I realize that everyone I come across, be it a stranger or someone familiar, is a walking story. Pages we might never get to read, an intersection in the plot of the stories of others. We are all intertwined in each other's stories; from the conductor that gave me change on my way to school this morning, to the beggar I handed that money to, to the woman I bought Gala from. The minuscule day-to-day activities connect us all, threads in the entire fabric of existence.

Sometimes I think about my parents' stories, where in their plot did they intertwine to become one? My mother and father were once my age, and I get curious; how were they? Their friends? Their parents? Their goals? Their personalities? Does everything change? Will I ever get to know more than the snippets of their tales they say here and there?

I raise my head from the spaghetti in my front and study the people before me. Nasir's mother is talking about Abdul's University, and Abdul is stealing out of Nasir's spaghetti - again - I saw him do it when Nasir wasn't looking the first time. Nasir's father had been on an important phone call, talking to the person on the other end in-between eating, and there was this calmness to his movement I found myself admiring, a gracefulness of taking time as if he controlled it. All of their stories, all pages I had no idea what lay inside them.

"Which University do you plan on going to, Nadeen?" My name shifts my attention to Nasir's mother.

"The State one. LASU."

"Good, why LASU? If you don't mind me asking." She continues.

"My father said it's the better choice."

"What do you think of it?"

I shrug. I really don't know much about the University to form a thought about it, other than the fact that they don't go on an ASUU strike.

"I think it's okay."

"Okay then, and course of study?"

"Medicine."

"A doctor," Nasir's mother smiles at me. "You must really like reading. Any inspiration as to why you chose to be a Doctor?"

I stop as I mix the spaghetti absentmindedly on my plate. Should there be an inspiration to be a doctor?

"Uhm...my parents said it was best for me because I do well in school," I answer as truthfully as I can. I have been getting into the habit of lying lately, and I need to correct it because I don't want God to be any angrier with me.

"I am going to be an astronaut or something," Nasir chipped in.

"Or something," Nasir's mother shook her head at her son. "This one will be changing careers all the time. When JAMB comes, I hope you will choose to be an astronaut or something." She returns her gaze back to me. "Have you tried researching Medicine? Maybe you'd like it?"

"But I...I am going to study it."

"I know, dear. I always tell my sons to research very well what they want to study at University before going ahead to select it. So I'm giving you that advice too."

I don't think there will be a need for that, but I just say, "Okay, thank you."

She puts her hand around my shoulder and squeezes me in a hug, and immediately, I feel something bright colour me on the inside. Can someone feel colour? I don't know, but I feel it, like the colour yellow, as if I have sun in my belly.

"Nadeen, I kept some pictures for you to see," Nasir says, his entire face lighting up. "I have them on my phone. I wanted to show you in class but you said...you said maybe you'll forgive me."

"Forgive you?" It is Nasir's father speaking now. He has already set down his phone and looks between Nasir and me. "What did you do to Nadeen?"

"I just...I only showed her an earthworm," Nasir mumbles.

His mother quaked with laughter and quickly put a hand on her mouth to muffle it, but her shoulders still shook.

"Nasir, Subhanallah," she stifles her laugh and pulls me into her arms. "I'm sorry, Nasir loves animals, and doesn't  know some can be irritating."

"It's okay, I've forgiven him," I say to her. No anger or grudge can hold in the space of her arms; it all evaporates.

"And forgive me too for laughing. I'm so sorry, Nadeen." She apologizes with another laugh. She breaks the hug, much to my disappointment, and goes into another fit of silent giggles.

"Do you know the spaghetti you're eating now is..."

"It should be praise for your mother's cooking that should come out of your mouth, Abdul," his father cut him off. I know he is about to compare worms and spaghetti, and I am glad he was stopped.

"Nadeen, my twin cousins are going to have a birthday party this weekend," Nasir says. "Please come."

"That's true," His father said. "They're going to be 15. I'm sure you'd enjoy it. Take a break from school and homework."

I shake my head. "I can't. I have...a competition coming up."

"What's it about?" Nasir asks.

