Sudi Kenga did not need to read the proposal twice.
He read it once, picked up a pen, then drew a long line through the final instalment.
“This is too long.”
They were in his supplier yard, where sacks of chilli and dried ginger were stacked beneath long sheets of corrugated roofing. Two trucks waited to be loaded. Workers carried sacks on their shoulders while spice dust hung in the air like a brown mist.
Nasma sat on one side of the wooden table.
Yusuf sat on the other.
Between them lay the payment schedule they had built from Bi Tunu's review.
Sudi tapped it.
“I can accept this first payment.”
He pointed to the first line.
“I can try this second one too.”
He pointed to the next.
“But here you're asking me to carry your risk for almost a full month.”
“We're reducing the quantity,” Yusuf said.
“Risk doesn't disappear because the bag count is smaller. What do my farmers get paid with?”
“That's why we're proposing staged deliveries,” Nasma said. “You don't release the whole load today.”
Sudi looked at her.
“And if I release the first lot and you sell a machine tomorrow?”
The question hit Nasma in a place that was becoming painfully familiar.
An outsider was asking whether the family itself was a system that could be trusted.
“We have no signed sale.”
Sudi shook his head.
“That isn't what I asked.”
Nasma fell silent.
Yusuf stepped in.
“We're conducting a family review. No distribution before the review date.”
Sudi looked at him.
“And a sale?”
Yusuf did not answer immediately.
Nasma could have answered for him.
She did not.
“We haven't locked the rule on a sale yet,” Yusuf said. “But we need to lock it before any new supply deal.”
Sudi pulled the proposal closer.
“That's the problem.”
He put down the pen.
“You think I see your grief and say, ‘Fine, I'll be patient with you.’ But there are people behind me.”
He gestured across the yard.
“Farmers. Drivers. Sorting workers. Those people don't have room to wait while your family figures out what fairness means.”
Nasma nodded.
“Fair.”
“I can trust you,” Sudi said. “I cannot make my farmers lend money to your grief.”
The words stayed on the table.
Yusuf pulled over a blank sheet.
“Then let's redraw it.”
For forty minutes they reduced the order.
Instead of one large load, they set three smaller deliveries.
Each delivery was tied to its own payment milestone.
No instalment could be pushed back without reducing the next delivery.
Sudi rejected the discount they requested.
Nasma did not fight hard for it.
Instead, she adjusted the delivery cadence until KVK's working capital would not be squeezed on a single day.
At last Sudi said, “This is still a risk.”
“For us too,” Nasma replied.
“Your risk is your business.”
“Yes.”
Sudi watched her for two seconds, then initialled the side of the draft.
“Conditional.”
“Condition?” Yusuf asked.
“You do not change the asset structure in the middle of this bridge without informing me. If you start selling machines or shutting the line, I stop the next delivery.”
“Fair,” Nasma said.
Sudi studied her.
“Don't say fair if you're going home to five people with five interpretations.”
Yusuf gave a short laugh.
“That's tonight's job.”
From Sudi's yard, they went straight to their first customer, a large restaurant that had reduced its orders while Saada was ill.
The owner, Bi Hawa, sat them in a corner of the kitchen while staff prepared lunch.
Nasma placed small sample packs on the table.
“We want a two-week preorder.”
Hawa looked at her as if she had misheard.
“Preorder?”
“Yes.”
“I've waited for your deliveries before.”
Nasma did not dodge it.
“Which is why we're not coming with an empty promise. This is the quantity we can guarantee. This is the delivery date. This is the small deposit discount.”
Hawa picked up the sheet.
“Why is the discount so small?”
“Because if we make it too large,” Yusuf said, “we'll have bought your cash at a loss.”
Hawa stared at him, then laughed.
“At least you didn't come here to lie to me.”
“We want the cash earlier,” Nasma said, “but we don't want to destroy the margin while pretending we're saving the company.”
Hawa opened one sample and smelled it.
“If this quality holds, I can place a deposit for twenty cartons.”
Yusuf did not smile until Hawa sent the confirmation to his phone.
The deposit was not large.
But it was cash before product.
When they left the kitchen, Yusuf stared at the notification.
“This is the kind of money Rashid thinks can't exist unless we sell something.”
“Don't start winning arguments with one deposit,” Nasma said.
“But—”
“The weekend pilot worked. This is one deposit. It isn't proof of six months.”
Yusuf put away the phone.
“You're right.”
Nasma looked at him with a second of surprise.
“Don't get used to it.”
They went to a second customer, a man who owned two retail shops.
He did not want to hear the proposal.
“I'm not paying for stock I haven't touched.”
“We can make the deposit very small,” Yusuf said.
“Even small money is my money.”
Nasma showed him the small-pack pilot sales.
He shook his head.
“That's one weekend. I want to see repeat demand.”
Yusuf almost offered a deeper discount.
Nasma only looked at him.
He remembered the margin guardrail.
He did not offer it.
Instead he asked, “If you see repeat orders within a week, can you come in?”
“I can talk.”
“That's not yes.”
“Correct. It's not yes.”
They left without a deposit.
Nasma climbed into the van exhausted, but she did not feel they had failed.
The market had given them one yes and one no.
That was better than fantasy.
In the afternoon they visited another mid-sized customer who wanted small packs for two outlets but requested deliveries every three days instead of weekly.
Yusuf drew the route in his notebook.
“I can run this.”
Nasma almost said, *I'll review it first.*
She stopped herself.
“Show me the cost per trip.”
Yusuf showed her.
“Within threshold?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it.”
Yusuf looked at her.
“Did you just say do it?”
“Yes.”
“Without approving every route yourself?”
“You'll report.”
“Ah. You still thirst for reports.”
“That's not a disease.”
“For you, it might be.”
Nasma laughed for the first time that day.
When they returned to KVK, Khalfan had already entered Hawa's deposit into the cash map.
Sudi had sent confirmation of the first staged load.
Nasma studied the whiteboard.
They had not found miracle money.
They had not paid every debt.
They had not created profit to distribute.
But they had done something more important: they had connected incoming cash to products the business would continue producing.
Rashid arrived twenty minutes later.
He did not smile when he saw the whiteboard.
“I hear you went to the supplier.”
“Yes,” Nasma said.
“And customers.”
“Yes.”
“You've tied yourselves to new commitments before the family decides ownership.”
“The commitments are below the review threshold,” Yusuf said.
Rashid looked at him.
“Now you sound like Nasma.”
“I sound like someone who read the paper.”
Rashid turned to Nasma.
“The buyer is still there.”
“And our bridge only works if we don't change the asset structure halfway through it,” Nasma said.
“So the supplier now has a veto over the inheritance?”
“No. He has a condition on his credit.”
Rashid shook his head.
“Words.”
“Transaction terms,” Khalfan said calmly.
Rashid looked at him, then back at Nasma.
“And if the buyer brings all the cash tomorrow?”
Yusuf answered before Nasma could.
“Then we need a rule before tomorrow.”
Rashid fell silent.
Nasma checked the time.
They had bought one day of air with the supplier.
One deposit.
One new route.
And now the problem had moved back home again.
Before Nasma and Yusuf had even reached the factory from the last customer route, a message from Rashid landed in the family chat.
**Family meeting tonight at eight. The buyer returns tomorrow.**
---