I am a Janitor. Janitor – you know it, don’t you? The one you walk past every day without ever recognizing his presence? Yes, that one. Be that as it may, I want to say I love this job – every part of it. Take it from someone who’s in his late sixties, work keeps me together. It keeps me functioning. Look, forget about the pish posh you hear about old folks needing to stay at home and rest. Truth is, staying in one place – that drives us crazy! Or at least, it drives me crazy. Plus, I have mouths to feed. So no rest for the living, it seems.
And today, like any other day, I still myself for the sun to climb seconds into the next level of the morning. It’s too chilly but I’m used to it. Spending more than thirty years working early with the chilliest mornings can do that to you. I look at the sun and smile and then I pick up my broom. It’s time to get back to work.
The campus is getting busier now. And so the noise comes alive little by little and joins me. I see students rushing like the prairie wind to get to class. I see cars endlessly humming in different tones and occasionally at the prairie winds that is the students. I hear the wind blowing and see the leaves falling just to give me more work to do. It’s beautiful watching all these exchanges as I work.
And these students… To most of them, I don’t exist. I fade to the background of an almost emerging object from the corner of their eyes. They don’t see me or the things I do or make happen. I’m lost in the freshly cut flowers, the clean hallways, the clean toilets, the bunch of crumpled papers thrown feet away from the bin and all other broad details I make happen or make disappear. After all, I’m just a janitor. Maybe it’s because I never went to school that’s why I’m making a fuss about such trivial things. What an old sad man, you might think. But I like to believe that the little things do matter. It’s unthinkable how some people are vastly inconsiderate these days. But the thing is, that little smile that comes with a wave hi, and a small touch of care that accompanies what comes after a hello goes a long way. Compassion always goes a long way for any and all generation.
It’s not that I’m complaining. It’s just that this place – this campus – I think it home. I’ve witnessed generations come and go. I see their young faces and their dreams grow just by looking at them walk. I see the happiness in their strewn about abandoned books because they are graduating. I see the sadness in their posture and the stories they carry when they heave their school bags after class. I see their accumulated distraction in their text necks. I hear them cry in the dark alleyways and give them their privacy and a prayer. I know I’m just a janitor but I think them family too, and I smile at them when they walk past me hoping that little action will help some of them in some way. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But I want to believe that my presence has helped them in some way. At least my presence makes them not to worry about such trivial issues like taking the trash out. I’m happy to take the trash out for them. I’m happy being a janitor. At least because of that my twenty-year-old grandson is a student here. Speaking of which, he’d be here in a while to bring me my lunch. So yes, this old man thinks the little things do matter. Just give it time and some compassion.
“How did this happen? I am drench in the blood of the future and the present. With each laborious breath, I fade away. It is difficult to catch my breath and fit it into being. Into me or at least what would be left of me after tonight. But I don’t think there would be an after because I can’t even tell what color the blood is. The darkness has stolen that truth too. The same way it has stolen the truth that had been with me for twenty-seven years. Now it’s gone. Now she’s gone. The blood is my sister’s – Safiyya’s. How will I tell Hafsa – Safiyya’s five-year-old? How will I tell our mother, umma? How will I tell my father, Abba? How will I tell my younger brother Umar…”
The moment Umar Ja’far read his name, he shut the book. He had read this paragraph more than a million times. Umar could feel every word wreath him out of consciousness. He still couldn’t understand how his older brother, Saleem was able to write a book about their eldest sister’s – Safiyya Ja’far – death. Oh, how I miss you, Safiyya! Umar thought. It has been ten months since her death. Umar didn’t understand how Saleem found the courage to not only touch the words but also arrange the words that made up that night. That torturous night. Umar used to hate Saleem for that. Now, he didn’t know. That was the story of his life – full of ‘I-don’t-know’s. All he knew was that he read the book almost all the time. And now, sitting in a commercial vehicle for the past one hour, he gravitated to his drug of choice. But like most times, he could not read some paragraphs. After closing the book, he touched the title of the book with his index finger and felt the letters even though they weren’t embossed. The letters: The Color of Blood by Saleem Ja’far. New York Times Best Seller. Umar put the book in his bag. In between his folded trousers and shirt. He was on his way to Zaria from Kano and the horrible road made the car jiggle from time to time. “This road, when are they going to finish it?” the man behind him said. It wasn’t a question, it was a topic. Put two Nigerians who know nothing about each other in a room I promise you they will have a lot to talk about when it comes to the problems of Nigeria. Given that this was a car full of Nigerians who are expected to sit for at least two hours, you just know they’ve got plenty to talk about. Umar, on the other hand, had plenty to think about. And just then he received the first message from an unknown number. The first of many, that will change his life forever. R: Welcome back home, U.J. I know what you thinking. Who is this? You can call me R. I thought you weren’t coming back. I thought you’re too weak. Anyways, we have a lot of work to do. Here’s something to keep you motivated about the work we are going to be doing: I KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN FOR THE PAST TEN MONTHS. AND I KNOW ABOUT THE GUN. Umar read and reread the message almost as if rereading it will change the information it contained and somehow stop it from ever existing. Naturally, he was scared. He tried to call the number but it didn’t get through. Welcome back home, U.J, he read; very few people address him with his initials. And none of them would send such a message to him. Nobody knew about the gun except him – that much he was sure of. Not even his closest friends. Not even his past or anyone from it. And his past ended when Safiyya died and nothing began after that. Big black nothing was what time counted. And the ten months was also a secret. Only his family knew where he had been for the past ten months. Who’s this? he thought. The only person who called him U.J and knew about the gun was his late sister Safiyya and there was just simply no way that it was her. Because dead tell no tale. He deleted the message and decided to go on with his life as if nothing happened. What a fool!
