Bi Tunu Sengo did not open the meeting with a long greeting.
She placed five files on the table, handed out five small pieces of paper, then said, “Before I show you the numbers, each of you write down one question you're afraid to have answered.”
The room had been rented by the hour. A rectangular table. Six plastic chairs. A fan that made a faint complaint every time it turned toward the window.
There was no photograph of Saada on the wall.
No KVK machine nearby.
Not even the smell of chilli that had settled into their clothes for years.
Nasma liked that.
For the first time since the funeral, they were somewhere nobody could say, “This is Mama's house,” or, “This is the factory where I work.”
Bi Tunu pushed pens toward them.
Yusuf wrote quickly.
Leila stared at her paper for a long time.
Rashid bent one corner before he had even written anything.
Nasma wrote her question last.
Bi Tunu did not collect the papers.
“Keep them in front of you. We'll return to them at the end.”
Khalfan opened his laptop.
Bi Tunu touched the first file.
“Cash.”
The second.
“Debts.”
The third.
“Stock and machines.”
The fourth.
“Receivables.”
The fifth.
“Management decisions and family withdrawals.”
Rashid leaned forward.
“That last one is what I want.”
“We'll get there,” Bi Tunu said. “But if we want the truth, we don't begin with the part we like.”
Yusuf suppressed a smile.
The meeting began with a number that silenced everyone.
The cash available that day was worth less than one machine.
Khalfan had already shown them that reality on the whiteboard days earlier, but seeing it on a cleaned statement, alongside the money that had actually come in and gone out, made it different.
“This is the first important distinction,” Bi Tunu said. “A company can own assets and still have no cash.”
“Which is why I want us to know what those assets are worth,” Rashid said.
“We know the range. Don't run there yet.”
She laid another sheet on top.
One side contained estimates for the machines, the van, saleable stock and other equipment.
Yusuf exhaled.
“So this isn't small.”
“Wait,” Tunu said.
She placed a second sheet beside it.
“Supplier debts. Payroll obligations. Taxes and routine operating dues expected. Customer deposits that represent commitments, not profit. Contract obligations. Then the cost of stopping the business.”
Yusuf frowned.
“The cost of stopping?”
“You don't close a production line by pressing a switch and walking away. There are orders, notices, stock disposal, penalties, delivery commitments and people.”
Mama Pendo was not in the room, but all seventeen workers were present inside every payroll figure.
Rashid tapped the table.
“But something still remains at the end.”
“Yes,” Tunu said. “But it isn't equipment price divided by four.”
She wrote three phrases on a large sheet.
**Asset value.**
**Liquidation proceeds after obligations.**
**Going-concern value if the business continues.**
“Those aren't one number?” Leila asked.
“No. And that is the biggest mistake you're making when you say, ‘The company is worth this much,’ as if the money is sitting in a drawer.”
Nasma looked at Yusuf.
He was simply studying the paper.
A few days earlier, he might already have started arguing about his vehicle deposit.
Today he did not.
Bi Tunu opened the fifth file.
“Decisions.”
Rashid straightened.
“Now we'll know.”
Nasma said nothing.
Khalfan displayed a list of commitments from the previous six months.
There were supplier terms Saada had agreed to alone.
There were price adjustments she had made for two customers without any minutes from a family discussion—there had been no family council then.
There were overtime approvals Nasma had made while Saada was ill.
There were emergency partial payments with receipts but no memo explaining why one supplier had been paid before another.
There was customer credit extended over the phone.
Bi Tunu looked up.
“I searched for transfers into Nasma's personal account.”
Rashid went still.
“There aren't any?” Yusuf asked.
“I have found no hidden cash transfer giving Nasma a personal benefit in the records I was given and independently verified.”
Nasma did not feel victorious.
She had expected relief.
Instead, she felt like someone who had waited for one verdict and received another.
“So she's clean?” Rashid asked.
Bi Tunu looked directly at him.
“I said there is no evidence of a hidden personal transfer. I did not say the system is good.”
She pointed to another line.
“Nasma, did you promise the payroll balance before seeing the entire cash map?”
“Yes.”
“Did you change the production mix without documented approval from anyone else?”
