[ 109 ]
Only the tip of the sun still showed, red and low on the horizon—a clear evening. Lai Jin knocked tentatively at Munira’s open door. His hair was wild and stood on end. He found Ayaana blowing air into a charcoal stove, a saucepan of water by her side. He had a favor to ask. She agreed to it with a grin.
Half an hour later, she slipped into his house with a blue bucket full of water into which she had mixed a portion of coconut oil and a cup of aloe vera. Lai Jin was waiting, shirtless. He crouched in front of another basin full of water, a long plastic bottle containing a tiny bit of beige-colored shampoo in hand. Ayaana recognized it as one of a set that had first brought grief to her hair in Xiamen. She sniffed at it, then placed it on the ground beside her bucket. Next, her hands warm on his shoulders, his chest. Remembering. Too many eyes would be watching, she knew. Lai Jin’s presence was a riddle. Her behavior and habits were under scrutiny; she had become an enigma. This did not bother her. She stroked the back of his neck. He tilted it, eyes shut. Ayaana ran fingers through Lai Jin’s extra-dry, long gray-flecked hair.
Before he went to Ayaana’s house, Lai Jin had found himself ensnared by profound doubt. Feeling his otherness keenly, he had groaned, asking himself what he was doing on this shifting island of an Africa where history was a shroud, the news of the world was a lusterless rumor, the water he used was from a brackish communal well, and sometimes when he looked sideways, he glimpsed odd-shaped shadows peering at him. The scented vision he had pursued treated him like a mirage, while his life yearned for all that was her and hers. It was as if another man had possessed him.
He had got up to seek Ayaana.
“I need you,” he had whispered.
She had come. Her hand was on his forehead. Touch. She had asked, “Will you cut it?” Not yet, he thought. Touch. And then his fear left him.
“What is China to you?” he asked. China? He had meant, What am I to you?
The used water ran into the outside drain. Ayaana lathered his hair and remembered crossing the sea with him, the world she had found, the profession she had gained. She had been marked by China. But “marked” could also mean “bruised.” Or blemished, or scarred, or written into. She lathered Lai Jin’s hair. She wanted to trust in his presence, its life. Life was wild, beguiling, and dangerous. It peddled desires, and could abandon the beloved at will.
The sun still rose and shone after a disappearance, a death, an exile. She stroked Lai Jin’s head. His raspy breathing, eyes closed.
Every day she watched him—of course she watched him. She wanted her island to tether him. She coveted his time. She raced to Mehdi’s because she knew he would be there. She listened for his thoughts. Yet she needed space to surface from the depths of the unknown into which she had plunged. She asked, “What is China to you?” as she rinsed his hair. “Have you seen the American salt well? The pit latrines they built?”
He smirked. “The goat shelters?”
“Yes,” she answered. She continued: “I was young when they came. They landed with noise.” She scoffed. “Their dream for us? An unusable well.” She flicked the suds off Lai Jin’s head and poured more rinsing water over him. “China says she has come back. An ‘old friend.’ But when she was here before, we also had to pay for that friendship. Now she speaks, not with us on Pate, but to Nairobi, where our destiny is written as if we don’t exist.”
Stillness.
“We hear China will build a harbor, and ships will come; we hear that an oil pipeline shall cross our land. We hear a city shall emerge from our sea, but first they will close our channel. These are the things we only hear. China does not talk to us.”
Lai Jin listened to Ayaana, heartsick for her, for the island, unwilling to lie about assurances. Outside, other night voices: Mama Suleiman yelling over some offense, Munira calling for Abeerah, Ziriyab hammering some wood into shape, fish on fires, and the smell of steamed coconut rice, night jasmine, cloves, lemongrass, and rose; moths, and the fluttering of several other shadowed night fliers—bats, maybe. Lai Jin exhaled. Ayaana sprinkled more conditioning water on his head. She said, “We hear the Admiral Zheng He has emerged from out of time to resume his voyages.” A twist of her lips. “Me, though, I desire Pate’s dreams.” She paused and shook her head, softened her voice: “If they can be retrieved. You see, we have lost even the memory of the name for our seas.” She patted his head dry with a frayed green towel. Evening cicadas added to the night chorus. Lai Jin shifted to get more comfortable. Ayaana added, “China is here. With all the others—al-Shabaab, everyone else…China is here for China.” She shrugged. “What do we do?”
