RUNNING

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

“Of all the beautiful things in life, the most beautiful of it is to have people that makes your life worth living. And the most precious gift of life is the gift of a beautiful family.”

“Asalamu alaekum tweenie!” Afnan shouted as she enters the kids playroom to which the two kids rush to give her hug at the same time. Hassan and Hussaina are aunty Raheela’s last born, the two kids are six years old twins and they were born when she was in abroad so she had never meet them until about a year ago when she moved to Nigeria with her mom. Aunty Raheelah is her only paternal aunty and she has always been a second mother to her since she was a child. She spend more time with her aunts’ family more when she was a child because her only brother Ahmad had always been a geek spending more of his time learning and growing with their father that he hardly have time for her.

Then her aunty lived in Lagos with her family, her two other cousins Ibrahim and Aleeya are like her own and their parents treat them alike without any discrimination. Ibrahim is her age mate and Aleeya is three years younger than them. They schooled together until Afnan family traveled to United State when she was ten years old, since then they have been temporary separated and they only talk occasionally through their parents landline until the invention of handset in Nigeria when they all grew up that enabled them to keep good relationship through skype and other social networks that it seems that they are together even though they are miles away as her cousins have travelled to Cairo for their first degree and she was in United State.

Afnan was a little disappointed when she had to move to Nigeria to continue her study when her cousins are no more around and her aunty have relocated to Ibadan which is one of her reasons to continue her study in university of Ibadan in order to spend more time with her aunty and her little cousins.

“What are my babies painting today?” Afnan asked smiling at the twins. Looking at their tainted hands.

“Aunty, I am painting the Kabbah!” Hussaina said excitedly as if it is the most precious thing to be done in the world and to her it is really the most precious thing to Hussaina.

“And I am painting a masjid.” Hassan chilled in excitedly too.

“MashaAllah!” let’s go to see them.” Afnan said and walk them towards their painting. She looked at the painting admiringly, the two kids are good in painting and their mother have always encouraged them by buying them painting books and some crayon since they have started painting when they are four. Their playroom is filled with numerous toys and other playing material but the kids spend more time painting than any other play.

Aunty Raheela is also an artist but not a very good one but she is very good in other skills like sewing, knitting and writing. She studied business management in the university and worked in Islamic banking until she had her second child and decided to leave banking sector to pursue another career which will enable her to have more time for her family and that was when she choose to attend fashion institution where she learned about corporate cloth design.  Being an entrepreneur she established her own certified fashion institution where she has numerous workers and trainees and her fashion institution is a very big store that has customers throughout the world.

During their childhood with her cousins her aunty has always been around to help them working on their creative skills. While Ibrahim is the best among them when it comes to painting, Afnan and Aleeya have successfully learn so much about sewing and knitting with Aunty Raheela and after returning to Nigeria, Afnan has learned the professional way of sewing from her Aunty’s institution and apart from her Abayas, she is the one that usually design all her wares. She planned having a small design store as her part-time job but her main field of interest in working in the hospital after her graduation.