That was the first time Edegbe stayed outside to see the crescent moon on the clear northern sky, the next day was Ramadan.
"Ramadan?" Edegbe asked as Victor told him excitedly. He had been more hyper than normal since his return the previous night and Edegbe took it that he enjoyed himself. When he came back, Edegbe had just happened to be by the gate and Victor looked too guilty. He had prepared a query for him, but with the look on his face, he just laughed.
"You don't know? Ah, these Muslims celebrate a lot o. We Christians only celebrate the birth and death of Jesus, but them? You can count like five celebrations. "
"I thought it was only Salah."
"Salah is not a celebration, it's a prayer," Victor explained. "It usually marks the end of the celebration, but it's not the main thing."
"Seriously?" He glanced at Efe. "But in Benin we always hear 'Hausa are doing Salah and Salah is the time they share food to one another'." They were in the dining and he was serving breakfast.
"This is how it works; a festive period comes, it's acknowledged, and when it ends, they pray and then celebrate."
"What then is Ramadan?" Efe asked.
"It's a period of fasting, they call it sawn, but this fasting is different from what we do. You know that when we, Christians, wants to fast, it starts when we wake up, but they have a particular time during dawn when their fast starts and before that time, they'll gather and eat. If their fast starts by six, they'll gather and eat by five, imagine!"
Edegbe shrugged. "Different people, different religion, different methods."
"Really?" Efe crooked a brow at him. "Since when do you do 'different people, different religion, different methods' with something you antagonize with?"
"You make it sound like I go around sniffing for trouble. There's nobody pushing a naked minor inside my room, there's no herdsman leading their cattle to graze on my farmland, why should I concern myself with how they decide to fast."
"You don't think it's hypocritical?"
"You declare a fast by six, you eat by five, no rules are broken, how is it hypocritical?"
"But you did not have a 'different people, different religion, different methods' attitude when you witnessed that marriage."
"Jesus, that's different. You're talking about an underage matrimony, what do you think that child knows she doing in that union? This is somebody who does not know that the organ between her legs can be used for another thing that is not urinating. That is not culture, that's an inhumane act."
Efe studied him for a while. "So, you're saying that this you who doesn't think hypocritical of what you would have thought hypocritical isn't influenced by a particular woman you like?"
Edegbe paused and wore a deep scowl on his face. "What nonsense are you talking about now?" He waited for him to reply. Efe did not. "You know what I actually find stupid? It's the fasting itself, either as a Muslim or a Christian. Why would you go on a hunger strike for a god you can't see? What kind of a god wants you to sacrifice your stomach to show how serious you are with your request?"
"The kind that told Abraham to sacrifice his son just to see how faithful he was, the kind that allowed calamity to befall Job to see his steadfastness, and the kind that made a man blind from birth to glorify himself years later," Efe said.
"And the kind of god that built the world with the words of his mouth and destroyed it with tiny drops of rain but when he wanted to save the world, he had to send this supposed son and watch him suffer, but wait, you read the Bible?"
"Hello? I was once a child who had to go to church and hear stories told and retold."
"But God is good," Victor said, reminding them of his presence.
"I never said he wasn't," Edegbe said.
"But you imposed it. If you think God is bad, try the devil."
"I believe in neither, but if He wanted to save the world, He could have just done that, it's unnecessary that he had to send His son and watch him die. It is much more easier to understand the devil than your god, why does he have to be an egnima? And I don't want to worship a god who promises to send me to a place raging with fire if I don't go to his kingdom."
"But you're alive because He's keeping you alive."
"I don't know about that, but if it's true then I'm very grateful. Mohammed Ali once said; 'Our services to humanity is the price we have to pay for our space on earth', and I think I service enough people to pay for my space. See, I'm here in a frigid northern state with the hope of making cost of living in a fast sinking Nigerian economy, affordable, isn't that enough evidence that I'm grateful if there's a god keeping me alive?"
"If there's a god keeping you alive?" Efe repeated, askingly.
"When there's an uncertainty, there should be an if statement."
"But Victor does not look convinced."
It was not that he was not convinced, he could not believe that it was possible to not believe in God. "But you believe God exists?"
"Whether it's your God of the god they serve, or the god we don't know, there's an existing of the supernatural. But I believe I should do the things I can do then leave the ones beyond my power for whatever supernatural creature who decides I should be helped."