Lai Jin felt, for a moment, the paralyzing weight of insane historical forces and their cacophonic slogans pressing both of them down.
Ayaana dropped the towel and leaned over his neck. “Done.” Her head tilted over him. She crossed her arms over his chest. He held her arms. Her face was pressed against his. She added in a whisper, “But maybe, as it approaches us, this earthquake that is ‘Zhongguo,’ it will do us the honor of recognizing that Pate Island is also the keeper of its graves?”
Lai Jin shivered. Still, he lifted Ayaana’s hand to his mouth. “Xiexie xiao…meimei.”
She turned to kiss his face. “Not ‘Wo de airen’?”
They laughed.
[ 110 ]
Lai Jin had become a grounding rod of sorts for the family. He had joined their meal. Little Abeerah was already in bed, faking sleep. Lai Jin had become a crucible for their memories of Muhidin. Though speaking of Muhidin opened their hearts and changed their voices, he also noticed that the repetitive mention of Muhidin’s name gradually turned Ziriyab mute.
As Ayaana had escorted Lai Jin partway to his house, she had suddenly burst out, arms flung forward, “I need a storm.” The next afternoon, Lai Jin, having already learned from one of the fishermen of Fundi Mehdi’s past as one of the coast’s legendary wind-whistlers, had approached Mehdi mid-work to ask what, hypothetically speaking, a person might require in order to purchase from him a storm-raising wind. “Why?” Mehdi had asked. Lai Jin had hemmed and could give no answer.
* * *
Ramadan came and went, and a few more of earth’s new exiles, the Yemenis now, showed up on the island armed with shared genealogies that guaranteed that they had a place to settle into. Lai Jin went with Ayaana, Munira, Mehdi, and Abeerah to Lamu for Maulidi and, for the first time in his adult life, dared to dance in public. Mama Suleiman was present, making deals and catching up with old friends. Lai Jin had, naturally, attracted Mama Suleiman’s disdain: “Made in China Bandia,” she called him. She took pleasure in pointing him out even to strangers as “Mtu Bandia Made in China.” He ignored her, his thoughts briefly preoccupied with the e-mail messages he had received: demands for his ceramics, his agent’s desperate appeals, and more requests for interviews. Maulidi. Music and prayer and dance, and the loud arrival of boats and souls from other Indian Ocean islands. Timeless rhythms. The dusk’s orange light reflected on sand dunes, and all around him the warm, warm sea. “I am betrothed to the Western Ocean,” he wrote back to his frantic agent, “and to its ineffable bounty, including its light.” The music from this land bounced off his browning skin. “I am unable to respond to you now. I am dancing.”
* * *
Lai Jin sometimes accompanied Ayaana as she prepared rose-and-jasmine attar for Munira. Slowly, he was co-opted into the gathering of materials amid the ruins of cultures past. He was learning the terrain and what it carried. One dawn, Mama Suleiman found Lai Jin collecting wild-rose florets for Munira. “Mtu Bandia! Stealing knowledge!” she hurled at him.
The morning had been pleasant and tender until that moment. Lai Jin felt the fresh breeze falter, as pained as he was by the unexpected sourness. In defense of the morning order, he placidly told her in Kiswahili, “Umerogwa. Nenda zako!” Testing a new repertoire of insults: You are possessed. Get lost.
&nb
sp; Mama Suleiman froze. She peered at him, and her face flushed. He waved her on. She huffed. He touched the plants to his lips, ignoring her. Yes, he could learn the secrets of rose attar and the meaning of its sprinklings on a woman’s skin, this uncommon map that had steered a seafarer to this most unexpected place. Receding footsteps. He did not dare turn to see if the woman had really gone.
* * *
Lai Jin found he was most contented when he was in Fundi Mehdi’s ship-repair yard. Among boats. Close to Ayaana. In view of the sea. Without intending to, he found himself under Mehdi’s tutelage, learning how to craft boats with mangrove poles, and repair them with cotton rope soaked in coconut oil, and hearing about Mzee Kitwana Kipifit, another ghost with whom his fate was entwined. Like others who had found a way to Fundi Mehdi, Lai Jin worked best in silence save for the reassuring cadences of the teller of the tide news.
