Narrator’s Name: Still, Unknown
VII. Past of Pasts
Hint/Confession: I respect time. I respect the past. Without it I wouldn’t be here, neither would you.
Anxiousness sat beside each of them in the car, taking up all the space, but putting most of its weight on Abubakar than on all of them. To the three friends, Zaria had never seemed farther than it did now. Abubakar had just spoken to Aamati to hear what the situation at the hospital was. He had asked whether he could speak to his wife and Aamati told him she was unconscious.
None of the three friends had eaten since yesterday. I wonder! Did they think that their presence would change anything? There’s never been much logic for people being there for each other than just being there; simply and willingly. Like breathing or like kindness. But even simply being there is a specialty not many fathom or excel in. This group of friends, on that treacherous hour, tried to do both.
Jameel was the one driving and he was over-speeding. If you want to know if a car is really over-speeding, see if you can read its plate number when it is overtaking you. If you can’t then it’s over-speeding. So trust me when I say Jameel was over-speeding.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Cozz,” Jameel said comforting Abubakar. “We are almost there.”
This wasn’t the first time they had been in a car racing to something they couldn’t change. The first time such a thing happened was a few years ago and at that time, anxiousness weighed more on Jameel than it did on Abubakar. It was three years ago, Jameel hadn’t seen or heard about his mother for twenty two years, yet somehow, he learned that his mother had died the night before. Jameel took his car and picked up his friends. And this time it was Abubakar who drove, watching his cousin through the rearview mirror and informing him to not worry. Umar rode shotgun and Adam kept Jameel company in the back seat.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Cozz,” That time it was Abubakar who was uttering the words in his attempt to comfort Jameel.
Jameel’s mother had remarried a year after her divorce with Alhaji Shatima and had lived in Bauchi since then. Jameel was just three when he watched his mother walked out of his life. Jameel didn’t like to admit it but that affected him a great deal. He never showed it though. Not even to his closest friends but he wanted to know why his mother left him. Why she walk out of his life. He wanted to know so that his heart would break and shatter. So that it'd hurt. So that it'd learn how to wear a long woven time and its worn-out patches. So that he’d forget then remember then forget again and again until he picked one and made peace with the other. There's mercy in knowing.
After four hours, Jameel and his friends located his late mother’s house in the heart of Bauchi State. Jameel was the first to exit the car. He entered the house with no plan of what explanation to give of who he was if he were to be asked. All that mattered to him was that he was there for her. So his three friends were where he wanted them to be: beside him and there for her with him. They walked inside the house streaming through all the words people were saying about her. Most of them were news to them. They were news to her estranged son, Jameel.
And then Jameel saw his mother and she was very much alive. He was confused, happy, and a little bit surprised that he could recognize her after all these years. Jameel’s father, Alhaji Shatima, had burnt all her pictures after he divorced her so Jameel had nothing to remember her by.
It turned out that Jameel was misinformed; it wasn’t his mother who had died. It was her husband and by extension, his stepfather who had died.
Jameel froze when he saw her for the first time after two decades. For the life of him, all he could do and all he did was freeze. She wasn’t more than twelve feet away from him but she didn’t see him. Jameel saw the pain in his mother’s eyes. she must have really loved her husband, he thought. He had wanted to run to her and hug her but turned to his three friends and said. “We have to… we should go.” I think when you’re hurting you just want to say so little and hope you would be understood plenty. They understood him plenty and were hurt just as much even though they weren’t aware his mother was alive.
They left. Nobody knew who they were.
In the car, when he told his friends what had happened, Abubakar slammed on the brakes and turned to face his cousin. They tried to convince him to make his presence known to his mother but he said, “no. this is not the time. If ever, this is not the time.”
And nothing, if any, carries the burden of worlds, wars, and worries like time.
And now three years later, the peasant of time wasn’t Jameel. It was Abubakar.
***
“Ya Allah!! She’s still in there,” Aamati said in her accented English, a few minutes after the boys had arrived at the hospital. Abubakar kissed Aamati on the forehead and held her hand. “The doctor, he said she might need blood. I don’t know but I think she’s going to be okay. I pray it, don’t you worry, Abubakar. Allah will keep her safe.”
