FreeFreeDescription
Line-by-Line
Today, I put on a level of glamour and makeup that I hadn't done in a very long time. My entire house was filled with a beautiful, pristine fragrance. My own body smelled so heavy with scent that I honestly lost count of the number of traditional humra oils, body incenses, fabric perfumes, and fragrant smoke-pots (turaren tsugunno) that I had thoroughly layered onto my body, inside and out.
I had specifically invited a professional makeup artist to come over with her cosmetic kit to work on my face, and I paid her a substantial amount of money. In fact, I had already spent the entire day at a beauty salon getting intricate henna skin-designs (qunshi) and fresh hair braiding (kitso).
The elegant lace gown (leshi) I wore was actually the one I bought for the recent Eid celebration; I hadn't been able to wear it back then because I was completely bogged down by the messy task of deep-frying the festive meat.
Furthermore, I loaded the dining table with the absolute finest selection of food and drinks that my husband loves most in this world: fresh homemade banana milkshakes, a vibrant fruit salad, a spicy offal pepper-soup (farfesu kayan ciki), and a beautifully prepared fried rice.
I made all of these elaborate arrangements strictly for the master of my home, the absolute love of my life, Usman. Today, I was completely renewing our eight-year-old marriage; anyone walking in would swear I was a fresh bride of only eight days.
I deliberately sent the children to their rooms to play, keeping them there until they eventually drifted off to sleep. I absolutely did not want them messing up my spotless living room or interrupting our romantic evening. I had carefully rehearsed the beautiful words I was going to whisper into his ear, as well as the romantic things I wanted to tell him while looking directly into his eyes.
I went over to the mirror and studied my reflection. I swear, even the most bitter hater would have no choice but to admire me. Today, I was undeniably beautiful—beyond beautiful, honestly. I spun around to view myself from the front and back, placed my hands on my hips, and practiced various runway walks—modeling back and forth like a literal fashion model on a Parisian catwalk. After all, I am naturally tall, slender, and exceptionally fair-skinned—praise be to Allah. My husband always praises my figure, comparing it to the perfect slimness of spaghetti; even after giving birth to four children, I have absolutely no belly fat.
At exactly 8:30 PM, I heard the living room doorbell ring. I knew with absolute certainty that the king who rules the absolute empire of my heart had finally arrived—my dear Usman. Fluttering with excitement, I glided over with a rhythmic, seductive sway to open the door for him.
I batted my eyelashes provocatively, angling my face so he could fully appreciate the long extensions and the flawless eyeshadow.
In a soft, sultry voice, I cooed, "The pride of my life, welcome home..."
Before the words could even fully leave my mouth, the entire narrative violently flipped. Within a single second, I was completely ripped out of my reality. I felt myself violently launched into a dizzying, spinning world where my head felt down and my feet felt up. My hearing and vision instantly cut out, my mind went completely blank, and a searing, throbbing agony instantly consumed the entire right side of my face. The next thing I knew, I was no longer standing at the door; I found myself crumpled on the floor in the far corner of the room, as if I had been physically hurled across space. Clutching my burning cheek, I sat in stunned, absolute silence, gently rubbing it.
As it turned out, he had unleashed a ferocious, earth-shattering slap across my face with the massive palm of his hand.
Now, I wasn't entirely shocked by his anger, because deep down, I knew the massive offense I had committed against him. However, I was utterly paralyzed with shock that Usman would actually lift his hand to physically strike my body. In the past, I had committed offenses against him that were twice as severe as this one, yet he had never once shown even a hint of aggression or threatened to slap me.
"What on earth is happening right now? Is everything okay? Or am I locked inside a horrific nightmare?" I frantically questioned my own heart.
But this was no dream—it was a brutal reality. I could see Usman approaching me with an expression of pure rage. He raised his hand high, fully preparing to repeat that devastating slap for a second time.
This time around, I wasn't going to let it happen. The first slap caught me completely off guard, which was the only reason he succeeded in catching my face wide open and doing what he did. I instantly leaped to the side, ducked my head down, and curled into a defensive ball. I let out a piercing shriek, yelling, "Don't you dare slap me again! You married a wife, not a slave!"
When I didn't feel the impact of a second blow, a heavy silence filled the room. This caused me to quickly look up to see what had stopped him in his tracks.
