The Zanzibar Wife

by Deborah Rodriguez

  “Of course I know about the jinn. In fact, I was there when one left my great-uncle and entered my aunt. It was a horrific sight. I’ll never get it out of my head. And my parents, just a few years ago, had a horrible accident, driven off the road by the jinn. My mother was lucky to survive. Believe me, my whole family has been touched. And that is exactly why I’m beginning to think that going to Bahla is not such a great idea. Why invite trouble?” What she didn’t mention to Hani was her nagging fear that the clairvoyant in Dubai had been right, that she, herself, had a jinn. What else could it be that was keeping her from finding love? She feared it was only a matter of time before the allegedly amorous spirit who had attached himself to her would cause whatever this was with Hani to also head south.

  “Okay, okay,” she sputtered when she clicked on the next link. “Now tell me I’m wrong. National Geographic has named Bahla the fifth most haunted city in the world. National Geographic!”

  “Respect to Bahla!” Hani chortled with a fist in the air.

  “It’s not funny!” Ariana returned to her search.

  “Give me that.” Rachel reached from the back seat and grabbed the phone out of Ariana’s hand. “Here,” she said after a minute. “TripAdvisor: Picturesque oasis town. Impressive and lovely fortress. Friendly people.”

  “It’s probably a jinn who wrote that!” Ariana protested. “To lure unsuspecting people to their town.”

  “You will be fine,” Hani assured her. “Bahla is a nice place. I know it well. And I will have you back in Nizwa by nightfall. It is my promise to you.”

  20

  It was actually surprising to Rachel to see just how much about Bahla seemed to be jinn related. Scrolling down through the links, desperate to put a stop to the hysteria building in the front seat, she struggled to find any other tidbits of interest at all. It was all black magic, jinn, witchcraft. And a fort. Which, apparently, was also haunted. Were ghosts the only thing this place was about? It seemed so. And it also seemed all like a bunch of nonsense to her.

  Miza stirred in her sleep, her legs bent up against her belly and her feet resting alongside Rachel’s thigh. The woman’s reaction when Rachel had mentioned Bahla the night before had been sort of pitiful, the way she had grabbed Rachel’s arm with both her hands and begged to be taken along. The poor woman would have probably gotten down on her knees if she could manage it. “Sure, you’re welcome to come. No problem,” Rachel had assured her. “But I’m going to be spending pretty much all day getting shots of the guys making pottery there. Might be pretty boring for you.”

  “No,” Miza insisted. “It will be fine. I think I might be able to ask around and find someone in Bahla who can help me.”

  Rachel had noticed her ashen skin and wobbly legs the minute Miza entered through the hotel’s glass doors, and had invited the visibly shaken woman to join her in the lobby to share a pot of chai. “Help you how?” she had asked as she poured them each a fresh cup. “You mean like a doctor? You’re not feeling well?” Miza had, in fact, appeared increasingly distraught by each day. Rachel had wanted to reach out to her, to offer some sort of comfort, but was made awkward by the woman’s reserve.

  Miza nodded. “Yes, a doctor,” she said quietly.

  “Wait,” Rachel said, recalling the conversation on the patio earlier in the evening, “are we talking a doctor-doctor, or something else?”

  “I need to find a person who has the power to help me. To help us,” Miza added as she lightly rubbed her belly.

  “Oh. I see.” Rachel leaned back on the sofa. “So you’re saying you think someone’s done a number on you?”

  “A number?”

  “A spell. Bad juju.”

  “I know so. And I must hurry to put a stop to it, to protect my child.”

  Rachel blew the steam from the top of her cup. “Hani told me your husband had an accident. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Yes, it is true he had an accident. But that is only part of my trouble.”

  “So what’s the other part?”

  “It is his other wife,” Miza said quietly, making certain there was nobody around to hear.

  “His ex?” Rachel asked.

  Miza shook her head. “Not an ex. The other one he is married to.”

