An African Sunset: A Novel

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An African Sunset

A Novel

Auwalu Abdulazeez

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Auwalu Abdulazeez

This ebook is licensed for your personal use. It may not be resold or given away.

When the bright morn reveals its fires

Every twinkling star expires

***

CHAPTER I

The wall clock tick-tocks persistently and the ticking grows steadily until it dominates the silence in the office. The sound of speeding cars rises as they approach and then recedes into the distance as they speed pass the office block. The Air Conditioning revs back to life and blows a sudden waft of cold breeze towards the glazed mahogany desk and into his face. The early morning sun pours its golden rays of light through the slits of the window blinds and the rays fall on the painting on the wall. The picture is an oil painting of a serene rural scene, of huts huddled beneath black hills and birds soaring high in a red hued illuminated evening sky. The painting speaks of peace and quiet. The colours on the painting are a sober combination of modest and tranquil nature and the ascetic appeal merges in harmony with the solemn elegance of a Lawyer’s Office. In that lasting solitude, he dwells in the sanctuary of his thoughts. The office is quiet except for the ticking of the clock and the slow mournful humming of the secretary in the reception. He knew that soon the firm’s lawyers and paralegals will burst in in one steady bustle into the firm. A hearty frenzy will ensue as they sort out gowns and wigs and polish already shiny black shoes and scamper to court muttering insults at a random judge who denied a motion the previous day. Mrs. Khadeejah will come fifteen minutes late and will complain about how hard it is to prepare children for school before coming to work just in case anyone is contemplating a rebuke for her late coming.

He examines the crumpled piece of paper in his hands like a cherished souvenir and he smiles faintly. Even when he smiles, he could feel the sadness in his face. He reminisces about the happenings of the previous years past and all that have led him to the present. He straightens the paper and studies the curious flourishes on the handwriting. If ever Furairah had a flaw, it is in her inelegant handwriting. He has resolved firmly to stop placing her on a pedestal so he stops the thought.

He was born on the 1st of November in the year 1989 or 1990. He does not know of the two years, which his true year of birth is. His father had used both dates on several different occasions and on different documents as if both were equally true. When he was sixteen or fifteen, he asked him which of the two years is his true year of birth but his father only stared vaguely at him as if it is natural for a boy to be born on two different dates. For the next few months, he choked with fury whenever he thought about it because he felt, that of all the things an ordinary man ordinarily lacks, he lacked, in addition to most of the others, certainty on the year he was born. For a man to not know the year he came into existence in the world is to almost put to question his very existence in it. For how could a man look back into the past when he does not know when his past began or to learn to look into the future, when he does not know how far he has gone in it? He favored the older date because the latter would have placed him remarkably younger than most of his friends. However, the latter date is more probable. He had found it written at the back of an old baby picture of his and inscribed together with the time of his birth: 7:15 a.m. in his father’s handwriting. Like most things that made him very angry, he soon found the vexing ambiguity unimportant and resigned himself to his ambiguous existence.

An easel stands beside the bookshelf and a sheet of canvas is pinned to it. Brushes of different sizes and shapes stick out from the brush holder. Oil paints in small tubes and watercolours in small colour-stained containers lie on the wooden frame near a piece of charcoal, which more than all the other painting tools, have a pronounced foreignness in the office. Colour stains of gray and lilac taints the easel’s wooden board. He feels a slight sense of shame when he looks at the easel. He has not painted for a long time and the easel stands in its corner of the office moping at its abandonment. He knows why he has not painted since Sumayya. The inspiration to paint has slipped away with the ebb of his emotions.

Besides the easel, the mahogany and glass shelf introduces a formal air into the office to counterbalance the informality of paint and canvas. Rows of Nigerian Supreme Court Law Reports lined the shelves in fluent harmony. The bright yellow Nigerian Weekly Law Reports arranged in twelve rows look like the duplication of the same book, a boring manual-type of book. It introduces a vivacious vulgarity of colour into the office. He resents the yellow colour. A client once told him that he believed no one person will survive with his sanity after going through all of these similar-looking books and of possibly monotonous set of instructions.

