Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 21 Issue 4

her. She asks Jiniya to accompany her to Sabongari Market to buy the original cream. Chuks, the seller of creams and lotions, famously referred to as “Beauty Master” assures them that: Lighter skins made women more attractive. Such women never felt inferior but told people confidently that they too, could look better with a good colour and thus be admired for displaying lighter skins with a polish that never failed to be noticed (p.103). After Habi is married to Hamisu, she begins to ask for money to maintain her secret passion so much that it reaches a point where Hamisu as Jinjiri (2019) observes “becomes completely broke as a result of her incessant demands for money.” When she fails to get enough money, she chooses to rebel against him like Larai to Lawandi in The Blaming Soul (2005). She refuses to cook for Hamisu and when he complains, she doesn’t have any conscience-stricken feeling for what she does. This nauseating behaviour of hers makes him tender the first letter of divorce in order to bring her back to her senses and hopefully change for the better. Clearly, Habi spends a huge sum of money on bleaching purposely to prevent Hamisu from being attracted by any other girl, as Jinjiri further observes: Habi thinks that she can lighten her skin to keep her lover always attracted to her and never think of taking a second wife. She is unaware of the negative and hazardous effects such habit would eventually have on her. She was totally oblivious of the negative financial and social effects the bad habit will have on her since that make her make excessive demands on her man (p.32). Clearly, in terms of waywardness and naughtiness, Habi Habibu is a carbon copy of Hajjo Gano in Hausa Girl . They have a number of personality traits in common. Both of them are covetous, greedy and mischievous. The two are also avid readers of Hausa love stories and viewers of Hausa films, too. They are eager to act out the roles they watch in films. Habi, like Hajjo, copies everything she watches in films. Her covetousness of wanting to marry a rich man in their locality in order to have all the enjoyment of life is not unconnected to what she watches in Hausa movies. She fantasizes, as narrated to us, that “She had… the wish to cruise in Kano city with him in a car. More importantly, she wanted to cause a stir when they turned up together at a wedding party” (p.89). In fact, the attitude of Habi (s) towards dark skin compels critics like Nnam (2007) to point out that: I have reached the African problem and have discovered that ‘colonial mentality” is an attempt by Africans to continue to live and behave like we did during colonialism even several decades after independence. It makes us appear to be ashamed of our culture, customs and who we are. We pretend to be what we are not by trying to dress like foreigners, speak like foreigners... We become estranged in our motherland. We begin to see everything African as bad and inferior (viii). That is to say, modernity, as Western trend, makes a person defy his norms and values to the extent of shedding out his black skin to white as he sees nothing good in anything non-western. Clearly, Habi and Jiniya’s ardent desire for light skin is similar to Hansai, in Kamal’s The Hair Today, Gone the Marrow (2014), who also wants to have her hair become silkier, fast-growing and more easily manageable as the Western type. And her instance on the application of do-it-yourself hair straightener kit indicates how young African women are so much drawn to modernity through copycatting Western ladies at the expense of their Africa tradition. Jiniya, on the other hand, is not as covetous and greedy as Habi. She is also not mischievous, yet she is Habi’s best friend just like Serah and Hussaina in Gimba’s Witnesses to Tears (1986). Almost every day Habi pays a secret visit to Jiniya probably because of their common interest in bleaching. They share each other’s secrets, especially concerning boyfriends. Their main ambition is to marry husbands of their choice like Dija, Husna and Jummai in Silence and a Smile (2005). Unlike Dija and her friends who use education to achieve their ambitions, Jiniya and Habi choose creams and lotions as their powerful weapons. Arguably, Jiniya may not bleach her skin if were as beautiful as Habi. Thus, for Jiniya to save her marriage, she continues to bleach her skin even after she married Ladan. She doesn’t want him to go for a second wife, as Habi severally cautions her that, “Men are watery-eyed.” In one of Habi’s incessant visits to her house, Jiniya, proudly says to her: So, as you can see, that is why I never neglect the beauty treatment ever since I started it. Ladan spends a great deal on food and because I read Cookery at school, I serve him wonders at every meal. That fools him into thinking it is the good living that has lightened my skin just as it helps him to fill out (p.176). One other difference between the two friends is that, whereas Habi is an avid viewer of Hausa films, Jiniya, on the other hand, criticizes them because to her they are not reflecting Hausa culture, let alone teaching morality. She frankly condemns Habi’s attitude of watching too many Hausa films. She challenges her: What is there to watch in nonsense like that? It is all rubbish. Hausa courtship isn’t done that way. I have never danced or sung with any of my boyfriends nor you or anybody else. It is Indian and we are Muslims. We just talk and crack jokes. That is enough. We shouldn’t copy anybody: Arabs and much less the Hindu (p.19). Finally, the two friends have a tragic end. On the one hand, Jiniya suffers from cancer (Leukaemia), which ultimately claims her life. On the other, Habi suffers double tragedy: divorce and a miscarriage. All this happens because they entirely depend on men for everything. Instead of depending on men, women like Habi and Jiniya should make their conscience their armour as Zahrah and the ever assertive Miriam in Volume XXI Issue IV Version I 67 ( G ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - © 2021 Global Journals Year 2021 Literature, Modernity and Cultural Atavism in Aliyu Kamal’s Somewhere Somehow