Free Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

dried tear-tracks on Ummi’s face.
    â€˜There is a pair of men’s shoes outside.’ Fa’iza ushered in a stream of sunlight as she held up the curtains.
    Keeping as far away from Fa’iza as she could manage, Binta hurried across to her room, locked the door, lit two sticks of incense and watched the alluring smoke curling up to the ceiling. But the unmistakable miasma of sin still prevailed. So she lit two more sticks and then headed to the bathroom to wash away her indiscretions.

    The sun was a russet glow on the western horizon as Reza returned to San Siro. The noise and the pungent smell of weed greeted him from beyond the makeshift fence of roofing sheets that formed a curtain between San Siro and the thriving market that surrounded it. Reza stood by the entrance and looked at the dozen or so young men crowded into the small confines, some lifting weights, others smoking weed in the corner. On the veranda, by the four shops that had been converted to rooms, young girls sat, ogling the men, gossiping, giggling while pretending to be minding the cheap noodles swimming in palm oil or the sun-beaten, almost-expired alale and the danwake they were vending. Farther away, near the crude toilet hemmed in by the fence andthe pile of yellow jerrycans that some of the boys used for their black market trade in petrol, Reza saw a boy fondling one of the foodsellers, who was laughing like a hyena.
    Apart from the residents – the five or six people who had called San Siro home for years – there were many others who came for weed, or the other intoxicants sold on the sly.
    â€˜Aha, Reza is here. Ask him.’
    Babawo Gattuso jumped up from the worn jerrycan on which he had been sitting and was instantly at Reza’s side. ‘Reza, how many times has Milan won the Champions League? How many times?’
    All eyes turned to Reza.
    â€˜Seven.’
    A raucous uproar greeted his statement. Some of the boys beat on empty jerrycans and whooped derisively.
    â€˜I told you, I told you, you ass!’ Gattuso’s voice rose above the noise. ‘You don’t know anything and you want to argue. When did you even start watching football, dan iska ?’
    â€˜You are the ass, you idiot!’ Joe shouted. He was a lanky fellow who wore a flat cap drawn low over one eye. When he first came to San Siro he had said that he was a student somewhere but he was drunk so often that no one was certain which school he was supposed to be attending, or even where he came from. He assimilated into San Siro until he became a fixture, like the mould on the walls.
    Reza looked around him at the excited young men shouting, at those in the corners smoking pot and sniffing glue, at the boy in the corridor pawing at the breasts of one of the vagrant hawkers. ‘What’s the argument about exactly?’
    A melee rose up in response. Reza tried to make sense of it but could not. He soon lost interest and tried to slip through the crowd of eager faces.
    â€˜Man U for life!’ Dogo, one of the residents, shouted impulsively. His real name was Musa Danlami and he had been living at San Siro since his mother, tired of his thievery, cursed him and sent him out to the street. He had the knack for turning up at meal times, or just when his mother had put away some money for his siblings’ school fees, only to disappear with the money afterwards. It was said that he got his sense of timing from his father, anitinerant labourer, who turned up every other year to get his wife pregnant and disappear again ‘in pursuit of wealth’.
    Joe looked at him and hissed. ‘You know, Dogo, you are a goat, I swear to God.’
    â€˜Man U for life, dan uban mutum ! Useless drunk. You stink of beer and your words smell like shit, bastard dog!’
    Joe would have hit him but was restrained by Dan Asabe, the carpenter.
    â€˜You romancing me or what, faggot? Get your hands off me, dan daudu !’
    Dan Asabe