Season of Crimson Blossoms (9 page)

‘Because I wanted to, you understand.' This time he held her eyes until she looked away and hugged herself, as if a cold gust had rattled her soul.

‘Hassan, my son …'

‘Don't call me that.'

She swallowed hard. ‘Hassan. You have every right to be angry, I know. Whatever happened between your father and me was not your fault and it was wrong of me to make you suffer for it. But I am still your mother and …'

He dug his fingers into the bark of the tree and peeled off a chunk, exposing a colony of ants to the mild glare of the sun. The dazed creatures ran about chaotically while he broke the bark into tiny bits that fell to his feet. ‘I have to go now. You go back to wherever you came from,
kin ji
?'

‘Wait … please.'

Beneath the desperation in her voice, he felt an emptiness that might have hounded her across the desert and brought her running to him. But the anger he had lived with since the day she unclasped his little fingers from her jilbab devoured any sympathy he could have felt for her.

He glowered at her mouth, which was moving, trying to form words. She wanted to say something important. He could see that in her tear-filled eyes. But he was not interested. Not any more. ‘If I had known you were coming I would have brought your stupid ring along.'

As he hurried away, he heard her calling his name. The voice reached out and yanked at his heart. He sprinted, as far away as he could get from the haunting hollowness in her voice and the whirl of musk that had lingered for so long in the recesses of his mind.

The young man beckoned at Reza from the door, before noticing that his eyes were closed. ‘The senator will see you now.'

Reza opened his eyes, looked at his watch and then at the young man. Why would anyone be wearing a tie at a quarter to midnight? He rose and followed the smartly-dressed man into the senator's study. The old man was sitting on an exquisite leather settee positioned before a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. He was peering at a file on his lap through the glasses on the bridge of his nose.

Reza knelt and greeted the man. The senator held up a hand and the two younger men waited. Reza scanned the books' spines and spotted titles on politics, philosophy and civil engineering. On the wall, there was a painting of the Eiffel Tower, from a period when men donned top hats and carried walking sticks and the women on their arms wore long extravagant dresses and dramatic hats. On the other wall, there was an exquisite painting of a semi-nude girl. He was haunted, not by her jauntily poised breasts but by her eyes, and the innocence they exuded.

Senator Buba Maikudi, who was a professor of civil engineering and owned Bulwark Construction, a company that had enjoyed favourable contracts under several governments, patted his stomach beneath his white
babban riga
and adjusted his glasses. He shifted his slight frame on the leather seat and rubbed his nose before putting away the file.

‘Reza.' He looked over the rim of his glasses at his guest, as if just realising he was not alone.

Reza greeted him afresh, more reverently, but the man leaned forward and extended a hand. His grasp felt weak and Reza wondered, for an insane second, what it would be like to crush the hand of this powerful man. He was small, and he was getting old too, old enough to put wrinkles on his face, grey in his eyebrows and a quaver in his voice. He was sixty-nine. But his beardless face was still boyish and his eyes, above the rims of his glasses, were lively even this late in the night. Reza wished he could grow old in money like this man. He pushed away the image in his mind of his ageing one-eyed father.

‘Ah, Reza,' the senator's voice perked up. ‘Busy day at the rally,
ko
?'

‘Yes, Alhaji.' Reza settled down on the rug.

‘But how come you allowed the situation to get out of hand like that?'

‘Alhaji, they came at us. They just wanted to disrupt the rally—'

‘Yes, that was their objective.
Yan iska kawai
! I know who is behind this and we will be dealing with them soon, don't worry.'

‘Anytime you give the word, Alhaji.'

The senator leaned forward as if to confide a secret. ‘You see,' he whispered, ‘politics is a tricky business. And you have to play your cards well. You know, this rally, ehm? I organised it to know exactly who is with me and who is against me. What do you think I would do with a House of Reps seat? You know I'm bigger than that.'

Reza nodded.

The senator leaned back and cleared his throat. ‘I have been a senator twice and a minister three times. I am almost seventy; I am too old for this. That is why I said let that young man go to the House, because he is reasonable, is that not so?'

‘Indeed he is.' Reza had never seen the man, Audi Balarabe, before the rally. He had heard that the man was a cousin of the senator.

‘Come, Moses,' the senator beckoned the young man who had retreated to a corner of the room and stood against the wall, arms folded. ‘You know Audi. Is he not a reasonable young man?'

‘He is, sir.'

‘You see.' There was triumph in the senator's voice. ‘The problem with this country is that we don't want to make way for the younger ones to come in. That is the problem. Especially in our party. That is why you had these miscreants coming to disrupt our rally. But we will deal with them.
Shegu
! Is it not me they want to challenge?'

