Home like a fading memory

Forlorn sparrow

lost, airborne; the span of heaven's vast, you roam alone.

Run, run back home

it beckons with open arms

you've been long covered in dust.

.

Like a lone bird with no destination. Salima had been on the run. her flight lingered crevices of grey lone clouds and melancholic out-pours. Tired wings, there was no resting place. Forlorn of traveling space long with sight of nothing but vast emptiness, she was exhausted and forgetting the smell of home. Touching down from where it all started, even if she was to take flight again, it wouldn't be without filling her coffers with the scent of where she knew life first took form, gave meaning.

It was a few days till she was closer to her dreams, her final papers were good and her university entrance exam was in less than a week, Salima hoped to make it pass the last hurdle as it would mark a new chapter of life and before that she thought of taking as much of home with her as she would be gone for long.

She was in their town, the root of the only family she knew, her maternal family. Salima knew too little of her father's origin except that it was somewhere in the provinces of Niger state. The town was usually a sleepy one far from civilizations with the joys of an abundance of naturals, hills, rivers, untamed gardens. enclosed, it was like another realm on its own as the weather there too was always different. The forenoon of that day had been timidly heated up, there were cloud blocks with light rays escaping through spaces between the thick cover and she had spent most of it touring vaguely familiar streets, the old bakery which still made breads as sweet as she knew it to be. She had gone to the gardens at the hill sides, the pea plants were drooped and dried, it reminded her of when they competed to get as much pea, they didn't know the name back then, they only called it the round green thing or binobino. A small laugh escaped her mouth as she remembered too well the name of the special delicacy she took pride cooking in tin containers with stolen matchboxes and how they ate despite the repercussions of a running stomach.

there was too much the smell of happy yesteryears lingering in every wall,every pathway of the town and Salima coveted, tracing them all till it had led her to the sea. she watched children swim at the shallow mouth of the black water and farther she could see the fishers fill their nets and baskets. her mind was full and her lip stretched a weak smile at distant yet sharp images her head retained when they had been there too for baths and when they were lucky sometimes to catch tiny fishes which they took home for grooming despite they all ended up dying. Salima missed the pure fun before she became an empty skin of ill feelings, at that time, she still felt like herself. there was nothing Salima wouldn't give to have those days back, she had only been breathing, she longed to live once again.

On her way back home she took another road, a shortcut where she saw those trees they used to tie their grandma's old curtains as hammock and shade themselves when they've been in the sun for too long and the soil there that once beheld their small feet outgrown with bushes some parts of it trimmed and farmed on. on collecting as much as the short road permitted she was again at the odd entrance of their family home. pushing it open to the view of the gravelled floor with fallen leaves of browning sun scorched trees, aside the intruding cats that took flight at the sight of her there was no other sign of life. the place was desolate and so hauntingly quiet Salima was rethinking sleeping in it, despite cleaning out all the dust and cobwebs, it felt like habitants of unnamed graves hovered over her. she could feel presences, her ancestors, the first settlers on that land, she wondered who they were and how many generation had lived there, what was that land before it became her grandfather's before it became a home under her dovish grandma's grooming. she imagined her mother and her uncles running the now empty house as children. she imagined how alive it could have been, how vibrant and thronged it was before growth, separation,old age then death. The house was a ghost of the picture she had seen of it in the 70s, it was cold and aware of its own emptiness as the doors creak was weak like scared of upsetting the solemn silence of the unliving. it was a quite cleaned out house, her grandma's belongings had been given out in charity except a few, like the rocking chair in front of her. she still saw her grandma doze on it while lulling Iman to sleep. It was one of those times her mother had run back home after one of their many fights, she'll be so angry at everything that she showed it by abandoning them to her grandma's care despite she would caution, her mother would go out with her friends just so she could believe she was just as unrestrained as she was in youth, uncaged. Salima wondered why her mother if she so loved freedom decided to be married, very early at that and still made a point to vent about everything that's gone wrong. she blamed her staying upon Salima because in her words she was going to go away when she discovered she was carrying Salima. Salima had bore blames even for incidents before her birth, they both would say she was the reason they were stuck even though they went ahead to have one more child.

