𝓜𝔂 𝓫𝓪𝓫𝔂, 𝓶𝔂 𝔀𝓲𝓯𝓮

1# NEW BEGINNINGS

THE ABUBAKR RESIDENCE,
ABOWA.
NOVEMBER, 2020

In the quiet town of Abowa, the day began like any other.

Men and women spilled out from their clay-lined homes, baskets perched on hips, hoes balanced across shoulders, machetes swinging rhythmically with each step. They walked swiftly toward their farms, the red earth soft beneath their sandals, the scent of dew mingling with the dust.

The sun was shy that morning, and the skies stretched in pale gray silence. It should have been a peaceful morning. A beautiful one. But in the Abubakr mansion — a sprawling, colonial relic with high walls and secrets thick in the air — peace was a foreign guest.

A scream split through the silence.

"Jamilah!" Inside the gilded walls, Mrs. Safiya Abubakr limped through the bedroom on one bare foot, the other clad in a blood-red heel. The missing pair was clutched triumphantly by a girl who looked far too delighted to be in trouble.

Jamilah grinned wide and wicked. Her scarf was askew. Her hair, dark and curled, framed a face too luminous for the chaos around her. Even now — barefoot, giggling, eyes dancing with mischief — Jamilah looked like a portrait. A hauntingly perfect mirror of her mother, only softer at the edges. But there was one small problem.

Jamilah Abubakr wasn't supposed to be alive.

"You think this is a game? Wallahi, Jamilah, if you don't give me that shoe right now—!"Safiya's voice trembled with fury as she lunged forward, her torn bespoke gown fluttering like a  wounded flag.

"Do you know how expensive that shoe is? Do you want me to curse you?!" she shrieked.

Jamilah merely laughed. It was light, childlike. A sound that didn't belong in that cold, heavy room.

The door banged open.

Senator Yusuf Abubakr stormed in, his bulk filling the doorway. The man was a permanent fixture on TV — for political antics and scandalous headlines — but stripped of his media polish, he looked like a worn-out tyrant.

His eyes landed on his wife first, then slid to the laughing girl.

"I told you the governor is coming today," he growled. "And this is what you're doing? Playing house with that useless daughter of yours?"

Safiya flinched. Her gaze flicked toward Jamilah like the girl was vermin.

"Alhaji—darling, it's not what it looks like," she cooed quickly, brushing her palm against his chest with practiced ease. "She just—she took the heels you bought me."

The moment her manicured hand touched him, Yusuf's scowl faded a fraction. He looked her over — at the waist she spent millions maintaining, the youthful glow bought with expensive creams and surgeries. No matter how many women he entertained on the side, none of them ever rivaled his wife's beauty. Well, almost none. His gaze drifted to Jamilah.

She'd once been his pride. The face of his redemption. Brilliant, poised, beloved by dignitaries. Her charities had softened the public's hatred toward his corruption. She was his gold shield.

Until the accident. Until she'd opened her eyes as a woman-child — sweet, slow, scattered. 

And that simply would not do. So he'd declared her dead. Buried a washed corpse in her place. Held a private funeral and squeezed out a few crocodile tears; And the world had mourned.

But here she was — living, breathing, laughing like she had no idea the world thought her gone.

He turned to Safiya. "Yahya will be here any moment. Tidy this mess."