‘How do we deal with them, Alhaji?'

‘Reza, Reza.' His laughter belied his size. ‘That is why I like you. You are always ready for action. But don't worry. When the time comes,
ko
?' He patted his pockets and looked around. ‘Moses, ask Musa to get me some tea. You will have some tea, Reza, won't you?'

‘Oh, no, Alhaji—'

‘No? You are not married yet, are you?'

‘Not yet, Alhaji.'

‘So, why not stay to have some tea? It will be good for you,
ka ji ko
?'

Moses went to fetch Musa. Alhaji Maikudi stood up, stretched, and walked round the room.

Reza worried that the man showed no intention of retiring for the night. And the boys were waiting at San Siro.

‘Alhaji, there's something.'

‘Oh, yes. Yes.' He returned to his place on the settee. ‘What is it?'

‘The little … something for the boys. Because of the skirmish, we weren't sorted out—'

‘Oh, yes. But I thought, ah, I thought I asked … well, never mind.' He reached beyond the armrest and pulled up a briefcase. He snapped it open and pulled out a wad of notes.

‘One of the boys was badly injured, Alhaji. We need to take him to the hospital.'

The senator looked at him over the rim of his glasses and added one more bundle. ‘You know, Reza, you don't come to me unless you are having troubles.'

‘You are always too busy, Alhaji.'

‘But we've been together for how many years now? All the politics, is it not to help you, our people? I am already rich, you know, and I am old. This entire struggle is for people like you,
ko ba haka ba ne
? We are just unfortunate to have terrible leaders in this country. But you don't even call to say, senator,
sannu da aiki
, except when you have troubles.'

‘I call, Alhaji, but your people won't put me through.'

‘My people? Sometimes you speak and I don't understand what you are saying,
wallahi
. Are you not one of my people? Or are you no longer with me?'

‘
Haba
Alhaji, of course, I am.'

‘Good. Good.' He handed over the wad of bills to Reza, who shoved them into his pockets. ‘And how is your policeman? I hope he's not troubling you anymore.'

‘Not so much. He just raided our place and took our stuff and sold it to other boys.'

‘You see the injustice we are fighting?' The senator threw open his palms as if to receive an affirmation. ‘That is why we must never give up.'

‘Exactly, Alhaji. The man is new in the force.'

The senator snapped shut the briefcase and placed it back by the settee. ‘They are just recruiting illiterates in the force, and yet there are qualified people out there looking for something to do. When you called me that time, I called up his boss immediately and said his boys should stop harassing my boys. If he disturbs you again, let me know.
Aikin banza da wofi
! You see now what I am talking about? They don't want the masses to eat, eh?'

Musa, a young man in his early twenties, came in with the tea and set the tray on the footstool by the settee. Moses was standing by the door waiting. He closed the door after Musa stepped out.

‘Yes, Moses, give Reza my direct line. He is one of my good boys.'

‘Yes, sir.' Moses whipped out a card from his pocket and handed it to Reza.

‘If you call this number, Moses will take the call. Moses is my P.A. He is always with me.'

Reza thanked the senator, sat down for tea, wondering why anyone would want it at midnight, and listened to him talk as if the night was just beginning. When he eventually left for San Siro, it was a quarter to one in the morning, long after the dogs had tired of howling.

The sewing machine whirred and chased the silence into the corners of the living room. Binta squeezed some more oil under the presser foot. She rummaged through the cardboard box next to the machine and found a bundle of cloth.

‘Are you going to sew that today?' Fa'iza gestured at the cloth with the remote in her hand. She was sitting on one of the seats with little Ummi perched on the armrest beside her, her eyes on the TV.

Binta looked at the girl over the top of her glasses. ‘What does it look like I'm doing?'

The two women sitting across on the sofa looked at each other – Kandiya in her dampened hijab and Mallama Umma with her shrivelled face and sunken eyes that had witnessed sixty rains and sixty-one harmattans.

Kandiya cleared her throat. ‘Mallama Umma, perhaps we should leave now.'

Mallama Umma looked down at her hands, the wrinkled fingers blackened by henna. It was something she did whenever she was confronted by a challenge such as this. In her six decades, she had dealt with all sorts of children – nieces and nephews and
grandchildren – not wanting to go to school. To her, the challenge posed by Hajiya Binta's case was not entirely peculiar. She shifted forward on the seat. ‘Hajiya Binta, we have been waiting to see you and you just came in and went to your sewing machine as if we were not here.'

Binta looked up at the women, and then turned to her niece. ‘Fa'iza, go to the kitchen and prepare the kasko.'

‘Me? But Hajiya, I want to watch this—'

‘Fa'iza, go now and prepare the kasko before Munkaila and his family arrive.'

