The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Here there were routes and means of travel to every destination on earth: by road, water, railroad, and air. She had been caught in that flurry of ceaseless movement and, for a season, entered into the rush to get things done. But her feelings short-circuited. She had scrambled for and found places into which to retreat: Piano Island and Xiamen Haicang Oil Painting Village; the everyday streets, where she watched workers at work, repairing roads, pipes, and lights; the night streets, with lights twinkling, shining, beaming, ghostly beckons in what should have been darkness. Subsumed by invitations to new sentiment, new sensibility, new smells, and new ways of hearing, tasting, seeing. Yes, dissolution. And new answerless questions echoing down the corridors of her being.

  * * *

  Large yellow moon. Ayaana watched her world as if from within a glass cage. She coughed again and dabbed her nose with a handkerchief. Disparate soundless word: “not.” Another soundless word: “what.” “What then?” Yesterday, daringly, boldly, as one who burns the single road behind her, she had decided to abscond from her “duty to history.” Five weeks ago, at the event where she had eaten the deconstructed almost-egg, her hostess had declared to her, in a heartfelt speech: “There is one memory. Like blood. It is on your skin.” Ayaana had wanted to protect her body parts. She had then counted the heads of those who now looked at her as if she were an heirloom. One hundred and twenty-eight heads. An heirloom, she had read in Mandarin, was an object of value belonging to a family that had been in existence for generations. So she stood next to cardboard cutouts of Admiral Zheng He. “We are old friends.” This was spelled out in four languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, English, and Kiswahili. After yet another public outing, the word “family” replaced “friends.” Oddly for her, because of the questions, she was forced to pore over a past she had not known to learn before. She retraced the admiral’s African pathways to anticipate what she was supposed to become. The study of Kongzi, Confucius, suggested to her other ways of knowing and reading the world. Cohabiting with shadows—here was the weight of a culture with a hulking history now preparing itself to digest her continent; here she was, with something of this land already in her blood, being made into something of a conspirator, anointed with a sobriquet: “the Descendant.”

  * * *

  A slender cloud drifted past the moon’s big face. Shadow and light within and outside her window. As Ayaana tilted her head to scan curved roofs in silhouette, the headache adjusted the center of its pounding from the frontal lobe to the side of her skull. In daylight, the scene below would become mostly green amid flamboyant trees, imports from her East African universe, that had been carried as seedlings and then colonized the landscape to become a Xiamen emblem. Around these, giant palms, black swans, green benches, and slate-gray water edged by green forests, bicycles to borrow, and trees with huge roots that held up the world. Her cell phone rang from under her bed, where it had slipped. Ayaana withdrew her head from the window, chewing on her bottom lip. Documents of acceptance and admission to another university lay scattered on her bed, like rectangular white puzzle pieces. She fell on her knees, hands stretched to reach for the phone. It went off. She picked it up. Missed call: Shalom, her most consistent friend. She stared at the phone, into the dimension that was Pate, from which a choice-shaping call had come.

  * * *

  Country code 254.

  Kenya.

  Her mother’s contralto, its delighted “Ayaana!” Words rushing into one another, backtracking, circling, craving, returning. Ayaana’s words jostled with her mother’s phrases, picking up images to offer, so she was now telling Munira about differences in the colors of light. “It is not the same moon here,” she said.

  “Du!” her mother exclaimed. Then she asked: “Are you eating? Do you have friends? How are your teachers? Do they like you? Are you warm? Will you become a lawyer?”

  Ayaana recalled the acupuncture sessions in her Chinese-medicine class. Lawyer? Ha! She offered a noncommittal “Mhh.”

  More news from the island, the state of tides and fishing, the return of species that used to be hijacked by trawlers before the pirates secured the currents, the death of two fishermen—freak accident on the jetty—the heart attack and consequent death of the muezzin Abdulrauf. He was not going to be replaced.

