Zara: (The Teenager)

By A.Hafsah

Zara is a novel that depicts an intimate knowledge of coming of an age, love among teenagers and family life. After Zara, the protagonist who is from a very poor background has an encounter with Afrah, her life automatically takes a new turn. Her hopelessness, is turned into hope, her poverty is becoming a thing of the past and Zara is beginning to see a light at the end of tunnel until Mohammed, Afrah’’s boyfriend, returns from abroad. His presence triggers a lot of restlessness in Zara’s life, as she believes that the young man is shifting his affection from Afrah to her. Afrah will have known of it and believes that the only way to confront a world that has taken away her mother from her, given her father to another woman and delivered her boyfriend to a girl she picked from the slums is to commit suicide; an unexpected turn of event opens up a whole new life that hands Afrah and Zara all they think they’ve lost, making their fantasies their realities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798823016407

A.Hafsah

Hafsah Ummi Abubakar is born in Nigeria. She attended Iman Comprehensive College and currently a student of Crescent University, Abeokuta, Ogun state. Ummi is one of the young writers of natural talent that have been tipped to take the world by storm in years to come. At fourteen, she has already announced her presence in the literary world with many short stories and Zara is her first novel. she writes in a vividly charming way that sustains readership. Ummi is a serial award winner.

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© 2023 A.Hafsah. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/13/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1641-4 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1642-1 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-8230-1640-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023920536

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgment

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

DEDICATION

TO MY BELOVED DAD

AND ALSO YOUNG TEENAGERS.

Acknowledgment

I wish to express my profound gratitude to my parents, Alhaji and Hajiya A.G Umar for their unshakable trust in me, even when there is every reason to doubt. I won’t forget my amiable brothers and sisters, all of you have positively affected me in no little way. I say Masha Allah to that.

Special thanks goes to my English teacher-Mr. Onyemara Uche Innocent who have been my mentor and who has inspired me a lot and also made the publication of this book to be of great success-you are a blessing to our generation. May God almighty continually bless and be with you all.

Chapter One

I t has become natural for Zara to deny her own problem whenever she sees that someone else seems to suffer more. She is just being herself as she uses her mother’s clothes she gathered from the line and covers the two bags of rice Afrah has been struggling to drag into the house to avoid the drizzling that proposes to be an imminent downpour, as signals by the frowning cloud and the clapping thunder. ‘You can’t carry them,’ Zara tells Afrah, ‘and the two of us can’t. Wait for me. I’ll get help soon. Find a shelter for yourself.’

Zara hurriedly runs across their estate immediately she properly covers the bags of rice with all the clothes she gathered from their lines. After about ten minutes, she returns with two boys, ages ten and twelve. Their drenched body shows that they have been playing in the rain and they are enjoying it. ‘Who dropped these bags of rice here?’ the ten year old boy asks to nobody in particular. He adds: ‘That person must be very foolish.’ He drags ‘very’ so long as if by so doing he is indicating the extent of the person’s stupidity.

Afrah is not happy with that remark yet she sees sense in what the young boy is driving at. With that harsh criticism, she can’t tell her helpers that her father was actually the ‘very foolish’ man that dropped the bags of rice. He was in front of his gate and about to drive into his compound in the morning after a night-shift in his hospital when he got a distress call to attend to an emergency in the hospital. He bought the bags of rice as his Sallah gift for his daughter’s teachers, so he had to drop the bags in front of his gate, so that the school bus that will come to pick Afrah for school will carry the bags. It is after he left that the cloud changed, followed by the drizzling and then the rain. The school bus is not yet there and Afrah is still waiting for it. These are the things Afrah would have explained to the inquisitive boy if his question has been polite enough.

‘Don’t ask question,’ Zara urges the boy, ‘let’s take the rice away from rain first.’ The three teens started dragging one of the bags. Afrah sees that they are finding it difficult and goes to join them. ‘No!’ Zara shouts. ‘You’ll drench your school uniform.’

Her warning comes late because Afrah is already drenched. Zara brings up her face to look at her, Afrah has a happy glint across her face, as she joyfully draws the bag from one edge. Zara is not happy with how the rain has splashed dirt on the beautiful and stylishly ironed school uniform, but the joy she senses from the rich girl makes her to nod her approval.

