Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John Read Free Book Online

look up to be sure there is no one holding a whip over my head. Reading is nice if someone is not forcing you to do it. The first hadith is familiar.
    Actions are but by intentions and every man shall have only that which he intended. Thus he whose migration was for Allah and His Messenger, his migration was for Allah and His Messenger, and he whose migration was to achieve some worldly benefit or to take some woman in marriage, his migration was for that for which he migrated.
    The driver looks at me in amazement as I read under my breath but loud enough for him to hear. I am doing this deliberately and look at him, expecting him to ask where I learned to read or who my teacher is. He only shakes his head and smiles.
    The driver taps me as we approach Dogon Icce junction. I wake up, wiping saliva that has rolled down the side of my mouth. It is crowded as usual with people trying to make their way into the villages around. The roads here are not like the roads in town. They are mostly narrow bush paths cleared by the villagers. The main road was cleared by a member of the House of Representatives who was building a big house in the village. He only comes briefly during the big Sallah and shares a lot of meat and grain.
    â€˜The motorcycles are not even agreeing to pass this road after the floods,’ one woman with a baby on her back complains.
    She and a few women are going to walk all the way to the village.
    â€˜You have to even take off your shoes most of the way,’ another woman with a sack of grain says.
    I walk behind the women as they complain about their losses. The woman with the baby has just returned from the hospital in Sokoto where her daughter has given birth but is still very ill.
    â€˜They say her waist was too small and she should not have gotten pregnant so early. I don’t know what this world is becoming these days. When I had her, I was not up to her age. Did I even have breasts when I was married off? Yet I had all my children without any complaints. It must be the new fertilizer, I tell you. It’s all poison, wallahi. When it was only cow dung, who heard about such things for Allah’s sake? Imagine, they had to tear her open for the baby to come out! Even the baby is not doing well.’
    The other women agree.
    â€˜May Allah lighten her burdens,’ the woman with the grains on her head says.
    â€˜If only we had a hospital here, I wouldn’t have to make this long journey back and forth to get her things, but no, if not buying cars, and sharing meat during elections and Sallah, there is nothing else they do. Tell me, for Allah’s sake, what is a little meat when I have to travel to get to a hospital?’
    If, insha Allah, I ever have the money, I will build a road to Dogon Icce and a hospital. And a nice mosque with a rug, like the new one at the motor park in Sokoto, but bigger. I would paint it completely white and build a concrete house for Umma by the side. I would give her all she needs and stop her from selling gruel or doing any work for that matter. Maybe then she would stop sitting and staring at lizards for long periods.
    As we walk through a huge pool of thick muddy water the woman with the grain on her head slips and falls flat. The contents of her polythene bag spill into the mud. A few grains of wheat float while most sink to the bottom. It is too late to save any of it. She starts to cry as the other women take her by the hand to lift her up. There is nothing I can do to help her; both my hands are full and I am in the middle of the water. They are too busy trying to clean the woman up to hear me say sorry. I feel bad just walking past like this, without stopping. But Allah knows the intentions of my heart. That is all that counts.
    I could have sworn my house stood here, where this mound of mud and thatch is. There is nothing I recognise. An old man chops off wood from a fallen tree ahead. The axe seems too heavy for him and he groans with every