“I wish I met you before my wife.”

I wish I met you before my wife.

The day I read this text message from my husband’s WhatsApp to another girl, I went numb. Everywhere blur. It was like my entire existence, our entire marriage, and everything we built was all a big fat lie.

I met Bello on the 13th of February 2016. Just when I was 18 and full of dreams and a colorful future. I had dreamt of becoming the next Eugenia Abu, and the first baddie newscaster in Nigeria. I had envisioned myself every morning in front of Channels News Station with a bold red lipstick and a 28-inch bone straight, creating a statement that a woman can be bold, bad and ambitious. That not all baddies are after the next rich married man to fund their lifestyle. Some of us just liked to look good.

But when I met Bello, I slowly began to forget the woman I dreamt of becoming.

During the first year of our relationship, I spent my entire days trying to prove myself to be the best girl he had ever met. Every day, we would spend hours on the phone talking about our future together. I would spend the other hours assuring him that I wasn’t anything like his bitch-ass ex-girlfriend, who cheated on him with his best friend. He had sworn that he would never marry a Hausa girl since she broke his heart to pieces. 

So, it was no surprise that this Muslim Fulani man was interested in a Catholic Igbo girl like me. We both knew our parents would consider our relationship an abomination, or haram— like he would say. But we believed we were different from the norm. We thought we could fight the generation biases between the two tribes and religions. We were destined to change the dynamic and clashes between our two communities. That’s what we stood for.

“Ifeoma, ọ dịghị onye ga-akụda obí eze anyị na-ewu.” Bello read out from his phone on the day he proposed to me. 

Ifeoma, no one will pull down the kingdom we are building.

I knew he had copied and pasted this grand Igbo gesture from google or had asked one of his Igbo friends to translate it for him, but it was the most romantic thing he had ever done or said to me.

I was on cloud nine.

But there was one problem.

He didn’t propose with a ring. Or prepare any heart-shaped flower decorations with a ‘Will You Marry Me Sign’ on it. According to him, men didn’t propose with rings in his religion.

That was the first sign of my dying dreams. But I was too blinded by love to care.

The second problem arose when he started convincing me to change my religion for him.

“Do this for the sake of our children. Let them grow up in a one religion household.” He said. “And as the man, it is natural that they follow in their father’s footstep.”

“But I don’t have a problem with them being Muslim. I can go to church while you all practice Islam.” I debated.

“It will only bring confusion. You can be learning more about Islam as they grow, join them in their classes. It would help you bond with them more, don’t you think so?”

He was very convincing. Too convincing. And especially the fact that his parents were very much against our relationship, I thought converting to Islam would make them warm up to me and like me more.

And when I converted, his family eventually warmed up to me as I had hoped.

But there was another problem that I had been blinded to.

The language.

I began to mingle with Bello’s sisters and their friends. And not a single word of English came out of their mouths. I would sit down with them like a deaf dog, listening to them gist and laugh in Hausa, not caring that I didn’t understand a single word of it. It wasn’t until one of their friends, Amina, pulled me to the side one day to say that all that screaming and laughter were about me. They gossiped about me in my presence and pretended to smile when they looked my way.

“They said you’re only marrying their brother for his money.” She said. “You’re already an outcast to them.” 

I frowned. “Because I’m Igbo?”

“No. Because you don’t wear real gold. Sis, you need to stop buying these fake jewelleries from Claire’s and Primark. Invest in real gold. Even if you don’t like normal gold, go for white gold. Wear ankara or abaya. Stop with all these cheap adire bubus and boyfriend jeans. It’s not fashion here.” 

Like a fool, I began to listen to such advice and nearly emptied my pockets to fit in with these women. Thankfully, Bello was always generous to send me money to buy more of them. It made him happy. 

One thing I liked about Bello was that he was such a provider. He never made me spend a dime on any of our outings. Unlike those lazy Anambra boys back home that would expect me to pay for everything in the name of “potential”.

I had always heard that men from the North treated women from other tribes better than their own. So, I thought I hit jackpot.

Of course, my father disowned me for renouncing the Catholic faith. He had wanted me to only marry Catholic, but when I told him about Bello, he even began to reconsider me ending up with a Pentecostal or Anglican, in fact he would take Deeper Life any day anytime. But not Islam. But my mind was made up. And I had a kingdom to build with the man of my dreams.