"It's a Quran competition," I explain. "I have been preparing for it and...and it's been..."

I don't want to say hard, it would just sound like an excuse for me being lazy. Uztaz Sa'id is only just getting impressed with me.

"It's okay to feel stressed about it, you know," Nasir's father says. "But if you want to destress, you can come along for the birthday party."

"I'll keep your gift bag for you," Nasir says. I notice he has finished the food on his plate, and is scrolling through his phone. "The pictures..."

He rises from his chair and carries it over to my side. He sets it down next to me, and he smells clean. Like soap.

He scrolls through some pictures of the sky. "Look, I took this when it was about to rain yesterday." The sky looks like something out of a cartoon with all its colours. "Wait, come to the parlour." He says.

After promising to come back and finish my spaghetti, I follow an excited Nasir to the parlour. He flips through different pictures, telling me about this one and that one, and I listen mainly because there is something addicting about listening to Nasir talking like this, his words lacking the overlapping, almost stammering quality they usually do. His voice is loud, almost as if he is talking to me at the dining table and not next to him.

He stops talking when he reaches the last image, then his fingers tap on the screen, as if he is playing the piano.

"Why don't you have a phone?" He asks me in a lower voice.

"I wasn't given one."

"Did you ask for one?"

"Yes," it had been months ago, but Daddy had said after secondary school. "I'd like to have one, but I would have to wait till after WAEC."

"What if someone gifts you one? Will that be a problem?"

"Why?" I tilt my head to the side, a smile dancing on my mouth. "Do you want to gift me one?"

Nasir still keeps his eyes on his phone. "I don't know, when is your birthday?"

"About a month from now. The 15th of next month. If you want to get me a phone, it has to come with at least 10 different chocolates," I add to the joke. Even I know that gifting phones as birthday gifts was an expensive kind that isn't usually exchanged between students still dependent on their parents, like us. "Did you show Omar your pictures?"

"Omar?"

"Yeah, he's your friend too. What did he think?" I ask.

"I only...I only show you my pictures. You like them, and it makes me take more than I usually do." 

Both of us don't say anything for a while after that, and Abdul's gist from the dining table flits over to us, something about a lecturer punishing a student. I give a quiet sigh.

"Do you really consider me your friend?" I ask him.

"Yes," he answers immediately. "Do you make friends with guys?"

I shake my head. "Not at all."

Nasir's shoulders fall at that. I have always maintained my distance from guys because Daddy had warned Iffat and me severally that if he as much as sees us talking to the opposite gender in public without a pressing need to do so, he would throw us out of the house. Even Mummy knew better than to talk with men outside the house.

"Today I might see you talking to a boy and I ignore it. But because I ignore it, the next day I pass by, you might be sitting on his lap." Daddy had said before.

So Iffat and I knew, boys as friends are a no-no, because Daddy says friendships between men and women do not exist. 

"But," I find myself saying to Nasir, " I'd like to be your friend too."

Mainly because Nasir looks like an interesting story, and I'd like to read his pages. I can imagine awkwardness to him penned in scrawny writings, mistakes crossed out repeatedly, plot twists with very interesting angles, and then, there will always be the occasional punctuations of hugs that feel like the colour yellow.

I get home in the afternoon, and I make sure to hold my Quran in my hands. It's not like I would have to lie, but if anyone assumes I am coming from Madrasah, I won't have to say anything.

 When I enter the house, it is quiet, and no one is around. Noises flitter from Mummy Anu's place, an off-tune Who is in the garden? being sung by the children at the top of their lungs.

I move to my room, humming the song along with them, and stop short when I see Iffat sitting on the bed. She is holding her head in her hands, unmoving. With careful steps, I move over to her.

"Iffat?" I call.

Iffat snaps her head up like she has been electrocuted. Her eyes are so hard I take a step back as if she has stoned me. It had been roughly ten days since our misunderstanding, and she wouldn't even utter a word to me. All she did was be mean in her actions. She messed up my side of the room several times with no excuse, she shoves me when she walked too close to me and makes me wait so long before she unlocked the door to my room. Each day brought a fresh new wave of anger in me, but I put a leash on it, for the sake of peace.

