By Oye-Oyewo Olufoyekemi
Those who say time heals all wounds deserve a spot in the deepest part of hell. It’s been ten years and I still haven’t mourned Abdul, at least, not properly. And I still haven’t moved on; I find myself slowly drifting from sanity, each passing day a second off the ticking time bomb.
Ours was a forbidden love story. He was Hausa, Muslim, and I was Igbo, Christian. 
Abdul and I met in our first year of uni. It was the first day of lectures after resuming for the second semester. The wind was less than happy that day and it was threatening to rain, and I had promised myself and Papa before resuming for the semester that I wouldn’t miss any classes in the new semester, so when I saw Sade, our course rep’s message on the group chat informing the class about an impromptu class with Dr Saheed, the strictest lecturer in our department, I threw on whatever I could find and ran to class. That was when I first met Abdul. He was the new student in our class that everybody had been whispering about but dared not to talk about. From the whispers, I heard that he was a politician’s son and had only joined our school on account of his father’s promise during a campaign. It was little wonder that our school had accepted him in the second semester. It was during our second class of the day, Dr Tadesere’s, that we really met. We had been paired together as partners for a practical project, and he walked over to introduce himself to me. The rest, they say, is history.
Abdul was intelligent. I didn’t use the word smart because I don’t want to downplay his intelligence. He was the first person I knew who solved mathematical problems for comfort. He always said it had a way of calming him down. He also had a flair for teaching difficult topics to our course mates, and boy, was he good at chess. He was the only one I considered my rival in all things academics because, for the first time since primary school, I finally found someone who surpassed me in every course and did so effortlessly. Surprisingly, however, Abdul was not street-smart, and I blame it partly on his upbringing. He had been spoon-fed his entire life and was used to things being given to him, so he never had the experience of an average Nigerian. He was also emotionally intelligent. He knew what to say and when to say it. He also knew when not to say anything and give you space.
Abdul was very athletic. Looking back now, I think this was why I fell in love with him, a devout Muslim whose beliefs stood against everything I believed in. Abdul was a member of our university’s track and field team. I remember when I first watched him run. It was at our university’s annual inter-faculty competition, and he had been the last leg for our faculty and had been given the baton last, but he managed to push through and came second, but he was displeased with himself. That day, he had the biggest frown on his face and the moment I caught it was the exact moment I fell in love with him. He was competitive, just like I was.
Abdul was driven. On our first date, in our second semester of 300-level, his first question to me was what were my goals for the future. I was taken aback because I had expected the usual questions, but this felt different and I liked it. I told him that my dream was to be the best I could be, and he laughed and called it vague. That night, after I got home, I sat for the first time and pondered on what I really wanted to achieve in my lifetime. He had shifted something in me.
Abdul was 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Abdul was love. I remember when we had just started dating in 400-level that I received a call from my older brother that my favourite uncle, Uncle Uche, had passed away, Abdul was there to comfort me. He had skipped lectures that day and had come to my room and had just sat with me and let me cry. After I had finished crying, he told me to tell him all about my favourite uncle, so I started right from my earliest memory of him—when I was three and he had gotten me a Barbie doll—to the last time I saw him, which was a day before I had left Enugu to resume 400-level, when he had come to our house with suya to say goodbye to his ‘only child’, his term of endearment for me. I spoke about Uncle Uche for hours and Abdul sat there and listened. Not once did he complain.
The day he introduced me to his parents for the first time, right after he had proposed to me, three years after we had graduated from university, I saw a different side of Abdul that I had never seen before. He told his parents off when they said he couldn’t marry an Igbo woman, let alone a Christian. He stood with me, fought for me and had even threatened to elope with me which frightened his parents. After we left their house, I asked him if he was serious about eloping or if he had said it just to frighten his parents, and he told me he meant every word. That day, I fell in love all over again. The love he had for me was glaring for the entire world to see. His parents later came around.
My parents were harder to convince than Abdul’s parents because I was their Ada, but seeing Abdul’s love for me, they gave their blessings. In less than a year after Abdul’s proposal, we got married.
Abdul was a terror. The first time Abdul hit me was ten years ago, when I was pregnant with our first child, Alima. We had gotten into an argument on how we were going to raise the child because I said I wanted her christened by my family pastor. I thought he would understand because of the nightmares I had been having previously regarding our child, but he called it an abomination and said that no child of his would be christened. It was during that argument that his hand slipped and met my face, an action he called the greatest regret of his entire life after he bought me a bag I had been dreaming of buying as an apology gift. That was the day I truly lost him.
That day, however, I was too blinded by the gift to see him for who he really was—a monster. After that day, his ‘mistakes’ became regular till even after I had Alima, and it continued till two years ago when I was pregnant with our twins and he kicked me in the stomach and I lost them. That day, something in me changed, so while the house was asleep, I went into the kitchen, picked up my favourite knife and stabbed him while he was sleeping on our matrimonial bed. The flow of crimson liquid from his limp body made my heart jump, and for the first time since he first laid his hands on me, my body relaxed. I had avenged the death of my twins and the four more that were before them whom I had lost to his cruel hands.
