Sadiya |REWRITING

Chapter Thirty

***

ABUJA, NIGERIA.

"He's got your nose."

He chuckled lowly, "Save me the BS, brother." The tiny being squirmed in the Moses basket, his tongue peeking through his lips. "Why a FaceTime, again?"

"So I could see my nephew? Were you even listening?"

Once having successfully released his digits from the tight grip of his two-hour-old nephew, Adam nodded to his sisters and mother with a jab of his thumb in air, then left the private suite. He switched the call to his most preferred setting and placed it on his ear. The disturbed exhale Rayan released from the pending tension of the day came weighing on his mind whilst he rolled his sleeve cuffs. Adam's brows furrowed; he paused as moments passed until he blurted, "I had a...talk with some six-year-old kid earlier." Rayan grabbed his keys off the hook as he listened to his friend's words. Adam most definitely was not one to be given the floor when starting a conversation.

He could laugh at his own "joke" even though it only sounded like a communique. The man's state of humor was absolutely sad like that.

"A six-year-old? Whose? Where?"

Adam paced in the hallway as his mind downrightly wasn't being cooperative with his mouth – the words came pouring. "No idea. Just a child my daughter plans on marrying in two days," he rolled his lips in distaste at the unpleasant remains of the thought. Jannah, his daughter, screamed and giggled while she said her words analytically in her own way, genuinely ignorant by the effect they had on her father. He'd clearly brought up the topic to divert the tension from Rayan's mind, but it only worked by also making his own mind go spiral.

The sonorous sound of Rayan's laughter surged more annoyance out of him, he tsked and Rayan wheezed. "Marriage? The little girl's only what, four?" He pushed down the impending snicker, "Where did she even meet this dude? A schoolmate or..."

"He's not a dude, a kid. For God's sake, a kid! See my point? A six years old child with thoughts of marriage? First, he makes my daughter hang up on me 'cause of some stupid, useless, barbaric, insolent misled thought that was probably crammed into his two thousand, one hundred and ninety -probably something- year-old brain. What else should one expect?"

***

After the 3-hour excruciating moment of hollers and a string of colorful language from few doors down, Sadiya all, but calmly set the last of her new five-step skincare and quickly tied the stuff on her head in a messy bun. She cared for her time, but also cared for her body. And a day of coddling her lone self with some relaxing hours with the friseur, to grocery shopping affirmed the written remark. From all she'd gathered of the words echoing down the walls, her landlord's wife had supposedly caught her husband in the act with a lessee.

And from all she heard, it seemed to be a drama worth the bees hovering over it with judgmental looks.

Well, guess that's all they know to do, she lifted her brows and sighed heavily.

Sadiya had never been scared of men, no, but she was scared of marriage in essence and everything that came with the encumber. Yes, that was all it was to Sadiya. She'd always believed that if her father could do what he did to someone like her naïve mother, who was to say she wouldn't have that same chapter in her all, but perfect life? Her father did the job of cognizing her with his very pattern of deceit. Men...they are all the same person encased in varied shells, she'd say. The day Sadiya thought she could never have the mental potency for, had finally arrived and she, more than anything, wanted to crawl into a wall and vanish for good.