Being His(Updates Every Friday)

14.

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Alhaji stepped off the vehicle, Elijah shut the other passenger door and jogged to meet his boss. 

"Tell me why this man dragged me here again? Old people." He mused as they reached the flight of stairs of the building. 

Elijah chuckled silently and opened the door, ushering Alhaji into the museum. An older friend of his had retired and opened up a museum of his life. Although Alhaji thought it laughable, he didn't show any indication when he sent in a large donation. 

Several pictures of the man's early life lined the hallway into the small museum, pictures of him as a young child in England, attending Cambridge, where he and Alhaji met when Alhaji was a postgraduate student. It had been a relief to meet a fellow Nigerian who spoke the same language as he in such a cold dreary place. 

"Eh, Abdullah, you're here." His friend, Mallam Bello Geidam, walked briskly in a pace that bellied his old age to his younger friend. Alhaji greeted the man very respectfully, then they began looking at pictures upon pictures. Alhaji featured in about two of them, one where he had just turned thirty and another when he had just turned thirty two. 

About half an hour later, Mallam Geidam ushered him into a plush indoor office fitted with rugs that made you take off your shoes at the door. 

Mallam Geidam offered Alhaji a meal, but he refused gently, citing an earlier heavy lunch, a nonexistent one but Mallam Geidam didn't have to know that. 

"How are you?" Alhaji exhaled, he nodded firmly to say he was good. 

"Don't give me that bullshit. I know your ex- father in-law is gunning to have one of his daughters marry you again. Your mother and I talk all the time." Alhaji laughed silently, watching the older man squirm. Alhaji wanted to pick up the phone and call his mother so he could link the two gossips with one another. 

"Well, now that all I do is relax, gossip isn't such a bad thing anymore." The silent laughter Alhaji held in became full blown out. 

"I like that you agree that it is gossip. Yes, the Emir wants that, but between my mother, Maymunatu and Na'im, it won't happen." Mallam Geidam held his spry white beard thoughtfully. 

"And you?" He asked Alhaji, Alhaji sighed and adjusted himself on the chair, he had taken off his suit earlier in the car, so he played with his cufflinks. 

"I feel pity for Surayyah. At some time in my life I loved her very much, but the hate she had for me overcame whatever work I could have put into loving her." Mallam nodded, understanding Alhaji's point. 

"I guess my question wasn't as direct. Would you marry her again knowing she did all she did because her father told her to?" He asked, making Alhaji quiet for a few seconds to think of his response. 

"No. Because if she truly cared, even just a bit, she would not add methylated spirit to my tea. She was doing it every morning during breakfast until my body began to collapse, how am I supposed to think she cared a bit? She could have told me and we could have told her father off together." Mallam Geidam nodded because it was the truth.

The relationship between Alhaji and Gimbiya Surayyah was a complicated mess, it had been doomed to fail from the very start. With Gimbiya Surayyah coming into the marriage with nefarious intentions. 

"Did you hear anything about the kingmakers wanting to make you Emir?" He asked Alhaji. Laying it out without any preamble. But that matter was the cause of Alhaji's life's troubles. His father died just as he was about to be named Emir of Chiroma, leaving the throne at the time to the Aminu Abbas family. The Emir however had suspected the Kingmakers would like to make Alhaji the Emir at some point, so he made the good effort of marrying his daughter to him.