Before you go

Chapter Nine

Ruqayya Ibrahim Tahir.

I could tell from the first time I saw Bello, that he is a romantic. It isn't just about how he talks about how much he adores certain traits in couples, or how he would spoil his wife and kids rotten.

There's something about the way his jet black pupils dilate and take over the oceans of white in the background, making them almost invisible when he talks about love. And the way his lips widen to the extent that lines mark the corners of his eyes and lips when he smiles at a thought regarding his dream marriage.

Too bad I'm not even close to a romantic. Matter of fact, I'm more of a realist. Fa'iza once called me a humdrum. I had to check the dictionary for the meaning of the word —its an irony that I am the English student but Fa'iza is the one who knows more than a thousand words she most probably has no business using in her day to day life —, it means someone who is boring or has no excitement towards life. I'm anything but that.

It's just that, I don't understand how you will believe that you will get married to the man of your dreams who will treat you like a barbie princess and tick all your boxes. That's too picturesque to be put into real life. Surely, I have seen something relatively close to that in my parents. But they have had their downs too. I've seen a time when Ummi left the house for seven months and didn't come back until my grandfather —may his would rest in peace —threatened to disown her.

And if I believe that is just something that "fate" has written for Ummi and Abba, then what about what I see on divorce diaries, northern hibiscus, northern tulip, moments with ray and all those other pages that feature the kind of scary life couples have? There's no doting man out there that can give you an impeccable relationship.

But for the past one week, Bello— no, Bee has started to convince me otherwise and my opinion is slowly swaying. The one week he promised to use to convince me was exhausted yesterday and honestly, after all he's said and done, I don't mind getting married to him next week. Well, that's an exaggeration on my part but it's just so surreal, having someone say so many sweet things to you, do so many thoughtful things for you and all that.

Regardless, I haven't completely believed that he is the perfect man or that we will have a perfect relationship. I'm not a pessimistic, I just know that marriage is far from all what he has shown me. A lot of men have shown more than this, yet after the marriage it's as if they've been switched with an evil twin.

I just finished my clearance today and sitting in the bakery just few minutes from the school I graduated from, everything is just going through my head in a jumbled mess. I thought about school, Fa'iza, Ummi, Abba, my friends and now, Bello. I rarely have these types of thoughts but when I do, it's hard to clear my thoughts.

My phone pings with a message and it takes a lot of effort to pull my head from my swirling conflicting thoughts to the notification on the screen. It's Fa'iza.

Your dress has arrived.

My face breaks into a smile and so swiftly, I take my degree which is now cramped into one rectangular paper, and pay for my snacks. I leave and all but speed home, barely keeping myself below the speed limit.

On Tuesday, after a long day of going around Wuse Market to find a suitable material for my send forth gown and the after party, I finally decided to just let the fashion designer do her. That was Fa'iza and Ummi's first suggestion but my stubborn self insisted on picking out the material myself.

Ummi knows my indecisive self will end up wasting the day so she made Fa'iza tag along with me instead of my earlier request for her to do so. I am confident and knowing in all that I do. But when it comes to clothes, I become a total mess. Now, the problem is not the cloth itself. The material used to make the cloth is the problem. During Sallah, Ummi let's Fa'iza pick our clothes for us because she knows that if it's left to me, I will end up coming back home empty handed.