  Rachel tried not to let the surprise show in her face. “So you and another woman are both married to the same guy?” She knew such arrangements weren’t that uncommon in Muslim countries, but she had never spoken with anyone involved in one. Personally, Rachel couldn’t imagine having to deal with a bunch of sister-wives.

  Miza nodded shyly. “I married Tariq more than one year ago. He has been so kind to me, and to my sister. I love him, and he loves me as well.”

  Rachel couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows.

  “It is different,” Miza rushed to explain, “than being a mistress.” She looked down at the ground. “In some ways,” she added.

  “I’m sorry, Miza. I don’t mean to come off as all judgy.” Rachel paused for a sip of tea. “So you say the other wife is now causing some sort of trouble?”

  “She saw me today.” Miza pointed to her belly. “In the hospital.”

  “Oh.” Rachel drew the word out long, her mind struggling to wrap itself around how that meeting might have gone down.

  “Yes. Today she saw me, and saw that I was with child. And she knows that if Tariq does not live, and our child is born a boy, she could lose almost everything to us. So I know that to her, it is best my son not be born, no matter what.”

  “And?”

  “And I am sure she is doing something to make sure it does not happen.”

  “To make sure Tariq doesn’t die?”

  “If only that were so. But I’m sure it is me, and the child, she is after. She took some pieces of my hair. That is all she needs for a mganga, a witch doctor, to inflict a spell. That is why I must seek help in Bahla.”

  “Okay.” Rachel took a deep breath. “But really, Miza. Do you know what those guys, those so-called healers, do? Let me tell you—”

  “Oh, I know all about it.” Miza leaned back stiffly into the cushions. “In my country we have many ways of dealing with the sheitani.”

  “Okay, but seriously, do you really think you should be doing this to yourself? In your condition?”

  “It is because of my condition that I must do this,” she suddenly snapped. “Why do you think I dared to leave my husband’s side? How could I have let myself do that if it wasn’t my baby, our baby, that was in danger?”

  Rachel rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Miza. I’m trying to understand, I really am. But are you sure it’s really what you think it is? Personally, all this hocus-pocus stuff just seems to be so—” Rachel paused mid-sentence, stopped by the blatant desperation on Miza’s face. “Okay, okay. We’ll go to Bahla tomorrow.”

  Now, with Miza still asleep beside her in the car, Rachel took the opportunity to probe a little deeper. “So maybe you can explain it to me, Hani.” She leaned in and rested her forearms on the back of Ariana’s seat. “What is it about the whole jinn thing that gets everyone around here so worked up? It just all seems so archaic to me.”

  Hani looked back at her through the rear-view mirror. “Well,” he began, “it is true that it is an old belief.”

  “The way we were taught it,” Ariana chimed in, “was that angels were originally created by Allah from light, and that the jinn were created from smokeless fire. Then there was Iblis, one of the jinns, but he was raised to the rank of the angels.”

  “Yes,” Hani agreed, “and what you have to understand is that, unlike the angels, the jinn have free will. So what happened is that when Allah created man, Iblis was jealous, and refused to bow down before Adam, claiming he was superior because Adam was made from clay, and he, Iblis, was made from fire. So, for his disobedience, Iblis was driven from paradise and condemned to Hell.”

  “But,” Ariana added, “he begged God to delay his punishment until the Day of Judgmen
t, and that is why the jinn live all around us, making trouble from their parallel universe.”

  “You don’t have this in your religion?” Hani’s eyes once again turned to the rear-view mirror.

  Rachel thought for a moment. “Well, I guess for Christians, Satan would be their Iblis. But I’m not sure where the jinn come in. And in my religion? I think it’s looked at sort of differently, not that I know much. But then again, I’m not really a religious person.”

  Ariana whipped her head around and flashed Rachel a look.

  “Really?” Hani paused before saying more, as if he were pondering a notion he’d never considered before. “So tell me, how does that work?”

  Rachel laughed a little. “How does it work? It just does. I live my life, I try my best to be a good person, and if and when I’m not, it’s totally on me.”

