Zaki Book 1 Complete Hausa Novel 

The beginning of any life is breathing and blood, the breath I exhale confirms that I am alive. However, I cannot determine how much my breath is now, because its smell is a pleasant color of air. As soon as I opened my eyes, I saw the place where the man was standing as if it had been washed away because there was no sign of him, let alone that he had never been in the place. Maybe he was afraid of my face with a charcoal complexion or the fact that I had closed my eyes that scared him, so he quickly left the place. 

Finding myself with a smile on my face because of the fear I felt, I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of perfume that penetrated my brain and brought peace to the one who had no one and gave it to him. 

I took my money that had fallen and laughed to myself, because now what makes me laugh is breaking the window of someone's car because the owner of the car threw dirty water on me, maybe he didn't do it. 

 When I saw my mother in front of the stove, I was filled with joy and happiness, because you rarely come to find cooking in our house, we usually buy kwaki flour to soak or make kadu (Datu) and kuli to eat, when we have enough, we buy kanzon tuwon dhawa or shimkafa to keep and eat, that's why I can cook it in any form, if I make jalof it, you won't eat it at all and assume that you have come to eat until I say so. I don't usually enter our house with salam, so salam didn't bother me so I just finished my mother's house and reached out and opened the pot on the fire saying.

“Nana, what are you cooking?”

He didn't prepare to open the lid due to the excruciating heat I felt at the moment, my fingers twitched, but seeing the pasta made me forget the pain I felt despite my usual behavior and a sense of joy overcame me until I burst into tears.  I really like pasta, especially the rich ones' cooking, not ours, which we add spices and maggi when we are done, sometimes we just add salt and eat it. 

“I'm cooking pasta”

She answered me, her face also filled with laughter. 

“Where did you get the money?”

“After you left, Maman Maryam sent it to us”

I laughed, putting my hand in my pocket and taking out all the money I had and handed it to her, I didn't know if I had any left, let alone taken anything, even if I needed to buy something, until Nana took it herself and gave it to me. In total, the money I had today was not more than three hundred and a few change, it was not even Friday. 

“Hey Ataa, where are you going to work?  The money you earn is not enough to buy food in the morning, during the day we have nothing in it unless God brings us something”

I kept quiet because I didn’t know what to say to her, she was right when she was begging and she saved a lot of money and even bought something to save, now I’m afraid I’m stopping her and I can’t bring anything good because I’m not your servant. 

“You know I’m not very good at begging, and I don’t like going to the big trucks”

“Look Ataa, take off that pride, separate yourself from everyone else, if you insist on begging, insist because he is our everything”

She told me but I laughed, because she called me a man like she does to any woman and if it was a man, she would turn him into a woman, because she still hasn’t mastered her Hausa. Then she laughed too because she knew what I was laughing at.

 So I got up and took our dirty clothes and walked around the place where we were confined and washed my urine and then I came out and put on soap and washed my face which was black with charcoal and performed ablution and entered our hut. I did not find my younger brother Lukman in the hut, so that confirmed to me that he was a Muslim. The only effort I made was to change my clothes and put on some and started to make up for the noon prayer and then I started the afternoon prayer. No offense, I was the only one who was doubtful about the prayers we were doing in our hut because I had heard when I was going to school that God does not accept anything except what is pure, but I could not differentiate between the purity of urine and janaba or the purity of cleaning the room.