No Longer Friends

By Azeeza Adeowu

I never cried after Aisha and I broke up. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons I haven’t completely healed. To accept that I’m hurt and let my body feel the pain, to shove it through my eyes and cry till I’m exhausted is a form of clarity that allows me to move on.

Sometimes, it felt like I had finally moved on, and then one memory would spring up, or I would see someone dressed like her and I was back to square one, back to asking what-ifs and wondering if I should call her.

We weren’t lovers. Aisha and I; we were friends, and I think it was my hesitation to accept that friends are lovers too that left me sore for a long time. When I broke up with Khalil and Yemi and Tunde, it was easy for people to understand my pain, to empathize with me, send their awwws, and don’t worrys, you deserve better.

 But with friendships, it’s different. We rarely discuss the friends that left our lives, whose lives we left with the same passion and mourning we accord to ex lovers. And that was why I couldn’t acknowledge my heartbreak. I couldn’t understand why a friend leaving my life could be so painful, even after years. I couldn’t understand the pain. I couldn’t accept I was heartbroken because heartbreak felt like something too much to feel over a friend, as though heartbreak was only exclusive to romantic relationships.

And now, after 2 years of not being friends, Aisha was getting married. I was not her Best Girl, but that didn’t hurt as much as not knowing who she was marrying; that didn’t hurt as much as not knowing anything about her anymore.

∞∞∞

I met Aisha in 200 level. I had seen her around a few times, but that day, she had come to market her handmade earrings in our room. She wore a black Abaya and rolled a pink scarf over her head like it was an afterthought. I told her her earrings were pretty, but I didn’t have money on me.

‘No problem. You can have them. I come to the hostel often. Just give me when you have it,” she said. She was pretty, with long eyelashes I didn’t believe were real at first and a perfectly symmetrical face that always wore a smile.

We exchanged numbers. I saved her as Earring Girl because I had 4 other Aishas on my contact list. We met the next day, in her apartment off-campus. I was with the money, and I wanted to buy 2 more pairs, one for my sister Feeya and another for my mom.

I didn’t leave right after I made the purchase. I asked where she learned to make earrings. She learned from her mother’s friend. She knew how to do other things too: make hair, sew clothes, make Ankara bags, crochet anything, even bras. She told me she didn’t intend to make a business out of her skills, she was just trying her luck when she made her first set of earrings, but surprisingly, she sold all 20 of them in 2 days.

I told her nothing was surprising about it; her smile was alone to convince people to buy whatever she was selling.

From earrings, we moved to school and the upcoming exams and how we couldn’t wait to leave the university for a freer life, a life without exams.

For 3 years, her name remained ‘Earring Girl’ on my phone except for the pink love emoji I later placed in front of it to signify my love for her, then 2 love emojis, then 3. It was a weird name, but it felt like an endearment, not for being a talented earring maker but a pet name only I called her. Every time, Aisha would complain about the name, “Isma, when will you change my name?” but she loved it. She was like a lover who complains about being ticklish, hoping the tickles won’t stop.

Later, Aisha would tell me she realized something had happened to us when I changed her name from Earring Girl to Aisha.

 ∞∞∞

She sent me the Invitation Card via WhatsApp. February 10, 2019. Our last conversation was dated August 14, 2018, when I commented about how grown Rafiah was since the last time I saw her.

“Lol, she will soon be bigger than me sef.” That was her last message before she sent me the IV followed with a note I suspected was a Broadcast message, sent to up to 30 more people on her contact list. Aisha was getting married, and I heard through a Broadcast message. I didn’t know how to reply. I was hurt and angry, and I didn’t know if feeling that way was valid. We were no longer friends after all.

 I was glad my read receipt was off; it was easy to pretend I hadn’t seen it yet.

She called me before I could reply, saving me from the hard work of sending “congratulations” and “wow,” when what I would have preferred to say was, ‘Aisha, so this is how bad it has become, we are really no longer friends?’

When she called, I was in an Uber coming from Jevinik with a bowl of Afang I had been craving for a month now. 

“My friennnd.” She said in a soft voice, almost like an apology, and it almost sent me to tears. That was what she used to call me whenever she was about to shower me with compliments, disapprove of my opinion without sounding like she’s judging me or beg for something, like follow her to read in class till 5 am, prepare my special palm oil rice or walk all the way to Yahuza for Suya in the middle of the night when there was a Maisuya right in front of her house.

“Aisha,” I said, trying to be casual, trying to pretend it didn’t hurt we hadn’t heard each other’s voices in 2 years? “What’s up?”

“I’m getting married,” she responded. She sighed or smiled, I was not sure, “it’s in April.”