Grumbling, Fa'iza got up and left. Little Ummi curled up on the chair, taking over the space Fa'iza had just vacated, and picked up the remote that Fa'iza had dumped on the seat.

‘And you, what are you waiting for? Is there any age mate of yours here?'

‘But Hajiya—' Ummi's protest trailed off into a grumble in the wake of Binta's fiery glare. She left, rocking from side to side like a swaying palm tree in irreverent winds.

For a while after the children had left, the whir of the sewing machine filled the room.

‘Hajiya Binta,' Mallama Umma seized the opportunity as soon as Binta slowed down, ‘we have been worried about your not coming to the madrasa.'

‘Mallama Umma.' Binta's brow furrowed as she examined the stitches she had just made. ‘
Wallahi
, I respect you, but your coming to my house with Kandiya is a bad idea.'

‘Mhm!' Kandiya gathered the folds of her hijab around her bulk. ‘Mallama Umma, I will be leaving now.'

Umma put a hand on Kandiya's thigh. ‘You women should stop behaving like children,
haba
.'

‘This is the woman who came and insulted me in front of my granddaughter and now she comes here pretending she cares about me.
Munafurci kawai
!'

‘It is not hypocrisy,' Umma spoke quickly before Kandiya could snap out of her shock. ‘Whatever was said then was out of anger. Or have you forgotten how the Prophet, peace be upon him, admonished against anger, saying
laa taghdab
.'

‘Leave the Prophet out of this, Mallama Umma. Leave him out of it.'

Umma smiled. ‘You know you can't leave the Prophet, peace be upon him, out of anything, Hajiya Binta. We all live by his teachings and he admonishes us not to hold grudges against one another.'

Binta pressed down the foot control and the women had to wait yet again.

When the machine stopped, Umma cleared her throat. ‘Ustaz Nura and the students, too, have been wondering if you've been ill, but your neighbours assured us of your good health. So we thought we should come and find out why you haven't been to the madrasa for some time now.'

Just then, the power went off and Binta hissed. She detached the foot motor and slipped on the pedal cord.

‘I haven't been feeling too well, actually. Nothing serious, just
ciwon tsatsaye
.' Binta put her foot on the treadle.

‘You see, we are growing old already – healthy today, ill tomorrow, which is why we must prepare ourselves for our encounter with Allah, the Merciful. A moment lost can't be regained and we never know when death will come knocking. Every step you take to the madrasa is like walking on the wings of angels and Allah will reward you. You know this, Hajiya Binta, and yet you allow yourself to lag behind.'

Binta sighed. Thoughts of her sins weighed on her. There she was, at fifty-five, cavorting with a hemp dealer who was younger than her youngest child. Faith reached out a hand and squeezed her tear glands and she leaned closer to the machine, pretending to thread the needle so the women wouldn't see her tears.

‘Are you all right, Hajiya?' There was a note of concern in Umma's voice.

‘I'm fine, Mallama Umma, thank you.' Binta raised her head and worked the treadle with some desperation, hoping to mask her tremulous state of mind. Her voice had almost betrayed her. She tried to focus on guiding the material into the feed dogs but the machine was running too fast, clattering as it ran, and the material zipped through her fingers.

There was a sudden racket as she lost control. The needle ran across her fingers, sending jabs of pain through her nerves.

‘
Inna lillahi wa inna illaihi raji'un
!' Binta grimaced.

The women jumped to their feet and Fa'iza came running in from the kitchen. She froze when she saw the blood. Binta wrapped her wounded fingers in a piece of cloth and turned away from her niece. When the stabbing burned its way to her brain, she fell to her knees. The women were torn between attending to the agonised woman on the floor and the dazed teenager, with sweat on her upper lip, trembling like the last leaf of a baobab caught in the chilly gust of harmattan.

Munkaila arrived with his wife and children while Binta was still in the kitchen making masa and filling the corners of the house with the aroma of taushe sauce. She abandoned the kasko and, mindful of her plastered fingers, hoisted her youngest grandchild, Khalida, into the air. The eighteen-month-old baby squealed and buried her face in Binta's shoulder. Zahra, who had just turned four, put her arms around Binta's legs and pressed her little body against her. Sadiya, their mother, stood smiling proudly. When eventually she stooped to greet her mother-in-law, Binta looked with disapproval at Sadiya's translucent powder-blue veil, with its gleaming sequins, hanging from her shoulders and looping over her chest. And the silky hair peeking from beneath Sadiya's scarf. Sadiya noticed and adjusted the
gyale
.