What my eyes witnessed hurt significantly more than any physical slap ever could. It was an image so deeply agonizing that I immediately began praying to Allah to never, ever show me its likeness again, even in a nightmare. Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un (To Allah we belong, and to Him we shall return). I was completely shaken, utterly terrified, and filled with an instant self-loathing. I would have preferred for Usman to spend the entire night slapping me a hundred times over rather than witness what unfolded right before my eyes.
There was my neighbor, Mufidah Ansar—an unmarried, voluptuous single woman and a fully qualified corporate lawyer. She was dressed in highly provocative sleepwear: a loose, flowing white nightgown that barely reached her knees. To make matters worse, the short gown featured a daring slit running all the way up her thigh. Because the material was entirely sheer and see-through, she wore absolutely no underwear underneath; every single line and curve of her body was fully, visibly, and provocatively on display.
She had firmly grabbed my husband's raised wrist, stopping him mid-air from slapping me. Her face was contorted with absolute anger, matching the fiery rage on his face. For what felt like an eternity, they stood frozen, locked in an intense, unwavering eye contact. She refused to release his arm, and he was too paralyzed with utter shock to violently wrench his hand away.
Both of them were panting heavily, huffing like enraged bulls. But while their heavy breathing was fueled by sheer anger and adrenaline, from my perspective, it looked like the heated, intimate heavy breathing of two people completely wrapped up in each other's physical presence.
"Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un!" I screamed out loud as I scrambled to my feet, charging forward in a blind, furious panic, desperately trying to break up this physical entanglement.
I lunged directly at Mufidah with the sole intention of aggressively shoving her away from my husband's body. At that exact moment, Usman attempted to swing a massive, heavy-handed slap at me for the second time. In a frantic bid to shield me, Mufidah attempted to shove him back while maintaining her iron grip on his arm. In the chaotic scramble, the two of them slammed violently against one another—chest completely pressed against chest, thigh explicitly rubbing against thigh. A wild, chaotic wrestling match erupted right in front of me. He was forcefully struggling to break past her to beat me, while she—acting under the guise of being my heroic savior—locked herself entirely around him. They became thoroughly entangled, their bodies completely mixing and blending together as they grabbed wrists and pushed back and forth against one another. I silently begged Allah to never let me witness such a sight again. This supposed "rescue" did absolutely nothing for me; it merely plunged me into a far worse catastrophe. I would have infinitely preferred the physical pain of a severe beating from my husband over the psychological torture of seeing him wrapped up so intimately, body-to-body, with another woman.
Letting out a ferocious, animalistic roar, I grabbed hold of Mufidah and pulled with all my might, desperately trying to hurl her to the side so she would stop grappling with my husband. However, in the heat of the chaos, Mufidah completely misinterpreted my physical grab; she assumed I was clinging to her out of sheer terror, using her body as a protective shield to find safety from my rampaging husband.
Consequently, she yelled out, "Ahmad's mother, do not worry! I will not allow him to lay another finger on you! Run into the bedroom right now and lock the door!"
I shouted back at the top of my lungs, "Run into the bedroom to go where?! Leave him alone to kill me if he wants—he is my husband!"
At this point, the three of us became completely tangled together in a chaotic, suffocating heap. Mufidah was locked squarely in the middle between us. I was pulling at her with everything I had, trying to pry her away from my husband, while Usman kept reaching over her shoulders to swing blows at me, with Mufidah desperately intercepting his swings and locking his arms down.
During the frantic struggle, her hair wrap slipped completely off, revealing a breathtaking cascade of soft, silky natural hair that flowed all the way down to the nape of her neck—deeply black, incredibly thick, and long. Looking closely at Usman's eyes, I watched his gaze drop instantly to admire her hair. A fresh wave of pure, unadulterated jealousy flooded my soul, granting me a sudden surge of supernatural physical strength. I bit my lip, overpowered her, and violently yanked Mufidah away, shoving her forcefully toward the front door.
Panting heavily, I yelled at her, "Get out of here! Leave me alone and let him kill me! Let him take my life—he is my husband!"
Mufidah, completely oblivious to my true motives, genuinely believed that my explosive outbursts were simply driven by extreme emotional heartbreak over my husband's violence—assuming I was so distraught that I was literally inviting death. She had absolutely no idea that what she was physically doing to my husband felt a thousand times more painful to my soul than any slap he could ever deliver.
