The Husband

The Husband

With

Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

15/02/2014

I’ve been a wealthy man and affluent, the famous around my location. That made the masses to come around my house everyday for a crumb of handouts, food sometimes. This had made me to develop a feeling of gargantuan disdain of the poor which accounted to maltreatment and contemptuous association. With my impression of snobbery, I was always deadly feared, imposing and commanding. That whenever I came out, people that came to greet me would be jittery and very uncertain about the point to speak first. When they greeted, I would only raise my hand in answering their greetings, a supercilious way of responding to them because their words were not worth my words. I was rich and they’re poor, that was just the reason.

I had interest in politics besides my private business as a retired bureaucrat who knew the lucrative benefits the business fetches. I contested for senate and had fully and deadly armed to the teeth my campaign team with wherewithal. The campaign advisers were provided with luxurious cars and buses and sacrificed one of my properties to be the head of the campaign office. The thugs were always provided with facilities, weapon, sticks, cutlasses, machetes and knives to butcher anybody who came our way from the opposition, both internal and external. Just a day before the election, the president, having the privilege of being a parley to him pulled combined resources and deployed them to the polling units where the elections were to be conducted. Thousands of persons-laden cars were seen going there. According to some accounts every local government of the state contributed 5 buses full of hoodlums to go and ensure the supremacy of the almighty ruling party. How would the party show its power? By arming hoodlums to the teeth with ganja, drugs, intoxicants and deadly weapons to finish any opponent of the Poverty Development Party on the instruction of the regime officials. When just you saw the processions you would think that a gruesome violent clash was underway in the barbaric community of the unrefined thick forest. For it is the common practice in the country where there is an incumbent regime, the government uses all the means of rigging at her disposal to win the election. Politicians resort to economic use, military forces, such as the most brutal and barbaric creatures on earth, the most cruel brutes and autarkieted forces, and other parochial institutions, a bundle-wagon of violently corrupt human beings. The process of mutilating the figures or inflating it is all in account. Deliberately committing irregularities in the hope of influencing the result to the favor of one party over the other, delay in distributing electoral materials to the designated and strategic polling units, use of unregistered voters, underage voting, multiple vote by single voter, snatching electoral materials, stealing of votes, destruction of ballot box, violence in the polling unit and other Machiavellian principles in connivance with security personnel and ICENEC officials in support of one party to win the election at all cost.

 I was lavish to my candidacy for I was not such a mean politician with babies’ hands anyway. Politics was one of those activities that would show how wealthy I was and that was my ambition to flaunt to the world that I was not poor. After the election there would be some ways I would score out my expenses and later the benefits would follow. Political relationship is always quod pro quo after all. Though I was not used to struggling here and there downtown but I attended my political rallies to the fifteen local governments that made my constituency. I faced the difficulties of having association with the masses because I didn’t have previous experiences of constant rubbing shoulder, handshaking and sometimes eating from the same bowl with them. I was sick and vile with that but my political strategists instead that I should be doing it because it was a strong political weapon of wooing the voters by injecting the sense of belonging in them that you’re all the same while the reality was that apart from being human beings, it was there the similarity stopped and the differences began. I endured doing this but whenever we dispersed from the rally I washed my hands with antiseptic and germicide substances to kill the possible germs and bacteria that might get into my hand while shaking with the masses. The campaign advisers had precluded me not speak again while in the gathering because I would spoil the political goodwill they had been building with my foul and derisive language. I rudely addressed the masses as poor, illiterate, destitute and wretched.

            “You the poor, illiterate and hungry persons,” I said in the mic while the programme was transmitting live on air from a radio station, “if you vote me as a senator I’ll introduce new policies to improve your lives,” my address during one of our gatherings.

