I stand Rejected ( Aisha's guilt)

Aisha’s guilt. Amina was more like the sister, friend and companion I lacked in my life. I was the only child of my parents. Though my father was a Moslem, he remained married to my mother; he refused to take more wives that his faith allowed him to despite the pressure from his family. The fact that I was a girl was the main source of concern to them; ten daughters were not worth a son but he remained married to my mother and treated me like the son he did not have. I lacked nothing. My mother was loathed by my father’s family, they believed she had used Juju to tie him down and he only acts on what she instructs. Due to their attitude to us, I lacked the usual extended family love and affection that normally I ought to have been showered with. But what I was deprived of by my relatives, I got from Amina. She was two years older than me but we were like sisters. I remember the first time I met her; it was in the Mosque. She came with her brothers and they left her at the basement with the women as we observed the Ramadan Fast. I was sitting all alone, technically dissociated from by the other girls who had been indoctrinated that I was anathema and needed to be avoided. As I sat there very lone and badly needing some affection from my peers with none forthcoming, Amina appeared from nowhere and asked for my name. “Aisha,” I replied. “What is your father’s name?” She asked further with authority that got me unsettled with fear that the mere mentioning of my surname would drive her away. “Aisha Bello,” I supplied with reluctance as I waited for the usual stare of recognition followed by the painful walking away with a look that revealed more than it shielded. “I am Amina Danladi,” she replied and sat close to me. I was surprised she did not recognize my identity that was more a burden than pride. “Can you recite any Sura?” She asked. “Yes,” I answered, feeling a bit optimistic that she would last longer. “Sura 4 verse 34 says what?” She asked like a natural born teacher. Luckily, it was a verse I had heard my mother and father being referred to on hundreds of occasions. “Men are in charge of women because Allah hath made one excel the other,” I replied with gloom. Amina was impressed and I saw a glint of smile. “Do you know ABCD?” She asked. I was suddenly confident that the friendly character called Amina was for real; she was equally veiled like me in our traditional Hausa fashion. “Yes,” I answered, still watching out if my surname will register on her mind. “Who taught you?” She asked, I read from the way she was interrogating me that she was used to asking the questions. “My mother,” I replied and regretted my response. “Your mother?” She reacted with surprise written all over her cute face. I nodded, afraid that I had revealed too much. “Does your father know she teaches you?” I was in a fix to reply; I felt my revealing more will send her away, like the rest. I nodded. She came closer and whispered, “Will she teach me?” At that moment I was knew I had gotten a friend. “Yes,” I replied excitedly, “Will you want to meet her?” I asked my first question. “Yes,” came the answer; she met my mother the next day and together we started studying secretly inside our house without the knowledge of my father. When I tried to follow her to her house, she refused. “My father and brothers will flog me,” she informed me. I kept away from her family but she was welcomed to mine. My mother was overjoyed that I had gotten a playmate though my father had reservations about her background of being a peasant’s daughter; he was always around on weekends when Amina came around and asked her questions about her family once in a while. One thing I noticed about Amina was her zeal to learn; she read all my story books and was fascinated by my Abacus and toys. “You are a very lucky girl,” she once told me while we were playing with my dolls, “My father doesn’t know I exist and my brothers care less. They know a child called Amina was born into the family and that is all.” I never understood what she meant because to me, every mother was like mine; she always cared for me. “What would you want to be when you grow up?” I asked one day when we finished reading one episode of Famous Five . “A teacher,” she replied excitedly without hesitation, “I will like to teach all the girls in Gusua to be like your mother and not stay all day at home preparing Kunu for their children to sell,” she added laughing innocently. That gave me an insight to the kind of family she came from. Amina was two years older than me but she treated me like her age mate, we never quarrelled nor fought. Our favourite play centre was the elementary school at Gusau; Amina took me there after assurances to my mother that we would always come back on time. Amina loved the school compound so much; we would sit down on the benches and write new words my mother taught us on the blackboard with pieces of used chalks we picked from the floor. “I