Speechless

by Anne Simpson

  Thomas parked the car and Sophie got out into the solid wall of mid-afternoon heat, into the darkness before her eyes, a brief dizziness. She straightened up. Yes, A’isha, with Safiya, was with her auntie, hidden in the shadow of the porch. The child who had been scratching in the sand leapt to his feet, commanded by A’isha’s auntie, and ran to the car. No one stopped Sophie. No one said, You’re not welcome here. But she wanted it to be over, now that it had come, the meeting with A’isha, the meeting Sophie had asked for. The next day she would leave for Canada with her mother, if they let her go, if they didn’t try to stop her because of a number in her passport. Or if the article she’d written remained a sticking point. But her uncle had said there was no legal reason for anyone to keep her in the country, and he would accompany them to the airport in case there was any difficulty.

  Her uncle opened his door and stood by the car, stretching his arms.

  There she is, said Sophie. With her auntie.

  We’ll come back for you in about an hour, said Thomas. Will that give you enough time?

  Yes, said Sophie.

  The little boy took Sophie’s hand, as if to propel her forward, as if she belonged to him and should be introduced by him, but as soon as they got close to A’isha and her auntie, the child burst into giggles and ran away.

  A’isha stood as Sophie came toward her. Safiya lay on a blanket at her feet, sleeping, one arm curved over her stomach. A’isha’s auntie stayed on her bench, inclining her head to watch Thomas and Clare drive out of the compound. Sophie remembered how she had resembled a large red spider that first day she’d seen her, so long ago, it seemed.

  Sannu da zuwâ, said A’isha’s auntie.

  Sannu, said Sophie.

  You are welcome, said A’isha.

  Sophie smiled at Safiya. She has grown. She’s lovely.

  A’isha motioned to a chair, and Sophie sat down.

  I am happy you are here, said A’isha. You come again.

  I’m glad to be here too. Sophie glanced at the place where she’d sat with A’isha, with Felix, under the green palace of a tree. I was sorry to hear about your mother, A’isha. I wanted to send you my sympathies. My condolences.

  Condolences? said A’isha.

  Your mother, said Sophie. I am sorry.

  Sorry-o, repeated A’isha softly. And Mr. Felix? He did not come.

  Felix was in the rioting in Minna. He was injured.

  Uh-uh, tutted A’isha.

  He was not fighting. I mean, he was not involved in the rioting himself. He was going there to see what was going on, a bystander. Sophie didn’t know how to put it so A’isha would understand. He is in the hospital now. He has an infection. She didn’t know how to stop explaining; she rushed on. He got the infection from cuts, from injuries, but they couldn’t do much to help him, even after we took him to a different hospital. Sophie spread her hands.

  He is hurt?

  Yes, badly hurt.

  Safiya woke and A’isha took her up from the blanket, comforting her. Safiya had indeed grown. Soon she would be of an age when she could be weaned. A’isha got up, spoke to Talata and gave her some coins, and then motioned for Sophie to follow her across the compound, to a bench next to the hut Sophie had once entered to meet Nafisa. A’isha put her hand out for Sophie to sit beside her. Sophie remembered the cashew tree by the hut, how the sun poured through its leaves, as it did now.

  Mr. Felix, said A’isha. Uhhuhhh.

  A’isha put her small hand on Sophie’s, a light pressure, and Sophie leaned back against the firm, warm wall of the hut. Safiya woke, and the shushing sounds A’isha made as she rocked her were soothing. A’isha wouldn’t tell Sophie things would get better; A’isha was well aware that things could get worse. Hadn’t Thomas told Sophie and Clare on the way to Paiko that the first appeal for A’isha had not gone as planned? Sophie had forgotten all about the appeal. She was ashamed she’d forgotten.

  Talata brought bottles of water, slipping herself beside A’isha on the bench and returning some coins to her. Sophie was given one bottle, A’isha another.

  Nagode, said Sophie. She gulped the water, a pure stream sliding down her parched throat. She could have drunk several bottles.

