The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Never.

  Ayaana breathed, hefting Pate, her home, as another talisman. The outside wind dropped its high-pitched lamentation. Eavesdropping wind. Ayaana’s thought: Today, my ghosts, you have witnessed my tumble. Transmutation. What she knew: currents were bearers of destinations. A putrid fish smell seeped into the room through an open window. Ayaana lifted the edge of the sheet to cover her nose. Koray seemed immune. The more she watched him, the less she saw him. Thick silence. Limbs entwined. Koray’s hand was flat on her stomach. “I will adjust the ring for you.” Her fingers combed through his soft curls of their own volition. His eyes flickered. His eyes closed. “My mother wants you to have it.”

  Of course she does. “Is this Nehir’s house?” Ayaana asked.

  “And mine,” Koray murmured.

  Stone-heavy weight on Ayaana’s chest, as if the old asthma were stirring awake. She held her breath, a shield. Reflections from the day striped the room and their bodies. Pungent scents of living. There was also that special loneliness that can come only from being with another.

  * * *

  Before dawn the next day, Ayaana scrubbed her body with the assorted oils that adorned the shower walls, testing them all. Nehir’s distillates. She dressed up in sweat-stained clothes and left the den and the sleeping Koray surrounded by his true and false sapphires. Outside, transfixed by light, even though it was a drab day, she carried the riddle of herself, touching her mouth, noticing her flushed skin, seared at the core. She made her way through dimming worlds, the stink of smoke, and the centuries saturating narrow pathways. She ignored the leering eyes and derogatory catcalls of hungry-thirsty strangers who imagined that a woman alone at this time in this district was peddling her soul. Refuge in the memory of the rhythm of tides as they flowed into her in the company of Delaksha’s question: “Is it true that there are bats that can suck your blood as you sleep, and all you might feel of the draining is a sweet-sweetness, and only when you wake up do you realize how grievously mutilated you are?”

  [ 76 ]

  When Ayaana reached Taksim Square, she snapped to greater wakefulness. Crowds, faces, people of the world at the crossroads, bumping their heads against low-hanging ancient stones. Beggars. Time. A booming voice, American? Despair. Inarticulate heart-wail: “Where am I?” She looked and looked. Standing before the desired shores of the Bosporus, but instead of awe and wonder, for no fathomable reason she saw, through borrowed memory, the souls scattered and still scattering beneath waters: all those pilgrims who, like her, had fantasized about elsewhere-bliss. Nameless, invisible, and already abandoned. Speak to us of earth, she heard them whisper in many voices; Ayaana fled. “Where is the Embassy of the Republic of Kenya?” she gasped.

  Hunting for home. “Ankara,” an information bureau informed her.

  “I need a new passport.” She was tearful.

  “Ankara.”

  Disassociated. She wandered through the city, another child of Daedalus, that euphoric fool who flew with wax wings toward the sun. A gnawing sense in her heart, her belly. Screeching birds, discordant notes. Ayaana peered through Istanbul’s open doors, passageways, and windows. She noticed the cats and their humanlike eyes. They noticed her. Wandering through the cacophony of the Grand Bazaar into exhaustion. Lurking in bookshops drowning in music, picking names off book titles. There was Gurnah. There was Agualusa. There was Iduma. There was Tadjo. Names from her continent. And here Selasi. She touched these. Late in the evening, when she returned to the villa, she was a delirious sepulcher stumbling past Nehir, whose mouth was moving. Ayaana heard nothing. Without a word, she sought and entered her designated room and locked the door. In her bed, Ayaana folded her body into the shape of a mollusk shell, knees drawn up, her head resting on a tear-stained pillow. Both hands were wrapped around Han Song’s novel The High Speed Railway. Forgetting by entering into another’s hurtling imagination. It painted over her ineffable sense of loss. A dull throb. When her phone rang and rang again, Ayaana ignored it.

  [ 77 ]

  Koray was beating at her door. Ayaana heard other doors creak open as he doubled his pounding. Ayaana got out of bed to move the chair she had used to lever it. Koray stood, unshaven, on the other side. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. He strode in. “This is no game, canim.” He tried to stare her down, then slammed a black velvet box into Ayaana’s hands. “You left this behind.” He pursed his lips. “You look a mess.” He paced the room. “Why did you leave?” He pressed his fingers into her arms and scrutinized her face.