The occupant of the office is a twenty-six year old Lawyer, of medium height with a dark handsome face. The face is almost ruined by a full black beard that may have been last trimmed several months ago. The face is equally ruined because it settles into a frown when it is not doing anything else. He likes to watch, with mild amusement, the dilemma on some people’s faces as they try to place him among the several categories of bearded Hausa Men. He might be a religious fanatic except that he is a Lawyer and goes to work wearing a well-fitting black suit and speaks fluent unaccented English. He might be adjudged a religious zealot too of the thou-art-damned-o-ye-sinners persuasion, except that he hardly speaks any Arabic, not even in the Shari’ah Courts and with people, he shows no judgment. Instead, in his eyes is all the indifference of one who knows it and probably lived it all. He might be an academic radical too, probably a neo-Marxist except that he is not a lecturer and he is too clean and too neat for that sort of radicalism. He sees the dilemma in the eyes of some of the Judges too. With their well shaven faces and ‘secular looks’, the Judges of the High Court are men who lived their youths in the 70s and 80s, an age of secular values when the newly independent nation is striving to live up to the fine details of the values of the Colonial Masters. He sometimes wonders if anyone contemplates the more obvious reason that he simply keeps a beard because he finds shaving as a daily routine tedious and unnecessary.

Introversion he was told is not a good quality for an advocate, but Mustapha has found that to be untrue. His quiet countenance has earned him a reputation in the Courts. When he speaks, the most controversial Barristers at the Bar extend to him a rare courtesy of listening quietly. The young Barrister addressing the Court has to deal with the Judge’s sobriety and the distraction of senior colleagues who knew too much to be quiet and have acquired an easy confidence and informality that comes with long familiarity appearing and conducting cases before the Judges. The ‘gown draggers’ will always distract a junior Lawyer with unsolicited suggestions when he stands to talk but despite the annoyance of having one’s gown tugged at when one is trying to make a point, he could remain focused while on his feet. When he speaks, his voice resembles the distant rumbling of a gathering thunderstorm. Many mistake that for his original voice when it’s just a voice in disuse. He is a passionate observer and can quite often carve out a person’s personality from little intricate details in his face and in his garb. When he rises to talk, the Judges listen and the senior Lawyers nod in agreement before their heads come together in superior counsel.

He likes to be alone to stay away from having to listen to extroverts. Extroverts do not acknowledge the validity of the idea of silence. They seem to think that no one keeps quiet without intending that as a slight to anyone. One has to talk or be considered arrogant among new acquaintances. Among relatives, one is allowed to be quiet only when he is sick or excused when he is sad. His mother had offered a thousand apologies on his behalf for his refusal to engage in a discussion with a friendly neighbour or the child of a friendly neighbor or guest, and she does that with a look on her face as would the mother of a delinquent child.

His grandmother, because while she lay groaning with arthritis and he was sleeping on an adjacent bed but offered no word of sympathy to her, decreed on her deathbed that his name along with the names of his two unruly uncles is not to be given to any new baby born into the Galadima family. She also prophesized, without any disaffection for her eldest and only male grandson, that he will grow up to become a cold-hearted creature. He talked only when he had to and when he is alone, he tries to tame his own thoughts. He has always been withdrawn for as long as he can remember and the friends he made are those who understand that.

Na’ila hums in the reception and her voice resonates from behind her computer. He often listens while she attends to the Law firm’s clients. He once overheard a client tell her at a point in their discussion that he needed the services of a Lawyer ‘to teach that imbecile a lesson’ and she replied: ‘Shall we discuss the fees?’

It started a few years ago when she entered his office one morning and informed him that a client is waiting.

Sir, you have a client waiting, She said.

Na’ila is a square faced woman, flat chested and with strong capable hands. She could easily have succeeded as a boxer. She is a hard worker and never makes mistakes. She sits on her desk, enduring the silence, reading a fashion magazine, trimming her nails or humming an incomprehensible tune all day, unaffected by the haunting feeling that bothers him sometimes, when he feels like he is a few minutes away from boredom. He has tried several times to describe and understand the fixed expression on her face. It could be gloom and despondency but it isn’t. It may be a resigned expression of coming to terms with the knowledge that one’s face, although far from repulsive, is by every analogy to the standards of her fashion and beauty magazines, ugly, just a little short of hideousness.

Should I send her in, sir? She asked.

Yes, send her in please, he replied.

Na'ila went out and came back in with Sumayya. She dropped a new file in front of him and told the client to sit. The lady sat down on one of two clients’ chairs. He had kept the chairs as close together as possible. He likes to keep two disputants on the two seats and watch as they try to avoid eye contact or as they try to form an accurate expression of disgust on their faces that will convey to the other person just how they feel about them. He enjoys the knowledge of the flimsiness of human barriers and likes to watch them crumble. Few disputants could sit face to face for several minutes, not talking and not erupting. Some may initiate or take the cue for a civil discussion, carefully avoiding the subject matter of the dispute. He has found that those are the hardest to reconcile. He had reconciled a man and wife, for so much is made of the ill virtues of Lawyers that few care to know the role Lawyers play in reconciling turbulent homes, two business partners and a Landlord and tenant, and from that he concluded that it is only a thin line between love and hatred. The more formidable barriers to reconciliation are what come in between: indifference and nonchalance.