  What will you do? asked A’isha.

  I will go home to Canada.

  A’isha shook her head.

  Oh, you mean what will I do once I’m there? I don’t know, said Sophie.

  You must do your work. A’isha looked directly at Sophie now, patting Safiya’s back. Sophie was reminded of the grip of Nafisa’s hand on her own. You must do it.

  A’isha’s life, a string, could so easily be snipped in two, and yet she was thinking of Sophie.

  The appeal did not go, A’isha said.

  Yes, my uncle told me. I’m sorry.

  They will try another time.

  And you — how are you? asked Sophie.

  I am well.

  What else could she have said, thought Sophie. She wouldn’t have said what it was really like, waiting.

  I came to apologize to you. Sophie said. She watched Talata go across the compound. There were always chores to be done. Talata couldn’t curl up on the bench beside A’isha and go to sleep.

  Apologize, said A’isha.

  I wish what I wrote had not caused you so many problems.

  You did not make problems for me.

  If I had not done it, people would not have come to your — to this compound. Sophie brushed her hand across her forehead.

  Those men, they wanted to cause trouble.

  But I wanted to come and tell you myself. I should not have written the article. I had this idea that it might help you, but it didn’t.

  Farih says you were the first.

  I don’t understand.

  You come — you came, you and Mr. Felix.

  Yes.

  I wanted you to speak for me.

  Sophie finished the last of the water in her bottle.

  The daughter of Farih says the story about me has reached America, said A’isha. She says people are giving money to help me. It is good.

  Sophie sat with her hands in her lap. Yes, it’s good. She was thinking out loud. I mean, if your story goes international it could help with the next appeal, A’isha.

  Safiya gurgled at A’isha and she bumped her up and down on her knee.

  Farih says that because of so many people knowing my story, Nigeria will not want the shame.

  The shame of carrying out the sentence? Yes, she could be right, said Sophie. What do you think?

  All is the same here. It does not change.

  You don’t see how this could help you? said Sophie.

  A’isha made a little movement with her shoulders, almost a shrug.

  Sophie leaned forward. A’isha, if enough people believe that you’ve been wronged, if enough of them, all around the world know about you, then something might happen.

  UNCLE THOMAS AND CLARE had returned. Sophie saw her mother get out of the car, shading her eyes with a folded newspaper, and she felt a sweeping rush of gratitude. Her mother, her deep concern. She watched as her uncle went to greet A’isha’s uncle, and how her mother and uncle were ushered onto the porch and given chairs. Sophie’s mother fanned herself with her newspaper.

  Talata came across the compound and spoke to A’isha.

  You have been invited to take a meal with my auntie and uncle, said A’isha. I am invited also. It will be after sundown.

  An electric fan was put outside to cool the visitors and keep the mosquitoes away. Two tables were put together, chairs of varying shapes and sizes were gathered, and Talata set lanterns and a few candles on the tables in case the power went out. She gave everyone plastic glasses and spoons. Sophie’s Uncle Thomas was given beer in a large green bottle with a star on it, which he divided between Clare, Sophie, and himself.

  A’isha, next to Sophie, was quiet; Safiya slept. It had been dusk for mere moments, or so it seemed, then a flare of sky, and darkness dropp
ed over them. There was a wail from the kitchen outbuilding; the fan wound down; the power had gone out. But the egusi soup had been prepared. A’isha fixed the candles on a square of folded tin foil, melting the wax first so each candle would have a base. It made the tables festive. Sophie saw the merest edge of a new moon now as she shifted in her chair, and felt herself tumbling into the night sky, weightless.

  A little over a week before, when the moon was waning, she’d pointed it out to Felix. They were driving to Lagos after she wasn’t allowed across the border.

  It’s gibbous, he said. It must be in the last quarter.

  What’s gibbous?

  Any moon that’s half-full, less than full.

  Waxing or waning, either way?

  Either way, he said. You didn’t know a moon could be called that?

  It had been a long day, and they were both tired. The moon looked like a water-filled balloon, pale and distorted as she gazed at it through the car window.

