The Zanzibar Wife

by Deborah Rodriguez

  As she stood at the reception desk digging for her passport, she spied Ariana across the way, perusing a rack of brochures that was bolted to the wall. Odd, she thought as she watched her fixer slide a handful of tourist literature into her bag. She signed for her room and was handed the keycard. “Meet back here in fifteen?” she suggested as Ariana approached.

  “Minutes?”

  “What, you need more time?”

  Ariana checked her watch. “Would a half-hour do? It’s almost prayer time, and, besides, the souk doesn’t open again until four. Do you mind?”

  Rachel headed to her room, frustrated at wasting practically a whole day right off the bat. When she returned to the lobby after plopping her backpack down on the bed and splashing some water on her face, she was surprised to see Ariana already there, deep in conversation with the concierge. Ariana gestured with one finger for her to wait, which Rachel did until they were led outside to a taxi.

  “Did you forget your makeup?” Ariana asked, squinting a little at Rachel as they headed west along the water. Rachel just stared back at her. “Because if you did, we can always make a stop. Or perhaps I have some extra,” she added, rooting around in her purse. Rachel turned her head and stared out the window. “Do you want to take a quick look at the Royal Opera House?” Ariana continued. “It’s supposed to be spectacular. Oh, and the Grand Mosque. I hear there’s a hand-woven rug in the main prayer hall that’s seventy meters long. It took four hundred weavers four years to make it.” Ariana looked quite proud of herself.

  “The craftspeople? My assignment? Remember?” Rachel checked her watch and slumped back into the taxi’s lumpy upholstery.

  The Muttrah Souk sat across from the harbor in the old commercial center of the city. On this afternoon the port was dotted with cruise ships, bringing the owners of the cafés and juice bars along the corniche out to their sidewalk posts with practiced German greetings shouted in competition for the attention of the camera-toting tourists walking by. “Guten tag damen. Kaffee?” they called out to Rachel and Ariana as the pair passed on their way to the market’s main entrance.

  The first steps into the souk brought immediate relief from the blinding heat outside, but with that came a sweet, sickly smell that filled the air like cheap perfume. Rachel sneezed and shifted the camera around her neck as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The main thoroughfare was crowding quickly as the shopkeepers opened up for the afternoon rush. Omani families—the men in robes and embroidered kumas, pillbox hats not unlike what Rachel’s grandmother used to wear, the women in black abayas that swept the ground—were swarming the place, diving into the dance of bargaining over coffeepots and shoes and pots and pans. The tourists were drawn to piles of scarves from Kashmir, to the “I ♥ Oman” T-shirts hanging from the beams above, to lamps from Turkey, brass figurines from Africa, and purses from India. Rachel had seen a lot of this stuff before, in the markets of Morocco and Turkey and Egypt. But nowhere in sight were the handmade local crafts that she had hoped to find, let alone any photogenic craftspeople to go along with them. In her past assignments all she’d had to do was follow the sounds of gunfire or explosives, or head the wrong way into a fleeing mob to find the source of a story. This was something else entirely.

  Ariana must have noticed the scowl crossing her face, as Rachel suddenly felt herself being pulled to the right into a dark labyrinth of narrow alleyways, where everything became even darker the deeper they tunneled. I should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, she thought as they followed a route that seemed to turn in on itself in an endless coil. Clearly Ariana had no idea where she was going. They wound inward past tiny stalls spilling over with old silver necklaces and strings of beads so heavy it seemed as though even the strongest woman would collapse from their weight. There were antique swords and daggers and ammo belts fully stocked with bullets, dresses so bright they nearly glowed in the dark, and tunics so crisp they looked like they might crack at the touch. And everywhere that cloying smell that stuck in her throat like thick syrup.

  And Ariana? She could not resist even the weakest pressure from a shopkeeper to come inside for a look. “Where is this from?” she would ask as she fingered each piece of fine embroidery or soft woven fabric. India, Kashmir, Turkey, would be the answer.