“Wow, congratulations! Barakallahu Feek.”

 “I want you to come, please.”

There was a pause. Outside, an okada man had forced his way through a Danfo and a Benz in the traffic. He left scratches, and they won’t let him go.

“I..I don’t know…It depends..” I shrugged. “Let me call you back, Aisha. I’m on the road. It’s loud.”

“If you can, please come. It would mean the world to me.”

The Benz man returned to his car. The Danfo man and Okada man were still arguing.  “Even person wey get Benz sef don forget the matter, but common yellow bus, you wan delay everybody,” I heard someone say outside.

∞∞∞

Aisha was kind. I used to tease her by calling her PureHeart. She was intentional about being kind in the way you imagine people passionate about their skincare or me about looking good. It was a virtue she held dearly. She had routines; daily routines, weekly routines, checklists she set up just to make people smile. I had never seen anything like that.

Every Saturday, she collected Hijabs and wrappers from the mosque, washed them so that women whose dresses weren’t solat worthy could wear something clean to pray.

There was a vagrant opposite the school gate she gave money every month. There was a time she made a crotchet dress for my coursemate’s baby. She had come to my lecture theatre that day, seen the cute baby, and boom, Aisha promised to bring her a gift.

It was so easy for her to be kind that she couldn’t understand why anyone would choose unkindness. She didn’t know how to quarrel or fight. She gave undeserving people second chances.

If you ask, she gave. It was so easy for her. She gave out her blue Jalabiya to a neighbour who said it looked pretty, shared her last 500 with the 2 little hungry girls who knocked on her door, offering to wash her plates and clothes and clean the whole room for 100 naira. Aisha handed them 400 naira and told them she didn’t need their help, then took a 70 naira bike to the hostel to report herself to me.

“I just pitied them. They looked so hungry,” she said. I was making Indomie for us, and she was sitting in front of my room, watching me cook.

“You give out everything, even Prophet no do reach like this,” I said. I tore the seasoning open with my teeth. “You don’t know how to say no. You’re too kind, Aisha.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“Sometimes, it feels like it is. Like, you try hard to please everyone, anyone.” I covered the pot, faced her; she looked hurt. I quickly added, “Like someone can just say, Aisha, dash me Isma for I’m friendless and you have many other friends and then pufff, you dash me to a stranger.”

She laughed so loud.

One of our fights was about ‘kindness,” too.  Hannie came to borrow a bag, and a scarf, and Aisha gave them to her. The last bag she lent her was never returned because she claimed someone stole it; the last scarf she borrowed was returned in bad shape. The lace trimming half torn, and the multitude of stones remained just a few.

I told Aisha that sometimes I saw her kindness as her wanting to be liked, wanting to please everyone; even people who didn’t deserve it. People saw her kindness as weakness, and people like Hannie only came back to her because they knew she was easy.

Aisha argued that people like Hannie deserved second chances because she wouldn’t want to repeat the same mistakes.

“You don’t know people,” I said

I made a mistake comparing her to women whose husbands maltreated, who continued to clean his shoes even though he kicked them with the same shoes the night before, hoping their niceness would change a wicked man.

Aisha didn’t find it funny.

Aisha and I were two different people. We were so close we barely saw how we stood and believed in different things. Thinking about it now, I think we were just scared to acknowledge our differences, afraid accepting we were different would ruin us.

And then, our differences started to seep out, like a growing fetus, it became difficult to hide, it became difficult not to feel something had changed.  Once, she was with a group of friends discussing Hijab and a girl in their department who had stopped wearing it. We were seated in front of her room, and she blurted, “how can you argue that Hijab isn’t part of Iman? I really dislike it when people who don’t wear Hijab start arguing about Quran verses as if the thousands of Muslim women who wear it are too dumb to read and translate.”

Aisha and I had never really sat to discuss why I didn’t wear Hijab or why I questioned the existence of God. She never questioned my beliefs. The day I had argued about the misinterpretation of some Quran verses like the verse about Hijab and the verse about men being protectors of women, she hadn’t countered me. Instead, she said, “Allah knows best.”

I wonder why she didn’t argue with me, why she didn’t tell me then that she disliked people who challenged the Quran’s translation. I also wondered if she was referring to me when she said ‘people’. I didn’t ask her about it, but it became harder and harder not to acknowledge our differences. She thought I was trying too hard to be liberal, be Western, adopting beliefs just because they were “cool.” I thought she was too conservative, stuck in an outdated world. We avoided topics like feminism, marriage, sexuality, God, even Islam because we had disagreeing opinions. We were afraid to argue with each other, afraid to throw each other’s views at each other’s faces. So we hung to the rope of our friendship, straying far from difficult conversations that could threaten its strength—hoping that holding different opinions about matters was too silly a thing to break a friendship like ours. And that was the problem; it wasn’t just matters or opinions to Aisha. It was her life.