  “So you believe in nothing other than yourself?”

  “Believing in myself, that’s a whole other issue. But if you’re asking if I think there’s some all-seeing, all-knowing being up there running the whole show, then the answer is no.” Rachel saw Ariana shrinking down in her seat.

  “And can I ask,” Hani said, “why do you feel this way?”

  “I suppose it’s the same reason you feel the way you do. It’s the way I was brought up. And seriously, how could I believe in a god after seeing all the horrors I’ve seen in every corner of the world? Especially because so many of those horrors were committed in the name of religion.”

  “So you are saying that your religion is atheism?”

  “Actually, atheism isn’t a religion at all. That would be like saying that bald is a hair color, or that health is a disease.”

  Hani nodded slowly. “I see.”

  “I mean,” Rachel continued, “I just believe in taking responsibility for myself, for my own actions. To you guys, it seems like everything is about fate.”

  “Yes, it is true that Muslims believe that their life is left up to the will of God. But as human beings we are given absolute freedom to do as we please, and believe that God loves his people and will always be forgiving,” Hani said.

  “Well, with all due respect, to me that kind of feels like a cop-out.”

  “Cop-out?” he asked.

  “You know, an excuse, a way out of something.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Okay,” Rachel explained, “so like with this whole jinn thing. Someone has bad luck, someone makes a poor decision, maybe someone even does something bad. It was the jinn! It’s like saying the devil made me do it, right?”

  “It’s not that black and white, Rachel,” Ariana interrupted. “Can you honestly say that you’ve never experienced anything out of the ordinary in your life, anything that made you think, even a tiny bit, about the things we can’t explain?”

  “Oh, there are plenty of things I’ve seen that can’t be explained.” She snorted. “With what I do for a living? Trust me.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the things we can’t necessarily see, the sense of another power, or another dimension.”

  Once again the image of the old woman with the goat came into Rachel’s mind, but she decided to keep that to herself.

  “Yes,” Hani said. “I am also curious about how you think. For us, the only purpose in life is to serve and obey God. And where do you find your purpose?”

  Rachel had to laugh a little. “That’s a good question, Hani. But the thing is, I have a real problem with the whole servility thing. I know that Islam means ‘submission’ in Arabic, submission to Allah’s will, right?”

  “And obedience to His law.”

  “Do you know what the philosopher Karl Marx called religion? ‘The opium of the people.’” With no response from the front seat, Rachel worried that she had gone too far. “Look,” she added, “you two are good people. You’re not hurting anyone by being so devout.”

  “I should hope not!” Ariana gasped a little.

  “All I’m saying is that I respect you both for your beliefs.”

  “And I respect you for yours,” Hani said. “I am just trying to understand better what they are. You see, in Oman, it is very open. We live with other religions without any problem. We cannot say that other religions are not true. We believe that we are all brothers and sisters.”

  “Well that I can agree with.”

  “It is just difficult for me to understand that believing in nothing is believing in something.”

  “I think we’re talking in circles, my friend. I say live and let live. To each his or her own.” Rachel leaned back and inserted her earbuds, ready for a little Wu-Tang Clan to take her back into Rachel’s World. But before she could even press play, the talk about her had started up in the front seat.

  Didn’t you tell me she was Jewish? I think that’s what she said. A Jewish atheist. How can there be such a thing? I feel sorry for her. Anyone who willingly does the job she did must be crazy. I think she’s lonely. I think she must spend her life trying to prove there is no God.

  Before long their chatter turned into a droning lullaby in Rachel’s ears, and she drifted off to sleep to the sound of her own psyche being pulled apart like a loaf of soft bread fresh from the oven.

