Assalamu Alaikum! Here it is, an update, like promised. The fifty comments goal has enabled me to write faster because I didn't want to break my promise to you guys.
So let's get to fifty-five comments for the next chapter. And please, no commenting in single words😂
*****
The sun has set, the ocean has calmed and the night has chilled when Maryam received the news. A journey back home! All the way home, where her father is, and her friends.
She jubilated, danced with joy, hugged and rained Hajarah, the bearer of the best news she had received in a long time with kisses.
She could not stop smiling as she arranged her clothes in a luggage. She imagined surprising her friends, Indo especially, by closing her eyes and letting her guess who it was. Giggling, she placed a black, blue and grey hijab into the bag. What else? She thought, I'll put my toiletries in once I'm done with them in the morning.
It was eleven twenty eight in the night when Maryam lay on her bed. They will be on their way early the next morning. As she closed her eyes, all sorts of thoughts started clouding her mind. She wondered if her father would speak to her, or recognize her even. She wondered what is it like in her father's house now, was it how she left it? Or has things changed? Was Inna Saude dictating how everything goes? She couldn't help but shudder, what if Inna Saude had killed her father also?
Maryam couldn't believe she had never thought of it. Inna Saude had many reasons to kill her father, it could be to inherit his farm, his money, or better yet the house. What if she had?
Maryam couldn't bare the thought. Her throat constricted suddenly, and a huge lump settled there. She ambled to the kitchen, in search of a bottle of water. Once she found one, she sat on the counter and gulped from it. Her eyes traveled to the chair and table in the kitchen, and her mind instantly wandered to the night she sat in them with Sufyan. It felt like decades ago when they shared a thub of ice-cream, when he asked her what her favourite colour was.
Had she lost him, too? Maryam's stomach clenched at the thought. It has been seven days since they had talked normally, nothing passed greetings were exchanged between them. They were no evening outings anymore. Those outings, Maryam has painfully missed. But most of all, she had missed the glint in his eyes as he spoke to her, his soft un-earthly voice that says her name in a way no one has, and the deep rumbling sound of his laughter whenever she did something amusing.
What was I thinking? She thought, giving herself a soft smack on the head.
I am losing him!
*****
The first call to prayer woke her up. She rose and shone and washed and wore.
Maryam did some last minute packing before dragging her luggage down the stairs. She left it by the front door and head for the kitchen. Hajarah was not down yet, she must have gotten ready too early. She glanced at the clock, it was almost seven in the morning. Sudais wasn't going with them, so he must have probably gone to work.
Maryam decided to make pancakes, Sufyan's favourite. She brought out the ingredients and started by mixing the dried ones. Hajarah came in shortly after she had started frying the pancakes, dressed gracefully in a red lace boubou.
"Let me finish that." She beamed at Maryam after she finshed answering a call from a customer, who was there to pick up some orders.
Maryam took the boxes of four doughnuts and eight brownies slices to Zara'u, a lady in her late twenties with two kids who have a soft spot for sugar. Zara'u was a garrulous woman, she talked and talked, about how her children enjoyed the brownies and how they kept crying for more.
When Maryam finally got in, she was met with Sufyan's car in the parking lot. She walked slowly inside, anxious to meet him.
"Good morning Yaya Sufyan." She greeted once she entered the kitchen. He was sat on a chair, devouring his pancake.
"Good morning." He replied, smiling tightly.
Maryam served herself and joined him on the table.
"I... " She started, but stopped abruptly when his eyes met her's. Suddenly, all she had wanted to say was blown away by the intensity of his gaze. Her breath hitched, and the words cease to form in her mouth.
"Nothing." Whispered Maryam, letting her gaze drop. "Never mind."
*****
After an exhausting journey by air, Maryam, Sufyan and Hajarah had driven to the nearest restaurant to have their launch. After which, their journey commenced.
Eventually, the sun began to sink lower below the horizon, and the temperature dropped a few degrees yet their car was still on a tiredless motion. Moving on a promising speed.
"We're almost there." Maryam took a sharp intake of breath. Her eyes moving around, in all directions, to catch a familiar face.
They drove through the barely tarred and deep potholed roads of her village steadily. Alot of things had changed. Some bulings were missing, some were renovated while some where still the way she left them. She saw new kiosks, less trees, less water, more dirt littering the grounds and lots of untended gutter.
"Home." She whispered, looking at the door that led to her father's house. She got out, ran to where it stood and pushed it, earnest to find what was behind the barrier it created.
But no, it refused to bulge. And it had a reason.
"What happened?" Hajarah asked from behind her.
"It's locked. Padlocked."
"Maryam?" Far, from a safe distance, Maryam heard the voice she had longed to hear, calling onto her.
"Kandala!" Kandala looked and felt chubbier as she hugged her.
"Where have you gone to?! We just woke up one day and you disappeared. No one knew where you were and how to find you." Kandala broke their hug. "Tell me, what have you being eating? You look exquisite."
Maryam chuckled. "Long story Kandala. Where is my father?"
"You didn't know?" Kandala gasped, a little exaggeratingly.
"Know what Kandala?" Maryam felt her hands trembling with fear. Oh God! Let it not be he's dead. Her sweet father.
"He has moved out since the spell broke. Said he couldn't stay in the house that reminded him of the evil witch."
"Spell... I knew it!" Maryam mumbled to herself.
"One faithful day, about twelve months after you left, a small pot moulded with white clay fell from the wall of your father's room and a huge black, nine headed snake slithered out of it. That's what I heard anyways." Kandala spoke as she led them to where her father lives.
"Oh." Was the only thing Maryam could mumble.
"We're here!" Said Kandala, stopping infront of the door of a small house.
"I don't know if he has come back from his farm. But I guess he should be, it's almost dark. So are you ready to meet him?" Kandala smiled brightly at her.
Maryam was about to enter when Kandala held her and said in a soft whisper. "Maryam, he missed you, so much. "