“I feel like you disapprove of my life. Why are we even friends? You wish I wasn’t religious. You wish I could hold opinions similar to yours. You find every opportunity to complain about Islam, about God, about women like me, right in front of me! You are my friend, but you don’t like people like me? It doesn’t make any sense.” That was her statement during our big fight. I hadn’t seen Aisha that angry, and I couldn’t believe I would be the one to make her angry.

∞∞∞

I later reached out to Aisha and told her I would make it to the wedding. She told me the dress code was onion purple, but I could wear anything.

The day before I was to travel, Aisha called to ask when I would be coming so Awwal could come to pick me up from the car park. I told her not to worry, I would take a taxi to get to the hotel then visit her before the day ended.

“Hotel? Haba Isma. You have a house here.”

“It would be weird. I don’t know your friends.”

“Only 1 of my friends will be here, besides you know me.”

“Do I?”

She didn’t hear me, or she pretended not to hear, “what did you say?”

“Nothing”

“And you know Rafiah and Jibril and Awwal,” those are her siblings, “and you know my mom.”

“Okay, Aisha.”

“So you’re coming then?” she exclaimed happily. “I’m so happy.”

The last time I was here, I remember Aisha had had an argument with her dad. He said Aisha was changing from what he used to know. I was in Aisha’s room. They were in the sitting room, and he had mentioned how she needed friends that would guide her to the straight path. Friends who weren’t wayward, who dressed and behaved like Muslims, and who would help her strengthen her iman.

I didn’t hear the beginning of the argument, but I heard him say, “next thing, you too will replace your hijab with pink hair.”

I was on pink braids then. It never occurred to me that her dad had a problem with our friendship or my way of life or my pink hair.

Aisha came to the room, crying. I asked what happened, and she said it was ’just an argument,’ and couldn’t wait to get married and be finally out of the house. I told her parents can be annoying, and with what I’ve seen, husbands could even be more annoying.

“At least, I can speak back at my husband, I can call his shit out,” she said. I nodded, not in agreement.

She stopped crying, we went to buy suya, ate it at the spot, and never mentioned what her dad said about pink hairs and wayward friends.

Now, back in this house, nothing had changed except the curtains. I think they were green before or olive, and now they were brown. The large frame showing a picture of Mecca was still on the wall, the bookshelf beneath the Mecca frame was still there, and I could swear the books’ positions were the same as the last time I was here.

I greeted Aisha’s dad and mom on my two knees.  They missed me, they said, I forgot about them and my friend since I moved back to Lagos after my service. They prayed for me too, “as Allah did it for your friend, he shall do yours too. You too shall get to complete half of your deen…”

Before they could finish the prayers, Aisha jumped out, screaming my name. She jumped on me for a hug, but I lost balance, and we both fell to the ground, laughing.

∞∞∞

Like old times, we shared her bed. I showered, and she offered me her pajamas even though I had mine. I didn’t know how it worked, but I wondered why her clothes were still here rather than her husband’s house. Would she leave her clothes here or pack them to her new home after the ceremony? I didn’t know. This bothered me a lot, but I didn’t know how to ask her.

We tried to fit in 3 years of conversations in one night, it was as if we were having a funeral for our friendship. Speaking of the fun times and the silly times with the aching realization that we would never have times like again.

I asked about her husband. He was a soldier, that scared me. But she wasn’t because he worked in the office, not at war fronts. He was 11 years older than her and had a 5-year-old son his wife birthed before her death.

She showed me his pictures. He looked kind, not like a soldier.

I think of marriage as some kind of prison you go to after living on your terms. The way it’s set up, the restrictions, and the sudden changes. I couldn’t wrap my head around having my identity stripped off, having to dress a certain way, speak a certain way, friends with certain people, waiting on my spouse hand and foot. On one occasion, when Aisha and I mistakenly talked about marriage, I told her this, and she told me my parents’ marriage wasn’t the reality of other marriages. Her statement hurt me, but I let it go.

“You love him?” I asked

She was taken aback as if it just occurred to her that love is an ingredient needed to make a marriage. She told me no one had asked her that question before me. Knowing Aisha, she probably believed in love after marriage, but she told me she loved him.

“He’s a very good man. He is just what I prayed for, Isma, so uncanny. Like God really answered my prayers,” Aisha said, squeezing my two hands.

Someone walked into the room without knocking. It was Rafiah. She came to announce Aisha’s attention was needed outside.