"What?" Iffat asks me in a low growl.

"I'm...I'm sorry for what I said to you," I apologize. "I didn't mean it."

"You didn't mean it," Iffat mocks me. "Of course, I believe you. Let me the Olodo go back to reading."

"I didn't mean it, Iffat," I say more adamantly. The freedom I had felt back at Nasir's house must have still remained. "I didn't mean it. I was just angry with you, and that was the only way I could...hurt you. But I didn't mean it, Wallah."

I stare at Iffat's book in her hand, preparing for her scream at my face. When I see her hands squeeze the book, I look up then, and I see the tears fall down her face.

"Do you really think I'm Olodo?" She asks me in a soft voice.

"No," I sit on her bed and hug my Quran tight. "No, Wallah I swear by the Quran, I don't think you are. I'm so sorry."

Iffat rubs her cheeks, and takes in a sharp intake of air, halting the tears at once. The fear that she might push me off her bed grips me, and I ready myself ahead by pinning my legs strongly to the ground.

"I'm very scared of failing again, Nadeen," she whispers.

"You won't."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because you've prayed and read, and prayers are always answered."

Iffat scoffs. "If that's the way the prayer worked, I'd be a millionaire living in a mansion in America."

"It doesn't always work the way you want it to but the way Allah wants it to."

"And how will I know how Allah will work this one out?" Iffat asks me. "How will I know He will make me pass?"

I am quiet for some time, and I try to reason my reply. Iffat is like a wound, words are like salt, and the wrong ones will just set her off.

"You are sure you prepared well?" I ask her.

"Nadeen, don't you see my eyes?" She asks me. I observe her eyes then and notice how dark-rimmed they had become. Iffat must have been waking up in the middle of the night to read, and I hope more than anything that she does passes. All her efforts cannot go to waste.

"Then have faith, Iffat," I say. "You will pass."

"Thank you," She surprises me by saying that. When she notices me waiting, she keeps talking, "For telling me that. No one has told me that they are sure I will pass."

"Maybe they believe it."

"Or maybe they have given up on me."

"Mummy and Daddy haven't given up on you..."

"I am not talking about only them," Iffat cuts me off. "I am talking about my former classmates, friends. It feels like the second they enter University, they drop those that haven't gotten admission."

Iffat's countenance looks so fragile, so breakable, I wanted to hug her like how Nasir's mother hugs me, the way all the pain fades away. But there is this barrier, this invisible wall between us, separating us for so long I don't know if I will come in contact with something solid if I try to touch her, and maybe electrocute from the foreignness of it, like barbed wires protecting the walls against attackers.

"You will make new friends," I say. "And it would be easy for you since you are pretty."

Iffat scoffs out a laugh. "Because I am pretty?"

"Yes, pretty people will not have problems making friends. Friends will come to you."

Iffat's lips lift in a smile. I realize it has been a long I have seen her smile, and it is warm, real.

"Why aren't we close, Nadeen?" The question comes out of the blue.

I shrug. "We are sisters."

"But we aren't close. We should be. There are only two of us."

I pick off a piece of dirt from my cloth to avoid looking at her. "But you get angry a lot," I find myself saying. "You get angry so much I can't help but avoid you."

A heavy silence drapes upon us at that. Mummy Anu's children's voices filter into our room. The light comes on, and Up Nepa rings through the air. Iffat and I don't say anything.

"I don't know how to control it," Iffat's words sound like they are being dragged out of her throat. "It's like a switch inside me. Flick it and my feelings change like the snap of a finger."

"Everyone has control. I always have control over my feelings."

"No, you don't have control," Iffat says immediately. "You bury it, which is even worse."

"It's not worse. I don't hurt people."

"You do."

"How?"

"You hurt yourself, Nadeen," Iffat says. "You hurt yourself so much you might physically bleed from it."

-

-

-

I woke up extra early that morning to offer the Tahjud prayers. I also wake Iffat up, and she doesn't take that long to drag herself out of bed and perform ablution to pray. Both of us pray separately in the living room, and I raise my hands to beg Allah to forgive us both for every sin we have committed that might anger Him and for Him to let us both pass with flying colours.