  21

  The silence came as a welcome relief to Miza as she watched the others disappear behind the heavy iron gates of the pottery factory. She had pretended to sleep during the ride, had in fact wanted to sleep, but how could anyone sleep with that constant yammering going on? And all that talk about the jinn. If she hadn’t been so weary from her lack of sleep the night before, and if her mind hadn’t been so dizzy with worry, she could have told all of them a thing or two about the jinn, about the juju, the sihr, the sheitani, about the white arts, the dark arts, all of it. Where she was from, there was a long history of magic.

  Miza took some brief comfort from the baby’s movement inside her. But the panic remained close to the surface. How long would it be before Maryam would hand over whatever amount it took to buy the services of a mganga? Miza strained to remember the rules her mother had sworn by when she was pregnant with Sabra, measures her ancestors had taken for generations in order to keep the evil spirits at bay. A woman with child does not sleep alone. A woman with child does not go outside during the night. A woman with child does not watch a movie that will make her scared. A woman with child does not go out alone to use the toilet. And, of course, her mother had also hung the azma from their ceiling, just as everyone else did. All throughout the shops and homes in Stone Town one could see the brown scraps of paper fluttering on the end of a piece of cotton tied to the beams, carrying the words from the Koran that would ward off evil and bring in good.

  How she wished she were home in Zanzibar, where she’d know just who to go to for help with warding off Maryam’s evil magic. That’s where the true experts were. All the Omanis who had family ties to Zanzibar preferred to go there for healing. If only she weren’t about to give birth she’d hop on an airplane and go tomorrow. But the doctor had said it would not be safe this far along, so she could only hold on to the faith that one of the healers in Bahla would know what to do.

  Miza thought about how Rachel had reacted the evening before, when she had told her of her interest in going to Bahla. The woman obviously didn’t believe her story. Why should she? From what Miza had heard in the car, she didn’t seem to believe in anything. A woman like that wouldn’t understand the fears of someone like Miza. A woman like that would have no problems, would have no idea of what real problems were. A woman like that would be blind to the magic even if it bit her on the ass. And the other one! With her eyelashes and high-heeled shoes, poking into everyone else’s business as if it were her own. Acting so high and mighty, and then practically crying like a baby when her daddy brought up the jinn. And why was she not there at home with her parents and the rest of her family instead of living alone like a spoiled diva in fancy Dubai? What Miza wouldn’t give to have her mother and father still in her li
fe. How could Hani stand it, tending to those two day after day?

  Miza checked her phone for a message from Sabra. If only she had arranged for someone in Stone Town to check on the girl, to make sure she was okay. She should have gotten a phone number from her neighbor. She should have left someone other than that silly Hoda to care for Sabra. She should not have left the girl behind at all.

  The baby continued to stir, roused by Miza’s agitation. She dropped her head into her hands and paused. What was the matter with her? Perhaps it was Maryam who was causing her to think this way. It was not right of her to judge Rachel so harshly. She meant Miza no harm. In fact, she had acted almost warmly when Miza had returned, so upset from her clash with Maryam, getting her tea and soothing her nerves. And though Rachel may not have had the types of trouble Miza had experienced in her own life, it was clear that something had happened to her, to make her appear so hard and doubtful and shut off from the world.

  And Ariana. Ariana had been nothing but kind to Miza, handing out compliments like candy, and giving up her room in the hotel so that Miza would be comfortable. It was clear that the woman’s mind was now fixed on Hani. The way the color rose in her cheeks when he spoke to her. The way her eyes seemed to turn into two soft pools of warm chocolate when she looked at him. And last night, the way she appeared when the two of them arrived back together at the hotel after dark. Miza knew that look, the look of two people who had indulged in the touch of one another. But even so, Miza had a sense there were things troubling that woman, and to Miza it came through as loud and dissonant as the call to prayer blaring from all corners of Stone Town.

  Miza plumped up her satchel and stuffed it between her head and the window, desperate for some real rest. If only she weren’t so eaten up by her own troubles, she thought as her eyes slipped closed, she might try to help the others to see what was right in front of their eyes, to listen to what was in their hearts. She would not be so selfish, thinking her problems were so much bigger or more important than those of others. If only.