SOLOMON'S BRIDGE {Part I}

NURUDEEN *23*

ZARIA, August, 2001

Zaria, is where he'd found solace after the horrible death of his parents, at that formative age of eleven. Here is the final resting place of his grandparents, the noble Alhaji Shamsudeen and Alhaja Zaria Bello. Here, is where he discovered and became attached to his fun loving maiden aunt, Amina Bello. Here, in Birnin Zaria, barely a stone throw away from the palace of the Emir, less than thirty minutes drive to Tudun Wada, where all the traditionalists still resided in adobe compounds. Here, flanked on all sides by hills and valleys and green meadows.

Before the death of his grandparents, Amina Bello had lived in the slums of Sabon Gari, where most of the southerners in the state were domiciled. He'd visited her there twice; the first time, out of curiosity to see who'd become the second Bello to be exiled and labelled an outcast by the fold, but the next time it was to seek out a fellow grieving partner for the duration of his grandparents burial rites. He'd found in her a liberal muslim woman, delighted by the simple things in life.

She'd taken him to see other neighbourhoods; Samaru, Danmagaji, Wusasa, Kongo, and Hanwa. Whatever he knew about his home town, he knew, courtesy of Amina Bello. Now, she lived here, under his authority, in this vast, fifty bedroom mansion at the end of the royal valley- previously, the estate of the one time Magaji of Lokofo Shinkalla, but now, property of the notorious Canaan city Rake, Dr. Nurudeen.

His dis-honourable, monstrous self.

The major-domo, Joshua Lar (an ex Muslim and necessary addition to his late grandpa's fanatical household,) opened the front doors before he alighted from the airport taxi with a wide grin on his fatty face, "Welcome home sir!"

"Hello Josh. Please take my blasted things to my room. How are you?"

He'd traveled light. Joshua grabbed the overnight duffel bag with one hand and swung it onto his shoulder, "Fine sir, no problem..."

Which was contrary to what his aunt had said in her letter. "And...Amina?"

He found her in the inner courtyard. Her, and about fifty other children.

"Children," she was saying, "last week, we learned that Amina of Zazzau (Zazzau which we call Zaria today,) was a great Nigerian warrior queen, who expanded the territories of the Hausa people of North Africa to the largest borders in history. Who can recall what else we discussed about her?"

He'd forgotten she'd been a history teacher in her hay days. His eyes scanned the hallway. From the looks of things, she was turning his inheritance into a vocational school centre.

The children sat on long padded benches facing a big white writing board. Because they faced her, they didn't see him stroll along the corridor, and for a while, neither could she. Either she was getting too old, or she was engrossed in queen Amina's exploits.

Something she' d drummed into him as a young man, only, three dozen times or so.

"Aunty me!"

"No, aunty, pick me!"

"Um; let's hear Fatima," she called, and the enthusiastic sea of hands dropped. A dark little midget of a girl stood up. He leaned against a stout white pillar, not surprised to see boys on one side of the open enclave, and the girls on the other, a gloomy gray marble aisle demarcating the sexes. This was Zaria. He was, however, surprised at the large turn out of children-especially the little boys whose parents didn't seem to mind that they'd be coached by a spinster old woman. Zaria was changing.

"Aunty," said the shy girl, "-we read on the internet on the-the-wall screen pro-pro-projector? -Ok, that, four hundred years after- which is now- the legend of her per-per-persona? -Ok, has become the model for a popular television series in America, called Xena!" Applause erupted from the sea of hands.