Chapter 14 10: She Pouts

She watched as he lifted one brow at her which meant he was listening and Fareeda wished she could smack his head. She looked away from his face for a few minutes and after she gulped down the lump in her throat, she turned back at him. "As you said, I'm going to apologize to Alhaji today, make sure you re going to keep your promise also." He stared at her face longer than he used to, this was the first time he was seeing her in two months now. Since the day she had cried her eyes out in the hut he hadn t seen her or that annoying face of her boyfriend. What was wrong with her? Have they broken up? And now that he looked closely at her, her eyes had bags under them and she undoubtedly lost some weight. Had she been sick? He briskly looked at the place she had last parked her car and thought, he had forgotten the last time she drove her car. "Have you been sick?" He asked, and she scoffed softly which got his attention to what he asked her. He probably spoke what was in his mind and this lady will think otherwise. But since he had voiced it out, he had to go on with the flow. "That's none of your business. I'm just going to do what you said will be the only reason you re going to back out from this alliance, Mujaheed. I'm going to apologize to Alhaji as you said, but you have to keep your promise too." She said in a slightly angry tone and how forlorn she looked didn't go unnoticed by him. Sometimes he hated himself by noticing everything, he was so observant that it hurt him at the end. "You aren t yourself, Fareeda. What's wrong?" He asked again, finding it so hard to keep his curiosity to himself because this wasn t the Fareeda Kamal Sardauna he knew. She softly hissed and placed her hands on akimbo, "Can I ask you a question please? Are we talking about myself or the promise you made to me? What s your business with my life that you become so concerned about it. I can die, but that shouldn't be any of your business. Can we just talk about what we have on hand?" She asked while furiously rolling her eyes at him and for the countless time, Mujaheed doubted if she really couldn t see with those eyes. To him, her eyes would have been the healthiest in the world. They were round, milky and her orbs were honey-like. One could get carried away by just looking into her eyes and when she rolled her eyes at him, he found it so hard not to want to keep on seeing that for the rest of his life. He quickly took his mind off that and focused on what they were saying, but he wasn t going to let this conversation go easily, he had to feed his curiosity. "It looks like you ve been sick or something has been eating you up for the past two months, what s wrong?" He wasn t able to close his lips when she yelled at him. "Mujaheed! What the hell is wrong with you? How could you be deviating the conversation to something that clearly doesn t concern you? Since when have you been so invested in my life that you ve started asking what s wrong with me? When did you even start noticing things about me?" Woah, she was really angry at him and that amused him. Seeing the way she was glaring at him while she angrily spoke even though her voice could be the last thing that would show she was indeed angry at him. "Since when your father asked me to marry you. Now, if you ll calm down a bit, can we talk over there? I can't have you standing here being so furious that you might undoubtedly choke on my throat with your fingers." He calmly pointed at the resting hut over yonder and she envied him. How could he be so calm in situation like this and said whatever he wanted without any hassles whatsoever? She stubbornly folded her hands across her chest and shook her head, "I m not going anywhere, you either answer me here or not." She didn t know how a pout found its way to her lips until she realized he wasn t even looking at her anymore, he had this amused smile on his lips while he stared at the way the pout beautified her glamorous face. "What are you doing? Do I have something on my lips?" She asked while tapping her palms on her lips to get rid of whatever it was that amused him on her lips. The next thing she heard was a soft chuckle and when she looked up at him, he had a wide smile on his lips. "You have nothing on your lips, Fareeda, it was just a pout. And it looked so cute on you, if I may add." One thing she had noticed about him, he loved annoying her. "What do you mean? Will you please be serious for once, Mujaheed? I'm talking about an agreement we both made, and I want to fulfill that promise like you said, with Nana being the witness and you re being carried away by a pout I didn't know how I did it. Am I some sort of joke to you?" She asked, furiously pointing at herself then to him. He looked so calm, relaxed even. "I'm listening to you, Fareeda. Now, about apologizing to Alhaji, do you really want to do it?" He asked, his face back to how it used to be without the smile and that amused look. And he fixed his eyes on hers to the point that she felt unnerved by his eyes. "What do you mean? You definitely know that it would be the last thing I'd want to do in my life but I have no other choice, I'm going to do it. But in return, you ll tell him that you don t want to get married to me anymore, you want Asma u instead." That took him off guard, so she knew about Asma u all along, he had noticed the looks they exchanged in the park but he didn't know she was the one behind that grand confession. Now, he had figured it all out, she was going to use Asma u to get what she wanted. "Why would I choose Asma u in your stead?" He asked, and she rolled her eyes exasperatedly at him. She should have thought that talking to Mujaheed would be harder than apologizing to Alhaji. "Because she s a good girl. Because despite being an annoying person, she s also a good person. She s pure, lovely and beautiful as well. She ll make a good wife than I can ever be. Your kids will have a good mother, she has never done even an inch of the list of the bad things I did, she s innocent, not contaminated with all those dirty deeds. I don t know...but she's good in any way possible you could ever think of. And what s more important is, if you get married to her, you ll have more chances of having a good future, because she s lucky in her life. She has a mother, her father loves and trusts her, she has a sister that loves her without wishing evil on her. I don t have to make a list for you, but she ll be the best for you." Slowly, her eyes looked up at him and staring back at her, were the realest and most sympathetic eyes she had ever seen stared back at her in her whole life. Mujaheed softly sighed and pinched the bridge between his eyes, "She s also not stubborn, she ll do whatever you say. I'm certain she ll make you happy because she loves you. She s not as crazy as I am, she doesn t talk like I do, she doesn t cause even a drop of the ocean of troubles I make. And a bonus, she can see without any difficulties, you don't have to worry about her breaking her eyeglass before she goes to sleep." She was brave, that was the first thing he noticed about her. And she was selfless even though he was sure if he pointed that out to her, she would have to keep on arguing with him until the next day. She thought she was a bad person, she wasn't lucky, she was all sort of bad things she could ever imagine. But in his eyes, all he saw was an innocent little girl that was broken to a point that she stopped everything and when choosing the things that could grow in her, she chose only her body, but never her heart and soul. He slowly shook his head, "That s not reason enough for me to want her as a wife, Fareeda." "Then what do you want, Mujaheed?" She asked and stomped her feet stubbornly on the ground, annoyed to the highest order. 'You. He wished he could say this out loud to her but he couldn't. It was evident that she undermined herself, she hated herself and felt that she wasn't significant in this life. "You." He said softly, and when her eyes widened in shock and anger, added. "I just want you to apologize to your father, and for first time in your life, if there s something you feel like you can t forgive yourself for doing, do that. Forgive yourself, set yourself free from the mistakes you done, that s all." "I promised Asma u that..." She began, but he cut her off. "I ve already made it clear to Asma u that I don t like her, Fareeda. But as I promised, I m going to tell Alhaji that I can no more get married to you, but my reason wouldn't be anything you mentioned above." She glared at him but he could see her relaxing from within, she would finally get free from this bondage and after all this is over, Fareeda wanted to leave Taraba for good. She would go back to New York, register for her doctorate degree and start working while she studied. She was going to start afresh. "What will be your reason?" She found herself asking, her eyes involuntarily rolling themselves at him. "You cry too much, you act as if you re strong but you re so soft within. You want to portray yourself as a tough woman but you have your weakness hidden, your fears. And I want a strong woman. I don t want a woman that when she s sad, she ll leave her room late at night without her glasses and go to the hut to cry her eyes out only to be scared to go back alone when she s done emptying her heart through her tears." "What do you mean? I wasn t afraid, it was just because the lights got off and nothing else." She didn t know how her voice sounded whiny or the pout that painted itself on her face.