Cry of Reason
May 1993
Safia could not stop crying when her mother told her that she must stop going to school and concentrate on learning the Qur’an and getting married. She was only thirteen years old, doing exceptionally well in standard 8 – top of her class. By that time, her heart had already been set on pursuing her dream – to be the first girl in the village to study at the university.
She worked tirelessly, reading her books till the candle died out. Her Uncle Suleiman had introduced her to African literature. He gave her his novels: Things Fall Apart, The River Between, Anowa by Ama Ata Aidoo and a few Pacesetters. She devoured these novels with relish, and this helped her to excel in English. Without good command of the English language, learners find it difficult to excel in their studies. Safia loved English and Mathematics more than the other subjects even though she did well in all of them.
She did not share her dream even with her best friend, Aziza or dare to let a speck of it slither into her mother’s ear, who would kill her dream ferociously like a cockroach under her foot. Her mother was very prejudicial against Muslim women who loved books.
“You are quickly developing into a woman,” said her mother one day, just as she returned home from school, “so tempting to men like one ripe mango amidst unripe mangoes in a mango tree – so tempting to make one pick up a stick and poke it down.”
“I am still a little girl, Maa!”
“You are growing into a woman! It is high time you started covering yourself up when you go out. Look at your budding breasts and those hips, men have already started turning their heads at you. I must prepare you now perfectly for your husband, Yusuf!” said her mother sternly.
Safia was growing into a lovely girl, slightly tall, narrow waist, and wide hips; her packet of precocious breasts, so buttery and at liberty from constrained by a bra, had started to attract love from scurrilous, conniving men – so sick in their heads that needed repeated hefty blows with a sledgehammer to rewire some faulty circuits.
Safia rushed to her bedroom and started crying. Her mother struggled to heave up her corpulent body from the veranda, and when she had finally managed to stand up straight, she tottered to her daughter’s room and banged loudly on the door with her enormous hands. The door frames groaned under the impact of her maniacal onslaught.
“Open the door!”
“No more school for you! You have learned enough! You can read and write! And that is enough for an African woman. Look at me! I did not finish school but managed to raise three children – you and your sister Fatimah and your brother Rahman. Even if I die today, I will die a happy woman – I have fulfilled my obligation as an African woman that is required by the laws of nature. I would see my grandchildren and they would see me; my blood and image would live forever! Girls must marry when they are still young, so that they can live to see their children get married and if fortunate enough, to see their grandchildren. Life is too short my daughter!”
“How about my free will?”
“Safia don’t make me cross! What free will are you talking about, huh?”
“Our English teacher, Mr. Lukongolo acknowledges the free will of his children,” said Safia gaily from within.
“He is a shaitaan! How can good parents allow their daughter to have a boyfriend and a son to have a girlfriend? Isn’t that condoning fornication?” said her mother bitterly.
“Open the door bloody fool!” she bellowed, banging on the door banging repeatedly with her palms like someone beating a drum.
Suddenly, a car’s tyres could be heard screeching to halt in front of the house, accompanied by the long strident beeping of a horn. Mama Aisha, Safia’s mother traipsed out to see who was making such a deafening noise in her yard. In a flash, Safia whooshed out of her room like air from a punctured tube, squeezed past her mother in the corridor, down the veranda and to the door of the car – a white Nissan Sentra stood shining in the late afternoon sun.
“Uncle Suleiman! Uncle Suleiman!” sang Safia excitedly, twisting around to beckon to her mother, to join in the flurry of excitement. Her mother’s face contorted in disapproval, abruptly stopping Safia’s antiphonal chants in praise of her of her uncle.
Mama Aisha stood stolidly rooted to the spot on the veranda, hands akimbo like a giant baobab tree unfazed by the squall in progress. She did not like Suleiman at all. She crowned him a bad Muslim, who drank beer and loved women. Every time Suleiman visited them, she would just greet him and then walk away and hide herself in her room. Although Suleiman helped her family a lot financially, Mama Aisha remained untouched and unmoved by largesse that came from a hypocrite. She said one can feed a village, and if you are a Muslim, who do not perform salah and pay zakat, Allah would still throw you in Jahannam.
Suddenly the driver’s door clicked open, and the tall, well-built Suleiman popped out of the car, looking dazed, a dying spliff pinned between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, He dropped the spliff and ground it into the dust underfoot. With a flashy moustache and his Afro combed in a pushback style, Suleiman donned a short sleeved printed viscose shirt, baggy stone-washed jeans, and a pair of white canvas shoes, With Def Leppard blaring from his car’s sound system, he looked searchingly around like a stranger uncertain of the place he was in. And then the passenger’s door clicked open. A woman with sleek black hair down to her shoulders, lips painted blue, dark sunglasses perched on her head, dressed in a white T- shirt that said: Give Me Love First and Money Later, and a short denim skirt that barely reached over her knees, walked around the car, and took Suleiman’s hand. They walked hand-in-hand to the veranda and sat down.
“Safia, get all the things in the boot,” ordered Suleiman smugly. Like a marathon runner at the shot of the gun, Safia raced to open the boot and started fishing out the food items one by one and chanting its name as it plopped down onto the ground: 25kg maize meal! 2kg brown sugar! Two litres cooking oil! Three loaves of brown bread! Five cans of tinned fish! 10kg Superfire rice! And a dozen of Lexona soap! Once done with the offloading, she hauled the cargo into the house. Plumped up with feelings of good will and worthiness, the benefactor watched Safia like God watched the Israelites picking up manna in the wilderness.