With immense effort, I managed to shove her completely out into the corridor, slammed the heavy door shut, turned the key, and locked it from the inside.
I left her out there in the hallway, where she began pounding furiously on the wood, shouting, "Ahmad's mother, don't do this! A woman's physical strength can never match a man's! He could severely injure you or even kill you! Open this door right now!"
Inside the apartment, Usman violently ripped his leather belt off his trousers. He grabbed me roughly by the back of my neck and growled, "Get your self into the bedroom right now! Today, I am going to make sure your afterlife is far more comfortable than your reality! Tomorrow, even if you are completely blinded by intoxication, if anyone tells you to cross the line into my professional life, you will think twice before doing it! Look at the absolute disaster you have brought upon me today—I am on the absolute verge of losing the very job I rely on to preserve my dignity and feed this family!"
From outside, Mufidah’s voice boomed through the door: "I swear by Allah, Usman, if you cause a single injury to that woman, I will personally represent her in a court of law and ensure she gets full legal justice! Don't you dare think that just because she is your wife, you can abuse her tyrannically and get away with it! You worthless man who doesn't possess an ounce of respect for women! I will personally teach you that a woman is not an object to be degraded! Release her and open this door right now!"
I, however, was screaming and screeching back at her through the locked door, yelling, "Leave him to kill me if he wants! He is my husband!"
The simple reality was that I wasn't angry at my husband at all—she was the absolute source of my blind fury.
Usman, completely pushed over the edge, shot a murderous glare toward the door where she was shouting and roared back, "Don't you dare hold back from taking me to court! Go ahead and ensure they lock me up in prison—it's not like you were the one who married this woman off to me anyway! Stay out of my family business and get away from my doorstep!"
In a sudden, desperate burst of jealousy, I lunged forward like a wild animal, wrapped my arms tightly around Usman’s neck, and literally began choking him.
I screamed into his face, "Tell me right now why you allowed that cheap, shameless woman Mufidah to wrap herself all over you like that?! Your betrayal has literally walked itself straight into my home, right in front of my very eyes! I swear by Allah, we are either going to kill each other right here today, or I will never live to see you entangled with another woman again!"
Furious and gasping for air, he violently pried my fingers away from his throat with great difficulty. It was clear that my physical grip had severely shaken him; his eyes were literally bulging out of his skull from the force of the chokehold I had locked him in.
He shoved me away forcefully, causing me to crash hard onto the floor. He raised his heavy leather belt, fully intending to lash me with it, but at that exact moment, the children came bursting out of their bedrooms. They were running around the living room, screaming and crying in absolute terror at the violence. Witnessing their panic, he instantly froze and dropped the belt. He looked at them, and they stared back at him in sheer fright. In a flash, he spun around, stormed into his bedroom, slammed the door, and turned the key, locking himself inside.
The real battle was only just beginning. As far as I was concerned, my true fight had officially commenced, because neither Usman nor Mufidah were going to get away with what they did today scot-free. Tonight, I was going to unleash a monumental, unprecedented neighborhood crisis; I swear by Allah, absolutely no one was going to catch a single wink of sleep tonight—including every single one of our neighbors.
I began kicking and pounding on his bedroom door with my hands and feet as if I were trying to break the wood down, causing an absolute scene and screaming at the top of my lungs. The children followed right behind me, wailing and crying hysterically. Meanwhile, out in the main hallway, Mufidah and several other neighbors had gathered at our front entrance, pounding on our main door. The entire apartment building devolved into a chaotic, deafening uproar; the noise was so intense that no one could hear a single word anyone else was saying. From the neighbors' perspective, they genuinely believed Usman was still actively beating me black and blue inside and was on the verge of taking my life.
Right in the middle of the chaos, Usman’s phone—which had been violently knocked out of his hand during our initial physical wrestling match—began ringing loudly where it lay forgotten on the living room floor. Realizing he had to retrieve it, he had no choice but to unlock his bedroom door and step back out into the living room to search for it.
I instantly intercepted him, blocking his path like an enraged wall, screaming hysterically and demanding that he explain his exact relationship with Mufidah—demanding to know how she could casually grab his hand and stand there locked in an intimate, prolonged gaze with him. He let out a sharp, irritated hiss of frustration and snatched his phone off the floor. He saw that the incoming calls were from our prominent neighbors, Dr. Isa and Dr. Musa. They informed him over the line that they were standing directly outside our front door and demanded that he open it immediately.