  Ayaana looked back, voiceless. Koray shook her. A scowl. “Women disappear off the streets of the boulevard, never to be seen again. You took a grave risk.”

  “You taught me well.”

  Koray moved back as if slapped, and then he laughed and wrapped his hands in her hair, pulling at it. She refused to react. “We are expected for dinner, together, canim.”

  Pinpricks on Ayaana’s skin. Gelid wordlessness. Koray’s words were clipped. He stroked her skin. “Clean up.” He paused to squeeze her chin.

  Ayaana pulled away. Koray’s eyes gleamed. “Curious creature. Dinner in thirty, my lover?” An edge to the word. His lips brushed her right ear. Ayaana shuddered.

  * * *

  —

  Now familiar Terzioğlu routines: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks; the small talk—the weather, the markets, the literature of Pamuk. A deeper level of scrutiny was attached to Ayaana’s person. Koray sat close to her, implying by his actions that she was his. Nehir’s pleasure was palpable. It was at the dinner table that Ayaana learned that plans for her public outing as Koray’s mate were already under way. “Just family and close friends.” Nehir overrode Ayaana before she could object. Among the benefits she would gain after the event would be to have her belongings moved into Koray’s in-house apartment. Nehir was already working on a list of likely invitees. She wanted African lilies for the table. Nehir turned to Ayaana. “I am dee-lighted, my darling.” Nehir was eager for a shopping expedition for the two of them. There was so much to do.

  Ayaana listened. Hemmed in, encircled by the Terzioğlu-making process. She was being ingested into the family. Ayaana stood to watch dawn’s muted colors from her window, watched her breath on the pane. I must breathe. Later, she matched one of the large handbags with a red Audrey Hepburn dress. She wore the black patent-leather pumps. Terzioğlu shopping uniform. I must breathe.

  * * *

  Shop managers and myriad assistants fussed over Nehir, having already clucked over Ayaana, who was to present herself at the weekend event in a frothy rust-colored frock that reached just below her knees. Nehir, caught up in the drama of preparation, did not see Ayaana wandering away from the shop’s private salon. Somewhere between the ice-cream parlor and the men’s shoes shop, Ayaana was distracted by a plaintive repetitive phrase from a song. She looked about her. Nobody seemed to notice it. So she decided to seek after the grieving chords.

  * * *

  —

  Ayaana wove in and out of streets and stalls amid a curtain of daily noise, and citrus scents in the streets. Just within sight of the Eski Istanbul, the live music became louder. She turned left and saw a bandaged arm: the wound it covered oozed something yellow. It belonged to an elderly busker who was playing an oud. Wrapped in a dirty white shroud, on top of which sat a heavy green jumper, his body was withered and dry, his skull visible, as if it had been borrowed from a recent grave. The music from his oud mourned something, beautiful and desolate. Inside Ayaana, a despair she had not known gushed to the surface, where it transformed into unexpected light with which to see. The old man stared into a space, his eyes fixed as his music cried for him.

  Ayaana hugged the wall, not seeing the public passing by. From above the music, the musician, assuming she was Middle Eastern spoke to her in old Arabic:

  “What do you see, child?”

 
; “Dusk’s boats coming home laden with fish,” she murmured, her Kipate seeping through in her language cadence.

  The musician paused. He was fascinated. “Where?”

  “On Pate, within the Swahili seas. Our fishermen sing.”

  “What do they sing?”

  Silence.

  “Sing it.”

  “My voice…” Her singing voice had not improved with age.

  “Sing.”

  Ayaana sang: “Ua langu silioni nani alolichukuwa?…” She stopped, because the vision of that other world was a moan in her soul.

  The man asked, “Why do they sing?” Then he answered his own question. “They sing because life is a dragonfly: flutter, shine, fly, die.” He strummed the oud. He looked at Ayaana. “So—there are still places in the world where the human can hear homecoming songs?” His sunken eyes acquired a faraway gaze. “Blessed be their dreams. May the enemy remain blind to their existence.” He paused. “Where is this place?”