  As they made yet another right turn deeper into the maze, the musky odor suddenly became more intense. Rachel sneezed again, loudly, as smoke filled her nostrils. “Gesundheit!” said a shopkeeper, beaming, as he stood from straightening the heaping piles at the entryway to his stall.

  “Oooh,” Ariana said as she lifted a clear plastic bag filled with pale yellow pebbles up to the light spilling from the shop’s interior. “Frankincense! Like in your bible. The three wise men.”

  “Not my bible,” Rachel muttered.

  Ariana cocked her head and blinked, her batwing eyelashes fluttering with confusion.

  “Yes, madam,” the shopkeeper interrupted. “In fact, it is frankincense of the finest quality. From Dhofar.” He dug into a bin and offered a chunk, silvery compared with those in the plastic bags, to Rachel, who held it in the palm of her hand. “The frankincense resin is considered a gift from God. Those on whose land the trees grow are extremely blessed. Go ahead. Chew. It is okay.”

  Ariana reached across Rachel and popped the nugget into her mouth. “They say it’s supposed to help with digestion,” she said as her rouged cheeks pulsed in and out. “And your skin, and your mind as well. You know, for things like anxiety and depression.”

  “In fact,” the man continued, “do you know that in ancient times it was more valued than even gold?”

  Rachel sneezed again.

  “In fact,” he repeated, “the trees that give the resin are not planted or watered. They just appear. They are a symbol of immortality. In fact, this kind,” he said as he picked up a bag of cloudier, greenish chunks, “it is for burning, to bless and uplift your home. In the old times people would burn it throughout the night to keep away the dangerous animals and evil spirits.”

  In fact, thought Rachel as she dug in her pack for a tissue, it would be enough to keep me away as well.

  “The best, it is true, is reserved for our king His Majesty Sultan Qaboos.” The man folded his arms and smiled proudly.

  Ariana bought three bags for herself and one for Rachel, a transaction that lasted five times longer than it should have. By the time she had tucked her change away in her purse, she knew more about the shopkeeper than Rachel knew about her own uncle.

  “What’s up with all the questions? What, are you looking for a husband or something?”

  Ariana reddened, and then screamed. Rachel looked down to see a wave of murky brown water cresting over Ariana’s baby-blue wedges. Her own boots were nearly submerged before she could jump out of the way. Soon a river of crud was rushing down the slanted pathway toward them. “Disgusting!” Ariana lifted the legs of her white linen pants as if she were about to curtsy for the queen. From the look on her face you’d think it was a ninety-foot tidal wave that was about to hit. Rachel couldn’t help but laugh as Ariana became increasingly frantic. Then, in the darkness, an army of men with buckets and brooms appeared. Rachel backed up onto the steps of the stall behind her to make way, as did Ariana at the stall across from her. The men passed slowly between them, urging the brown sludge forward with their brooms as they went.

  When she looked up, Ariana was gone. Probably making yet another friend, thought Rachel as she crossed the wet walkway and entered the shop. But Ariana was nowhere to be found among the pots and bowls and hookahs and urns. “I give you a very good price,” the shopkeeper said, pointing to a bin teeming with antique coins.

  “My friend? Did you see my friend?” She held out her hand at the approximate level of the top of Ariana’s head and batted her eyelashes. The guy shrugged his shoulders.

  Rachel did not like being lost. It was a waste of good time. She quickly tried to backtrack their route, but soon became disoriented.
Normally she would have used her camera to record landmarks along the way, but she had been trusting Ariana to keep track. That, apparently, had been a mistake.

  Now she peered into every twisted alleyway and narrow doorway in search of the woman, while at the same time struggling to find a ray of natural light or a breath of fresh air—any sign of an exit to the street. The thick smell of frankincense was making things even worse. The cloud of smoke that had closed in on her was becoming intoxicating, making her feel as though her head were lagging three steps behind her body and taking with it any sense of bearing, as if she were walking in a thick fog on a dark night.