  Munira’s voice deepened. She said, “I have important news.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  Ayaana’s heart faltered. Fear monsters filled the spaces of distance from her beloved ones, and circled Ayaana with morbid suggestions: Death. Disease. Loss.

  Ayaana bit her nails as her mother said, “Something’s happened.”

  Ayaana strained to hear.

  Munira rushed, “Lulu…do not object…Now Muhidin, your father…” she said. “Well, Ayaana…we decided…What am I saying? We are to be together. We shall marry.” Silence. “Ayaana?”

  The ground had tilted.

  Munira’s words only coalesced inside Ayaana’s mind after a minute. Ziriyab’s omnipresent phantom gasped through her. Could the agonizing season of his absence simply be ended? How unfair life could be.

  Something Delaksha had said niggled at Ayaana: We adapt, you see.

  Ayaana said, “Muhidin?”

  Munira said, “We were not expecting it, but then…well…”

  Utter silence.

  Munira added, “And…you know…it’s been difficult in Pate, so…Ayaana, we are going to Pemba. Mozambique. There’s work there for Muhidin. Oh, Ayaana, and, at last, we will go to Mecca together. Ayaana, are you there?” Munira stopped. “Ayaana? Hello? Hello?”

  * * *

  —

  Ayaana had dropped her phone. She sat on the floor, staring at the wall and seeing nothing. Nothing. Ayaana retrieved the phone to call her mother back half an hour later.

  She asked, “You are l-l-eaving Pate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Put him on the line,” Ayaana said.

  “Ayaana…”

  “Ma…” Her mind was racing. Hadn’t she wanted this? So why was she horrified? She knew why. She wanted to be where they were, to have this adventure with them—to know that they were not proceeding with life without her. How could they leave home?

  Muhidin’s rasping voice came to the line. “Abee-hee-rah,” he breathed.

  Ayaana waited.

  “Abeerah,” Muhidin repeated, “you are happy?”

  Silence. Why leave? she wanted to ask.

  Muhidin said, “So, my girl, life happens. What do you have to say, hmm?”

  Ayaana said nothing.

  Muhidin laughed. “Shocked?”

  And Ayaana understood then that her mother and Muhidin would proceed with their choice with or without her blessing. She asked, “When do you leave?”

  “Maybe after two months.”

  Ayaana’s heart pounded. Sweat beaded her brow. Muhidin said, “Pemba is not so far away.”

  Silence.

  Muhidin asked, “How are you?”

  “Fine,” replied Ayaana.

  “Boys bothering you? Remember what I taught you to give to fools? Kick the balls, punch the nose—twa!—break the bone.” He cackled.

  For a tiny second, as Muhidin spoke, the long shadow of Lai Jin flickered, and she thought, There are those who steal in through the heart. She laughed, but her soul was not in it. Her voice shook. “Will Pemba now be home?”

  “It is on our sea; our sea is home. Pemba is just next door.”

  “Let me speak to Mother.”

  Muhidin said, “First teach me Chinese. How do you say, ‘The sea is warm’?”

  “In Mandarin, Hai shi wennuan de.”

  “Hai shi wennuan de, Abeerah.” Muhidin cleared his throat.

  They paused, as if touching heads, as if Ayaana were reading him through his eyes. Then Munira returne
d to the line.

  “You are happy?” Ayaana asked her.

  Munira did not answer.

  Ayaana now understood something of the fear of unseen forces that hovered, waiting to consume hope. “I’m happy for you,” Ayaana burst out, in defiance of greedy fates.

  Munira’s soft, soft laugh. Stillness. Until Ayaana suddenly whispered, “Who is my father? Where do I find him?”

  Munira heard her. Munira ignored her. Munira said, “It is so late; soon we shall speak again. I leave you in God’s hands.”

  * * *

  —

  Abandoned.

  * * *

  —

  Haunted by transience of the one thing that should have been constant—home. It should not have mattered, since she had wanted to leave. But it did. It felt like betrayal. It made Ayaana’s skin clammy and her body restless. A question hammered at Ayaana day and night, aggravating a headache and growing flu.

