrest of the chair, and then at Reza who was sitting on the bed with a disappointed expression on his face. ‘I know.'

He chuckled, ‘Who is it?'

‘My daughter.'

‘Oh. When is she leaving?'

‘I really don't know. I just want her gone. It's bad for a woman to leave her husband's house like that.' Binta adjusted the salmon-pink veil around her neck with a casual elegance.

Reza found the movement titillating. And he liked her veil, the translucence and the flushed hue that, to him, was suggestive of a newly-wed. Of bridehood. The particular reason for that connotation did not interest him for the time being but he loved it. He loved that the veil made her look younger. That she was sitting down with him in that hotel room, even if she had refused to let him touch her.

‘Perhaps, if you take the veil off you will be more comfortable, you understand.'

‘No. Thank you.'

‘Here, let me help you.'

‘Don't come near me.' Her voice was curt, but she was not sorry. She wanted to punish him. ‘You are not laying a hand on me, ever again.'

He cleared his throat. ‘Even lovingly?'

Binta hissed.

He sidled up to her and drew the footstool closer so that when he sat on it, he was barely a foot away from her. He attempted to take her hand. She slapped his away.

‘What do I have to do to win back your trust?'

‘Look, we need to get some things straight.'

‘What things?'

‘If ever there's going to be anything between us again, then you need to be more responsible.'

‘How?'

‘First, if you ever raise your hand against me—'

‘I won't, ever. I promise.'

‘Well, if you do, I will have my son beat you up and have you thrown in jail. I'm not kidding.'

‘Ok. Agreed.'

She sighed. ‘And you need to open an account. I am not comfortable keeping your money.'

‘Will you help me open it, please?'

‘No.'

‘Please.'

‘I said no.'

‘
Haba,
Hajiya.'

‘Look, Hassan. I'm serious here. We can't go on like this.'

‘Ok, ok. I will. I will. Is that all?'

She resisted the urge to smile. ‘You have to take that exam and go back to school.'

‘Oh, mehn!' He threw back his head. ‘Not that, please.'

‘Well, in that case, I suppose we are done then.'

‘Look, I can't be doing that now, you understand. I've got commitments. Maybe later.'

‘Perhaps, when you make up your mind to do that, then we can see what happens, assuming you haven't found a younger girl to occupy your interest.'

He reached in his pocket and found a joint. He searched for his lighter.

‘You won't smoke that here.'

‘Come on, cut me some slack,
saboda Allah mana
.'

She stood up. ‘Well, you can have your weed, while I head home.'

‘You are making things a bit tight for me. I need to cool off somehow, you understand.'

‘No weed.' Her face indicated that her resolve was absolute.

Groaning, Reza slumped on the bed. He was tempted to leave but he knew he would be haunted by the image of her terrified face as he had raised his hand to strike her. It was the image that had lingered in his heart since the incident, each time thoughts of her occurred to him. And such thoughts had been sequential, a conveyor belt of guilt, haunting his conscience. He never again wanted to see her eyes, hitherto always filled with adoration, inundated with fear of him.

‘Hassan, I am trying to help you. I care for you and I want you to get your life on track.'

‘My life is on track, you understand. My life is on track.'

‘It's not and you know it.'

She sat down beside him and, as she would her own son, talked to him about the importance of education. Again. He got up, sat by the window, fetched a cigarette from his pocket and, without deigning to look at her, lit it.

‘I don't understand why you insist on this going to school business.'

When his phone rang, he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen for a moment, then shoved it back in his jeans.

‘Answer your call.'

‘Don't worry, it's just Gattuso. My brother. My friend.'

‘Gattuso?' Binta chuckled. ‘Where do you guys get your names from?'

Reza, smoking pensively, went and sat on the chair Binta had vacated not long before, where the depression her weight had made in the cheap foam still tarried. He sat down, one leg thrown over the armrest. ‘Why do you keep pushing and pushing and making demands like this? I am who I am, you understand? This is who I want to be.'

Binta fiddled with her fingers. ‘My husband, God rest his soul, was killed by some Christian boys he employed. They were people he called by their birth names and did business with. My sister's husband and her son were hacked to death by their Christian neighbours because a woman urged them to. But my sister and her daughters were saved from being raped and murdered by a Christian woman whose husband had been killed by some Muslim youths.'

She dabbed her eyes with the corner of her veil, adding a damp patch, splotched with the blackness of her kohl, to the ruddy fabric.

Reza paused with his cigarette held inches from his ear. ‘Why are you telling me all this?'

She looked up from her fingers into his eyes. ‘Because I want you to understand why I have not given up on humanity, and why I won't give up on you.'

Binta climbed off the bike, having been intercepted at the turn to her house by Mallama Umma, who stood and flagged her down. Binta paid the bike man and he zoomed away, making a dramatic turn as he went, his knees almost grazing the ground and his rear tyre firing up a storm of dust. The move upset the women, who turned their faces away and covered their noses, Umma with her hijab, Binta with her veil.

‘
Dan iska kawai
,' Mallama Umma coughed.

They waved away the dust and exchanged pleasantries in the fashion of elderly women. They enquired after each other's health and grandchildren and Mallama Umma, regarding with disapproval Hajiya Binta's girlish veil, commented that her friend was ageing with grace. Binta observed prudently that Umma's new hijab was both regal and quite appropriate.  