They are through dragging the two bags to their corridor and away from rain and about to disperse to their various concerns when the ten years old boy says: ‘We are talking about the foolish man that left the bags of rice here, but the person that scattered all these clothes here have a degree in idiosyncrasy. It’s obvious that it’s a new word he picked from somewhere and he can’t tell the meaning, but the fact that idiosyncrasy sounds like idiot, he believes that it is a superlative for an idiot.

Afrah has heard one of her teachers use the word before. She still remembers that the teacher said, ‘My idiosyncrasy is that no student is a dullard.’ If the teacher had used the word in that context, Afrah knows that the teacher meant her believe or way of thinking. To hear a street boy use the term in an incongruent context makes her to remember what her class teacher calls an error of malapropism. She gives a mocking smile to the young boy mistakes for an acknowledgement of his highfalutin expression.

As Afrah looks at Zara and sees that she is sad. Afrah can’t bring herself to think that the rags before her can pass for somebody’s wears. She looks at Zara’s face again, her countenance has worsen, although she is fighting very hard not to make it obvious. Afrah’s eyes momentarily surveys the three children before her, what they are wearing are not different from the ones on the floor. The pictures of Zara running to meet her and spreading the clothes upon the bags of the rice flash into Afrah’s mind and she asks forcefully: ‘Are they yours?’

‘Your mother will kill you today?’ the twelve years old boy, who hasn’t said anything since they came to help says with a magnified seriousness to clearly emphasize on the kind of punishment that awaits Zara.

‘Won’t you leave her alone?’ the ten years old defends Zara.

‘Am I holding her? I can only imagine how she’ll be beating like a she-goat when Iya Pregnant will be decorating her buttocks with cane.’

‘You are a fool to think that!’ the ten years old boy says in a growing irritation, not because he can no longer hobnob with his friend’s sadism, but because he likes Zara and will like to use defending her to win her interest.

‘You are calling me a fool?’ the twelve years old boy queries in a harsh voice that indicates how he is deeply hurt. ‘If you repeat that, you won’t like what I’ll do to you.’

His threat carries fire, but the ten years old who is fighting for love is ready to build bride and cross hell to get to his object of interest. ‘What will you do?’ he asks the older boy in a matching seriousness. ‘Do you think because you are taller than me you can throw my back to the ground?’

‘I am older than you,’ the twelve years old warns.

‘If you think strength is by old age, cross this line.’ He uses his leg to draw an imaginary line on the floor. The older boy crosses the line. The ten years old draws another line and demands the older boy to also cross the line. The older boy is convinced that the younger one is no match to him in a fisticuff, so he crosses the line again. The younger boy keeps drawing a line and the older one keeps crossing the line. The two continue in that fashion until all of a sudden they forgot their quarrel and in ecstasy continue their play in the rain, leaving Zara behind.

Zara throws her face to ground. She is not crying, but the rain that falls on her seems to form tears for her eyes. She bends down and starts picking the clothes. They are not just her clothes, her mothers are also there. To make the matter worse, her mother had in mind to wear one of the clothes to market after the rain and that was why she hurried Zara to go and bring in the clothes immediately she saw a sign of rainfall.

‘You don’t need to pick them,’ Afrah says, ‘I’ll give you better ones.’ She starts making for their house and she hears the horn of her school bus driver urgently hooting for her. She runs towards the school bus, tells the driver to wait for her to change into another school uniform, before running back into their house. When she comes out, she has an umbrella that shelters her from the rain.

Zara eyes are fixed on her as she happily joins other children in the car. Zara tells herself that Afrah has forgotten to give her the better clothes she had promised her. She bends down and continues packing her drenched clothes.

Chapter Two

T his girl has killed me! Zara’s mother shouts in a heavy Pidgin English immediately she sees Zara enter their compound carrying the dirty wet clothes. ‘What will I wear to market now? I have no other clothes to wear, and that was why I told you to hurry and bring the clothes in before the rain. When someone will be telling you children of these days something, you will be looking into the person’s eyes as if you listen with eyes, and once the person is through talking, you’ll go and do what your head tells you. I blame myself for not going to bring in the clothes myself. But how can I have sixteen years old grown daughter like you and I’ll still be doing