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My Dear Falmata,

It has been so long since your last letter that I do not know how to begin. You and your husband are fine, I hope? Would you believe it, I feel strange making such mature enquiries. Even now, after nineteen solid years, I see us the way we were in our early teens; two schoolgirls racing across a graveyard every morning, eyes closed and satchels pressed to their chests, more afraid of the teacher’s whip for late-coming than ghosts. In our pinafores, knee-length skirts and white stockings, we pranced all over Dadin Yalwa Girls College, much to the envy of our mates whose fathers refused to enrol them in school.

Through the rollercoaster of life, I’ve kept the photograph we posed for on the last day of our final examinations; you, mourning the father you buried just one week before and I, dreading an upcoming marriage that was to be my family’s ticket out of poverty. We sat for it, cross-legged like proper women, on a mound inside the school farm (one of many, Mallam Kokari, our dear late vice principal, made us dig to grow and harvest soya beans for his family). Remember the cameraman with his shaker shirt tucked into bell bottom jeans, held in place with a bedazzled belt? And those shoes with tips pointing to heaven! He was sweet on you, that one. Wanted to marry you, then take you from village to village like a portmanteau, capturing people’s moments in time, for pennies.

The picture’s colour has changed to green, and one can barely make out our outlines, but it is still as dear to me as the day it was taken.

That same month, my father gifted me to the chief imam. I was to fill the vacant position of a third wife. Your mother, well-off and well-read, sent you to university. It was your lot in life to become a successful pharmacist and mine to bear Alhaji Yinusa’s babies, year after year. For this, he bestowed a great honour upon me, pegging me down in the roster for three nights per week, “instead of twice that is your due my dear, as the newest.”

There were so many things I wanted to share with you about my new life, but you returned from Zaria each semester break, a different person. You must have made better, sophisticated, more interesting friends. I forced myself to accept fate, never held your aloofness against you, told myself I had something you did not—children. Then one day, without a thought to my feelings, you and your family loaded everything inside your house into a lorry, drove away, and never returned. The flat was sealed off, painters arrived to work on the place, a for-sale notice sprang up, and at the end, it was converted into a guesthouse.

Seven topsy-turvy years passed, and I did not hear from you. Then, out of the blue, you wrote, informing me of your forthcoming wedding. You had earned two degrees, secured a well-paying job, and were set to marry a man with a very famous last name. I confess, for about twenty seconds after reading your letter, I went mad with jealousy. Still, you obviously wanted to revive our friendship. My reply was a five-page-long dossier to which I attached snapshots of Abubakar, Shettima, Aliyu, the twins, and little Mariama. But the parcel I sent, came back unopened and unread. Like I felt on that day, receiving this letter will no doubt, shock you. I am sorry that it cannot be helped.

Falmata, today is the third anniversary of my divorce.

I cannot say that I regret my decision. Maybe I should have worked harder at marriage, practiced patience like my mother, who, determined to hold on to the title of “wife,” lived twenty-four years in tiresome thankless drudgery. Only to get replaced scarce three months after she was put in the ground, by a cantankerous, loud, demented, scrofulous witch who governed my father with an iron hand and broke him.

When my husband brought home his new spouse and said I was to share my quarters with her, I asked him to let me go quietly or I would pry her throat open. I swear by Allah it was not me speaking, but that infernal rage, my lifelong enemy.

Seeing as the words left my mouth, there was nothing to do but follow things through. Money was already becoming tight—the education board shut down Alhaji’s school in a statewide raid against institutions involved in examination malpractice. They were intent on making an example of him, although he was a first-time offender. His name was read on the evening news and his picture, plastered in the local newspaper. How can I explain the shame that enveloped us, his wives, during that time? Alhaji, mashallah, possesses a will of steel. He continued to give the khutbah and lead jumat prayers. While my mates and I were forced to leave purdah, go out in our niqabs, and seek employment.

My sister, life is nothing but a series of problems. As soon as you solve one, another arrives to take its place. On and on the pendulum swings, until Israfil is told to blow his trumpet. I was in sujood, on the third day of a one-week fast, begging Allah for mercy upon my husband, when who’d show up arm-in-arm with him? A dainty new parasite with a mouth fashioned for perpetual gobbling, dolled up in a turquoise abaya and silver stilettos that must have cost at least three thousand naira, scowling at her seniors as if we were dirt.