  She stepped up onto her tiptoes with the hope of spotting Ariana in the growing crowd, but all she managed to find was herself clumsily walking right into the person in front of her.

  “Afwan. Excuse me,” Rachel hastily offered in Arabic as she lowered her heels to the ground, where she found herself face to face with a stooped woman wrapped in a red paisley scarf that seemed to reach all the way down to her ankles, her face hidden behind a black satin mask that reminded Rachel of Darth Vader. Only her eyes were visible through wide slits in the shiny fabric, one of them milky and white, the other clear and sharply focused on Rachel. And by her side? A shaggy white goat with a tail as pink and fluffy as a stick of cotton candy.

  “Ma fimushkila, no problem, Lil’ Cherry Bomb,” the woman replied, her voice muffled by the mask.

  Rachel stiffened, her heart racing beneath her T-shirt. “Did you say Cherry Bomb?”

  The woman cackled softly as the goat gently butted its head against Rachel’s thigh. Rachel took a deep breath and wiped away the droplets of sweat that had formed at her hairline. I must be hearing things, she thought as she nodded politely and backed away. And when she turned, silhouetted by the light from the street outside, there stood Ariana leaning on a wall, pecking away on her phone as if she had been left standing and waiting for hours.

  6

  Her uncle had been right. She was sure of it now, with the harsh light of day taking over from a sleepless night, Tariq’s side of the bed still cold and unrumpled, his phone still unanswered. “You are only a whore to this man!” he had screamed at her the day she left his village for good. “He has no love for you. You will see.”

  Perhaps it was Tariq’s discomfort from having her dropped into his own world, seeing her among his own people. Perhaps it was the pressure of the child that was coming. Perhaps he felt torn between his two wives, having them both suddenly within arm’s reach. Perhaps it simply seemed easier to go back to life the way it was before, to stay in his big home with his fancy wife and allow Miza to simply fade into the Zanzibar sunset like a long-ago memory.

  The thought made her sick to her stomach, bringing back the pain and doubt she suffered every time Tariq had kissed her goodbye at the door of their flat in Stone Town to fly back to Muscat. While he was with her, she managed to do her best to not think about his other life, to erase Maryam from her mind and pretend that Tariq was all hers. It was like playing house. She would try not to ask questions of Tariq, but sometimes she just could not help herself.

  “I don’t understand,” Miza had said to him more than once back in Zanzibar, when he tried to assure her that his first wife did not object to their relationship. “Why does she not care?”

  “I have told you,” he explained. “Maryam does not concern herself with something so far away, something that will not shame her in front of her friends. How she looks to other people—that is what she cares about. As long as you are here and she is there, it is okay. I have made her that promise.”

  “And why,” Miza asked, “would she not be jealous?”

  Tariq shook his head. “I have told you that as well, my love. You know I am not what makes Maryam happy. It is only what I can give her, the life she has learned to enjoy that is important to her—going to the salon, to tea at the nice hotels, the opera, the fashion shows. It is being able to fly off to Dubai or London with her friends, just to shop, to go wherever she wants at any time. That is what makes her happy.”

  “And you, are you happy in this relationship?”

  “I am happy here with you,” was always his answer.

  Tariq pointed to similar reasons for not divorcing his wife. He claimed to be too honorable to bring shame upon her, to her family in Saudi Arabia, who would, out of tradition, insist on her return to them. Her father was strict and unforgiving. A life there, he insisted, would be a cruel fate for a woman so used to a more lenient, permissive lifestyle.

  Miza would never forget the day, before they were even wed, when Tariq admitted to another reason for Maryam not feeling threatened by the prospect of a second wife.

  “And what is that?” Miza asked, her head cocked.

  Tariq lowered his eyes. “It is that there will be no children.”

  Miza tried to hide her surprise. “You have made her that promise, to save her feelings?”

  Tariq shook his head. “I have made no promise. And it is not about her feelings. It is that there will be no heirs. That is what Maryam knows, that her future is secure, no matter what.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tariq answered without looking up. “I cannot father a child, Miza. When Maryam failed to become pregnant, we saw many doctors. The opinion was that the problem is mine.”