***
Where are my manners? I haven’t properly introduced myself to you. Two people will narrate a story of time. The second person is Umar’s best friend Jameel Shatima. I am the first narrator and for reasons known only to me, I remain Unknown. Call me Unknown. Still, Unknown. A pleasure to meet you. And don’t think for one second this a love story. How I wish it were. That way, this would be easier maybe even bearable. This is what you see when you open the window in your room, watching the hours and every event it carries – if you have time for that. Or, if you are like me, you won’t watch, you would be a part of those events – shaping them to the form you like. And this is what you don’t see when the window is closed. Or maybe when you blink your eyes or when the sun is blind. But no matter, no one, and nothing is safe from the touch of time. Because this, as I said, isn’t child’s play. But you’ll see for yourself. Or if you are like me, you’ll see yourself. But don’t bother too much about that. Just pay attention to all the story told. All the risk is in the telling.
Alhamdulillah my book: *A Story of Time* is available on demand *(hardcopy* ). Just order from store and you’ll get a copy or copies *wherever you’re located*.
Here’s the link. Quick, make your order, and get your copy 🏃♂️🏃♂️🙌😊Thank you for your patronage 😊🙏
They say one of the best feelings, out of all that’s pure, Is waking up in the morning and finding a verse of your Lord Springing up from your mind of what you’ve sown in your thoughts Or does it spring up from your pillow, and jumps into your mouth?? As you ponder the meaning, the breadth and the depth This is what it feels to taste the sweetness of faith Because you’re what you feed your heart.
And what becomes of the heart becomes of the vessel With a percolating description, they become one So in a world that wakes up with song lyrics, heaving worries or worldly dreads Let the words of your lord be your mother’s tongue, thick in the heart Let it become your air always minced in your breath For how does a man forgets what is written on the inner walls of his chest?? ومن أحب شيئا أكثر من ذكره And whoever loves something he remembers (dhikr) it a lot Morning, night, asleep, awake, like Majnun crazy in love
Abu A’ish MK Albani 8/05/1443 13/12/2021, 8:58 a.m.
The thing is, I’m no longer a poet Waiting for the bustlings and bucklings of brewed bright mornings Waiting at the doorstep of thick thickety things that are finer and lighter than air I’m a poet on no grand wait-list tugging between growing pains and growing pleasures Plainly? I’m no poet
To tell you what happened will make me a poet After all what is a poet without time.. Without time offering its velvet back to him so that he’d imprint his heavy sighs, and scribbles To tell his tailor-made lies, dichotomies, heresies or his blue-sky truth
But I guess —( I say, almost like a shout in a void) — I guess, I’m here because of the words of one the greatest Arab poet, Al-mutannabi: “I give myself a second chance to hope, then I wait. “Life is too narrow without the space of hope.”
Waiting has never seen a better description Brewed with hope for all bustling and buckling breath And I’m once again reminded that the fibres of Time tickles with serenades And the coarseness of the world can’t be turned to its prime And fire swims in the sea of unyielding minds So I begin in the name of the most Kind
Her story contains a thousand more words because she is one who makes a lot of mistakes. And so she couldn’t let the words lie down in peace, in the pages that was guarded by the two hardcovers. She erase, erase and took heed. She thought she was making a mess. But that was how she perfected her story.
Disclosure: This is an extract from my published book, A Story of Time.
