Divorce Diary Season 3 Eoisode V

MY NAME IS AHMED NASSARAWA. I AM 46 YEARS OLD. I WAS MARRIED TO ASMAU JATAU FOR 6 YEARS. I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE MY DIVORCE DIARIES WITH YOU.
Asmau and I got married shortly after I finished youth service.  We got married when I was a very young man. I was a pampered child as my father was a wealthy politician. He had been a minister multiple times and was friends with all the powerful and wealthy people in Nigeria. A mutual family friend introduced me to Asmau for marriage. From the first meeting I couldn’t wait to marry her. Asmau was a good girl; she was quiet and well raised. She was from a good family, the type of family that anyone would love to marry from. In fact we were even distantly related. They were raised in the old fashioned way, with discipline and strict religious instruction.
My parents were really pleased with my choice of wife. They were really happy and I was happy to see them happy. She was beautiful and graceful at our society wedding and I was the envy of my friends.

Soon after our wedding, I got a job in a bank and we moved to Abuja from Kano. At the time Abuja was just opening up.  The town was calm and peaceful. My father gave us a 4 bedroom house in Asokoro to settle with my new bride. Asmau was a wonderful wife and my life was easy. She took care of me, she organized our home and made sure I was always comfortable. She didn’t ask for much. She never complained about anything and she kept her thoughts mostly to herself. She never really allowed me get to know her like I should have as her husband. At first I didn’t mind, I just thought people in arranged marriages adjusted to each other after a while. But as time went on, I realised this wasn’t a good thing. I tried to get to know her but she was like a robot, with automatic responses to everything.

Like I said earlier Asmau was a wonderful wife. We hardly ever quarrelled and that was the problem. She did everything right. She made me comfortable, she just accepted me. At the time I started drinking socially with colleagues. Back in those days, the only place you could hang out after work was the bar at Transcorp Hilton; it was called Nicon Noga Hotel then.
That’s where I met Hawwa, a Lebanese qwara (mulatto) who was an executive call girl at the hotel. She was beautiful but she was wild. Hawwa was a runaway. She told me her father abused and molested her. After a while she became pregnant for her father and her mother sent her packing. That’s how she found herself on the streets selling her body to survive. According to her she met Bobsy, a notorious pimp and he brought her to Abuja. Bobsy shared in whatever profits she made from turning tricks.He got patrons for her and took care of her. Her story broke my heart and oddly enough it created a strong pull towards her. I felt like she had gotten a raw deal in life. I wanted to change her luck in life.
Soon we were spending a lot of time together after I closed from work. Slowly but surely Hawwa introduced me to drinking and snorting cocaine. At first I thought it was ridiculous to be drinking alcohol. As a Muslim it was quite a reprehensible notion that I would be drinking almost every day. But that was the situation I found myself in. I would drink and rush home, dash to the shower before madam could smell the alcohol and feminine perfume on me. Though I detested the smell and taste of the alcohol, I craved the rush it gave my brain. And I was hooked. A drink after work became compulsory.
After about a year Asmau gave birth to our twin daughters. When I first saw them, I resolved I would never ever be involved in anything dishonourable again. I vowed to be a man of integrity. To protect my girls from an evil and unfair world. I promised my babies I would be an honourable man, a father they would be proud of.

It was easier said than done. The more I fought the temptation to be around Hawwa, the more I got sucked into a downward spiral. Soon after my girls were born, Hawwa introduced me to sniffing cocaine. She said it was harmless and it would make me stronger in bed. I knew about cocaine and what it could make a person do, but she convinced me to try it. From the first sniff I was hooked.
My life soon became complicated. At home I was devoted father and husband, and at Hilton Hotel I was deranged drug and alcohol user. It became more and more difficult to manage my two lives. It became difficult to control my habit and keep it away from my family. Another problem was that cocaine was expensive; I was spending a fortune on replenishing my high. I was burning through my savings and pretty soon I was broke. I told Hawwa we had to stop because I could no longer afford to keep up. She told me if I didn’t meet up her demands she would leave me.
So I went and did something really stupid. Something I still regret to this day.