Mama Aisha’s pride was completely vanquished by the cudgels of generosity barfed up by the infamous Suleiman. His largesse had come at an opportune time, when the household’s food supplies had been vacuumed from the storage room into their tummies and the human waste lay deep down the pit latrine that stood behind the house, belching fetor around the yard. Overcome by beaming smiles and disguised under a veil of borrowed goodwill, Mama Aisha skittered to her husband’s brother side, offering her gratitude.
A few minutes later, Mama Aisha’s husband, Mustapha Hassan glided by on his Hunter bicycle, A brown bag with an Air Malawi sticker was slung across his body, his once white turban turned cream from infrequent washing was pushed further back exposing his front balding, his bushy unkempt beard was now mixed with streaks of grey hair, his short trousers exposed a squamous pattern on his dry ankles. He stopped the bike and jumped off, and recognising his brother, he flashed him his all-yellow-teeth smile. He propped the bicycle against the veranda and proceeded to sit down next to his younger brother. He unhooked the bag from his shoulder and deposited it on the veranda. Suleiman looked at the bag and smiled. It reminded him of his many peregrinations outside the country.
“Do you still have this bag?”
“I like this bag,” said Mustapha, shaking hands with his younger brother.
“Madam, Asalaam alykhum?”
“Walykhum msalaam,” said Malika.
Mama Aisha, who was standing behind the door furtively peeping out to see her husband’s eyes feast on the woman’s exposed flesh.
After a while Mustapha excused himself and headed into the house where he bumped into his wife.
“Is that woman your brother’s new girlfriend?”
“I saw you looking at her lustfully.”
“No way.”
“Safia! Safia!” called out Mama Aisha.
“Maa!”
“Take this chitenje and tell your guest to cover her legs please. We don’t wear short skirts in this village!”
“This woman does not live in this village, soon she will return to the city,” said Mustapha.
“I can see you like her legs!”
“What is wrong with my brother’s partner?”
“So, you can’t see!”
“See what?”
“Shame on you!”
“She is a Muslim,” declared Mustapha.
“No way!”
“We must not judge people, remember!”
“Isn’t it so dignifying to see a woman demurely dressed in a headscarf and hijab? When a woman is properly dressed – covered her legs, arms, and head – men’s desire and lust for the woman automatically switch off. The only sensual vice that draws a man to a woman is her modesty with its innocence and virtuous affection. Muslim women should not feel tempted to pander to the whims and commands of modern sexuality,” harangued Mama Aisha in her vernacular Yao language.
“Suleiman’s girlfriend could be an incredibly good woman, better than you, who may appear immune from being molested by lecherous eyes of men, but when your heart is tempted and beaten by forces of vice – your hijab cannot save you. How a person dresses is not always a true projection of that person’s character,” countered Mustapha equally in Yao.
“No way! An egg that smells rotten is rotten even if you break it to see,” piped up Mama Aisha.
“Whatever!”
“Tell your brother to come home and get a good Muslim woman here,” she said, pouting like a blowfish fully puffed up.
“They say you must look for a good woman or man where you least expect to find one,” said Mustapha in a mocking, purring tones.
“Nonsense! Look at your brother’s choice!”
“Leave my brother alone: he is the pride of our family. He is the only educated one and doing well in our family – a respected mechanic. Our family depend on him for its livelihood. My other two blood brothers are slaving away in South Africa picking up dogshit in white men’s yards. And my only sister, Sakina, has been made into a children-making factory – eight children at the tender age of twenty- eight! Her husband is a fifty-year-old man – a tailor, whose only obsessions in life are his sewing machine and my sister; and if he is not peddling his sewing machine, then he is peddling away at my sister!” sniped Mustapha.
“Of course, Suleiman helps this family a lot, but that does not make him a good man in the eyes of Allah if he does not change his wicked ways,” cut in Mama Aisha with a growl.
***
Next day, around 5:30 in the morning, the giant sun burst forth, lighting everything in its golden glow. Mama Aisha found Safia missing from her room. Like a headless chicken, she zoomed out and scuttled to her husband, who was in the living room busy chanting out Surah Yasin: Wa ma liya la a budul-ladhi fatarani wa ilayhi turja un…
“Safia is not in her room,” shrieked Mama Aisha bitterly.
“Maybe she is in the toilet,” said Mustapha, desperately trying to return to his prayers.
“I suspect she might have left with Suleiman.”
“I did not see her in the car.”
“Her bag and shoes are missing! Give me money for transport! I must stop the nonsense! Suleiman cannot do this to me!”
“I don’t have money!”
“I know where you hide your bloody money,” said Mama Aisha, racing to the master bedroom. Mustapha did not shift in his seat; he continued with his reciting, assured that his wife would not find the money.
Suddenly, Mama Aisha appeared before her husband, her handbag slung over her left shoulder. There was certainty in her pose that implied she got the money.
“I’m off to Lilongwe!”
“And money?”
As if on cue, Mustapha jumped out of his chair and careened off to the master bedroom where he discovered the dreadful truth – Mama Aisha had found an envelope of the money he hid underneath the leg of the bed. Shell-shocked, Mustapha flew out of the room and stomped off in pursuit of his wife. At the bus depot, an old, grey-haired man prodded him with his cane, pointing out his wife in the bus who was waving at him. Then the bus started moving, nibbling away at the five hours it took to reach Lilongwe city.
Nixon Mateulah was born in Lilongwe in Malawi and moved to South Africa in 1996. Running Home is a fictional memoir based on his experiences when arriving from Malawi in South Africa during the early years of the South African democracy. He has published a number of short stories and poems in various online and print publications.
