As Munira administered the concoction, Ayaana’s tiny snores punctuated the tense silence. Soon after, Munira served rosebud tea sprinkled with cinnamon, and small portions of mbaazi and mahamri coated with coconut. Her mkate wa mofa was unlike any other, he noted. Munira asked him, “What do I do now?” In the pale light sprinkling the room, they both stared out at the sea. They savored the snack and avoided answers.
“Is this now the world?” Munira asked Muhidin. Tears shimmered in her eyes.
Silence.
And then Muhidin, gaze distant, spoke to her of things he had once seen. In 1985, two weeks before Ramadan, he explained, he had found himself in Misrata, Libya, on Tripoli Street, he told Munira. He had been making his way back to the emerald seafront of Tawergha, where his ship waited. On one of the side roads, a strangled voice made of disgrace had screamed at him, “Negro cur, perpetual slave, blacker than ugliness.”
“It was,” Muhidin said, “the grunt of evil that blames its victim for existing in the first place.”
Munira listened.
Muhidin said, “Being human is a rare art; it is not given to all equally.” Muhidin then rubbed at the sweat and stickiness of the blue shirt clinging to his skin. His voice was suddenly gruff as he answered an unknown question. “Aren’t we also men? Don’t we also know something of honor?” His left hand clenched and unclenched.
For an interval, they just listened to the earth’s simple sounds outside: birds, ocean, a woman singing, children playing and giggling, and the flow of tides. Muhidin said, “I noticed that the ants are carrying food into their nests.”
“Storm?” Munira asked.
“Likely.”
She said, “May it come. May it purge this evil.” Then: “I like your voice. Even in fury it bears kindness.”
He glanced up at her, startled. She smiled. He froze. The thick heat and humidity invoked lassitude, slowed down their futile hunt for solutions to heal existential uncertainty. The heat collected and stored the wind-borne smell of rotting mangoes and decrepitude—something of the essence of the liquids of death. Munira rose. “Must fetch herbs.” She groaned again, covering her face. “Why don’t they just immolate themselves in their slimy shit-pits?”
Muhidin wanted to assure her it would all go away. He reached out, but withdrew his hand before it touched her skin. He scratched his beard. Finger tapping the table, Muhidin cleared his throat and said, “We’ll save Ayaana.”
“How?”
“We’ll rescue her from the burden of God.”
Munira’s response was cold and hard: “Muhidin Mlingoti, you shall only point my daughter to eternal possibilities. She was not born for limits.”
“The risk—” he had cried, intending to argue his case.
“Fix it,” Munira interrupted, nostrils flaring. “That’s what fathers do.”
Confused, annoyed, and also cheered by the word “father,” Muhidin had meekly answered, “I’ll try.” He had gulped down his coffee, burning his tongue and throat, and stood erect to stretch his back, easing the tightness in his belly. As he released a breath, he said, “I’ll rest now.”
Munira had walked him to the door. But when he stepped into the hazy day, she had grabbed his forearm. A crack in her façade. She had asked, “What if there’s nothing to hold on to?”
He had surprised himself by tucking away a stray lock of hair on her head, touching her eyebrows, and saying nothing, because he had no guarantees to sell.
[ 15 ]
Later, within the dim shadows of a dull afternoon light, Muhidin sat across his table from Ayaana, clutching a waterlogged dark green book. Brows meeting, he watched her, as she, hand to jaw, watched his mouth open and close.
Ayaana’s laughter skipped around inside the room. “You look like…like a big fish!”
Abrupt. “Abeerah?”
“Mhh?” she answered.
Muhidin’s fingers tapped a tattoo on the tabletop. “Abeerah,” he repeated. “Some cursed toads from craven realms dream of drinking our blood. They are, of course, possessed.” He pointed to his head.
Ayaana cradled her head. A mosquito whined. Muhidin leaned forward to add, “They are idolaters. They are stone-cold infidels.”
She added, “And…aposto…apostorate.”
“Apostates.”
Ayaana’s head went up and down.
Muhidin said, “Correct.”
Remembering the previous application of “apostate,” she whispered, “And you?”
“Me? Only a humble heretic.”
