OCTOBER 10TH

PROLOGUE.

AGADEZ, NIGER.
SUNDAY, 10TH OCTOBER 2000.

Walking down the red sands of Agadez is Maisara, leisurely ambling around with a smile that has always been present in her face since younger age.

She has always been a happy person but that escalated after her marriage with the love of her life, her husband and the father to the baby inside her womb, Yusuf.

The man that sacrificed multitudes just to be with her in her birth home. Which is something that is frowned upon in their culture but he didn't care.

Many men wouldn't have done what he did to be with her and for that, she's always grateful for having him in her life. Her best friend and soulmate.

"Ah, why are you walking all alone today, Maisara? Where's your husband?" Jabeen stopped her on her way.

Janeen is an old woman known all around Agadez as the most nosy woman in the whole city. She stopped Maisara from her journey back home. Everyone can't stand her but she didn't care because she is in a good mood.

Her smile widened instead, almost startling the older woman. She should know though. Maisara is a happy lady right from when she was born.

"Yusuf is busy in the farm today, rainy season and all. Why are you here around our side, Jabeen? Heard you were in Cameroon a few days ago. When did you come back?" Maisara questioned with a tilt of her head.

Jabeen, excited that the news of her leaving the country reached every crevice of the Agadez –she made sure of that– beamed admonishing all she's told her about her busy husband like she wasn't the one that just asked.

You hardly find anyone leaving the country because they all have nothing and no one to go to anywhere else. They enjoy staying in the confines of Niger not bothering to look for an aperture.

"I came back yesterday. I brought souvenirs for Dujanah. You know how she likes begging, I had to buy it and take it to her. I'm just on my way back home." Jabeen sighed, her wrinkly hands moving to cup her face in that exaggerated manner everyone knows about. You should never ask Jabeen of something, she'd tell the whole society before it reaches you.

"Well, be safe then. I should get home before it gets late now." With that, Maisara yawed around and stalk down the long path that leads to her home where she lives with her parents, siblings and husband.

While walking, she bounced in sheer felicity that her twenty-three-year-old self cannot contain. There is no one there with her in the streets so she did all she wanted -excited bounce- as though she wasn't nine months pregnant. She does not feel the heaviness of her body and only feels discomfort when she is trying to lie down in the bed. It is not the same as when you have nothing inside you.

She sighted her husband waving ferociously at her, holding his bicycle with one hand while waiting for her to reach him. Another blinding and gleaming beam took over her face as she fastened her pace a little too enthusiastically only to look at Yusuf's horrified expression as he continues to stare at something behind her.

But it was too late for her to find out what got him so frightened because she felt herself flying in the air then to the side of the road where mud and grass manage to befriend one another.

Her eyes slowly opened, fear gnawing at her visceral, leaving her catatonic. Her heartbeat raced to the point of pain, limbs shook like leaf.