Yes, have your say

It’s that time of the year, when we air some of your views, dear readers, on Al-Bint’s Diary. Do read, and enjoy them. Until next week, when we serve you another hot dish of our dear Bint’s adventures.

Assalamu Alaikum Albint. I am an ardent and a weekly-addicted reader of your column, having been reading Daily Trust, Weekly, Sunday and lately Aminiya papers of Media Trust since 2003. After reading your diary with the above title I decided to share a true-life story with you. So my letter is about my aunt who did something similar to what happened in Malaysia, here in maiduguri. She got married to someone who divorce his first wife earlier, due to reasons best known to him.

But after his marriage to my aunt, the first wife started reaching out to my aunt and her husband and appealing to them to allow her to return to the house with her three children. She started visiting the house frequently even without being reconciled with the man. My aunt then started pleading with the husband to take her back so that they will each take one room in the 3-bedroom house they were staying in.

When the husband didn’t oblige, my aunt went so far in protest that she had to go and hide somewhere, in her friend’s house, resulting in all our family members panicking because we thought she was kidnapped. It was not until someone went visiting to that house and discovered her that we all knew she only went into hiding.  But her selfless action resulted in their husband bringing back the first wife. And since then they have been living peacefully without any the complains or troubles between co-wives generally known in Arewa.

Yet the credit for all this goes to my aunt. It’s due to her simplicity, and above all, her selflessness and empathy that this situation happened. She is a director in the Borno State Agency for Adult Literacy but she is not the type to buy cars or worldly possessions. She sponsored our grandmother for Hajj in 2017 by saving for 3 years when she herself never went to even Umrah. That is my dear Aunt Yagana for you, never pretending or ostentatious.