Season of Crimson Blossoms Read Online Free

dates by association, as did most people in Kibiya. Binta gathered, from conversations that did not involve her, that she was born the year the British Queen visited Nigeria.
    She had woken up before sunrise that morning, all those years ago, and lit the hurricane lamp. She shook the mattress, drawing protests from her sleeping younger sister, Asabe, who grumbled. Binta picked up the lamp and searched the small confines of the hut, lifting the mats, probing the calabashes and the single kwalla containing their clothing. She found the crumbling moult of a spider in the first, and the remains of a long-horned beetle in the other. She gave up after prodding the major crevices on the wall with a broomstick and finding nothing of interest.
    She went out, performed her ablutions and said the Subhi prayer. Then, as she had been doing for years, she joined her taciturn mother in the faint light of the awakening sun. Together they worked in silence sifting pap with a translucent piece of cloth. Her mother, who was Fulani, slim and dignified but bulging in the middle, hardly said a word to her. Binta was her first daughterand, as was customary, she rarely acknowledged or called her by her name lest she be deemed immodest. But each time Binta sneaked a look into her mother’s eyes, she glimpsed, before it was blinked away, a clandestine love she wished she could grasp and savour. She would have given anything to hear the sound of her name on her mother’s lips. Anything.
    When the sun was up, she balanced the tray of kamu on her head and went out, her yellow veil tied around her swaying waist, hawking the kamu around the neighbourhood. As soon as she had sold out, she hurried home, washed, ate a breakfast of kunun tsamiya and kosai and hurried off to school, her school bag – a cut out sack with a shoulder strap attached – swinging as she went.
    She walked by Balaraba’s house and met her friend waiting at the entrance. Together, they moved on to Hajjo’s and then Saliha’s. Saliha had not yet returned from hawking bean cakes so they moved on to Bintalo’s.
    School was no more than a couple of raffia mats spread out under the ancient tamarind, on which a black board leaned. Mallam Na’abba, the schoolteacher, had often told Binta that she was smart. That she could, if her father consented, continue schooling and perhaps some day become a health inspector. Each time he said that, she would smile and chew on her forefinger, turning her face away from him. It was a far-off dream. She knew that much then. But Mallam Na’abba was passionate about its possibility. It was he who convinced her reluctant father to let her pursue her education for a while longer. That she could benefit the whole of Kibiya with her knowledge. Her father, skeptical as always, had agreed, but carried ridges on his forehead for days afterwards.
    After school, the girls went home and met plump Saliha loitering under the moringa tree at the entrance to their house. When she was not hawking, Saliha had inexplicable bouts of headache, backache and a variety of fevers that conspired to keep her away from school most of the time. Her afflictions healed as soon as the prospects of attending class had been eroded. Since she did not seem to be suffering from any of those infirmities at that particular moment, the girls decided to play gada under the barren date tree.
    They ran to the field laughing, piling their school bags at the foot of the tree. Because Bintalo was belligerent enough for the entire coterie, they started with her. They formed a semicircle and Bintalo leaned back into their waiting arms. They caught her each time and threw her on to her feet, singing and clapping. Saliha was next and then Binta, who felt the little buds on her chest jiggle each time they threw her, singing:
    Karuwa to saci gyale
    Ca ca mu cancare
    Ta boye a hammata
    Ca ca mu cancare
    Ta ce kar mu bayyana
    Ca ca mu cancare
    Mu kuma ’yan bayyana