The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  * * *

  —

  The university hostel was still mostly empty. The start of the fall semester was nine days away. Ayaana missed the annoying cacophony of pop music of many nations spilling out of different rooms. To while away the time, she arranged and rearranged her books. That night, she picked a book from her shelf to read: The Book of Chameleons. She fell asleep with the book next to her.

  * * *

  —

  Freshly made morning. Crisp air. While bicycling around, Ayaana had stopped to admire the fresh rust color on the university training ship, where she would be doing her new semester practicals, when it dawned on her that she could accelerate her lessons, take more classes, and complete her finals a year early and leave China as soon as possible. Contented, she spent the next day twisting her hair into braids, seated on her bed, legs crossed, mind blanked. She added coral beads to her locks. Still restless, she spent the next day tracing and retracing the Basmallah, using Thuluth calligraphy, finding voice in an old refugee’s oud melody. Then Ayaana wept.

  * * *

  —

  Two days later, not really looking for anything, as she ate her lunch while reading a newspaper, Ayaana saw an insert with the thumbprint image of the Zao Wou-Ki print she now had. Her chopsticks clattered on the table. She pored over the text, which announced a Zao Wou-Ki retrospective in a Shanghai gallery.

  * * *

  —

  Studying schedules, she found a train would be leaving Xiamen North Station at 09:34 the next day. If she got a ticket on it, she would reach Shanghai Hongqiao at 17:42. Shanghai, like most of the big cities in the country, did not sleep.

  * * *

  —

  Ayaana wandered up and down from the Bund to the gallery, her face turning often toward the water. Smog obscured a clear view of the city on the other side, giving the edifices the sheen of a dream. Ayaana had made note of a boardinghouse that was one stop after Shanghai Central; she would spend the night there. She entered Zhongshan East Street and located the Shanghai Art Gallery. And there were the works of Zao Wou-Ki. She had to pause to keep herself from foundering. A rush of emotion. She settled on a bench, staring, remembering. Life had seemed to stretch out infinitely on the ship; it had felt charmed. She raised herself to immerse herself in the Zao Wou-Ki painting: “4.4.85, 1985. Oil on canvas.” Wistful. “What do you see?” he had asked. An echo, she might have answered him now.

  * * *

  —

  “Histoire sur la mer, 2004. Oil on canvas, Zao Wou-Ki.” Ayaana sat before each print or painting until she ran out of day and dreams; she was the last member of the public to leave the gallery. Later that evening, in a city filled with movement, Ayaana joined a river of souls. She flowed with them one way and then another, hemmed in by a surging populace. She wandered onward, belonging to nonthinking nothingness, and trying to remember the sea, only the sea. She returned to the gallery the next day and lingered there until it was time to catch the train back to Xiamen.

  * * *

  —

  A bright dawn marked the start of the new semester. A torrent of students and their sounds filled the space. Chen Sheng—Shalom—saw Ayaana in braids and exclaimed, “You look exactly from Tibet.” She took several selfies with Ayaana. Ayaana’s mouth turned down. She had intended to underline her African-ness.

  [ 80 ]

  Ayaana ran from her maritime-ecology classroom, heading for the hostel and her room. She jumped over a bucket before skidding to a stop in front of two brand-new pink suitcases on wheels parked outside her door. Her head drooped. She had hoped to catch a nap before heading for her night classes. The bags, she knew, carried all the things she had abandoned in Istanbul. Koray was back. She looked around before rolling the bags into the room as if they might also hold grenades. She stared at them before stepping around them, and out of the room. She fled to the library where a “strict silence” rule was rigidly enforced.

  * * *

  —

  “Ayaana.” Koray found her on the breakfast line early one morning. Intense whisper. “Well done. You pissed Mother off.” He was grinning, but his eyes were searing. “How did you leave?” There was unalloyed rage in that question.

  Ayaana laughed to annoy Koray, to mock herself.

  “Searched everywhere for you. Can you imagine the shame?”

  “No,” she answered. And she scooped extra shrimp shu mai onto her plate.

  His voice in her ear. A shiver. Lust. “We are betrothed, my love.”

  She was serene. “No, we are not…my love.”

  His eyes: lonely, greedy, restless. Koray leaned over to whisper, “Life is war. We pay for our victories in advance. That is why we own the future. We do not fail.” Ayaana turned to fill a cup with jasmine tea. He continued, “I choose you. Learn to like it, for you will live with it, whether you want to or not.”

  In the awful warmth of the room, Ayaana wanted to howl. Behind her, Koray said, “You may want to take a step forward, baby; you are holding up the line.”

  Ayaana laid aside her tray and walked out of the dining hall.

  * * *

  —

  Ayaana left her hostel room, where she had closeted herself, to go to her pond-view bench and listen to the night. The place felt uninhabited but safe. Stillness. A soft and salty breeze. “Koray is back,” she murmured. She was neither happy nor sad. That darkness. That night. Eddying thoughts: the seduction of surrendering, of forgetting, of numbness. But then a familiar sound reached her from the far waters. Zar. The murmuring cry of djinns at night; other saltwater whispers, urgent and garbled.

