The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Ayaana zigzagged, trying to maintain her north, using her gift compass. Muhidin stroked the kitten, which was riding on his shoulders. Ayaana asked, “When you are on your boat, did you drown never?”

  He huffed, “The boats I worked on did not capsize.”

  “What is ‘capsize’?”

  “Boats drowning.”

  “Capsize”: a word to collect.

  They made their way homeward; the evening was orange, and its light shone on their faces and on the water.

  Ayaana said, “Mehdi, he builded your boat?”

  “No.”

  “Someone else, he builded your boat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even me, I can build a boat?”

  “If you want.”

  Somewhere in the dimming distance, a woman’s voice soared over the evening wind and waves. “Ayaaaaana!” Before Muhidin could say anything, Ayaana had taken off like a hunted zebra in the direction of her mother’s voice.

  * * *

  —

  A harried mother spoke as rushed footsteps scrambled into the house. “You are late. What a mess. What have you done to your uniform? Who will wash it? Money for soap—does it grow like leaves? Wash up.” Munira sighed. “What a day. That woman! Miserable about everything. Can you believe that she wants singo, as if she is a perpetual bride, du! Ayaana, you hear me? Change your clothes. There’s fish on the fire. Mix the henna for me. Less lime this time. How often am I to repeat that to you? The jasmine water is tainted. Brown. That woman! She must have put something into it when I was outside.” Munira sighed again. “Quick, lulu, dress up; we must collect some langilangi before the sun sets. Ayaana, are you hearing me, or am I talking to the walls?”

  [ 11 ]

  Abeerah. An inflow of unexpected light into a carbuncled existence. Without his knowing it, Muhidin’s life waited for the moment every morning when a child appeared on his doorstep, sometimes preceded by an almost white kitten that purred nonstop, and that had learned to scratch at his door to be allowed in. One night, Muhidin started to laugh like an old truck starting up. His voice gathered power, influenced by its own sound. He guffawed as he had never done before, head tossed back, clutching his hurting stomach. Something the child had said. He couldn’t recall the words, but he remembered the feeling of it. He laughed until his fingers brushed his face and touched tears, which soaked his pillow. It was during that sleepless, joyful night that he realized the extent to which he had underestimated the force of love, its pain and dreadful persistence, and how much like fear it also was.

  [ 12 ]

  Munira, who through the years had refined the art of cushioning herself from innuendos and insults, did not hear the mutterings about Ayaana’s relationship with Muhidin until almost three months later. One Friday afternoon, after prayers, distracted by the heat, cursing the morning’s two ungrateful customers, who had haggled her into exhaustion, she walked toward the shops. The sight of Ayaana’s schoolteacher Mwalimu Juma Hamid lolling about sparked her interest. It was the school’s end of term. She hurried toward him to ask about Ayaana’s report, which she had not yet seen. As she approached, without turning, Mwalimu Juma asked Hudhaifa the Shirazi, a fabric vendor and avid reader, if he knew to what school of ill-mannered ease Ayaana had been transferred.

  Munira halted.

  Fear seized her heart.

  She looked from one man to the other, listening.

  Mwalimu continued: “Alone! Last week, the creature was loitering in the boatyard. Alone, I repeat. Unconscionable, I say. This morning, the girl was crawling on the beach like a slug, and Mlingoti the Apostate, half dressed and unshaven—as usual—looming over her. Overfamiliar, I say. What habits. Vulgar. That’s what I say.”

  Hudhaifa, with his perfect black skin gleaming smooth and touchable in the sun, gasped loud enough for Munira to hear. Mwalimu Juma, rubbing his graying hair, continued: “Money shops for mischief. Mischief. That’s what I say. To be poor is not a sin, I say. But to offer a child to alleviate…” He raised his brows and rolled his eyes, performing woefulness.

  Hudhaifa loved story lines, whether imagined or not. He lifted a hand to secure Munira’s attention. “Is that you, Mama Ayaana? Mwalimu was just wondering why you plucked young Ayaana from her school. Have you…” He paused. Munira had evaporated. Hudhaifa glanced at the slightly hennaed nail tips of his fat, beringed fingers, still clutching Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s translation of The Merchant of Venice, which he was reading that year. “There’ll be trouble.” Eyes glowing, his glee met Mwalimu Juma’s sneer.