Her mother created a mirage and liked to live her lie, but she hated that Salima mirrored her shattered reality, the truth that was too bitter to swallow for her.

"she has such innocent eyes, a very unfussy child" her aunt inlaw had said to her mother playing with Salima's resting braids.

her mother's eyes drilled into her harshly. "this one? don't be deceived by her looks. she's super cunning and very good at making people think she's the good one" her mother hardly had good things to tell people about her.

"haba, don't say that. she's still a child"

"I'm her mother and I know her better"

It was a hard thing for a child to see dislike in her mother's eyes. it was empty mockery her mother called herself her mother when she had been nothing like it to her.Salima played on her fingers, eyes full with tears, if only her mother had good things to say about her like Iman. Mama showed off Iman to anyone that cared, she extolled her with values she didn't even possess.

"my Iman is so smart." Iman could never do wrong in her mother's eyes. Iman was the trophy, It was always Iman this, Iman that and those her mother liked most were those who liked Iman and held her as special as she saw her in her eyes.

she remembered when she had first withdrawn fearing their harsh, suspicious gazes.

every broken glass, every writing on the wall, every thing gone wrong was Salima. It was her mother who had told them to watch out for her because she had told them Salima was a smooth criminal.

"no wonder, her mother had said so. she's really mischievous and never admits" Salima had walked in on her aunt inlaw saying as she gestured at the shattered vase. Salima had gone quick to look for a broom to pick up the pieces before it could hurt anyone, she had delayed for some reason and when she had come back it was said she had plans on denying but it was because someone already saw her and told on her and that's why she couldn't.

She swept it up pondering why every of her action had to end up with so much scrutiny and clearing herself even of things she didn't intend doing. it was impossible that she wasn't thinking of the next accusation and who it would come from, they willingly thought the worst of her,there were eyes watching and waiting for her slip just so they would scold. it came so natural to be that even her cousins got away lying with her name. the seeds of discord her mother sowed polluted their ties, her mother had a list of frenemies among family and some of her them visited their grievance for her on Salima and Salima would retaliate by distancing. Salima was so guarded with her peace and lost all sense of belonging that she didn't know how to see other people's company as nothing but intrusion of space and unnecessary aches. she had started by refusing visits and holidays to her uncles' house, she wouldn't play with her cousins. one time she wouldn't visit her grandmother too because their taunting gaze were always there. Her mother would spill every bit of wrong she ever did, painting her in the most unflattering images and they would listen throwing her their meanest look, the look that had the underlying thankfulness that they were not the unfortunates who became mothers of such a child. a child that was she.

Salima preferred her mother put a knife to her throat than the daggers she spilled from her mouth.they wounded too badly.

"It's quite unfortunate, my biggest regret is I'm already her mother, can I rid myself?. I was stuck in this marriage first because of her and this is how she pays me, by being a child that brings nothing of joy to me " her mother lamented. Salima was riled. deep paining thoughts. how was she a pain? wasn't she doing very well at school?, didn't she say yes to everything her mother wanted? She just couldn't fathom her mother's words. was it because she told silly lies sometimes doing the things any normal child would do even things Iman would do which her mother overlooked.

She had questions for her mother but knew better to keep her mouth because her mother would readily dish out more hurt than give her answers. Salima assumed her mother found it easier to eat her up with the resentment she couldn't face her father with, whom she maybe exhibited some degree of affection for yet punished, a toxic dynamic Salima or no one else could understand. Salima knew her place as the castaway. she was hurt that her sister and cousins were all perfect and never got the suspicious look and an imperfect she who would always ruin their fun excused herself.

