Flawed Perfection

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Scars To Our Perfects

It all made no sense to Aisha.

"The only girl you could've killed was me and I'm right here because you did not kill me - you're not a murderer, Abdullah Umar Kallamu. That's that, don't tell me otherwise." His revelation was rather absurd.

He shook his head no. Aisha realized Abdullah Umar Kallamu must really have more than a few missing screws in his head.

In Nigeria, murder was something elites easily got away with, there was always an explanation that justified the action. When caught, the criminal was always mentally disturbed, acting in self defense, depressed, going through a lot, and, in some cases a full grown man or woman was "legally under age", it went on and on until the case was closed.

Aisha knew the chances that Abdullah could've easily used one of those endless reasons and gotten away with more than a single murder were high yet something about the regards people, his siblings had for him did not add up to the criminal side of him.

Nigerians would never miss adding 'the architect who murdered his girlfriend' to his title. Justice was always bought but the crimes were hardly forgotten. It reminded Aisha of a girl who staged her own kidnap, at the end of the long run, she was caught and an excuse for her action was fabricated. Even while she continued wearing floor-length hijabs and resumed carrying out sermons about topics like modesty, the comments always sounded like, 'forget she staged her kidnap, she's saying the truth', 'even if she planned her kidnap, she's doing something good now'. One would never get rid of such comments yet there was none when it came to Abdullah, it had never come up in a conversation, it had never come up in the hateful words of anyone, if something as big as that existed, Fatima and her Ummi would've uprooted it no matter how deep it was buried. Their spite for her did make them good detectives. Besides, no murderer could've held on as fine as Abdullah had. Well, not until a few minutes ago.

Then again, random truths had nothing against the weight of a grown man. This one, like death, came to him and broke him joint by joint till he could not stand on his feet.

Aisha had no reason, she moved closer to Abdullah, offering nothing but a blank stare.

He took a loud breath. "I loved her so much... didn't matter if it was just a short glance or a hard stare, everytime my eyes found her, I knew exactly what I wanted. I knew I needed more from life; heck, she proposed a million lifetimes and it sounded like a start. I knew I would love her for a million years and it'll still just be bare minimum of what I wanted to spend with her." Aisha's heart clenched. What was that in his voice? What was that in her heart? She didn't know. Aisha did not know why she didn't know and she never wanted to.

She just felt like a big idiot.

Who said truths set things free? Whoever it was, he or she was a liar, the truth stared back at her in Abdullah's glassy eyes, the truth was right there in every word he spoke, it was most probably in his heart, breaking through every fibre of it.

The truth was right there and it was trapping Aisha instead, for some strange reason she couldn't look at Abdullah while he said all that. She couldn't let herself process those words. Abdullah Umar Kallamu had loved a woman so much, a woman that was not her.

"You know, I've always had extreme anger issues..." 'No I don't.' "...I found my reactions very normal until one day, I was in grade four at the time, I had a fight with a boy and I ended up ruining all the windows that class had with my fist." He pulled his legs to his chest and wrapped them with his big arms. How can someone so big look so delicate? Aisha wondered. She continued to listen, empty headed.

"That day, Baba got me an anger management tutor. At first it worked," He shook his head, then added. "Maybe it didn't, because one thing led to another and I lashed out on my tutor as well. He couldn't continue with it so I was enrolled into a proper anger management class." He let out a deep sigh. Aisha made a delicate replica of his sitting position. He knew she was listening even without making a sign that she was. She could tell because Abdullah continued.