Baroroji Part 1 Complete Hausa Novel

She let out a careful moan, biting her lips. She drew in a breath to show she was in the throes of severe labor pains, turning her head in deep frustration and sorrow, as something got stuck in her throat. For about fifteen months now, she had been feeling this thing within her, and still she had not felt it drop.

"Take heart, Abuh, here is water for prayers to drink, Insha Allah you will safely deliver." She raised her head to look at him with intense hatred and sorrow, then lowered her head, resting it against the wooden frame of the reed bed. She let out another heavy, slow sigh, and the infant dropped from beneath her, letting out a harsh cry after a sneeze; by Allah's very eyes, it had arrived with its mother entirely.

She smiled as she let out a deep sigh of relief, while the obstruction in her chest cleared. Slowly she got up, picked up a veil and a wrapper and tied them on, then took the large wrapper he used to buy for her and wore it as a loincloth. Before she reached his front, she said to him:

"Every life has gains and losses, victories and failures. Just as you oppressed me, may Allah multiply back to me what you did to me. Just as you made me weep, may Allah make you weep.

Just as you denied me happiness, may Allah deny you. I would love for the Lord to cast you into the depths of hellfire, to send you beneath Pharaoh and Haman, may the Lord bind you to afflictions and calamities, and may Allah bring you more sorrow than you brought me."

She stepped up to the infant, turned him over, looking at the man standing there, and smiled again with a mixture of tears and a smile, saying to him:

"I will not wish for you to turn out like that criminal. I would want you to live in peace. This man who fathered you is a wicked person, a wicked man without direction, an ungodly libertine, a filthy person carrying the dirt and filth of calamity, disaster, and ignorance, who has smeared a black stain upon you for the rest of your life. That alone is enough for you; loathe the one who contributed to the twistedness of your destiny."

Then she stepped up to him in boundless grief and said to him: "Sama'ila, here we are, here you are, here is the world, and here is Allah who stands by the righteous." She turned toward the door of the room to leave. He grabbed her hand, dropped his knees to the ground, and said to her in anguish:

"For God's sake, cover my shame, take your child, he has no support greater than yours. Zainabu, I will rectify the mistake I made, I am ready to go before your relatives. For God's sake, cover my shame, do not turn your back on us just when we need you."

She stopped dead in her tracks and broke into another kind of crying that she was only now able to let out, sobbing.

"The peace of Allah, the mercy of Allah, the grace of Allah the Lord—may He deny them to you both in this world and the hereafter." Then she went out, leaving the room and the entire nomadic camp. She walked while crying; although it was the dead of night, it did not stop her from walking. She walked a long distance before reaching a small town. From afar, she could see what looked like an open desert space with nothing in it but sand. She stared intently at the place as if it were not the right one, so she kept walking until dawn broke and the chill of the early morning approached. She sat down at the base of a tree, pressing her hand against her lower abdomen as it twisted and blood oozed slowly. Sleep of exhaustion overcame her.

Just as Zainabu walked out of the room and the entire camp, he sat looking at the infant who was wailing endlessly as if about to scream. Slowly he heard the infant's voice ringing in his ears. When he could no longer bear the baby's crying, he picked up a wrapper and covered him, staring at his face as if to strangle him. But he stopped. Then another voice advised him to kill him and be done with the shameful burden he had created. He sat and stared fixedly at the infant, leaving nothing out. For the baby's eyeballs were identical to his father's. The tears in his own eyes dropped onto the baby's, and he opened his eyes wide and blinked his own. The boy's pupils looked as though they were drawn with charcoal, and the whites of his eyes were like something painted with gold liquid. Only a tiny black dot in the center adorned the boy's eyeballs, while his forehead was full of extremely soft and smooth hair. His eyebrows grew joined together, his bridge of a nose reached down to his mouth, and his mouth was small and pretty, just like an infant's—which the father could see clearly from the glow of the kerosene lantern. The baby put his hand in his mouth, sucking on it with patience and endurance. A terrible wave of remorse began to wash over the father. Why did he do what he thought was right? Why didn't he just leave Zainabu alone that day? Why did he destroy her happiness?

He knew her parents well; they had left their location. Where would they meet again now that he knew they were also Bororo, who do not stay in one place and would not wait? It would be difficult for them to stay since they were nomadic Fulani. He saw no benefit in having emerged from the Wodaadabe Bororo tribe, and no benefit in answering to the name Bororo. What was he going to do with this infant's life?

He had severed her from everyone she held dear, stripped her of her happiness, and brought her to a place where he subjected her to trials of grief and anguish. Why had he not been just with his own life? Why hadn't he remembered this moment? He had ruined...