  * * *

  Imagine a firestorm. Imagine that it is a dust devil. Imagine its fierceness as a growl that also contains a sibilant sound. But first—“Ayaaaaaana!” An insane mother’s howling.

  There was a corresponding stillness inside Muhidin’s shop, where Ayaana had been trying to create pear-shaped calligraphy while Muhidin studied a map of ancient seas, still wearing a faded pink piece of cloth around his waist. It was his approximation of Hussein Fahmy in the Egyptian movie Khalli Balak Min Zouzou, which he and Ayaana had watched. She had needed a foil for her performance as the belly-dancing Soad Hosny.

  From the outside, another yowl: “Ayaaaana!” Ayaana leapt out of her chair, slipped beneath Muhidin’s arms, tugged open the door of the Bombay cupboard, and crawled into it. From inside, she prepared Muhidin: “She kicks doors in, so leave yours open.” After a slight pause, she added, “She’ll lift you up with your ears, but it won’t hurt for long. Rub hard. The pain, it goes away.”

  Muhidin, still tottering from Ayaana’s speedy scramble, asked, “Who?”

  She said, “Mamangu”—my mother. “You, you’ll call her ‘Bi Munira.’ ”

  Muhidin said, “I will.” A brief silence followed; then, “Abeerah?”

  “Yes?” she replied from within the cupboard.

  “Why’ll Bi Munira lift me up with my ears?”

  “Mhhh…maybe ’cause she doesn’t know you’re my father. Ahhhmmm…maybe ’cause I stopped going to that school—they don’t like me, and I don’t like them. Maybe ’cause I didn’t tell her I live here, but only in the daytime, so it doesn’t matter, maybe.”

  Muhidin nodded. “Anything else, maybe?”

  The cupboard door clicked shut.

  Muhidin sat down to wait.

  * * *

  —

  Imagine a flash of lightning from cloud to ground.

  Munira materialized on Muhidin’s porch, crossed into the foyer, and entered the reception area that was also the shop, Vitabu na Kadhalika. She slipped the niqab from her face and glanced around the space, filling it with the wrath of primal forces. Muhidin tried a pre-emptive strike: “Hujavuka mto, simtukane mamba?”—If you cross a river, won’t you meet a crocodile?

  Munira’s anguish turned into distilled hatred. Eyes red, dead calm, she dropped anchor. Her voice spat icicles. “You?” She stepped closer. “A crocodile?”

  Outside, the echoes of receding waves. Inside, Muhidin experienced the encyclopedic scope of Munira’s knowledge of arcane and contemporary insults. Muhidin kept his head low and imagined himself a rock in the sea. Ten minutes later, the verbal battering ended and Munira growled, “Where’s my baby, you piece of filth?”

  Point a finger, start a quarrel. Muhidin sighed. He was old. He was tired. He craved peace. He limped to the Bombay cupboard and flung its doors open. “Out,” he snarled at Ayaana. Ayaana cowered, covered her face. “Out,” Muhidin howled. “Your foulmouthed fiend is here.”

  Ayaana crept out, shivering. Muhidin had never shouted at her before.

  “My baby!” Munira shrieked.

  “Noooo!” screamed Ayaana.

  “Ayaana!” Munira lowered the pitch of her voice.

  Ayaana reached for Muhidin’s hand and grabbed it. He shook it and her away. She returned, clung, dangled, rotated on the li
mb, and shouted at her mother, “He is my father. Mine. My father.”

  Muhidin extricated himself by peeling each of Ayaana’s fingers from his arm. “Go!” he said, lifting her in the direction of the door.

  Ayaana froze, staring at him. “Ah! Go!” Muhidin lifted his hand. Munira rushed toward Muhidin. “Don’t even…” Muhidin turned to Munira, large eyes popping. “Begone, witch,” he said. “Both of you. Disappear forever.”

  Munira grabbed Ayaana and pulled her away. Ayaana was as still and stunned as a small bird in a toothless cat’s jaw. But she grabbed the threshold frame, watching Muhidin, her eyes double in size. She hurled at him, “You throw me away. You…you throw me away.”

