by Sefi Atta
“I have no juices.”
“I’ll use my spit,” he said.
I struggled under him. “Please, I’m not supposed to lie with you. It’s not my turn today. I’m not supposed to.”
That was the night Junior Wife gave birth to a baby boy. Our Husband named him Abu. He announced that Abu was going to university and the rest of us would have to make sacrifices. I wandered around the whole day after Abu’s naming ceremony, thinking of Fatima. I went to the tailor’s to order a dress for her. I passed the Quranic lessons where young boys chanted verses. I stopped for cattle rearers. I smelled fresh blood in the abattoir. It made me sick. I heaved by the wood carvers’ sheds and there he was. He had the facial marks of a peasant, my invisible man.
“What happened to your hand?” I asked.
“It got cut off,” he said.
“What did you do to get it cut off?”
“I stole.”
“Did you ask for penance?”
“This is my penance.” He waved his stump at me. His extra skin was folded neatly at his wrist like a belly button. He was smiling.
“How do you carve?” I asked.
“With my one arm.”
“How do you pray?”
“With my one arm.”
“How do you love?”
It could have been that I found my partial hearing in his missing hand. You know how people find others in life to compensate, especially in difficult times? Why else would I ask? He pointed to his temple. “Love is here.”
“I’m a married woman,” I said, in case he suspected me of flirting.
“You have a rather sad face,” he said.
He laughed and it scared me. If a man laughed in Zamfara these days, a woman could be in trouble. I drew closer to my invisible man and he smelled of wood dust and cracked earth. The mixture cured my nausea instantly.
“Let me see your carvings.”
I took the one with the biggest head and traced her broad nostrils, then behind her neck. Then her lips. I was thinking of Miriam Maliki.
“I like you,” I heard my invisible man murmur.
“What do you like about me?”
“Your breasts. I would like to suck them hard.”
“Let me feel,” I said, meaning his carving.
In his shed, among the carvings and wood dust. We were standing.
“When did you become a bad woman?” he asked as I unzipped his trousers.
“Today, I am not so well,” I said.
He was like a rod of warm iron. He said he didn’t mean to insult me, he just wanted to know. Women in Zamfara could consent and then act as if they were raped. I let him suck my nipples. I felt fear for Fatima’s education like a tremor between my legs. He said I reminded him of his first cousin, one he almost married. He said this was not an abomination. In his village, people married within their families, but most of them were deformed people, so he refused, because he never thought he would be one himself. He stole a transistor radio. It belonged to another cousin who died, but a half-brother claimed it. It was a property dispute. He just wanted to listen to the news, he said. The whole world could be explained by listening to the news. “You see what is happening in Zamfara? It has nothing to do with Sharia law... You are exciting me... It has nothing to do with Islam. It has nothing to do with the Quran. It doesn’t even have anything to do with Arabs... who come here to preach against infidels... You’re making me excited! Slow down!”
It was a property dispute, he said. All the madness and the sadness in the world, from war to starvation, came down to property disputes.
“Except my ear,” I said, fastening my brassiere. My hands were wet.
“That, too,” he said, zipping up his trousers. “Your husband believes he owns you.”
“Not his drinking,” I said. “That is no property dispute.”
“That, too. He drinks to appease himself. If a rich man drinks, who flogs him? Ah, you are like sweet mango to taste. I could lick you all over.”
“I feel sick,” I said.
Truly, to think Our Husband and I were part of the same sorry group. Who forced his hand in marriage twice? Who led him to his beloved burukutu? I pulled my panties up.
“You are going?” my invisible man asked.
His nose was as broad as his carving’s, and his eyes were a shade of light brown.
“It seems unreasonable,” I said, “to cut off a hand for stealing a transistor radio. For the sin of drinking, they really should cut a throat.”
He frowned at that. “You are quite a harsh woman.”
I was pregnant by the end of that month. I had not been as sick as I normally was. I was sicker; sick all day. It made me thin. I was worrying about Fatima’s schooling. I was running around for Junior Wife’s newborn, Abu. She was refusing to touch him. She said he might as well have been born a stone. She cursed her parents who gave her to Our Husband in exchange for a dowry. She said marriage was like slavery.
“But you’re a miserable one,” I told her. Everyone was quick to compare themselves to slaves. What slave had the power to tell Our Husband to let her sleep separately? I had to fake typhoid so that he would not come to me at night. My temperatures were easy; I was making his morning teas again. My nausea was convenient.
Junior Wife told me one evening, “You’re hiding something from me. You seem one way while you are the other. You say one thing and mean the other. Our husband says you do this to drive people to madness.”
Her eyes were red, not from crying but from lack of sleep.
“Have you fed your son?” I asked.
“See?” she said. “You’re doing it again.”
“Your son needs to be fed,” I said, sharply. Doing what?
“My son is like you,” she said. “A snake hidden in the grass. He does not cry so that I will worry about him. That is why I no longer sleep at night.”
“He’s an innocent child.”
“No, he isn’t. His big head almost killed me.”
She turned her face away from me. I moved my hand to check her head for fever. She slapped it. “Don’t touch!”
