Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

ogling men to tease. She scoffed, pouting and clucking at the back of her throat, drew the curtains and lay down to rest her eyes, tired from watching the needle jumping all morning as she worked on her machine. Moments later, she heard them salaaming at the door.
    Fa’iza emerged from her room smiling.
    â€˜Kareema. Abida.’
    The Short Ones smiled. They were in the same class as Fa’iza but were considerably smaller since Fa’iza had, of late, been sprouting like a reed. Kareema and Abida – born of the same father to different mothers – carried on like twins, dressing in matching outfits of different colours, Kareema persistently in the darker shades. They conducted themselves with the air of evolving women who knew, with a certainty bordering on arrogance, that they were beautiful. And they did not really care what the worldthought of their height. Or what their mothers thought about their closeness.
    Kareema was born first – by three days. But her mother, Aisha, was actually the second wife. Alhaji Babangida, their father, had married Zainab first. After a year without being blessed with a child, he married Aisha. The co-wives took the competition to heart and were soon racing each other to see who would first have a baby, seducing their husband each night and wearing him thin after his day’s exertion at work, until he started faking trips and spending nights in hotels by himself, recuperating from too much sex. After Kareema was born a girl, Zainab desperately willed the child in her womb to magically transform into a boy.
    After the birth of Abida, there was a race to see who would deliver the first son. Zainab won at the third attempt. That race was succeeded by the competition to deliver the most children, a contest that resulted in the two having thirteen between them. As the children grew, the mothers limited their interactions to flashes of hostile glares, while Kareema and Abida would be out on the veranda playing with stuffed dolls, much to their mothers’ dismay. When the girls turned eight, and had refused to inherit their mothers’ caustic quarrels, as their younger siblings had, Aisha did something dramatic. In a misguided attempt to disabuse Zainab of an unfounded claim of potent witchery, Aisha smacked her with a broom. A huge fight broke out. Neighbours, attracted by the ruckus, rushed in to break up the fight and were baffled to find the indifferent girls before Aisha’s dressing table, painting their faces with the radiant colours of girlish dreams.
    â€˜What are you doing, Amin?’ Abida caressed the lace fringes of her short hijab.
    The Short Ones always called Fa’iza by her surname, which had originally been Aminu before Fa’iza decided to streamline it. Fa’iza Amin sounded slicker. Of course, she wished she could be more avant-garde without desecrating her family name. And the hallowed memory of her beloved father.
    â€˜Me? I was trying to get some sleep until I heard your voices. Let’s go to my room.’
    â€˜What about Hajiya?’ Kareema flipped her scarf over her shoulder.
    â€˜Hajiya? She’s inside.’
    Announcing their intentions to greet Hajiya Binta, the girls started making their way to her room.
    â€˜Ah, ah, Kareema, Abida.’ Binta, who had no intention of letting them into the room where her indiscretions had manifested, filled the doorway in her saffron-coloured hijab.
    The girls knelt to greet her and answered in the affirmative when asked about their mothers’ wellbeing. But all through the exchange, Binta’s eyes were on the soyayya novellas rolled up in Abida’s hand.
    â€˜Don’t you girls tire of reading these books? What value do they add to your lives anyway?’
    â€˜I asked them to bring them, Hajiya.’ Fa’iza, quite conversant with Binta’s mistrust of the Short Ones and their corrupting influence, stood behind her friends.
    â€˜They are the only