He moved to open the door, but I physically threw my body in front of the locks to block him. Another frantic wrestling match broke out between us before he finally managed to push me aside with sheer force, turn the deadbolt, and open the door.
The very first person my eyes locked onto was Mufidah Ansar, standing right at the absolute front of the crowd, as if her sheer stubbornness refused to let us breathe. However, this time around, she had quickly thrown a large hijab over that scandalous, see-through nightgown—the exact type of provocative dress traditionally nicknamed "Taya ni kasuwanci" (Help me market my business).
In an instant, the neighbors swarmed into the apartment along with their respective wives, Safiya and Umma. They immediately grabbed hold of me, physically restraining my frantic movements, and forcefully dragged me away into the bedroom.
A fierce, explosive shouting match erupted out in the living room between Mufidah and Usman. I violently surged forward to break free and join the fight, but Safiya and Umma instantly pinned me down, forcing me back onto the bed and holding me seated.
They were completely blind to the catastrophic danger and the raging emotional fire that was currently threatening to burn me alive—specifically, the horrifying prospect of Usman and Mufidah interacting. Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un. They completely failed to understand; they had absolutely no concept of the raw agony I was feeling inside. Out in the living room, the argument suddenly shifted entirely into English. To my jealous ears, their rapid foreign words sounded exactly as if they were saying "I LOVE YOU" and "I MISS YOU" to one another. To make matters worse, Mufidah possessed an incredibly sultry, smooth, melodic voice, which sounded exceptionally captivating whenever she spoke in English.
I slapped both hands over my head, slid down onto the mattress, and buried my face in the pillows, bursting into a violent, uncontrolled fit of sobbing. I cried out, "Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un! Please, just let me go out into that living room! None of you understand what is actually happening here!"
In response, they merely tightened their grip on me even further, locking my left and right arms down in an absolute hold so I couldn't wrench myself free.
Mufidah’s sharp voice dominated the living room as she spoke continuously without a single pause, while Usman's voice could only be heard in low, muffled, occasional responses. Eventually, he completely lost his temper. He bolted to his feet, his voice shaking with absolute rage as he began shouting at the top of his lungs. At that point, her voice dropped low, and I could hear Dr. Isa and Dr. Musa pleading with him, physically restraining his body and pushing him back, because he had charged directly into her face, looking as though he were about to slap her across the room. The absolute final words that boomed from his mouth felt like pure, sweet music to my soul: "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
She let out a long, loud hiss of utter contempt, spun on her heel, and stormed out, slamming the front door behind her with such monstrous force that the entire apartment building literally shook as if caught in an earthquake; the violent bang caused every single interior door in our home to vibrate in response. Umma has finally seen the true nature of Aisha, I thought to myself, letting out a massive, deeply relieved sigh of absolute pleasure at her departure.
Safiya, Dr. Isa's wife, understood my emotional language perfectly. She possessed the exact same intense, consuming level of marital jealousy that I did; in fact, I was practically her mentor in the art of jealousy, having personally coached her on several of its finer points. Umma, Dr. Musa's wife, however, didn't possess a single jealous bone in her body; she was always trying to lecture us and stop us from checking up on our husbands, which was why the moment Safiya and I realized her nature, we stopped sharing our marital secrets with her entirely.
Umma abruptly cut into my thoughts, asking, "Ahmad's mother, what on earth did you do to Usman today to make him actually lift his hand to beat you like this? From everything I know about him, Usman is an exceptionally compassionate man who deeply cherishes women. You yourself always told us that even if he is in the middle of a massive argument with you, the moment he sees a single tear drop from your eyes, he completely loses his composure and begins begging for your forgiveness. How did things possibly escalate to this extreme today? He was completely beyond the reach of reason; he was incredibly furious."
I fell into absolute silence. It was only at that exact moment that I actually sat down to think, desperately racking my brain to try and remember what specific offense I had even committed against him in the first place. He hadn't explicitly stated it before hitting me, and I hadn't had the chance to investigate it because the moment Mufidah barged in and committed her ultimate offense against my marriage, I completely forgot about my initial war with Usman and focused all my combat energy entirely on her.
Out in the living room, the two doctors had sat Usman down and were interrogating him with the exact same question. I strained my ears, listening intently through the bedroom door to catch his response. True to his naturally secretive and guarded personality, he began stammering and fabricating excuses, claiming that he was merely disciplining me because I had a chronic habit of leaving the house to attend social gatherings without seeking his proper permission. The doctors listened to his story, but they knew him far too well to believe that was the actual truth.