“Aamati, why don’t you sit, I’m sure she’d be okay. Sit, let me get you water to drink.” Abubakar helped her sit. He supported his mother with his hand and his smile as she sat down.
A few minutes later, the doctor exited Yusra’s room. There it was: Pain – on a piece of paper between the doctor’s hands on a clipboard. He gave it to a female doctor beside him and exchanged a few words with her then went back inside.
If I didn’t have a job to do of telling this story, I’d have told you that worry engulfed me when I came about this part of the story. It engulfed me to the point that I felt as paralyzed and powerless as Abubakar and the small number of people who were told to wait outside felt.
It was evening and the walls of the corridor were blue. So blue that it could easily be stained with life or death. Abubakar, his parent, Yusra’s parent, and his friends had been standing between two walls of a long blue corridor for a very long time. Nobody knew what was to come.
If I could be anywhere I wouldn’t have peeked inside Yusra’s room and saw her almost lifeless. Where her four walls were stained with a blue lost in the after-hours of time and hope. I’d have preferred to write something else because it is illimitably harder to write off someone so beautiful than to write anything else. If I could be anywhere I’d be outside, inside Abubakar’s heart. I’d navigate through his memories of her and see her there and how happy she made him. I’d listen to the last words she gave him before he left with Jameel to Dihaara. Her words always find him and search him benevolently. I’d listen to their long hours of conversation through the phone. I’d watch the day they met, where she first played him her smile and he knew he wanted that for the rest of his life. But instead, I peeked inside her room and saw her state and I turned to tell her husband that I was sorry. I was really – really – sorry.
***
It was midnight. And when that hour clocked, all were in attendance. All were tired, waiting but in attendance. Somewhere, everywhere, midnight happened and in so many ways. Nothing would ever be the same.
At twelve a.m. Jameel gestured to Umar to look at the TV Screen. Adam was on TV with the news. With a mic on his hand, Adam stood in front of the palace and broke the news:
The new king has been appointed. After long hours of consideration, a name has finally come up. The most repetitive question for the past few days had been, who would be the next king. Who would rule the city of Dihaara. A city with much history. And today, the eighteenth of November, twenty-twenty-four, I’m happy to announce that the long wait has come to an end. The new king is Abdullah Jibrin Abdullah. He is one of the three grandsons of the former King. He was a lecturer at Oxford, who had spent his childhood in Nigeria until…
Umar was relieved and happy. He had never wanted to become king in the first place. He picked up his phone and sent a congratulatory message to his cousin, Abdullah. King Abdullah. And that news would only rate as the second most surprising thing that happened that night.
Jameel put his arm around Umar and said, “We are done with that chapter now. Although I kind of wanted you to be king.”
“Oh yeah?” Umar asked looking at the grin on his friend’s face.
“Yeah. Then you’d officially get me a driver’s license without me actually having to go through all the troubles of actually getting one.”
Umar smiled then said, “You’re kidding right? You still don’t have a driver’s license?”
“He doesn’t.” This time it was Abubakar who spoke. He had just gotten out of his wife’s room after about an hour of being in there with her. His friends came closer, and from the slightly opened door behind him, they saw Aamati standing close to Yusra, blocking their view of Yusra’s face.
“Abubakar, what’s going on in there? How is she doing?”
“Don’t worry. She’s okay.” He said and then as if on cue, they heard a baby’s cry. “And so is the baby. She’s also okay.”
“It’s a girl?” Umar said tears escaping his eyes.
“It’s a girl. So maybe for her, you should get a driver’s license,” Abubakar said facing his cousin. “And stop smoking.”
Jameel smiled. He sighed, but he smiled.
***
Saleem was on his way to the Deputy President of Senate, Senator Taneem Thawbaan, when he called his little brother to hear whether they had arrived Zaria safely and how Abubakar’s wife was doing.
“Abubakar said he would name her after our Safiyya. And he nicknamed her Noor – meaning light.”
Saleem was happy about the news, “How nice of him! That’s very lovely. May Allah bless little Safiyya. May Allah bless Noor,” Saleem said. “Talk to you later, brother. Do send my regards to umma.”
When he reached Taneem’s house, he was directed to the senator’s study by his guards. This was his first time in the house.
“It’s funny that this is the first time we are meeting,” said the senator.