  Three days later, storm sirens sounded. A typhoon that had been pummeling nearby Taiwan had switched direction and was heading straight for Fujian. At once, emptied streets, barred buildings, sheets of rain, and all the moans and groans and howls of wind. Ayaana sneaked into a storeroom at the top of their building to see what a typhoon looked like. She listened to the screeching hundred-kilometer-an-hour winds. She saw one of the largest flame trees roll across the main street as if it were cardboard, and strained toward the sight of giant waves breaching the sea walls. The water reached for the avenue. The djinns were roaring Ni shi shei? today. Strangely exhilarated, she listened to the boom of life at its fiercest. Some of the building’s windows facing the sea broke in tinkling symphony. The typhoon, though, was a summons. If she were Fundi Mehdi, she would have known how to read it.

  Udongo utakuita.

  The clay will call you.

  [ 81 ]

  He was turning his life into a clay-borne liturgy. He traveled with ghosts—his fire-eaten wife, his fire-eaten ship, and the sea creature, Ayaana, who floated in the turbulence of all his dreams now, and in whom sea, ship, and wife had converged. He turned his story into water and soil and the pinching, pulling, turning of his body and hand around a wheel. His hands as wings, as small birds in flight, listening, throwing clay. Passages, transforming, and he had become a scarred vase, a scarred plate, a scarred bowl.

  [ 82 ]

  This was a land unfazed by the sea’s dramatics. After the typhoon, a return to routine. School was no exception. Clanging of machinery. The tang-tang-tang of the tools of students learning, rebuilding, and testing metal parts. Oil and fuel, the aroma of latent fire. The training ship was out at sea. Koray joined Ayaana in the simulation engine room, where she practiced, ear plugs in her ears, protective glasses over her eyes. She was on her back in blue overalls, examining pipes as part of an exercise. Cables and all manner of gleaming tools were arranged beside her. As she held a screw between her teeth and cleaned a gap, Koray’s face loomed over hers. It was somber, with wariness in his hooded eyes. He signaled to her; his mouth opened and closed.

  “What?” She was brusque.

  He gestured outward. “News,” he mouthed above the din.

  “What?” she said, tapping a
t a knob with a wrench.

  He pointed at his watch. “You need to come now.” He then wrote it out and placed it over her face.

  Ayaana checked a nut.

  “Admin office says it is urgent,” he added in blue ink.

  “Koray…” she started.

  He added, “They sent me to get you.”

  She dragged herself out from under the machine. She smelled of diesel and oil. She removed the protective gear and wiped her blackened hands on a greasy brown cloth.

  * * *

  —

  Their footsteps hurried along the corridor. A distance from the noise, she asked, “What’s wrong?” Her voice was shrill.

  Koray said, “Just come with me, canim. Do you have your phone?”

  Ayaana looked at him and started to quaver. She adjusted her overalls. She was suddenly dumb. Koray offered her an arm. She did not react. They walked into Xiamen’s world, its air redolent with rain, a blend of blossoms and invisible spices. Wind created ripples on water, stirring leaves. Ayaana’s heart cudgeled her ribs.

  * * *

  —

  It was Muhidin.

  [ 83 ]

  Enchanted by his new life, entranced by his increasing wealth in family and matter, in love with existence again, Muhidin had felt invincible. He had taken leave from his work in Pemba to make a jubilant return to Pate Island. There were things to do. He intended to convince Mehdi to return with him to Pemba and set up a boat-building-and-repair yard there. He wanted to commission a dau for his wife. He also wanted to surprise her by repairing and repainting both their houses. With this in mind, he had arrived on Pate with three workers from Pemba and Mombasa.

  * * *

  —

  These were details Ayaana would collect much later, when she went from soul to soul on Pate asking what the islanders had seen and heard and sensed about Muhidin before he disappeared.

  * * *

  —

  Muhidin had declared, “This realm shall be known again.” He had distributed some of his old books to the school. He had teased the boatmen and said they needed to diversify their businesses: There were immigrants from Europe looking for uncomplicated ways to enter Mozambique and Angola by sea from Oman, where they waited. They were paying in euros up front. The young men listened to him and sought contacts. He had supervised the house repairs by day, and offered additional work to the long unemployed. He had harangued, bullied, taught, laughed, and slaughtered a goat, both for gratitude and to share his bounty. He had administered some more of his herbs and tonics, including a few he had acquired in Mozambique. He refound his corner in the evening baraza and regaled the men with stories of life in Mozambique, of working as a sea captain on oil-prospecting vessels. He had praised the wonder that was his wife, Munira.

  * * *

  —

  Hudhaifa would tell Ayaana, “Muhidin radiated the joy of paradise. He had no one to hate anymore.”

  The tailor would tell Ayaana, “Your father descended upon us like the sun.”

