been like for Arize and her brothers, Odinchezo and Ekene, seeing their parents through the curtain, hearing the sounds that might suggest an eerie pain to a child as their father’s hips moved and their mother’s arms clutched him. She had never heard her own parents making love, never even seen any indication that they did. But she had always been separated from them by hallways that got longer and more thickly carpeted as they moved from house to house. When they moved to their present home, with its ten rooms, her parents chose different bedrooms for the first time. ‘I need the whole wardrobe, and it will be nice to have your father visit!’ her mother had said. But the girlish laugh had not rung true for Olanna. The artificiality of her parents’ relationship always seemed harder, more shaming, when she was here in Kano.
The window above her was open, the still night air thick with the odours from the gutters behind the house, where people emptied their toilet buckets. Soon, she heard the muted chatter of the night- soil men as they collected the sewage; she fell asleep listening to the scraping sounds of their shovels as they worked, shielded by the dark.
The beggars outside the gates of Mohammed’s family home did not move when they saw Olanna. They remained seated on the ground, leaning against the mud compound walls. Flies perched on them in dense clusters, so that for a moment it seemed as if their frayed, white kaftans had been splashed with dark-coloured paint. Olanna wanted to put some money in their bowls but decided not to. If she were a man, they would have called out to her and extended their begging bowls, and the flies would rise in buzzing clouds.
One of the gatemen recognized her and opened the gates. ‘Welcome, madam.’
‘Thank you, Sule. How are you?’
‘You remember my name, madam!’ He beamed. ‘Thank you, madam. I am well, madam.’
‘And your family?’
‘Well, madam, by the will of Allah.’
‘Is your master back from America?’
‘Yes, madam. Please come in. I will send to call Master.’
Mohammed’s red sports car was parked in front of the sprawling sandy yard but what held Olanna’s attention was the house: the graceful simplicity of its flat roof. She sat down on the veranda.
‘The best surprise!’
She looked up and Mohammed was there, in a white kaftan, smiling down at her. His lips were a sensual curve, lips she had once kissed often during those days when she spent most of her weekends in Kano, eating rice with her fingers in his house, watching him play polo at the Flying Club, reading the bad poetry he wrote her.
‘You’re looking so well,’ she told him, as they hugged. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d be back from America.’
‘I was planning to come up to Lagos to see you.’ Mohammed moved back to look at her. There was a tilt to his head, a narrowing of his eyes, that meant he still harboured hope.
‘I’m moving to Nsukka,’ she said.
‘So you are finally going to become an intellectual and marry your lecturer.’
‘Nobody said anything about marriage. And how is Janet? Or is it Jane? I mix up your American women.’
Mohammed raised one eyebrow. She could not help admiring his caramel complexion. She used to tease him about being prettier than she was.
‘What did you do to your hair?’ he asked. ‘It doesn’t suit you at all. Is this how your lecturer wants you to look, like a bush woman?’
Olanna touched her hair, newly plaited with black thread. ‘My aunty did it. I quite like it.’
‘I don’t. I prefer your wigs.’ Mohammed moved closer and hugged her again. When she felt his arms tighten around her, she pushed him away.
‘You won’t let me kiss you.’
‘No,’ she said, although it had not been a question. ‘You’re not telling me about Janet-Jane.’
‘Jane. So this means I won’t see you any more when you go to Nsukka.’
‘Of course I’ll see you.’
‘I know that lecturer of yours is crazy, so I won’t come to Nsukka.’ Mohammed laughed. His tall, slim body and tapering fingers spoke of fragility, gentleness. ‘Would you like a soft drink? Or some wine?’
‘You have alcohol in this house? Someone must inform your uncle,’ Olanna teased.
Mohammed rang a bell and asked a steward to bring some drinks. Afterwards, he sat thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. ‘Sometimes, I feel my life is going nowhere. I travel and drive imported cars, and women follow me. But something isn’t there, something isn’t right. You know?’ She watched him; she knew where he was going with this. Yet when he said, ‘I wish things didn’t change,’ she was touched and flattered.
‘You’ll find a good woman,’ she said limply.
‘Rubbish,’ he said, and as they sat side by side drinking Coke, she recalled the disbelieving pain on his face that had only deepened when she told him she had to end it right away because she did not want to be unfaithful to him. She expected that he would resist, she knew very well how much he loved her, but she had been shocked when he told her to go ahead and sleep with Odenigbo as long as she did not leave him: Mohammed, who often half-joked about coming from a lineage of holy warriors, the very avatars of pious masculinity. Perhaps it was why her affection for him would always be mingled with gratitude, a selfish gratitude. He could have made their breakup more difficult for her; he could have left her with much more guilt.
She placed her glass down. ‘Let’s go for a drive. I hate it when I visit Kano and only get to see the ugly cement and zinc of Sabon Gari. I want to see that ancient mud statue and go around the lovely city walls again.’
‘Sometimes you are just like the white people, the way they gawk at everyday things.’
‘Do I?’
‘It’s a joke. How are you going to learn not to take everything so seriously if you live with that crazy lecturer?’ Mohammed stood up. ‘Come, we should stop by first so you can greet my mother.’
As they walked past a small gate at the back and into the courtyard that led to his mother’s chambers, Olanna remembered the trepidation she used to feel coming here. The reception area was the same, with gold-dyed walls and thick Persian rugs and grooved patterns on the exposed ceilings. Mohammed’s mother looked unchanged, too, with the ring in her nose and the silk scarves around her head. She was fine-spun in the way that used to make Olanna wonder if she wasn’t uncomfortable, dressing up every day and simply sitting at home. But the older woman did not have that old standoffish expression, did not speak stiffly with her eyes focused somewhere between Olanna’s face and the hand-carved panelling. Instead she got up and hugged Olanna.
‘You look so lovely, my dear. Don’t let the sun spoil that skin of yours.’
‘Na gode. Thank you, Hajia,’ Olanna said, wondering how it was possible for people to switch affection off and on, to tie and untie emotions.
‘I am no longer the Igbo woman you wanted to marry who would taint the lineage with infidel