By the end of the week she was rocking herself. Her hair was falling out, her breath stank, she’d stopped douching. Her baby was shrieking now, and it was I who was acting like his mother. I, who was carrying him and attending to his mess.
Our Husband was furious. “This household is cursed from top to bottom. One really has to be sure where one picks his brides. Everything is falling apart since she arrived. If she doesn’t take heed, I will send her back to that father of hers, so that he can do as Mallam Sanusi did and cut off her foot.”
Threats. He was trying to outshriek his own son.
“What will happen to the baby?”
“He will stay here. My son will not be deserted. If his own mother won’t care for him, I will accept the next best mother.”
“Who?”
“Who else? You, of course. And he will attend university. And he will become a doctor. And he will be rich. Then he can be president of Nigeria—”
“Bismillah,” I said. “I’m sure he will, since he resembles you.”
“Oh, shut up.”
To him, that was an invitation to come to my bed again. Not because we’d exchanged pleasantries, mind you. He said that since I was up to my usual tricky ways, my typhoid must have cleared. This time I was prepared for his entry.
“I’m pregnant,” I said.
“How?”
“By the grace of Allah, as usual, and it is a boy, and if you lie with me, your son will instantly be miscarried.”
“Spread your legs,” he said.
He was rubbing spit inside me. I was writhing not from pain, but from the thought of burukutu in my passage.
“I’m—” I said.
He collapsed on top of me.
“Will you shut up? Now see what you’ve done. Only you are capable of doing this to me. Never, ever, has this happened...”
His manhood was
like water on my belly. His chest hairs were in my nostrils.
“I can’t breathe,” I said.
Junior Wife had strayed into the room without a knock. She stood there with her hair looking like a mongrel’s; her eyes were redder than ever.
“Something terrible has come to pass,” she said in a soft voice.
“What?”
It was I who asked. A mother knows. She senses danger. She senses it in silence, a silence that is connected to her womb.
“Have I married a couple of witches or what?” Our Husband asked, staggering out of my bed. “Why do you barge in like this?”
“Unfortunately, he is dead,” Junior Wife said.
“Who?”
“Abu.”
I heard the ceiling collapse. You know how coincidences happen? A whole section of the ceiling just caved in behind me. It made such a noise I was sure it had pounded the floor to pieces. I turned to check. The ceiling was intact. It was Our Husband lying on the floor. He had fallen down in grief.
I could have pitied him the way he mourned. He embalmed the body. He wrapped the body in white cloth. He dug a hole and placed it gently in. He covered the hole up. He even ordered a tombstone. One morning I heard him weeping like a woman, “Abu, Abu.” I asked, “Would you like some tea?” His eyes widened as if he’d seen a witch. He ran away from me.
That same week he sent Junior Wife packing, back to her parents. He said she should be prepared for her foot to be cut off, after the way she neglected his son. Neglected? But he was always dumb for her sad face. I was happy to see that murderer out of the house. To kill her own child; there was no excuse, not even motherly madness. I told Fatima when she started lamenting how two losses in one week were impossible to bear, “Save your upsets. Save them for times that are worth it. They will come.”
Our Husband was drinking burukutu like water now. He’d stopped going to work at his shop. He would leave home early in the mornings to do the work of drunkards. Meanwhile, his mechanics were pilfering from him. I was thinking, how did they dare in this new climate? The situation was so tense that Christians and Muslims were coming to blows on the streets, burning each other’s houses, taking daggers to each other’s throats. One Christian in the marketplace, a Muslim ripped a cross pendant from his neck. It wasn’t even real gold. They fought until the Muslim died, and then a group of Muslims retaliated with bows and arrows on a Christian settlement. These were the stories we were hearing, and Our Husband’s mechanics were pilfering? That was some poverty. I would rather beg knowing I had two hands to show for myself.
We did not hear a word from Junior Wife who had returned to her father’s house. We never even asked, so we did not know her father finally begged her forgiveness for abandoning her. He said he did it to make her strong, so that she would not be homesick and run away. She told him of the threat Our Husband made. Her father said, “Come on, I’m not as wicked as Mallam Sanusi.” She told him also of Our Husband’s drinking, and her father exclaimed, “He drinks? You never said!”
That was it. They came for Our Husband while he was doing the work of drunkards. They dragged him out of the shack. They took him to court. The Alkali presiding over his case ordered fifty strokes. I did not know any of this until his friends brought him home, whimpering like a baby. They could find no trousers soft enough to cover his buttocks, so he was naked except for a dirty shirt. Fatima cried the most, of my daughters, as we lay him face down on his bed.
“There must be a reasonable explanation for this,” I said.
He cursed Junior Wife and her father, and told me what happened.
“I am so forlorn!” he wailed, louder than a muezzin. “Heaven awaits me! I’ve always been humble. Leave me to die. Let my sores fester...”
“I’ve heard alcohol helps,” I said.
He wept silently now, into his mattress, gibbering something about me never changing my tricky ways and his friends coming back to save him. I used warm water and a boiled towel to cleanse his skin. The job took a long time. His buttocks looked like shredded cloth and he had urinated on himself. Shit was hanging out of him. I took Vaseline and slid it over each of the fifty welts while he sobbed on. He cursed the day this and that. He really was like a baby with all that complaining, and as I reached his anus with the Vaseline he farted.
