Beneath the Kuka Tree

 

By Rose Chukwudi

The first time Halima saw Chijioke, he was arguing with a goat. She was on her way to the well, balancing her silver bowl with a poise that would shame a queen, when the sound of loud Igbo curses and stubborn bleating stopped her. There he was—shirt clinging to his chest, one slipper lost in the red dust—trying to pull a rope tied to the most defiant goat this side of the Niger.

“Move, nwamma! If your ancestors were this stubborn, no wonder the village shrine cracked!” he barked, sweat dripping from his brows. Halima burst out laughing. The bowl tilted, water sloshed, and her cheeks turned the colour of palm wine. He looked up, startled. And then he grinned, sheepishly. That grin ruined everything. Her plans, her composure, her vow to never fall for a southern man.

Over the weeks, they met by accident on purpose. At the market, by the mosque steps, beneath the old Kuka tree that held stories in its bark. She taught him how to greet in Hausa; he taught her how to fry akamu without lumps. They argued over tuwo and okpa and danced barefoot to the sweet hum of Hausa folk songs under a moonlit sky.

But the village whispered.

“An Igbo boy and a Hausa girl?”

“Oil and water.”

Still, love bloomed. Quietly. Boldly.

On the day he left for Enugu, she gave him a string of prayer beads. He pressed a kola nut into her palm. Years later, under the same Kuka tree, their daughter argued with a goat. And in that defiant bleat and breathless laughter, love lived on.