When I am done, I look back at Iffat, and she sits there, doing nothing, her eyes closed. When she opens them, she smiles at me, the shadows cast by the halogen bulb falling over her face.

"I feel I am going to pass, Nadeen," she tells me.

I return the smile. "That's all you need to believe."

She nods. "Yes, yes. I know it. I'm getting admission with this JAMB. And I will..."

"...in shaa Allah," I cut her off with the appropriate prayer.

"...in shaa Allah. And I will try to convince Daddy to let me go to UNILAG. I cannot be going and coming to LASU every day."

"Let's focus on JAMB first," I tell her. "And in shaa Allah, after you pass, we'll talk about how to tell Daddy about that."

Iffat nods without another word. Our last "small" talk had done something between us. That wall that was planted before us suddenly had a door, kind of like the magical doors that existed in fairytales.

She excuses herself to go to her room. Mummy appears by the passageway, her hair messy, her eyes heavy with sleep.

"What are you two doing awake? Praying?" She asks. I nod.

"That's good. Iffat, don't worry. The Dua made at the time of Tahjud is surely going to be answered. This is the year you will enter LASU Bi'idnillah." Mummy prays for her.

"I'm not going to LASU," Iffat says.

Mummy rubs her eyes, slaps a mosquito on her arm. "If not LASU, where else?" She asks as if LASU is the only University in the world.

"Mummy, please let me just write my exams first," Iffat says in a tired tone. Mummy shifts for her to pass to her room and a breath I didn't know I was holding releases. I had thought their argument would escalate into one of their fights.

Mummy turns toward me, and she smiles. At that, I recall Iffat telling me that day we had our talk that she knows Mummy and Daddy don't like her. I told her that it wasn't true and that it was only because she was always angry with them.

"People who like you show it," she had told me to end the talk.

Mummy didn't smile at Iffat, but I know Mummy and Daddy like her. Mummy gives her food and buys her food sometimes, Daddy buys her food and gives us money sometimes to buy clothes. He also owns the house we live in, and we stay here. When he was angry several times, Daddy said, "There are people who would be so grateful to stay in just one room in this house. People would be so grateful for drinking one cup of garri in the morning, in the afternoon, and in night. People who would be so grateful to have their school fees paid. And you're complaining?"

I don't know what more Iffat wants. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, "Whoever among you wakes up secure in his property, healthy in his body, and he has his food for the day, it is as if he were given the entire world."

So if the entire world isn't love, I don't know what is.

"Nadeen," Mummy calls. "Did you wash the plates last night?"

I shake my head. Mummy's smile falls.

"I told you to be washing it at night..."

"...but I was practicing..."

"...no excuses, Nadeen. Do it immediately after Fajr prayers, please.  Dirty plates attract cockroaches, you know that." She says. "After that, quickly make rice before your father asks for breakfast, okay?"

I nod. Mummy returns back to the room. I think she's forgotten that I have the preliminary stage of my Quran competition today. If Iffat was here, maybe she'll realize how Mummy likes her because she only remembered her own JAMB.

I did all my chores just as Iffat got ready. Daddy was in neutral mode all morning, and he didn't complain about the rice and stew as he ate. His eyes went between his food and Iffat sitting in the living room. She had refused to eat, saying that she wasn't able to stomach anything.

She checks the time and rises to her feet. She is dressed more modestly today in her long-sleeved bodycon top and her long black skirt, and she even draped a scarf over her head and neck. She puffs out a breath of air, and Mummy prays for her. I see the smile on Iffat's lips, and I know she has a good feeling about her exams.

"You're going now?" Daddy asks after Mummy finishes praying for her. Iffat pauses, as if contemplating to answer, then nods. Daddy takes a long sip of his water and trains serious eyes on Iffat.

"You're sure you read well?" He asks.

"Yes."

"What should I do to you if you fail again?" Daddy asks.

Iffat doesn't look at him. Instead, her gaze is focused on the couch, and I wonder if she is studying the new tear down its middle.

