Women Of Steel | ✔

VII

For days I remain huddled and hiding in that tent. Every morning I woke up with a calabash of food and water for cleaning up placed besides me, oddly I feel like a prisoner - except here, I am my own jailer because there is nothing keeping me from my freedom except myself.

In the noon and evening the same pattern repeats itself, and I never catch my so called father sneaking in but I know too well that it is all his handwork, because his slight scent is ever present in the small space, a faint smell of oranges and sand.

Most of the time in the past days was spent relieving memories, good and bad until I drift off to the cold arms of sleep. Sometimes I laid awake during the blistering hot afternoon, listening to ever lasting cheerful conversation and through out it all, I never heard his voice, no matter how much I strained my ears to.

This evening, I try to think of what I would have been doing if were back home, in Ile Wura, if my brother was still alive. I would have spent the whole morning by the riverside, with the daughters of rich merchants and chiefs, we would laze in the water and gossip about every soul beneath us.

In the afternoon, I would have had a quiet lunch with Tade, I would have attempted to chatter about nonsense things and the gossips to him, and he would have attempted to listen even though his eyes would stray ever so slightly to the mud building that contained Demilade's chambers. Then I would have felt that familiar swell of resentment, that everyone in the village was so determined on thinking of the scorned women they claimed to hate.

I would have spent the evening pestering her, wanting the one thing I had been so starved off, attention from the people that mattered to me.

Now I spend my evenings, lying and threading my fingers through the loose threads of the shirt I was given. It is a man's shirt bigger than my small frame and a faded patterned Ankara.

I look up when I hear the rustling of the tent flaps and he enters, bending considerably because he is bigger than the tent. He sinks down to a kneel and sits, crossing his legs over each other like how I am seated. I cannot help but notice how alike we must look.

My brother always used to marvel at how it was easy for me to twist myself into positions that many would consider uncomfortable, and for a few years he indulged my sudden excitement in training myself to twist into more shapes and I learnt to walk upside down on my palms as well as I could walk with my feet. My trainings stopped when the suitors began to pour in, nobody wanted to marry a girl that couldn't sit still and talk pretty.

For the first time in a long while, I mull over the thought of resuming my trainings.

"Are you well?" My father speaks first, brown eyes flickering to mine, it is too dark in the tent to make out what he might be thinking. Why is he suddenly speaking to me after disappearing for days?

"I am well," I say, then add as an afterthought, "Thank you," because it is a habit.

"I am leaving for a short journey tonight with some other men in the camp,"

Panic fills my blood sharp like a quick jab. I have come to depend on his presence, even though I don't feel it often, I don't want him to go suddenly and leave me feeling more alone than I am.

He must sense my worry because his next words are quick to reassure. "It will only be for a day or two, and every soul in this camp knows not to bother you, some of them are more friend than foe if you make an effort to find out." He says, an accusation in his words.

When I say nothing, he sighs full in disappointment as if he is excepting a confrontation but he forgets that I have been thought for so long to hold my tongue. A proper lady only ever says nice things, my governess used to say. Right now, the words on my tongue are nothing nice.

"Do stay out of trouble," the god throws his final words over his shoulders, a warning, no, an invitation - a challenge.

***

There is no moon in the desert and the bite of the cold takes me by surprise. I gather my arms around myself as they will shield me. My eyes scan the oasis, noting the camels resting under the tree.

There is no single soul in sight and I feel like a thief in the night. I take hesitant steps to the beasts by the oasis, taking in their wide eyes and touching a hesitant hand to their heads. My touch becomes more confident when one lets out a low growl.

I have always liked animals, always thought that they are more trustworthy than humans who betray, lie to and hurt their kind. But I didn't come out for the camels tonight, something else calls out to me in the night and I want to follow.

So I do, feet digging into the cold sand as I walk, farther and farther away from the camp, from safety.

This time, I learnt from my mistakes, in my right hand lies a long nail come unscrewed from the tent and I will use it. I will never be caged again, I will bloom, I will grow but I will never be trapped again, by my hands or by the hands of another.

Closer, closer, closer - the night whispers, the invitation thrums in my blood and causes my heart to quicken until my pace is faster and I am running, a woman liberated. I trip twice, stumbling like a new born calf.

A smile spreads wide on my lips, and I don't feel burdened by anything, not by the ghosts of my father or mother, not by the ache of grief in my chest or everything life has thrown in my face. Standing atop a steep dune of sand, I feel like a goddess, untouched and powerful.

If I stand there any longer then maybe I will forget everything, including my name because even names are burdens - it is why the Yoruba people name children after significant heroes or after powerful deities, in hopes that those innocent children become great like the people they are named after.

Names are stories. And mine means; a child is everything, so much hope on my shoulders, hope that I become everything, everything that they were not.

Instead I am nothing like everything.

But here I am not Omolara, I am not a princess, I am nobody, just another soul savouring the night and all its secrets - that is until I stumble upon a frightening one.

When I look to my right, I see it, tall and helpless in the sand, forgotten and easy to forget because if I risk blinking, then maybe it will just be another pile of sand.

The sight in front of my makes me look down at the sand under my feet, wondering if it is really sand.

A cold shiver snakes down my spine, a different chill than the one in the air.

There is a broken woman lying on the sand. And she looks dead. The word rings in my head over and over again, dead, dead, dead.

A scream escapes my lips a second too late, piercing the stillness.

Her arm twitches then her whole body convulses on the sand undulating like a dying snake. As I scramble to her side, kneeling by her, a single word escapes her rosy parted lips.

"Sare," - run.