My New Home

Chapter Twenty-six

After Asr prayer the next day, I rushed to my room to put on the dress I've assembled. It consisted of a white blouse and also a plain white skirt slitted at the back to allow for easy movement, then I pulled a golden yellow kimono (after dress) to cover the wide slit and mainly to complement the dressing, then put on my white hijab with a golden yellow brooch attached to the side not to hold the hijab in place but to match the gown style, then set my nude coloured bag with matching stilettos on the side while I awaited Jamal's return from the mosque.

I was already agitated and hoped that he won't come back with a different story. Although I've tried to forgive him but if he could lie to his family about such serious issue, then, I don't think he would have told any other person, especially not me. I can't turn back the hand of time so I thought that I had to forgo it for my inner peace.

Jamal soon came back from the mosque and threw on a shirt and trousers casually. He told me it was time to leave. Then, I slipped on my stilletos, hanged my bag, and then, powdered my face a second time before stepping out of the room and we left in his car.

He hardly drove the car because he's mostly afraid of the baggage that comes with owning a personal car like fuelling the car, servicing it and other unforeseen faults cars usually develop. So, he mostly got a ride or drive on days he was late for work but today is an exception since he chose to take me in his car.

"Where are we going, you should be able to tell me now. I whined. After all I'll get to the place soon and it will no longer be a secret".

"When we get there, you'll know". He replied not rising to my bait.

We started talking about random things till I noticed our new environment. We've moved to the high side of Lagos, everywhere looked neat and inviting and I was able to guess that this was the part of Lagos that people mostly talked about.

When I asked Jamal about our location, he said we're on the route to Victoria Island. An hour and a half later, he slowed down at the entrance of an internationally acclaimed art house named Terra Kulture.

When he promised me an outing, I thought we would be going to a restaurant or something like that but I was surprised as well as elated that he opted for a different place totally out of my expectation. If I knew we would be coming to a place like this, I would have convinced him to plan a whole day for the outing instead of an evening because I believe there would be a lot of things to view and enjoy and just one evening wouldn't cut it but I planned to come back to the place some other time if it happened to be fun.

We bought our tickets and presented it at the entrance. We were asked if we needed a tour guide to which we complied. Our tour guide was a guy who is pleased with his job because he was quite enthusiastic about showing us around on a Sunday evening when most people would have preferred to be with their families.

I'm quite passionate about art and as a former theatre art student, I asked for a brief history about the centre since the only thing I knew about it was that most artist used the center for stage plays. Our tour guide was thrilled to give us more information than we needed about the place.

"Welcome to TK. He began. On seeing our confused expression, he elaborated that Terra Kulture is fondly called TK and its home of contemporary visual and theatre arts in Nigeria. It's one of the only two art auction houses in Nigeria which houses a collection of over a thousand art pieces from across the country and it homes a restaurant, craft shop, a library, language school and an art gallery". He said.

Although I was thrilled about the prospect of viewing art, I was still a little apprehensive that all we would mostly be doing is viewing art and the only food that we might have access to might just be snacks but my ears perked up when I heard him mention restaurant and my feature was a little brighter and Jamal noticed this.