[ 111 ]
You are facing your older child. She is so much taller than you, her breasts and mouth are fuller, her body is more contoured. She is a woman. She has her grandmother’s face and gait. You, too, are a reader of signs, and you know, in a way that she does not yet, how everything in life has turned upside down, how certain arrivals change the course of currents. But this is not why you want to talk to her. “It is time,” you tell her. “Come with me.” She follows you, and on her face are traces of the distance that China had first imposed on it. It is a chasm that wounds you, too, because you would have preferred that none of your children should know pain. But you have faith now, for you trust the one who has been willing to journey so far to be close to your child. He is older than you would have wanted, but you also know that the spirit of your girl is old. You stroke her face, this daughter born of your first encounter with fiery desire. She is a woman now, older than you were when you gave birth to her. She has a degree. She speaks Mandarin, English, and Kipate. She is tethered to an island that is a death sentence to its many. You do not know why; you do not understand many things. You do not know what will resurrect the fullness of your Ziriyab’s soul. Your daughter—ah, but she is lovely. You are in the garden you created to perfume faith, hope, and a beauty you imagined would restore life. You knead the earth of the garden you wrestled from the salted earth and made fecund and rich. The wind lets you eavesdrop into the whispers of your transplanted roses. They are dropping their petals today. The rose hips have burst into orange-red. Your daughter says, “The seed harvest is good.” You shift on your feet. “What do you know?” You pretend to frown. Your daughter reaches up and plucks and skins a yellow-green loquat. She sucks the flesh and spits out the brown seeds. You follow her and pluck one of your own. She laughs. “I spy on you.” The mischievous child shimmers through. “Babu…” A pause. A smile. “He asked me to tell him the secret of your halwaridi.” You pinch your daughter’s cheek, half in jest. “Tricky hawk!” Fake outrage, the presence of beloved ghosts. Your daughter giggles, “I didn’t tell him about the seeds. I spied for me.” Now she cups your face. “To find you.” Heart in her eyes. You want to weep. Somber: “And?” Your child reaches for the rose hips. She brings her nose to these. Nutty, earthy, gentle—you know. “Harvest seeds before dawn.” She adds, “You sing to them, and tell them how necessary and beautiful they are; that is why they grow for you.”
She asks you, “You will be leaving soon?”
“Leaving?” You step away from her. You look at the garden. You carried livestock manure from Mombasa to feed this soil. You massaged the dung in, centimeter by centimeter. You smuggled in dirt from fertile places in paper bags. You have borrowed, begged, and stolen herb, flower, shrub, tree seedlings for this garden. You learned about the character of plants, how human they were. Some take, some give, some share; others must have everything for themselves. You found the ones that purged the salt that would have burned roots. And the earth yielded to you. It helped you raise your daughter. You stoop to scoop some of it with both your hands. You squeeze it, and the light of day tints you and the earth yellow-gold. You ask your daughter, “Could you keep her for me—this co-mother of mine?” Perhaps you are mad. Your daughter reassures you by asking the right question. “What is her name?” Your daughter crouches next to you. You want to ask her to go with you to Pemba. But, then again, you understand that fate makes its own plans. You press the name of your earth into her ear: “Bibi Alilat Dhat-Hamin.” She is still, absorbing this. Now you sit holding hands, as sisters might, your legs stretched out in front, surrounded by birdsong, the buzzing of bees, the undertone of the tide, and the memories of worlds shared. The laughter of new children, and the unease of a wind you suspect Mehdi has summoned for company. It is a young one. It is warm and loping. Its habit, you notice, is to reap scents from your garden. A sweet-nosed wind: it lurks most among the jasmine, lavender, and rosemary. Your daughter’s head is against your heart. Tomorrow you will show her which one of the chests contains your seed bank, now hers. You will later tell the story of these to your grandchildren, whose closeness you sense, for you have started to dream of them. You want to give your daughter the pale amber of the first rose-hip-seed oil you ever made. You have stored it in your brassiere, close to your heart. First you will rub three drops into her forehead. The bottle is almost full. She will know what to do with it. You will add to her knowledge of herbs. You will tell her why and for whom to mix what and when. But, for now, linger in this moment of existence, for all is well, and you and your daughter are perfect.
[ 112 ]
Preparations. A few weeks later, the Adhan crescendoed as early-arriving water-seeking dragonflies rode in on a mid-September wind. The kusi stormed seaward and unveiled storm-darkened skies. But since life’s small creatures were calm, and the season’s fish showed up as expected, the fishermen were not worried. It was on this day that a visitor now living within these—the farthest edges of life inside an invisible, old, and ruined land—pronounced Shahada, reciting, “Ash hadu anlla ilaha ilallah…” He cut his hair short. He took a purifying bath. He adorned himself in a clean white garment. He re-emerged transformed, and belonging to God and Pate. The imam had told him that he really did not have to change his name. He could still be Lai Jin. He replied that he could also be Jamal. And so he was both. Because of the seas in his blood, his name was preceded by “Nahodha.”