“I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to come earlier. As I told you before it’d be a great pleasure to write your autobiography.” The senator had approached Saleem, requesting him to write his autobiography. “It’s just that I don’t have the time and I’m currently working on a new book.”
“Busy, you say? It’s good to keep busy, Mr. Saleem,” the senator said, motioning to Saleem to sit down as he walked to the chair opposite Saleem and sat down. “I’m sorry about your father. He is a good man. And the misfortune that befell him, let’s just say, I admire him more for it. He’s a man of action and that is a man I understand,” the senator added then paused as though letting his words to sink in. “And I’m sorry you didn’t get to be our new king.”
“It’s okay sir and thank you. I must admit that I admire your work and contribution to our city, sir. And I hope you don’t feel offended by my answer.” Saleem was a man who was very focused; when he embarked on something he doesn’t let anything else distract him. But that wasn’t the only reason he declined the job.
“This book you’re writing, what is it about?” the senator said ignoring his remark.
“About four friends who want to change the world,” Saleem said.
I know what you are thinking. That Saleem is the one telling this story. That he’s the one behind these words. That I am Saleem Ja’far. And it makes sense since he’s a writer. But that doesn’t explain the reason why, does it? So here’s my truth. Do me a favor and pay attention to this – whatever this is. Because this, right here in the senator’s study, is where everything could end. With a wrong answer from Saleem, everything could end.
“Four friends, you say? Four friends who want to change the world. Young man, I’m sorry to burst your bubble but the world won’t change because four friends want it to. You’re wasting your talent. Fictions don’t matter.”
“Some don’t. But others do; I like to think that even if time is a fictitious lie we would still be tasked to collect the varied pieces it had been known to be or is, until we do something beautiful with it. Something worth living. It might be fiction but when I write, sir, I let my words be human. I let them communicate. I let them be you and me.”
“Mr. Saleem, I don’t see how that would stop you from writing my autobiography. I’ll pay you handsomely,” said the senator.
“I’m sorry sir but I’ve made up my mind.”
“What if I told you I can get your father out of prison?” said the senator. Saleem looked at the senator intently. Saleem knew who the senator was in the government. He knew he was influential but why was the senator so adamant that he should write an autobiography about him and that the price would be getting Abba out of prison, Saleem wondered. He could simply have any other writer do the job. It made Saleem suspicious.
“I’d say it’s your duty to do what you believe is right,” Saleem said.
“Nothing is free, son.”
“I can’t write your autobiography, sir. If my father is innocent, then the truth will out.”
“Principled. That’s why I like you for the job and that is why I must insist. If you don’t do this job then I promise you I’ll not only make sure your father is executed for a crime I know he didn’t commit, but also I’d destroy your family starting with your little brother, Umar. I’ll tell the world what really happened in the ten months he had been missing after your sister died. That means discrediting you because according to your book, The Color of Blood, you wrote that he traveled around Nigeria in ten months. We both know that’s a lie. If I discredit you then the world will also question the memory of your sister you had portrayed in your book. I’ll make sure your mother stops doing what she loves doing best. Architecture. And lastly your niece, I’ll destroy her even before she knows how to spell destroy.”
Saleem was livid. He managed to hide it. Anger clouds sound judgment, he thought. “Actually my niece, Hafsa, can spell destroy and construct worlds with both its synonyms and antonyms in the most surprising of ways,” Saleem said smiling.
The senator said nothing to that but kept studying the impact of his threats on Saleem’s face but he saw it had little. Saleem continued talking, “So you would do all these because you want me to write your autobiography? Senator, what is it that you really want?”
The senator pushed his eyeglasses back a little and said, “They say be very afraid of a patient man. Especially if his smile is inexhaustible. Maybe I’m doing this to put that to the test. Maybe it’s because I just want a descendent of the former king to paint me with the most beautiful colors in words and in time. Maybe I want to own you then make you king then control you. Maybe I’m a sadist and I want to see everyone you love get hurt. Maybe it’s because I never take no for an answer. Maybe nothing. Or maybe I’m doing it for the fun of it. But what I want right now is your friendship.”
“What an odd way to ask for it.”
“I’m an odd man, Mr. Saleem. Do I have your friendship?”
“Do I have any other option?”
The senator laughed. “Of course you don’t.”