And love! That idea for which a thousand verses have been scribbled by the illumination of candlelight and in the still of cold nights and remote places yet it had remained over the centuries largely incomprehensible. No one concept in the world has enjoyed such indulgence. It has been for the most part the genesis of human creation so that the crude act of human copulation came to be named after it. It has inspired passion too, such tempestuous passion and have therefore, perhaps not intending to, led to war and disaster. Like most other things the common man cannot grasp and examine, or roast over a fire for supper, it has inspired much controversy from so many who think they know what it is. Many pious and well-meaning persons have placed standards of purity and truth in it, chipping away at lust and desire and seeking to reduce love to an unselfish charity of the heart. Just how selfish and detrimental will that be to the valid desires of man and who is to say where adoration ends and desire begins? Desires persist and adoration often fades. It is beautiful and priceless the passionate yearnings of a lover removed, yet he’d rather as he will probably say, abandon his noble quest and return to the object of his love.

My name is Mustapha, he said.

I am Sumayya, she replied.

‘Do not get involved with clients’ was the first advice his Principal Partner, A.H. Azare gave to him. It was also the only advice he had ever given to him with a serious look on his face. Perhaps he had had some distasteful experience getting involved with clients. It may be the reason that keeps him away from the courts and not his political ambitions. Azare will laugh at anything from the death of a client who died before ‘perfecting his brief’, a euphemism for not paying the firm its fees to the testimonies of witnesses in court giving evidence to the offence of rape, yet that one advice he gave with a seriousness.

Her face was an oval shape with a prominent and almost aquiline nose, a small retreating mouth and chin with small lips and a dark beauty spot below her lower lip. When she spoke or smiled, she revealed a gap between her incisors in her lower jaw that the Hausa consider a mark of beauty. Her eyes were dark and disproportionately big for her face. She adjusted her veil and he looked away. Some unwritten law of propriety requires a man to turn his gaze away when a Hausa lady adjusts her veil or when she, often without ceremony, begins to breastfeed her baby or is about to step down from a motorcycle. Sumayya was probably a Fulani woman but the two cultures are almost indistinguishable.

My father was your client. I came to see his file, she said and when she did she gave him a tentative look and continued. It was fourteen years ago. He was sentenced fourteen years ago. He is set to be released two days from now.

He knows the look. He was in his early twenties then and twelve when her father was sentenced.

There is a problem with that request, he said, first, there is this thing called Attorney-Client privilege which means anything on that file is confidential. You are not allowed to see it. Secondly, if the case ended fourteen years ago, then it must have been handled by my Principal and in which case, he should do this for you, if he thinks it okay.

Alright, can I see him now?

He’s currently not in town but come back some other time. By the way, why did you pay for a file if this is all you wanted?

She smiled a small smile which was supposed to politely end the conversation so she can avoid giving an answer. He knew why she would do that. She is the kind of person that pays for things to avoid the discomfort of been thought of as wanting it for free. He is like that too.

Take the file back to her and take back your money, he said.

She stood for a quick while undecided. Her lips moved as if to say the money is not a problem but decided it’s easier to take the file from him. She took it and walked out of the office. He saw it, hidden under her cream coloured hijab, something that appears to be pregnancy when seen from the front, and a little baby strapped to the back when seen from the back. It was actually a supersized handbag that was then in vogue. He remembered that Kamal once joked that some of the bags were big enough to hide a medium size horse. As she walked out of the office, he knew she will remain in his thoughts for a long time. Whereas people say too much to repel him or reveal too much about themselves to make him lose interest in them, she had withheld from him. He hoped that she will come back again. She looked sad. If her father was jailed for fourteen years, he may have committed a felony. Robbery is unlikely as Sumayya had wellbeing written in her being. It was unlikely to be rape too. Rapists rarely get the maximum fourteen years sentence and Sumayya appeared to be a creature for a kingdom where rape does not exist.

He picked a brush and began to paint. He never allowed himself to think of what he’s painting before he starts. When he wants to, he picks a brush and dab on the canvas a random colour. He dabs a few more colors and then he realise what he wants to paint and give it form. The brush went into the creamy colour he mixed and he knew then that he wanted to paint Sumayya. He called the secretary.

I want you to search for a file for me. It will be an old file, closed about fourteen years ago, he instructed.