  “Kenya,” she answered.

  “And this Kenya?”

  “In the east of Africa.”

  The man cradled the oud close to his chest. He made it weep and weep. Ayaana felt all feelings for which no words existed, the unheeded cries of uncountable beings. She burst out, “Why play that?”

  “Does it hurt?” the old man asked Ayaana. “So then cry for me. For once there was a hearth in exquisite Ma’loula. Turned to ash overnight while its keepers slept. A single rocket came through our roof.” He strummed the oud. “Seven children. Gharam, my wife, my waterbird, slim as the twig of the Sanawbar el hhalab, even seven births later.” He played. “The human body burns like roast meat.” He paused. “The end.” He cried. “ ‘Death,’ girl”—he tugged his oud—“is an abominable word.”

  The musical elegy conjured the sinister absence of an English-speaking Damascene with no name, a hapless dirty-white kitten, suffering ortolan buntings, and a soul she had wounded and the body she had used to betray it with. Ayaana wept for things she had not cried over before. A few passing humans dropped coins into the man’s open case before they continued on their way.

  The elder stopped playing to ask, “Where to now?”

  Broken. “I…I must…go…home.”

  “Home. Yes. You want to find it while it still exists.”

  Ayaana dug into her handbag and found a clutch of liras to press into the busker’s case. Impulsively, she stooped to cup his pinched face.

  The man grasped her fingers and said, “This present darkness is a death shroud.” The sun drizzled in their corner of the world. He rasped, “Run, child.” His voice was bile. “Tell your people that the world is turning blood-red as they sing.” He plucked the strings of his oud. “Go!” he howled.

  * * *

  —

  Ayaana tore down the big road, urged on by primal dread. She threw her phone into the nearest bin. A twinge of regret: this was the first phone she had bought for herself. She ran past a haggard woman trying to nurse a baby who would not stop crying. She skidded when their eyes connected. The woman was so close to tears herself. “Ana asfa,” Ayaana told her—I’m sorry. Ayaana ran. Taxis idled at a rank on a corner. She asked to be taken to the Chinese consul general’s office.

  [ 78 ]

  Ayaana, the Descendant, guest of the Chinese state, reported a bag containing her passport and most of her money stolen. Pickpocketed by a vicious vagabond. She relished saying that—a grubby creature who had bruised her and given chase. She had fled to the consul general’s for safety. She rubbed her eyes. She looked around the office. Lassitude, the miasma of dense bureaucracy. Beijing was five hours ahead in time, and no easy references could be exchanged to verify her story. But she could not stay in Istanbul another day.

  An official, not the consul general, stared her down. Ayaana sobbed. “Please,” she asked. And she started to tremble, then wiped her face. “If you search the Internet, you will see my story. Please call the Xiamen Maritime University; they will confirm who I am, please.”

  Ayaana was directed to wait. She sat on a chair with one weak leg and perched, unmoving.

  In defiance of the usually low bureaucratic expectations, Ayaana’s role as the Descendant was verified in a record six hours. She had made a police report, and the junior official took it upon himself to lecture her intermittently on the perils of leaving her study base without informing her hosts, even if it were for a holiday. Gallivanting! He tut-tutted. Her only job was to study, he told her every time he opened his mouth. Ayaana, her head lowered, did not answer. She just needed to leave Turkey. Time had slowed down. Her heart raced and ached. Uncertainty. She needed a place to stay, and did not have enough money. The official sighed in irritation, would have tossed her out to fend for herself if she were not something of a state guest. Well, she would have to make do with the office storeroom and a foldable bed. Another six hours passed. Ayaana, who, though cold, had slept quite well, was summoned into the dingy den of a main office to be issued a temporary emergency travel pass. Her return ticket had been retrieved from the system and changed. Unwashed, hungry, exhausted but elated, Ayaana was on a flight back to Xiamen that evening.