  He brushed a hand across her cheek. Things will get better, Soph.

  He’d been beside her in the car, in the dark. So close, so alive.

  The egusi soup was brought to the table in green glass dishes. There was enough pounded yam for everyone, and small dishes of water so they could clean their fingers. Sophie had eaten it before but had never quite got the knack of shaping the pounded yam to scoop up the egusi. A’isha showed Sophie how to do it, and laughed when Sophie ate it, carefully, her head bent over her soup bowl. There was palm oil in the soup that gave it an oily texture, and it was fiery with spices, but it was very good. The pieces of goat meat were tender and delicious. Sophie looked at A’isha, who had covered her mouth with one hand, eyes crinkled with amusement.

  She grew serious when a visitor arrived and stepped from his car, arranging his clothes before joining them. It was Hassan Muhammed, the alhaji, the head man, and A’isha’s uncle greeted him effusively, inviting him to the table. The best chair was brought from inside the house by two boys and put between A’isha’s uncle and Thomas, Sophie’s uncle. Hassan had eaten. But he would take tea, and after a long interval, Talata brought it to him in a cup that rattled on its saucer. It might have been the only cup and saucer the family owned. He made Talata nervous, thought Sophie. She must have boiled water over a kerosene stove, since there was no power. But by the time the tea came to the table, Hassan forgot to drink it. He was deep in conversation with Thomas. They spoke Hausa.

  What are they saying? Sophie asked her mother.

  But Clare couldn’t hear them.

  There was so little time, thought Sophie. Soon they would drive back to Abuja, and the next day she would fly to Canada. Yet now she was wiping her brow and finishing her egusi soup. She was sitting with A’isha, gathered together with her own family and A’isha’s.

  When it was time to go, Sophie reached out to A’isha and Safiya, and hugged them as one.

  I will be thinking of you, said Sophie. Hoping for the best.

  She saw A’isha didn’t understand.

  I hope everything goes well for you, said Sophie.

  Yes, please. I pray to Allah, I pray.

  You aren’t angry? You can still pray?

  Now always, I pray.

  Goodbye, A’isha, said Sophie.

  Goodbye.

  Sophie, Clare, and Thomas walked to the car. It was cool. Above them, the glinting stars were shaken out, spilled across the clear air. The new moon, the deep blue of evening, the beginning of night. The past and the future were divided by the sound of the door opening and closing, by the car starting. Sophie was cleaved in two. She might never see A’isha alive in the world again.

  28

  ____

  BINTA LOVED HER DRESS, made by a tailor Monica knew. Binta had picked out the material with its print of birds dipping and circling and soaring over the blue waxed cotton. Now, wearing it for the first time, she thought the birds were lifting her off the ground. A different girl, Monica had said to Thomas, than the one who’d come to them. Soon they would tell her that the police had found and arrested Danjuma and B.B., the very police that Monica thought would do nothing. Should they tell her now? Binta knew that they thought they were speaking privately, but she overheard them.

  Monica was helping Binta settle in, and Thomas had figured out a way to take her on as a helper, an assistant, as he called it, before she started back at secondary school. She had not finished school; she had never taken examinations, not received the Senior Secondary School Certificate. Thomas had an idea that she might make a lawyer one day: it was only a hunch, but hunches were, as his father had once said, the staff of life. Binta didn’t really know how people studied to be lawyers, or what they did after they became lawyers, or why they needed briefcases packed with papers to be read, but the staff of life made her curious. Was it something that lawyers were given?

  Monica had made sure Thomas was dressed up too, in a good suit, and the silk tie with a pattern of gold keys, though before he left with Binta, Monica told him she knew that the first thing he would do was to take off his jacket.

  I can’t do business with my jacket on, he told her.

  Well, don’t stuff the tie into your pocket.

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED, Hassan was already seated in a chair on the terrace outside his house, under the awning, where cold drinks of lime cordial and soda awaited them. He was especially pleased by Thomas’s gift of a goat. It would be saved for a feast.

