The total made her hand shake.
When she returned to the family house with her mother, the entire courtyard fell silent.
Mariama stood up sharply. “You brought her here?”
Sakina did not answer. She helped her mother into a clean room, arranged a pillow behind her head, and kissed her forehead.
“Rest,” she whispered.
Then she walked back to the living room.
Ousman had just arrived.
“You went out early,” he said.
“I went to see my mother.”
A heavy silence followed.
Mariama’s face tightened. “Who told you where she was?”
Sakina ignored her.
“How long has she been living in that abandoned house?”
Ousman sat down slowly, as though preparing himself to take control.
“Sakina, things are not as simple as you think.”
“Then explain them.”
“Your mother became difficult. She refused help. She wanted to leave.”
“She wanted to live on a mat in a broken house while the house she owned was renovated?”
Ousman’s jaw tightened.
“You have been gone for 8 years. Do not come back and accuse people who stayed.”
“I was far,” Sakina said. “But I never abandoned her. Can you say the same?”
Mariama stepped forward. “You think money solves everything? Life is hard here.”
“I know life is hard. That is why I sent money. For her medicine. Her food. Her care. Show me the receipts.”
No one answered.
Sakina looked around at the tiled floor, the new furniture, the television, the car outside.
Then she asked, “And the papers she signed?”
Ousman’s eyes changed.
“What papers?”
“She told me you made her sign documents she did not understand.”
Mariama crossed her arms. “It was for managing things. She was old. She could not handle everything.”
“What things?”
Again, silence.
“The house?” Sakina asked.
Ousman lifted his chin. “The house is in my name now. She gave it willingly.”
Sakina felt the room tilt.
“And my father’s land?”
Ibrahima suddenly looked up.
Ousman shot him a warning glance.
“It was sold,” Ousman said.
“To whom?”
“That is not your business.”
“Everything that concerns my mother is my business.”
Ousman stood.
“Be careful, Sakina. You are alone here.”
She looked toward the room where her mother slept.
“No,” she said. “I am not alone.”
That night, Hadja Ramatou told her everything.
At first, after Sakina left for America, Ousman and Mariama had been kind. They brought food. They promised to manage the money. Then they began saying the money was not enough. The house needed repairs. The family had debts. The land should be used to solve problems.
They brought papers and told her to sign.
“I trusted them,” Hadja Ramatou said. “He was my brother.”
Later, they called her forgetful, difficult, burdensome. They said she needed a quieter place to rest. Then they took her to the abandoned house and stopped coming.
“I waited,” her mother whispered. “I thought they would come back.”
Sakina turned her face away, unable to breathe through the pain.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were far away. I did not want to make you suffer.”
“You were suffering.”
Her mother looked at her with old, tired eyes.
“That is life.”
“No,” Sakina said. “That is what they did to you.”
Her mother reached under the pillow and gave her a folded envelope. Inside was a torn copy of a document. Sakina could make out a few words: transfer, land, signature.
But the signature did not look like her mother’s.
The next day, Sakina began searching for proof.
At the money transfer shop, the clerk reluctantly confirmed what she already suspected. Ousman had collected almost all the money she sent. Sometimes Ibrahima collected it. On several forms, her mother’s name appeared, but the signature was too steady, too strong.
“That is not her handwriting,” Sakina whispered.
At the land office, she found records of her father’s land being sold to a company connected to a wealthy businessman. The transfer had been approved through Ousman as a legal representative.
Again, the signature did not match her mother’s.
When she left the office, her phone rang.
A voice she did not recognize said, “Stop asking questions.”