In my family I was a lion, dictatorial and tyrant, deadly feared to which the mere mention of my name’s intimidation to many and stabilizing influence that brought everybody around to his right senses. It’s only when the cat wasn’t around that the mouse would play.   Every action had to pass under my approval for I was the alpha and omega, period! I always wore cow face and whenever I was to enter home I didn’t need to say the formal salaam. All I had to do was three throaty sound hm...hm...hm as a herald of my arrival to show my power and manliness. My mother and other siblings were helpless because they could not challenge me even at a point I went glaringly wrong. They didn’t have any influence on me for I held their financial burden upon my shoulder which gave me a total control of all the affairs. My wife Dija was more helpless than anybody, whom I treated badly, handled roughly and spoke rudely. I didn’t bother abusing her parents any time I so wished even though we were cousins from the same lineage. Our parents insisted on our marriage to keep the relations going. Dija was very obedient to her parents that she agreed with the suggestion without demur. After our marriage she remained loyal to her parents’ sermon as her obedience to me was unflinching, unalloyed and unconditional despites my unbecoming behavior. I was a source of her grief instead of joy, disturber instead of comforter. Nothing she did, no matter how good would command my applaud but would abuse her and shout and amplified her mistakes beyond proportion on a slight err. That day she would have restless and sleepless night because my swearwords kept haunting in her mind. If she departed for her family on strike, her parents would send her back, “you’re impatient,” they said, “others are living happily with their husbands but not you.”

One day I was coming out from a mall where I did my weekend shopping and saw a lady dropped by a chauffeur and was to get into the shop. I was bewitched with her beauty. My heart thudded because I was afraid of what would happen the first time I talked to such a big girl. Really big girl because her appearance confirmed this. She was wearing Burberry shirt and black slim jeans with stiletto Italian shoes with her perm curly hair dangling behind her nape. Again, she was carrying iPod device, Bluetooth earpiece, golden necklace and glistering bracelets and expensive rings were decorating her hands shining in the sun reflection. I sighed a heavy relief on seeing that this was such a girl I wanted association with. She was very modern, arrogant, rigid, difficult, and sophisticated. I liked such association because I hated the simplicity and meekness of my wife. I always liked association with rigid people that would keep my brain always busy. After I negotiated with my mind I decided to venture into the girl and let whatever would happen be. I compared my car with hers and realized that I had only narrow escape for mine was a bit more costly than hers. “By the way may money would do some works,” I said finally and shrugged to walk up to the girl. She was already inside the shop when I reached her and began talking without farther ado.

            “Lady how are you?” I asked, modulating my voice to sound sonorous and equalizing my tone to please her ears.  It’s a conventional practice among the both sexes not use their natural voice while interacting with different sex, especially the boys who mercilessly squeeze their voice to appear thin to please the ears of the girls and the girls always don’t care  but rather mock the guys when they left. She did not answer me even though she clearly heard me.  She just continued picking her things on the shelf and dropping them into a trolley pushed by a boy behind. Instead of listening to me she just continued listening her music, miming the song aloud – an indirect way of telling me that she had no time for me. I did not give up. I went ahead talking. I followed her to every corner she moved, like a beggar, talking and talking but to no avail for she refused to give me audience. I looked up to myself to examine if there was anything wrong with my dress but for sure I was ok. Nayi kawai. Whenever I talked to her she would just make an angry hiss and shot an angry glance to my side contemptuously. I followed her again and again begging and lobbying while other people in the mall watch – aghast and saddened by my embarrassing and undignifying approach.

            “Lady I’ve been talking to you but you did not answer me. I know a smart girl like you suppose not submit at an instance,” as it’s the habit of the girls to maintain respect for a moment to gain value before they answer to the men after they be flattered. “Look young lady, I believe a beautiful girl like you must have lots of courtiers. Please,” I begged, “find a place to squeeze me into your heart although I know you have no place for me.”

            “Hm,” she chuckled and turned to me for the first time. She then removed her spectacles to the nose bridge and peered `through to give me a scornful and disdainful look. But I didn’t care; all I wanted was her talking to me. This alone had paid for everything.

            “Sannu dai, how are you?” she spoke finally. Having her speak to me was a great honor. I felt like cool water poured into my heart. My body was convulsing in joy and my mouth was widening in smile while others in the shop looked me foolish and laughed at me. When we reached to the till I preempted her in footing the bill even though she did not ask. It’s always the courtesy of eager men like me who the mere seeing of a face or hearing of a voice excites us to pay for the girls. Although the bill had totaled the sum of five hundred thousand Naira, five percent the amount I refused to give my wife at home on request, but I was no reluctant to pay the money for it was a favor and honor for me to have such a girl accepted my gift.