Anecdotes of Zaria
Entry: 200th Name: Salihu O. Babatunde Location: Samaru
“It is graduation day. It rained and I counted every raindrop that left the sky, every second that passed, and every memory I made. I am so happy that I didn’t sleep all day and all night. After five years of schooling here at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, I am finally going home. I come from a less-than-privileged family so I couldn’t afford the privilege of going home every holiday. I live in Lagos. Last night, when I borrowed Ahmad’s (my best friend) phone and called home, and informed them I was coming home they were so excited – so very excited – more excited than I was, which only made my excitement grow exponentially.
“It is graduation day and the celebrations only end to begin again. I am flooded with gifts even though I am the second-best student of the year. There is laughter the size of the sun, there are goodbyes the weight of the world. I was taking a picture with my lecturers and friends, when my best friend, Ahmad pulls me away. Ahmad pulled me so hard I almost hit him. He tells me to walk fast and so I do. We hadn’t walked far when I first saw someone who looks my age and resembles me. It is my younger brother who I haven’t seen for five years, and behind him are the rest of the faces I haven’t seen for five years. With that, came a beginningless celebration. We cried and laughed and thanked Allah. We cried and laughed and it was after those long beautiful moments that any word was uttered. Apparently, Ahmad planned everything. He took care of their travel fees. He practically brought them here. My mother, my father, my brothers, and three sisters. I couldn’t thank him enough and all he said was this: “There’s no need for that brother. We are brothers, you know. I’m just sorry they didn’t get here earlier to see you being conferred all those gifts.”
“I live in Lagos and I live in Zaria. I’m a man of two cities. And take it from a man of two cities, patience is the richest hand I’ve ever shaken, kindness is the family that befriended me and gratitude is the rest of my life – with every drop, every second, and every memory made. Like that memorable rainfall on my graduation day.”
The sun is white, pale, clearly not in the mood and I hope this finds you well, Basheer.
It’s been a while, you know. It’s been a while I read the first letter I sent you. It’s been a while I sat with the first goodbye we shared as married couple. As I sat with you in that unforgivable afternoon seventeen years ago, I remember hearing an orchestra of nature ushered in by the sunset. I remember the wind playing, the trees sighing to a beauty that’d end and then the bus… the bus? Well, the bus came too early taking you away from me and that’d only be the first of many times. I thought I’d get used to it but there’s no getting used to goodbyes.
That first goodbye: we’d been married for just fifty-two days but you had to go. Your country needed you; but then doesn’t it always? A country with unkenneled peace. And so has developed an unsympathetic and incessant habit of separating its caregiver from his loved ones for the sake of sewing together the strewn pieces of that peace. We had only been married fifty-two days! But I forgive it.
You said we should write to each other until you return. I thought that was odd when we could just call. You said you weren’t allowed phones throughout the duration of your mission. You spent three months away. I won’t say I’m used to your constant short presence and unavoidable long absence though being incurable pen-buddies in a digitally-oriented world has proven to be plenty fun, plenty beautiful.
I mean we’ve been doing this for seventeen years now. And even though “fate makes queer uses of all of us sometimes” we have make to the best use of it.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Book to read: The Great Secret by E. Philips Oppenheim
P. S Quote above is from author.
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NAFEESA Re: What color is the sun today?
The color of the sun is like the inside of my palm, and I hope this finds you well.
I’ve received your last letter and the necklace. It’s beautiful — not as beautiful as you coming home finally and with finality. I know! I know… It’s just that, it’s been two months now.
I’ve also read the book you recommended in your letter [The Midnight Library by Matt Haig]. As always, I love it. Although I’m starting to think you recommended it to ruin the wish I told you I had when I was younger: an ability to time travel. So keep in mind that I’ll have my revenge, Basheer.
But no matter, I made a review about the book: I love that the time-travel medium is a library filled with books of the main-character’s varied pasts. And that when she takes a book from a shelf and opens it, she meets unventured paths of her pasts. And she doesn’t just meet them, she becomes that past — hence, the time traveling — and see how life would have turned out for her had she done this or that differently. Who wouldn’t love to visit their past and correct all the wrongs they’ve done, correct the lazy and childish choices they’ve made?
But in the end the author cunningly, but with love, showed me the illusion of time travel doesn’t guarantee happiness (thus shattering my wish all thanks to you). And that a person’s present moment —no matter how boring, if I may add — is the best version of one’s tale.
In other news, we have new neighbors. The fact that the thin wall we share with them divulges new names, low-pitched conversations, and no screaming match between children and their parents as it was with the previous occupants confirms that we have new neighbors.
Hurray! We are no longer the newest member of this neighborhood.
