The End of the Beginning

Habibah; update from the tales of A Bed of Thorns and Redemption Plan…

After Habibah’s plan to keep her husband’s love and attention safely on her alone failed, the already horrible situation became worse. Her husband completely stopped sleeping in their matrimonial home. He now sleeps in the house he gave to the new wife he brought home who is even now pregnant for him. He stopped eating her food as well. Meanwhile, he barely provides food for Habibah and her children while he lavishes this new wife with varieties of food.

She continued to bear it as she had been doing right from the beginning of the marriage with hopes of a miraculous change.

One afternoon, Habibah’s husband’s new wife walked into their matrimonial home. Before she stepped into the compound, Habibah’s step-daughter (the child from the man’s late first wife) was having a conversation with a friend of hers, and while at it, she hissed. It was in that moment that the new wife entered the compound, and she instantly concluded that she was being hissed at by her husband’s daughter. They argued about it for a moment before this new wife pounced on the little girl. Habibah heard the rancor and came out only to find her husband’s new wife on her step-daughter.

Habibah quickly separated the fight, telling the new wife that she should not be fighting in her pregnant condition, and immediately, the new wife started to rain insults on Habibah. They started exchanging insults, calling each other prostitutes and the likes, and spectators gathered around them to feed their ears.

In the evening, when Habibah’s husband returned from work, his new wife sat him down and fed him with lies about the day’s occurrence. She told Habibah’s husband that Habibah joined forces with his daughter to beat her mercilessly. Enraged, Habibah’s husband stormed into his abandoned matrimonial home and beat the hell out of his daughter, leaving Habibah out.

The next morning, he went back again and started calling out to Habibah, asking her to come out and see the damage she had done on his precious wife by laying her hands on her. Habibah ignored her husband. Then he entered the house and dragged her outside insisting that she must go and see how weak his new wife was due to the beatings they gave her the previous day.

Still, Habibah made no move to go.

When she went back inside, she realized that her husband had forgotten his phone on their living room table when he entered the house to drag her. Then Habibah took the phone and gave it to her friend to hide it as a way of punishing her husband. When her husband came back again after realizing that he had forgotten his phone, Habibah denied seeing it.

He pounced on her then and started beating her, and when he was not satisfied, he took a shovel and began to hit her with it. Neighbors and passersby gathered in the compound again to watch the wrestling match where only Habibah’s husband was doing the beating. Mind you, this was early in the morning when responsible and peaceful people got dressed and went to work to earn a living for the day. After they managed to pull Habibah’s husband away from her, he started to spew cuss words on. Then after wards, he took Habibah’s children to a friend of his and kept them there.

Habibah still got dressed and went to her workplace; a place where she was being paid the meager sum of ten thousand naira monthly.

At work, Habibah called her step-daughter and gave her instructions to go to her friend’s house to retrieve the phone for her. When the girl handed Habibah the phone, she discovered that her husband’s ATM card was tucked in between the phone and its pouch, and fortunately for her, she knew his card pin. Quickly, Habibah took the card to a POS attendant and asked her to check the account balance with the card. Somehow, the account balance refused to come up, and not wanting to waste much time, Habibah asked the attendant to withdraw five thousand naira for her.

It worked.

Seeing that it worked, which meant money was in the account, she asked that another five thousand naira be withdrawn from the account, and to her surprise, it worked again. Then she proceeded to ten thousand naira.

And it worked!

She tried for another ten thousand naira but the POS attendant informed her that the account was now reading insufficient funds. Habibah asked her to try for five thousand naira again, and it worked. So the money she withdrew from her husband’s account that day was twenty-five thousand naira altogether. She also went ahead and sold some of her belongings out to add to the money she withdrew.

When the man found out about the withdrawals, he ranted and cursed and demanded for his money, but Habibah paid him no mind, especially after she had called her family and explained everything to them, and this time around, they stood by her side.

Her husband had no idea that Habibah was done being the foolish wife.

The next morning, after her husband had gone to work, Habibah went to the house he kept her children, hired a vehicle and moved back home to her village in Kogi State. Her family welcomed her with open arms, and her father declared that the marriage was over.

Habibah’s husband requested to have her children back to Abuja with him, but Habibah and her father stood their grounds and they refused to give the children to him; let him focus on his new wife whom he claims to love with all his heart and the child they are expecting together.

Currently, Habibah is back to Abuja while she left her kids in the care of her parents. She is staying with a family friend somewhere far away from her husband’s vicinity, and she is working tooth and nail to raise money to complete her education since she has just one year left to round off schooling.