They offered him words of comfort and profound marital advice before calling out to their wives. The women stood up, joined their husbands, and they all departed together. Before they walked out, however, I quickly flashed a subtle hand-signal to Safiya, indicating that the moment we crossed paths tomorrow, we would have a thorough, deep-dive discussion about the evening's events. We absolutely did not want Umma to find out, lest she start preaching her endless morality lectures to us.
Left alone, Usman began gently comforting the crying children. He went into the kitchen, brought out a jar of chin-chin snacks for them, and sat them down at the dining table. They immediately began making an absolute mess, completely ruining the pepper-soup and the fresh juice that I had spent the entire morning meticulously preparing. He didn't even taste a single bite of the food himself. From the bedroom, I could hear them casually tossing around pieces of the offal—the stomach, the lungs, the liver—and a deep, suffocating wave of bitter resentment washed over my heart, because every single bit of my hard work and financial investment had completely gone down the drain today. To make matters worse, my heavy makeup had completely smeared and caked; one of my expensive eyelash extensions had been knocked clean off during the very first slap, while the other was left hanging awkwardly from my lid until, out of pure frustration, I reached up and violently ripped it off myself. I lay there in the dark, consumed by bitter resentment, with my mind completely trapped on a continuous loop of that horrific image—seeing my husband body-to-body, locked in a physical struggle with another woman. I squeezed my eyes shut, wrapped my arms tightly around my pillow, and let out a stream of hot, bitter tears.
Usman began pacing restlessly back and forth between his bedroom and the living room. I knew his psychology perfectly; he was deeply distraught over what he had done to me, and he desperately wanted to peek into my bedroom to check on my physical state, but his pride was preventing him from doing so.
Eventually, he washed the children's hands and led them to their bedroom. There were three beds inside; he tucked each child into their respective bed and began telling them a traditional bedtime story until they completely drifted off to sleep. Our youngest infant, who was still actively breastfeeding, had long since fallen asleep in his arms. The baby didn't sleep in the children's room, so Usman used this as a perfect excuse to bring him to me in my bedroom. Anticipating his entry, I had quickly switched off the lights, curled into a ball on the bed with my head buried against my knees, and began loudly sobbing, gasping for air and letting out dramatic sighs. Make no mistake—I had done plenty of genuine crying earlier, but this specific performance was entirely calculated; it was pure, tactical tears.
He flipped the light switch on, stared at me quietly for a long moment, and then walked over to the crib to gently lay Haidar down. Without saying a word to me, he turned on his heel, walked back into his own bedroom, and left me sitting there entirely alone. A sudden wave of intense panic gripped my heart. I am sitting here weeping, yet Usman doesn't seem to care at all? This was an alarming sign; there was undoubtedly a massive problem brewing. Shortly after, I heard him making a phone call. He started the conversation inside his room, paced out into the living room, and eventually walked directly into my bedroom while still talking over the line.
It turned out he was on the phone with the Deputy Governor of the state and his wife. Usman was practically begging them for forgiveness, but judging by his desperate tone, they were completely refusing to accept his apologies.
He suddenly thrust the phone into my face, his face contorted with anger as he barked in a furious whisper, "Take this phone right now and beg her for forgiveness! This is the exact high-profile woman whose phone number you sneakily stole from my device yesterday just so you could call her and unleash a torrent of insults!"
I took the device, intentionally inserting heavy, dramatic sniffles and a voice full of deep remorse into the line. "Hajiya, for the sake of Allah, please have mercy and forgive me. It was a horrible mistake... I genuinely assumed you were one of those young girls who constantly chase after him..."
The prominent woman let out a long, disgusted hiss of utter contempt through the speaker and instantly hung up the phone in my face.
Usman snatched his phone back, standing over me for a long time as he glared down at me with an expression of pure, unadulterated resentment.
I slid off the mattress, dropped straight onto my knees on the floor, and wrapped my arms tightly around his legs, begging him to forgive me. This time around, a genuine, overwhelming wave of sorrow crashed over me, causing a thick cloud of hot, heavy tears to stream down my face.