"I am asking you, if you fail again, what should I do?" Daddy asks.

"I won't fail," Iffat whispers.

"How are you sure?"

Iffat looks at him. Her eyes aren't red in colour, but I can almost see the ember glows sparking off the rage that is emanating from them.

"Because I am," she answers.

That seems to do the trick because Daddy simply nods, mutters good luck, then Iffat bade us goodbye. I go into the kitchen to help Mummy serve the akara and pap for breakfast, and I could only settle for pap because of the nervousness in my stomach. 

"Why won't you eat, Nadeen?" Mummy asks me once we are seated at the table.

"Today is my Quran competition," I say. I wanted to add, "That was what I was trying to tell you this morning," but just let it be.

"Oh! Yes!" Daddy slurps on his hot pap. "Yes, you are going to come home with the first position. I trust you because it's my brain you inherited."

The smile on my face feels like plastic carved from nervousness. Mummy makes a prayer for me, and as I eat the pap, I wonder if it is a good idea not to go empty stomached like Iffat. My belly seems to reject the pap, and I force down the last three spoons so that Mummy won't complain that I am wasting food.

When I am done, I leave the house and head over to the Madrasah. Uztaz Sa'id had already told us to come early to practise again, and so when I get there, he is already seated in the empty classroom, eyes closed as he swings slightly from side to side, the cane in his hand swinging along with him as Husseinah before he was reciting.

"Salam alaikum," I am stuck between sitting or standing. Uztaz opens his eyes, and motions to the space next to Husseinah for me to sit. She continues her recitation, often punctuated by Uztaz Sa'id's corrections. When she is done, Uztaz uses the cane to motion for me to recite next.

My voice is thick as if I had just woken up, and I clear my throat several times during the course of my recitation, causing Uztaz's brows to crease above his closed eyes. My recitation is better, and my corrections are minimal. When I am done, Uztaz comes down from the tabletop and smoothens his palms down his white jalabiya.

"You two must pass," he says, the tip of his cane close to my face, then Husseinah's, then mine again. "You two must pass."

Big Daddy's driver comes around not too shortly to take us to the venue. It is a small car, and the air conditioner is blasted to the fullest, my arms and neck prickling with goosebumps underneath my gown and hijab. "You need to cool your brains," Uztaz Sa'id looks back at us with a smile, and he rubs his hands up and down his arms to get warm too. The car ambles through the traffic-free roads until it arrives at the wide compound of a public school at Fagba.

The place is already milling with people, men in mostly in their sparkling white jalabiyas and women in hijab colours of all kinds. The microphone is booming with the Quranic recitation of Sudais, the renowned Quran reciter. Children run past, their feet leaving a wake of brown dust across the field.

 When we step down, Uztaz Sa'id is whisked to the side by some men in white. I stare at the lone plastic chair at the centre of the space, where our fate for the intermediate level will be determined. There are tents on the four sides of the place, and I can see myself in that chair, everyone's eyes on me, watching.

There's an acceleration in my chest that comes with speedy beats, but I try not to think about what will happen, and try not to invite those invisible hands back to me. Husseinah is on her phone, and she is laughing. I think about Iffat then, in a big hall filled with computers, her mouth laced with all the prayers she could remember. JAMB looks even scarier to me than my own situation; one miss and that's an academic year at home.

I send a prayer for Iffat just as Uztaz Sa'id comes to our side, hands in his large pockets giving him the illusion of disproportionate hips. He smiles at us, then ushers us into one of the smaller tents.

"These are for the participants," he says when we get there. "Make sure to keep practising, okay?"

He says his Salams and walks away. I perch myself on a plastic chair at the front row, Husseinah a seat away from me. She crosses her legs and exhales deeply.

"It's you we are counting on oo." She tells me.

"It's both of us that are participating."

"It doesn't matter. It's you that will represent us in the state's competition." She says. "Me I cannot go through another practice session, I'm tired. I really want to travel to my grandmother's place when the break comes."

