There is a feeling that comes quietly, without invitation — a feeling that finds you when you walk past other people’s homes and allow your eyes to linger a moment too long. It is not quite envy. Not quite longing. Something softer and deeper — a tingling in the chest, a pull behind the ribs — nostalgia for a life that is not yours, yet feels familiar enough to ache for.
Nata had begun to know that feeling well.
That morning, after helping her mother prepare the family’s meal — grinding the millet, stirring the pot, tending the fire until smoke settled into her hair and wrapper — she stepped out into the lane that cut through Farato village. The sun was still low, stretching shadows long and thin across the earth. The air carried the scent of damp soil and distant cooking fires. It was quiet enough to hear footsteps on sand.
The houses in Farato were few and scattered, not pressed together like those of Jeshwang. Each compound stood with breathing space around it, mud walls shaped by hand, roofs thick with straw, doors sometimes open, sometimes closed. Life revealed itself in glimpses, never fully, never deliberately.
As she walked, Nata found her eyes drifting.
Through a half-open gate she saw a woman sweeping the yard while two children chased one another in circles. She slowed her steps, watching just long enough to imagine the inside of that hut — the arrangement of sleeping mats, the warmth of shared laughter at night, the quiet clatter of bowls being passed between small hands.
Further along, she passed another compound where an elderly man sat under a neem tree, shelling groundnuts, while his daughter-in-law poured water into a basin. A baby cried somewhere inside. The sound reached Nata and lodged deep within her chest. She imagined the baby’s face, its small limbs, its scent — the rhythm of rocking it, the weight of it against her shoulder.
She kept walking.
Each home became a story she built in her mind. Bedrooms she could not see. Sitting spaces she could not enter. Families she would never belong to. She filled them with tenderness, with unity, with the simple completeness she felt had been denied to her.
And with each imagining, the ache deepened.
Every hut — whether shuttered in stillness or alive with movement — reminded her of what she had buried. Of what her body had promised and failed to deliver. Of what her arms had reached for and never held long enough.
She wished, in ways she dared not speak aloud, to step into those lives. To exchange places just for a day. To be the woman whose child laughed in the dust, whose evenings were spent washing tiny feet, whose nights ended in exhausted contentment rather than hollow quiet.
Pain carries a particular sadness.
It does not always shout. It does not always collapse you to the ground. Sometimes it moves like a shadow alongside you, whispering. It tells you to fold inward. To shrink. To make yourself smaller so the world cannot see what you have lost.
Nata felt that pull as she walked.
She felt the urge to disappear — not dramatically, not in despair — but gently, like mist dissolving when the sun rises. To become someone lighter, someone unmarked, someone who could pass by houses without feeling her heart reach toward them.
She paused near the end of the lane, standing still, watching smoke rise from distant cooking fires. Life continued in every direction. Children cried. Pots clanged. Voices called. The world did not stop for grief.
She pressed her hands together in front of her, steadying herself.
The ache did not leave her.
But she carried it with quiet familiarity — like a companion she had not chosen, yet knew would walk beside her for some time to come.
***
As Nata turned back toward the family compound, the morning light had already grown fuller, spreading gold across the open earth. She walked slowly, her thoughts still lingering on the homes she had passed, on the imagined lives she had stepped briefly into with her mind. The lane curved, and the outline of her own compound appeared in the distance — familiar, grounding.
And then she saw them.
First, the tall, steady figure of her granduncle — Maama Ousman Bah — standing just beyond the entrance, his posture composed, his robe falling neatly around him. There was always something reassuring about his presence. He carried calm with him, like a man who had already wrestled life and learned not to shout at it.
Her heart lifted at the sight of him.
But just beside him—
That limp.
Unmistakable.
Even from a distance, she knew the rhythm of it: the slight drag of one foot, the uneven sway of movement she had come to recognize without ever embracing. Bukari.
Her breath caught.
The warmth she had felt a moment before drained from her chest, replaced by something colder — something sharp and immediate. Revulsion was too simple a word. It was a tightening in her skin, a retreating inward, a memory of everything she had endured wrapped into one physical reaction.
She slowed.
‘I’m not going back to Jeshwang,’ she told herself, firmly, decisively.
Not today. Not tomorrow. Not because anyone says I must.
By the time she reached the compound entrance, the conversation had already begun inside.
***
Yerro sat on the low stool beneath the shade, his face composed but guarded. Ousman Bah sat opposite him, speaking in measured tones. Bukari remained slightly behind, respectful, his hat turning between his fingers — a nervous habit he could not seem to stop.
Borogie and Nenneh Dado hovered nearby, listening without intruding. This was men’s dialogue, yet its outcome would shape them all.
Ousman spoke first.
“My nephew,” he began gently, “I came not to command you. You are master of your household. But matters of marriage touch more than one roof. They ripple through families.”
Yerro nodded stiffly. “I know this.”
Bukari cleared his throat softly.
“Baba Yerro…” he began, voice humble, almost pleading. “I have come for my wife.”
Nata froze near the doorway, unseen.
Bukari continued, words careful.
“I am not a man of many speeches. But Nata belongs in her home. People are already asking questions. They are wondering. I cannot answer them.”
Yerro’s jaw tightened. “And you think I cannot hear questions about a daughter who abandons her marriage?”
Ousman lifted his hand slightly — not interrupting, but guiding.
“Let us speak as men who want peace,” he said.
He turned to Bukari. “Tell him plainly — why do you want her back?”
Bukari hesitated, then answered honestly.
“She is my wife,” he said. “I do not wish for another. I have not wronged her. I have waited through grief with her. I have buried what we buried. She belongs beside me.”
The simplicity of his words carried weight. He did not speak of love, but of duty — and in that generation, duty held more authority than sentiment.
Ousman turned to Yerro.
“He has come himself. That is respect. He did not send word. He did not send elders. He came.”
Yerro exhaled slowly.
“Marriage is not a child’s wrapper to be dropped when it grows heavy,” he said. “She returned without permission.”
Bukari lowered his head. “She was hurting.”
Silence lingered.
Then Ousman spoke again, softer.
“My nephew… she has buried three children. Her body is not just tired — it is wounded. If you send her back immediately, you send her back as broken clay.”
Yerro’s eyes flickered.
Ousman continued:
“A resting daughter is not a lost daughter. Allow her time. Let her recover. Let her breathe under her mother’s care. Then she returns stronger — not resentful.”
Bukari shifted uneasily.
“I cannot stay long without her,” he admitted. “The house is empty. I… I miss her.”
The vulnerability surprised everyone — including himself.
Yerro looked away briefly, absorbing it.
He remained silent for a long moment, weighing pride, tradition, expectation, and something deeper he rarely acknowledged: concern.
Finally, he spoke.
“She will rest,” he said.
All eyes lifted.
“One month.”
He glanced toward the doorway — and for the first time noticed Nata standing there.
“One month,” he repeated. “She will regain strength. Then she returns to her husband’s house.”
Bukari nodded immediately, relief flooding him.
“Thank you, Baba Yerro.”
Ousman smiled faintly, the kind of smile that belongs to a man who knows compromise when he sees it.
***
But inside Nata, the agreement fell like stone.
A month.
It sounded generous to them.
To her, it sounded like a countdown.
She lowered her eyes, her resolve hardening quietly where no one could see.
‘I will rest,’ she told herself.
‘I will regain strength.’
‘But my life is not theirs to schedule forever.’
Outwardly, she said nothing.
Inwardly, something had already begun to shift beyond recall.
To be continued…
