Season of Crimson Blossoms Read Online Free Page A

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    Ca ca mu cancare
    Mallam Dauda, who had been standing at the edge of the field, stroking his greying beard and watching the little jiggles on Binta’s chest, asked why they were behaving like tarts. Did they not have things to do at home?
    The girls picked up their bags and went home, wondering what business it was of his that they were singing about a prostitute who hid a stolen veil under her arm and were jiggling their little buds. They agreed to meet later that night under the leaning papaya tree to play tashe in the moonlight.
    Mallam Dauda went on to have a talk with Binta’s father, Mallam Sani Mai Garma.
    Her father returned from the farm that evening with the ridges on his forehead more pronounced than ever, and his limp, caused by his polio-sucked leg, even more obvious. Binta rose from washing the dishes to relieve him of the hoe slung over his shoulder. He brushed her aside and called her mother indoors.
    Binta heard him thundering about how big his daughter had grown under his roof and how men now watched her jiggling her melons in public places, and how it was time for her to start a family of her own. He stormed out, kicking his food out of the way. Binta ran into the hut to weep at her mother’s feet. The woman turned her face away to the wall, her hand poised uncertainly over her abdomen.
    Two days later, Binta was married off to Zubairu, Mallam Dauda’s son, who was away working with the railway in Jos.

    This time, it was the sound of movement in the living room that woke her. She heard wood squeaking on the tiles like some oppressed animal and wondered what was happening. Then she heard Hadiza issuing directives to Fa’iza, who kept echoing each question.
    â€˜Fa’iza, hold that end.’
    â€˜Me? This end?’
    â€˜Move it this way.’
    â€˜This way?
    â€˜ Haba ! Fa’iza, for God’s sake, what are you doing?’
    â€˜What am I doing? But, Aunty Hadiza, I was only doing what you asked.’
    Hajiya Binta, who had gone back to sleep after her early morning prayers, listened to the noises from the living room. She imagined she could feel the weight of her liver, imagined that it felt a little heavier. As she lay in bed, she listened to an unfamiliar birdsong floating in through her window. It was sonorous and confident and if she had not felt weighed down by her body, she would have gone to the window to see the bird.
    The sound filled her heart with tranquility and she closed her eyes to savour the sensation. Images of her late husband, Zubairu, the stranger she had spent most of her life with, flitted into her mind. Every time she thought of him, he seemed to be smiling, something he had not been famed for doing so often. Memories of his touch were shrouded in a decade of cobwebs. What she recalled, albeit vaguely, was the sensation of his hands pressing down on her shoulders, his lower lip clamped down by his teeth to suppress his grunts as his body hunched over hers. She remembered how he used to chew his fingers before he told a lie, and how he always slapped his pocket twice before pulling off his kaftan. These memories were vivid. A strong arm around her, crushing her bosom. A strong body behind her. A bulging crotch pressed hard against her rear. Warm, desperate breathing on theback of her neck. A face, young, crowned with spiky hair. Binta realised then that her thighs had been pressed together, that she was moist, down there. Just a hint of it.
    â€˜ Subhanalla !’ She shook her head and saw the images dissipate like a reflection on disturbed water. Sitting up, she reached for the Qur’an Hadiza had placed on the nightstand the previous evening. She found that her cracked reading glasses were useless so she put them down. Undeterred, she flipped open the Qur’an and tried to read. The elegant curlicues of the Arabic letters blended into an indiscernible pattern before her eyes. Binta sighed, kissed the Qur’an, replaced it on