Theft

by N. S. Köenings

  Finally, Zulfa went out the back way and walked through the cassava plots to her father’s father’s place, her Babu, to ask him to say something to his son, or, even better, call Salum to his house and speak with him directly. Babu liked Zulfa’s Aunt Khadija. He felt warmly towards her. He’d be glad if Zulfa made a journey to Kiguu. Babu, Zulfa thought, was kind, and he would surely help her. But when she found him spread out like a spider on his bed, he was in no mood for easy talk. He had the shortwave pressed up to his ear as though it were a telephone, as though the Deutsche Welle people had called him up especially. “Just listen to this,” he said, having sensed Zulfa’s arrival without opening his eyes: “Children in the U.S.A. are shooting schoolteachers with guns.”

  Zulfa sighed. She sat with him on the bed, snapping with her fingers now and then at the skinny chicks that scurried in and out. When I get to America, thought Zulfa, I’m not going to be a teacher. She knew that once the program ended, Babu would fall right to sleep. Zulfa tried the words out in the room: “If I make it to America, Babu, I’ll make sure not to be a teacher.” Babu frowned, and pointed at the radio. “I’m listening to the news,” he said. Zulfa rose, picked up a small banana from his table, ate it, and left her granddad on the bed.

  On the way to the main road from Babu’s, Zulfa kicked at the mimosa on the edges of the trail to make the leaves furl back. She took a back path up the hill towards the gristmill, where Babu Omari sat sleeping on the threshold, spectacles high up on his brow, Lion notebook on his lap. Zulfa paused to look at him and made a face to test how deep his dreams were flowing. Then, moving past him down a gully that was plugged up with dead tires, she emerged behind the workshop of Usilie town. She would ask Salum herself if he could take her to Kiguu.

  At the shop, Salum was banging at the underside of a bright blue Morris taxi. Zulfa didn’t want Salum’s coworkers to see her. The fat, thick-bearded one was her ex-husband’s youngest brother, and the others, fox-faced, muscled, had roving eyes and mouths. Zulfa leaned against the light blue wall of Bi Faida’s house, facing the garage. From inside, she could hear Bi Faida’s chatty girls making ice pops from sweet juice. Below the open window, Zulfa squatted, balancing herself on two flat, white coral stones. “Psst. Salum.”

  Salum started at the sound and hit his head on something hard under the car. Zulfa bit her lips to keep from laughing. Pressing with a hip against Bi Faida’s house, she hunkered even lower. She called her cousin’s name again. Salum eased out from below and rose, tugging at his coveralls. He looked around a little and he frowned when he spotted Zulfa squatting.

  “Wallahi, Zulfa, can’t you announce yourself politely?” Zulfa made her mouth sweet. She liked how Salum’s eyebrows met sharply in a vee at the center of his nose and that he was easy with a smile. Sometimes she could get him to do exactly what she wished. But when she looked at him demurely and raised the question of a car, Salum interrupted. “None of these will run,” he said. “The first car I get working goes straight back to its owner.”

  Salum wasn’t smiling. Perhaps he was coming to suspect that Zulfa was fetching mostly when she needed things from him. That it didn’t matter how much he thought of sending news to Mzee Abeid that even if Zulfa was a divorcée, Salum would be glad to have her, cherish her and treat her well. Maybe Salum could see that she would always be like this, looking to escape, begging rides from those who loved her. “No,” he said. He frowned so that the outer edges of his eyebrows leapt almost up into his hair. “I’m not in the mood.” Even when she rose and placed a soft hand on his forearm, never-minding it was black with engine grease, Salum pulled away and said he had to get to work.

  Looking sadly at her feet, Zulfa shuffled back the way she came. At the gristmill, Babu Omari, now awake, adjusted his thick glasses. Seeing Zulfa could make a man alert. He tried to have her stop with him a little, but she stood only long enough to ask if he’d got lemons growing on his land, and when he said no, he hadn’t, Zulfa kept on moving.

  She was just stepping onto the main road again when she saw a tall man in a well-pressed kanzu gown stop at Nazir’s Tailoring and Petrol Stand to fill up a big red and orange Honda. The bike glowed brightly in the sunlight, much more nicely, sleekly, than a taxi. That’s Masoud Hamad, she thought. Now there was a generous, well-rounded man with a means of transportation.

