He was my father’s friend, but his eyes were always on me whenever I passed along Kofar Fada. Though I was blessed with glamorous structures that shook strong men’s hearts, I had never imagined drawing the attention of an older person as old as him. He was an old man of almost sixty years, a huge man who could be compared with Samudawa (tall and huge people that existed in in past and described in the holy Qur’an).
When I was six years old, I was told that he was the dagaci of Dadin Kowa, the place where I was born. I used to wonder how he felt when he was surrounded by his talakawa under a mahogany tree. His head was always covered by a rawani, a turban used by the royalty. He mostly administered the city under that mahogany tree, where they spread a big raffia mat. When it was raining or in extreme harmattan, they stayed in Fada, a traditional sitting room known as his palace.
When I reached school age, I became very close to one of his daughters, Bintu. We were close and even shared the same seat at school. I can’t remember how we came to be good friends, but I knew her as a very stubborn girl, who always fought on my behalf. The ego of the royal family made her not tolerate nonsense even from her older friends. Our friendship allowed me to visit the royal house and play with other children. Although I visited Bintu’s home so often, her father’s attention was not caught on me. Maybe because those things in women that drive men crazy were not then visible in me.
As the harmattan, the rainy, and the dry seasons kept rotating, I came to know that Bintu’s father had a budurwar zuciya-(or teenage heart). It happened one morning when I had a terrible experience at school. I was then in my first year at junior secondary school. We were having the English class and Malam Habibu was asking questions on the previous lessons he had covered. When he asked a question, I raised my hand to answer. As he ordered me to stand and answer the question, Aliyu, a classmate sitting behind our desk, screamed and said, “Sir, she is bleeding.”
I looked at myself and discovered that my uniform was soaked with blood; even my seat had stains on it. I was so shocked to see how such a thing could happen to me. “What is happening to me?” I thought in naked fear. My heart was beating as it had never beaten before. I hadn’t wounded myself; neither did I feel any pain. Before Malam arrived close to my desk, my eyes were filled with hot tears.
“Go to the toilet and clean yourself,” My teacher said when he observed the condition I was in. I had no experience with what was happening to me. When I came out of the class, instead of going to the toilet, I went home directly crying. As I reached Kofar Fada, Dagaci and his entourage were having a session. They called me and asked what had happened to me. I told them the scenario, but instead of them sympathise with me, the Dagaci smiled and said, “Yarinya je gida, girma ya kama ki- Girl, go home, you have come of age”. I left them and ran home.
My mother was shocked when she saw me crying. I narrated to her the incident. She too joined the Dagaci and smiled. She held me very tightly in her arms and said, “Allah ya raya mun ke na ga aurenki! May I live long to witness your marriage!”
“My daughter, the blood is an indication that you have grown up into a full woman and can have a baby. You would be seeing this blood every month.” Mother said as she waved away my tears and led me into the toilet. She washed my body and showed me how to use a pad.
It was silly of me. I had never known that every normal woman should have jinin haila (the mensuration cycle). I was later told by my mother to avoid sex until I got married. I just imagined several girls like me who had no idea about the mensuration cycle. How would they feel when ignored by parents? That day I blamed many parents in my local community for not drawing their daughters close and educating them about it and even sex.
The next day I found it difficult to look into the eyes of my friends, especially boys. I knew those boys were very observant. I know they would begin to see me as a sex symbol. I was so foolish for my behaviour because for months my chest had begun to grow small breasts with big heads. It was then I understood that those boys observed me more carefully. I knew even Aliyu was among those who kept their sights on me. I couldn’t deny that they could see the horns and spikes on my chest.
“You are ready to start having sex,” Larai, an older friend in the class said, trying to bring back my yesterday’s scenario during the break.
I stared at her recalling what my mother had said about avoiding sex until marriage. “You may mislead me if I was not informed about sex.”
She shook her head. “I’m not saying you should go and have sex, but I’m saying you are ready to have it. You are mature enough to have a relationship.”
“You are saying the same thing. Peer groups are playing a great role in sending young people into the wrong. Maybe because parents are not up to the task and so leave everything in the hands of these peer groups,” I said.
She smiled, “Jamila, do you want to tell me you don’t know about all this and yesterday’s experience was a shock to you?”
“You got me correct, Larai,” I replied to her.
She clapped her hands. “You are a liar. Why didn’t you see a doctor when those things you are hiding on your chest begin to appear? Why didn’t you go and tell him that you have a monster appearing on your chest?”
Bintu who was listening to our conversation intervened in a gentle manner that wasn’t her normal behaviour. “I agree with what Jamila had said one hundred percent. She is the only daughter in her family, so Larai don’t try to disgrace her.”
