His Scandalous Bride

11: Now

"Where the hell have you been in the last week?" Saddiq flares in heightened irritation. Aisha had just stepped on his last nerve. How dare her walk in here like she hadn't just disappeared without a word? There were lines that shouldn't be crossed, he knew that, he understands that, however, he didn't care. She hadn't just crossed those invincible lines first, Aisha had obliterated them. Why shouldn't he not do the same? And to think that he'd been worried sick about her.

The hour after her sudden disappearance had him panicking. Why marry him if she couldn't even last a week? He couldn't understand why she would just up and leave after turning his world upside down. However as that hour turned to hours, he had found himself getting angrier and angrier until he was downright mad. She had insisted. She wanted marriage. Why should her choice keep making him suffer? He couldn't understand. That night, he had tossed, turned, hissed, scoffed, and sighed until eventually, he'd decided he doesn't care.

It was for the best. She should stay gone. He doesn't care.

Unfortunately, his resolve only lasted from the moment his eyes succumbed to sleep and the moment he'd wake, screaming, drench in his sweat with his heart beat escalated to abnormal heights. It couldn't even hold for a mere hour. His mood had spiralled even further since, realizing his anger was more at himself than it was for his enigmatic bride, hating how much he cares despite not wanting to. And just as he began the night worrying, morning had found him in the exact state of mind, or perhaps, in an even worst state.

Zainab collapsed.

He knew something was wrong when he saw the overwhelming amount of missed calls on his phone that morning. It was unusual considering the kind of night he had endured but he had overslept —he'd been up most of the night despite his resolutions and it would seem the exhaustions of the past week had caught up with him because he'd dozed off on his sallaya where he had prayed fajr—and was in a race getting ready for work. It couldn't have been the worst day to oversleep; he has a very important meeting at 12pm which is critical to his plans of expansion into the Asian market but like the upheavals that was his life in the last week, that day wasn't any different. He'd woken up at a quarter after eleven by the ring of his phone which had seem endless.

It was Faysal, the youngest son of his father's older and only brother of the same mother, and perhaps, his only friend.

Their grandfather has four wives; Hajiya Hawwa, Hajiya Binta, Hajiya Rakiya and Hajiya Hassu, and 13 children. Hajiya Hawwa has seven; Fatima, Zainab, Ummu-Kulsum, Aisha, Asiya, Maryam and Hawwa. Hajiya Binta has two; Hassana and Hussaina (they're twins). Hajiya Rakiya has one: Muhammad kabir. Hajiya Hassu, their grandmother, has three children; Alhaji Jabir, Faisal's father who has two wives and seven children, Alhaji Ibrahim, his father who has a wife and three sons and Hajiya Zainab who has a daughter whom she died giving birth to; it was a child she had after twenty years of marriage and was named after her, Zainab,

He hadn't picked. Time had been against him deciding to call him on his way to work knowing it might not even be anything serious knowing his cousin. Nothing usually was with him. Some family gossip, a new restaurant —he is a food connoisseur, or news about his latest fling with some exotic place on earth; Faysal is a certified wanderluster and it's sometimes hard to keep up with his flamboyant taste for life—Saddiq, it would seem, is a magnet for the weird and crazy.

Nonetheless, if he is the black sheep of the Makama family, Faysal would undoubtedly be the blacker sheep; he might have dropped out of school but Faysal is simply refusing to graduate —he has four degrees so far in Law, History, Mass communication and Political science. It was strange. Saddiq still wonders why the ancient one was letting Faysal off the hook when his entire existence is put on a million thousand radars.