“Hm,” I said, holding my nose. “Men really should douche.”
“You can’t even say sorry!” he shrieked.
I was laughing. Not because of what he said, or what I saw, but because of what I’d said: “Men really should douche.” It came out of my mouth like a bullet, without me thinking. I laughed so hard tears poured from my eyes and burned them. This house of ours, what else could go wrong?
“You evil woman,” Our Husband said. “You will pay for this. You think it’s funny? You will pay. Just wait. I will get better, and I will do something that will make you want to die.” I stopped immediately and held my chest. “Fatima?”
His voice became shaky. He’d reached the stage of uncontrollable lips with his crying. “W-what did Fatima ever do to me? It was you. Y-you and this horrible behavior of yours since you lost your hearing. P-punishing me, punishing me, for what was m-merely an accident. Did you think I made you h-half deaf on purpose? C-curse you...”
I nodded. So long as it was me.
The day Our Husband was able to walk straight he went immediately back to court and told them he had an accusation to make. The Alkali, knowing his face, asked him to make it concise. Our Husband declared that it was his wife. She was pregnant, by another man. She had committed adultery and that was why he’d been drinking burukutu: his wife was a very loose woman.
They came for me in the afternoon. What was I doing at the time? Dyeing my hair. My real hairs were so white for a woman who had turned thirty-three years. They told me of Our Husband’s accusation in court. They took me into custody. “Who will look after my children?” I asked. One of them answered, “Why are you bothering to ask?” I said, “I shall be away several days.” He said, “Your pregnant belly is evidence, if ever I saw any. I warrant you will be away longer than that.”
That was when I met Miriam Maliki. She came to visit me in custody. I’ll never forget the way she commanded the guards, “Let her out of there. She’s pregnant and she’s no danger to anyone.” The doors miraculously opened for me. Allah. In all my life, I’d not seen such a delicate woman with power. She was as tiny as Fatima. Her head was covered with a black scarf and her eyes were big and sparkly. I saw her thin wrists and fingers without knuckles. I thought, this one, she hasn’t suffered a second in her life.
“I’m Miriam Maliki. Have you heard of me?”
“My daughter said she met you.”
“Your daughter?”
“Fatima.”
“Fat?”
“Ima.”
“What?”
“That is her name. Fatima. You said you would train her, and she would be on the news. She was jumping up and down, and she even said—”
She nodded. “Listen, it’s you I’m worried about. Do you know I heard your story and immediately came out here? I could not believe what they were telling me. You were taken from your home? Like a mere criminal? To this mud dungeon with nothing but a bucket? And your own husband accused you? What did you tell them when they came for you?”
“Who will look after my daughters?”
“Did you tell them you were innocent?”
“Did they ask?”
For the first time she seemed to see my face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so angry about this. Forgive me. I heard your trial is tomorrow. I’m disgusted by the prospects of such a case in Zamfara. I will be there at your side.”
“My side?”
“Do not be afraid. Look at me. I know you’re innocent. You will not be put to death.”
“Death?” I said. “For what?”
She said, “Don’t you know? Don’t you know how these courts intend to punish married women who have
committed adultery?”
How, I asked.
“Death by stoning,” she said. “Have you not heard? You are the first.”
Indeed she was with me during my trial. Not by my side, but she was sitting with others who were allowed in the court. If she had been by my side, I might have been able to answer the questions better.
“Why didn’t you tell your husband earlier that you were pregnant?”
“I just didn’t.”
“How do you lie with a man who doesn’t exist?”
“I just did.”
Miriam came to spend time with me after my sentencing. She said all her life she never imagined this would happen in a place she lived, that a woman would be stoned to death for adultery. She said I was maligned, or raped. I told her imagination was a dangerous exploit.
“You’re brave,” she said. “You’re like a mountain.”
“See me as I am instead.”
“The court was unfair to you.”
“You can’t fault Islam.”
Her voice rose. “It has nothing to do with Islam!”
“A property dispute?” I asked.
She began to pace. “The state cannot sanction such courts. The federal government won’t allow it. You know what this is really about? People wanting to break our country apart. Not about declaring Zamfara an Islamic state. Not even about the Islamic fundamentalism that people say is sweeping the world.” People said that?
“I’ve fought for the rights of women...”
What about children? What about men who had one hand cut off?
“I’m against underage marriages. The psychological effects alone are bad enough. Some women develop cancer of the cervix...”
My mother died of a rotten womb.
“And God only knows why, when Muslim men want to get closer to Him, they look for Muslim women to pick on.”
“I’m going to die,” I said.
She took my hand. “I will make sure. I will so make sure people hear of you. Others have taken an interest, not just me. Elsewhere in the country they are writing about you in newspapers, calling this a barbaric injustice. Foreign papers are hearing about your case as we speak. Once they carry your story, there will be activists involved. They will petition our president. Very soon, our little court in Zamfara will be the focus of the world. A world that is worried about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. You understand? It is very likely that your life will be saved because of this. Have hope. You are a symbol.”
