Habiba

Razinat T. Mohammed

2023-ж. май · Spears Books

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Saleh’s love and respect for his mother, Hamsatu, is not only detrimental to his own life but also injurious to his family life. Hamsatu makes all the decisions in his life. She becomes despotic and decides who her son, Saleh, should marry, and the type of children his wife should bear. Habiba is just thirteen when her grandmother, Hamsatu brings in a suitor, Zubairu, a contemporary of her late husband. Although Saleh wishes to send all his children to school, a rainstorm renders him hopeless as his mother takes ill and eventually dies. Following his mother’s death, Saleh’s bankruptcy compels him to take a loan from the elderly Zubairu and his failure to repay the loan compels him to hand over his daughter, Habiba, in marriage to Zubairu. Consequently, Habiba is helpless and soon discovers that she must pay not just for her father’s wrongs but must also shoulder the responsibility of his abandoned wife and children by remaining married to Zubairu who is willing to assist them as long as she plays his game. Habiba desires to punish both her father and Zubairu for ruining her dreams. What will she have to do to get at them?

Автор жөнүндө

Razinat T. Mohammed is an award-winning Nigerian author of A Love like a Woman’s and other Stories (2006). She writes about the sociocultural plight and challenges that bedevil impoverished northern Nigerian families, with particular emphasis on the challenges of womanhood, nationhood and the failure of both family and state. Her other published works include The Travails of a First Wife (2015), A New Lie, (2021) as well as a seminal article, “Female Representation in Nigerian Literature” published in the African Writer Magazine (2007). Razinat has been a guest writer for many literary platforms and held prestigious residencies including the El-Gouna Residency in Egypt, Guest Writer at Rutgers University and most recently, Resident Researcher at Augsburg University, Germany. She holds a doctoral degree in African Literature from the University of Maiduguri, Nigeria where she later taught for over a decade before joining the University of Abuja in 2021.