The Story Of Us

#3

29th May, 2001.

I stirred in my sleep as I felt something ticklish behind my ear, I was almost settling back into sleep again when I felt the same thing again. I fluttered my eyes open, trying to settle it to the bright sun peeking through the curtain.

"Wakey wakey" a light chocolate brown skinned 5year old boy held a little feather in his right hand and smiled down at me.

"Wamadan ttop" I whined which made him laugh evilly.

"Manal you're 5 today but you still can't pronounce R and S correctly, I'm disappointed" he shook his head. I was always teased by my friends for replacing my Rs with a W and my Ss with a T, I always cried anytime I was teased. That was until my mother told me that speaking like that was cute, she said whenever I spoke, it felt like music to the ear. That made me happy and I never bothered again.

"Just leave me alone, I want to sleep"

"But you know you can't sleep now, Ammi sent me to wake you up, it's already 9 o'clock, the photographer will come soon" I sprang up and ran to get my Dora the explorer towel. "Turn awound, I want to wemove my clothe" he obliged and I quickly tired my towel then ran into the bathroom.

"Manal, won't you wait for Ammi to come and bath you?"

"She taid I can bath by myself when I turn five" I answered from the bathroom. I turned on the shower and let the water run down my body, luckily enough, I had my shower cap on, I came out minutes later and ran to the sitting, Ammi and Abii were watching the rebroadcast of president Olusegun Obasanjo's democracy speech,  she gasped when she saw me, she held my hands and took me to the toilet to have a proper bath. Minutes later, we came back to the sitting room, me dressed in my beautiful birthday outfit. Black blouse with white polka dots,  pink skirt and black sandals. Ammi wore a black abaya.

Everyone gathered around us and sang birthday songs for us. It was mine and Ammi's birthday. I turned 5 while she turned 28. 29th May was also Democracy day. Ammi once corrected me when I said I was born on democracy day. She said democracy was born on our birthday and not the other way around, since we're older than it. I was 3years older than democracy and her 26years older. I always looked forward to our birthdays because it was a public holiday, Ammi said Nigeria celebrated us.

My name's khadeejah Manal Yusuf Gana, I named after my late grandmother, my mother's mother. I was the only child born to Major Yusuf Modu Gana and Barrister Amira Kabir Santuraki. My father hailed from Maiduguri, Borno State, Kanuri by tribe, the eldest in a family of eight children. He was born on the 14th of December, 1960, attended Primary School in Maiduguri, King's College Lagos for his Secondary school and University Of Maiduguri were he read English Literature. He didn't go to Nigerian Defense Academy (NDA), he got into the Army through short service of 9 months.

Their love story with my mother was one I never got tired of listening to. He was her crush back then in the late 80's in secondary school, Federal Government College Wukari of the then Gongola, now Taraba State. He came to their school for his primary assignment as a youth corper doing his National Youth Service (NYSC), Ammi told me that he thought them Literature in English then, she made sure she was the best in literature because of him, she mastered all the lines in Julius Caesar and imagined herself as Juliet, him as Romeo. By the time he was going back to Maiduguri after his service, he went away with her heart without even knowing that he did.

My mother on the other hand was an indigene of Adamawa State, born on the 29th of May 1973. She attended Command Primary School Yola, FGC Wukari and went ahead to study Common and Islamic Law at Bayero University Kano. Ammi told me she went to BUK in October 1989, by then Law was still a four-year course in Nigerian Universities, she graduated in March 1993 and went to Nigerian Law School Lagos, which was then the only Law School in Nigeria, she always talked about Boni Camp, where she mostly lived during her stay in Lagos with nostalgia. She was called to the Bar in June 1994 few weeks after she turned 21, and as fate had it, she met Abii in NYSC Camp when she went for her 3weeks orientation in Edo State in November 1994, few months after her call to bar, not as a fellow corper but as their camp commander. There she found out that Abii had always been in love with her, but was hesitant to tell her because of the teacher student relationship that existed between them then. There in the Camp they rekindled their love, he was a Captain then and the following year 1995 in August, exactly 9 months after they met again, they got married, Abii was 35 and Ammi 22. On Ammi's insistence on wanting to base in Adamawa, Abii secured a transfer to Adamawa where we now live in the Military Cantonment of Yola.