  [ 79 ]

  The luggage carousels at Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport belched into life. Ayaana watched other people’s bags turn up in assorted shapes and colors. The airport’s space-age design gave it a sense of anonymity that could place it anywhere in the world. She crossed the arrivals hall. To the left of a café, a television flashed news of the release of the journalist Gao Yu before returning to its regular programming, which revealed the image of sinewy arms around a pottery wheel, crafting a vessel. Ayaana idly watched an elongated earthen pot emerge. A transition of seasons on the screen: the tides, birds, wheat, skies, flowering trees, clouds, and dust, then back to the potter and his vessel. And then his hands ritually broke the pot he had created, and Ayaana recoiled. A river of arrivals pushing luggage carts drove her into the Xiamen evening. Outside, East African botanical exiles—the flame trees of Xiamen had exploded into red flower, and in the late light these looked like giant lanterns. The distant glimmering line of the South Sea, and inside Ayaana an odd sense of arrival. And Ayaana remembered that she needed to buy a new phone.

  * * *

  Later, inside her hostel room, Ayaana called Munira. Hearing that suddenly most beloved voice, she whispered, “Ma-e”—tasting the words—“how I love you.” And her voice cracked.

  Munira cooed, “What’s wrong, mwanangu?”

  Ayaana wiped tears. She could not continue. “Ma-e…it’s been too long.”

  Munira crooned, “My jasmine, my rose baby.”

  Ayaana shut her eyes and could feel the ache of her body, its new knowing. She had broken through a side window to steal some of the secrets in the cult of life. “Lulu,” Munira said, “I have a surprise. I must speak of it to you soon.” She paused. “Please, pray very much for me. Pray for us.”

  “Muhidin?” Ayaana was suddenly terrified.

  “What, that one? He grows fatter every day.” Munira giggled. “You should hear him. He has a theory for everything, now that he captains his own ship.”

  “How is…M-mozambique?” The word stuck to her tongue.

  “It is good to us.” Munira laughed. Ayaana made a face. “You are well, child? You were doing exams? That is why you were quiet? I told your father. But you know him. His crazy mind creates trouble where none exists.” Munira laughed. “He was certain you had been eaten by Chinese sea monsters!”

  Ayaana touched the phone to her head, gave a wry smile. Close. Muhidin. “Where is he?”

  “Gone to Pate. Call him there. You have his number? How were the exams?”

  Within Ayaana, silence: If I could find again the God, who contains the allness of existence, including the story of this China, maybe I would learn to pray again. I wish you were in Pate, Mother;
I would come home to you tomorrow. Learning about the sea is not the same as being with the sea. I should have apprenticed myself to Mehdi. I gave my body to a man I fear; he is trying to swallow my soul whole. I am not Chinese, Ma-e, and I never shall be. My heart is drifting in waters that have no name. I am also afraid of shadows. “I am well,” Ayaana replied.

  “God is kind,” Munira said.

  Then: “Ma-e,” Ayaana said, “do you sing in Mozambique?”

  “Not yet.” Munira cleared her throat.

  “Can you sing now?”

  A high laugh. “ ‘Ua langu silioni nani alolichukuwa’?”

  “Yes, that one.” Ayaana hunkered down, the better to hear her mother’s voice.

  * * *

  Ayaana needed a new passport. She extracted money from her account and bought a second-class ticket from Xiamen to Beijing, looking forward to sleeping overnight on board. From Beijing South Railway Station, she headed for the Kenyan Embassy. When she saw the red, green, black, and white of the Kenyan flag, she had to wait for a paroxysm of a most unexpected emotional yearning to pass. Inside the embassy, while her new application was being processed, she indulged in a frenzy of speaking Kiswahili and guzzled Ketepa tea with rice-flour mandazi, paged through the Kenyan newspapers—she read about the usual swindles by Kenyan politicians with indulgent affection. Wanting to stay close to the bulwark of the embassy, Ayaana decided to go shopping for clothes. On impulse, she stopped at a cinema. The film was one of those that featured a grand emperor in bright robes who falls in love with the nightingale voice of a blind peasant girl, who sang as she tended to her meager fields. Ayaana wept in all the right places. In the afternoon she learned that the embassy would have her new passport ready after twenty-one days. She spent one more night in Beijing—the Beihai Old Town Holiday Seaview Inn in the Dongfeng area had a sixteen-dollar room available. The next day Ayaana was on the return train to Xiamen.