He sat up suddenly, awakened by the noisy racket going on in one of the flats that lined the lower floors. From what he could hear, it was a family tussle and a lot of neighbours had gathered around, shouting and screaming into eachother’s voices.
The noise was grating on his tired drowsy senses. A glance at his clock told him it was 2:30pm. He murmured grudgingly and was about to resume his nap when something quite unsettling from the ruckus reached his ears.
“Evil woman!” Someone yelled, hard enough to be heard above all the noise.
“I swear, they have the prettiest faces!” Another addded, a taint of apologetic reserve in his tone.
“Eat it!” Several people were sayiing at the same time. Voices drowned voices till it became a huge ball of heaving, breathing noise echoing off the walls of all the flats in the block. He idily wondered if the other soldiers in the building were unaware of this commotion or just plain ignoring it? It was very likely they were ignoring it because the next flat occupied by a soldier was 2 floors down and every other military personnel on his floor were absent at this time of the week.
He sighed and slowly put on a Tshirt, then left his room, making his way to the staircase , drifting slowly towards the location of the afternoon mayhem. It was a flat on the lower floor and the crowd that had gathered there was substantial. They seemed to be increasing by the second.
“Excuse me?” He muttered, pushing his way through into the house “What is going on?”. They made way for him , a few people murmured answers and greetings, most of them recognized him as one of the new soldiers posted to the barracks and he thought he could see relief on some of the faces and maybe, consternation on others. He guessed the situation was a bit more dire than he had imagined, from all indications, someone was about getting mobbed.
“What is going on?!”He asked again as he sauntered into the living room, this time, his tone a notch higher. The room was crowded with a mass of men and women talking excitedly.
They saw him and made way for him. In the midst of the crowd was a heavily built elderly looking man in the traditional muslim garb, standing over a kneeling young pretty woman, a tray of food on the floor infront of her. The man looked livid and the woman had streaks of tears on her face. Apparently she had been crying.
He recognized her. She was the strange lady he saw through his window dancing outside on some cool midnights.
As soon as her eyes met his, she got up and flung hersel at him for protection. She was shaking uncontrollably from nerve racking sobs and the soldier instinstively wound his arms around her.
There were muffled reactions to this.
‘what is ging on?” He asked for the third time, scanning the crowd and resting his eyes on the elderly man who appeared to be in charge of the entire situation.
“That witch is my wife! Soldier.” The man thundered “And she just tried to poison me”
“Poison you?”
“Yes! She brought this food to me and when I requested to eat with my son, she tried to stop me. That was a bit absurd since she knew I always ate with Hamza”
“And you translate that to poisoning the food?”
The man glowered at the soldier.
“I asked her on her return to eat it or atleast have a taste, but she has admantly refused!”
The man was visibly very infuriated and his eyes shot fiery darts at the chest of the soldier. The soldier suspected it had more to do with the way he held his wife than it had to do with the poisoned food.
‘Let my wife go, Sir” The man asked poisonously. The entire room and hallway was now quiet. Everyone was staring at them.
The soldier was confused, the woman clung to him like her life depended on it (maybe it did) and Allah would hold it against him if he let them harm right before his eyes and he did nothing about it.
‘Why don’t we take her to one of the guardrooms for questioning? Instead of subjecting her to all this harrassment?” He suggested calmly.
“Give me back my wife Soldier boy! This has nothing to do with you or your questioning” The Alhaji ordered again. The soldier didn’t enjoy the man’s tone but he felt he still had to be civil about the whole scenerio. He dropped his arms from the women but she wouldn’t let him go. He shrugged at the alhaji and for a brief minute, they exchanged heated stares already dotted with the smoky hues of hatred.
“I am taking her to the guardroom for interrogation” the soldier said resolutely ‘You can join me there if you want and we can all talk about this”
The Alhaji continued eyeing the soldier angrily as he backed away with his wife, the crowd parted for the both of them to walk through. Hushes, murmurs and whispers trailing them. Again, instinctively, the soldier’s arm wound around the woman as he led her down the stairs, this caused a mild uproar behind them and the Alhaji began reeling out a barrage of curses in the hausa language.
The chattering rose up again to a more feverish crescendo and through it all, nobody noticed the long, black snake calmly curled around a pole on the upper floor, observing the chaos with cold, unnatural reptilian eyes.
