As long as she lives | ✔️

Elusive Magnet

1.

"Your highness, you have been here for one week. There are over one thousand people keeping a look out for her. If she is in Nigeria, we would've found her already" Babu, the old servant advised respectfully. "Eventually, we would find her. But your highness, I beg of you, think about the consequences of bringing her back!" He pleaded anxiously. And no wonder. The girl is not fit to be the wife of an emir. A conclusion everyone would eventually come to draw.

Aariz felt despair. His heart churned with a desperate feeling of bitter anxiety. Every cell in his body grieves at the notion of giving up.

She has to be here somewhere, a voice in his head insisted, consequences be damned!

He has been visiting Nigeria since he attended a charity dinner with the president in Abuja. It was the first time he had seen her in Nigeria. But she proved too slippery despite his many means.

Every few months, he would come back and continue the search himself. Some days, it takes him only a day or some others, a few days when it takes longer. He became good at making up excuses so he could join the search. It had felt like if he was there physically, there would be better progress. Perhaps they are just being lax when he is not here... Sometimes though, he tells himself the truth. That he simply feels closer to her in Nigeria.

With a swift look through the windows, in his mind eye, a girl much like her, was squatting at the roadside, looking like a beggar. She wore all black clothing, with matching nikaf. Her gloved hands held out an ugly rubber plate as if begging for others to help her. She didn't speak, but she followed people with her eyes mutely, giving the impression that she is mute.

She looks like her, through the eyes that were framed with thick long lashes. Underneath the dirt is a translucent skin which showed signs of neglect.

Ya Allah! How she feels like her! The same vibe, the same wrenching evoke of his every emotion.

So he didn't understand why she seemed like such a common woman today. Why she wasn't smiling at him...

It was all illusions. This one too, will disappear.

Sometimes, his mind conjures the things he wants to see even if they are an impossibility. Other times, his mind conjures the things he wouldn't like to see.

Psychosis, right? Not so much. Try way of life.    Confused? Don't be.

There are legends in Maicki.

One of them is that 'he who holds power, loses power'

Yes. In Maicki, you earn the staff of power and the throne, but then you lose your power to be yourself.

So yes. Doctors call it psychosis. But nobles in Maicki, call it a rite of passage.

Every Emir must pass this test or be doomed by it!

This happened along a congested junction and he is on his way to the Alhaji Hassan Abdulaziz mansion off in Tarauni. Everyone told him it is a mistake and that it might cost him his freedom and his throne. But Aariz didn't care.

So even now that this particular hallucination didn't disappear, and that it looks quite drab and weird, he still could not look away.

Still awaiting the moment he would no longer see her, Aariz fixated her with a stare as she continued to stare off into the distance, savoring the memory of her even though she would soon leave him.

Finally, the traffic lights showed green,  allowing them to go. But Aariz is still seeing the girl, through the side mirror.

And that was when it happened. She finally turned to look at their car in a flash of what looks like anxiety before picking up the rubber in a hurry to leave. Almost like she had been waiting for the car to slide away before she made good her escape!

"STOP!" He shouted in panic. It was not a hallucination! It was real! The damn girl has pretended to be mute just to mislead him!

His mind raced with possibilities and he lost all sense and composure. And why not? She is something whose existence cannot be easily described in his life. Everyone just sees her as a third rate nobility.

But he sees her differently.

To him, Aairah is both medicine and food.