“Me, too.” She was emphatic. “Like you.”
Muhidin grasped the tabletop. Some things were no longer a joke. Lest Munira hear about it, he hastened to correct her. “Er…only untethered…er…men are that.”
Watching him, Ayaana decided she would also be untethered, whatever that was. Muhidin tried again. “There are malaria mosquitoes, which need to bite. They carry and spread sickness and diseases. So, too, do some people.”
Ayaana’s eyes studied Muhidin. “Why?” she asked, not understanding his words. Outside, a crow cawed. The sun’s light changed, and it imbued objects in the room with a halo.
Muhidin’s mind turned on its pivot. He propped up his jaw. “Can’t explain humans.” Muhidin stopped. He realized that he could not prevent some unpredicted horror from robbing Ayaana of her joy, some tragedy from stealing her life. He made a fist, despising his helplessness. She drew circles on the tabletop with her fingers and waited for him to render her world safe again. She whispered, “Atarudi?”—Will he return?
“No,” Muhidin answered, little knowing that an invading alien army was already on its way, the fallout from Fazul that would deform their destinies. Muhidin paused. “Should anyone ever approach you as that one did, run. Just run.” Muhidin’s eyes bulged before turning red. “Promise?” His voice broke.
Muhidin’s tears struck Ayaana’s heart. She leaned over to wipe his eyes. “The bad man won’t come again. I am happy.”
Muhidin took Ayaana by her face, squeezing it. His voice was intense: “Why do you love the sea?” Muhidin trembled.
She half frowned.
He prompted, “The feeling of the sea outside and inside you, yes?”
She nodded.
“That feeling…that is truth, that is how the Almighty speaks.” What more could he add? Beauty? He seized both Ayaana’s hands. “Basmallah!” he exclaimed.
Remembering, she intoned, “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim…”
He pleaded, “Slow-slow.”
She repeated it.
Muhidin said, “That’s it! That is it!” Muhidin then stroked Ayaana’s hair and retied her mismatched ribbons. She did not need to know yet that other types of ugly soul-traders existed, hollowed-out entities that would also seek to gorge themselves on her body, mind, heart; memories, blood, soul; her will, her dreams, her desires. Not yet. Not yet. So Muhidin breathed upon Ayaana’s head. He was willing Ayaana eternal safety. He wanted to take a whip to the disordered world and clean it up for her, to find all the Fazuls that still existed and break their necks. Muhidin breathed, and his voice was cracked: “Abeerah, render Basmallah in color blue, green, yellow, and red. Colors pink and orange.”
“And purple,” Ayaana added.
“And purple.”
“Abeerah,” Muhidin said, “this book”—he indicated the lumpy book she was kneeling on; Ayaana did not move—“is yours.” She blinked at the strange title. “The Poetry of Rabi’a al-Adawiyya. I’ve marked some lines for you. Stay close to Rabi’a. She’ll take care of you.”
He prayed.
* * *
—
Over the days, weeks, months, and, later, into the years, on a wooden desk that Muhidin had carried from his house into her room—a desk that would turn into an untidy shrine for her accumulated treasures, including her callig
raphy pens and books—Ayaana refined her Basmallah calligraphy. As the seasons flowed, she learned how to turn to the musty green poetry book to find a word or phrase or line and hear from Rabi’a before she ended her day. Almost at once, Ayaana started murmuring prayers again—speaking of easy things, such as asking for the protection of her mother and Muhidin, the father who was standing in for the father who was still lost. One day, she retrieved an old photograph of her mother to place on her table. She then went to Muhidin to demand one of him. He gave her one of him looking out toward the ocean from a ship’s deck. She pasted these onto the table surface and covered them with plastic, these sentinels of her rest and her days. Yet, during some nights, Fazul’s ravings inserted themselves into her dreams to breathe death, fire, and delusion. Sometimes she would scrabble out of sleep and hide under her bed. Sometimes, partway there, she remembered that she had Muhidin and that he was stronger than Fazul. She would return to her bed and fall back asleep.
