CHAPTER TWO

AZRA

Iman knocked on my door at six forty-five just to tell me I was going to be late.

I was not going to be late. I had been awake since six, dressed since six-thirty, sitting on my bed doing nothing because I was too nervous to go downstairs and admit it. But that is Iman. He has a radar for the exact moment his presence will be most unnecessary and he shows up precisely then.

“Azra.“ Two knocks. “You’re going to be late.“

“I have one hour and fifteen minutes,“ I said.

“Traffic.“

“Iman.“

“I’m just saying.“

I opened the door. He was already dressed for work, his shirt tucked in, his ID badge around his neck, looking exactly like what he is, a twenty-nine year old gynaecologist who has never once let anyone forget it. He looked at me, then past me at the room, then back at me.

“You’re ready,“ he said. Surprised.

“I told you I was ready.“

“You said you needed more time.“

“That was yesterday.“ I pushed past him into the hallway. “Some of us don’t need forty-five minutes in the bathroom to look like this.“

“To look like what? A doctor?“

“To look like you’re trying too hard.“

He followed me down the stairs making a sound that was almost a laugh.

Mami was in the kitchen.

She heard me on the stairs and was already turning by the time I reached the doorway. She looked at me, fully dressed and standing there, and her face did something I cannot describe without making it sound larger than it was. It was not large. It was just Mami. She opened her arms and I walked into them without thinking.

“My baby,“ she said into my hijab.

“Mami, I’m nineteen.“

“You’ll be forty and still my baby. Come and eat.“

She kissed the side of my head before she let me go.

Baba was at the table with his phone and his tea, reading something with the concentrated look he gets when an article has caught him properly. He looked up when I sat down.

“Azra.“ He smiled. “First day.“

“First day,“ I agreed.

He put his phone down, face down, fully, the way he does when he wants you to know his attention is yours. “How do you feel?“

“Nervous.“

“Good nervous or bad nervous?“

“I don’t know yet.“

He nodded. “You know what I felt on my first day?“ He leaned back in his chair. “Terrified. Completely terrified. I was from Kano going to Kano and somehow I felt like I was going to another planet.“

“You were not terrified,“ Iman said, coming in from behind me and reaching directly over my head for a samosa without acknowledging my existence.

“Iman.“

“You told me once that you walked in on your first day and immediately knew where everything was and who everyone was going to be.“

“That was confidence,“ Baba said. “Confidence and terror can exist at the same time.“

“Is that how you met Mami?“ I asked. “Through terror?“

He pointed at me. “Now that is a story.“

Mami came in from the kitchen carrying the kettle. “Don’t tell that story.“

“She asked.“

“She didn’t ask. She baited you and you walked right into it.“

“Mami, I genuinely want to know,“ I said.

She set the kettle down and sat across from Baba with the expression of someone who has heard something so many times it has become another thing entirely, not boring, just worn smooth, like a stone that has been handled a lot.

Baba cleared his throat. “So. First week of second year. I was in the Faculty of Humanities…“

“He was repeating a course,“ Mami said pleasantly.

“I was auditing a course.“

“He failed it the first time.“

“That is not the point of the story…“

“I’m just giving context.“

Iman put his head down on the table. His shoulders were shaking. I was already laughing before Baba said another word because this is what they do. They tell a story together like they are in competition, delivering two versions at once, and somehow it always ends up funnier than either one alone.

Baba saw Mami in the library during his second year and spent three weeks trying to find a reason to talk to her that did not involve admitting he was trying to talk to her. He failed. She noticed immediately. She made him work for it. He worked for it. They married four years after that first library encounter.

He tells it like he was suave and deliberate the whole time.

She tells it like he once followed her to the wrong faculty by mistake and had to pretend he had business there.

“The point,“ Baba said, when the laughing had settled, “is that university is where life begins. Not just education. Life.“ He looked at me across the table. “And if someone finds you there…“

“Baba…“

“I’m just saying. If.“

“I’m nineteen.“

“I was twenty when I started looking.“

“You were repeating a course,“ I said.

He pointed at me. “You sound like your mother.“

“Good,“ Mami and I said at the same time.

Iman lifted his head from the table. His eyes were wet from laughing. He looked at me and got that look, the one that means he has been holding something.

“Should I tell them,“ he said, “about the valentine’s letters.“

The laughing stopped. In my chest.

“Iman…“

“SS1,“ he said to Baba and Mami, very calmly. “She received not one. Not two.“

“Iman, if you finish that sentence…“

“Three valentine’s letters.“ He held up three fingers. “One of them had a poem. A full poem. With rhymes.“

“I will end you,“ I said.

“The boy had glasses,“ Iman continued, speaking only to our parents now, as though I was not in the room. “Very thick ones. He was in the science class. The letter was four pages long. There was a pressed flower inside.“

Mami covered her mouth with both hands.

“It was a hibiscus,“ Iman said. “He wrote underneath it: like you, this flower is rare and beautiful.“

“IMAN.“

The whole table collapsed. Even me, eventually. I tried to hold the outrage for about thirty more seconds and then I put my face in my hands and laughed until my eyes watered. Even when it is at my expense it is still warm. Still safe. I know the difference between being laughed at and being laughed with, and in this house it has only ever been one.

After breakfast I helped Mami clear the table. The men went to get their things and she and I stood at the sink, passing dishes between us.

“You know,“ she said, not looking at me, focused on the plate she was rinsing, “the most important thing about university isn’t the grades.“

“Mami, I’m going to get good grades…“

“I know you are. That’s not what I said.“ She handed me the plate to dry. “The most important thing is knowing yourself. Knowing what you can handle and what you can’t. Knowing when to say yes and when to say no.“ She paused. “And knowing that you can call us. For anything. Not just emergencies. Anything.“

I dried the plate.

