THE ROOT OF A CYNOSURE

Chapter sixteen

Fahad

I allowed a little distance between us as I trailed them. It was a market day and the village was chock-a-block with people from the village, neighbouring villages and tourists.

They walked down the slope,
descending from the mountain top which habited the people. No roads for cars but the natives made a way for motor-cycles. I kept following them until we reached the ground. Then they moved to a jeep, got in and drove away.

The trail was a debacle. Damon had driven the SUV away.But it was obvious he was no stranger here. We were told that Ardo was a native of this place. How come no one seemed to remember him? We asked so many people but never got a satisfactory answer.

I decide to board a bike back to the hotel. As we rode through the valleys of mountains with lots of green grasses, I enjoyed the beauty of this town.

Then I saw her. No doubt, it was her. She was the girl I saw at the playground  and gave my soul a lift.
“ Tsaya,tsaya,tsaya! ( Stop,stop,stop!)” I said  suddenly and the desperation in my voice surprised me.The biker stopped .

“ Menene? ( What is it?)”

I alighted atonce, paid him and said,
“ Jeka, nagode. ( You can leave, thank you.)”

He looked at me astonishingly, shrugged then left. I looked at the girl who seemed not to notice me. I had not been myself since I saw her. She had been standing, watching the brutal game which seemed not to amaze her. She stood out among the girls. I used to have a weakness for chubby girls but this girl changed my life long desire at once with her model-like slim body with a height I guessed was almost six feet.

Her figure looked like an art work, a masterpiece out of imagination, and painted by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo  and sculptured by the combined efforts of  Donatello, Michelangelo, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Auguste Rodin.

Her hands were slim ,beautiful with long straight fingers. Her multi-coloured bracelets were locally made, cheap but intriguing. Her bossom looked like the best work of a surgeon who endowed women with fake breasts but no, this was real and natural,  but looked too good to be real.It reminded of two contrasting words in Biology : turgidity and flaccidity. I now understand the word turgidity better.  Her tommy was flat, I mean flat then it expanded into the widest and most curved hips I had ever seen.

Then she tormented me with straight ,long legs which she placed in a simple, locally made flip-flops. She was natural. No make up, no sophisticated wears, her local Fulani dress which used to stop before the navel in the past but now covered her belly, her wrapper which passed knee length was handmade.

Her hair was a rich shade of ebony, flowing in waves to adorn her smooth, porcelain-like  light skin. The Fulanis looked like Arabs. Her large, sparkling eyes were as black as ink, framed by long natural lashes, under perfectly shaped eyebrow.

Her straight nose pointed, her full, firm thin lips was soft pink. Her very fair complexion skin was peaches and cream and I guessed she only used sheer butter as cream.

This belle sent me into an instant state of reverie, revivifying a dead and buried part of me, awaking a  ten thousand year old mummy.

She stood, leaning on her long stick while she watched over her cattle as they fed and drank water from a stream .Yes, she was a cattle rearer and if becoming a cattle would draw me close to her, then I would chose to become Holstein Friesian.she was a Fulani girl.

The people called Hausa-fulani of the northern part of Nigeria spoke Hausa language. But in the real sense, ther was a difference between the Hausa people and the fulanis in terms of language and culture. The Fulanis could be found in many countries in Africa .They were pastoralists and the largest nomadic pastoral community in the world.