He balled one hand into a fist and smashed it violently against the open palm of his other hand, biting his lip fiercely as he held his head in a long, pained silence. He remained standing frozen while I stayed on my knees, clinging desperately to his legs for what felt like an eternity. Finally, he reached down with both hands, pulled me up to my feet, and to my absolute astonishment, he yanked me tightly against his chest, wrapping his arms around me so forcefully it felt as though he wanted to literally pierce through his own ribcage to lock me inside his heart.
This exact capacity for profound love and deep tenderness is the very reason I am so completely obsessed with him, and why my jealousy burns so dangerously close to madness.
He began to speak, and I felt hot tears dropping from his own eyes onto my shoulder. "I gave you a solemn promise that I was going to buy you a brand-new, zero-kilometer car so you could personally drive the children to school and take care of your daily errands," he whispered heavily. "I promised you that I would completely replace every single piece of furniture in this house; you explicitly told me that you wanted this entire home remodeled to look exactly like Mufidah's luxury apartment, complete with air conditioning units installed even in the kitchen and corridors.
I even took you out to that massive, prime plot of land in the GRA—a full 100 by 100 size lot—and told you that I was going to purchase it to build us a magnificent multi-story mansion from the ground up.
Yet, today, every single one of those dreams has completely crumbled into ashes, simply because of the vile insults you hurled at that woman yesterday. Those people are phenomenally wealthy; a financial deal had been finalized where they were going to move their massive corporate cash reserves directly into our bank branch. In my line of work, anyone who brings in high-net-worth clients receives a massive financial cut—a huge percentage commission—alongside an automatic, guaranteed corporate promotion to the highest executive ranks. They were on the verge of depositing astronomical sums of money into our bank through my portfolio, an alliance that would have automatically connected me directly to powerful senators and state governors. Fatiti, you have completely ruined everything I have spent my entire career building! I am left with absolutely nothing! I have humbled myself and begged them for forgiveness in every way humanly possible; I even drove to their private residence to apologize in person, but it was already too late—they have already transferred their entire wealth to a competing bank. As it turned out, you didn't just insult her over the phone; you spent the entire day bombardment her device with horrific text messages. When they handed me the phone to read what you wrote, I couldn't even finish reading the messages out of sheer shame, heavy embarrassment, and disgust. You literally used the most vulgar profanities, calling a high-ranking dignitary a common prostitute, a loose woman, and a lesbian! Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un. I accept the decree of destiny, but Fatiti, why on earth do you keep doing this to me?! This is officially the sixteenth consecutive time you have systematically insulted my high-profile female corporate clients! I have lost countless massive life-changing opportunities solely because of this destructive behavior of yours. Is this how you want us to live forever? Stuck in a stagnant existence, moving strictly from one basic monthly salary to the next, because you actively destroy every single doorway of financial breakthrough that comes my way?"
I squeezed my eyes shut, wrapped my arms around his torso even tighter, and burst into deep tears against his chest. "I only did it because of my intense jealousy for you! My overwhelming love for you is the only thing that completely robs me of my peace of mind—I simply cannot handle seeing any other woman interacting with you in any capacity! Please, I beg you to have patience with me."
He shook his head slowly. "I love you infinitely more than you could ever love me, Fatiti. Yet, I never interfere in your personal life or restrict you from anything. You know damn well that your behavior has long transcended basic marital jealousy—you have mixed it with toxic, unfounded paranoia. You completely refuse to allow us to simply enjoy our love in peaceful tranquility; you have no peace of mind, and you ensure I have absolutely none either. You have literally stopped taking care of your health, and you completely neglect your fundamental marital duties over me. Whenever a fresh wave of jealousy hits your mind, you spend days locked in an angry, weeping sulk; I literally leave for work and return home only to find that you haven't even bothered to sweep the floors or wash the dishes—despite knowing fully well that I suffer from severe asthma and am highly sensitive to dust. I need a clean, organized woman. What exactly has this toxic jealousy achieved for us now?
My absolute deepest heartbreak is that I have failed to fulfill your dreams. I desperately wanted to buy you all those luxury items because I know you look at your neighbors and see that every single woman in this compound drives her own vehicle, and their home interiors completely outshine ours..."
I quickly reached up and placed my hand firmly over his lips to silence him. "If that is all that matters to you, please do not worry about it ever again. I will happily live with you even if we are reduced to staying inside a primitive mud shack, as long as my ultimate happiness is secured by seeing us together—just you and me against the world."
