Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim Page B

why his face is all over your room.’
    â€˜My room? Well—’
    â€˜Well, what?’
    Fa’iza smiled coyly.
    â€˜It’s cool, I think he’s cute.’ Abida, as she sometimes did, switched to English.
    â€˜He’s not.’ Kareema sounded unnecessarily belligerent.
    Fa’iza’s eyes popped. It was the first time, in the eventful seven months she had known the sisters, that she had heard the Short Ones disagree on anything. Overwhelmed by this insignificant bit of history, she opened her mouth to speak but could not say anything.
    Abida spoke instead. ‘ What’s wrong with him? ’
    â€˜ Blubbery lips .’
    â€˜ His lips are fine .’ Fa’iza was shocked by her own voice. By its high-pitched ring of desperation, which she hoped would shut Kareema up.
    â€˜Sure they are.’ Abida smiled and the undressed sincerity of it pleased Fa’iza.
    â€˜And he’s arrogant too.’ Kareema was not quite done with her offensive.
    â€˜Arrogant? He’s not.’
    â€˜Sure he is.’
    â€˜Sure he’s not!’
    The sisters had a stare-down that, in reality, lasted all of three seconds. But in Fa’iza’s baffled mind, it must have lasted an entire hour. Kareema rolled away from her sister, picked up one of the novellas they had brought and started flipping through the pages.Abida got up and went to look in the mirror hanging on the wall, the one embellished with stickers of Ali Nuhu’s face. Fa’iza picked up the book she had been reading before the Short Ones arrived and took up from where she had left off.
    Abida patted down her nose with her palms and, satisfied with her looks, sought something else to engage her attention. Her eyes fell on a notebook at the other end of Fa’iza’s mattress. She would not have thought much of it but for the words scribbled on the cover: Fa’iza Amin’s Secret Book . She went and sat down on the mattress, her back turned to the other girls. She picked up the book and opened it. There were sketches of figures wielding clubs standing over a person on the ground. The felled figure was a little more elaborate, with a distinct beard.
    She turned over the page and started reading what Fa’iza had written each time she had been hounded out of her tenuous sleep by the roaring shadows that prowled her dreams, and which were now manifesting in her wakefulness as well.
    When the silence in the room grew uncomfortable, Fa’iza looked up and saw Abida hunched over on the far end of the mattress.
    â€˜Abida, please.’
    Abida looked up at Fa’iza’s troubled face and closed the book. She tucked it under the mattress. They looked into each others’ eyes – Fa’iza seeing the glint of understanding in Abida’s and Abida, moved, in no small measure by the glimpse of Fa’iza’s secret struggles with something she could not name, saw her friend in a new light. It was a significant interlude in which trust and understanding were forged and Fa’iza felt closer to anyone than she had in years.
    Kareema scrutinised her dyed nails once more and frowned. ‘I need a razor.’
    Fa’iza rose and searched in her make-up basket. She offered the sheathed blade to Kareema and went back to her book.
    Abida lay back on the mattress, scowling at the ceiling. ‘So, you want to write?’
    â€˜Me? Maybe.’ Fa’iza was still embarrassed that Abida had actually read the repository of her most private fears and terror-laden dreams.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Why? I don’t know.’
    Abida looked at her sister expertly cutting her nails, collecting bits of henna-dyed fingernails into a little pile on the handkerchief spread out before her. She turned to Fa’iza and asked: ‘What are you going to write about then?’
    Fa’iza sighed. ‘Me? Maybe I want to write about other things and other places and other people, about love