(I) Zaitun – The Olive
Over the phone your mother relates a dream when the HIV/AIDS pandemic was rife & took over her village.
She watched her cousin slowly fade to the illness the beauty of her flesh morphing into that of a zombie.
Your mother dreamt that she too was infected & bulged with lesions that excreted pus all over her body.
Her voice trembled with a fear that engrained itself in her soul giving birth to many faces.
Once when unhoarding you decluttered the master bedroom & a litter of rapid HIV tests lay underneath the mattress. [ ]
This fear hid in the whispers of gossip about aunties & uncles who began to hollow & fall suddenly ill.
This was the first sign of the kawuka the bug of HIV/AIDS colloquially termed slim an invasion that deflated the life from your human.
This fear she moulded into a cautionary tale about men if you start with men know that HIV/AIDS exists.
(II) Sarah – The Free Woman
Sarah the free woman chased her dreams & escaped a marriage to a muSwahili soldier who
brought with him the kawuka.
Sarah deserted the veiling in her last days & shamed the modesty of your mother in a skimpy red dress.
Sarah was ailing but so too was your mother, deep in the displacement of womanhood &
ballooned in fabric poking face & hands for the world to see.
Sarah offered you a half-eaten pie which to your dismay your mother took
from you whispering that she is sick.
(III) Permutation
The rebellion, slow & subtle, cancered with all the chastisings of your girlhood.
From men & women – teachers at school & the madrassa – aunties & uncles – self-appointed guardians & guiders.
Eat properly – cloister your legs – lower your voice & your spirit
Who would marry your uncouth?
Who could possibly love
let alone live with it?
Your innocent curiosity met with the rancour of the adults.
Amina – second wife of your cousin – eldest son of your paternal aunt who too died of AIDS – took particular delight in blanketing you with shame –
at family gatherings – at the mosque on Eid – in rooms full of audience –
shame & shame again.
(IV) Al Fātiḥah or The Opening
Perhaps the voice of wisdom was your fathers’
who in his austerity & critique had insulated
you with an impenetrable resistance.
& so you took his apathy as approval when
your enraged hand met the cheek of an older boy
at a gathering celebrating a friend’s sister’s matriculation.
It was Amina’s son who thought he could parrot his mother & insult you.
The resistance once again proved a sheathing against the
snicker of puberty a body bellowing for womanhood could
no longer cower in the pretence of boyhood.
Yet
your uncouth resisted:
it gnawed the honeyed rubber of gum in class & hissed with curses
your spirit had the inkling that you were not here to be controlled.
