Speechless

by Anne Simpson

  I have sent for A’isha, said Hassan.

  You know that when I represented Halima — I mean, I was part of the team representing Halima — I could do nothing for her. Surely she could have been spared the pain.

  But you also represented Lami Abdullah and Fayola Usman and you were successful.

  Yes, true, but in this case we have not had luck on our side up to now, as you know. I expect the judge for the appeal will be another country bumpkin. Ah, you must forgive me. I am quick to anger.

  Hassan smiled. There is nothing better than a lawyer who must contain her temper.

  And what has made this a case for you to take up? she asked. You have worked tirelessly for A’isha.

  When an injustice has been committed — Ah, she has come. He stood to acknowledge A’isha, who got out of the car and shut the door. She had not brought Safiya with her.

  Alhaji, said A’isha.

  A’isha, my condolences on your mother’s passing, he said.

  She lowered her eyes.

  There is much to be discussed before the appeal, he continued. Farih has come to talk to you. I will leave the two of you, but I will return.

  Farih rearranged the material over her shoulder, the same lustrous blue as her head wrap. Come and sit down, A’isha. You are well?

  Yes, I am well.

  A’isha, we have to go back to the beginning. I must ask you some questions, said Farih.

  A’isha sat down on the edge of a chair.

  These are difficult questions, warned Farih.

  I will try.

  In the time after your husband died, did any man want you to have sexual relations with him?

  A’isha didn’t answer.

  A’isha, please understand that I would not ask you if it were not of the utmost importance.

  No one asked me. I was taken.

  You are saying that a man took you without your permission?

  A’isha bowed her head.

  And you told no one? Farih pressed her hands together.

  I wanted Musa dead, she said fiercely.

  I can imagine you did.

  Afterwards, I could not bear to speak of him. I was thinking of my mother, how she would hear of my shame. Now she is gone, but there is Safiya also, and I must think of her. Shame follows from mother to daughter. And there is Musa himself. I am afraid of what he will do.

  But you must speak the truth.

  I do not want to speak of Musa.

  A’isha, it is your life that we are trying to save. I should tell you that someone has come forward, someone you know.

  Rahel, murmured A’isha.

  Yes, Rahel told us what happened. She would be willing to speak for you, to be a witness, if that were admissible in court. Farih turned the bangles on her wrist as if trying to command her thoughts.

  Rahel must not — A’isha began.

  She has given this a great deal of thought. She is willing to speak. If anything were to happen to you, she said she would hold herself responsible. Of course, we might not be allowed to bring forward a witness for this appeal, but we will see. Anyway, perhaps that is enough for the moment, do you think? It is a great deal for you to think about, I know.

  She beckoned to Hassan, who came outside. Tani stood in the doorway behind him.

  My wife has made sweet tea, he said. There is nothing better. And if we indulge her, we may be given some of her small biscuits.

  Tani brought a tray with a teapot and cups, a plate of biscuits, and a small dish of figs, which she set down on the table between them without looking once at Farih. She left quickly. Hassan thought of what Tani would say after Farih had left, how he would have to soothe her.

  Farih poured herself tea and stared into her teacup as if mesmerized by it. She roused herself, adding a spoonful of sugar and stirring it thoughtfully.

  It is time for me to tend to Safiya at home, said A’isha.

  Yes, of course. He is nearby, the driver. Let me call him. Hassan slid his phone out of a trouser pocket under his riga.

  I am going to work for you, A’isha, said Farih. I think this appeal can be won. We will have to be very well prepared.

  Hassan set down his phone after calling the driver. Indeed, it can be won.

  But I have no money to pay, said A’isha.

  The Spreading Acacia can’t take up every case, but some, yours among them, might be won on appeal if we work hard enough, said Farih. We receive funding. We are receiving more money now than before, because there are reporters who are telling people about you.

  About me?

  Yes. And the more we can communicate your plight, your predicament, the more we can tell the world, the better for you. We could use a lawyer who is well known, for instance, who could discuss this case with the media.

  I do not know very much, A’isha said. What I learned in school was not enough, but I want — Her voice trailed into a whisper.

  What do you want, A’isha? asked Hassan gently.

  She shook her head.

  I FEEL FOR HER, said Farih, who watched as the car reversed, turned, then sped forward out of Hassan’s compound. And yet she is not embittered, as one might expect.

  Hope is not lost, said Hassan. But it is much too hot under this awning — look, even the lizard is seeking shade. He pointed to the reptile that had found its way atop the railing on one side of the patio, an orange-headed creature, a curiously ancient relic of another age, with dark, charcoal-coloured scales covering its body and a tail that appeared to be nothing more than a stump.

  Ehhh! Farih shifted away from the railing.

  He has had many fights. See his tail?

  No, she said.

  Hassan laughed.

  The lizard’s eye was fixed on Hassan and Farih.

  Well, come indoors, Farih, he said. My wife has turned on the air conditioning, and if the power stays on, it will soon feel as though we are in the path of a blizzard. There will not be a single lizard to bother you!

  Farih was tired, he could see. Soon her sister would arrive, and they would drive back to Abuja, but there were still some questions to which he needed answers.

