A Muslim’s Meet Cute ( A Falter Short Story)

‘Alhaja, remove dat bag na! Abi bag sef go sit ni?!’

The voice, obnoxiously loud and obviously belligerent in the cramped space and heated swirl of the cab, snapped Uthman out of his semi-slumber. He turned around to confirm what he thought, what he already knew, was going on. The woman he had noticed in the backseat when he’d approached the vehicle a few minutes earlier was being harassed by a rough-looking young man, presumably because she’d settled her hand bag beside her on the seat to create an illusion of space between their bodies.

It was the same story, everyday, on any number of Nigerian public means of transportation. There was always a Muslim, usually female, trying to maintain a modicum of personal space in a system designed to cramp as many bodies as humanly possible in a vehicle. It was why he always sat beside the driver, always paid a double fare.

‘Oya na, abi wetin be dis kain tin?!’

Uthman did not even think about it. He got out and quickly jogged across the front of the car. He reached the door at the side of the poor beleaguered woman who was doing everything to make herself smaller; simultaneously trying to pacify the disgruntled co-passenger and obstinately refusing to remove the offending object at the same time. He yanked the open quickly, knowing how these scenes usually went – the entire cab of men, except him of course, would soon verbally pile on her. The flaying in such scenarios often bordered on abusive. He had to do something. 

She, poor woman, hadn’t been paying him much mind, though, and almost tumbled out of the unexpectedly opened door.

‘Careful!’ Uthman caught her falling body by the shoulders, totally on reflex, before his brain caught up with his hands.

They both froze for an infinite second – the type that lasted eons – before she awkwardly righted herself and he stepped back, rubbing his inexplicably tingly hands together behind his back.

‘Erm… Salaam alayki. Would you take my seat up front? I paid for two, so you won’t be bothered in shaa Allaah.’

She was startled enough to meet his gaze headlong, before both their eyes scuttled away from each others’. She doesn’t reply. Well, she mumbles something — possibly a prayer of appreciation, maybe just a response to his salaam — under her breath as she gets out and retraces the steps he had just taken, slower and more gracefully to get into the seat he’d offered. It took the sharp thud of her door closing to bring Uthman to the awareness of the fact that he’d been staring. Again.

When he’d approached the cab earlier, he’d caught his first glimpse of her sitting in the backseat corner. Her head was thrown back and her eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to the chaos of the motor park as she recited some verses of the Qur’an in a soft and melodious voice that she no doubt thought no one could hear in the midst of the cacophony surrounding her. He’d been struck. Like a sense of deja vu, he’d been hit with an ethereal awareness that he was meant to be here at this moment, to meet this woman. Something about her face, the light of its serenity framed in a navy blue that was suddenly his favourite colour, called to him. He had found his eyes drinking her in until his subconsciousness slapped him over the head with, “the first look is for you…” and he’d averted his gaze and slid into the car.

Just like he did now.

Uthman slid in beside the young man who’d made the fuss over the few inches of a handbag and gave him a measured, narrow-eyed look. He wasn’t trying to be threatening per se, but he couldn’t say — especially in this instance — he minded that his well-over-six-feet, solidly-built body was often commented on as intimidating. Probably something to do with the beard, his inner snark commented.

‘But all you these ‘Alhaja’ sef,’ the last passenger, the one with no actual connection to the entire debacle was saying, obviously unwilling to let it go. ‘You all know this is how the buses and cabs in Naija be o. Still, you go enter moto, then begin to take space with your bags. Buy your own cars na!’

Uthman was not surprised by the sentiment expressed, and didn’t particularly feel like getting into the conversation either. Truth be told, as far as these things went, this was a milder comment than most he’d heard over the years. Nigerians had always been good at voicing their opinions publicly on others’ choices and for some reason, they liked to pile their vitriol on Muslims who dared to bring their religion to the public sphere.

‘No be all of them o. Na only the Yoruba ones dey always do dat.’ The driver was saying now, the northerner who was presumably Muslim himself. ‘You be Yoruba, Alhaja?’

The young woman answered him with a short statement, too low and in the wrong language — Hausa, he assumed — for Uthman to understand. But there was no mistaking her terse tone, the cutting glance she shot at the man or his chastised silence afterwards.

‘Exactly!’ The disgruntled third passenger refused to be cowed, though. Neither Uthman’s physique nor the young woman’s sharp ire had been directed at him. ‘Those Yoruba Alhajas go beyond the bounds of common sense. Did you read in the paper about the one who sued her parents to court?’

Uthman tensed at that. He knew the young woman in question and could not vouch for keeping it civil if these people maligned her in his presence. She had been through so much…

‘Yes o!’ Apparently a conspirator was all the man beside him had needed to loosen his tongue. ‘Imagine! The parents wey born you and send you go school o! Then you join some yeye religion for school – and carry them to court. Tufia!’