  * * *

  Muhidin heard a child’s shrill, post-storm litany. He heard bewilderment in a mother’s voice.

  Munira: Why?

  I. Won’t. Go.

  Munira: Who?

  He is my father.

  Munira: What?

  He’s my teacher.

  Munira: How?

  Him I love.

  Munira: Why?

  I’ll stay with him forever.

  Munira: What?

  You go away. You are bad. Bad!

  Munira: Why?

  A child wailed.

  Munira: Ayaana! Stop it this second. Stop it!

  Noooooo!

  A slap echoed.

  Muhidin flinched.

  Another one.

  He flinched.

  Another.

  Flinch.

  Silence.

  End of clamor.

  * * *

  —

  His house was too quiet. So Muhidin murmured, “Abeerah.” His house was much too still. His heart split when he saw the incomplete shape of a bird on paper and felt the sensation of a cold, hard knife slicing his guts. An unexpected cramp of sorrow forced him to hunch over his heart. So he murmured, “Abeerah.”

  For three days, it sounded as if some dreadful easterly wind was stabbing the sea, which, with diminishing howls, succumbed to its wounds under Muhidin’s unbroken gaze from a tall balcony window.

  * * *

  —

  A resolute and ceaseless pounding shook his door in the thick of night. Muhidin, who had been struggling to sleep, eased himself out of bed, wrapped himself in a pale blue kikoi, and descended the stairs. The pounding intensified as he crossed the courtyard into the foyer. He unlatched the door, looked out, then moved it aside.

  Munira’s body thrummed with fear and fatigue. Ayaana’s swollen eyes searched Muhidin’s face. Muhidin cringed at the limpid ache there, at the naked soul in her gaze. He translated her imploring look. He knelt down, eyes level with hers. “No,” he said. “No, Abeerah.” Her mouth trembled as a teardrop reached her chin. She sniffed. He stroked her brow, saying, “A father to throw away his own? No.”

  The spillover in Ayaana’s eyes dried up. She sniffed away whatever lingered and leaned over so that her forehead touched Muhidin’s. Unsmiling, she asked, “Never, ever?”

  “Never.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.”

  She stood on tiptoe, a long bird half a second before flight: “Promise?”

  Muhidin hesitated, and then he nodded.

  Ayaana was now chewing on a finger, her eyes on him. “You are mine?”

  Muhidin blinked. A lump filled his throat, choked off his air supply, and made him dizzy. He watched her gazing at him. There was the panic, and then a spark of elation from at last knowing what it was to be seen by another, to be truly seen. Seizing the moment, not the future and its consequences, he let go, wordless. He nodded. Ayaana cupped his face, forehead furrowed, eyes to eyes. Her fingers were near his throat, testing the vibration of his words for truth. “Yes.” Backed up by another nod.

  Copying him, Ayaana also nodded. She slipped under his arms to return to her desk and finish her interrupted calligraphy.

  * * *

  —

  Munira shifted on her feet, not knowing where to begin. Gesturing toward Ayaana, she said, “She hasn’t eaten.” Muhidin said nothing. “She has mourned you,” Munira added, a catch in her throat. She bent her head. Muhidin remained silent. Munira said, “She wouldn’t talk to me.” Muhidin watched, silent. “Tell me what to do now?” Munira stepped closer to Muhidin.

  He heard her, the huskiness in her low voice, its plea. Saw her direct gaze, smelled her perfume. He did not trust her newfound meekness. Muhidin narrowed his eyes.

  “Forgive me. I was wrong,” Munira said.

  He studied her.

  Munira then asked, “How did it happen?”

  Muhidin’s gaze was steady.

  She added, “You…her?”

  He listened.

  “Fix it,” she begged.

  Muhidin laughed.

  At himself.

  At her.

  He laughed until he had to wipe his eyes.

  Munira pleaded, “What will she do when you leave her?”

  Muhidin grunted.

