Baba Suleiman lowered his head.
At seventy-two, he had learned that silence was sometimes the only dignity left to a man who had lost everything else.
Amina turned toward Malik.
“Are you going to sit there and pretend you cannot hear me?”
Malik slowly put down his spoon.
“He didn’t break the plate deliberately, Amina.”
“Then perhaps he should stop trying to do everything himself! If he cannot even clean the floor without making a mess, what exactly is he contributing to this family?”
The words struck harder than she realized.
Baba Suleiman stopped gathering the broken pieces. For a moment, he stared at his hands, rough and scarred from decades of work.
Those hands had once signed contracts worth millions. They had built houses, paid school fees, rescued relatives from debt, and employed dozens of men who had nowhere else to turn.
Now, those same hands were trembling over a broken plate.
