In a Blue Ocean

….In a Blue Ocean

By

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

27/07/2013

In their first pulse of enthusiasm groups of students of different sexes were moving fro and to different directions carrying some documents, reporting from one office to another to complete their college registration.

Ahmad, a since-primary-school friend of mine that we shared rise and fall of life was sitting beside me at the veranda of Students’ Affairs Unit of the school, waiting patiently for the long queue to crawl so that we could join the vacant space.

As newly as we were, some students have already broken the fortress of strangeness and unfamiliarity. They began acquainting themselves with others, both males and females. Everywhere in the college was at peace and loveliness. A group of students chatting heartily and bantering animatedly. Cool.  On almost every seat provided on the premises of the campus for sitting to while away the time between lecture intervals, were seated friends, a combination of sexes, lost and carried away by their gleeful exchange of talks. Some began to buy the feeling of others as they intimated so closely with one buddy among the rest of the pals.

Male students started dating their female partners. Usually sitting on the cemented seat built in front of the lecture halls, the suitors would aside themselves to a private location to have the feeling of their affectionate. It makes an interesting view seeing such a scene where suitors are making love banter so intimately like pigeon as if they swallow each other out of admiration. Oh God!

I only waved at my friends and coursemates in company of their loved ones while passing them by on my way to the library or attending a lecture. Though I had none yet, but not because I did not fancy interest in the ladies or the students’ style of love showing.  I have just waited to find not only love friend but also a soulmate who could read my feelings even before I write them. And besides, I only loved a girl beautiful not only in face but also in brain. For who would not love to live with brilliant people?

One morning, the night before was so handsome a one. The sky was glistering with dotting stars, decorating the indigo but smudgedly-pale space with blinking glimmer.  The whole sky was dancing in a shimmering shine. Like the usual, I woke up early because of the school rigid and strict adherent timing, took bath and breakfasted. I then went to take my bag and hung it leisurely around my shoulder and left for the school after bidding “good morning” greeting to my parent. The “good morning” greeting is a way that students follow – heralding their way before collecting school allowance from their parents.

The weather was chilly but quite charming. The cloud blotted out the sun and the sky deep beautiful blue. The morning air was blowing, whispering a pleasant tune as it swished past across my ears. The swift moving and tender song of the air wafted across my face carrying the beautiful smell of drenched rainy season soil in to my nose, then lashing my cheeks before cascading through the entirety of my body to make my hair and shirt billowing. I sniffed, gasping to inhale the serenity of the atmosphere before releasing a deep breath of satisfaction.

A political science lecturer, Dr. Sa’id Kaduwa was to be in the class at exactly 8:00 am. The class was dried for quite a number of students weren’t in attendance. Perhaps they were still in bed enjoying the clementness of the weather. I sat at one corner of the class, one- thousand seater hall, to the side of a window from the right side direction. It was my favourite location because of good ventilation, and to be among the first ones catching the incoming fresh air. The class was always overcrowded as the course has many students from other schools of art, social and management sciences doing the course as their subsidiary subject.

“Please may you lend me your pen?” In a mellifluous voice, a girl next to me asked as an overture to establish the beginning of our personal relation. Though I knew her previously through the contact of a friend whom she first saw me with, but we did not hold any personal talk then.  Without saying a word, I gave her the pen in my hand and rummaged through my bag to pick another one.

“Huh,” I sighed a heavy relief after I came out from the lecture. Came the day I have longed to witness! I have been seeing her around but did not find a chance of speaking to her. To reserve their dignity, men of veneration always have the fear of talking to ladies whom they deem will on the first reaction show their side of incivility by refusing to even listen to what the men have come for or with. As ladies of nowadays think it, (dubiously and ignorantly), wise to make things difficult for men. But for this girl she was obviously not the type to make things difficult for me. Fatima was such a girl that I could do business with.

From then on, we continued to meet at library and in lecture halls. We began to know and accept each other as we respected our feelings. Within short while I learnt that Fatima was such a bookish and reading-type student. I procured books for her and she, for me with additional reading materials of magazines. Quickly we understood that we shared many things in common. She was aspiring journalist, like me, humanitarian and considerate.

Our relationship intensified as the whole school identified her with me as we always featured around the school together. I accompanied her to her lectures which I was not a student of. On going to lectures, I would pluck a leaf of flower and put it on a chair to book a seat for Fatima. Or while seeing me holding a flower she would rush to me to collect the flower as a way of receiving my love. During the closing hour she would present a gift of Lollipop candy to me as a memento ta take with me.

