₦airaland Forum

badohemmy:
Thanks. Knew you were coming, reserved front row seat for you. Enjoy boss

BiadeFolar:
The self torture continued. What they didn’t know was that Jaye missed them too. Only that he couldn't call them. He had broken his SIM card and didn’t know anyone’s phone number. “I will have to go to them one of these days” he would say to himself only that he couldn’t tell how soon it would be.

There was really no pressing need for him to go home. Though it was his home town, he couldn’t really call it home. He grew up in Lagos and visited Ede only during Sallah. Even when they went for those festivals he never connected with members of his extended family. He never thought he the place was never a place for him until his father suddenly insisted that he would continue his school in their hometown. The man noticed his son’s apathy for the hometown and decided to send him down there to reconnect.

It was in Ede that he made his friends for life or supposed friends for life. His friendship with David and Adams started in secondary school and endured through their university years. At graduation, they all decided to stick together. They all chose to settle in Ede. The relative quietness of the town and its almost constant electricity appealed to them.

His friends had graduated before him and were settled already. David ran a restaurant and Adams worked as a supervisor for a construction company. Jaye would settle there too as an entrepreneur and hype man. After graduating, he lived there until he was mobilized for NYSC. Then the prank came.

He wasn’t going to throw away all the plans they had because of some stupid prank but he had to take his time. He would let this ‘thing’ with Hadiza grow first. He would nurse it to a certain stage where she would want to go anywhere with him. More so, he wanted to give Rihanat the space to heal, to move on and get over him.

He spent the bulk of service year in Nassarawa and visited his mother in Lagos only twice and she understood. She knew he was in a far place, far away from home. So she didn’t bother him to visit often. Jaye could almost thank her for not going mummy on him.He wouldn’t have been able to handle her troubles.

The absence of mama’s pressing gave him the room to enjoy his new home-home away from home. All seemed well until few weeks to the end of his service.

One month prior to the end of his service, Mr Salisu retired from his job and decided to go back to his village, Kukuri in Yobe state taking his family with him.

Amidst the preparations for relocation, Mr Salisu summoned Jaye to his seating room where they saw football matches every weekend.

“Maybe I didn’t tell you but I am not the owner of this house and my rent will be due in December and I think your service will end in July. Am I correct?" he began.

“Yes sir” Jaye replied trying to figure out what the talk was going to be all about.

Mr Salisu knew he hadn’t call the boy to talk about tenancy and house rents but how would he go about discussing his intimate affairs with his daughter? He eventually went out of his own way.

“Young man, I know you love my daughter. I am sure she loves you too. To be honest, I used to believe she would never say yes to any man.

In fact, her difficulty with men had led me to take her for a lesbian.” He said and paused briefly. Jaye was slightly amused by the lesbian stuff but still didn’t get why he had to tell him all that.

Mr Salisu continued anyways. “She has always proved difficult for men. There was one Ali, young and wealthy. He tried all he could to get her including trying to make me influence her. To be honest, I thought I liked him until I met you. She turned him and many others away. Her only excuse was that she was not ready which I respect. But you came from nowhere and changed all of that for her. She got intoxicated by you.
Whatever means you had used, I must admit I was relieved she wasn’t lesbian after all.” He paused at this point and held Jaye’s hand. “I don’t mean to and I know I can’t separate the two of you but I am relocating and must take her with me. She has been adamant that she won’t go with me. Please help me to convince her. She can go anywhere she wants later but I don’t want to return home the way I left, with no wife or children. Please beg her not to disgrace me. I have had enough to put up with already, she should not aggravate it. I would not be asking you this, if her mother was alive…” words drained off his mouth as the emotions poured through the thin air.