Chapter 20: AFTERMATH

“I was eight when my father was taken from us,” Aisha began, her voice trembling, though she held herself with the quiet dignity of someone who had carried her pain for far too long. She did not look at Karim or Jemima; instead, her eyes fixed on some invisible point in the distance, as though the memory itself demanded her full attention. “I didn’t understand everything then, but I knew enough to know a great wrong had been done. I knew it from the way my mother cried at night, muffling her sobs with the edge of her wrapper, from the way neighbors who once greeted us with warmth now whispered behind our backs and shut their doors when we walked past. I knew it because every time I

looked into my father’s eyes across the prison table, I

could see his soul breaking even if he forced a

smile.”

Her words hung in the air like smoke.

Jemima lowered her head, her fingers knotting together in her lap. It was her burden, too, though different in shade and weight. Karim remained silent, watching Aisha. He saw the strength it took to revisit memories like these, the courage to peel away scars still raw beneath the skin.

—

Life after Samuel’s sentencing was nothing short of brutal. The world outside their door had transformed overnight.

Neighbors who once asked after Mariam’s health or shared bowls of food suddenly looked at her as if she were cursed. The wife of a murderer, their eyes seemed to say. Some avoided her entirely, dragging their children away if little Aisha tried to play nearby. Others went further, muttering loud enough for Mariam to hear, voices like daggers aimed at her dignity: That’s what happens when you marry from a poor family. You never really know what blood runs through their veins.

Aisha, only eight, carried the weight of shame she

couldn’t understand. At school, children mocked her. Prisoner’s daughter, they would sneer. Teachers avoided eye contact, their tones clipped, as though

her father’s alleged crime had tainted her too. She grew quieter, more withdrawn, until even her smile felt like a betrayal of the grief inside.

Mariam bore the brunt of it all. With Samuel gone, her world collapsed. His parents, already frail with age, crumbled under the strain. Samuel’s mother passed first, her heart too weak to carry the shame of a son accused of murder. Within weeks, his father followed, loneliness and grief eating him from the inside. Their deaths struck Mariam like fresh blows,

reminders that life was intent on stripping her of everything she loved.

When their rent expired, there was no reprieve. No neighbor offered help, no hand reached out. Mariam gathered what little remained of Samuel’s savings and relocated to downtown Lagos, into a shabbier apartment where peeling walls and leaking roofs became their daily companions. The room smelled of damp clothes and stale cooking, but it was shelter. It was all she could manage.

The savings dwindled fast, each market trip shrinking what little cushion they had. Mariam, once a proud woman, found herself begging for cleaning

jobs. She scrubbed floors in houses where women

half her age gave her orders, her back bent, her hands raw from soap and chemicals. Yet she endured, because Aisha needed her. And every Sunday, no matter how exhausted she was, they made the journey to see Samuel.

—

The prison was a world of its own, filled with iron doors that clanged like thunder, the stench of sweat and rust, and guards whose eyes were always suspicious. The first time Aisha visited, she had cried when the metal detectors beeped at her necklace, and a guard yanked it off roughly. But Samuel, when he entered the visitation room, had gathered her in his

arms and told her gently, “You must be strong, my

little one. Stronger than me. The world will not pity

you, but you must show them you can survive it.”

He was gaunt then, reduced to a shadow of the man he had once been. Torture and endless interrogations had carved him hollow. Yet slowly, over the years, he built his body back, exercising in the yard, refusing to let despair devour him entirely. Still, his eyes never fully recovered — they always carried a sadness that lingered even when he laughed.

On those visits, he forced cheer into his voice. He would joke with Aisha, ask about her lessons, encourage her to read books, and tell her to dream beyond their circumstances. He made her repeat after

him: “I will not be defined by lies.”

When Aisha once broke down, sobbing that she wanted her father home, Samuel had cupped her face in his calloused hands and whispered, “You must

change your surname, Aisha. Don’t carry this name like a curse. Make a new one. Be the best you can out there. That will be my freedom.”

They would leave the prison each Sunday with red eyes and aching hearts, Mariam holding Aisha’s hand tightly as though afraid she would drift away too. The walk home was always silent, broken only by the sounds of Lagos traffic and Aisha’s muffled sniffles.

Seven years. Seven years of this routine, seven years of building their lives around stolen moments in a prison.

—

By the seventh year, Mariam was worn thin. Her body had aged beyond her years; her face, once soft, had hardened with lines of exhaustion and despair. She loved Samuel fiercely, but love could not pay rent, nor silence the hunger that gnawed at their stomachs. And so, when a man named Idris began to show kindness — offering her small help when she struggled with bags from the market, checking in when Aisha fell sick — Mariam’s resolve faltered.

It was not love, not truly. It was reluctant acceptance.

She had resisted for months, clinging to loyalty, to

hope that perhaps Samuel’s case would be reopened, that truth would one day set him free. But each day chipped away at her defenses. Each day reminded her that the world did not wait for grieving widows of the living.

Aisha had seen it coming before her mother admitted it. She saw the way Idris lingered, the way her

mother’s sighs carried something heavier than grief.

When Mariam finally told her — voice trembling, unable to meet her daughter’s eyes — Aisha had screamed. She felt betrayed, abandoned, as though her mother had chosen another man over the father

who still breathed behind bars.

That night, Aisha did not speak to Mariam. She lay awake, listening to her mother sobbing softly, whispering apologies to the darkness.

Later, when Aisha confronted her father about it during one of their visits, Samuel had taken her hand across the table and, with quiet resignation, said: “Your mother has suffered more than anyone deserves. If this brings her comfort, let her have it.

Don’t hate her, Aisha. Don’t.”

But Aisha did. At least for a time. The bitterness sat in her chest like a stone, heavy and immovable.

—

The years that followed were cruel, shaping them in ways none of them had chosen. Mariam tried to build a new life with Idris, though her heart was never fully in it. Aisha grew colder, sharper, determined to carve her own identity far from the stain of her

father’s name. And Samuel — Samuel remained in his cell, carrying the knowledge that his family’s suffering had been born of lies, of signatures forced by fists and whips, of a system that had devoured him whole.

The cankerworm had set in — and it had eaten everything