So, I got married to Bello without any of my family present. We did the Nikkah and Walima without them. 

In the first month of our marriage, my primary school, secondary school, university and NYSC certificates vanished into thin air. Like they had legs that crawled out of my wardrobe and ran out of the house.

I asked Bello about it, and he acted oblivious to their whereabouts.

“After all, you don’t need them.” He said. “We don’t do career women here. The man is the provider, the woman stays at home to look after the children.”

Later that week, I found half-burnt pieces of my NYSC certificate in the backyard. He had burned all my certificates. 

To keep the “peace” in the home, I didn’t bring it up to him. Because if I acted out of character, he would threaten to bring another woman in as a second wife— as his aunties had warned me.

I loved him too much. And that was my curse.

But after all the sacrifices I made; throwing away my dreams of a newscaster, becoming a housewife, changing my dressing, changing my name, changing my identity, stopped drinking, stopped socializing, cutting off all my friends, became stuck with his gossipy sisters and friends who refused to speak a word of English to me, bleached my skin to fit his “type”, changed my religion, even disowned my family…. And all that came that to one thing.

Nothingness.

I had spent my entire youth building Bello’s castle, only for him to remove my crown, my worth, and place it on another stranger’s head, another woman who didn’t lift a finger to paint its wall. 

I wish I met you before my wife.

It was a stab to my chest. A broken bottle to my head. An acid to my face. Everything that could kill me… boiled down to those eight words.

I wish I met you before my wife.

I opened the profile picture of this mystery woman he wrote the message to. And my heart sank deeper.

She was this light-skinned, skinny Fulani girl with a European nose. She looked 18– young, naive and tender. She wore a purple hijab scarf, and her fingers were decorated with faded red henna that matched her bright skin tone. She had the kind of beauty that you would find on the covers of Indian films. A halal beauty. Even I could not take my eyes off her.

She was everything Bello dreamt of in a woman. And it shattered every piece of my glass heart.

If she was ugly, even slightly, I could handle it. But this here was Nadia Buari incarnate. 

I opened their chat again, reading that one line all over again. 

What pained me wasn’t just the part that he wrote: ‘I wish I met you before my wife’. 

It was what followed after.

Halal beauty: Then make me your wife 🤭

That was her response. 

And my husband replied: I’m coming to meet your father tomorrow 😜. In fact, I’m coming for my baby tonight!

I didn’t know if it was the response that made me sink, or the fact that he called her baby, or because the emoji he used looked like one that spat and laughed in my face for being an idiot wife. Bello had never used an emoji in our chat, not even a heart emoji. But here he was, flirting, playing, kiking with another girl.

With me, he was always on the serious side. From the start of our relationship to our now six years marriage, every conversation we had always revolved around marriage, our children, work, Islam and breaking generational barriers. We didn’t kikiki in our conversations. So seeing this side of him broke me into pieces. 

It was in that moment I realized that every part of me, the real me, had been washed, squeezed and rinsed out of my system, and left to hang and dry at Bello’s feet. 

I was no longer Ifeoma.

I was hopeless Hannatu. 

A completely unrecognizable person.

I looked at myself in the mirror, cradling my third baby in my arms. My bleached skin showed dark marks around my ears and knuckles. My face full of break outs and dark spots. Head covered in brown shawl. Black khol liner drawn around my bottom eyelids, trying to overshadow my heavy eye bags. 

This was not the same bold, red lipstick and 28-inch bone straight baddie newscaster that I had envisioned 10 years ago. The woman staring back at me was a lost, betrayed, confused woman that revolved her whole life around a man who sold her dreams of a castle but ended up leaving me in the slums.

I closed my eyes for a moment, praying this was all a dream.

I opened my eyes once again to see the same broken woman in front of me. 

And so, I had one decision to make.

It was time to wake up.

The next morning, Bello left the house in a hurry—to meet his halal beauty.

By noon, I locked my bedroom door and switched on my ring light.

I sat before my phone camera wearing a brand-new 28-inch bone straight wig. Scarlet Red Mary Kay lipstick overpowered my lips. I picked up the sliced onion on the table and pressed it to my eyes until hot tears spilled from my eyes.

Then I opened my TikTok live.

And with the next thirteen sobbing words… 

“I married a rapist and a ritualist, and I’m scared for my life.”

…I burned his entire bloody castle to the ground.

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, organizations and incidents appearing in this blog are fictitious.

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