  When Masoud saw Zulfa at the bottom of the path across from Nazir’s Tailoring and Petrol Stand, he couldn’t think, at first, exactly who she was. But while Nazir put away the shirt he was resizing to fit a brand-new owner and got the gasoline for the new Honda from a plastic gallon jug, Masoud watched her carefully, and Zulfa, pleased, could feel his eyes right on her. She knew just what she’d do. First, she looked away from Nazir’s Petrol Stand and down the road that led to Hausemeki town. Then, as though she’d dropped a small thing in the leaves, she looked down at the ground. Finally, she pulled her scarf around her face a little tighter to be modest and stood still for a long moment, frowning slightly, as if considering something personal and secret. When Masoud called out a greeting, Zulfa pretended that she was not sure to whom it was addressed. After one full minute, she bowed her head in answer. Oh! Me?

  While Nazir bent over the Honda, Masoud took a step towards Zulfa. “Whose child are you?” he asked. Zulfa saw a dainty tuft of gray at the edge of Masoud’s beard, just below his mouth, and noticed his soft lips. She hadn’t heard his voice so clearly before this. It had a winning tone, she thought, a voice that would be heartening at dawn, calling from the mosque while you were still in bed.

  Nazir looked up from the gallon jug, glad Zulfa had come. He, for one, had not been pleased when Mzee Abeid’s last daughter went to live in a hill house far away from town with a rich, bad-tempered husband. Not that Nazir could have got her for himself. Zulfa’s family (on Habiba’s side) was pious, and Nazir was not ardent about praying. On Mzee Abeid’s side, they had once been rich and still behaved as though they were. And all Nazir knew how to do was stitch and pour out gasoline. But he’d been thrilled when Zulfa finally escaped from old Kassim Majid. A man can always dream.

  Zulfa told Masoud that her father was Mzee Abeid, and that when Masoud took on his latest wife, she had been away. “I was sad to miss your wedding,” Zulfa said, though she hadn’t been invited, and she knew there hadn’t been a party. Her manner subtly suggesting that she knew what wedding nights were like, Zulfa cocked her head. “It was a long time ago, but still.”

  Nazir, who could tell how Zulfa looked from the honeyed sound of her high voice, screwed the lid back on the jug and called, “Hey, Zulfa! Itching to be number four?” She looked down at him and laughed, and Nazir’s legs went soft. Zulfa was a pleasure, really. She took teasing very well. She never made it cheap. It wasn’t disrespect or looseness that made her such a joy. It came from having been a wife and being free now, free to name things if she wished, having looked them in the eye.

  “No,” she said, tilting her head up so that Masoud (who was taller than she was) could contemplate her face, “I won’t share my husbands.” Zulfa stepped up to the Honda and hoisted herself sidesaddle up onto the seat. Turning to Masoud, she said, “This bike is very beautiful.” Then she asked if it was his. She stroked the burly handles with the fat part of her palm. “Did you buy it? Is it new?”

  Nazir answered for Masoud, because he liked to speak to Zulfa and it wasn’t often she came down his way. “Brand-new! Sixteen fifty. Take you all the way to Mkumbuu,” he said, as proudly as if he’d bought the thing himself. “And you won’t have to get off once to walk it through the mud. This bike will plow through on its own.”

  Zulfa didn’t need too many details about how well the Honda ran. Still looking at Masoud, she said frankly, “I don’t want to be a wife just yet. But I would like a lift out to Kiguu.” Masoud couldn’t help himself. He smiled at her. “Kiguu, eh?” Nazir understood that everything that happened now would be between Zulfa and Masoud. He sat back down at his own old Shanghai Stitcher and st
arted pedaling again. “Tomorrow afternoon,” said Zulfa. “Tomorrow afternoon at two.” She slipped lightly from the Honda and bent to tug the bottom of her cotton dress to cover up her ankles. Masoud, open-mouthed, looked on. Then, very quickly, she was gone, moving towards her mother’s house. She looked straight ahead of her, so Masoud wouldn’t think it mattered much, and Nazir wouldn’t see how very much it did.

  At almost two o’clock, with three minutes to spare, Masoud stopped the Honda at Habiba’s house. When she heard the Honda’s rumble on the road and saw her man about to knock and call out at the door, Zulfa gestured through the window for Masoud to be still.