  Once inside, she settled happily on the white leather couch in the living room.

  Would you like anything? A cold drink of lemon squash, perhaps?

  No, she said. Thank you. I have taken tea.

  So, he said, seating himself in the armchair. Of all the cases you know, has the fact of rape ever been used successfully to appeal a conviction?

  In Nigeria, yes, there are a number of such cases, said Farih. But in several of them, the sentence, like Halima and her sentence of lashes, was carried out before anything could be done, even when the woman had been raped. I must tell you, though, in some cases rape has been turned against the woman, used against her. We do not want that for A’isha.

  Mmm, he said. But you think there might be a chance for her?

  Yes, a chance. It would be best if you could devise a way for the international media to keep apprised of this case. I don’t know what you could do, but they are hungry for information.

  Well, that will rouse the hornets from the nest.

  Do you recall that famous case — Rahamma Yusuf? She received the same sentence as A’isha, but it was appealed successfully.

  I recall the name, but not the details.

  It was the same charge of adultery, and, in fact, Rahamma did have a relationship with someone. The man was not charged; you recall that there have to be four morally upright citizens who must actually witness the act of adultery.

  They would not be morally upright citizens in that case.

  I agree, but so it is. Rahamma gave birth to a child out of wedlock. Now do you remember?

  Something about a sleeping embryo?

  Yes, said Farih. You are right. Her lawyer studied every detail of the case in order to appeal. She went back to the hadith, and discovered the Mudabbar of Imam Malik, who said an embryo might be “dormant,” that it might sleep in the womb of a
woman for several years. And you see the relevance, I am sure, because as you might recall, Rahamma had been married three years before, to a man who divorced her.

  So, said Hassan slowly. By this line of reasoning Rahamma might have got pregnant by her husband years before.

  Yes, and the appeal was won on those grounds. The story of Rahamma’s sleeping embryo was not at all credible, of course, but it allowed the court to save face. The appeal succeeded. Unfortunately, that lawyer has gone to work in the United States, so we can’t ask for her help. Farih looked at him penetratingly. You said before that it was because of injustice that you took up A’isha’s cause.

  You do not believe me?

  Yes, I believe you, but I wonder if there is more to it.

  He looked at the soft, white, very impractical carpet. He was always afraid he would spill something on it.

  I knew Nafisa, A’isha’s mother. We were the same age.

  Ah, she said quietly. A tale of romance?

  No. We grew up here, in Paiko. I was sent away to London for university, while she did not have the opportunity. I finished at the LSE and came back here. In the meantime, she was married off to a man who, well, he was not her equal. And then she had A’isha. That first husband died, and Nafisa was urged to marry a second, but he was more useless than the first.

  And history repeated itself. A’isha was married off too.

  Yes, and so, you see, I was incensed by that. But I never expected, no, I never imagined, that A’isha might find herself in worse circumstances.

  And so you feel the guilt of the one who has not experienced such things.

  Hassan was conscious of the hum of the air conditioner, and distantly, Tani’s music.

  There is someone who might be helpful to an appeal, though he is not well versed in shariah law, said Hassan. He knows something of it, though. He is capable and well known. And he could speak to the media.

  Ah, my sister has come. Farih stood up and smoothed invisible wrinkles from her elegantly wrapped skirt.

  Hassan opened the door for her. She went through, dipping her head with its gorgeous head wrap: she was a bird of paradise. He’d have liked her to stay longer, but it was out of the question. Usually he was surrounded by people with one complaint after another, people wanting him to do the impossible, but Farih’s mind challenged him. And he didn’t mind that the scent of her, that almost imperceptible fragrance of sandalwood, would linger when she had gone.

  And maybe you would contact this person who could be helpful to the appeal? she said.

  Yes, I will, Hassan assured her.

  They stood on the terrace under the awning, where the lizard had not budged.

  Your friend is waiting for you, he said slyly, tilting his head in the direction of the lizard.

  A-a! she cried.

  He would fight on your behalf. And he would be a natural, I think, on television. Don’t you agree he strikes a good pose?

  She laughed, then grimaced, and hurried past the lizard to the car, as the creature held its flaming head poised, immobile.

  Hassan stood on the terrace after he’d waved to the departing car, after the whirl of sepia-coloured dust had settled, after the lizard had finally jerked into action, swiftly running along the balustrade and down the steps. It was time to go inside, into the chill of the air conditioning, an artificial coolness he’d never much liked. He was more at home outside, with the lizard. But he was unable to get it out of his head: A’isha’s contorted face, the things she’d wanted to say.

  24

  ____

  FELIX COULD HEAR THEM as they talked. Kidneys. Blood clots.

  He was in a place underground, tunnelling through dirt. He was tangled in the upended roots of a tree, somewhere in the woods, crawling on the mottled ground, mottled with light and shadow. Pine needles, mushrooms the size of giants’ ears. He tried to get up.

  Where was Sophie?

  Felix had gone to see her. He’d gone all the way to where she lived on the other side of the world. He was in the middle of a forest on his way to her.