I appreciated her intervention, maybe because she understood I was uncomfortable with Larai’s interrogation and the discussion was sensitive. That was how we buried the issue and opened a new discussion, but at the back of my mind, I was revisiting all the conversations. I believed Bintu. Had it been I had older sisters, I may not have been disgraced the way it happened to me. I just looked at Bintu, who was a late bloomer but was aware of all this. No wonder, the royal house was full of women of all ages.
**********************
Dagaci turned out to be seriously interested in me. He used to see me every day when I was passing to go to school. Sometimes, he would call and give me two coins to have a delicious break at school. I thought he was behaving as a father; a friend of my father and also the father of Bintu.
Things began to fall apart when I reached JSS 3. Dagaci summoned my father and asked for my hand in marriage. My father had no alternative other than to accept his wish. Even though they had grown up together, he was nobody other than his subject. When I was contacted, I vehemently declined the offer. Dagaci sent his errand woman to me to convince me. I told her to go back and tell him that I recognised him as my father; therefore, he should stay out of my business. Alas, it was too late for me. The heart of this old man had already been infected by ciwon so (besotted love). His heart was completely blind.
Since when I was a child, I had gotten used to hearing about people with budurwar zuciya, but I had never known the true meaning of it until I fell into the Dagaci’s trap. Certainly, he became blind, trying to get me by hook or by crook. The memory of my mensuration period came back to me. I could vividly recall his smiling face when they talked to me on that very day. I was wrong to accept his gifts. It meant all those years his tired eyes were on me, trying to reveal what those naughty boys had observed. Alas! All those years, I had claimed to be in front of my father, shaking my natural gifts in the blowing wind of maturity and puberty.
The Dagaci used his influence and money to convince most of my relatives that he was going to marry me and take good care of me. He distributed money and reams of wrappers to women, especially my paternal and maternal grandmothers. He promised to offer plots of land and farmlands to my parents if the marriage succeeded. I cried every day until all my eyes turned red as chilli pepper. “What on earth does this old man want from me?” I thought.
Apart from Bintu’s mother, the Dagaci had two more wives. I wondered how I would face Bintu. I was imagining how I would turn out to be her aunt. What would happen to all those memories and childish acts we had together? What would happen to my studies? Would I be allowed to continue? Since I was a little girl, I had the ambition of becoming a doctor. Whenever I visited a hospital, I got attracted by female doctors and nurses with stethoscopes hanging on their necks. I couldn’t imagine seeing this dream fade away like scattered smoke in the air.
The Dagaci was permitted to start seeing me. Whenever he came, he would do all the conversation. On his first visit, I had to tell him that he didn’t respect himself. I restated that he was my father. This world was full of injustice. Could you imagine that he shook his head in dissatisfaction and said, “My dear, I hate those words from your lips. You are trying to make me old.”
I raised my head and looked at him; we then had eye-to-eye contact. “Do you think my lips are telling lies? Are you not Bintu’s father?”
He smiled and asked, “Do you know how old Bintu is?”
“I don’t care. If you put yourself in my shoes, you cannot deny that we play together. She is my best friend.”
I got him wrong again. I was dealing with an old man who found himself in another world different from that of his generation.
They set a date to marry me off to him. As you know, the date never fails. One Saturday morning, I was married to the Dagaci. From that day, I could not deny that I belong to his kitchen and his living room. But for sure he could not have my heart and my love. In that instance, down to the bottom of my heart, I was warned. “He might be happy to have your tall well-built body with its wide hips even if your heart doesn’t belong to him.”
On that day when it was dark, I was covered with a white veil and taken to his house. The elderly woman who took me there introduced me to the other two wives and sought their support in treating me as a younger wife. Even though I was covered, I was extremely embarrassed when I heard Bintu’s voice while we paid homage to her mother.
I later found myself crying in my new room. All the women that brought me had left. My friend, Bintu, who was in the compound didn’t bother to see me. I didn’t know if she too was jealous of me marrying her father to compete with her mother.
“Amarya kin sha kamshi.” I heard him praising me and the aroma of scent in the room when he got himself in. He sat on the bed, removing his turban and shoes. I adjusted my sitting and moved myself tightly against the corner of the bed, looking so nervous like a hen that had a broken egg within her. He came closer to me and unveiled me. I raised my head and warned him to leave me alone. But he ignored me, appreciating my beauty. Even in the dark light, I could see how his teeth were coloured by kolanuts.
“Wallahi, I was cheated. Ba na kaunarka, ka mayar da ni gidanmu. I hate you, you should take me back home,” I shouted.
He quickly used his palm and closed my mouth. “Please, Jamila, don’t allow the other wives to hear you shouting. This house is equally your home.”
