A Promise to Aabidah (#1 Natives series) #ProjectNigeria

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

             STRETCHING HER ARMS OUT, AABIDAH looked down at the little boy who had talked through most of the flight from Lagos to Abuja and had just fallen asleep a while ago.

The flight attendant who had attended to her son's demanding needs for more than an hour walked up to her with her ever permanent show of white teeth.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" The lady asked pleasantly in such perfect English you would think she wasn't a Nigerian. But she was.

Earlier on, Aabidah had heard her speaking fluently in Ebira with an elderly couple who was going to Maraba for their seventh grandchild's naming ceremony and then she had tried reasoning in Yoruba with a young lady who wanted to create content for her video blog while on air.

The difference in ethnicity and personality found in the confines of a plane always amused Aabidah Ali, until stereotype walls in, that is.

She smiled and declined the offer for assistance. The attendant nodded and moved on to serve another passenger. Her grin as intact as the perfectly starched and crease-free uniform she had on.

It was probably for the best that flight attendants learned more than two languages, she guessed. It made both working and communicating with passengers a lot easier.

Unbuckling herself from the seat of the economy class her parents had booked for her and their grandchild, she stood up and wriggled her feet, making sure to get the blood circulating properly once more.

When she was sure she could walk without falling from tentacles she called legs, she tapped her boy softly awake. He slept heavy but woke easily from a tap.

"You ready to go?" She asked quietly with a smile.

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palms and yawned openly. "Are we there already?"

His mother nodded. "Yes, we are. Don't sleep again o." She urged and when he nodded lazily she began to unload the bag packs she had been left with after sending ahead all her belongings. Her brother who worked at a motor pack had been in charge of getting her things home.

"Come on, let's go." She hummed, grabbed his little hand and walked out with both bags slung on her shoulders.

It took a while for them to get to terminal due to the amount of passengers that had boarded the flight. For someone who had lost her husband through this means, Aabidah had a little fear for planes but she had put this journey, her life and that of her son's in the hands of her Creator. Anything can happen in the span of a minute if He said be, so what then is an hour or more? "Whatever happens," she had told her parents and younger brother, "it was the decree of the Almighty Allah and I would accept it as qadr."

Her big brother, Sulaiman had snorted and said "If anything happens, it would be as a result of your selfishness and ungratefulness."

She hadn't bothered with him, knowing if she had remarked it would have left a huge hole in their relationship. She was going back to her hometown to start afresh with her little boy, she couldn't ruin it by keeping malice with her older brother. Even her Lord even frowned upon it. So, instead she had hugged everyone at the airport, her pregnant sister-in-law but not her brother, only telling him to take great care of the younger lady as her way of showing she didn't mean harm.

After picking up the big ghanamostgo bag her mother had given her at the very last minute, she switched on her phone, got a cart and wheeled her luggage away. She waited just inside the large lobby of Abuja's international airport for it to load. Immediately she received bars, she dialed her younger sister-in-law's number. The girl picked up on the second ring.