Salima was drift away long enough and was only learning to know home again before her grandma passed and now sitting in a house so empty she couldn't help wish go back in time to grasp all she's let pass in childish anger.Her grandma was the sweetest soul, her mother and uncles didn't deserve her. Salima still didn't know what had made her mother the way she was, she had zero history of early life trauma and lived comfortably with a quite wealthy mother, it was in trying to unstring the maze her mother was that she found out her mother was a residual of the excessive love her mother poured into her, her grandma had spoiled her mother to a fault yet it was no explanation for the malevolence she exhibited, the self-centeredness that the world revolved around she and only she and Salima thought of the irony of being the consequence of a harmless crime of her grandmother. Salima wished she could heal her mother, she was a void no love could fill, inside her was chaos and it balmed her making others feel worse, she was sworn to making her daughter more miserable than she because Salima reminded of everything she hated of herself. For all the things Salima had had to bear, for all the weight, she was sunk into her own skin. She embodied broken and misery. despite being just seventeen Salima felt twice as old and her face showed it. if she wasn't looked at two times, Salima knew she could be mistaken for a full woman who had seen too much of downturns in life. her aging wasn't present in her traits, it wasn't physical, it was in the way she was slouched, the lackluster in her eyes devoid of the enthusiasm of being young.

She didn't know youth, she had matured early and had been old too long to remember it, so old when she and her grandmother would sit and talk, her grandmother bejewelled and dressed up even with no eyes to admire her was like a budding young woman near Salima and salima filled the mould of the bitter old lady not beguiled by any excitement. Maybe it was love that made people younger and her grandmother had so much of it and showed it.

"May God take my soul before I grow too old, I shouldn't burden my children" ma Asma'u had said eyes brightened with the entity of light that thrived in her. A mother that still loved her children till her last breath. it was a funny thing how life worked. ever hardly a balance. love was never paid in full, there were parents who didn't deserve their children and there were children who didn't deserve their parent. Salima felt her grandmother's love wasted as none of her children had measured up, they all didn't deserve her love but she still gave and gave and all they thought to give back were fiddling material things and Hajj trips now and then when all she wanted was to be talked to and to hold her children's hand as she did once. To feel her essence of motherhood was all her grandma wished and Salima regretted none of them could give her not even she was less guilty. they still leaned on her and when she needed them,they would flee too busy in their own affairs and her mother was the worst of them.

Salima filled her bag with memoirs. photographs, a toy camera with a readymade reel - images of real places, fanciful keepsakes ma Asma'u had brought back home on her last trip to Makkah, her grandma never saw them as if they ever grew, they were all still little and she was obliged to look after them.

Salima sat on the rocking chair, going back and forth.

she wondered the essence of relationships, taking the pain to form fickle things bound to break. what did love ever yield? who ever got anything for all the love they gave out.

no one was more downtrodden than the heart that felt too much too truly. platonic, agape - whatever name was given to those fickle things couldn't save it because it was bound to break. it was a bond born like humans, it would be infant, thriving and fresh, then grow older and then die. emotions died faster than people and perhaps why people lived shorter, they'll be too much hate for the world to contain and Salima really wondered if as the world grew bigger, truth and love got small and vanished from hearts. She wondered if the fleeting life of relationships still made them necessary to form. She still wondered if anyone in the world still loved the love that didn't flee, the kind that was full of empathy and content with loving in secret without the reciprocating.

Salima wouldn't tell anybody, it was a well kept secret that she was the heart that loved and forgot boundaries, she didn't know when,where or how to stop. the eyes of her love were the ones to look beyond flaws and forgave without being asked, it loved the whole being from thread to fibre. Her love wasn't a fleeing bird like she, it made home and rooted itself in soil minds of the things it loved. maybe it was the reason her mother and sister's action got to her because deep down she loved them, that she lamented all they couldn't be. her greatest pain was their own ruin. their wounds were her ache to feel . Salima wouldn't tell anyone that the reason why she'll never show that gem mind of hers was because if she loved, it didn't know limits, it stretched far as the heavens permitted and if she would break, she'll break smaller than rain drops; scattered and uncollectible and it wasn't worth breaking for anyone.

Salima knew if she loved and showed it, it would kill her first.