Culture Over Love

I thought being a Rtd military man, who fought for Nigeria during the civil war would make you look at life and things differently, but then I am wrong. You are lucky to have been my older brother, if not, I would have given Fati’s hand in marriage myself, after all Kazim is from a very good home, raised here before our very eyes.

Kazim and Fati were peers who grew up in the same neighborhood, became friends and got attached to each other. Everyone had grown accustomed to the two, that many admired them both young and old with the old praying and hoping their relationship would last a lifetime.

Kazim a Yoruba boy, raised in Bida, a society dominated by the Nupes and as such grew to learn not just the language but their ways of life, he was referred to by the Nupes in his neighborhood as “our own”. He is from a humble home well respected and loved in the hood and as such Kazim felt all at home until he made his intentions to marry Fati, the Nupe girl he grew up with.

Fati, the second daughter of Alh Ndaman is the favorite of everyone including her father, he calls her mamana meaning my mother because she took after his mother’s name. Naming children after loved ones is something the Nupes take seriously and most times feels the one whose name is given to the child is seen in the child. Since Fati’s grandma happen to be a beautiful woman with a beautiful heart, same was said of Fati, as such all who knew her grandma automatically had a special likeness for her. Fati aside having her grandmother’s charms, is a happy person. Her smile was said to suit the heart and change a gloomy day.

After her convocation, the next big thing she couldn’t wait to happen is marrying the love of her life, but everything changed when her father refused to accept the kolanuts Kasim’s people brought stating their intentions of seeking Fati’s hand. Fati became the opposite of her real self and wouldn’t associate with any one, not even her siblings. Fati’s mother who is not happy with the situation could do little or nothing at all since the man of the house got to make the whole rules which most be abide by. She loves Kazim and always wished him a son-in-law but then, I am only a wife and your mother, there isn’t much I can do, if I go against your father, you know the repercussion, she told Fati the night she found her crying.

Kazim who couldn’t stand to watch the woman he has always wanted to be his wife taken from him, left for Lagos. Even when Fati pleaded to go with him, he just knew he couldn’t do that to her, for she would loose her family and everything that ever mattered to her in a community that raised her. And he didn’t want to endanger his own family as well, since he already knew how far the Nupes can go in fighting them.

After a couple of months, Fati was married out as a second wife to a Nupe man whom the father chose. And that is how Fati lost to culture rather than marry the one man she ever loved.