  Miza had taken his hand and quickly assured Tariq that she did not care, that the love and caring he was offering to her and Sabra was a gift worth more than anything. “But,” she also added at the time, “inshallah, if God wants us to have a child, God will bless us with one.”

  So now here she was, with Tariq’s child in her belly, in a place she was not welcome, with no husband by her side.

  She had urged Tariq to think twice about having her come to Muscat for the birth, about what that might do to their delicate situation. But he was adamant. Nevertheless, she had insisted he tell Maryam of her arrival in Oman, and of the reason for it. She did not like the thought of having to stay hidden, buried away like a dirty secret. Let me speak to Maryam, she had suggested. We are now sisters. But Tariq, worried about Maryam’s unpredictable temper, had said no. He would tell her about the child once Miza and the baby were back safe in Zanzibar.

  Miza knew first-hand how cruel the woman could be. When she had been introduced to Maryam so many years back—then just Tariq’s teenage cousin and not yet his wife—the Saudi girl had treated her like the dirt under her shoes. Maryam had traveled with Tariq’s extended family to spend a summer month in Zanzibar—the one and only time she had set foot on the “filthy, backwards island”, as she had called it. Miza knew Maryam regarded her as an uneducated fool, and pretended not to hear when the older girl ordered her around like a servant. Tariq could see it, even back then. He’d tease Maryam into dropping her haughty ways, or would distract her with his silliness until she’d forget Miza was even around. When Tariq had shyly confessed to Miza that he and Maryam were promised to be wed—an arrangement made by both sets of parents when the children were still very small—she could not hide the scorn on her face.

  “Maryam is not so bad,” he tried to convince her. “It is just that sometimes she does not think before she speaks. Or does not hear herself when she does.”

  But Miza could tell that Tariq was only marrying Maryam out of obligation to tradition. He had no choice. She would sometimes, during that summer, see the look on his face when he thought nobody was watching, the embarrassment at his cousin’s behavior causing his cheeks to redden and his eyelids to drop. To Miza, Maryam was simply a mean girl.

  After the two cousins were wed, things got worse for Tariq. In her darkest moments, Maryam’s insults and blame would be flung directly at him. “What kind of a husband are you, causing others to see me as barren as the naked hills of this wretched country? I should leave you,” she would say, “and find myself a real man.” But the truth was, Tariq said, that his wife never wanted the bother of a child, just as she never wanted to leave him an
d his riches, or the “wretched” country that allowed for a life so easy.

  Perhaps Maryam had grown used to sharing her husband with another. Even though the law required that a man divide not only his money but also his time equally among all his wives, Maryam did not seem to care how much time Tariq spent in Zanzibar, as long as he kept his “business” there.

  So what had happened? Had someone told her of Miza’s arrival in Muscat? Had she threatened Tariq, insisting he maintain the appearance of being a husband only to her? Was he worried for Miza’s safety, and that of the baby, as he had often expressed when they spoke of Maryam and her tantrums? Why did he not call?

  Miza’s heart thumped loudly in her chest as she picked up the phone and dialed the number to his other house, the number Tariq had given her to use in case of an emergency. It rang four times before someone answered. “Nobody is home,” a maid responded to Miza’s shaky inquiry. She quickly hung up.

  Miza shuffled to the kitchen to heat water for tea. What a fool I have been, thinking I could live as a man’s other wife, allowing myself to become a part of something like this, believing it would all work out fine. How could I have believed that such happiness was to be mine? What was I thinking, leaving my country and my sister behind—concerned only with my own selfish needs? This is what I get. This is what I deserve.

  “But no,” she said out loud, slamming her palm down on the marble counter. Tariq would not have taken that road. He was a good man, a strong man. A man who would never leave a woman, any woman, in a position like this. So then, Miza thought, what was it that could be keeping him away from her now?