"Is Efe back from the gym?" Edegbe asked Victor for an umpteenth time. Efe had been visiting the gym a lot more often since the girl, Soliat, dropped that she knew what he had done to her letter, but apart from that, he did not give any reaction to the information, although Edegbe had given him an 'I told you' look and had been giving him an 'I told you' look ever since.
"No, sah." If Victor was impatient, he did not show it. "Maybe he won't come back now, the other time he went to the gym…" He left his words hanging, but internally he completed— he came back late with two women.
"What?"
"Nothing, sah."
Edegbe was bored. He should have followed Efe to the gym when he had proposed. Efe usually took hours to work out, putting his phone on flight mood, so maybe Victor was right.
He had been sitting on Victor's bench for the past hour and the young man had chatted away, happy to have the company, but he was not. He stood up. "I'm going for a walk."
When Edegbe steeped out from the shade by the gate's side, he was reminded of how well he hated the northern sun. The sun was the first thing Edegbe hated, the second was the people although he had learned how different they were. He now knew they were Hausas and Fulanis and that they spoke different languages and had different cultures, and that the Hausas were the peace loving people while the Fulani were the violent ones whose original habitat was not even in Nigeria. And that they were also Hausa Muslims, Hausa non-Muslim and non-Hausa muslim. Edegbe did not care about any of that, the only thing he had found bearable was the the food, especially snacks. He had always eaten suya, especially the part coated with simmering hot fat, but what he discovered new was kilishi, meet dried to a hard crispness that would leave Edegbe's teeth aching, but he ate it anyway, with a chilled bottle of Goulder beer while Efe would opt for Stout beer.
The first time he cooked Towo Shinkafa, he thought it was white shit, but the second time he paid a northern woman, who Efe couldn't stop admiring her behind, to cook it and although he did not have a special craving for the food, it had appealed to his taste bud. He was never quite sure whether or not Efe slept with the woman, somehow Efe wanted it to be a secret, but he felt like he did.
What Edegbe sought frequently was Fura da nunu. Back home, in Benin, when he would see Hausa women hawk the processed cow milk, he would say he would be the most insane person to drink fermented cow milk, now he did not mind if it was fermented cow milk. He had once visited a ranch and even milked the cow himself, but he did not join in the other men who sucked the cows tits to drink the raw milk. The Fulani men had talked him into drinking it from a cup instead and as he sipped the warm fresh milk, his vomit splattered over the floor a few seconds later. He did not try to drink the raw milk again, but watched as they processed it, watched as they made the Fura, and when they finished, they bagged a lot for him.
He brought his mind back as he neared Alhaji's house. He thought of those times the man would visit. Although unannounced, it has been a nice gesture and it crossed his mind, for a few seconds, that he should return the neighborly friendliness. He shook his head. That he was bored did not mean he was friendly. He was going to pass by the gate when it opened and the smell of tangerine filled his nostrils.
"Wallahi, if it is not the man from south with an indigenous name he cannot interpret, who else would it be?"
Good grief! Couldn't the woman just ignore him? "Hello," he greeted, his eyes looking at the gate she came out from.
"Since when has 'Hello' become the normal way to greet, Mr Edegbe?"
"Since today." He continued his stroll and she followed him.
"Where are you going to under this scorching sun?" She asked.
"Taking a stroll?"
"Taking a stroll? Do you like suffering yourself or are you just stupid?"
A frown formed on Edegbe's face. "I don't see how what I do is any of your business."
She shrugged. "How is your farm?"
"Good." The last time he went he had prided in seeing life bustling on his farmland. The farmers, who were dominated by women, had littered on the piece, clutching their hoes and bending to reached the ground and Efe had leaned to whisper that he imagined taking the women from behind and he had laughed and said Efe deserved a room in hell.
"Have you resolved the fight with your bouncer?" She asked.
"He's my friend not my bouncer."
"The both of you settled already?"
Settling with Efe had taken a treat to an expensive restaurant with a diaphanous glass overlooking the beauty of the night embellished by the lights and colors of the night. Actually, it had started from there and moved to the whiskey whose edition was limited, then ended with a hot night with hot women. He had only wanted to find a girl for Efe, but Efe had found for both of them and it had been good. "Yes, we settled. We are men, these things are easy for us," he told her. Then he realized that he, in his unnecessary monologues, was being hostile. Was he still upset about her indifference towards the girl? Even though, he owed her a little friendliness, there were neighbors to begin with and she had given him a ride. "Thank you for the ride the other day."
She scoffed. "So did you ask Solia for her number at the party? I doubt, you couldn't even ask me to wait for you."
Edegbe ignored the last remark. "Do you know her personally?"
"What?"
"You called her Solia, not Soliat. Alhaji also calls her Solia, I'm guessing the name is with people she knows personally."
"You've seen her with Abu—Alhaji?"
"Yes." And he could not shake the feeling that they had been too close for for friends, maybe it was in the way Alhaji turned around and whispered, no space between he didn't know. He had asked Efe but he hadn't wanted to talk about it and he hadn't wanted to probe.
"Yes, I do know her personally. Do you want me to get her number for you?"
"No, I'll do that myself." He did not mean to let her believe he was into the girl, he just did not want to explain why he was inquisitive about her.
"Don't take it to heart that I don't care about Amina," Mrs Yasmin said. "Even her mother can't do anything."
"Her name is Amina?"
She nodded.
"The mother is a foolish woman but more of the blame goes to her father, and I think this goes way back to the way we as Africans raise children."
"The way we raise children?"
"Yes. We raise female children with so much concern and care and discipline, making sure that are respectful and submissive especially so that they can fit in a home. But the boys? We just watch them grow but what we fail to realize is that an irresponsible son will never turn to a responsible father. A boy who doesn't respect his mother will never respect his sister, his wife and even his daughter, a boy whose parents allow to come back home by eleven pm will marry a woman and make her adapt to his lifestyle. And so when this irresponsible men meet these well trained women, the women are more at loss and because the woman has been trained to be submissive, she has no say."
Mrs Yasmin was silent for a while. "That sounds wise. Then she stopped in front of a black gate which Edegbe guessed to be her house. "That night at the party, Amina—wait let me finish," she held up a hand when he wanted to interrupt, "—Amina will never forget what you did for her."
"What?" He was taken aback by her words.
She knocked on the gate and spoke in Hausa for an old man to open the gate, then she stepped inside and turned to face him. "Most people when they come to realize her situation and know that she cannot do anything about it, that they cannot do anything about it, look at her with pity. But you did not look at her and sympathized, you looked at her and got angry on her behalf, angry enough to confront her father. Even though it might not do much, she would never forget that amongst the men whose room she was pushed into to service, one stood up for her, something we, hypocritical fools, could not do." Their eyes met. And locked, until the gate shut by the old man finally broke their attention.