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his finest clothes: the pale blue embroided kaftan from the last Eid. Then they got into a car heading to Lafia, to see a mother he had only heard whispers of.
    The boy brushed away crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve and raised his innocent eyes to his father’s face. ‘Will she be staying with us now?’
    â€˜You want her to stay, don’t you?’ His father leaned forward, using his handkerchief to clean the child’s face, his damaged eye looming closer. The boy could almost imagine how the highwaymen had struck him with a club all those years before and how his father had desperately clung to his bag of money. ‘Tell her that; that you want her to stay and look after you, mhm?’
    The fat driver yawned and threw a piece of kola in his mouth. He slotted a tape in the cassette player. Musa Dan Kwairo’s voice poured out from the device. They listened to the renowned praise singer lauding another royalty in some far-fetched place, a distant kingdom closer to that mystical shelter where the sun set.
    The boy shifted on the seat. ‘Why did she leave, Abba?’
    His father sighed and leaned into the backrest. ‘You will not understand.’
    â€˜But Bulama said that his mother said—’
    â€˜Shush. Never mind what your brother says about your mother. She is your mother.’
    But he was tormented by the taunts of his half-siblings. Even Talatu, one of his two stepmothers, had said his mother was a ‘Kano to Jeddah’. There had been muted talks about her questionable liaison with dubious Arabs.
    His father, Babale Mairago, had long been buying cattle from the Fulanis in the North and selling to the Igbos in the South-east. He had lost his left eye on one such trip when he and his friend Buba Mohammed ran into bandits on the highway. Regardless, his good eye remained fixed on Buba’s spirited seventeen-year-old daughter, Maimuna. And when she was forced to marry him, a stormy affair that lasted less than two years, she dumped their six-month-old son and caught a flight to Jeddah, for purposes other than hajj.
    When Babale received news of Maimuna’s deportation from Jeddah, he decided to take his son to see her and help tame the wild flames she was infamous for.
    The boy saw her; saw her supple skin, her almond eyes and long lashes, saw the diagonal scarification on her left cheek. She rode on a zephyr of musk towards him. When she patted his head and ran her hands down the sides of his face, his little heart did a cartwheel.
    â€˜You have grown so big.’ Her voice caressed his ear like the evening breeze sweeping through a grass field. ‘You are in what class now?’
    â€˜Primary six.’
    She smiled and enchanted him with her gold tooth so that he stood lamely, waiting, hoping for her to smile again.
    â€˜Do you know who I am?’
    He nodded.
    She contemplated him for a while as one would a feeble kitten, then pulled one of the silver rings from her fingers. This she claspedinto his palm, pressing his fingers close around it. The elegance with which she performed the gesture mesmerised the boy.
    She turned and was walking away, past his father, whose good eye had been on her the whole time, when the man reached out and held her sleeve.
    â€˜Maimuna.’ His voice was husky, desperate even. His lower lip trembled but no other words came out.
    She eyed him. ‘Get your filthy hands off me, dirty old man.’ She hissed and wrenched her sleeve free.
    The boy ran after her and caught hold of her jilbab by the door. ‘Mother.’ He was uncertain, scared. ‘Take me with you?’
    She looked down at him, a hint of sadness in her eyes. She bent down and gently, very gently, loosened his grip on her dress. Her fleeing footsteps echoed in his memory amidst the swirl of musk, the gleam of gold in her teeth and her beautiful face shimmering like an image under water.

    â€˜Reza.’ A boy burst into the room while Reza