Zainab's mom had experienced damnation from all angle, everything began when she married a man from a different tribe she had a strong bond with and her father's people loathed the mother from the first day she ventured her foot in their home for introduction. Her mom could recall the harsh gaze her sister-in-law gave her when the brother said "sister Tosin, this is the lady I want to marry". The nerve of Zainab's mom to simply go straight and embrace her after that sentence from the brother, made the sister-in-law disdain her with energy . People can literally hate you for no reason, Zainab's mom said in her mind.

It's been five years since their dad passed on. It was just Zainab, Aminu and Zara that the mother Habiba had, before he died. After his death, life has been very difficult for them, because the husband’s family came and took away the remaining property that the husband had. Leaving the family with nothing.

Habiba woke up one day and decided she was going to the city to find greener pasture. So, she left the three kids with her elder sister, who was happy to look after them since she didn’t bear children. The night before her departure, she decided to tell her children the truth about her past. She has been having the inclination that her past has come to haunt her but she didn’t want to truly believe it. She later decided to tell only Zainab her eldest daughter so she will know and then when her siblings come of age they might know too.

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It all started when I was in primary 5. I lived in a small village with my parents, we were battling however we were blissful. Life wasn’t a bed of roses for us and so we knew when to talk about food and when not to.
When I entered primary 5, I would walk home from school through a certain route. And that was where I first met Ahmed. Ahmed was in Jss 2 when we first met and became friends. We became really close that everyone knew about us. Soon he started calling me his wife.

My parents, especially my mother was in support of us because he was from a good family. He would come to our house during the weekends to help my mother with all the necessary things she needed. My mother started blessing him one day and told me in his presence “Habiba the day you leave Ahmed's life is the day you will suffer”. She blessed my future marriage with Ahmed. At that time I was in love with him, I won’t lie but as the day progresses something else happened

What happened? Zainab asked. Hmmm!! Well, my mother kicked the bucket.

Life in the village became more difficult. I was about graduating from junior secondary school when this happened. Ahmed and I turned out to be exceptionally close. Everyone knew about us. They were all hanging tight for our big day. It was already too much that I was sent to school, they thought. This was because in my village, girls don’t go to school. They are trained at home on how to become a house wife. Taking a girl to school is just providing her ability to be insolent to her husband. That was their ideology.

When Ahmed graduated from secondary school. His elder brother took a knife one day and wrote my name on his left arm. It spouted blood that day but it later halted. At the point when he came to show me, I was crying on the grounds that the aggravation was much for himself and he did that to demonstrate the amount he cherished me.