  Mzee Abeid had come from Babu Issa’s coffee stand for lunch. Zulfa went to find him in the kitchen. “Ba,” she said. Mzee Abeid looked up at his daughter. Though he did think Zulfa shouldn’t be so free, he could not begrudge her little joys. He regretted how things had gone with Kassim. He set his plate of stewed greens down beside him on the mat and asked her what she wanted. Zulfa apologized for asking at short notice. “Ba,” she said, “Masoud Hamad has business in Kiguu.”

  Abeid nodded. “So?” He plucked a piece of white-fish from the bowl beside him with a spoon. He doesn’t know about Khadija’s party, Zulfa thought. “Poor old Aunt Khadija’s asked to see me. You know how we neglect her.” Zulfa could already see it: her dad was going to agree. It was better if it looked like Masoud’s accidental doing. “He’s outside,” she said, picturing the place where she had, in preparation, left her newest shoes. “He says we have to leave right now.” Aunt Khadija was Mzee Abeid’s own sister, so how could he refuse? He didn’t think about the work Habiba had just then, with Warda and her babies home to stay; no, he didn’t see a reason to object.

  Zulfa hadn’t known for sure that Masoud Hamad would come, but she’d got her things together just in case. Outside, she handed him her nylon bag and let him strap it to the plank behind the seat. Once Zulfa settled sideways on the leather cushion, her feet crossed neatly at the ankles, Masoud bore her away. The people who were not asleep or in their houses saw, and each of them took note. When Habiba woke up from her nap and found her daughter gone, she was riled, but said nothing to her husband. She knew Masoud Hamad had no business in Kiguu except to do their daughter’s bidding. Indeed, Habiba could imagine just how Zulfa had convinced him. At Zulfa’s age, Habiba, too, had known how such things were done.

  To ensure that nothing shameful will occur when assisting a strange woman—no loose talk and no flirtatious questions, and certainly no looking in the eye—some men will keep quiet. And many women, too, when taking kindness from a man they don’t know well, will refuse to answer questions, ask none, and keep their eyes turned down. Nonetheless, no matter who the man and woman are, or how quiet they will keep, on the long seat of a motorbike subtle intimacies bloom.

  For example, Zulfa’s shoulder and the length of her soft upper arm were necessarily pressed close to Masoud’s spine. One of Zulfa’s hands, which when the road was smooth stayed properly behind her on the belt across the seat, crept up to hold the loose cloth of his shirt when the road turned full of potholes. Zulfa found that if she turned her head towards Masoud, she could eye her own reflection in the rearview mirror’s circle. Masoud quickly found, once they were heading for the hills, that he could see it, too.

  Just as Nazir had promised, the Honda plowed through sand and mud and up and down sharp slopes without their having to step down. But it also bucked and shivered, and the bucking made Zulfa, who was brave but not accustomed, really, to riding on a Honda, press more tightly up against her driver. They talked (or shouted, rather, since the engine roared and rumbled), and Masoud learned that Zulfa was, in an important way, a woman after his own heart. Zulfa liked, she said, to travel. Moreover, she announced, “I want to see the world before I die.”

  Her next words must have got lost in the wind, or maybe Masoud just didn’t pay enough attention. When Zulfa said, “I’ll see the world before anybody marries me again,” Masoud was thinking of his wives. They all liked to travel, too. Husna had once spent three months in Abu Dhabi with an older cousin who had married there: she had seen the inner walls of a dozen well-appointed houses, reveled in the air-conditioning, and gotten beautifully fat from drinking lots of water. His Hausemeki wife had as a girl spent several Ramadhans on the mainland, where she had shopped and watched a great deal of TV. Masoud’s third wife had never left the island, but she had stayed with relatives up north, where the yams, she swore, were sweeter than any she had tasted. All of them, he knew, would have liked to go on visits to their families abroad, assess the growth of children they had seen in photographs or known only as infants, and enter shops filled up with goods they could not get at home. The third one in particular, he thought, would have liked to visit fabric markets in a city, for the dresses that she made.

  But none of them would have formulated their desire quite as Zulfa did: “Traveling,” she shouted in his ear, “is a means of education! I want to see how people live.” She was not looking at him in the mirror when she said this. She was frowning at a pair of houses on the edge of Kiguu road, painted in pink earth, embellished with a black design of leaves. This neighborhood was poor, with people who only dreamed of motorbikes and didn’t have Toshibas. To Zulfa and Masoud, their dialect was strange. “For example,” Zulfa said, “what’s it like out here?” Gazing at her face in the bright disc of the mirror, Masoud thought briefly that had she been a wealthy woman contemplating novelties in a sophisticated shop, her expression would have been the same.