Sarah – Mr. Hassan’s wife from down the street – said the new neighbors are newly married. How very nice! Do you remember when we were newly married? The timeless mornings, the nocturnal afternoons, the soulful nights and the lazy weekends. How time flies… Now we are old, Basheer. Old married couple with two teenage kids, a thousand travelled letters, a thousand colored sun travelling with those letters, an obstinately young-love that, thankfully, has no sense of time. We are all the yesterdays we allow in the now-ness of us, don’t you agree?
About the new neighbors… I think there’s something strange about them. I can quite put my fingers on it but for some reason, I think, it spells trouble… Well, time will tell. But I do pray it tells the opposite of what I think it is.
It’s almost two p.m. and I have to go pick up the kids from school lest I keep them stranded like last time (FYI: the kids and I agreed: last time was your fault.) I do look forward to receiving your next letter. Even more, I look forward to your return.
Book recommendation: I’m The Messenger by Markus Zusak
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NAFEESA Re: What color is the sun today?
Today, the sun is too intrusive. It cuts open the leaves and branches and curtains and forces its way to our room waking me from sleep I didn’t have and I hope this finds you well.
It is said, the artist not the art. Your forte for writing the right words that always find me shouldn’t preclude your physical presence to relay them to me firsthand. I have received your letter. I’ve read them multiple times but when are you coming back?
I also love your review on I’m The Messenger. “Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are.” – Markus Zusak.
It rained yesterday. A little drizzle then a downpour. All night long but I didn’t sleep all night long – don’t worry too much, I will get to the reason why soon.
Your mom was here two days ago and she took the kids with her and she really misses you too. So this morning, I drove to your mom’s to pick up the kids and take them to school. I dropped Hajara and Jabir an hour ago. Hajara is turning sixteen in a few weeks. I know you said you are going to get her a phone. I don’t think you should. A phone is an invitation to problems for a girl her age. If the kids must use a phone, when they do, they can use mine.
Also, attached to this are two more letters written by Hajara and Jabir (full disclosure: I almost didn’t want to send their letters and use it to blackmail you so be very grateful I didn’t and do the needful.)
So the new neighbors… I have been planning to go round the building and welcome the bride to the neighborhood but I haven’t gotten around to it.
You know, the thing about living in a neighborhood like ours is that the people here are incredibly nice, fences are almost unnecessary, nighttime comes late, the neighborhood’s pulse is in its benign greetings, guidance and gossip. And most of all, words pokes the fine fibers of the wall we share with our new neighbors.
And what those thin walls spilled last night about our new neighbors was that the groom hits his bride. He has made her his punching bag. They haven’t been married for more than a week. Something most have gone drastically wrong. Truly, the scariest thing ever is a love that has turned to hate. And this is worse than that.
Lately, this has been the case whenever the husband is home, except when he brings visitors. I hear his laughter threatening to bring down our wall. The laughter is always from him and his visitors, but never from her. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her voice (I don’t mean her cries, and screams but her voice when she talks). It is always his voice screaming her name and I feel sad because she has a beautiful name: Asma’u.
Before I continue, I should tell you that I called your friend Engr. Umar to see if something can be done about this damned thin wall of ours. I don’t want the kids hearing this brutality. Engr. Umar said he’s unavailable but he’d take care of it as soon as he can. Therefore, the kids have been with your mom and will remain there until it is fixed.
Last night, I was awoken by Asma’u’s screams. He beat her so much that I thought he had killed her. I couldn’t sleep. So this morning, after going to your mom’s to take the kids to school I went to the new neighbors’ house. I said salam but no response. I peeked through the window and saw Asma’u trying to hang herself. Luckily, the front door was open. I rushed in but tripped over her suitcase that were by the door. I saw the fear in her eyes. I stopped her. I was lucky I was there the time I was.
I wonder how many moments brought her to this. To this point, to this decision — a decidedly final act that I interrupted.
I brought her back to our house. She said she was never going back. And as I held her and walked her to our house she clutched her suitcase that was by the door. I think she had wanted to leave him when she decided to end her life instead.
I asked her if there’s someone from home she wanted me to call for her and she said nothing. I switched on her phone to search for her mom’s number when she snatched it and said, ‘please no. No one can help.’
“You know that things aren’t going well for you when you can’t even tell people the simplest fact about your life, just because they’ll presume you’re asking them to feel sorry for you. I suppose it’s why you feel so far away from everyone.” Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
I must save her, Basheer. I don’t know how but I must. That monster of a man that is her husband is going to be back later in the evening and meet an empty house. It won’t be long before he finds her here. It won’t be long before he knocks on our door.