We’ve been in relation for quite a long time. For this time no passing day that I did not spend at least half million for her and her friends and relatives. I would drive her everyday to school early in the morning before I attended my own family and would not come back until late in the evening when she had done with the school. Each time we arrived at the school, I would quickly open the door for her and collected her books from the back seat where she always occupied. Nobody was allowed to sit along with her, even myself, nor her friends because she exercised total monopoly of the car. If she wanted to assist her friends she told me to call my driver at home to forgo anything, basically who took my children to school to come and collect her friends to school. He too like me would not leave from the school until Zury’s friends done with the day. I was very loyal to her that there was a day when my mother and wife asked me to drive them to visit a relative but I dodged, bluffing them that I had an important commitment that I could not miss and no delegation would do. This was because I could not send my chauffer to take care of the apple of my eyes.

In the school after I opened the door for her an collected the books, I would then follow her in tow wherever she went like bodyguard from place to place carrying her books, biro, tissue and phones like a servant till I learnt all the venues and theatres they took lectures. Whenever she needed a thing she just asked me to bring it forward. She commanded and I obeyed diligently. I contended her treatment of me because it was an honorary gesture she offered me to get into relation with her. Her friends also began to treat me as she did. Whenever Zury was absent her friends attempted to give me order as she did but I rebelled it. When I asked a girl among her friends whom I knew previously why they tried to bark order at me, she told me that Zury told them that I was the servant her father employed to do her things while at school and that’s why they treated me as such. From then on I learnt why Zury never shared a sit with me in the car as she always used owner’s corner in the back from the right side where she made me  always appeared like her driver because she was sitting in the back while the cab was empty. She also never allowed me to walk side by side with her on the school premises or when we went to social outing because she didn’t want the society to identify her as my girl although I had brought my betrothal by that time. Note that I did not care as I continued to do her all the nice things I v’ been doing. It was a master-servant relation because I didn’t have the right to give her a call as known in every relation between male and female.

            “Who asked you to call me?”She barked thunderously at me one time I called her at night in the hope of having pleasant night if I heard her voice before I went to bed. “How many times should I tell that it’s always me that will call you when I need your services?”

            “Alright, forgive me if I offend you.”I said innocently, jovially not wanting to sound angry as I was trying to solace her and not minding what she told me. “I just want to hear your voice.” I pleaded guilty lest I would have a lenient punishment. I didn’t want to commit anything that would anger her for she would punish me in return. She punished me severely whenever I wronged her by sending me to Coventry and would never talk to me again until she had a financial deal to exert from me. From the time she had shunned me I would be anxious and restless to have an opportunity that she would talk to me so that our relation would get back, and whenever she brought the monetary issue I was glad to it and did the assignment with all the seriousness and sometimes doubled the amount she requested just to please her.  It was colonialism per excellence.

I was mad and crazy and xenerous and blind to love Zury unconditionally and put her on too high a pedestal. I was deliberately obtuse to any words against her for I always regarded them as words of the envious people who didn’t like my relation with her. All I needed as a senator was modern wife, beautiful for that matter that could do with kind wives of my associates. The one that would fit to the contemporary challenges and save me the shame from my friends.   The one of course which if I put in the cab would be decorating me when we went outings or happened to be in the gatherings. The one that would do as fashion for outing, of course.

I appeared happy in appearance but it was all that repression. From beneath a tumult of sadness and grief was oppressing my mind and had nobody to share with. All the masses around had stopped coming in fear of my denigration of them. Zury bossed me around and barked order and imposing commands at me like her boy. She did not allow me to have freedom or the liberty of disobeying her orders. She designed a roaster of the day’s schedule. All I had to do was just to follow the roaster as guidelines to discharge her instructions all morning. Six thirty arranging her bath, seven o’clock preparing her breakfast and by eight at night I would then prepare her bed before she came back from office. “Have you prepared the food,” she always cried from the bed. “Make sure that the dinner is ready before I get back,” or “wash my dress and iron them before four in the evening.” These were some of the instructions she gave before going out.