I don’t need to tell you how frightened I was to live close to that old man as my husband. It made the heart in me pounding hard as if it was going to come out. He grabbed me and drew me closer to him. I didn’t know the time I uttered an unjustifiable insult at him when I felt his enormous fingers against my chest. I pushed him down from the bed and got him off balance. He fell with the sound of a fallen sack. Before he could know what was happening, I ran to the door and opened it. I then rushed to the main entrance. I found it locked. I pulled to open it but couldn’t. All the map of the house was in my head. There was a place in the house we used to play. Sometimes we would drag a turmi (or mortar) and climb the wall to shout and mock at people outside. I quickly rushed there and found the turmi.
“Jamila! Jamila!! Jamila!!!” I heard him shouting when he came out. By then I jumped out and ran into the darkness. I was the fastest student runner in both primary and secondary schools, so with the speed of a young stallion, I disappeared into the darkness.
I was later told that the Dagaci had screamed, waking up all the members of the house. His errand boys emerged and were instructed to search the whole house. They searched all the nooks and corners of the house but couldn’t find me. He ordered them to check at our house and ask for me. I was not that dull to go back there.
I sneaked into my grandmother’s room. I met her sleeping. I joined her on her mattress and lay beside her. She was shocked early morning to see me.
“Kin ci ubanki!” (You worthless girl!). She shouted with her mouth agape. “Were you not the one we conveyed to your husband’s house?”
“Kaka, I don’t love him. I can’t live with that old man.” I covered my eyes and started crying.
“It’s okay jikalle! Stop crying, my granddaughter. I will think of what to do.”
Her effort didn’t work out; I was later carried back to the Dagaci’s house again. On that very night, he had me the way he wanted. But the truth of the matter was that he swam in the river of poison. Quite, he enjoyed the honey in me, but it drove him crazy and hypnotised and completely besotted him.
I didn’t change my position. Three times I escaped and ran away from his home. But because he was so hypnotised, he warned the other wives that if ever I tried to run in their presence and they refused to report to him, he would issue a divorce note to each of them.
*********************
On Saturday evening, which coincided with my turn as a wife, the Dagaci sent goat meat to me to prepare his dinner. I still had the picture of his last visit to my room in my head; he got so low begging me to love him. He claimed his heart would stop beating if he lost me. Allah had witnessed how I tried to accommodate him and love him as a husband, but my heart refused to accept him. I tried to make myself ugly without taking a bath and putting makeup up, but whenever he came he would be astonished and praise my beauty.
He was outside under the mahogany tree with his entourage enjoying the evening breeze when I left the goat meat and tried to find my way out of the house. The whole wives ran outside to alert him. From where I was standing, I could hear them. “Malam, za ta gudu! Sir, she is trying to escape!”
Before they could make their way into the house, I had already climbed the wall and escaped. They said the Dagaci had to remove his rawani and a big gown he was wearing to climb that giant and tall tree for him to see which direction I took. I was sure he hadn’t climbed that tree for over three decades, but something running in his blood had forced him to do that. He quite saw me and shouted at his errand boys to go after me.
Gossip about the ill relationship with my husband spread in the community just like an airborne infection. The Hakimi, who was the district head, was told that the Dagaci had married a small girl who had refused him, but he was so crazy about her. He summoned him to hear the true nature of the relationship from the horse’s mouth. I was told that he confessed his love to me and said he could not do without me. Many thought he was joking. Even the Hakimi asked him to choose between his title and me. When he chose to stay with me and relinquish his position, the Hakimi ordered him to drop his rawani. To their surprise, he untied it and dropped it, indicating that he had relinquished the title. They said the Hakimi was so stunned to see someone from the royal family resign just for a girl’s love. The Hakimi felt it was not fair to abandon him. He therefore asked him to pick up his rawani.
Two weeks later, I was taken aback. The Dagaci came to my room. He was so happy that I had cooked his dinner. After his meal, he lugged me onto his lap and began to plead. “Please, Jamila, I want you to love me. You are the happiness of my heart. Where on earth would I be if you deny me your love?”
I raised my head and looked at him. I could not be a hypocrite. “I’m sorry!” I uttered. I turned my head down and said, “I tried to force my heart to accept you, but it didn’t. Maybe the truth is that you are too old to fit into the tender heart of a little girl who finds it difficult to resist the shame of mistreating her youthfulness.”
Even though there was a dim light in the room, I saw the sadness on his looking face. His eyes looked like those that had lost something so dear on earth. That night he went to his bed without having the fruit he always wished to have.
In the morning when he was about to go to Fada, he slumped in the soro, grabbing his chest with his hands. He found it difficult to breathe. All the wives and children ran to him. He was then taken to hospital. But before they could make it, he died. I was emotionally touched by his sudden passing away. But I would be a hypocrite if I said I was not glad that he’d die.
©Zaharaddeen Ibrahim Kallah
Zee Digest 
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