That night, Aisha and I sang and danced and hugged each other and held each other’s hands. We refused to mention our big fight, afraid to reopen old wounds. We were content with the moment, it was easy to pretend our fallout was because of the distance between the cities we lived in and not how we hurt each other.

“So many times, I wanted to call you. Didn’t know how we grew apart,” she told me before we slept. She told me she once cried about us. That she wanted so badly to talk to someone and I was the only one who came to mind, and she didn’t know how to call me because we hadn’t spoken in 2 years. I told her I was like that too, many times.

That night, I cried, quiet enough not to disturb the sleeping bride.  My tears, I wasn’t sure if it was from the heartbreak I never healed from or the uncertainty of what our friendship now meant. A possibility of new beginnings or was tonight the last rites?

∞∞∞∞

We had the big fight during our service year. Aisha’s dad had helped me work my posting to Abuja, and I wanted Abuja primarily because I would be closer to Aisha.

It was shortly after the pink hair incident. She came over to my apartment, and I tried to encourage her to sleep over, that I was the only one sleeping over at her place.

“That’s if your dad will allow you sha,” I said, hoping it would serve as some sort of challenge that would encourage her to stay.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“I know he doesn’t like me like that.”

“It’s not that Isma; he’s like that with everyone. Even his children.”

I told her I heard about the pink hair; she said she knew. I was surprised. “You knew, and you didn’t think to apologize about how his words hurt me?”

“You didn’t tell me his words hurt you.”

“Oh my God, Aisha. Are you kidding?” I couldn’t believe she was disingenuous at that point. How could she say she didn’t know his words hurt me?

I told her I hate the way I had to tiptoe around her parents, around her other friends, around her, questioning if I was good enough, religious enough to be in her circle, to be her friend. I told her I wonder if she saw me as a friend or the misguided girl whom she needed to pick up as one of her ‘kindness’ projects, to help to the right path.

I don’t remember how it escalated, but it did, right after she said I disapproved of her life and asked why we were friends.

I called her Miss Goody two shoes; she called me miserable looking for who to drag to her company. I called her a bitch, and she said, “Wallahi, if this is what being a bitch is, I’d choose it a million times over the life you live. You think dating all the men, calling yourself agnostic, trying to be woke is that life? You think your life is that life?” She laughed, a mocking laugh that made me lost for words.

Then I told her to get out of my house, the house she had helped me scout and rent. There are things you can’t forget no matter how much you try, and that moment was one of them. Aisha condemning my life, Aisha yelling at me and slamming the door with a loud sound that screamed ‘The End.’

When she called the next day, I didn’t pick. When I called back a week later, she ignored it.

Sometimes, I sit to think of how different things could have gone that day if I didn’t suggest she stayed over or if I picked her call the next day. Maybe we would still be friends pretending our differences got nothing on our friendship or perhaps something else would have happened, causing me to call Aisha a Bitch and her asking if I think my life is that life.

Even now, it’s that statement that haunts me. Every now and then, a tiny voice would whisper, “Isma, you think your life is that life?” and I would feel like I was indeed a miserable person living a miserable life.

∞∞∞

Aisha looked so glorious at her wedding. She looked like an Indian bride with jewelry round her head, nose, ears, neck, fingers, and wrist. Her hands were decorated with henna that reminded me of Rihanna’s tattoo, and I wished the henna would stay forever on her hands, never fading off. She wore a flowery purple dress embellished with sparkling stones and ornaments. My favourite thing was the veil that flowed to the floor, with her face almost hidden from where I sat. A shy bride and a Groom in military uniform, a sight I didn’t know could well sweet tingling emotions in my body.

During the dance, Aisha located me where I was taking her pictures from every angle I could as though I were the hired photographer.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said, “Earring Girl,” I tapped her bell earrings.

She smiled, then dragged me to the dancefloor, her hands around my neck; I knew she could see my tears stinging.

“Isma, I’m happy,” she said. “I swear, I’m not lying. I’m doing this for me. Don’t worry about me.”

I smiled. She wasn’t just talking about the moment, she was talking about the impending happiness the marriage would bring.

So like Aisha, to reassure me of her happiness on a day when everyone could see she’s happy. So like me to doubt her happiness on a day everyone assumed she’s happy.

“My friennnd,” Isma added, “I promise to call if you need to worry.”

 

Azeeza Adeowu is a storyteller based in Nigeria. Some of her works have been featured on websites like Amaliah, Brittle Paper, Hikaayat, African Writers and Muslim Girl. You can find her on her blog where she rants, fangirls and writes her opinions on thezyzah.wordpress.com.