Midnight Echoes (ONLY PREVIEW)

Chapter 13

For AishaUmarYau. Thank you for your love and endless support.
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"Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children."
~Kahlil Gibran.

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They were preparing iftaar together, making small talks, when Laylah's phone rang, interrupting their chatter.

Iman was sat on the cemented kitchen floor, eating boiled yam with oil and salt. She always liked her food like that, without soup or stew. At first, Laylah thought she hated the pepper, but she'd still throw tantrums even after they stopped putting pepper; so Azizah asked to let her be. And it got Laylah worried, worried that the girl may become malnourished.

Fingers dipped into a bowl of danwake paste, Laylah casted a brief glance at the phone's screen and looked away, let it rang. She was narrating her experience at the thick forests sorrounding the Borno villages when she escaped. Or rather, when Nasir let her escape. She was always telling her stories in bits. A different one every single day, as if she couldn't tell them all at once, were too enormous to be told at once.

She seemed to be talking about Maiduguri a lot, these days. She told Azizah about things that happened when they were away, about those who'd lost their lives, or those who'd fled the city, about those who were abducted, disappeared. She spoke about the villages that had fallen, and the neighbourhoods that were now completely deserted; the roofless houses standing like dry maize stalks in a farm, after harvestion.

Sometimes, she spoke about the good old days. The peaceful days preceding the war, when people go about their business, unfazed, unafraid of a looming bomb that may erupt at any moment. Any moment. Days when men leave their homes in the morning without the fear of never coming home by sun-set. And women, without the fear of never getting their husbands back, their kids.

"The woman had been in labour for more than fourty-seven hours," Laylah was saying. "We were all bent upon her, crouched down, behind those mountains, as the old women tried several techniques to help her give birth, safely. At last, with one final push, the baby came out; a beautiful baby girl with soft curly hair. It was crying eerily. A woman muffled the cries with her palms, lest they find out our hiding place and come for us."

"Amma! Ruwa. Ammaa!" Iman cried. Laylah filled a tiny rubber cup with water, gave it to the little girl.

"In our ecstacy," she continued. "We forgot that the placenta did not come out, had refused to come out. So an old woman plucked a tree branch, almost as thick as my arm, and pushed it through the new mother's mouth. Pushed, and pushed.

Two days after, the baby died of exposure. It was extremely cold. We buried it under a huge tree. I can still see the tiny mound in my eyes," her eyes teared. "Several children died of exposure, Azizah. We were always losing them to the frizzy cold. I'm not sure how Iman made it. I'm not sure."

The phone rang again. And somehow, Azizah was glad something had distracted them both, had prevented her from breaking down. But Laylah glanced at it, again. Kept throwing tiny balls of danwake paste into the pot of boiling water. She was supporting the large bowl with her left hand.

Azizah noticed her helplessness. "Should I hold it to your ear, Aunty Laylah?"

"No, no. Let it."

Silence fell between them, yet again, as each woman concentrated on her task.

"You remember my friend, Yakura? The one whose house was the last on our street?" Laylah asked. 

Azizah added a pinch of salt to the qosai paste, beat it with a turning stick. "Yes," she said. "I remember her." It was almost impossible to forget Yakura, who was one of Laylah's closest friends. She lived with her father in a single story house at London ciki. The father was a university professor at Unimaid. A tall, burly man with a receding hairline.