“I mean anything, Azra. If a lecture is confusing. If a friend does something that bothers you. If you just want to talk.“ She looked at me. “You don’t have to handle things alone just because you can.“

The thing about Mami’s advice is that she never delivers it like a rule. It always lands like something offered, put on a table, available if you want it, no pressure either way.

“Okay, Mami,“ I said.

She touched my face briefly. “Go. Your brother will be dramatic about the time.“

Iman drove me.

His car smells like the air freshener he buys in bulk and the clean pressed smell of his shirts. I sat in the front with my bag on my lap and we moved through the Kano morning in the comfortable way we have always moved through spaces together.

“Nervous?“ he said after a while.

“Baba already asked me that.“

“I’m asking again.“

“Yes.“ I looked out the window. “A little.“

He was quiet for a moment. Then: “You’re going to be fine. You know that, right?“

“I know.“

“You’re the smartest person in most rooms you enter. I say this as someone who is also very smart and has a medical degree.“

“Iman.“

“I’m being sincere.“

“You’re being yourself, which is different.“

He smiled at the road. “Just don’t forget to enjoy it. It goes fast.“ His voice was softer than his usual register. “Faster than you think.“

I looked at his profile while he drove. I thought about what it cost him. How focused he had to be for how long. How much of being young he moved past to get where he is.

I said none of it. I just thought it.

“Go in there and be yourself,“ he said when he pulled up at the faculty. “That’s all.“

I got out. I leaned back through the window. “Iman.“

“Mm.“

“Thank you. For dropping me.“

He waved it away, a small, slightly irritated wave that means don’t thank me for things that don’t require thanks. “Go. You’re going to be late.“

“I have fifty minutes.“

“Traffic could still happen.“

“Goodbye, Iman.“

“Azra…“

I closed the door. I stepped back from the car. He looked at me through the window for one second with an expression I had no name for, something between pride and something older and softer than pride. Then he pulled into the traffic and was gone.

I stood at the faculty entrance.

I took one breath.

Then I walked in.

English Language and Literature.

I chose it because words are the thing I have always been most certain about. Not as someone who was told she was good with them. As someone who discovered, privately and early, that language was where the things inside her could become exact. Where the feeling that had no shape could find one.

Some people thought it was a strange choice. You can do medicine like your brother, someone said once. You can do law. Why English?

Because of what it does, I said.

They didn’t understand. I didn’t try to explain further.

By the end of the first lecture I knew four names.

By lunch I had eaten at the canteen with three girls from my department. Halima, who has a laugh that takes up more space than she does and an opinion about everything delivered with the confidence of someone who has never doubted her opinions are worth hearing. Nadia, who is sharp and direct, someone who decided long ago that politeness and honesty were not the same thing and chose honesty. Faridat, who said almost nothing for the first hour and then said one thing so precise I thought about it for the rest of the afternoon.

I like people. I find them interesting before I find them complicated. I walk into rooms curious about who is in them. It is simply how I am, oriented toward people, toward the warmth of being received.

We talked about our departments and our secondary schools and what we expected versus what we found. Halima had opinions about everything. Nadia’s father was a professor at another institution and she had been hearing about university her whole life in a way that made her both over-prepared and slightly contemptuous. Faridat listened to all of it and then said, quietly, “I just came to read.“

We all laughed. I liked her immediately.

The afternoon went fast, too much new information arriving at once, the brain working harder than usual just to hold names and faces and building layouts and lecturers who had not yet fully revealed themselves.

I walked to the faculty entrance at the end of it and stood there before calling Iman.

The campus was settling into its late afternoon version, quieter, the daytime rush thinning out, the light going the colour it goes here at this hour. Students in small groups. Someone selling from a cooler near the main road.

I took out my phone and called Iman.

He answered before the second ring. “How was it?“

“Good,“ I said. And I meant it.

“Friends?“

“Possibly three.“

“Grades?“

“Iman, it was the first day.“

“I’m asking about your study habits. Your approach. Your…“

“I’m hanging up.“

“Azra…“

“Come and get me. I’m at the faculty entrance.“

A pause. Then: “I’m ten minutes away. Don’t move.“

“I’m not going anywhere.“

“Last time you said that you were at the wrong gate when I arrived.“

“That was one time.“

“I drove around for twenty minutes.“

“The gates look the same.“

“They have different numbers, Azra. The numbers are on the gates.“

“Goodbye, Iman.“

“Stay where you…“

I lowered the phone.

I stood at the faculty entrance and waited.

The city was doing its evening things around me. The azan would come soon. I could feel it in the particular quality of the late afternoon light, in the way people were beginning to slow down and turn toward home.

Iman’s car pulled up exactly ten minutes later.

I got in.

He looked at me, a quick full look, the doctor look that takes inventory before the brother look arrives. Then he nodded slightly, as if something he was checking for was not there.

“Good?“ he said.

“Good,“ I said.

He pulled into the traffic. The city moved around us, familiar and unchanged, the city that has been outside every window of my life. I leaned my head back against the seat and let the day settle.

“Iman,“ I said.

“Mm.“

“The flower was not a hibiscus. It was a bougainvillea.“

A pause.

“Azra,“ he said seriously. “That makes it worse.“

I pressed my face into my hands.

He laughed, the real one, the one he doesn’t perform, the one that has been the sound of my whole childhood. I laughed into my palms. Outside the window Kano went by in the early evening light, exactly as it always is.

✦