A Trial On Love

04

They all sat on the mat one of the workers in the house sprayed for them as they waited for Tabawa, Maigari's wife to come out. Rayhan's heart kept pounding against her ribcage because she could have a feeling that this meeting wasn't going to be fruitful, especially how Musa entered his mother's room first and spoke for some minutes before he left and now she was walking toward them with a bright smile on her lips.

Tabawa was the favorite wife of the house, she was the only one Maigari listened to and did all she asked of him even if he didn't want to do that. And seeing her smiling was both frightening and consoling for Rayhan. She sat down and they exchanged pleasantries with Mama before Nafisa and Rayhan greeted her. She stared at Rayhan longer than a minute before she smiled while nodding her head.

"Jummai," she called out to Mama's attention, with her eyes still placed on Rayhan as though this was the first time she was ever seeing her. "I heard that Rayhan's mother has never said anything about her father, right? I mean, no one knew whether the girl got married before she gave birth to her or not, right?" Her voice was casual, it wasn't as if she intended to hurt Rayhan, because the gentle smile still played on her lips.

Even though Inna made sure that Rayhan had never forgotten who she was and how she was born into this world, it felt like a dagger being choked directly into the aorta of her heart. She wasn't ready for this. Moreover, she had not planned for this conversation when they came here. Yes, it wasn't a hidden knowledge in the village that she was a bastard, but coming to her in this manner was just so painful.

She ducked her head down and felt when Nafisa held her hand and softly squeezed it. The tears she had managed to stop at Nafisa's house came back to her with full force and it was clear that she had brought herself from frying pan to fire. It would've even been better if she had stayed and got beaten by Inna, the pain would've already started subsiding by now.

"Haba Tabawa, how can you talk this way fisabilillahi? We came here so you could help us talk to Maigari and he would talk to Inna Ladi and her son Hashimu to let the poor girl be, if not one day they will end up killing her with their beatings. And now this? Come on, I wasn't expecting such from you." Mama said, anger evident on her tone even though it was clear enough that she was trying as much as she could to sound normal.

"What? I wasn't trying to be insulting or anything. I was merely thinking of a longterm solution for the poor girl's problems. It's pretty obvious that Inna Ladi will never let the girl rest and we shouldn't even talk about Hashimu. But what if we take her out of the house and far away from them? In a place where her security is secured and they would never get the chance to even think of going there to hurt her?"

"I think we've tried to do that once, even Maigari agreed that she can come back to my house and stay with us, but did you forget what Inna Ladi did at that time?" Mama asked, as if talking about it was as useless as thinking about that as a solution was.

Rayhan would never forget the best two days of her life. It was when Hashimu attempted to rape her and she ran to Nafisa's house in the middle of the night. That was the push Mama and Baba needed and they asked Maigari to give them the the permission to have Rayhan under their roof and he did. But two days after, Inna along with Hashimu came with two police men from Daura and took Baba with them.

It was a case as huge as Inna could pull because she claimed that Rayhan's mother had promised that she would be paying her monthly if she helped took care of her daughter before she left. The payment only came five times and from then nothing from her. So, now that the daughter had became a full functioning human being that she could use to her biddings, she wasn't going to agree to have anyone take her away from her unless that person is willing to pay for all that she had spent on Rayhan since her mother left her. As that was what she planned to do when the mother came back for her, because she had a feeling that so long as she was alive, she'd come back for her daughter.