  Dura, Ayaana’s former classmate, now married with three children, would remember Muhidin’s attempts to comfort the desolate Mama Suleiman. “Amina,” he had said, “your son is on hutubu.” He had meant YouTube. “He has a long beard. It is thick. He wears a black headscarf. Very advanced. Many men wear headscarves these days. He was carrying a grenade launcher all by himself. He has become a strong man. His voice caused the black flag he clutched to flutter. Your son is ambitious, Bi Amina. He is working for the caliphate. It includes us here. He now calls us infidels. Which is truthful. For who here is without sin? The good thing is that he says he is coming back to us as a raging fire. I suspect he has been infected by some foreign fervor. But Pate is an old place. When he comes back, we will calm him down.” Mama Suleiman had moaned and groaned and wailed, Dura would tell Ayaana, her eyes sparkling. Muhidin had looked confused. He had gestured and asked, “Have I said anything wrong? I told her he is coming back home. Here, doesn’t she want to see?” He had pushed buttons on his phone to access the Internet. The link had failed to open.

  * * *

  —

  Muhidin had also taken to spending most of his time on Pate with Fundi Almazi Mehdi, who had been joined in his enterprise by Mzee Kitwana Kipifit, who mainly focused on etching symbols on the boats, and stitching sails in silence in full view of the sea. The ship-repairing enterprise had grown steadily over the last three years. Mehdi and Mzee Kitwana became entwined, as companion boat makers, and in their shared silence had found something of a comrade in each other. They listened to the tide news together. They walked, worked, and ate together. Mzee Kitwana then built a shed close to Mehdi’s. Muhidin had at once understood that now Mehdi would not go anywhere without Mzee Kitwana, but Mzee Kitwana did not care to ever leave Pate. At first Muhidin sat with them to try to change their minds. But then he started to enjoy being with them, in a season surrounded by October’s dragonflies. He would speak of his pride in Ayaana’s progress in China. He asked Mzee Kitwana for words in Mandarin he could use to surprise her with. He also told Mehdi that he was experimenting with forgiveness.

  “How?” Mehdi had asked, interested in it for himself.

  Muhidin had tapped his nose, and his eyes had twinkled. He had said a miracle would make itself apparent on his next return to Pate.

  “We spoke of Ziriyab. His absence,” Mehdi would one day mutter to Ayaana. “Then we spoke of the sea.” His eyes became distant with remembering—not the conversation, but the sea.

  Two mornings later, Muhidin had come to the two men with his eyes red, his hair uncombed, and, for the first time in his new days on Pate, unsmiling. He plunked himself down in silence. After about an hour, he said, eyes darting hither and thither, “My son Ziriyab came to me in a dream. Wherever he is, he is not doing well.”

  * * *

  —

  In the dream, Mehdi would remember Muhidin saying, Ziriyab had been on a metal bed in a small room drenched in fierce light, so Muhidin could see that his entire body had become a wound. Muhidin had smelled the foul green pus of death within Ziriyab’s slowing crashing heart. Tearing up, Ziriyab had said to him, “My father, it is good you came. I am dying.” Muhidin said he had shaken his son, slapped him awake. “No!” he had commanded. Ziriyab had then pointed. “See my heart. It is rotting.” Muhidin had shouted, “Is it a heart you need? Then take mine. It is large. It is enough for you.” And in the dream he had torn out his heart and shoved it into Ziriyab, and did not let go until that heart started to beat inside Ziriyab’s body. “And you, Father, and you?” Ziriyab had apparently clung to him. Muhidin told Mehdi that he had informed Ziriyab that since he carried his heart now, he would have to live for him, too.

  * * *

  —

  Muhidin had asked Mehdi and Mzee Kitwana, “What can this dream mean?”

  * * *

  —

  And the mood had turned somber.

  * * *

  —

  “That dream infected us, too,” Mehdi would tell Ayaana.

  * * *

  —

  To reassure themselves, the men then spoke of the sea. They spoke of boats, of fish, of currents and tides. Muhidin spoke of watermen he had known. And because he needed to talk, he also spoke of the time he was “Abd” and how the sea saved him. The muezzins called the noonday prayers. The three men paused to pray in their own ways. After the silence, Muhidin said, “The sea is an old story.”

  “A song,” Mehdi offered.

  “True,” Muhidin replied, “and I have heard many. There is one that bears the fragrance of citrus and honey. I have tasted it.”

  Mehdi replied, “As I have.”

  Mzee Kitwana, who had been listening, exclaimed, “How does one savor this thing?”

  “It finds you at sea,” Mehdi said.

  Muhidin then as
ked Mehdi if he could build a dau to be named for Munira. Muhidin said he would pay for the boat up front.

  * * *

  —

  Mehdi would one day point Ayaana to the vessel, which he was still working on.

  * * *

  —

  And Mehdi remembered how they had spoken of Kenya, and why, whenever it took two steps forward, it also took eight steps back. Muhidin spoke of Pemba, of Mozambique, of the people. “Look at me,” he said, “how stylish I have become: Gome la udi si la mnukauvundo.” To live among the civilized rubs off on a person.

  And they had laughed.

  Mzee Kitwana insisted, “How does one taste that sea-song?”

  Silence.

  The Pleiades had been an especially luminous blue that evening. The men stared at them. Mzee Kitwana had pleaded again, “Will I ever know the sea and its citrus-scented song?” And Muhidin had then said, “I will take you to the place in the water where the song first ambushed me. But I cannot guarantee that it will appear.”