  Munira looked sideways. “May I sit down?” She collapsed into a wooden chair above which books loomed, about to spill over. She stared at his books, drained, a portrait of befuddlement. Muhidin chose to sit across from her in a tilted chair from which yellowed stuffing was popping out. He watched her, the crushed hauteur—traces of her cultivated youth. Its sullied state satisfied the resentful fisherman still within him. Shadows on her angular shape mirrored the loping geography of their island, and her air of displaced, permanent loneliness blended with the perfume of night jasmine outside. She was hugging her body in this room filled with knickknacks from all over the world, piled up like flaked-off memories. Muhidin’s eyes, cameralike, sought and captured small Munira-details from different angles. He leaned forward. He was already familiar with her shadow; now he saw the gap between her front teeth. A subsiding sensation all of a sudden dragged at Muhidin, as if the detritus of an unknown life had fallen upon him.

  “You choose us,” Munira said, making certain he heard the “us.” She continued, “Choose us and you lose your good name and standing.” Sarcasm underlined the word “standing.”

  Muhidin’s mouth trembled on the edge of laughter.

  She asked, “You don’t care?”

  Muhidin grinned. It had not occurred to him to worry about “standing.”

  She misread his look. “We amuse you.”

  Muhidin at last spoke. “Listen, woman, do whatever you want. The girl, well, since we’ve chosen each other”—he studied Munira; her squirm contented him—“since we’ve chosen each other, and I’m not going away, we’ll share her life. You can live with that, as I must.”

  A sound from Ayaana. They both turned to look. Ayaana was standing on her toes and using her whole body to color in the script that created a bird, using a red felt pen.

  Muhidin did not consider then that Munira had neither agreed to nor rejected his offer.

  Munira asked, “How did she find you?”

  Remembering Ayaana’s pre-sunrise excursions, Muhidin half smiled. “We found each other. The sea.”

  The sea? Munira wondered, looking for the trick, aware of unstated things, and of Ayaana listening behind her. Munira experienced a pinch in the heart at the idea of her daughter’s hidden life, a flare of fury that a stranger was privy to sites that should have been accessible to her alone. But she had to be careful. Ayaana had managed to cry for seven hours nonstop. This was not a feat she wanted to experience again. Munira was cool. “She calls you ‘father.’ In public,” Munira said. “Did you know that?”

  Ayaana’s pen hovered. Muhidin shrugged. “Then I am.”

  Ayaana hugged herself.

  Munira said, “You don’t understand.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m suppos
ed to be a lustful sorceress, old man, trapping even”—Munira hesitated, looking Muhidin up and down, her nose ever so subtly wrinkled—“the likes of you.”

  Muhidin’s body shook with laughter. Ayaana laughed with him, joyful, not knowing that her mother was shrinking and ashamed that the low-class, wrinkled, shaggy beast in front of her imagined she was beneath him. She stretched out her legs and waited for the laughter to subside. Still stinging, she said, “I wouldn’t marry you. Not even for her.”

  Muhidin retorted, “I won’t ask.”

  Munira retaliated, “So, then, what do I call you? Babu? You’re old, but are you old enough to be my grandfather?”

  “Call me mpenzi?” Muhidin offered roguishly. He waggled his brows, hoping she would choke at the outrage of declaring him “beloved.”

  Munira was tranquil as she suggested, “Why settle for ‘mpenzi’ when I can just call you nyumbu?”

  With his goat beard and uneven broad body, there was indeed something of the wildebeest about Muhidin. Muhidin grimaced. Such a sobriquet would be difficult to outlive. He offered a truce. “Something else?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Munira answered. For the first time since Muhidin had seen her, she smiled. This caused an unexpected shiver within his heart. He turned away at once, to see Ayaana watching him. She offered him a toothless grin. He waggled his ears at her. She giggled. She selected a green crayon to color her bird’s wing.

  Munira asked, “What do you teach her?”

  “Life.”

  “You took her out of school?”

  “She took herself out.”

  Munira nodded. It was possible. Ayaana’s thrill about school and new friendships had given way to her coming back home roughed up, unspeaking, clench-jawed, and wheezing. She would cough ceaselessly, eyes streaming, and her asthma would flare up on such days. Munira had circled the issue, afraid of complaining. She knew things would get worse, and there were no other schools nearby that she could afford to send her daughter to. She glanced at the book-filled room before asking Muhidin, “Do you know much?” Munira chewed on her middle fingernail.