One morning I dressed like a chef preparing her food while she was resting in bed after she came back from a midnight conference the night before, when friends visited me and found me in that embarrassing state. I tried hard to conceal the exact situation from them but then Zury shouted her order to their hearing, “if you finished the cooking take the food to my dining table and arrange for my bath.”I tried to mask my shame but then the visitors knew it all as I saw them exchange gossiping or rather pathetic glances. “I’m just helping her with some chores,” I hedged even though my words could not convince them.  On that same day my mother, wife, children and other siblings visited to see how I was faring in my new settlement with my new wife. She said she could not live in congested house with other people numbering more than two. I stopped visiting them for a long time after I married Zury as I moved to my new house even though my old house was spacious and beautiful but she said it was below her standard. When they entered the house they found me preparing the bed where Zury just vacated for a shower.

            “Where’s she that you’re left with this work?” my mother requested in my defense as I appeared powerless and helpless. From the looks of the rest they’re apparently sympathetic of my situation and fighting for my right as a bread winner.

            “Hmm... hmm...hmm... ,”I chuckled such an embarrassing grin, looking helpless and defenseless. “She went to bathe. I ‘m just helping to ease her works. You know she is going to the office and I don’t want anything that will make her late to her work.”I explained, glaringly happy, unperturbed and unrepented and confident.

Thing went on to get deteriorated. Zury denied any relations with my relatives. None of my siblings or relatives could sermon the courage to ask a demand directly from me. They had to reach my wife, Zury first, who would later forward them to me if she so wished and if not would just dump them in the dustbin without letting me know.  At times even a request from my mother had to be intentionally delayed before it got attended. She cancelled the monthly allowance I used to send my relatives. “You stop doing that,” she said half command half suggestion and obviously irritated, “why don’t you send the money to my mum,” she observed. She stopped the allowance I used to send to the students and community associations in my constituency and said she would use the money to change the cars of her brothers and sisters.

As a bread winner I did not have the audacity to question her frequent outings. Who was I to do that? She went out any time she so wished and would come back at any time she pleased, even dead of the night when conventionally I had already closed the door. More worse was that I’ve never shared a bed with her as a marital affair. Whenever I requested her in my bed she replied that she had been working on a document which she would have not finished until daybreak. “I have outstanding works from office. If I don’t finish them on the deadline I might get into trouble. I believe you don’t want to contribute to my problem,” she said and always would look at me and gave a foxy smile. This alone was enough for me for I was still her boy and had remained one. One day I summoned the courage to question her groundless and implausible excuses and insisted on asking and asking that I should follow her to the office.

            “Lots of works in the office: papers to sign, document to write, appointment to keep and meeting to attend. You don’t need to follow me,” but I insisted on accompanying her. I drove her one day, like the usual she was occupying owner’s seat comfortably even though the car was mine. I bought it from Germany a month ago and gave her as a birthday gift. On arrival at the office she left me to bask outside in the sun. “Entry into the main building,” she said, “is for the staff only.”I waited there very agitated and uncertain of when she would get out. I thought she forgot me outside for I spent about eight hours waiting. Later she came out to depart with a group of male colleagues. They bid farewell by handshaking and cuddling. I felt a spur of jealousy stir in me and a pang of diffidence hit me as my knees felt deflated and unable to carry me by what I saw.  My blood ran hot in me. My heart beat rapidly. She knew I was around but she continued her affair without a feeling of compunction.

For this long time I waited, my phone had been ringing but I refused to pick when I saw that the call was from Dija. What happened to her, I did not know but I just ignored the call. But when I saw a stark disappointment in Zury as she cuddled unlawful males before my naked eyes I left the place and rushed to Dija to find what was going on, and very willing to make things perfect and ask her forgiveness. It was my mother using Dija’s phone to tell me that Dija was admitted into a hospital. She was cardiac and got stroked by the grief of my subordination and undignifying behavior. When I arrived Dija had kicked the bucket leaving behind two rambunctious children, Walid and Humaira whom I abandoned since my marriage with Zury. I wished to meet Dija for the last time and ask her forgiveness. I wished to meet the woman who gave me love for life. I wished to meet the woman who cared for me and stood by me in peace and in pieces. The woman who prepared my bed, my food and arranged my bath, not the other way round. She was the peace of my life. I remorsed my subjecting her to the untold agony and grief. I cried tearfully for not meeting her and said ‘forgive me Dija’for the last time.  I vacated for her graveside begging her forgiveness. Zury, never, never, never!