That morning, the tenants' courtyard filled with arguments before Salma opened the house door. Two tenants stood by the water pipe, each holding a phone showing proof of payment. Hassan was not there. Since Salma removed him from rent collection, he had appeared less often in the courtyard.
“We want to know whom we should pay,” said Asha, the tenant in the second room. “Yesterday someone told us not to send money to the new number.”
“Who told you that?”
“We did not see his face. The message came from Hassan's old number.”
The man with her, Musa, raised his phone. “I paid rent last week. This message says the payment has not been recognized.”
Salma invited them to the table beneath the shade of a tree. She did not want them standing as if they were in court. She took out the new notebook, numbered receipts, and a paper showing one payment channel.
“From today, every payment will be recorded here,” she said. “You will receive a receipt immediately. If you have proof of an old payment, show it without fear.”
Asha shook her head. “Hassan used to say you did not know how rent was collected.”
“Perhaps I did not know everything. That is why I am checking.”
Musa looked at the houses. “If your family is fighting, how do we know our rooms will not be sold?”
The question made Salma silent for a moment. She had thought of the tenants as a line of income, but they were also people who had placed their lives inside those rooms. Musa's room held a child who attended evening school. Asha lived with her sick mother.
“I will not sell the house without a clear process,” Salma said. “And I will not take your rent without recording how it is used.”
She put a paper on the wall showing rent received, repair costs, and money set aside for Leila's education. She did not mention Baraka by name. She did not want to make the tenants witnesses to a dead marriage.
Another woman named Rehema arrived carrying an envelope of money. “I paid Hassan two days before Yusuf died. He did not give me a receipt.”
Salma opened the old notebook and searched for her name. There was a line in pencil, but the amount had been erased. The date was visible. Hassan's initials were beside it.
“Do you have proof of the payment?”
Rehema showed her. The money had gone to a number registered in Hassan's name. The description read: “repairs.”
“What repairs?” Salma asked.
“Hassan said the back pipe and the roof of the fourth room.”
Asha turned. “The roof of the fourth room collapsed a month later.”
Salma felt the paper cut her finger. She knew Hassan as a young man who walked around with a wrench in his pocket, but knowing his trade did not mean knowing his finances. She opened the repairs column. There were two payments to a builder, but no receipt for materials. A small gap appeared between the money collected and the money spent.
“I will not call you liars,” Salma said. “But from now on every expense will need a receipt.”
Musa said, “And if Hassan paid someone without paperwork?”
“We will ask him to explain.”
“Can you call him in front of us?”
“For rent matters, yes. For family matters, no.”
Salma took the form and wrote down each tenant's number. Leila arrived carrying printed receipt forms. She did not smile, but her steps were firm.
“You have started the system already?” she asked.
“We are trying.”
Leila gave the tenants a small contact form. “Do not send money to a number that is not on this paper. If someone asks you to send it somewhere else, ask Salma first.”
“And you run the property?” Asha asked.
“I study accounting,” Leila said. “Mama makes the decisions.”
Salma heard her insist on that decision. Not because she wanted authority, but because she did not want her education used as decoration in an adults' quarrel.
After the tenants left, Salma remained with Asha, who still held her phone.
“I do not want a quarrel,” Asha said. “I only want to know whether last month's payment arrived.”
Salma asked her to show the proof. The message displayed a date, an amount, and Hassan's number. There was no line for that amount in the new notebook.
“What day did you pay?”
“Monday.”
“Did Hassan write you a receipt?”
Asha shook her head. “He said he would bring one later.”
Salma did not say that this was the wall she had built by trusting one person. She entered the payment on a temporary page, marked it for verification, and gave Asha a temporary receipt that was not yet a final record.
“I do not want you to demand payment from me again,” Asha said.
“And I do not want to demand it from you without proof.”
Asha left still looking uncertain, but she carried a paper with a date and the name of the person who received her money. Salma knew trust would not return through one announcement. It would be built by every line that could be read.
Salma and Leila sat on a stone near the well. The notebook lay open between them. Most payments were clear. Others had short descriptions. One month had less income than the number of occupied rooms should have produced.
“This gap could be tenants who paid late,” Leila said.
“Or the money did not enter the notebook.”
“Do not reach a conclusion before asking him.”
Salma went through the tenants' phones. Dates, amounts, and recipient numbers lay like pieces of glass. In one message, Hassan wrote that he would put money into a repairs account. In another, he sent Baraka a few unexplained words.
“Hassan's message to Baraka,” Leila said.
Salma shook her head. “Do not mix everything together.”
“I am not mixing it. I am only saying that the accounts need one line for every expense.”
When they went inside, Salma took out the envelope Baraka had given her. She did not open it. On the cover she wrote: family evidence, do not mix with rent.
Then she wrote a short message to Hassan:
Tomorrow bring every notebook, transfer confirmation, and explanation of repair money since the day Yusuf died. This is not a verdict. It is an audit.
She showed it to Leila.
“Will you send it now?” Leila asked.
“Yes.”
“And if he says he cannot?”
“Then we will follow another path.”
That evening, Salma calculated the total gap. The missing amount was not large enough to buy a house, but it was large enough to affect Leila's deposit. She compared it with Baraka's message, then opened the saved list of transactions again.
The missing amount from one month was almost the same as the payment Hassan had promised Baraka to leave.
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