Uthman refused to be baited. He leaned back against the headrest and allowed his lids to drop over his eyes, leaving a sliver of sight to keep watch over the woman in the front seat. Or so he told himself…

She also refused to engage, staring studiously at the passing scenery as though suddenly finding the barren wasteland of desert on the outskirts of a Northern Nigerian city immensely fascinating. Uthman found himself watching her again, the mirror on her side angled in such a way that he could follow the silent movements and recognise the words she was reciting.

Lower your gaze!

Her message was clear, her gaze fierce and defiant, when he met her eyes in the mirror. Chastised, he looked away, shifting awkwardly in the cramped space that reminded him of the other reason he preferred to ride shotgun – the backseats of these compact cars typically used as cabs in Nigeria were not designed for someone with legs as long as his.

The men, meanwhile, had moved on to the futility of all ‘these women’ going to school at all, since they were only going to end up one of numerous wives in a man’s house.

‘See, Alhaja, I lie? You be student, ba? Are you going to work after you finish, with all this cloth you wrap like this?’ It was that third man again. He seemed most vested in antagonising the young woman.

Uthman was caught between fury and fascination; the man was badgering her but it was very likely that she was a student, at the polytechnic just down the road from the motor park they’d all embarked on this journey from. Unsure what to do with that information, why that information was even relevant, he tried not to watch her as she visibly squared her shoulder and turned to regard the offensive man with a withering glare.

‘Whatever I do, or do not, do after I graduate from school, it will not be sticking my nose into other peoples’ businesses that I was not invited to!’ And in a fluke of perfect timing, she flounced out of the cab that had just stopped at its destination.

Uthman suppressed the smile that threatened to take over his face, making sure to add an extra stink eye to his visage as he regarded his seat mates before alighting from the car – just in case either of them was entertaining the idea of following the spitfire that just blew them off. Then he clambered out of the cramped space, stretching his poor muscles before seeking out directions to his destination.

He saw the flash of navy blue once more, turning to watch her climb into another cab in her fluid manner, the volume of her clothing adding a regality to her fluid movements. He allowed himself a shameless moment of day-dreaming, where she was his wife and all of that fierceness was his for the asking. He imagined the unpredictable bliss of doing life with a woman who was equally dignified and outspoken, who chose her words with proper regard for maximum cutting efficiency. Once more, he felt that inexplicable sensation that this was supposed to happen, that she was supposed to happen. And because that made no sense whatsoever, even to himself, he said the dua of Musa, My lord, I am in need of any good you bestow on me, shook himself off and went to meet his mentor.

He would deny it, maybe he didn’t even know it, but Dr Idris had saved Uthman’s life. When he had been floundering, trying to figure out which direction his life would take, dangerously close to going down the path from which there might have been no return, he had been the one to pull that lost twenty year old back from the brink. A much older doctorate student who was finally taking the time to finish his dissertation, he had reeled Uthman in with his patience, calmness and the peculiar accented Yoruba of those tribe members born and raised in the North. They had kept in touch all over the years with letters and phone calls but, being stationed nearby for his NYSC, Uthman could not wait to see the older man again.

When he did, after nearly an hour of futile communication with the okada man and the largely hausa-speaking population that made him keely aware of the limits of the English language as a lingua franca, it was as though no time had passed. Dr Idris was still the small-statured, prematurely graying man with a ready smile and keen, intelligent eyes that peered at the world from behind the safety of his academic’s glasses. They exchanged salaams and hugged and back slapped and spent several long minutes catching up. They talked about their respective schools – the newly graduated student and the lecturer. About the fortuitous program that made this meeting possible – Uthman’s NYSC. And their families – Uthman still unable to find the bridge with his, Idris admonishing him on the ties of kinship as always.

‘We should go in,’ Idris finally said. ‘I know my wife and the girls will want to meet you before we go for maghrib.’

‘Of course,’ Uthman replied, humouring his host. Dr Idris had three daughters who were the light of his eyes and he never let anyone forget that. ‘Sherifah and… Uh, I’ve forgotten the others. But I remember Sherifah from when you were in Ife. So precocious! She must be all of what, nineteen now?’

He tried to remember what class Dr Idris’ eldest had been while her father spent those months at the University in Ife.

‘Twenty, actually. Almost twenty-one,’ a voice answered him from inside the house, just as he and his host entered the spacious family living room.

 He looked at her, inexplicably unsurprised to find her here. She hadn’t changed out of the navy blue attire, yet she was softer somehow, less guarded. He liked it even better than when she was just some phantom ideal. This time, she looked away first.

Uthman smiled and met his mentor’s quizzed gaze, unfazed.

All is, Will be, Must be, Right in the End.

*

PS; This 2k short story is my freestyle attempt at a rom-com Meet-Cute, Muslim style. The couple we meet here show up in my book, Falter, available on Amazon.

I hope you enjoy it! Leave me a feedback in the comment section.