OCTOBER 10TH

"TWO"

BAUCHI STATE, NIGERIA.

Mahnoor yawned and stretched her arms on the bed, as usual, a bright smile taking over her facial features. There is no way the dream she's had won't have anything to do with what is going to happen today. A big day for her.

Today is her birthday and her one year anniversary which means her husband is coming back from Portland and she will see him for the first time in her life. She cannot wait, she beamed at herself before throwing her short legs off the bed after muttering her morning supplications.

She padded to the en-suite and smiled widely at the whole place that took her almost half a year to know how to operate it with disconcerting technology but she did it. She is Mahnoor Muneer Imam and nothing can slip past with her vigilant eyes and sharp memory.

Filling the imposing frost bathtub with water, bubbles then pour some perfumes she's brought with her from Niger used for bathing, some citrus, lavender, rose oil and epsom salt, she settled inside.

Mahnoor won't listen to anybody today if her husband doesn't come back. He should've been with her days ago, she is tired. Whoever he is, she wants to see him today without any excuse from his parents or siblings or she will tell her father about what she's going through in the house no matter which way she will find to do so. She won't exactly say she's enjoyed staying in that house all alone with housemaids, she didn't.

She had no friends in the unknown city and her in-laws are not ready to entertain her so she befriended the whole housemaids. From what she's concluded, everyone has forgotten about her being in the other part of the manor with them which is fine by her because those people intimidate her and scare the living daylight out of her.

Sliding into the filled bathtub, the water poured down on the floor due to her weight which elicited a squeak from her before she realized that it was just water pouring down the floor and not a rat -she hasn't seen one since she left her hometown.

Sighing, she reclined back down on the headrest inside the tub and closed her eyes and smiled again at the thought of meeting her husband. When is he coming back? In an hour? Two or five? She cannot wait to meet the man she's decided to fall in love with without seeing his picture or him.

She's become a voyeur and she is not even ashamed. Why should she be? Her parents came to her one day and sat her down in their room.

"Dada, you are going to get married to a man from Nigeria. I don't know whether you have someone you love here with the amount of men following behind you all the time that I'm afraid to send you out but this has been finalized since the day you were born." Muneer Imam sighed and pinched his nose at her confused expression.

Her mother took over. "Pepere advised us to get you married to one of the twin brothers in Nigeria or we lost you to some terrible accident. You know how he's been right? You've heard stories about him?"

Mahnoor nodded but opened her mouth to chirp in like always. "Who are these twin brothers and why them? We have so many men here, don't we? Why in Nigeria? I heard the country is corrupted and so many bandits are disturbing them, I'm afraid, Pére."

They are speaking French, the language known around the whole of Niger, Agadez. Her own is more fluent but after she's grown up and went to the best school her father could find for her there, she's started mixing both her English and French with accent people adore.

She is the best student out there because her father forced her to be among the best so she can go to Nigeria and merge in with them without having to go through tribulations from the family she is going to meet. He knows the people she will deal with just not too personally but enough to know his daughter will be safe.