….
Yasmin always observed Ramadan with Alhaji, it was their ritual, and as she packed her things, she imagined him waiting expectantly, a stupid smile plastered on his face. She had still not given an answer to his request, the truth was that she did not know how to mend her relationship with her brother. Yes, he was trying but she wanted to punish somebody. Her husband, Allah be praised, was dead, Baba, Soliat's father, was not somebody she had seen since she left his house,so the only person closet was Abubakar. She did not blame him though, did not blame anybody in particular , but she wanted something tangible for revenge, she wanted revenge.
She knotted her sleek long hair at the back of her head and wore her hijab, Abubakar would plait it later, it was one thing she didn't stop him from doing, one thing that spiced her bland life for a very long time, until someone she was talking to suddenly winked at her.
She had been taken back, it had happened so fast you'd think it was a blink, and the men did not notice, but she was right in front of him and he had noticed the perfect shutting of one eye while the other was open. She had been intrigued. He had done it twice that night, once when they met at the farm and even in the front of Mr and Mrs Bilal whose daughter they offered to men, enough times for her to know it was an unconscious act. A flattering unconscious act. She found his guts flattering, his easiness to flare up flattering, his comfort in calling stupid what he felt stupid, even though unthought, flattering, what she did not find flattering was him fidgeting around her, his delayed speech, his untold words. She did not want him to beat around the bush when he wanted to ask her if she had an attraction for his friend, she did not even want him to ask, she wanted him to tell her not to look at the other man. She knew it was the beginning of an unthought attraction but she didn't mind, didn't everybody need a little recklessness in a while?
She stepped out of the house and locked the door. She had told the woman who came to cook that her services would no longer be needed for the next month She had discharged the old man she posted at her gate too.
When she got to Alhaji's house with her bag, he was already waiting at the veranda, and as she imagined, he was smiling.
"Does your lips not hurt with that kind of a smile?"
He hugged her. "I wish we had Ramadan everyday."
"Even you will get tired if we do."
"But at least, I get to see you and have you live in my house, you should move he—"
She raised up a hand. "Shut up." And headed inside but stopped when she heard a movement from the door. "Soliat is here?"
Alhaji grinned his response.
"You're smiling like a twelve year old whose love letter received a positive response, you should just marry her."
——
Amina Bilal counted the pills again; twenty five, she knew she counted it right the first time but she counted it again, stopping to raise one at the top of her finger and watched it, twirling, as if doing so would make her understand what her next action would mean. The thirteen year old counted the pills for the umpteenth time. She would never consider doing this if it wasn't for a certain rich man.
Amongst the men whose room she had been pushed into, she had met some who refused to touch her, who told her, some ordered her, to quietly get out as if it was her fault she was pushed into their rooms. Of course, more than some ravaged her and she knew they were satisfied because of the way her father would smile at her later. But only one man had taken her hand, dragged her out and told her father to his face that he, as well as the other people who had not tried to help her, was a hypocritical fool. She did not know what it meant but she knew it had angered her father because he did not stop talking about it even when weeks had passed. It made her realize she had a choice.
She stopped counting the pills and took a mirror to stare at her reflection. When she was younger, she would bask in the glory of being told she was a rare specie, and that she could be a model and contest for Miss Nigeria. She wanted to be a model, she wanted to contest for Miss Nigeria, but she now know she never would, her beauty was a curse to her.
She counted the pills again and satisfied with the number of times she had done so, took a bottle of her cream and started crushing the tablets. She would have her stomach filled with water before she finished taking them all, so she crushed them instead.
When she was done, she studied the mass of white powder that remained for a while before pouring it inside a cup. Beside it was a flask of warm water and beside that was the beverage she would use to make tea. She made the tea and gulped down the content in one go. There was no turning back now.
She walked to her closet and pulled it open. In it was the dress she wanted to wear for the Miss Nigeria beauty pageant. She stripped out of her pajamas and wore the dress, took a heel from under her bed and put it on. She studied herself in the mirror, adjusted her hijab until it suited perfectly. She posed, smiled and gave a modeling wave. Satisfied, she climbed on her bed and laid gently so the dress would not rumple. When she closed her eyes, she knew she would not be opening them again.