Alhaji and I reached a compromise. I handed over the children and a portion of my savings (under oath I’d send same every month for their upkeep). After subh prayer the next day, I took the seven o’clock bus to Abuja. Everybody thought it’d be impossible for me to survive so far away, but working from dawn to dusk at a sachet water factory, the only emotion that thrived in me was anger. Fate had robbed me of the life I was supposed to live.

I have a favour to ask of you.

It is big and I am a salad of nerves just thinking your answer might be no. Still, I beg it because I must turn to someone who understands my situation, or I would certainly go stark raving mad. You were there at the beginning of my misfortune. The day my father’s wife burned the flesh off my buttocks with a charcoal iron, because her son caught me pouring battery powder into the Miyan Taushe meant for dinner. Even after my walk of shame round the village, when adults and children alike shunned me, you remained a confidante. It was you who, days later, trekked six miles to the divisional police headquarters at Gadalci to report me missing. Otherwise, I would have died of thirst and hunger, locked inside that awful woman’s wardrobe.

Falmata, it is time to stand by me through yet another trial. As I often did for you.

I am sure you have not forgotten the beatings I alone received every time we cut class upon your urging, and snuck off to Madam Feel Good bar, behind the motor park. You loved watching men old enough to father us, dance away their savings assisted by burukutu and marijuana loaded into cigarettes. I played sentinel as they devoured you with lecherous eyes or pulled you closer to run their rough palms down your back. You never once shied away from their attention or gifts. Yet,the entire village said I was the one turning you bad.

You remember the night I dared the wrath of my father’s wife (and paid a terrible price for it) by leaving home without permission. We took the last bus headed for Pai, to the house of Hajiya Maimuna; famous saviour of young girls who find themselves in trouble. It was all on account of Mallam Kokari who swore he’d love you forever, got you pregnant at fifteen, and would not take responsibility.

At a point during the ordeal, you turned pale, grabbed my palms, and recited the shahadah in a voice so broken, I could barely catch your words. I feared it was over for both of us. But Allah does play favourites. You rose with the sun; strong and self-assured.

Your womb may have been unable, ever since, to carry babies to term, but I swear by Him in whose hands our souls reside, you are not missing out on anything. Children are at best, pesky little demons.

Forgive me for awakening old hurtful memories. Sometimes, these things need to need to be said, even amongst friends. You are my sister. For me, a dearer connection does not exist.

Per the favour I seek, it is only right to begin by informing you about a brand-new diagnosis. Tomorrow will make it four months since I received my sentence. Paranoid schizophrenia is the name of my disease. There are a host of other sub-terminologies I neither understand nor care enough for, to explain here. The doctor says it is tentative (highlighted and underlined) as if that could make it sting less.

For two days now, I skipped my medicines, so I can be awake and in sufficient control of my wits, to write this letter. But one million thoughts are racing through my head at the same time. I catch a few and they slip away, so forgive me if this reads like a ramble.

You are wondering … The answer is yes, I sent a message home. My father’s wife said her arthritis was flaring up again, she needed care herself, and she could have told me for free, that I was “unstable.” I must get the necessary treatment in Abuja and need not put myself through the trouble of travelling down or keeping the family updated. Her son as I said, is dead to me. My uncles and aunts on both sides, don’t care that I exist.  My father might as well be a slab of wood with the terrible work stroke did on him eight months ago. It’d make no difference if he was well; he has never been of any good to me.

One thing is clear, however. When a woman reaches the age of thirty-seven with a divorce in the bag, zero marriage prospects, a portfolio of nonaccomplishments, relics of her beauty, and a poriferous bank account, is it possible that she will not suffer manic and depressive episodes? It was during one of such, that I lopped off my niece’s thumb with a cutlass for serving me seedy pounded yam.

In my defence, I asked her very nicely to explain the reason for such a cruel affront but against the rules of self-preservation, that chit of a girl threw choice insults my way. She faced me eyeball to eyeball and said I should be less concerned about food and more about trapping a man to free the family from the stain of my protracted spinsterhood.