* * *
After Fazul, Munira wanted Ayaana close to her. When the awful soldiers landed, men who disrupted her work and scattered her bounty—sweaty, loathsome, unmannered men—she needed Ayaana to be within calling distance. Ayaana joined in her mother’s work and listened to the play of other children outside with jealous longing. Over the weekends, the heat, color, and voices of so many females cleansing, purging, massaging, coloring, oiling, adorning, incensing, and transforming themselves under her mother’s watch filled the house; Ayaana, bored, now eavesdropped on their thoughts, sentiments, and experiences.
* * *
—
Ayaana helped blend the henna with lime, molasses, and black tea. She watched her mother spoon henna paste into small cones of assorted sizes, and draw a lacy pattern into a woman’s scrubbed skin. Ayaana was soon permitted to add ingredients to her mother’s herb blends, including lavender and clove, to store in a dark vessel for later use. Munira supervised her as, with pride, she first mixed the entrancing singo for a bride named Asha: perfect portions of ylang-ylang, jasmine, kilua, and many rose petals, cloves, sandalwood, and Munira’s marashi, including her rose water, which was so distinct that women traveled from as far away as Tanga to buy up her stock. Women had earlier gathered in the house to exfoliate Asha’s skin. They whispered to the bride-to-be about the many, many ways of being a woman. Other women sent Ayaana away on assorted fool’s errands to stop her from prematurely hearing arcane woman-words. Ayaana tried to listen anyway. What did the florid words made of double-entendres mean? Why were these accompanied by outbursts of dissonant cackles by wrinkled beauties, the most eager arrivals when a bride was being prepared? Munira caught Ayaana lurking in the preparation room. “Lulu. Go fill those buckets with water from the djabia. If you see those foreign ghosts prowling, run back. Later, tend to the jasmine on the roof. Are you sulking? Eh? Keep testing me. I’ll give you something to stretch your lips over. You can stay and listen on the day you acquire good-sized breasts. Now go! Don’t dally. Just let the sun evaporate my elixir and you will hear from me!”
* * *
—
Off Ayaana went, fantasizing about the day when it would be her turn to be touched with beauty and scent and told secrets in wild, laughing words that would be her entry into this community of women. She also rubbed her chest to see if breasts had started to grow. Nothing there yet.
[ 16 ]
Earth dips. Another showing of a basket-shaped white moon. A boat was gliding into the channel. In it was a man, a surviving twin who had been taken off the island with his brother, Tawfiq, when they were six years old. Like all children of seafaring parents, he and his brother used to watch the waters for the return of their father, Muhidin. Too soon, the boys found themselves at this same jetty in February 1969, with an auntie they had not met before, setting off to join their mother in Yemen. They landed there to discover new relations: a sister, another father, and a tutor who would stuff new memories into their hearts. On this warm November day of a year in which rage had brought down two towers far from here, red strings dangled from the mast of a dau that returned an emaciated, bespectacled, thirty-eight-year-old Ziriyab Raamis to Pate’s shore. His clothes stank of stale smoke, and his shaggy, soft hair was uncombed. His eyes were two doorways to a tomb. He muttered to himself, “The ocean is an old country.” In their new life, everything should have ended well. It had not.
* * *
—
Ziriyab adjusted his glasses, his gold ring with its ruby strip glinting in the light. Fire hauntings. Then ash. Then darkness. Then nothing. The ocean is an old country. When he could get out from under an earth that had tried to bury him whole, bloodied and bruised, Ziriyab, moving on adrenaline alone, had needed to hide. The ocean is an old country. First, like most fugitives, he had made use of shadows, hollows, and holes, lurking in bushes, hiding in culverts, stealing a burka to wear over his clothes so he could walk among men, seeking a way out. Instinct led him to lesser-known ports and temporary landing spots along the extended coastline that deep-ocean travelers know. He had traveled boat by boat until Mocha, south of Hodeida. There, he skulked around until he found a night-moving, off-register, motorized fisherman’s boat that was headed southward. Its nahodha had shrugged: he chased the winds. Ziriyab would abandon that boat at Kismaayo. Fortunately, at that port city he was already among his own—he could have swum to his destination if there had been no sharks lurking. This ocean is an old country. Boat chatter. Ziriyab listened. The seamen and seafarers were deriding some “boots” that had swarmed onto the island. Screeching men, commanding this and commanding that, their screams brewed in some abyss.
