THE HEART OF DESIRE

THE HEART OF DESIRE

A short story

With

 Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

Sophie is a young African girl. Beautiful with her chocolate-like complexion and resplendent in her African blackness. A good-looking she appears in her African attire. She has a great ambition. A murderous desire to be fulfilled. Having an affair of any kind, with any type of Whiteman is her best dream in life.

          In her teens, a year minus to cover her twenty. She grows ripe with her soft, rotund swampy-breast stood erect in her chest. With her not-too-slackened arse and her bosom, she makes men soak their trousers. African suitors smitten with her beauteous show up their quest, asking her hand in marriage but only to be rejected by her.  

          Sophie is mad with her crave. Not minding what sort of man she wants. She meets a Whiteman. A European settler who has been to Nigeria since the first hour British colonizers set in to Nigeria. He is older now, older enough than her father. She clings to him. She goes mad and crazy. Mr. Brown rejects her. But she insists on him.

          Sophie grows fond of him. He doesn’t invite her to his lodge. But she always goes. Out of his wish, he starts to accept her. He tells her his regimented conditionalities if she wants to stay with him.

          “Sophie, don’t come to my room when I have a European coming to see me.” He begins his instruction. “Sophie you can come when the European has gone away. Sophie when you see me with a white lady, don’t look at me; don’t even make a sign of you knowing me. Sophie don’t greet me, don’t come near me in the presence of a white lady.” These are his conditionalities of taking Sophie as his African mistress. To Sophie, this development is a cause of jubilation. She feels great and special among her African friends.

          Sophie wants to flaunt her affair with her man. She wants to unfold her relation to the natives. She pleads with him to take her on a tour to the central city in his pick-up van so that her friends will see her and she will give them surprise. Mr. Brown agrees. The appointed day comes. He brings his car from the garage. She moves forward to the front door to enter the cab. He points to the back. She puts her feet on the rear bump and jumps into the van. He drives to the main street of the town. “My heart, how big, how snobbish, how relaxed.” She mutters to herself feeling exceptional and delighted. With her shoulder up, waving at the   groups of Africans as they drive pass them by or to those standing at the road side. She looks fool, the Africans are laughing at her, sitting in the back while the cab is empty. She thinks they are congratulating her or jubilating in her merriment. She really looks fool and laughingstock.         

          Two years elapsed. Sophie got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. The child also looks like his mother in blackness, with flatter nose, thick lips and spooky tough hair, typical embodiment of African man. Mr. Brown refuses to pay for the care of the child. Sophie takes the bill. She later gets financial encumbrance. She arraigns him to court demanding the court to force him pay the expenses of the child’s care. The judge, Mr. Smith, working under British administration. Mr. Brown contradicts against her claim. He reasons that the child is not his drop of liquid because the child does not look European in any way. Sophie fails to produce ground evidences. Hearing that, the judge gaols her three years in prison with hard labour for attempting to blackmail and defame the reputation of a renowned fellow, on spurious allegation of being pregnant by Mr. Brown.

          Poor Sophie, she gets wretched. She gets infected with gonorrhea, pneumonia and HIV/AIDS.  All the fellow Africans curse her and disown her. Mr. Brown goes back to London leaving her to die indigent and wretched.