Midnight Echoes (ONLY PREVIEW)

Chapter 47

"Inside us there's something that has no name. That something is what we are..."
~José Saramago "Blindness"

--
Abuja, December 2014.

"What do you mean by calling off the wedding?" Alhaji Muh'd spoke, folding the Business Daily newspaper and placing it on the bedside drawer. "What wedding?"

Hajiya Mami adjusted her own sitting position on the edge of the bed, at the other end of which sat her husband, restless, as he waited for a further explanation from her. She knew it would be hard, approaching her him with this issue, but she didn't imagine it would be this hard. How could he ask her those questions after she'd spent over fifteen minutes, explaining it to him?

"Toh, mi anda," she said- I don't know. "She came to my room last night and told me she doesn't want to get married to Suraj anymore."

"You know, between you and Firdausi I don't know who's more sensible," Alhaji Ahmad shook his head, the neck of the grey jallaba he slept in, loose, it shook in rhythm with his sparsely grey hair. "Ni kam Mami, is it you that birthed Firduasi or she's the one who birthed you? How can you come to me with such insensible talk and tell me 'it's what Firdausi wants'?"

"Believe me, wallahi, I've tried everything to see that she changes her mind, but she seem adamant."

"So you concluded her decision is okay with you. That's why you decided to convey it to me at this odd hour? Because no, this is not you sharing it with me but rather conveying it to me."

And her eyes glanced at the analogue wall clock above her husband's bed. It was a little past five-thirty in the morning. She remembered having to rush in her own salah, just so she could talk with her husband about this rather disturbing new development regarding their daughter's wedding. But the few minutes she had to wait for him to come back from the mosque seemed like longest wait in her life.

"I couldn't sleep last night," she said. "I kept tossing and turning on the bed until I heard the call for prayer. Wallahi I even contemplated waking you up. You need to understand that this issue is as disturbing to me as it is to you," she absentmindedly ran her fingers on the tiny lines on the bedsheet, smoothening them in place. "No mother would ever wish that her child's wedding is called off a few days to the wedding. But what could I have done? I don't want to force my daughter into a marriage she doesn't want."

"Can you see what I was just saying? How can she come to you with a talk like that and you support her? You're her mother barki Allah! Weren't you suppose to talk sense into her head? I mean... this doesn't even make sense in the least!' He took a breath. "And if she knew she didn't like that boy, why didn't she say it from the on-set? And now, All of a sudden you want me to go tell Ya Ahmad that my daughter said she isn't marrying his son anymore? Do you... I mean, do you even realize the gravity of this matter at all? Do you?!"

Despite her husband's agitated tone, Hajiya Mami's voice was calm when she spoke. "It's not like she had a choice when your brother and yourself decided you want to join your children in marriage, you know it." In the cold silence that followed, Hajiya Mami knew her statement had sent home a message. Because her husband knew, knew very well that Firdausi didn't have a say when her fate with Suraj was decided. She remembered being the one saddled with the responsibility of conveying such message to her daughter who was miles away at a foreign land. She remembered too, how she'd rehearsed the words over and over in her head as she waited for the day to break, over there in the States. 

"And believe it or not, Firdausi is an adult now who's capable of making decisions for herself. I'm not saying that as her parents we can't make decisions for her, but when we make decisions like these, we have to consider the consequences that may follow. I am a woman too, and I know what it is like for a woman to say that she isn't in love with a man. That's the most truthful statement a woman would ever tell you and that's what Firdausi told me last night.