He then realised that she didn’t tell him her father’s name. How could she when they barely talked. On rare instances like that, he regrets why he talks very little.

Did you write her name on the file? He asked.

Yes, I did, she replied.

The file I want you to search should have her surname as an accused person in a criminal case. It should be among the felonies.

Yes sir

He felt an excitement so strange, strange because he didn’t expect to feel like that again after Furairah. When she comes back, he will have something to tell her about her father even if he had said she can’t see the file. The Attorney-Client privilege isn’t so important after all in a concluded criminal case. Trials are held publicly and there’s nothing in the file that has not been said in court, contested or affirmed. In addition, she is also the client’s daughter. He wondered how she’d feel growing up with a criminal for a father, a convicted rapist or a killer perhaps. He hoped that Na’ila will find the file because he knew he will go and check it himself if she couldn’t. Na’ila always does what he could in a few hours in a few minutes.

He reached for the note. It was mailed to him about three years ago. He had kept it closed in his locked drawer below the correspondence files. The feeling excited something deeper in him, something well suppressed to be almost forgotten and strong enough to rule his subconscious nonetheless. He opened and straightened the note that had been flattened by the weight of the papers. The writing was as bad as he remembered it. His heart was steady. It was with the same gravity with which he reads the obituary of an acquaintance in the papers or listened to his favourite Judge read out a lengthy judgment, condemning an armed robber or murderer to death. It read:

The humming birds have tarried to their nests

And the night has sent the weary folks to rest

So I wonder who sings my sleep away,

And drags me out of my nightmare

May the bright moonlight shine--like day,

And forever send to me a lighting ray

So that I may see and never again lose my way

We fell in love under a star-lit night

You broke my heart under the grey moonlight

You saw me faint yet you walked away

You left me to despair with each passing day

Because you walked away when you could have stayed

F.J. Esq.

By the time he finished, his hand had begun to shake. It had only been a few years then. The first day he saw the handwriting was in the Law School Auditorium. She wrote something with her left hand during the class and passed the paper and pen to him. It was a game, she explained. George Agatu started it and the aim was to see how good one can write with his left hand or right if one is a lefty. He tried it and it was obvious that his left hand was the clumsiest limb of the five students. Later in the day while the lecture was going on, she wrote on a piece of paper the words: ‘are you ok?’

The writing was so bad that he turned to her and asked: ‘Did you write this with your left hand too?’

She frowned. He didn’t intend that as a criticism but it was and he was happy not to take it back.

Na’ila entered the office with the file a few short minutes after. She had made obvious efforts to clean off the dust from the file but there are too many layers of it to give way so easily. ‘The State vs. Bello Jauro’ was written on the green file. Below it was outlined and dated the case history. He was arraigned on the 26th March, 2002. The case lasted three years and ended with his conviction. He opened the file and the musty smell of old papers invaded his nostrils. The smell sent him into nostalgia of his childhood when he ravaged through his grandmother’s old boxes. The boxes held his father’s and uncles’ school textbooks and some old and weird articles of sentimental value, silver rings with unreadable writings, colonial bowls and quaint knives with odd inscriptions. It was the nostalgic memory of Jos and books, very old books that he read several times and then drew pictures on them (and in the process ruined them) to illustrate the story to his taste. He remembered: Treasure Island, The prodigal son, Arms and the man and interesting stories that seem to have only the name of the author on the front page: James Hadley Chase.

Bello Jauro, the man who had to his credit brought together the two most popular Fulani names together in his name, was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for the rape of one Ladi Abdullahi. He read through the testimony of the nominal complainant who was also the victim and the story began to unfold before him. He was detained at the Gwauran-Dutse Federal Prison. He felt grateful for that piece of information. Judges do not have that luxury now. Prisons are overflowing with inmates and the Judges simply pronounce sentences. It is up to the Deputy Comptroller of Prisons to decide in which of five overcrowded prisons a convict will be detained. In a copy of the judgment, the judge, Her Lordship Aisha Ahmad Gwarzo signed her name below the judgment. The fourteen year maximum sentence now made better sense to him. Lady Judges are understandably very harsh on rapists. He closed the file and picked up his brush again. He tried to picture Sumayya’s face in his mind but the face blurred into Furairah’s and into another and that into another until it blurred away. He dropped the brush and sat down to dream.

The fifty feet high Kano City Wall encircles the ancient city of Kano since the 11th century. He first saw a romanticized version of the wall at the Jos Museum. He wondered what the ancient inhabitants were trying to fence out with red clay bricks. It may have been built to defend the city’s trade from roaming barbarians, most