  What was she?

  What she was now certain about: not a Chinese-medicine practitioner.

  Emboldened and confused by the change of direction in her mother’s life, Ayaana thought to remake her own world. The sea. The only thing she was sure of was the sea. In the sea, there was always room for her. Just after the moon appeared, Ayaana had reached into her wide, three-level bookshelf and dragged out the first book: Treatise on Cold Damage Disorders. She carried it to her open window. Enough with the geography of Chinese bodies, and expectations that she master meridians and map energy flows, herbs, temperature, color, and harmony; no more struggling with qi, yin-yang, and qigong; no more Wu Xing—mu, huo, tu, jin, and shui—wood, fire, earth, metal, and water—to decipher inexplicable things. She liberated herself from Zhong yi. As the book flew out of her window, Ayaana also declared her independence from “duty to history…and to our nations.”

  [ 60 ]

  After Ayaana left for China, Muhidin had suffered Munira’s ignoring him, her sniping if he tried to talk to her. She tossed aphorisms at him—“Huna mshipi, hu nangwe”; “Kuomoa tenga na nini?” She would not engage. One evening, after Munira had for the third time in two months dumped rancid water on his head as he passed beneath her low balcony, and had exclaimed, again, “Aliye kando haangukiwi mti”— A tree does not fall on one who stands aside—Muhidin had finally snapped. Dripping water, he pounded Munira’s door for at least half an hour, quite ready to destroy it.

  Munira had finally flung open the door and started to say, “You drinking ass,” when, without speaking, he herded her back into the confines of her kitchen and shoved her up against the table holding a bowl of rose water, so that her hand touched the vessel and it spilled over. “Atekaye maji mtoni hatukani mamba,” Muhidin breathed.

  Munira wanted to scoff at his allusion to crocodiles again. Instead she breathed, “What do you want?”

  “You, of course,” Muhidin answered.

  Blood rushed into Munira’s head as Muhidin lowered his head to touch his mouth to the center of her neck. He continued, “Since I am a man of tradition—I no longer approve of adultery—we shall be married.”

  She responded by trying to scratch his skin. Her fingers tore off his shirt. A confluence of emotions. “You hyena!” she moaned.

  Muhidin dragged her down to the floor with him. In urgent possessiveness, they tumbled together down their chasm of longing.

  “I’ve needed you,” Muhidin repeated to her. “I’ve needed you. I’ve needed you.”

  Crushing each other, now that there were no others to hide behind. Falling, falling into each other.

  * * *

  —

  Just before dawn, they had sought out the night seas together. “This is where I first saw you,” Muhidin said. There they spoke of hidden things.

  Munira spoke of beginnings—“I don’t believe in man,” she said.

  “You’ll believe in me.”

  She told him of learning how to die every day. “You can’t outrun your shadow,” she added.

  He asked, “Who decides?”

  She answered, “Stop it. We know the truth. Even as we lie.” She added, “We will speak of death before we dare to speak of our loneliness. Dua la kuku halimpati mwewe.” The prayer of a chicken does not move the hawk. “But I’m alive. Isn’t that good?” Laughing at herself, bile in her voice.

  Muhidin shook her. “Stop that!” Munira shivered. “I am here,” Muhidin said. Munira was crying in a high voice. Muhidin said, “Who will hurt us now together like this?” Munira wanted to believe Muhidin.

  * * *

  —

  One day, two months later, Muhidin told Munira, “We are leaving Pate.”

  Her eyes widened. Fear, and then a subtle thrill. “What’s this, Muhidin?”

  He did not answer at once.

  Munira deflated. “Ah! You wish not to be seen with me.” She pulled away.

  Muhidin grabbed her by the shoulders. “Munira…listen…When I left…When I went”—he lowered his head—“to Nairobi to find out about Ziriyab…went to the CID…then, you see, they took me to prison. I was in prison. They held me there. You see, Munira?” Muhidin broke down.

