Love over Religion

Sam of other faith

His name was Samuel Okonkwo, though everyone called him Sam. He was nineteen, the eldest son of a widowed carpenter who had migrated from Enugu twenty years prior, chasing the promise of northern prosperity that had evaporated like morning dew upon arrival. His father now lay in the small Christian cemetery beyond the river, victim of a fever that proper medicine could have cured, buried in foreign soil that would never truly be home.

Sam worked at his uncle's furniture workshop on the edge of the ghetto, where the Muslim quarter frayed into the Christian settlement like two threads unwilling to weave together. He built chairs, tables, coffins. The last paid best. Death was the only business that never lacked customers in Kaduna.

He had seen her for only a moment. A girl in a blue hijab, face half veiled, eyes the color of strong tea held to sunlight. She had looked at him. Really looked. And then she had run as if demons pursued her.

He should forget her. He knew the rules of this city better than he knew his own Bible. The invisible lines that separated his world from hers. The history of violence that made those lines worth respecting. His own cousin, Emmanuel, had been killed in the 2011 riots, hacked with machetes while trying to reach the church where his daughter was being baptized. The police report called it religious violence. Sam's aunt called it murder. Both were true.

But he could not forget those eyes.

A week passed. He threw himself into work, sanding mahogany until his hands blistered, delivering furniture to addresses that required him to navigate the ghetto's complex geography of faith. He learned to read the signs. The Arabic script above a doorway. The absence of shoes outside a shop. The particular silence that fell when a Christian passed through a Muslim street, or vice versa.

He told himself he was not looking for her. He told himself this even as he took longer routes to familiar destinations, as he lingered at junctions where she might pass, as he found himself staring at every figure in blue fabric that moved through the crowded streets.

On the eighth day, he saw her again.

She was at the public borehole, waiting in line with two yellow jerry cans. The morning sun was merciless, and she had pushed her hijab back slightly to reveal her face, fanning herself with a piece of cardboard. She looked tired. She looked beautiful. She looked up and saw him watching from across the dusty square.

This time, she did not run.

He crossed to her slowly, giving her every opportunity to turn away, to shout, to summon the protection of the crowd. She did none of these things. She stood very still, her hand frozen mid fan, as he approached.

"You dropped this," he said, though she had dropped nothing. He held out a folded paper, blank on both sides, an offering without content.