Since she bleeds every month like me, why won’t she think we are agemates?

I am nothing more than a pawn on fate’s chessboard. A puppet in her circus. What could I do but rush to the shed, open the tools cabinet, grab a cutlass, and aim for that awful creature’s neck? Yet God is merciful. As you may already guess, my brother who acted as my guarantor and in whose house I was living, used this little issue as an excuse to throw me out. He went to my workplace and convinced the manager to fire me, then paid the police to lock me up. They released me when it became obvious that he did not plan on bringing me meals or financing my feeding. We no longer have any communication whatsoever.

I gathered my things and moved into a sixteen-by-sixteen matchbox.

Standing straight, the ceiling measured only a few centimetres above my head. Electricity was an alien concept, and our primary source of water was a well built without casing such that standing above it, one felt a wild desire to leap inside. Over time, I bought a second-hand mattress, a transistor radio, two pots, a kerosene stove, and a lantern I could recharge for one hundred and fifty naira per cycle at the charger man’s shop.

I wouldn’t have minded this life very much if there was somebody to gist and gossip with. My loneliness grew more disagreeable by the day. People wore odd looks whenever they pointed me out, like I was an anomaly. One afternoon, as I lolled on my bed wondering if there was anyone more miserable than me in the world, I caught two shadows lurking within the walls of my room. They took me into their confidence in exchange for shelter. I’d soon take to debating them in tones loud enough to frighten my landlord, because certain I was possessed by a savage demon, he evicted me without quit notice.

When I wrote my father asking if I could return to the village, his wife responded with a warning that I must either beg Alhaji Yinusa’s forgiveness or find a new husband.

Me and my belongings took refuge in an abandoned uncompleted building.

The three babes we met squatting there, welcomed us with open arms. They slept all day, worked the red-light district from nighttime till dawn, and drank copious amounts of sukudai, in-between.

Sister, when it rains woe, it really and truly pours.

I hadn’t lived in my new home three weeks, when the owner of a hair salon I found work as a cleaner at, gave me eight hundred naira and told me not to bother coming any longer. I think she was jealous of my popularity with the husbands and boyfriends of her customers.

The girls suggested I pivot to the world of entrepreneurship. They introduced me to their pimp; a burly half-breed with a thick Lebanese accent, going by the name Zachary. My interview with him, which was essentially a verification and validation of my beauty and curves, lasted ten minutes. I took a bus to the old Teacher’s College at Zuba, then paid a motorcyclist to drive me to Zuma Rock where a photographer hovering around, took stunning portraits of me. These I submitted to Zachary. In turn, he furnished me with at least one high class client per week, mostly white CEOs who at that time, were swarming all over Abuja. Some of them became my regulars. They paid to him, he took his cut and gave me what was left.

It was a clean operation. Until something strange started to happen to me.

I noticed that after finishing with a customer, a coldness sank into my heart and squeezed so it became difficult to breathe. One thing that helped, was sukudai. Lucky for me, it was easy to find, cost next to nothing, and unlike colorado, did not leave an after-smell. Only if I drank too fast, the highness rushed to my head, in which case the girls held me down till I slept.

We trudged on, counting nothing but our blessings. Then one afternoon, in the middle of a high stakes game of WHOT, a middle-aged man showed up uninvited. He was wearing a white agbada, matching trousers, leather sandals, and thick gold-rimmed spectacles. For a few seconds, he watched without speaking. Then when I screamed “last card,” he contorted his face like we were vermin, coughed out a big ball of spit, and turned around as if scared should he tarry longer, we might soil his pristine attire. This was the owner of our accommodation, and he was there to “clear away the trash.” We were given five days to disappear.

Onwards Shantytown.

In the flatland behind Durumi, proud, working-class, poverty-ridden folk desirous of claiming an “Abuja municipal” address live in shacks made from jute bags. The local government authority is always threatening demolitions and fines, so rent is fixed at four thousand naira per stint. The girls and I pooled funds for an apartment here.