am teacher,” she would say, “what do you get when you multiply two by four?” she would ask, holding a short stick as cane, just as the teachers did when we watched them from afar. “Will your mother send you to school?” She asked me one day. “Yes, she is waiting for me to grow,” I replied, “will you come with me to school when we grow?” I asked with naivety. “None of my brothers go to school,” she informed me. My mother, after I had whined so much, allowed her accompany us to test for maturity at the local school. I believe the presence of my mother, who was regarded as a ‘Big Madam,’ made them tolerate us. I noticed how hard the teachers looked at us and the expression on the faces of the boys; to them, we were supposed to be at the Pudah with our mothers preparing wheat meal or Tuwo, a local delicacy for them to savour. “They cannot register now,” the Headmaster announced rather too happily when we failed to touch our ears. “I would bring them back next year,” my mother assured but that next year saw only me coming back; Amina got married off. I remember her eyes bulging with fear when she ran to my house and alerted me. “My father has married me away,” She reported, I was dumbfounded and looked at her heaving chest. “I will not go to school again,” Amina said as the tears dropped; we cried together, she for a future distorted, me for a friend I was bound to lose. “Promise me you will always be my friend,” Amina asked of me. “I will,” I vowed and meant it. I did not go for the wedding; my mother forbade me from attending and made it clear to me that I was not to visit her again. “She is no longer a child; they have forced her to become a woman when her breasts have not even grown. You cannot visit her again because she now knows things a child should not know,” my mother explained as her reason for the ban. “She is still my friend, I promised her,” I objected ready to cry her into changing her mind. “Aisha, she is no longer a child, she has been forced into womanhood,” she stated. I did not understand, “Tomorrow, we will go back to school and get you registered.” As I took the test and passed, Amina was betrothed to a man that my father said was older than his own father. I was not to see her again for five years and she was never the same. I tried to keep my vow of friendship and asked the few friendly boys in my class about Amina. “She is with her husband at Kafanchan,” I was told; it was a distant town from Gusau. I kept praying to Allah to bring us together one day and it happened in Zaria when I was on holidays in one of my aunts’ house. I ran into a woman who recognised me and told me where Aisha was. “She is now at the place for cursed women,” the woman informed me; it was obvious that the woman liked gossiping going by the way she was voluntarily feeding me with information. I decided to find out where the centre was and my Aunt’s house help gave me directions. I went to the centre for the ‘cursed’ women and arrived with a queer fear of what to expect. The centre was called St Theresa Centre for VVF; it was sited away from Zaria town and had no fence around it. I saw three long houses and some women sitting under a Guava tree discussing in Hausa. From the way they looked at me, I knew instantly they were not used to having many visitors. “I am looking for Amina Danladi,” I announced to them after greeting them. “Amina Teacher?” One of them asked me, I did not know. The one that asked the question took me into what looked like the reception, I could smell an acrid odour of sour urine. Maybe that was the reason they chose to be outside. “Aisha na our teacher here,” the lady said as she took me through the hall as she brought out a nose mask from her blouse pocket and put it on. As we moved deeper into the dormitory, the stench increased and then I saw them; they were old, young and very young lying down on raffia mats that were soaked with urine and smelt of faeces. The odour was so much that I clasped my hand over my nose and held my breath. “What the hell is happening here?” I asked myself and briefly acknowledged within me that truly, with that stench, the place was meant for cursed women. The faces of the women bore the same expression of rejection; they were lost, confused and filled with grief, sorrow and pain. They were there in all sizes and ages; elderly women who had accepted their fate of seclusion; young girls that knew fate no longer had a future and girls that were yet to understand what lay in stock for them. They used to be married and had husbands and families but they had been abandoned and left to the humanitarian hands of the few workers who wore nose masks and hand gloves when dealing with them. “Who do we have here?” The muffled voice of a white lady with a European accent asked. I was between running away from the bad smell and understanding what sin the women scattered all over the place in their filth had committed to be passing through what they were facing. “She come look for teacher,” my