  Tani was about to beckon Binta inside the house, but Hassan gestured to her. Binta could stay. Thomas had been offered the place of honour at the head man’s side, and Binta, to her surprise, was given a chair on his other side. She watched Thomas bow to the men who had collected in a circle to ask Hassan for advice about a family dispute, discuss a scholarship for a student, resolve a matter of a well that had been dug in the middle of a property line.

  Thomas asked about their health; they asked about his health.

  He asked about their families; they asked about his family.

  Farih is coming, Hassan told Thomas. She will be the glue for us.

  But you must not say, he added quietly to Binta, that I called her glue. She would turn into a lioness.

  Binta imagined a lioness with her teeth bared.

  You have decided? Hassan asked Thomas as he batted his woven whisk at a fly.

  Yes, Alhaji, said Thomas.

  Binta scanned the other men: one guzzled thirstily from his glass, another scratched his vast belly. None of them was as respectful as Thomas.

  You do not have a reputation for pro bono work, said Hassan.

  That is true. Up to now.

  Binta was offered an orange soda and bobbed her head in thanks. She considered the words pro bono. She shifted the glass from one hand to the other.

  Hassan chewed on a fig reflectively. You envision yourself working together with the others?

  Farih Hussaini will be my guide, said Thomas. I have thought of another who may help. Yakubu Muhammed.

  I had not thought of Yakubu.

  However, I myself am not Muslim.

  Hassan laughed. You do not need to be Muslim to help us.

  Binta sipped her drink; both of her hands were freezing cold, but the rest of her body was warm. She watched as Thomas slid off his tie and crumpled it up. Now he would put it in his pocket. Binta smiled as he stuffed it in, exactly as Monica had predicted, so the tail of the tie, with its pretty gold keys, straggled out of the pocket.

  Hassan grew serious. There will be those who will ask questions. There will be those who want to harm you, even want to kill you. Churches have been bombed in Abuja, and this is the very place where you are living.

  I have talked about this with my wife.

  But, frankly, you may be putting yourself in danger.

  My own niece put her life in danger.

  Yes, she did. Then there was the business of the fatwa, so you are aware of what may happen.

  I am well aware.

  Thomas was so quiet,
like a little boy at school. He was looking intently at his shoes, the very shoes Binta herself had polished the evening before.

  If my family is threatened, said Thomas, I will cross that bridge when I come to it. Perhaps I would need to reconsider.

  Binta thought of him crossing a bridge and looking down at the water, considering and reconsidering.

  Let us hope you will not have to, said Hassan. He leaned back in his chair. You will be under my protection, such as it is. You have met A’isha. You do not know that her stepfather married her off to a friend of his who had one foot in the grave. I intervened too late after he died. He drained his glass, set it down on the table. A’isha’s mother died not long ago, as you know. Her death was a great loss.

  Binta turned this over in her mind. Her own mother had been hit on the highway and carried home, where she died on her bed. Was her death a great loss to anyone but Binta? Afterwards, Binta had gone to live with her cousin, who liked his youngest wife best, his junior wife. Men could draw women like honey. How could they do that?

  Ah, she has come. Beware the lioness, Hassan murmured.

  Farih got out of the car, a Lexus, Binta noticed, since she knew a little about cars, and immediately Farih’s glamour caused a commotion among the men. They slid their feet into shoes, adjusted their clothing, put down their drinks. Binta almost laughed out loud. But Farih paid no attention to the men grooming themselves; her eyes were on Hassan and Thomas. Her ivory-coloured dress shone as she moved toward them, and her pale-pink head wrap was twisted into a shape that resembled the open blossom of a flower. She was a queen. Binta revised her view: if men could draw women like honey, this woman could draw whatever she wanted. She would have whatever she wanted. This was the person Thomas must have been describing to Monica. The lioness.

  I am behind schedule. Farih lowered herself gracefully into the chair provided for her. Binta observed how she managed it, one hand beneath the silky ivory dress. You must forgive me, said Farih.