Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
I set out to find the perfect nanny to keep an eye on my angel while I prayed, took a bath or virtually attended to clients and employees.
The first one came through a professional agency. Professional my foot, the first day she resumed work, she flapped her ochre hijab and said: “I told the agency that I don’t cook and I’m not interested in taking care of a baby.” I took her reluctance to reject the job as a “let’s see how it goes.” By Allah, she was hardworking. My house sparkled more than the first day I stepped foot in it. My beautiful baby girl won over the nanny. And we lived happily ever….
I heard sounds erupting from my kitchen.
Insults I have never uttered or heard. Her screaming continued, as she threatened whoever was on the other line. When she said, “I will kill you and nothing will happen,” I peed on myself.
My cousin carried my baby upstairs and locked the door, while I fired the nanny through a phone call.
I found another one, a referral through family. I thought, the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. One problem, it seemed like a tsetse fly family had settled underneath her scarf. Whenever she wasn’t taken care of my baby, she was asleep. I found her in the living room, snoring and whistling like a sewing machine, while my baby stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. I woke her up.
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Why are you always asleep?”
“Headache.”
“But you said you aren’t ill.”
“Yes. No. I’m fine.”
“Yes? No? Which one?”
“Mm?”
I sought the number of the nanny’s relative who referred her.
“Assalamu Alaikum.”
“Wa Alaikum Assalam,” the nanny’s Auntie answered.
I explained the problem.
“Kai! I thought she had recovered.”
I thought, Ah, she wasn’t lying about the headaches.
“She has had them since she was a baby, they must have possessed her while she was still inside her mother’s womb…”
Possessed? Who? The lady downstairs, living with my family is possessed?
“Do you mean Aljannu?”
“Eh…but they’re not the evil type. They just make her sleep a lot. They never interfere with her prayers. She has memorised the Qur’an.”
“Innalillahi wa inna ilaihir rajiun. How could you have referred her to me knowing she has this problem?”
“I thought she had recovered.”
“Has ruqiyah ever been performed on her?”
“You see how small she is? She can lift the heaviest of men and throw them against the wall.”
The nanny’s angelic face peeped into my room.
“Do you need me to hold the baby so you can rest?”
I shooed her out of my room, then broke down into tears.
I thought I’d finally found ‘the one,’ when I walked into her in my kitchen carving out, ‘Musa’ with a scissors on my expensive serving spoons. I thought about it, “am I cursed?” Musa was the neighbour’s driver, a man who had no interest in her.
The next one…My husband returned from a foreign trip, and a driver he had sacked messaged him to welcome him back. How did he know he had travelled and he was back in the country? A friend, staying with us for a few days, advised that we should check the nanny’s phone. Lo and behold, she was dating the driver. And dating about twelve others, some scattered within our estate (those ones believed she was my sister), and the online ones…among them, was a man she messaged: “I don’t have anyone to poison for now, my madam is nice but give me a few months, let’s see if she changes.”
I was consoled to try again. My sister-in-law, through her own nanny, found one for me, a secondary school graduate. I woke up one day to a frantic call from a friend who had seen my baby online. The nanny had a vlog titled: life as a young mother.
She, the mother, the baby I tore my body for, hers.
Your honour, this is why I am seeking a divorce. Please, I want to return to my parents’ care. Please, I will not fall in love again, I will not get married again, and I will never, ever hire another nanny. Your honour, plead with my husband and my family, kindly grant me a divorce.