COUSINS IN LOVE

FRESHMEN DAY III

(SHEREEF’S POV)

Amman went on describing the party and all, but I had lost all interest in knowing whatever might have happened to him the previous night. I remember fading away to a light sleep for about forty minutes or so. Yeah, it was a light sleep because I could still hear Amman’s voice sounding like a background soundtrack to my dream. It was mad. It was obvious he still had a hangover even though it was already late in the afternoon. Abdi, who had proven himself to be loquacious, kept on dropping in comments every now and then.

When I finally got myself up, I felt a bit better and decided not to let my first night in college be spent on the bed in the room. So I got up and changed into something very simple; a V-neck grey T-shirt with camouflage shin length trousers. I had my headphones on and walked around the campus for a while, and the spot that got my attention the most was a basketball court. I am not a player, even though I have got the physique, but I really love watching the game in real life, not on the screen. From the stands, where I sat enjoying sets of games, I noticed the sign that said Murray-Dodge Hall. That’s the hall I have heard Grandpa Anifowose was amongst the students that spearheaded the movement of the hall being used as a Muslim centre.

In a moment, I noticed the kind of people that were trooping into the centre; Muslim cover girls and brown-skinned guys, obviously from the Middle East. I grabbed myself a large bugger and soda which I have been munching since I walked into the court.

I observed my evening prayers and walked back to the room, but while leaving the room, I spotted this beautiful lady also stepping out of the Murray-Dodge hall. I won’t lie, she got my attention. Her body figure was confusing. She wasn’t slender and I would have said she was chubby, but her hourglass shape was evidently visible beneath her long high waist skirt, with very wide full African patterned material. She had a deep blue denim worn over a simple chiffon shirt that explicitly exposed the outline of her her bosom. I couldn’t really be sure of her height, but I was six feet nine, and she wouldn’t be taller than my jaw.

I had to distract myself and remind myself I wasn’t ready for that yet, so I quickly distracted myself and went on my way, but she was still playing in my head and the final distraction came on with my phone buzzing in notification for a call.

Freedah’s mother... I gasped out in surprise, wondering why she was calling me. We hardly talked. She was on the other side of the country entirely. She got married to a man from Michigan, where they now reside with their four kids.

"Hello, my youngest mummy..." I greeted her with our joke.

"Hello, my eldest son..." She responded back, keeping the flow of the joke. That means we are still very much into each other, just like from the very old days when she lived close by and could drop by our place anytime unannounced.

"I am good mom..." My response was very resounding.

"So when were you going to tell me that you’ve followed our family tradition and gotten yourself into Princeton?" she said, with an emphasis on the "our" just to taunt me.

Of course, I know what she meant. I am not an Anifowose, my mother is, but here I was following their tradition. Well, what was I going to do? My ‘real family’ is not as affluent as my mother’s family to begin with, not to talk about having a long-standing tradition. We are practically what the term "new money" refers to.

"Well, you know quite well that if your father had his way, he would have had me bare your family name even if it cost him one of you." I responded quickly. I was not the one to let a bant rub off on me without giving a quick response.

"You are out of your mind..." she said, laughing quietly, to which I joined in, not knowing what to say again, but rather expecting what she called me for in the first place.

"Well... I actually called to inform you about someone else who is there in Princeton to follow the family tradition." That came to me as news, and for the fact that I don’t know her, it means whoever it was, he or she was from the other wing of the Anifowose family, about which, aside from small talk and gossip, I had no news or familiarity with.

"Okay..."? I said to her, still unenthusiastic about not just what she had to say but anything at all, just as I had been since I walked into the campus.

"So...?" I would really not lie, that didn’t fall out right and, of all things to say, and she picked it right on.

"What do you mean by SO...?" She blurted out, though not a single trace of anger was in her voice, she was still on with our casual relationship.

"Nah, I mean, who is she and why are you telling me about her..." I quickly try to run in on my defence.

"Well, she is your sister. She is also based in Michigan." She was trying to explain and it seemed she was already playing her magic on me again and I was already feeling all lively again.

"If she really is my sister, how come we have never met?" I ask her the question as if I have no idea why we have never met or had any sort of relationship with her.

"Well, that’s not a question I think I have a very good response to." I know she won’t have a good response other than what I already know, but I wasn’t expecting her to try to shy away from the question.

"But all this could be tied down to the fact that she’s the daughter of Grandpa’s eldest son." And that alone said everything, and like I said, the response was something I already knew, and hypothetically, I was asking the question more in a rhetorical sense.

"Okay, so what do you want of me..." I asked with some sense of reluctance. This time, however, I already knew what her response would be.

"I want you to find her and build up a good relationship with her over your" She said, trying to sound angry, but obviously she wasn’t angry.

