Aaliyah to the World

49 | The Break Up

•Bilal

Eid-Ul-Adha [Day 2]

14:30PM

"Layla!" Bilan called.

"My love she's in the backyard playing with Bushra and Kauthar."

"Ok." She darts to the kitchen to find our child.

Today is the second day of Eid and I promised to take Layla to visit her  grandparents.

Since both my parents were deceased I never spoke of them. Only to Bilan.

"Look at this mess!" She screams, pointing at Layla's muddy dress. Bushra and Kauthar followed behind her as she turned to the staircase.

She brought the girls back in to bathe them so that we could leave early.

Layla liked to play like the village children so you could always count on her to come back with messy clothes to the house.

Cooking sand and veggies in tin cans was her favourite. For some reason it fascinated her the most. She also enjoyed ten-ten and gaɗa.

I wasn't born in the village so I never got to play all these games but she had the opportunity, luckily, because Bilan and I adopted two of Mama's cousin's kids who were a bit older but very much agile.

The first, Bushra, was only five and her older sister Kauthar was nine. They have a brother but he wasn't so friendly.

He refused to come to Abuja when we first went to Maiduguri to get them since their grandparents were too old to take care of them. He was the oldest at seventeen. Since he was already enrolled in a school there we didn't bother much.

"Honey why are you still dressed in your tracksuit?" She asked, confused.

For a second there I wanted to laugh. She looked like her brain was about to fly out of her head this instance.

"What are you thinking of?!" She gasped, her hands rising and falling in the air like the Nigerian economy, currently.

"You." I grinned.

She dragged me off the couch by one arm and snatched my phone with her other hand, "Get off the couch you potato. We're going to be late. Me, Bushra, Layla and Kauthar are ready. Take a bath."

"I don't know what you're bothering yourself about. I already took a bath. I just didn't want to get my clothes rumpled before we left."

She sighed contentedly, "Ok my love go and change your clothes now."

We went upstairs and she told me to sit on the couch while she tread through my hurricane of closet to find me the appropriate wear.

"Wear this."

In exactly ten seconds she found something for me.

That's amazing!

I'd have taken twenty minutes to find anything.

Instead of taking the clothes, I pulled her hand with the clothes so she'd sit on my lap. She wrapped her arms around my shoulder and kissed my lips, staining it with a little of her maroon coloured lipstick.

"My love what's this?" She blushed.

"I didn't tell you how ravishing you looked today."

"So I don't look fine everyday right?" She slapped my shoulder, frowning.

"You always look beautiful. Just that it's not on all days I mention it. You have me blacking out and staring for a long time."

"You tease! Change let's go." She tried to get up but I pulled her by her waist.