  “Why?” Munira whispered.

  “They said I was a ‘terrorist.’ ” Muhidin wiped his face. “No court. No judge. Every day, questions: What do I know, what do I think, what do I do? Where was I when this or that happened? Who is my God?” Silence. Then “What’s this ‘terrorist’?” Hard look. “My identity card—it is not mine. I stole it, they say.” He laughed. “One day they’ll come to look for me.”

  “Why?” Munira stroked his face.

  Muhidin muttered, “Pwani si Kenya”—The coast is not Kenya.

  Munira dropped her hand. “I hate politics.”

  “No, mpenzi, it is what Kenya says to me.”

  “You drink, Muhidin?”

  Muhidin glared before growling, “Kenya cured me.” He sighed and continued: “If I stay here, I’ll become this thing. Then they’ll kill me. They’ll say, We have our ‘terrorist.’ And when I die, who will shield you?”

  “So you will leave?”

  “You will come with me.”

  “Why?”

  “I won’t leave you again.”

  “Ziriyab.”

  Muhidin blinked. “Yes.”

  “What do you say?”

  “Nothing. You?”

  Munira moved her hands to her neck to unclasp the gold chain that held Ziriyab’s ring, the one with a ruby strip. She opened up Muhidin’s palms to place the chain and ring in his hands. A tremor in her own hand.

  Evaporating ghosts.

  * * *

  —

  They shielded their affair from nosy eyes, and hid their plans. They whispered their expectations and fears only to each other.

  “We’re not young,” Munira said more than once, her eyes wistful. “To start again…we’re not young.”

  “We are alive,” he insisted.

  She asked, “How to live?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” She asked.

  “Pemba…”

  “Not Zanzibar, Muhidin, please,” she spluttered.

  “Mozambique, my dove. I’ve got people there.”

  Munira stared at Muhidin, soundless. She stretched out her hands toward him. He lifted them to cover his face.

  * * *

  Almost a week later, Munira phoned Ayaana to share their news with her.

  [ 61 ]

  Days after that phone call, unbeknown to her sponsors, Ayaana searched for and found a bachelor-of-science program in nautical science studies. With this, she disconnected herself from her role as the Descendant. Ayaana applied for a fall semester admission to Xiamen Maritime University. She invoked Admiral Zheng He in her letter as her motivator, reference, and inspiration. She wrote of p
ractical legacy. She saw herself as a bridge, as ships are, between worlds and people. “The ocean is but a passageway,” she wrote. “It needs navigators.” She was offering her service to the sea. At first her requests were ignored. Then she was informed that she was jeopardizing her scholarship and her living allowance. Ayaana hesitated. The generous allowance meant that she could save properly for the first time in her life. But in her next public-encounter meeting, Ayaana spoke of her dreams of the ocean, invoking the esteemed admiral again. She spoke in simple Mandarin, dressed in a Chinese dress of vivid red, looking modest and humble and grateful. It was her best public performance. Her hosts could not refuse her dreams without losing face. Moreover, there had been no written contract covering the shape of this particular adventure. Her admission into the maritime school was accepted in bad humor by sponsors who had also grown bored of generating narratives and performances for their houyi.

  Liwalo lolote, na liwe.

  What will be will be.

  [ 62 ]

  There were seventeen others in her class in the nautical science studies program, and they represented different maritime countries. Chinese and Malaysians, two Indians, two Pakistanis, one from Singapore, two from the Philippines, one Turk, the rest from Indonesia. There were two other women, both Chinese, one of them from Hong Kong. Ayaana was the only Kenyan and African. With her “Descendant” tag, her lanky height—she was taller than most of the men—and her dark-skinned yet also familiarly Asiatic looks, she had to contend with extra curiosity. She shrugged this off, focused on her work, and passed her continuous assessment tests with good marks.