Book to re-read: A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
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NAFEESA Re: What color is the sun today?
For the most part of the day, the sun is nowhere to be found and I hope this finds you well.
A person “who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they’ve all let him down.” – Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down.
And I don’t want to let Asma’u down.
Basheer, if our story – you and I together – makes hours and minutes run like seconds, I don’t think Asma’u knows how that feels like.
She slept like a baby at the end of the day I found her. It was a beautiful thing seeing the calmness in her face. A face of someone who found no meaning to life.
I don’t think her husband bothered to search for her when he returned and met an empty house. He returned a few minutes past midnight, opened the front door, then shut it and that was it. He didn’t care what became of her. I don’t think he was startled when he saw a rope hanging from the ceiling of their living room. The rope his wife almost hanged herself with.
The following morning, I made Asma’u tea and we sat at the dining table. She doesn’t say much.. she doesn’t talk. In your last letter, you did say I shouldn’t push her, she will open up eventually. Well she did.
She told me she doesn’t have a single family in in this city. She doesn’t tell me whether hers was an arranged marriage or whether she never knew how he really was when they were dating. I suggested she goes back to her parents and she told me they said she dared not return. That she should be patient she’ll eventually “understand him” and only then will the beating stop.
Can you believe that? That’s the thing about domestic abuse — it’s always taken lightly by the parties that can fix it at an early age before it worsens or become fatally unfixable.
‘Everything is going to be okay, Asma’u.’ I said calling out her name for the first of many times. There is life in her name. I call it time after time to remind her there’s life in her name.
I don’t really know how to help her. How do you help a person whose own parents deny the existence of her pain, a person who prefers to die than to continue living with her so-called “soulmate”.
Basheer, you have to come back now more than ever. The kids haven’t been home for almost three days. I talked to your mom about Asma’u and she said, this is a delicate issue especially since we are practically strangers to her. She suggested we take her to her parents and make them understand she needs to leave this city. She needs to leave this man. She needs to be free before she’s gone.
Book recommendation: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
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BASHEER Re: What color is the sun today?
Nafeesa, the afternoon here is impossibly sunny as always. It’s like I live in a different world with a sun that’s different from your sun and I hope this finds you well.
Work here is, for the most part, is perfunctory so I won’t bore you with that. But guess what? I’m on way back home. I’ll probably return home before this letter gets to you but I couldn’t help but write to you anyways.
So I’ve finished reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn just a few minutes ago. It was a scary book and I’m starting to think that the books you recommend capture or exaggerate the content of your letters. Nafeesa, is this your way of having your revenge?
For the record, I’ve sent you two letters (this inclusive) after your last letter. You gave me quite the scare when you didn’t write me back within the timeframe you usually do. I thought that maniac has harmed you in trying to get back Asma’u. It was through Mom’s letter that I understood all was truly well even though I’m not overly thrilled by all that she told me.
I can’t believe that lowlife dared forced himself into our home. Mom told me you screamed when he entered and the whole neighborhood gathered and gave him and I quote her “the beating of his life”. Is that why you didn’t write to me because you don’t want me to know? Or is it because you and Asma’u had to also move in with mom to avoid that man thus didn’t receive my first letter as it sits in our mailbox?
Whatever it is I assure you this: what the neighbors did to that jackass is just a prelude of what I’ll do to him when I get back. Though I’m happy that, with dad’s and mom’s help, you took Asma’u home and made her parents listen to you. To her.
I don’t know what to tell you but some stories are just that bad. We all like to think our story is all that is happening in the world. I think a person’s story means things happening in his/her life similar, or different than others. Maybe even in adjacent, but definitely among and in conjunction with other stories. The difference is in the perception but we are still required to have empathy.
The similarity is in the spark of connection and we need to keep it alive. And the adjacent, the conjunction are the places we find ourselves with each other; defining ourselves with each other a little more, a little better each day. But no story is entirely different. And nothing is completely new. The only uniqueness plastered to that is the fact that it is your story. So what do you do? You try to make it better and you help others make theirs better.
We tend to look at people like Asma’u and fail to see, let alone understand, the battles they are fighting and that it isn’t easy but they must keep fighting. And “hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are suppose to go.” – Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
But she must, nonetheless.
It’s a good thing Asma’u met you. It’s a great thing the world has you. And I can’t tell how happy I am to have you. I thank Allah everyday for the gift of you.
Book to read: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Right now, the sun is the size of the afternoon and a little past that and I really —really — do hope this finds you well. Nafeesa, see you when I get back. I bet I’ll arrive before this letter does. Will you take that bet?
I Write 