Life continued, the days melting into each other, until four months ago when I woke from a pre-work nap, gasping. I sawmy father’s wife bent over me; revulsion stamped on her face. Her son sat between my legs, holding a saucer filled with red-hot coal. For the longest time, I could not move, then somehow, I managed to push them off me. I ran to the expressway and hailed a cab. “Teaching Hospital quick.” My brother jumped in and rode shotgun. At the triage, we started to argue, and a nurse pulled me aside. She asked a lot of questions. He would not let me answer. She alerted the psychiatrist on call; a mountain of a woman well past her youth but not yet at the cusp of middle age.

My brother dared not enter her office, so he sat by the door, brooding. She was dressed in a black tailor-made skirt suit. Her hair was dyed grey and wrapped in a tight bun. She wore fake lashes, fake contacts, and blood-red lipstick. Her black slingback heels were polished till they shone. She had two big bunions. Her cheeks were assaulted by such an inordinate quantity of blush, they looked like the inside of a watermelon. In my humble opinion, she would make a very competent serial killer. I fell in love with her at once.

An intravenous depot of Diazepam and Chlorpromazine sent my brother back home. I learnt I’d have to spend the rest of my life watching out for triggers, manifestations, coping mechanisms and a host of tedious terms outlined in the big red folder bearing my name and hospital number. Most importantly, I must secure the services of a therapist post-haste. She said this with such conviction, I decided to obey her. As it was mental health promo season (yes, that exists), she found one for me, easy. Ordered from the directory sitting on her desk, next to a plaque congratulating her for some achievement. All I’d have to do, is pay a totally not scandalous retainer of four thousand naira.

Falmata, the time has come to confess.

I have fallen head over heels in love with my therapist and I am almost certain he feels the same about me.

The tension between us, it is impossible I am imagining it. Don’t roll your eyes, but he does this thing where he massages his left hand with his right, mid conversation. It makes me go hot and bubbly inside. He has a habit of lapping his lips to moisten the cracks, which drives me mad with lust. There are seven lines on his forehead, he has bilateral crow’s feet, and a mole at the bridge of his nose. The man is perfect.

When I talk about my hallucinations, he stares at me as though filled to the brim with pity. You would not understand, but it is such a wonderful thing to be pitied. If I start to explain, it’d take so many pages that I might forget the reason for this letter in the first place. No, it is much saner if we stick to the meat of the matter.

Him and I should be together as God Himself desires, but there is somebody, an obstacle, a woman, blocking the road to our utopia. She is the reason I am writing to you. Help me get rid of her, sister. I cannot be happy unless you say yes.

I first met her (my rival) heavily pregnant, resting against the wall of his office. This swarthy sallow specimen of at least thirty-five years, gloated at me through a six-by-six glass frame. Her particulars are a wide forehead, eyes set too far apart and a freakishly large nose. She was wearing a white wedding dress with a very long train. It was singed under the bust and had feathers around the neck and arms. She looked smallish and rather heavyset. But these could be my bias or the doing of a wicked photographer.

She was there in the same spot my next session, and each one after that, until I stopped acknowledging her presence. I have a sneaky suspicion retaining that exact position, so she’s the first thing that hits my eyes as soon as I open the office door, is deliberate. If triggering my jealousy is her and her wicked husband’s objective, I should appear unmoved, yes? But it is difficult and as I cannot bring myself to confront him, I sit in lamentable stillness. Me judging, and he, unfazed. It reinforces my belief that proper measures must be taken as fast as possible. Help me end this torture, I beg you.

My stealth research confirms they are only a little bit married. Less than six months, which judging by the size of her belly, means she railroaded him into the union. During a light reconnaissance mission at her flat, I discovered pictures of you both from your wedding. Also, she bears your surname (Koko is not a common patronym).

I am attaching a picture of the man stealer here. And mine as well (you are probably wondering how I look now; alhamdulillah the years have been kind).

Falmata, you must tell her. Force her. Make her leave my man. I have shared before and I will not repeat that mistake.

You should know that I am hanging all my hopes on you.

I am on pins and needles, waiting for your reply, my dear. If I do not get a letter, it would mean she is nothing to you and matters may be handled however I deem fit. A rather unfortunate turn of events for her, but we can’t all live long lives in this world, I guess.

Extend my greetings to your husband.

Your dearest sister,

Aishatu.