My name is Munirat. I met Ahmed just after I finished my secondary
school and we fell in love. He was everything a woman would ask for: handsome,
intelligent and God-fearing. He loved me so much that he shared everything he
had with me; he was willing to do anything I asked for even though he did not
have much. He did everything possible for me to gain admission into the university
and when I was finally admitted into the same institution he was, our love
became stronger. We literally lived like a married couple. Our friends were
jealous of the love we shared. Although I was young and as a fresher, I was
naïve and could easily be carried away, which is the beginning of my story.
I did not know what came over me when I had a fling with a guy
named Sam. However, I never loved Sam, but I became pregnant for him. I did not
know what to do, but terminating the pregnancy was not an option. I did not
want to lose Ahmed either. It was as if my world crumbled. I did not tell
anybody, not even my best friend because I didn’t know what would happen if I
did. I made a smart move by telling Ahmed that I was pregnant for him. He
believed me because he trusted me so much. He came to see my people to tell
them what had happened and he decided to get married to me to avoid the shame.
A few months afterwards, we got married. I put to bed a baby girl.
That was in 2008. My baby was exactly the carbon copy of Sam, which did not
surprise me. I had wished that the baby would resemble me. Ahmed accepted us
even when he knew the baby did not look like either him or me.
Ever since then, I had been dying in silence. My conscience kept
killing me. At a point, I hated my own child, seeing a picture of another man
in her. My husband loved her more than anything else. In 2010, I had another
baby, a boy, for my husband and my joy knew no bounds. Two years later, I had
another boy for Ahmed. Even at that, he loved my daughter more than he loved
his two biological sons. At a point, I became jealous and just could not bear
it anymore so I decided to confess and beg for forgiveness. I could not
continue to die in silence. I felt it was time for me to confess to my husband,
but how would I achieve that without breaking my home? I did not want to lose my
marriage for anything.
One day, I called him on phone to ask him if he would ever forgive
me. He asked what I meant by that. He asked if I was alright and I said yes. He
hanged up on me. I cried like a baby. When he came back from work that same
day, I served him his dinner, after which we went to the bedroom. I told him to
forgive me. He asked again what I meant by that. I narrated everything that
transpired between Sam and I. To my greatest surprise, he dropped a bombshell.
He said he knew all these years that he was not the biological father of our
four-year-old daughter. He said he knew that someday I was going to tell him
but he never knew it would come this soon. What he refused to tell me was how
he found out.
I was so ashamed of myself that I bowed my face in tears but he
cuddled me and said he had forgiven me long ago. He said that we pray every day
and that he had no reason not to forgive me. He went further to say no one was
perfect and that we made mistakes in life, that I was a nice person and that we
had been through a lot in life. Therefore, he could ot abandon me now that I
needed him most. He said he could send me packing if he wanted to but he had
always loved me.
At this point, I wept for cheating on someone who would rather
cover my shame at his expense. I wept because I took advantage of his love for
me. I wished I could turn back the hands of time. Why did I do what I did? I
thought to myself feeling so ashamed of myself. "As far as I am concerned,
she is my daughter, I have always seen her as mine and always will. Everything
that has happened is in the past now. You still remain the love of my life.”
Those were his exact words.
I was short of words. All I could do was to cry and thank God for
the kind of man He blessed me with because I knew that no man would take that
from any woman no matter what. I was lucky to have gotten away with it. Some
other woman might not be as lucky as I was. But I learnt my lessons big time.
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