Zafin Kai Book One Complete Hausa Novel

She slowly adjusted her standing position, lowering her eyes from the elderly woman standing over them and scolding them with authority, making it clear that she did not care about whatever consequences might follow from the mistake they had made, while reminding them of the painful punishment awaiting them.

The woman standing over them and shouting was the mother of the man who fathered them—the man people would normally call their father.

But they could never truly call him their father, because to them he was only the man who had brought them into this world, not a father in the way other children understood the meaning of that word.

They had separated the meaning of a biological parent from that of a true father because they had never experienced what being a father really meant. They had never received love, care, compassion, sympathy or any treatment that would make them feel like children who had a father, whether legitimate children or otherwise.

In reality, however, they understood the meaning of a biological parent better than most people. To them, it simply meant the person who had brought them into the world and then used the authority of that relationship to control their lives however he pleased, in the most humiliating and degrading manner possible.

That was the clearest meaning of the word “father” that life had ever shown them.

Even the woman who had given birth to their father was someone they could not easily call their grandmother, because there was no warmth, affection or bond of blood in the way she treated them that could make the word “grandmother” feel real to them.

Their own mother—their mother, their beloved Anne, their happiness and their only source of comfort in the entire world—was also living in slavery with them.

In fact, she had been the first among them to suffer that life of servitude. Long before they were born, she had spent years living under humiliation between the son and his mother.

To their father, even the shoes he bought with his own money and stepped on seemed to have more value than their mother.

As for his own mother, she believed Anne had absolutely no value in their lives. To her, Anne was nothing more than a humiliating burden who had filled the house with many daughters without adding any worth to the family.

After all the years their mother had spent enduring pain and punishment from their father, they were now trapped together with her in the same life of bondage.

They had no freedom and no authority over themselves. Their lives depended entirely on whatever their father decided to do with them.

Even if he chose to tear their fragile lives apart piece by piece, they could not raise their heads to face him, much less look directly into his eyes.

To them, almost any kind of disaster was easier to face than lifting their heads and looking into their father's eyes, because doing so felt like committing a terrible offence that could bring upon them a punishment even worse than pouring boiling water over their own bodies.