Lucky you, I want to say, but I don't say anything more, and neither does she. She hums, and I look up just as the sun's rays tap me, and they sneak through the tendrils of the large tree to my left. Its brown tendrils remind me of my grandmother, her overly relaxed hair sprinkled with grey, the hair that kept falling during her time of sickness. 

I try to remember her as the strong, tall woman whose arms would squeeze me in welcome when we went over to her house, her Aboniki balm and coconut oil overpowering my nostrils, but flashes of the thin, frail woman she was before she died filtered in my head, a woman bedridden with the Adire cover as her constant embrace. This morning, Mummy would have called Grandma to pray for Iffat and me, and each of us would take the phone to say endless Ameens to her prayers, which she would say so fervently and eloquently you would wonder if she had them written somewhere before.

It had always been that way, Grandma being informed of what was going on and praying for us. Our relationship with her had bloomed over phone calls, and that was what made our rare visits to her and her to us more cherished. If we went over there, usually when Daddy was having one of his good days, we would gorge ourselves on fried meat and Coke, because Grandma's neighbor always sold Coke for the smokers who would want to rid their mouths of their cigarette smells. She would do all the cooking, and we would only wash. We would take food without wondering who bought it or owned it, sleep when our stomachs were filled to the brim, then when we were to go back to our house, the bittersweet goodbyes would follow.

When Grandma came over, the boot of the taxi she would hire would make you think she raided the market for every available foodstuff, never mind if the naira was depreciating and things were getting more expensive. Plantain, pepper, potatoes, cocoyams; all in bulk spilling out from Bagco bags that would be too heavy for us to carry. Mummy would complain that it was too much, but she knew we needed it, she needed it. Grandma and Daddy got along well, especially when it was time for the Yoruba news, then they'll begin to talk about how Nigeria had been better at a particular President's time, or a Governor's rule. 

And then it changed when her sickness came, squeezing her till she howled in pain. 

My hand reaches to my chest, feeling for those invisible hands, and I wonder if the pain was similar to mine, if maybe the hands that squeeze at my heart are lenient, or if it is going to show me worse.

As if taking my touch as a summon, the hands squeeze in response. 

"Nadeen?" Someone calls me.

I turn to my side, and Husseinah leans toward me.

"Are you okay?" She asks me.

I nod. "Yes."

"Are you sure? Are you asthmatic or something? You were breathing fast."

"No, it was just...nothing," I shake my head and open my Quran, and thankfully, Husseinah doesn't ask any more questions.

Men in their big turbans and their entourage following them arrive one after the other, and soon, the competition begins, and my entire body feels like someone had tied me with iron chains. My tongue turns drier than fried yam, and my heart has migrated to both my ears to play its beats.

When it eventually reaches my turn, I find my "other self" hovering far above, and I view my body below walking over to the plastic chair at the centre of the field. I sit on the chair and face the table of judges, all men with their Qurans and pens and papers ready to scribble the results.

"Na'am," the one holding the microphone clears his throat and flips through the pages of his Quran. He stops, then closes his eyes as he begins to recite a verse. I am still hovering above, but I can still hear the loud thumps of my heart.

The man stops reciting, a signal for me to continue.

"Auzubillahi minas shaytanir rajeem," my voice in the microphone I am holding doesn't belong to me, it doesn't belong to my "self" hovering above either. It is distant, like in a dream, and it continues to read from where the man stopped.

I close my eyes as I become aware of "my" voice returning to my body, and the thumps of my heart have slowed. There are no voices around me, silence has descended unto the field out of respect for the Quran, and there are only static background noises. I keep reciting, and again, I cannot view myself from that hovering position anymore. I am here, fully, wholly.

There is peace here, there is quiet here, and there are no invisible hands here. Just me talking, just me. I want to make this feeling a space I can visit, build it into a house I alone own, where there are no thoughts, nothing, just a free flow of peace. Or it doesn't necessarily have to be a house, it can be a space under a table or something, and I want to tuck myself inside this space and not come back.

My tongue stops on its own, my body awakens from something, and when my eyes fly open, the Allahu Akbars ring in the air, and I am back in the plastic chair.