Paint his picture. Make sure the picture bears his claws. Make sure you show his horns. Make sure his figure represents exactly the devil. Tell her all the wrongs he’d done. Ignore all the roles you played.
By Sa’id Sa’ad
Create a new fake Instagram profile. Hide your identity. DM Northern Hibiscus. Tell them you have an urgent problem. Be very impatient. Before Aisha Falke responds, DM Hausa Room. DM Diary of a Northern Woman. DM Arewa Blog. DM Northern Marriages. Convince yourself that all these influencers only care about trends. Curse all the bloggers in your head. Curse the burning urge that forced you to create a fake account just to be heard. Remember your friends. Call Aisha. Call Zainab. Call Fatima. Take a wide-mouth-opening sigh. Resist the urge to share your marital secrets. At least, worse with your Abuja friends. Check your DM again.
Widen your eyes when Aisha Falke responds. Forget your initial bias about them. Become a storyteller. Narrate – in beautiful imagery – how perfect your husband was before he ruined your life. Feel the butterflies in your stomach when you reminisce about the old moments. Tell her how he was an angel the first two years of your marriage. Explain in detail how you never imagined he would become this monster. Paint his picture. Make sure the picture bears his claws. Make sure you show his horns. Make sure his figure represents exactly the devil. Tell her all the wrongs he’d done. Ignore all the roles you played.
Refuse to acknowledge any right he’d ever done. Make sure that when you are narrating the story, you refuse to accept any wrongs you did. But why should you? Even if you did, his were worse. Spark emotions. Narrate the story in a detailed way as if it were a film. Raise heart-beating questions. Cry while you type the story so the reader will feel your pain. Make sure your tears touch the screen of the new iPhone the devil bought you last year. Spread all your victimhood cards on the table. CHECK MATE!
Feel a temporary relief. Ask Aisha Falke to hide your new fake ID. Make sure you type it at the end of the text. Hate the blogger for responding to your three-page painful story with just a tiny, “Ikon Allah.” Ignore their heartlessness.
Wait patiently for the blogger to post your story. Refresh their page. Observe that they haven’t posted yours yet. Exit Instagram. Turn off your mobile data. Switch the data on again. Log back into Instagram. Click on the blogger’s page. Be disappointed for a second. Check the other bloggers you initially texted. Ignore their responses. Pretend they didn’t respond to your initial message. Scroll through the page of the young northern lady-blogger you are following. Watch her last “Travel to Qatar with me” vlog. Call it fake life. Push your lips at her fake shoe. Feel depressed all over again. Scroll through a luxurious clothing vendor’s page in Abuja. Watch her latest, “Unbox my new Malaysian materials order” video. Check the price tags of her latest collection. Curse her for placing such an expensive amount on a gown that cost only 30k in Kano.
Check the blogger’s page again. Be surprised at the misleading headline they wrote about your shared problem. Go back to read the message again. Double-check if you actually said you caught your husband in bed with your cousin. Remember that what you wanted to say was that you caught them sexting. Refuse to feel guilty for giving wrong information. He did worse. He is the devil. He broke you into pieces. He shattered your dreams. He made you hate life. And when you realized that it was time to leave, he sowed the seeds of three children in your womb. You didn’t like babies. He just manipulated his way through. You never liked sex with him. You never felt safe with him. He is boring. Controlling. Annoying.
Place your right hand on your chest and feel its pounding. Freak out about the 300+ comments that your story has already gathered in fifteen minutes. Build your muscles. Convince yourself that every sensible person should support you after reading the story. Click on the comment section. Read your eyes out. Read the popular northern celebrity lady who just commented with: “huhhhm!”. Imagine what was going through her head. Think the worst of her. She couldn’t speak the truth because she’s protecting her brand. Shame on her for choosing herself. Feel irked about the Ustaz who just quoted Qur’an verses and hadith to tell you how wrong you were for denying your husband sex. He is just trying to get attention. He is too oversabi. He wants to shine. Read the other young man’s comment who sympathises with your situation. Let your heart melt on his keyboard. Wrap your arms around his well-detailed, honest statement. For once, feel at home that another man could understand your simple situation. Follow his page. Be hopeful that he will follow back. Hate your husband for being dumb.
Read Hafsat’s comment. Ignore her bad English. Tell yourself that even if her English is ugly, her heart is beautiful. Read the Everlasting_Queen’s comment. Read it again and weigh how it fits into your husband’s persona. Read how she diagnosed your husband with Chronic Narcissism, Excessive Toxicity, Fatal Gaslighting, and Master Manipulation. Search for each word on Google. Handpick his behaviors and puzzle them with the results from Google. Remember when he ignored you for days, connect it to emotional abuse. Remember when he got angry after a fight, connect it to toxicity. Look at all those whose comments were seeking the other side of the story. Pity them for their cowardice. They didn’t know your situation. Believe there should be no other side. Even if there is, it doesn’t matter. Even if it does, nobody cares. Be lost about the lady who commented: “Rijaluuuu kenan!!” Is she supporting you or not? How insensitive of her!
Feel good about your sympathisers. Feel really good about the open-minded men in the comment section. Pretend you didn’t see the comments of those heartless people who said they are just there for comments. Pretend you didn’t see the one who asked if you’d seen all the red flags before marrying your husband.
Ignore the point that wants to make you feel guilty. It is coming from another manipulator who wants to make you feel bad. Refuse to remember that you had seen these signs before you married him. That you chose him as the latecomer who swept you off your feet with fresh flowers, foreign gowns, and expensive perfumes all the way to Kaduna.
Ignore that you didn’t know him too well before you married him. That you actually ditched your ex-boyfriend before you ended up with him. Refuse to believe that you chose lifestyle over love and peace. That your husband knew you married him only because of his money. But that’s not wrong. It was the right thing to do. Because your ex could not offer you your programmed lifestyle. Remember, your friends had told you: You are Gorgeous! You are Amazing! You are the best thing that will ever happen to any man!
Open your boxes of wishes. Wish that your husband, who’s gotten his finances together, could also get his sexual discipline together. Wish that if he is willing to change one more time, you can give love a chance. Convince yourself that your husband is not actually that bad. He is just being a man like every other man. Tell yourself that even those women who brag about how loyal their husbands are, are just living in denial. Feel some lightness in your heart that someone has listened to you. That you are not the only one in such a problem. That the whole world wrapped around their keyboards can relate to your situation. Feel bold. Feel like a warrior who’d spoken out for the universe. The voice of women. The jewel of northern ladies. The seeker of justice.
Refuse to reply to your husband’s last message. Ignore his calls. When he calls again, place your phone on silent. When he texts again, peep with a side-eye to see what the message was. Take a slight glimpse at a few words in the text. See: “Ready,” “Dinner”, “Sorry,” and “Shopping.” Be tempted to read the text again. Take another deep breath and exhale all the bad energy. Walk to your wardrobe. Stay still for a minute. Open the door and pick your best dress. Wear them for a dinner date and shopping at your favorite place. Smile at how sweet this man can be sometimes. Text your favourite Kayan Mata vendor.
Sa’id Sa’ad is a Nigerian writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He is the winner of the Peace Panel Short Story Prize (2018) and the NFC Essay Prize (2018). He founded Borno Book and Arts Festival. Sa’id currently works with the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) as an editor in Bonn. Instagram: @said_saad_abubakar, Twitter/X: @saidsaadwrites, Facebook: Sa’id Sa’ad Abubakar
Cover photo credit: Fotoboy