Binta had had reservations about Sadiya when Munkaila had first brought her to Jos back in 2005. She thought the woman looked too delicate; her hair too lustrous, fingers and waist too slender, hips too narrow, nose too tapered to take in enough air, with eyes so wide they readily betrayed her frailty. Her beauty was such that when she stood next to Munkaila, with his dark, pudgy face and blunt nose, she made him look like the Beast. Binta had concluded that if her son had not made some money, Sadiya might not have married him – her rich father certainly would not have allowed it.

They all settled on the plush rug in the middle of the living
room. Fa'iza knelt by the food flasks and proceeded to serve out masa on the plates, which she passed on to Binta who doused it with miyan taushe and topped it with choice pieces of meat.

Munkaila observed Binta's swollen fingers when she reached out for another plate. ‘That looks bad, Hajiya.'

‘Ah, it's nothing,' Binta smiled.

As if that was her cue, Sadiya reached out and took the plate in Binta's hands and picked up the serving spoon. ‘Don't worry, Hajiya, I'll take care of this.'

Binta watched Sadiya's wrist deftly flicking as she ladled sauce on the plates. She disapproved of the way Sadiya soused the masa with too much sauce. Rich, spoilt children had no idea how these things were done.

‘Come and fetch your plates, kids.' There was a tinkle in Sadiya's voice as she beamed at the children.

The little ones had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching Tom chasing Jerry on the screen. Ummi, delighted to have someone to boss around for a change, commanded Zahra to fetch her plate. Fa'iza carried hers and was heading to her room when Munkaila's voice made her stop.

‘Fa'iza, are you sure you are all right? You've been acting funny, you know.'

Fa'iza smiled with none of her teeth showing, and proceeded to her room.

‘What's wrong with that girl?' Munkaila directed the question at no one. Little Ummi sidled up to her uncle and whispered in his ear. He listened with a furrow on his brow. ‘Why? What happened?'

Ummi leaned in further and whispered some more, her eyes gleaming.

‘Get away from there, '
yar gulma kawai
.' Binta's voice had a mocking tone. The laughter of the adults rang up to the ceiling. Ummi made a face and went back to her place.

Sadiya shook her head, sipped some water and carefully set down the glass in the middle of the intricate pattern on the rug. ‘Hajiya, you will teach me how to make masa this good,
wallahi
.'

Binta laughed drearily. ‘To make good masa, you need an open flame and you can't stand the heat.'

‘I can't, Hajiya?
Haba
!'

‘You don't even know how to stoke firewood. The smoke will chase you all the way out of the house – all these gas- and electric-cooker girls who can't put their breath into embers.'

Munkaila, mouth full, directed impatient gestures at his mother, then his wife. They waited for him to swallow. ‘I've been telling her how much richer food cooked on firewood tastes.'

‘Oh, trust me, you won't want your wife smelling of all that
makamashi
; all that burnt rubber and whatnot.'

‘People have stopped using firewood like that.' Munkaila motioned meaningfully. ‘It's not healthy for the environment. That's why I had to get you the gas cooker.'

Binta nodded. ‘I am fortunate, I know. But my neighbour here, Mama Efe, she sent her daughter to buy kerosene at the filling station the other day and after spending half the day in the queue, the girl was knocked down by a bike on her way back.'

‘I hear the queues are back at the stations,' Sadiya addressed her mother-in-law.

Binta's eyes popped. ‘Back? They never left.'

‘And we produce oil in this country,
saboda Allah fa
!'

‘Bad leadership, that's all.' Munkaila's smirk grew more profound. ‘Bad leadership
kawai
.'

‘And I hear they are already asking this president to contest.' Binta paused and took a sip from her glass. ‘Do you think he will?'

‘He's not supposed to because of this zoning agreement they have in the party, but he is in power now, I'm sure he will find a way around it.'

‘If only Yar'adua had not died—' Sadiya reached out and wiped the sauce running down her chin.

‘
Wallahi fa
,' Binta agreed.

Munkaila swallowed the food in his mouth noisily. ‘Are they any different? Their interests are all the same, I think. They are all in it for what they can get.'

‘I‘m sure Northern leaders won't allow it.' Binta emphasized this by waving her spoon before her face. ‘Oh no, they won't.'

‘Hajiya
ke nan
.' Munkaila's tone was condescending. ‘Northern leaders, Southern leaders, what good have they done the country?'

Binta had her mouth full and couldn't say anything. Just then, the power, which had come back on a while before, went
off again and the children, in accustomed fashion, moaned in despair. Binta motioned to her grandchildren to come over for more helpings and she fished in the sauce for chunky bits of meat, which she judiciously placed on their plates.

The little Chinese-made generator with its blue tank sputtered and roared to life. Fa'iza pulled down the changeover lever and the power came on. The children yelped in delight and ran back to the room.