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

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

           "ARE YOU GOING TO TELL me what happened or what?" Aabidah turned away from staring at her gate to look at her son and just as she thought; he said zilch.

Exhausted of it all, she looked back at the gate as the sound of her brother opening it reached her ears. Quietly she drove into the compound, got out of the car and quickly asked her younger brother to keep Bilal from going into the house.

They stopped at the stairs leading into the house. It was one thing that he had beaten up a classmate, now he was not responding to any of her questions. She might as well be talking to the wind.

"Da kai nake magana!" she snapped, frowning down at him.

But Bilal didn't say anything. He just stood there with his eyes cast downwards. He had been that way since she picked him up from school, either he was being rebellious or he just couldn't find it in him to meet her eye.

"This is new," Aabidah muttered. "I don't understand why you would fight your classmate, Bilal. Who taught you that it was a good thing to do? Why did you beat him, Bilal? What happened?" she interrogated, her voice straining at the end.

Again there was no answer. Even when her brother, his uncle, asked the same question, he didn't answer. He just did what he had been doing; he shuffled his feet and didn't look at them.

Defeated, Aabidah's shoulders drooped. This new attitude of his was so strange and alarming to her that she didn't even know what to do or say. She thought of handing the case over to her brother since he was a man and practically the only fatherly figure her son had at the moment, but she shook the idea away.

Aminullah would leave eventually and then what? Would she be calling him every time her son acted out of line?

No. He's still a kid so there's enough time to guide him. God willing.

Perhaps if his father was still with you, he would not be acting this way. The words spoken by the headmaster earlier in the day echoed in Aabidah's head.

Was he right? Would the situation have been different if Idris was still alive? Aabidah found herself pondering over these questions and when she was nearly drowning in the pool of her own insecurities, she remembered a verse in the Qur'an that had been like a north star to her.

"And not a leaf falls but with His knowledge."

It was one of the few ayahs she had clung onto during her trying moments. To her, it meant; trust in His plans and doings because there was nothing more better, more rewarding than doing so.

Idris was no longer here because that was how their Rabb had planned for it to be and although things have been difficult, and would still be difficult, there was a reason for the trail. And knowing that unknown reason surpassed every insecurities and trial faced.

Thinking of the hidden blessings and reasons behind her Creator's works suddenly calmed Aabidah. There was no reason she had to doubt her patenting skills or even listen to such advice from a man who couldn't keep his own wives and children. 

"Okay," she sighed wearily then waved her hand in an airy dismissal as she thought of what to do about her son's behaviour.

When she opened her mouth to tell him to go in she noticed her brother making hand gestures to her from behind Bilal. Her eyebrows rose in silent question but before Aminullah could respond, another voice chimed in from the doorway.

"Aabidah, I've been waiting for you. It's a good thing you came straight home. We have a lot to talk about regarding your current... relationship."

Aabidah spun around, her eyes wide open and her mouth agape. "Yaya Sulaiman?" she gasped.