A soft, tender smile broke across his face. "Alhamdulillah. As long as I haven't lost you, and as long as I still possess your undivided love, everything else is secondary. We only lost money, which simply means it wasn't destined to be ours in the first place. But for the sake of Allah, Fatiti, you must stop this madness. Do not ever pick up my phone again to steal a woman's phone number just to call and insult her. If it weren't for the fact that those people hold immense respect for my professional character, you would be spending the night locked inside a cold police cell right now. The woman explicitly stated that she wanted to press full legal charges to ensure you were arrested. She has full recordings of your verbal abuse on her phone, alongside all your text messages."
A wave of intense relief washed over me. I closed my eyes in gratitude, took hold of his hand, and led him over to sit on the edge of the bed. "In that case, let me tell you the absolute truth about Mufidah."
The moment her name left my mouth, I watched his brow instantly furrow into a deep, severe scowl; it was clear that his hatred for her had intensified far beyond anything he had felt in the past.
Perfect. This is exactly the reaction I wanted to see, I thought, before continuing my narrative: "If you had seen the massive, ungodly pagan man she brought into this apartment building today, you would be thoroughly disgusted. The guy was covered in heavy chains and wore earrings, and she proudly introduced him as her boyfriend! They were literally standing in the open corridors kissing each other, and then they retreated into her apartment. They spent the entire day locked inside, blasting thumping disco music so loudly that this entire building felt like a cheap nightclub."
I forced a couple of fresh tears to roll down my cheeks and pressed further: "I genuinely fear for our children, growing up right next door to such shameless behavior. Our apartments are practically glued together—door directly facing door. Whether I like it or not, I am forced to hear and see everything. Darling, it is infinitely better for us to pack our bags and move out of this rental building entirely."
Usman fell into a deep, brooding silence, his face clouding with intense resentment. "My initial plan was that once that corporate investment bonus cleared, we wouldn't spend another year here; I would have finished construction on our private mansion so we could permanently leave this miserable life of renting houses behind. Honestly, today has made me utterly detest that woman; how dare a classless woman like her call me a man who doesn't know the value of women? As if she possesses even an ounce of self-respect herself! She is a completely unhinged, undisciplined woman—a total wreck. Frankly, I hope she actually tries to take me to court so I can thoroughly expose her shameless lifestyle to the public!"
He reached over to the nightstand, picked up a jar of soothing ointment, and gently tilted my face toward the light. The distinct outline of his slap had turned a deep, bright crimson against my fair skin. He began to gently rub the ointment onto my cheek, the words "I am sorry" repeating like a continuous mantra from his lips. He offered a fervent prayer, begging Allah to never let him lose control of his hands like he did today. His eyes were heavy with unshed tears, filled with profound, genuine remorse. As he softly massaged the cream into my skin, he gently blew cool air onto the injury to soothe the burn, while I immediately melted into a completely helpless, pathetic posture to look as vulnerable as possible.
For the rest of the night, he treated me with the absolute fragility of a delicate egg. He personally remade our bedding, carried me to the bathroom so I could take a warm bath, and carefully selected the exact nightgown he wanted me to wear. However, to my absolute surprise, he bypassed all my regular options and specifically pulled out a nightgown that bore an uncanny, terrifying resemblance to the one Mufidah had been wearing: a sheer white gown with thin, delicate spaghetti straps. Furthermore, since I was currently wearing long synthetic hair extensions (attachment), he took the time to meticulously brush out the braids, letting the thick, dark strands cascade loosely down my bare back—replicating the exact look of Mufidah’s hair from earlier.
Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un! What on earth was I looking at?! An explosive, raging wildfire of pure, unadulterated jealousy instantly reignited inside my soul.
Stammering violently, my voice shaking with intense panic, I gasped, "Usman... I am going to change out of this gown. This is the clothing of loose, shameless women."
He looked at me in absolute bewilderment. "You are locked in a private bedroom with your own husband—what on earth does shamelessness have to do with anything, simply because you wore a nightgown for him? Besides, look closely—yours doesn't even have a slit running up the thigh."
Aha! So he actually did notice that Mufidah’s thigh slit was wide open! It turned out that during that entire chaotic wrestling match in the living room, his eyes were fully functional, and he had taken in every single detail of her exposed body.
In a flash of pure adrenaline, I violently bolted upright on the bed and—
