Narrator’s Name: Jameel Shatima
XVI. Mistake
Day: Twenty days after Umar’s return.
“I told you I have nothing to do with this man,” Umar said to Abubakar while pointing at me.
“I’m offended you think I’d do such a thing to you,” I said. “I am not the one who broke into your house and shot you. It sounds fun but even that is too extreme for me. So you want to know what I do every Friday night? I’ll tell you. But I also want to know what you did and where you were in the ten months you went missing.”
“This is not a tradeoff, Jay,” Umar said calling me with the name I hated. I felt the urge to hit him, but I didn’t. “This is an interrogation and you are on the hot seat, not me.”
“Just tell him, Jameel,” Abubakar said putting his hand on my shoulder. I hated it when he did that. I always feel powerless against a request from Abubakar.
And so, I told Umar. I told him something I never thought I’d tell another soul after Abubakar. “When I was a teenager I stumbled upon my mother’s CV. On it was her email, and since then, I’d been writing to her about my days every Friday of every week. I never once got a reply from her but I never stopped. Crazy, right? I wrote to her about you guys, my hobbies, the day Safiyya died, Abubakar’s wedding, the day you went off the grid for ten months, the day you reappeared, the day we almost broke into prison – technically, I won’t call it prison-break but you get what I what I mean. I wrote to her about everything. And that was what I was doing that Friday night. I was in my old room at Alhaji’s house – the place I feel most comfortable writing from – writing to her about that week. That was what I was doing the Friday you survived a gunshot. Satisfied?”
I hope you haven’t lost count. This is the five-hundred-and-fifty-second email I’ve sent to you, mother. This is the twentieth day after Umar’s return. And like all the email subject line: Days before Umar’s return; Days after Abubakar’s wedding; Days after Safiyya’s death and so on and so forth, mother you haven’t replied to any of them – but then I never expect a reply nor do I want one. Because I’m not writing to you, I’m writing to an audience of one: me. Because in the end, all one has is oneself. And I figured that being me is a lifetime job so I write to remember and I have a flair for the dramatic. Every time I read this, I laugh at the roles of being, at the runs of points in time, and at the roads of reality and its alternative – at being me, my points in time, and my reality and its alternative. Because documenting my life, in the strangest way possible, is undoubtedly exhilarating.
So on that day, twenty days after Umar’s return, Umar stayed mute after I had told him what he wanted to know. I could see that Umar didn’t know what to say to that.
Truth be told, the fact that I miss you, mother, is something I don’t really admit. Virtually all I do is distract myself from that reality. You have to really know me to understand that but understanding oneself is a lifetime job let alone understanding someone else. The fact that you never replied to Allah-knows-how-many mails made the affair fun – not sad, but fun. Trust me on this. If you had replied, I probably would have stopped writing. Not writing is the death of me.
“I’m sorry. I really am. But I know you’re hiding something,” Umar said.
“Talk to Saleem. What I was hiding is the fact that Saleem used to spend a lot of time in Kashimu Ibrahim Library right after Safiyya died. At the time, he was working on his book about her. I don’t know how he is linked to R but I believe he also searched for her words as you’re now searching for her words. And I think he did something bad because he was banned from the library. I think he stole something from the library. You said the intruder who broke into your house shot you placing Saleem’s book on your chest? I think the intruder was telling you to talk to Saleem.”
“Okay,” Umar said. It wasn’t what he expected and he seemed relieved or maybe just dumbfounded. “Okay,” he added then proffered his hand for me to shake and apologized for punching me and busting my face the other day. “But why didn’t you tell me this in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I thought the messages were a prank and you were wasting your time chasing empty leads,” I said but that was a lie. The least that can be said is that I wanted him to react the way he did and the way he was doing. As I said I like this version of him.
Later when Abubakar and I got back to Abubakar’s home, Abubakar told me that Abba was to be executed in a few weeks. He had talked to Umar about it and asked him whether we could do anything to stop it. Umar told Abubakar that Saleem had met Abba and Abba had explicitly told them not to do anything about it. He didn’t even want them to come over and visit him in Dihaara. That was his last wish. That is why Umar is distracting himself with finding Safiyya’s words.
I picked up my phone and sent him a text message:
Allah is more than sufficient for his servant.
Because that was the truth, but what I chose not to add was, Allah is more than sufficient for the one who signs his death warrant.