Embraced (#2 Natives series) #ProjectNigeria

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen.

              RASHIDA ABDULLAH EYED ENVIOUSLY THE green coloured chewing gum in her hand. There were four pieces of them, wrapped together in a cut-out piece of transparent nylon. She looked up at the crowd of mothers flagging her, her lips pursed with jealousy, her eyes narrowed in stealth annoyance.

She was dight in a red and yellow wrapper with birds leaving their cages patterned onto the material. Her fair skin shone under the warm sunlight and her made-up face, contorted and highlighted in all the right angles by her second daughter, Madinah, sparkled brighter than her compadres.

In terms of appearance, Rashida granted the seemingly thrilled women cursory glances with scoffs of superiority, she surpassed them all. She was don up in the most expensive veil, a bag from some popular brand Madinah had ordered for her online sat on the plastic white table in black glory for all to see, and her jeweleries were more expensive than her entire outfit put together.

She had everything she had hoped to get; a rich husband, a big house, children, and money to buy whatever she wanted. It should make her happy, but instead she was not.

Rashida looked at the sick looking Mama Asiya, clothed in nothing but a simple plain veil and faded accessories. The woman couldn't compare to her in status. She was just a widow with little money, but the thing that annoyed Rashida was that the sick woman who had so little wealth was getting her first daughter married by the end of the month. The girl was just twenty-three!

Biting down on her red lined lip, Rashida shoved the bubble gum used to locally invite people for weddings in her small town into her bag. She scanned the crowd for a particular face, giving the mother of her first daughter's best friend a once over.

If any mother in her meeting group seemed close to coming up to her level, Rashida had to give it to Hussaina Ibrahim. The woman was comfortably rich and could pair together good accessories, but she was too calm for Rashida's liking. Hussaina's laid-back attitude towards the marital trails of life was something Rashida couldn't comprehend. She saw no reason why her friend would remain calm when talks of her husband taking a second wife—a younger second wife for that matter—was beginning to spread round their meetings.

"It's his right," Hussaina would always defend. "And besides, I'm not being laid-back, I just don't want to fight with my husband or his people, so I'm fighting with sabr instead. I believe whatever happens is qadr, so it is better to just let things happen as they should."

Rashida always hissed vehemently at that. Let me see my husband with any young lady who isn't his daughter first! She would always think but she had never spoken it out loud before, because she felt that if she spoke her thoughts out loud shaytaan would whisper it into being. She couldn't share her husband with any other woman. She frowned, realizing that she was already doing so with four other ladies.

Hussaina looked up, laughing and caught the woman staring at her. She smiled and Rashida playfully rolled her eyes before tearing her gaze away to search for Hussaini's mother. It was time she found our how the meeting between their children went.

She caught sight of the dark and slender older woman seated down a few chairs to her right. Hurrying to her feet, she scurried over to the black enwrapped woman, hoping desperately that her daughter had done as hadith taught and respected her mother this time around.

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          MUNIR WAS PAYING FOR the drug he had just bought when he caught a whiff of incense teasing the air around him. It was sandalwood, he figured instantly as he involuntarily sniffed in the air. The fragrance was so much like the one he had bought for his mother and sister from Istanbul months ago.