guide replied with a countenance that showed she didn’t want to be kept inside for a long time. “She is with her students in the Third Hall,” the white lady directed. My system was on fire, I wanted to vomit. We passed another hall filled with women the same condition before stepping into another big hall, I regretted coming to see Amina; one of my teachers once said that old friends are better kept in the past only to be remembered. I made up my mind to fulfil my vow and leave Amina forever in the past. But when I saw her, I knew I should not have had that thought. Amina was sitting on the floor with three other younger girls, she was reading from a book while the girls listened attentively. Her hair was badly woven and her blouse was loose on her, barely covering her emaciated body. She looked older and very unkempt. “Teacher you have a visitor,” my guide announced and took the nearest exit immediately on delivering me to her. When Amina looked up and our eyes met, I saw the glow in her eyes was gone. There was no sign of warmth or expectations that had filled her once beautiful face. She was the picture of a failed dream waiting for the end to come. “Aisha!” She called out with a quick flicker of surprise registering on her face and vanishing as it came, “You came,” she said and looked away in shame. She equally smelt of that same unpleasant pungency and from the way she sat down with her supposed students, she had left herself to fate; whatever her predicament was did not leave her with any choice. The stench coming from them was so heavy that I held my breath. “Let’s go outside, it is better there,” she said, understanding my plight. “We will continue later,” she informed that three girls who kept their faces glued to me; it was evident they were not used to being visited. We walked towards a Mango tree; Amina led the way and walked behind. The sudden Harmattan breeze that hit me was a relief, I breathed in to fill my lungs and get rid of the stench I had been subjected to the past minutes. Amina sat down on a bench that was kept under the tree and looked away from me; I knew she was avoiding my face. I had so many questions. “Amina, what is wrong?” I asked really confused, tears were already filling my eyes. When she turned to face me, tears were running down her cheeks. I felt guilty of not being a true friend; I had stayed away for so long that Amina had become a stranger, a dishevelled woman I could barely recognize. She slowly shook her head before looking up at me; I saw the pain, the sorrow and the regret. She was trapped without hope. “Everybody has rejected me,” she stated with her face filled with tears, “they tell me I will be like this forever. Aisha, I cannot do anything again in my life,” She said amidst sobs. I went close to her and hugged her; we both cried. “He got me pregnant and wanted a son,” she continued while we held ourselves, “it was very painful, I could not breath. I tried all my best to push with all my strength but the baby would not come out,” Amina said and started crying again, I held her closer; I could still perceive the awful odour but I smelt nothing, I was past caring. She was my sister. “The baby died and my husband called me a witch and accused me of killing the son he put into me. The women said it was my sin that killed the baby. I was abandoned by my husband and her people. They returned me to my mother who equally got tired of me and brought me here to be with the other women who their sins killed their babies,” she narrated and started crying again. “Aisha, tell me why Allah allowed this to happen to me,” she asked and I cried with her. I did not have the answers. Suddenly, Amina pulled away from me, her eyes never left mine as she stood up; her face begged for affection, understanding and a little love. I understood the look she gave me so well, it was a look of despair; of a person trapped and looking for rescue. I had been there as a child and Amina rescued me. “Amina, I will never leave you again,” I started to say and noticed she was breathing heavily. I heard the sound before I saw it; urine ran down her legs wetting the wrapper she had around her. She kept staring at my face as if telling me, “This is what I have become.” Then I understood why the smell of urine filled the centre; it was the scent of not being woman enough to deliver children. I was transfixed where I was watching her predicament, I was lost for words. Amina did not move but I saw fresh tears brewing in her eyes. I got up and embraced her as we both started crying again. “Aisha, I have been rejected,” she wailed as I held her tightly to her. I felt my clothes getting wet and cried the more for my friend Amina. I later found out that Amina’s condition was called VVF; the white woman gave me all the information I needed. I found out her name was Irene. I promised Amina I would help her and started thinking about how to do it. I was 12 years then and knew I had to change my friend’s situation.