I garnered solace of mind when Fatima told me that she had mastered the recitation of the Holy Qur’an by heart at the age of fifteen and learnt other Islamic jurisprudence, Hadith, Fiqh, Sira e.t.c. With this new discovery, Fatima made me to lay my hand on the religious books I didn’t even bother to read previously. This is the lady hat I have been yearning all my life to meet for she would prove a good mother to my children. Fatima was a girl of religiosity, moral character and a descendent of decent and respectable family.

Fatima was a lady of charming beauty, with her rotund but slightly-long face, her flabby cheeks, adorable aquiline nose kamar tsinin biro as Hausa people would say…… hospitable, accommodating, amiable, tender, arable, meek, friendly, soft and lovely. Fatima was really beautiful, scintillating, slim and adorable. Her face was so captivating and worth looking at. Trying to describe her this way…, ‘beautiful, tall, civilized, amiable’ and so forth, with all epithets – was a ludicrous and waste of time. Because Fatima was a member of all family of positivity and goodness. A lady in the possession of all rectitude of manner and character, elegant and majestic in person and in thought.      

I grew smitten and impressed by her to the point that I could smell her presence by tracking the alluring scent of her perfume that made her distinguishable from other students. In the class I didn’t need to ask whether Fatima was around for the drifting scent of her spray buffing into my nostril would tell me the answer.

As our days in school drew nearer and nearer to the end, I started making preparation to know her whereabouts so that I could maintain contact with her. We were so intimate that we found it painful to spend a weekend without seeing each other. She gave me her facebook username, Fatima Ahmad Haske. Haske the metonymy of her appearance. Fatima wasn’t a ‘swagger’ girl but she dressed comely stunningly with fascinating impeccability.

I was fantasizing how beautiful couple we would make Fatima and I parenting a family. But unknown to me, fate has already taken its toll for Fatima was already bespoken by one of her male relatives. She told me their parents had arranged the relation with him since she was an infant in rag.

“Are we going to discuss our cannibal arrangement?” Said she in a jocular tone as I approached her gloomily and sad.

“Ok we can go ahead.” I commented.

“Somebody has already asked for my marriage. His name Hassan. He is my relative.”

“And you love him?,” I said bitterly.

She groaned inwardly silently before responding to my question. “You know it was my parent who did it and I cannot help but complying with their choice.”

“Are they the ones to live in the marriage?” I asked rhetorically. “When…,” I continued, “When the nuptial affair would be solemnized?” I asked razing with volcanic rage from beneath. All effort to suppress my anger and frustration failed. I could not control the stream of tears rolling down my cheeks.

In a shaky voice I managed, “Fa...Fat…,” stammered. “Fatima you know you are bespoken and you let me inveigled into your affection.” My voice faltered again. “Fatima you know I love you with all my heart….Oh God Fatima….” I cried in a long sympathetic and mewling tone with an ocean of water cascading down my face.

Fatima could not help but took to my course. Crying. “You know I really, really love you”, she paused, sobbing, with stream of tears also tearing her face. “I love you in no measure but I could not help this matter.”

“But why then you did not tell me since before reaching this point. Why then you let the affair run this way?”

“I could not but love you the first time I met you. I’m human being and I cannot repress my feeling. Believe me you are the one and only person I love and continue to love right from my heart till the end of my life. It pains me really, and it hurts fiercely parting with you.” She welled as the agony burned blazingly and searingly in her heart. I pitied her and moved closer. She removed a sheet of tissue paper from her bag and wiped the tears off my face. In reciprocal gesture, I extracted another sheet from the roll inside her bag and did the same to her.

As we were sitting there evening was closing in. The school fell hushed and dried. I motioned her to stand up to go for home. When she rose, I was already standing over her. I opened up my arms stretched out. Fatima fell in. A hot and cozy was the contact. I closed, rounding her back as we intertwined into each other’s warming embrace. I felt her breath soaking into my body, melting into every vessel carrying blood across.

Till the time we parted I never heard of her news again. Yet I didn’t know her residence address. Kurna, Rijyar Zaki, Hotoro, oh… no… Sharada, Gwammaja, Yakasai…I didn’t know where to place her. Inside Kano metro I could not know where to find her for it was such a megalopolis city. How I wished our society would democratize marriage so that suitors would compete to come up with a winning husband. Were I to be consulted my choice I would have chosen the only Fatima to be my wife in place of all ladies of paradise. With Fatima, I pray for our reunion even in paradise. I will also continue to pray may Allah let me see the day I will take the damsel Fatima into my harem. Fatima is a needle in a blue ocean that only the lucky one could find, and I pray to be the one.

In memory of our relation, to placate my sorrows whenever I felt the fire of her love burning, I   took the plastic fan she has given me during our school days in exchange of a book I have given  her. It made me smile all the time to remember our last parting words.

“I love you,” she said boarding into Adai-daita Sahu tricycle maintaining a long loving wave.

“I love you, too,” I replied back the three magical words.

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