I started stealing from my office. I started embezzling office funds to keep up with our cocaine binges at the hotel. I lost control of my life pretty soon. Through all this, Asmau confronted me only once urging me to fear God and to think about my family. Her sermon touched me but at this point I was already too far gone to heed any advice.
My boss found out about my recklessness and I was relieved of my duties ,I lost my job. That should have been a wakeup call to any normal human being but not to me. In my drug induced craze I even celebrated losing my job telling Hawwa that now I had more time to spend with her. Asmau tried her best to get me back on track but I was too selfish to see what I was doing to my family. My father washed his hands off me. I didn’t care.

As if life wasn’t complicated enough, Hawwa told me she was pregnant. She was 5 months gone and an abortion was risky, there was nothing we could do about the pregnancy. I was in trouble. How would I manage this situation now? How would I be able to look Asmau in the eye and tell her this? I told myself I was her husband and she had no choice but to be okay with whatever I wanted even though deep down I knew it was terrible what I had done. The pregnancy turned out to be a blessing of sorts because Hawwa stopped drinking and sniffing cocaine because of the pregnancy. I did the same and my eyes started to clear. I started to see how messed up our situation was. Hawwa was still turning tricks despite being pregnant. I was utterly disgusted one day when I caught her with a customer with her baby bump showing. I was disgusted. I saw the kind of person Hawwa truly was. She was greedy and insatiable. And nothing I could ever do would ever change that. I wanted to leave Hawwa but I couldn’t abandon my unborn child.

As the pregnancy progressed I became more and more confused as to what to do. So in her birth month I told her I would take the baby after it was born and I would pay her off. Surprisingly she agreed and we negotiated a price. I did not know how I would face Asmau with this news.
Hawwa gave birth to a healthy baby boy,Thank God. We did a naming ceremony and I named him Imam, after my father. Hawwa and I agreed that he would stay with her for a year and then she would give him to me and disappear from my life. But it was easier said than done, cocaine made a comeback into my life and I was on the path to self-destruction again. I was selling my assets all over the place to finance my addiction. Pretty soon I was broke again, living on handouts from my mother. Asmau was still by me, standing strong trying to get me help. But I couldn’t see it.
The day I brought Imam home was a crazy day. I will never forget the pain in Asmau’s voice. The shock in her eyes.
‘Asmau, this is my son Imam.’

‘Ahmed what did you just say? Your son? You have a son? How?’
I wanted to hug her and apologise to her. But I had already set the ball rolling. So I continued, covered in my shame with the most manly commanding voice I could muster
‘I said he is MY SON and he will be living with us from now on. This is his father’s house and so shall it be. I don’t want to hear any more questions. Take care of him and I will introduce him to the twins when I get back’
I made for the door but my legs refused to move. The anguish in her face got to me. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me

‘Ahmed! So it is not enough that you have humiliated me all these years running around with that whore of yours, you have the guts to bring your bastard into my home?’
I had nothing to reply her with. I had never heard her speak like this. I wanted to get down on my knees and beg her for forgiveness. For understanding. But I had to be a man. So I just stood there.
‘Ahmed your bastard son is not welcome in my home! I will never condone this sort of iskanci’
‘Asmau he is an innocent child. You are a wife, your duty is to respect and obey me not give your opinion. Kin gane? You can rant all day if you like but he is staying and that is final’

I really didn’t mean what I said. I was praying she would consider the threat and quietly accept Imam.
‘I am not your wife anymore. From this minute I have stopped being your wife. I cannot do this and God is my witness I have done right by you all these years, I have tried my best but you are beyond redemption’

I got down on my knees and started begging, crying and pleading. I promised to change. I asked for one more chance but I knew she was done. After about an hour she wiped her face and told me:
‘I am leaving you. That is what is FINAL’
I cannot truly capture what I felt. It was a mix of regret, disgust and sorrow. I had pushed her to her limit. I had failed my twins.


Years later I am still struggling to get my life back on track. I still struggle with my drinking and drug use. I am still trying to repair the financial devastation caused by my addiction. I went to my mother and she was gracious enough to take Imam and raise him. I cannot really face my children because of the shame I feel at letting them down, the guilt I bear in my heart is heavy. I broke our family with my selfishness. It kills me that Asmau’s husband is more of a father to my girls than I am. It tears my soul apart. I haven’t quite moved on because really who wants to love somebody like me?
I can’t even go back to Hawwa. She met a wealthy old man and moved to the United States to start a new life. At least that’s what she told me. I have not heard from her since she left Nigeria.
Thank you for sharing my story. I hope you will learn from it.

All thanks to Jaruma Magazine Chief Editor For Allowing Us to Re-Broadcast it

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