Chapter 35

I got home at 3.30 p.m., about the same time as Mmembe. This surprised me because she had been closing at 6 p.m. since Mohammed Ali increased their hours.

I asked her why she closed at 3.30 instead of 6 p.m. and heard that Mohammed Ali had changed

the hours back to normal again. Why does he change time up and down like that?" I asked because it seemed to me that Mohammed Ali did things arbitrarily without reasons. From the look of things' said Mmembe 'he had got the ungodly employee recruited.

He says that whenever he got this employee he would change the hours to normal. Now that he has changed the hours, you can be sure he has employed the ungodly man - which you say is

yourself. Have you heard from him?"

I became disturbed. I had thought all along that the ungodly applicant who Mohammed Ali said he would employ whenever the applicant changed from his evil ways was no other person than

myself. I had stopped smoking and drinking, and. I was now being told that Mohammed Ali had recruited the ungodly applicant, obviously another person. I had been expecting all these days to

be stopped on the way by an anonymous agent and be told that I had got a job in Mohammed Ali's Company.

Did you enjoy your first experience as a worker in Punjab corporation?' asked Mmembe who did not know that the officer in the corporation and his Tuareg companion sacked me through a letter by one Jibrin Farouk. I had expected such a question

from her. My letter of termination had said that I had shown myself to be an absentee from office.

I had nothing to tell Mmembe but lies. The whole issue of my having got a job in Punjab corporat-

ion arose from a fundamental misconception' I

said. Going further into this fundamental misconception, I piled lies upon lies until Mmembe was convinced that I was never

employed in Punjab Corporation in the first place.

What about Palma Motors? Did you check again?I resorted once more to lies because I was not prepared to tell her that Palma Motors gave me a form which If I had filled would have betrayed my past since the Company had researchers dedicat- ed to finding the truth about me

'If I fail to get a job in the next one week' I said 'I will change my location scene to Kano.' Mmembe told me she would follow me to Kano if I changed my scene. I was amused because I considered

it impossible for any person in his right senses to leave the luxurious job she had in Ali Group of Companies for an unknown one.

The salary she took as a receptionist in Mohammed Ali's company was such that she should never contemplate resigning from the job voluntarily if she attached any importance

to money. And I was sure a majority of people attached importance to money. If I was receiving such a salary, nothing would make me contemplate leaving the job unless I received a

letter of termination backed up with a physical act of pushing me out of the company with the help of the police.

'If you follow me to Kano both of us would be jobless' I said

She told me this didn't matter since it was impossible for one not to get a job forever. I screamed at her that it was not impossible.

'I have almost failed to get a job forever!' I said. 'Mohammed Ali's Company is not a place from where a wise person should resign without being forced!' I heard from her that it wasn't everybody

who worked in Mohammed Ali's company and yet they survived; that there were people on a salary of only-N50 in other establishments; that sweepers and truck-pushers survive, and that blind.people have not all died of starvation.

We were on this until I started to feel sleeply. I picked up Rider Haggard's 'she' and I went to read it in the bedroom..

sorry 😐 for the short chapter, creation is hard as this is my first novel... i will try to expand tomorrow's chapter 💕💕

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