[ 113 ]
Four months later, Munira left with her once-and-again husband, Ziriyab, and her daughter Abeerah for Mozambique. Ayaana haunted Pate Island, roaming its contours with a doleful look. Gaps in the heart; family was completion. Yet, given the chance, she had not left with them. In the house, she studied a tattered green-and-gold photo album filled with images of antecedents that Munira had bequeathed to her, saying, “We are still that constellation, my love, my child.”
* * *
Seven nights later, Ayaana waded into her sea. At low tide, she drifted out with the current.
* * *
She dived in. Now she offloaded the cacophony of the world. She propelled herself down. Slow release of breath. She hovered at that point where, if she turned, it would be easier to sink than to surface. Daring. Dropping into the soul of the sea, where she could feel the whole of the ocean cocooning her again and offering its dimensions for her to expand into.
Drifting.
Breathing.
Her generation was supposed to develop a taste for a world that was being manufactured elsewhere. She had not found anything in it that mattered enough for her to own. There were things she was supposed to want, ways she was supposed to speak, and images she was supposed to adopt for her dreams. Yet, the more she had experienced of the world, the less she was certain of it. She had returned to Kenya supposedly armed with options. Ayaana kicked her heels to start her ascent. She could move to Mozambique. Ayaana somersaulted beneath a slow-moving dolphin pod, old friends introducing moonlight to sea depths. Breathing out, a bubble at a time, Ayaana floated and wondered if the traveling sea dog was already on its way home.
/> * * *
—
Ayaana surfaced.
Glimpsed a human silhouette on the beach. She lowered her shoulders into the water, squinting to make out who it was.
* * *
Nahodha Jamal had stumbled upon Ayaana’s nighttime sea sojourns. The sultry humidity had driven him outdoors, and the moonlight on the water beckoned. On impulse, he had headed down to the coves to rummage through Mzee Kitwana’s things. He wanted to be alone to think. What was he still doing here? And, just like that, there was Ayaana, wrapping up her body in a torn kikoi, having emerged from the waters. Moonlight on her skin. Somehow, when she saw him, it was natural that she would head straight into his arms. It was natural that he would enclose her in them. “What? A sea spirit?” he had asked.
She giggled. They shifted, still attached to each other, to watch the moon on the water and see how it lit the ocean as if from within.
Mahtabi. Akmar. Ayaana remembered.
Resting her head on his chest: “Did you want to be alone?”
He hugged her close. “Not at all.”
She stuttered, “The water is warm.”
He was somber. “Do you still want a brother?”
She studied the silver light reflecting off his bracelet. “No.” An upward glance. “Not at all.”
* * *
—
So they moved even closer. He pressed her against him. Breath to breath, heart to heart, and the tide swirled around their feet, casting the sea’s detritus around them. Seaweed wrapped around their ankles, and they stood in shifting sand beneath a soft bluish bucket-shaped moon. In dreams, she remembered, I travel inside stars, on stars. Her arms wrapped around Lai Jin’s neck. In dreams I am a tunnel made from darkness and I know the way. I’m not alone, even when there is nobody with me. His scars, the burn marks, on face and back. She rubbed her hands against his mouth. There was the scar beneath his lower lip. She would drag him down to her, because she needed to feel again the sense of his body on hers. In this place where they could be found and seen, every suppressed tension turned into yearning and its appetites. Slipping into yet another unknown, submitting to yet another call of the promise of moreness. Enveloped again, but this time she knew the currents, she knew where they would lead. Submerged again, seeing through the darkness, the motionless vastness, and now she knew she would not drown, she could not drown. Breathing. Life as passage always: Here are thresholds. And all that Lai Jin sought was in the softness, the wetness, the moaning, the pulsing, pounding, slippery rhythm of this, of everything sought and wanted and ached for so terribly, so terribly. Cartography not of possession, but of, how odd, belonging. Lai Jin groaned out, unheeding, and she, cradling him, tightened her body, arms, thighs, and heart around him. And there was soundless stillness, and the sound of waves lapping close by.
The Dragonfly Sea Page 49