  When she spoke again, Masoud felt an exquisite mist of spittle settle on his neck. He shivered. “You, Masoud. You’ve been around the world.” With Zulfa’s glassy twin looking so divine, Masoud forgot to watch the road. The Honda bounded towards a tree root that was poking from the ground; at the ensuing jerk and rear, one of Zulfa’s beaded sandals escaped the clutches of her toes. She yelled at him to stop. He did, ashamed, and Zulfa got down from the bike. As Masoud watched her scurry off to find the single shoe, desires he thought he had conquered came welling in his chest. Zulfa was so small, so strong! Luckily, Khadija’s was not far. Otherwise, Masoud might have made pronouncements whose time had not yet come: I too still have new things to discover. Or, I’ll build you a house, get two stand fans and a freezer. We’ll be happy, you and me.

  At Kiguu, Masoud didn’t stay. He greeted Aunt Khadija properly, and got back onto the Honda much more modest, all in all, than Zulfa had expected. Two days later he returned, and Khadija, with a wise look in her eye, congratulated Zulfa for securing the generosity and kindness of such a fine, respectful man. As Zulfa got onto the Honda and Masoud bent to hook two baskets full of fruit around the handles, Khadija handed her a gift: a ninja-niqab face-veil she had gotten in Dubai. “It’s the latest thing,” she said. “You’d be surprised how nice they are.” The veil made Zulfa feel very up to date. She giggled, then kissed the air beside Khadija’s cheeks, one-two, saying, “We are parting Arab-style.” Khadija pinched her arm, and said, “Look pretty, now. You might be number four.”

  After the visit to Kiguu, Masoud took Zulfa everywhere. He took her north to buy adesi beans and carrots. Sometimes he would take Zulfa along when he went south to pick up shipments—in Baharini town, she would visit her old school friends and toss their babies high into the air. If she learned that rose apples were ripe in Shibayako, she left a letter for Masoud at Nazir’s petrol stand. Nazir would deliver Zulfa’s notice, and in the morning Masoud would show up with his own basket for the harvest, so Zulfa wouldn’t soil hers.

  Habiba was displeased. Necessarily suspicious when it came to men with many wives, Habiba thought Masoud Hamad had scandalous intentions. But Zulfa was a headstrong divorcée. And Mzee Abeid approved. He did worry that his youngest daughter was too free, that if she did not marry soon, shameful things might happen. One night, as he lay bare-chested on his belly and Habiba rubbed his calves with oil, he said, “She will be the fourth. He’s only had young gir
ls, yet. He’s surely ready now for someone who’s mature.”

  More anxious than she knew, Habiba pressed her lips together and squeezed her husband’s leg so tightly that Abeid winced and turned around. Habiba didn’t want any of her girls to be a fourth, or third, or second. She knew how much a first wife can be wounded: Habiba hadn’t made her peace with Abeid’s second wife at all. Abeid tore his leg out of her hand. “Mtume! In the prophet’s name, habibti, are you crazy?”

  Mouth slightly ajar, surprised, Habiba examined the dark grooves her nails had made along her husband’s naked calf. Abeid rose up on his elbow and turned to face his wife. He softened. “How have I offended you?” Abeid’s eyes had gone all round. “If she wants him,” his wife said, biting fiercely at her lip. “If Zulfa wants him. If he asks. We’ll talk about it then.” She reached over for the vial of oil and pressed a heavy hand on Abeid’s tired back. “Now turn around, old man, and let me rub your sorry legs.”

  Zulfa’s feelings had a pattern. When Masoud went away on short trips to the mainland or farther north to Kenya to buy cloths and radios for his shops, Zulfa felt relieved. At first, she would revel in his absence. She would talk nicely with her sister Warda, sometimes playing with her girls. Sitting with Habiba, she ground coconuts for rice. She took a modest pleasure in the uneventfulness of things. If a mood came to her in the afternoons, she might listen to the news from London or from Washington, D.C., in Babu’s ancient house. She would walk the little paths and alleyways of Usilie town, and with a thrilled and painful sadness think how she would miss it all when she was finally abroad. She’d wonder why she spent so much of her time talking with Masoud when all he wanted was a wife. She would say aloud to Warda, “Thank goodness he’s left town so finally I can breathe! He sticks like a leech!” Warda would give her little sister a long and knowing look, keeping, for the moment, her own experienced counsel.