Umma wondered, and this, she explained, was her reason for flagging her down, if Binta would be interested in visiting Laraba, a much younger classmate at the madrasa who had just put to bed. Her fifth, Umma said, and fortunately without complications. So, although unprepared, Binta found herself walking along with Mallama Umma to a
barka
visit.

As they walked, two women in the afternoon sun, past the houses and power poles defaced by campaign posters, Umma attempted to channel the conversation they were having about the health merits of moringa leaves to a subject that had been causing her some irritation of late.

Binta had forgotten, and it did not really matter to her then, how the conversation had started, but she found it engaging. Perhaps because Mallama Umma was such an easy person to talk to.

‘Oh, I do take zogale juice, at least once every Friday. And I have introduced my son, Munkaila, to it. He takes it every time he comes.'

‘That's very good, Hajiya. It will serve him well, and his children too.'

‘Yes, I always serve them kwadon zogale each time they visit. They love it, the little ones.'

‘Yes, and you know how all these educated children have been saying we are old-fashioned and eat useless leaves. Now they are the ones researching and discovering that our parents who raised us on these things weren't entirely clueless.'

‘
Wallahi kuwa
, Mallama Umma.'

‘Hajiya Binta, there is something I've been meaning to ask you.'

Binta noted the weightiness with which Umma ushered in this aspect of the conversation and she felt a deep sense of foreboding.

‘Yes?'

‘Well, not that I believe all these things, but I feel it is only fair to ask you concerning what has been said and is being said. All these … rumours.'

‘Rumours? What rumours?'

But as they made the turn to Laraba's house, they spotted Kandiya walking towards them from the other end of the lane in the artless manner peculiar to her. They watched her flip-flops rouse small plumes of dust, her arms swinging.

Kandiya greeted them, Mallama Umma more reverently, Binta observed. But then again, Umma was older, more learned in the deen and perhaps more deserving of veneration from the younger Kandiya, whose manners had always been questionable anyway. Binta imagined that she caught a gleam of disdain in Kandiya's eyes and in her tone of voice when she addressed her.

Together, they went into Laraba's house and from the door Kandiya announced: ‘Salamu alaikum, we've come for
barka
!'

‘
Wa alaikumus salaam,
your felicitations are welcomed. Come on in.'

In Laraba's tiny room, warmed by the embers in the
kasko
placed in the middle, they found Murja, Ustaz Nura's wife, occupying one of the seats in the room, cradling the newborn. Laraba sat on the bed, all puffy-faced with a tired smile on her lips.

‘You are welcome.'

The women took turns holding the baby, a boy Binta felt squirmed like a clay animation and yowled like a young goat. They made observations about his sallow eyes.

When Binta prayed for the child's good health and prosperity, Murja chortled.

‘See how people turn into saints overnight. They don't realise you need to come to God with a pure heart before He answers your prayers.
Qalbun saleem
. That's what the Qur'an says.'

The sarcasm did not register with Binta and she handed the baby to Mallama Umma unperturbed. An uncomfortable silence followed, until the baby started crying again.

Umma unfurled the shawl and examined the baby's pallid, sagging skin. ‘This boy is afflicted by jaundice. He needs medication.'

‘
Haba
!' Laraba sat up. ‘I mentioned to his father last night that there was something wrong with this boy. He said we should take him to the hospital.'

‘Yes, take him to the hospital, but herbs will cure him better.' Umma tugged at his skin. It felt as if it would peel off. ‘It's definitely jaundice.'

Murja seemed impressed. ‘How do you know such things merely by looking?'

Umma only chuckled smugly.

Binta stretched her neck to observe the child. ‘No wonder he has been shrieking like a demon. That's why it's always important to have babies checked out in the hospitals first.'

Kandiya's laughter was shocking, not only for its spontaneity but also for its supercilious tone. ‘Hajiya Binta
shagali
!'

Binta looked at her, baffled.

Laraba was uncomfortable. ‘Mallama Umma, what herbs
should I get for him? I have never experienced this with my four other births.'

‘Oh, you will do well to take him to the hospital first.'

Murja sighed as she considered Binta. ‘I think the world is coming to an end.'

Kandiya turned to face Murja. ‘Truly?'

‘Of course. The sin of some people is enough to provoke Allah's wrath and He will smite the earth overnight.'

‘
Wallahi kuwa
.'

‘Imagine all these shameless sugar mommies running after young boys, taking them to hotels and doing
iskanci
with them.'

‘
Allah ya kyauta
,' Laraba squirmed. She wanted the conversation steered in a different direction. ‘One never gets used to labour pains.' She chuckled uneasily. ‘I thank Allah for His blessings though.'

Kandiya waved away Laraba's comments. ‘Murja, you speak as if these things don't happen among us when some of our women are now doing such things. Running around with all these bloody junkies.'

Binta bowed her head. She placed a hand over her chest, feeling her pulse race. She closed her eyes and hoped when she opened them again, she would discover it had all been a dream, a really bad one. When she opened her eyes, the challenge became how to walk out of the room as the women looked at her and saw her for what she was – a fornicator.

She felt her breaths coming in spurts, so she sprang to her feet. ‘
Toh
! I will be leaving now, Laraba.'

Avoiding their eyes, she put some bank notes on the baby's shawl.

‘
Haba
, Hajiya Binta, all this money for what?' Laraba's nervous grin could not effectively conceal her discomfort with the turn the conversation had taken, and the fact that it was happening in her room when Binta, sinner or otherwise, had come to felicitate with her and pray for her newborn.