Being His(Updates Every Friday)

25

Hey my darlings, It's still Friday, sooo Happy Reading. It's sort of short o, but please manage it like that, between being ill and rain beating me more today, I don't know which one pained me more.

Please don't forget to comment. And vote please.

""Abdullah ya fada miki cewa za'a kawo lefen ki asabar mai zuwa kuwa?" Nadia stopped washing the  mudu of rice she had just put some water in to stare at her mother.

"He didn't tell you?" Her mother prodded, Nadia kept staring, remembering her last conversation with Alhaji. He had randomly mentioned it, but she didn't put it to heart, thinking it would be the usual one week before the wedding arrival of the Lefe. The timing was a little too early, about a month to the wedding.

"He told me, just in passing, he said soon, so I thought it would be much later." Nadia watched her mother shake her head in amazement.

"Wash that rice and come, let's talk." They both worked in silence, Nadia's mom stirring the sauce prepared to take the washed rice some more so it wouldn't burn before adding some hot water. Once Nadia was done washing, she put the rice in a strainer beside the cooker and walked to the living room where her mother was waiting.

On the way there, she undid the elastic sleeves of her work uniform that she had rolled up to wash the rice. She reached the chair where her mother was, now concentrated watching a streamed movie from northflix, Nadia was not really bothered to learn the title.

"Why do I feel like in spite of how much you say you like this man, there's a smidgen of fear in you, maybe you're hoping he'll change his mind and all this will go away." Nadia blinked away from her mother's face, it was so startling to be told what she thought she'd concealed well.

"I-" Nadia stopped as she realized at that point that she couldn't say anything without feeling like an ungrateful soul. Life had dealt her a bad hand but Allah's infinite mercy gave her a reason to go on, He shamed her enemies and shut the roving lips of mockers.

"I'm just worried, I honestly feel like a homewrecker. Even though they divorced so many years ago, she still has his name on her Facebook and Instagram, she still hashtags his surname as part of her names, she still dances to songs that praise singers sang of him years ago, I can't help but be fearful for what the future holds and the future seems so much more concrete now that the Lefe is coming. Mummy, I'm going be a married woman, imagine that?"

Her mother laughed at her last statement, a rhetorical question that needed no response. It was almost set in stone. She sobered up quickly though, to address Nadia's concerns.

"What is his attitude towards her?" Nadia raised her eyes to think, Alhaji had only spoken to her about his ex-wife thrice, never bad words, just enough words to explain the sham of an experience it was dealing with her. The third time was an explanation of what had gone on the last time in Switzerland, how she had broken his phone with her Prada boots for no reason.

"His attitude is pretty much," She stopped again to find a word to use, "Undaunted by her antics. That's what he call what she does. But, Mummy you and I are women, you know what we can do?" Nadia's mom nodded, from her position on the comfortable practical living room sofa.

"Don't you ever fight her, in public or in private. You now have the responsibility of being the bigger person, the onus to the better woman now rests upon you. She slaps you, turn the other cheek. Because what if you slap her and she faints? Calling attention, making you into a villain? Or gets you into a shouting match, God forbid it?" Her mother drew in a breath before saying,

"I will not lie to you and tell you that it's going to be over soon. It's not, infact, she's tied to him for life. Even if they're no longer married, with the behavior she puts on, there's no way she doesn't hope that they remarry." Nadia sighed and looked round the slightly empty room, it wasn't like their six bedroom duplex in Kano, this was a three bedroom bungalow that her father had built in the early two thousands.