CHAPTER 3
Osman
The Imam brought my new mother to the Commander’s house straight after Friday prayers. I recognized her. She was one of the women who had visited my mother when she was ill. The one bag of rice and one bag of beans they brought lasted us a whole month.
They came in a car with a driver. I saw them come. My new mother sat in the back with the Imam. The car belongs to her. It is an old ivory-colored Nissan Bluebird, about twenty years old, but the driver, Amadu, keeps it clean inside and polished outside.
“Osman,” she said, “I’m your new mother. The first thing we have to decide is what you should call me. What did you call your mother who has just left us?”
“Please, madam, I called her Umma,” I said.
Umma is one of the Hausa names for mother.
“Well,” she said, “that wi