"Wait, from your description of who he is..." I took a little pause after I cut in and didn’t let him finish.

"Isn’t she supposed to be my cousin, or more like my step cousin?" and I was already cracking up with laughter ready to burst out.

"Yes, step cousin or whatever cousin you called it, cousin is cousin, and moreover, I want you to see her as a sister." She sounded really serious saying that.

"WOW, sister, here I was thinking you wanted me to date her when you said ‘strong relationship....." And at that point, I burst out laughing.

"You’re not serious..." she said as she laughed quietly with scoffs.

"And also, you should know, we are Yorubas. We don’t do that." She said, and was already sounding like Yoruba women do when they really want to make sure a warning goes straight into your head.

"And don’t come at me with the ‘it’s okay in Islam thing’, because Alhaji Anifowose (Alhaji: a ttile used by Muslims in West Africa precisely, who have performed the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca) will never approve of it. " She added and with her mentioning Granpa’s name with that specific title of Alhaji was to make sure I remembered my origin.

"Okay mummy... That was just a joke." I quickly said.

"Okay, I was just letting you know." She cleared the air.

"Well, I need to go now. I just dropped her contact into your mail, so contact her and you guys should be on a good term. " She said and went off the call immediately. I was still wondering what this mysterious cousin of mine would look like.

I was still staring at the phone number that had just dropped into my phone mailbox just almost immediately after my aunt had dropped the call. And there again, my phone began to ring, and yes, my mother was on the phone. I could almost have guessed what she was going to say to me, but I wasn’t expecting it.

"Hello, mother," I said.

"How are you doing, my dear?" was the response I got, the normal response I always get.

"Well, I’m trying to settle in..." I said, and then she made a lot of enquiries about how the room was, the convenience, the proximity to places and centres she was aware of due to her stay at the school some years back.

I just kept giving her a response that I was sure wouldn’t lead to more questions or, worse of all, a full blown conversation. And moreover, I needed not to lie about most of the questions because I hadn’t really been around the campus for that long to know the right answers to most of her enquiries, but she rattled me into a conversation when she began to ask me about my roommates, and this time I had to sit on a concrete seat just at the entrance of my accommodation hall.

"So, I actually called you about Hafrah..." she said, finally coming to the main reason why she called me in the first place.

"Is that really necessary?" I asked, not understanding why it was so important that she also talked to me about meeting my cousin, who also got accepted just like me.

"No, it’s not really necessary, but your father feels you guys could help build the bridge between my side of the Anifowose and the children of the eldest wife of my father." She laid it out like it was some kind of a joke.

"Mom, you know how well I do not like getting myself involved in domestic family issues." I stated coldly, trying as much as possible not to sound disrespectful, because where I originate from, a slight rise in your voice while talking to an elderly person will be translated as disrespectful.

"My dear, you’re not getting involved in anything. Just try to build a good brother-sister bond with her and not s**t things up like I and my siblings have over the years with their part of the family". She said she wasn’t really interested in the plan, but obviously she was concerned.

"So what’s the plan? What am I supposed to do? " I asked her, expecting to hear some kind of strategic plans on whatever they were expecting out of all this situation.

"Plan for what? There’s no plan. I already told you what is expected of you..." She said hysterically," as she seemed to be pissed about the whole call in the first place."

"I was already seeing myself in some Filipino movie scenes." I said, trying to put in some jokes so that she would be calm a bit.

"Filipino movie ko, Korea movie ni," she said in a language that we have adapted due to our long exposure to western culture and their language, which we now mix up and dilute with our own language and culture, which we are too proud to let go. And with that, I could sense the release of tension that was boiling up already.

"Wo bi (look here)," she said in the sweet mother tongue again.

"I haven’t said my evening prayers... Take care of yourself, oko mi (my husband)." It’s always sweet when she calls me that. I’m her son, but Yoruba women like calling their loved ones that title, especially when they get you to do something for them.

"Hey... Oluwanishola..." Abdi called me from behind me in a staggered tune with a very wrong pronunciation.

"You know you can call me Shereef, right? That's my first name, after all..."I said, turning towards him.

"Come on, man, I love the Yoruba name." He said it with all smiles, and I knew he wouldn’t stop, but I wouldn’t let that continue.

"Alright, please call me Shola," I said to him, giving him a simpler option.

"Oh, I see what you are doing here, shortening the name for me to be more comfortable pronouncing it. How sweet of you..." he said as we gave in our hands in a slapping hand shake.

"Yeah, you know, our names are usually a complete sentence when translated to English, so I just carved out the main subject word for you," I responded to his comment.

"So, what exactly do those Shola mean..."? I was so expecting that question, it didn’t come as a surprise to me.

"Be Wealthy," I responded quickly as we walked into the building and straight to the room.

...