“The Terrorized”—the name given to them by the islanders—had leapt from helicopters whose winds blew the roof off a mosque. They proceeded to board boats and madau and seize people on the basis of a name and the shape of a beard. They searched as ferrets would. They scavenged women’s cupboards to hunt shadows. Ziriyab listened to the low-toned murmurs. It looked as if the Terrorized had learned that their zeal had created resentments where none had existed before. They were attempting seduction now. The navigator said, “Monitor lizards posing as voluptuous sirens.” Laughter on board. The boots’ aims were to win hearts, claim souls, and change minds. They had announced that, really, they had come to help the islanders. They had taken it upon themselves to sink a well.
Now all the people on that boat were, as one, seized by tear-causing gales of laughter. They knew the punch line; Ziriyab did not. Huddling into his coat, he waited to hear it. He leaned over to whisper to the seaman nearest to him, “What’s so funny?”
“Duu! You are a visitor?”
“Yes…er…from…from…Turkey,” he improvised.
“Uturuki? How are our people there? Anyway…” Paroxysms of giggles engulfed the man. In between hoots, the seaman told Ziriyab how the boots had proceeded to dig a well without asking or being asked to. It took six months—more elaborate wells had been built elsewhere in eight days—and as they were building it, they surrounded it with a large metal fence, guarded by four large square-headed men wielding guns and looking fierce. When the well was ready, which was eight months ago, they had launched it with halfhearted song and speeches in assorted English accents in front of delegations from the rest of the world. A garrulous military man, whose coat had more metal than fabric, had then led the ambassador to cut a large red bow stuck at the entrance to the well with blunt scissors. And when the first water was drawn from the well and offered to the ambassador to drink, he imbibed it, and truth dawned on him. His pained smile informed the islanders that he, too, had discovered what centuries of Pate Island dwellers already knew: Pate’s underground water was foul, concentrated salt, and had been so for almost three hundred years. After that day, this new well was not referred to again. However, the boots were planning a new heart-soul-mind-winning project that would help Pate islanders help themselves. They were building a pit latrine where no pit latrine
had ever been built before. Surrounding them was a landscape containing ruins of seven-hundred-year-old wastewater channels and sewerage pits. The boat captain snorted. On board, more resigned, disbelieving laughter. The return of barbarous hordes had not been expected. It had been generations since a people completely oblivious to the codes of human hospitality had crossed Pate thresholds. A perplexed silence saturated the boat until someone muttered, “They’ll be weaving our fishnets soon.”
The boat rocked with their amusement.
“And sewing our robes.”
Guffaws.
Frail-toned, Ziriyab Raamis asked, “And where are they now?”
“The kaffirs in Nairobi have given Manda over to them,” a disgruntled voice snarled. Silence again. This one created from the wounds of betrayals: first by Fazul the Egyptian, but the second, more serious one was that of the covenant of belonging and protection broken by the state of Kenya, which had willfully laid the island bare to the murderous alien hordes. Still, Ziriyab’s relief was immediate. Manda. Not here. That is all he needed to know. Now he could permit the hunger, fear, grief, and exhaustion to take him over. Their boat limped into the mangrove channel, and long shadows flickered over Ziriyab’s brittle heart. Choppy water. There were rocks beneath the surface of the sea; millennia of sunken boats rotted down there. He recalled stories told at night of shipwrecks, of ghost boats that emerged in storms to attempt to reconnect with shattered journeys. Then he saw children crab hunting among the mangroves. He shivered. This was the farthest place on earth that he knew to go. He could render himself invisible here.
* * *
There were essences Muhidin Mlingoti could blend, and supplications he could make; there was food he could chew and regurgitate to feed his returned son. There were invocations he recited daily; they included all of Hafiz’s words that he knew. He could even give up his bed. But still the anguished, invisible world his son inhabited eluded his summons. His son would not speak. Ziriyab Raamis stared at his father empty-eyed; when he slept, a belligerent nightmare would have him clawing back into wakefulness with wild cries.
The Dragonfly Sea Page 10