Love over Religion

Two Years of silence 2

The first year was geography. Alhaji Lami owned houses in three cities, and they moved between them according to his business needs. Zaria, where his family watched her with the suspicion of established wives for newcomers. Kano, where the heat was merciless and the water tasted of metal. Kaduna, where she might pass Sam on the street and be unable to acknowledge his existence.

She learned the architecture of her husband's wealth. The servants who reported her movements. The drivers who were loyal to his first wife. the guards at the gates who noted every visitor, every departure, every irregularity. She was a valuable asset, and assets were protected.

She also learned his patterns. He visited his first wife on Thursdays, his business associates on Fridays, his mistress in the Christian quarter on Saturdays. He did not touch Halima except on Tuesdays, when religious duty required marital relations, and even then he was quick, efficient, uninterested in her response.

She was grateful for his indifference. It made her deception possible.

The second year was chemistry. She had studied, in stolen moments, the properties of plants and medicines. She knew which herbs could prevent conception, which could induce miscarriage if prevention failed. She obtained these from a woman in the market who asked no questions, who had her own history of necessary deception.

Twice, she was pregnant with Alhaji Lami's child. Twice, she ended the pregnancy before he knew. The second time was harder, the bleeding prolonged, the pain sufficient to blur her vision. She told him she had fallen, that women were sometimes unlucky, that she would try harder to produce the heir he required.

He beat her for the first time. Not from cruelty, she understood, but from calculation. The beating was a management technique, a reminder of her failure, an investment in future compliance. She accepted it as she accepted everything, with a stillness that gave him no satisfaction, that revealed nothing of her interior.

When he left, she treated her wounds and made a new plan. Prevention was failing. His Tuesday attentions, however brief, were statistically sufficient. She needed another strategy, another source of children who could satisfy his demand for heirs while preserving her secret.

She needed Sam.