“Yes.”
“Did you agree with a supplier on a seventy-two-hour discussion without a family process?”
Nasma swallowed.
“Yes.”
Yusuf turned toward her.
Rashid pulled his chair closer to the table.
“So she didn't take money, but the system still depends on her.”
Nasma looked at the files.
“That's the problem we need to fix.”
Nobody interrupted her.
“I thought transparency meant showing people what I'd done after I'd made a good decision.”
“That's not transparency,” Yusuf said. “That's a report.”
Nasma nodded.
“Yes.”
Leila watched her sister for a moment.
“Was Mama like that too?”
The question changed the air in the room.
Rashid started to speak, but Bi Tunu raised a hand.
“We cannot make the dead answer questions in this room. We have her records, not her mind.”
“Saada kept many decisions in her head,” Khalfan said. “That's why reconciliation became much harder when she fell ill.”
Nasma remembered the notebook.
*The business must not become a secret simply because one person knows it well.*
But she did not mention it.
Today they did not need Mama to win an argument.
Bi Tunu moved to receivables.
One customer had paid part of what they owed.
Another had confirmed the debt but asked for ten days.
Two retailers from the small-pack pilot had placed small deposits.
The market had not rescued them.
But it had not rejected them either.
“A going concern has value because there are customers, supplier relationships, workers, recipes, routes, brand habits and capacity,” Tunu said. “But that value dies if you cannot govern cash.”
“So what's your recommendation?” Rashid asked. “Never sell?”
“That isn't my job.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Showing you what happens if you divide now, what happens if you continue, and which controls are required so that none of you becomes the company.”
Yusuf gave a small, humourless laugh.
“Now we're back to Nasma.”
“I can accept controls,” Nasma said.
Rashid looked sceptical.
“What controls?”
Bi Tunu pulled another sheet toward her.
“Thresholds.”
She wrote down a commitment limit above which Nasma would no longer be able to act alone without a second review.
“Monthly independent review. No solo commitments above the agreed threshold. Significant customer-credit changes must be visible. Supplier terms must be recorded. Family withdrawals should be scheduled, not driven by emergency pressure.”
“And if something needs a decision in twenty minutes?” Yusuf asked.
“Then don't design a threshold that kills the business. You can create emergency authority, with mandatory reporting within twenty-four hours.”
“I accept that,” Nasma said.
Rashid smiled sharply.
“Easy to accept until the day of a deal.”
“Which is why it shouldn't be my promise. It should be a rule.”
Leila pulled her question paper closer.
“I wrote: ‘Are we selling something because we genuinely need to, or because we don't trust one another?’”
“And the answer?” Bi Tunu asked.
Leila looked at the files.
“Both.”
Yusuf opened his paper.
“I wrote: ‘Has Nasma already taken her share without us knowing?’”
The room went silent.
He looked at Nasma.
“The answer is no. But also… she's had power we didn't see until after decisions were made.”
Nasma felt the sentence cut in exactly the right place.
“Yes.”
Rashid opened his paper.
“‘Can this business support all the children, or are we only delaying its death?’”
“And now?” Bi Tunu asked.
Rashid looked at the small-pack deposits, the receivables and the liabilities.
“I still don't know.”
For the first time, his *I don't know* did not sound like weakness.
Nasma unfolded her own paper.
“‘If I'm not the last person making the decision, will the business collapse?’”
Yusuf looked at her.
“And?”
Nasma took a breath.
“I think that's a question I have to answer by allowing some decisions to happen without me.”
Bi Tunu closed four files.
She left the fifth open.
“There's still one thing.”
Khalfan turned to the final page of the cash model.
There was a line for operating reserve.
Nasma knew it, but not with this precision.
Bi Tunu took a red pen and circled one number on the page.
“You may distribute later. You may sell later. You may bring in an investor later. Those are your decisions. But based on these records, this is the minimum reserve required to keep payroll, the supplier cycle and customer commitments from becoming one fire.”
Rashid frowned.
“And if we distribute below it?”
Bi Tunu lifted the pen from the circle.
“If you distribute cash below this reserve, you will have sold tomorrow to pay for yesterday.”
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