Here Comes the Bride 2
Sad Muslim Girl.Image: Deposit Photos This series starts here. Catch up on it and enjoy the sequel. The number of people in front of her compound was daunting. Salamatu Yakubu smiled as she thought of that word; daunting. She had seen it in the newspaper at the principal’s office when she had gone to get chalk. She memorized the spelling and got her teacher to explain the meaning. As usual, her teacher had told her to find it out herself; urging her to search the dictionary starting at ‘D’ and then, the next letter. She couldn’t help but smile at how much she was learning, which was far better than her classmates and especially, than ALL the boys in her class. Her smile dropped when she got closer to her compound. There seemed to be an air of sadness hanging heavily around the entire compound. Her feet dragged, wanting to be spared the impending destruction to her little cocoon. Abubakar ran to her. He was her immediate younger brother and a real pest in her life. She was about to warn him to stay away from her when she saw his tear-streaked face. She squinted to see if he was trying to play a fast one but saw that for the first time in his entire 12 years of existence, he was genuinely sad. ‘What happened?’ she asked in English before remembering to switch off school mode for home. She asked again, but this time, in Hausa. ‘What happened? Why are you crying?’ Abubakar did something that shocked the shoes off her feet; he crumbled into a heap at her feet, put his arms around her and wailed. She dropped her school bag and bent to him. She was surprised by the flood of emotions that came over her. She held him until the teary fits wracking his body subsided. At that point, it didn’t matter that they had been taught not to hold members of the opposite sex or that their mothers were different. What mattered was that they had finally bonded over something she was still to find out about. ‘Ba…ba… Baba has died.’ he said. Salamatu flinched. She was not close to her father; had never been. That fact didn’t stop the temporary moment her heart clenched and the overwhelming that sadness came upon her. She gently pushed her brother away, picked her bag and started walking…walking away from her house…from the reality of her shattered life…from the end of what she knew. She didn’t know when she started running; running till her heart almost exploded in her chest. Her brain led her feet to the school library; her safe place. She paused long enough to check if there was anyone about before diving in. She went straight to the third row of books, the place farthest from the door. Unlike a true library, there were no sections with major headlines and easy access. The community was too poor to afford that. A corps member who had come in to serve was the one who built the library and got her church to donate books. Since she passed out, no new book had been added to the library and many were dog-eared from overuse. Salamatu sunk between the shelves and took the fetal position. She began to cry in earnest now. Her life was over. She was in deep trouble. And yes, she wasn’t crying that her father was dead. In fact, he had been her biggest problem since she started to understand what her life was about. She hated him and quite frankly, was glad he was dead! *** Mallam Suleiman Yakubu was an average farmer. He did what everyone else did; planted crops in season, worked his farm, harvested and waited for the next season to begin planting again. That was his life; simple and straightforward. He had four wives and so many kids popping out every 10 months, that at the last census, the number of his kids present at the count was 40. Thankfully, he had more boys than girls who could help in the farms and ensure that food was never a problem in his house. He was very religious; studying the Holy Qur’an at least twice a day. He said his five daily prayers on time and lived according to the tenets of Islam. He was also against everything Western. He hated Americans and Israelis – even though he had never met any of them – and he was against everything they stood for, one of which was formal education. He had sworn never to send any of his kids to the so called ‘school’. The school had sent many entreaties to him and even the local community leaders had asked him to send at least one child. They had all received the same answer; NO! His boys had to be on the farm most of the time and his daughters had to be prepared for marriage. He was not going to let anyone corrupt any child of his with Western ideas. His kids had a healthy fear of him. They cowered in his presence…well, almost all of them did. His daughter, Salamatu, was defiant. She was the only child of her mother and was very stubborn. She refused to be afraid of him. In one incident, she shocked him by questioning why they needed to pray five times daily. When he told her she must do so because he said so, she told him that if he had said because Allah said so, she would have accepted it. She went further to say that his word was not absolute, as he was but a man. He remembered how he beat her to unconsciousness. That was not the last time either. She found ways to rile him up with her constant questions and opinions. If Salamatu had not been a spitting image of him, he could have sworn that she was not his child. She questioned his audacity to marry off his
