At first it was a cough.
Then weakness.
Then pain in her chest.
Soon she could barely rise from her mat.
Latifah watched in horror as the only person who had ever loved her began to fade. She begged Mama Zanab to let her fetch the herbalist, but the old woman only smiled weakly.
“They won’t help me,” she said. “Not the woman who raised the witch child.”
Latifah tried everything she could. She cooked pepper soup. She sat beside her all night. She prayed until her throat ached. But Mama Zanab’s breathing grew weaker, her eyes dimmer.
Then one morning, when the old woman could no longer sit up at all, Latifah made a decision.
She would beg.
Not in Ojoko, where they would only spit at her.
But in the market town nearby, where strangers might show mercy.
She wrapped Mama Zanab carefully, left water beside her, kissed her forehead, and walked miles under the sun until she reached the busy roadside market.
There she sat with a cracked calabash in front of her.
“Please help me,” she whispered to every passerby. “My mother is dying. Please, anything.”
Most people ignored her.
Some stared at her scar and walked away.
Some frowned, suspicious.
Still she stayed.
Minutes stretched into hours.
Not far from the market, a convoy of black SUVs moved slowly through traffic.
Inside the lead car sat Chief Karim Adeni, one of the richest men in the region. A billionaire industrialist. A man known for power, wealth, and influence.
But beneath the polished suits and public reputation lived a father whose heart had never healed.
Seventeen years earlier, that same storm had taken his wife and his little daughter.
He had been told the bus crashed, that no one survived, that the fire and rain had destroyed everything. His daughter’s body was never found, but over time he had been forced to accept what everyone insisted was true.
She was gone.
Still, he never forgot the last thing he saw that night.
Blood on his little girl’s face.
A deep cut on the left side.
A scar beginning to form.
As the convoy slowed near the market, Chief Karim looked out absently—and froze.
A girl was sitting by the roadside, begging.
Her face was turned slightly toward the light.