  But it was here, in the woods, that he lost his balance, toppling down and sliding on his side, crashing into an upended spruce that lay across the path, where he lay like a child against it, hands over his head, one boot on and one boot off. There was the lost boot. He could see it; he could almost reach it. Yes, there it was. He put it on his sockless foot. He found the lost sock and stuffed it in his mud-covered pocket. Mud plastered his left side from his shoulder to his knee.

  What have they done to him? asked Sophie.

  He knew he must look comical, splattered and streaked with what might have been reddish-brown paint, though it was just mud, and, caught in his hair, a stripped, broken branch with a few clinging oak leaves. Sophie was with him now. Was she laughing or crying?

  Why didn’t she just put her arms around him? Sophie, he tried to say. Something was blocking his tongue; something prevented him. He wanted her arms around him.

  Ssssbbb, he said.

  The two of them made their way over a roughly made footbridge, three logs, and came out of the woods, draggled, miserable, Felix ahead of Sophie. He was nauseous, cold. The snow, on the cusp of sleet, had turned to rain, and this sheeting rain, as if it weren’t rain but corrosive acid, promised to dissolve the road and transform it into a series of badly eroded ditches. There was a long, downward sloping hill, then a road, and the gunmetal water of the harbour that lay beyond it. But the rain had already diffused the harbour into a cloudy nothingness that was neither earth nor water, and Sophie’s home, somewhere below, was entirely obscured, turned to mist, and because the world had fallen into itself there was no distance.

  There, he’s quiet, said one of them. Was it Serena?

  He’s sleeping.

  In this strange otherworld, they descended the slope through the torn, wet snow, the remnants of spoiled corn cobs — blackened kernels, toothless patches — and cropped stalks showing through, then the slimy mud as they continued stolidly down and down, bitter rain in their faces, Felix followed by Sophie, slipping and sliding until they came to the barn and the outbuilding for the cattle and the farmhouse with its long driveway, and so made their way across the highway, streaming with water, and along the lane to the house from which they’d come. But no, it was a dream, and when he looked around, she’d vanished.

  He always slept as a baby, said Felix’s mother. He did not give me trouble.

  I didn’t give you trouble, said someone. Clifford. It was Clifford.

  No, you didn’t.

  I did. Serena’s voice.

  You didn’t sleep much. Felix was a sleeper, said his mother.

  Her voice comforted him, his mother’s voice. She scooped him up, though he was too heavy for her. He was too heavy for her, but she cradled him, and he let himself be rocked back and forth and back and forth. Her voice soothed him. He had never given her any trouble. The rain had been hard pinpricks as they’d made their way down the slope, but now the whole sky was alive with colour, with gold and ruby tints. The water of the harbour, which had been flat and unremarkable as the bottom of a tin pot, became a blinking field of lights, and he could see through the birch and spruce to the spangles.

  You were all alone, said someone.

  Felix considered what it was to be alone. He didn’t mind being alone. But he missed Sophie.

  We’ll pray, said his mother. Dear Lord God —

  The sound of someone crying.

  He was lifted into air, his mother lifted him with her words. Over the tips of the spruce he went, the black-tipped or the green-tipped brushes of the spruce, over the old hemlocks, above a logging road curving up a hillside, curving up through the mess of snow on the ground, and above it, mist, parting and re-forming and parting, as if someone were drawing away a lace shawl. He couldn’t see the harbour, couldn’t see the spangles. Was God here? His mother was calling on God, but there was only mist, and below the mist was the unseen water. The mist shredd
ed and now he could see what lay below.

  Take care of Felix —

  He went farther, over the lip of a river, over the mess of dagger-sharp pieces of wood, upended roots of trees, dragged there by beavers, over an ink-coloured pond in which the branch of a birch lay upturned. Snow at its edges. Up the hill he went, and down to the boggy place, where the tasselled cattails made a soft, papery sound in the wind, a sound that could hardly be heard, erased by the brazen talk of crows.

  Please, Lord, help him.

  The crows were tilting the sky, turning it over.

  But Sophie wasn’t there; Sophie was nowhere to be found. She was lost. He had to find her. He could hear water pouring over stones somewhere, perhaps a waterfall, and he rose up near the clouds. The sky was grey in places, silver in others. He could keep going, but he wanted to find Sophie. Was she beyond the ridge, or the next, or the next? Was she down by the ocean, the ocean he could see from this vantage point, with its edge of white surf beating the strip of beach? Now he could see it all. He could see where the water of the harbour poured out into the ocean. He could see where he’d come from.

  Amen.

  He could hear Sophie, but he couldn’t see her.

  She said, I’m here. He felt her touch.

  He wanted to tell her how far he’d come, but he couldn’t. He wanted to tell her that he’d been looking for her. There was so much he wanted to tell her.

  HE FOUGHT THEM. The thing in his mouth — he tried to yank it out. He was angry. What had they done without his permission?

  Felix, cried Sophie. Don’t.

  He doesn’t want it!

  Don’t let him —

  Yaaaa. We can do this without you, Sophie.

  Serena, stop.

  It had been soft in the clouds. Everything had been gentle, without edges. Here there were lights and noise and someone yelling. Who was yelling? Someone grabbed his hand, but he was stronger. Whoever it was got the better of him.