Divorce Diaries Part Twenty-Three

 *Divorce Diaries*

*Part Twenty-Three* 

MY NAME IS HAJARA JALINGO. I AM FROM TARABA STATE. I AM 35 YEARS OLD. I WAS MARRIED TO MY HUSBAND SALIHU BASHIR FOR 8 YEARS. I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE MY DIVORCE DIARY WITH YOU.

I met my husband Salihu on the road. It was a time of fuel scarcity and public transport was hard to come by. I was standing on the road waiting for okada and he offered me a lift. I could not say NO! We got talking and he told me his house was near my street. He offered to drop me home from school everyday if I wouldn’t mind. Of course I didn’t mind. He was a calm person. A very calm person. That’s what really attracted me to him. After that day he always gave me a lift back home from school. I looked forward to seeing him; he had a nice car and his car AC was a welcome relief from the scorching heat outside.

Our friendship progressed and he told me of how he was depressed. He said he was depressed because he had been married for more than 10 years but he was yet to be blessed with a child. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this but I tried to be a good friend to him. For 3 months he went through his moody spells, sometimes even breaking down in tears. He wanted a child badly. He said he felt a child would validate his manhood. He said people in his family were even calling him a woman. I tried to get him to share all these things with his wife at home but he insisted he was more comfortable telling me. Slowly but surely I fell in love with Salihu. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings in my heart. After a lot of sleepless nights thinking I decided to let him know. He kissed me and told me to get married to him or die trying (50 cents was the entire rave then). He assured me about being a second wife. He told me I would be the queen of his heart and I was going to be the mother of his children. I was on top of the world.

After we got married, I realised I had been deceived. Salihu was very cosy with his first wife, Zara contrary to what he told me about their relationship. They did everything together and a lot of times I felt like a gooseberry. They ate together, watched TV together, spent hours downstairs jisting and laughing.  In fact the only thing that was true was their childlessness. Everything else was an elaborate lie. I was very angry. You see you can’t just be playing with a woman’s feelings. Chabdi. There would be consequences. Even though I had no problems with Zara, I had to do something to mark my territory in that house. To divide her from his equation was the only way for me to enjoy my marriage. There was no way I would be prancing around in my own home feeling like I was invading people’s privacy!

So I decided to aggressively fight Zara over every little thing. If I heard her breathe I would start trouble. My aim was to cause division among them so he would treat me like he used to. And for a while it worked. He stopped staying downstairs with her to watch TV or jist on my nights and I made sure I screamed loud enough to torment her. But after some weeks he was back to his usual routine.

I had to do something very drastic. Something that was of a permanent nature. So I went to my friend maama. Maama had the connections for every good marabout/native doctor in Northern Nigeria. If the boka was good, then Maama knew how to get to him. After narrating my ordeal to Maama, she consoled me and told me to relax, all would be well.

So that’s how my descent into darkness started. I lied to my husband about attending a wedding and we drove to Jibiya in Katsina State from Kano. We went to see Boka mai yaki.

Boka mai yaki told me that the only way to own my husband was to sleep with him only on Tuesday and Thursday nights. That was the only way to get pregnant. Mai yaki told me that I would be required to bath with different oils every Tuesday and Thursday night before meeting my husband before I could get pregnant. I would also have to tie a charm around my waist all the time except when getting intimate with my husband. I gave him 20k and I collected jerry cans of concoctions.

Luckily for me, that day was a Tuesday. The rest is history as they say. Salihu became mine and mine alone. In fact by the time I was 4 months pregnant, Zara could not greet me without getting into trouble. He was so happy that I didn’t even feel guilty about what I had done since he was happy, that’s all that mattered.

After my daughter was born, Zara had been reduced to a mere shadow. Salihu bought me a 5 bedroom duplex and I stopped sharing a house with Zara. I can’t even describe the way Salihu was ecstatic and overjoyed. Our daughter, Maryam was the pride of his life. He was now a man. He pampered me to no end, and I pampered Maama and Boka Mai Yaki. Doling out huge sums of money and gifts to show my appreciation for a job well done.

Only problem now was that I couldn’t sleep with my husband on only Tuesdays and Thursdays since Salihu divorced Zara after Maryam’s birth. But Boka Mai Yaki was adamant. He warned that Salihu would come back to his senses if I stopped doing as he instructed. Maama took me to one bori cult for a solution. They asked me for a lot of sacrifices. I was getting tired but Maama kept encouraging me to finish what I started. At this point I had become heartless and heedless. We went to several places looking for one thing or the other because the solutions were never lasting, and the problems were never ending. One time we traveled all the way to Ibadan to see an ifa priest. I didn’t care. My husband was a very rich and generous husband had enough money to spend just wanted to be the beginning and end for Salihu, I wanted to be the centre of his world.

After about 4 years I gave birth again, to a son and everything started changing. Salihu started to change. He adored the children but He started to snoop around on me. He started to go through my phone and he even banned Maama from visiting me. He installed CCTV in every room in the house.  He completely stopped having any intimate relation with me.Something was going wrong somewhere and I had to stop it, fast.

Being cut off from Maama had me panicking and unsettled. I had to go and get to the bottom of this. I paid my driver money to tell Salihu that he was ill and couldn’t pick up the kids from school…So after picking up the kids from school I branched to see Maama. She took me to a new malam for solution. The malam told me Salihu was no longer under any spell. I had to renew the spell for all to be normal. While we were there my toddler son had picked up a laya and was playing with it unknown to me. That’s how my son went home with a charm on his body. He ran to hug his father when we got home. Salihu got hold of the charm and all hell let loose. Salihu asked where he got it from and my son replied that he got it from ojjuju’s house. So he asked him where that was and Maryam said:

‘Daddy we don’t know, but ask anti Maama. She took us there with mummy’

Salihu looked at me and I swear I felt like I was melting. I didn’t know what to say. My mouth was dry. My head was hot. Maryam broke the silence:

‘Mummy tell daddy where that ojjuju’s house is’

I laughed nervously.

I just quickly went into the kitchen and pretended to be busy. Salihu did not say a word. I was in that kitchen all day thinking. Thinking of my defence. Nothing was making sense in my head.

Salihu took the kids to his mother’s house and came back to meet me.

I knew from the look on his face that I was finished. There was no saving me from his wrath.

He asked me to come into our bedroom. There on our bed were my talismans and charms and concoctions. I knew it was over. The end was near.

I asked him:

‘How did you know?’

‘CCTV, in your stupidity you forgot there are cameras everywhere in this house, watching you, recording you and your every move? I am disappointed in you’

‘Salihu please let me explain. It’s really not what it looks like. I did it because of the love I had for you’

At this point all I remember is the resounding slap I got. I don’t remember much about that day. There was a lot of crying and begging and cursing by both families.

Salihu didn’t want anything to do with me. He reconciled with Zara and remarried her. These days, I have to be the gooseberry whenever I visit my children, because Zara and Salihu have gone back to the way they were when I first came into their lives. I am so grateful to Zara. She is the one that begged and begged Salihu to at least allow me see my children. She treats my children like hers. God will bless her Insha’Allah.

I have lost everything. And I didn’t gain anything. I decided to share my story to help enlighten women who are like me who want fast results. You shouldn’t try to control your husband. It’s not worth it. You don’t have to offend God to satisfy your selfish desires, wallahi it always backfires. Don’t listen to friends. Friends will lead you to damnation and laugh behind your back.

Think about it.

Thank You for reading my story. I hope and pray that you will learn from it.