ALIYA

Chapter 1 - Aliya

Kaduna, Nigeria.

Present day.

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In all my years at Hajiya Faridah's house, I had never been deprived anything except things that are not good for me. She was a very nice woman and had treated me like her very own. Actually, she didn't have any children. She was the first wife of Honorable Kabir Fawad, so beautiful and was a successful business woman. She had a jewelry store here in Zaria, and another one in Kano. Her husband, however was a high official of the Nigerian Embassy at France. He hardly return back home, hence Hajiya used to pay him visits. Same applies to his second wife, Hajiya Halima who gave him a son, Fawad. She lived just few kilometres away from our house. The third wife on the other hand was a French woman with the name Nadia, I had only seen her picture. She was also childless like Hajiya.

Hajiya was a mix of Kanuri and Fulani but could speak both Hausa and English fluently. The only time she speak Kanuri or Fulani is when she's with her relatives. Our first meeting was the day she found me crying by the roadside which was 13 years ago. She pulled over and asked me what was going on and where my parents were but all I did was to cry even more. It took her a lot of courage to make me speak, thus I narrated all that I knew to her - starting from the evening I last saw my mother to the moment I was lured into a car and brought to where I was. She was touched by my story, hence she promised to help me find my mother but only if I come with her to her house and rest for the night since it was already getting dark. I agreed, after all I had no other choice. I was also hungry like crazy.

After driving me to her house, she fed me up and then bathed me by herself. I didn't have any spare cloth so she made me wore the old one and promised to buy me new cloths the following day. Her house was very big, there were many rooms in it. I was expecting to see children or many people around but there was only a young lady, Balaraba whom I later learnt was the cook and also the cleaner of the house. Hajiya took me to a room upstairs which appeared to be hers, and thence we retired for the night. The following day, she took me straight to the police station and reported my case to them. The DPO expressed sadness, and after consoling me he promised to help me search for my mother against all odds!

The search only lasted for few weeks, hence the police called and told us they'd received some information about my mother and that she had been dead for long. The news broke my heart, thus I cried incessantly with Hajiya consoling me. That was how I ended up living with Hajiya, and ever since I started living in her house I had only saw her husband thrice. Like I said earlier, he was hardly seen. Every four months, Hajiya would visit him and stay for a month or so before returning back. She would leave me under the care of Balaraba, but not anymore because I had now become a grown up. Yes, and was now a graduate of Sociology from the prestigious ABU, Zaria.

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Today was a special day, I woke up happy and I didn't really know why I was happy. Perhaps because Fawad was coming but Fawad? Do I even care much about him? He was too funny to be with, and he loved poking fun at people. Sometimes I used to feel like punching him so hard in his nose. He was two months younger than me but always act as if he was the eldest. Well I guess I used to give him too much face, maybe I should start confronting him as well.

Fawad graduated from a university at France, he studied Nursing and was now working in ABU Teaching Hospital but guess what? He was still single! You know, he was the shy type when it comes to love. I had severally tried to hook him up with some of my friends but all he did was to give me silly excuses, that he's not into them or they are too big or too small for him, bla bla bla. At the end I got fed up and let him be. I believed one day he would fall in love no matter what, and with a very beautiful lady.