Moses Isegawa: Abyssinian Chronicles

“Was that why you decided to try the wonders of Islam by finding a Muslim man for yourself? Think about it: you left your husband allegedly because of the sinister activities of his concubine, and now you are entering a relationship in which four wives are legal. Why are you doing this?”

“Hajj Ali is not going to marry any other wives. I am enough for him.”

“Foolish woman talk. I believe that Ssali won’t marry again because he is highly educated. But what will stop Hajj Ali from doing what he wants? Are you a virgin, or do you still think you are?”

“If he was after virgins, sir, he would not have come knocking on my door. He has had enough of virgins who have to be taught everything. And save your worries for your other children, I know what I am getting into.”

“So it is a question of a Muslim man getting tired of Muslim women and trying Christian stock for a change!”

“Sir, I am in love. I am old enough to know that. I also know that something special is going to happen. I can feel it.”

Something special eventually did happen: she became pregnant after a drought of about eight years. Grandpa sanctioned the marriage, but without the knowledge that Nakatu was going to convert. By the time he got that particular detail, he had given up.

“They are not going to circumcise you, are they?” he asked in an attempt at humor.

“Whoever heard of women getting circumcised?” Nakatu, victorious, asked.

“Right. You can do what you want. If your husband wanted you, he would have been here already.”

That was how Aunt Rose Mary Nakatu became Aunt Hadija Hamza Nakatu. The wedding took place six months after her departure from her husband’s house, but most relatives boycotted it. For the first time in many years, Serenity, who had ignored all the dramas in the family, appeared.

This was vintage Serenity, “Cocoon Serenity,” as Nakatu called him now and then. Withdrawal was his best form of attack, and after all the storms which had preceded his marriage to Sister Peter “Padlock” Nakaza Nakaze Nakazi Nakazo Nakazu, he had decided to lie low. He had visited Tiida once, when the ulcer and dog-head upheavals were about to end. He was a hands-off type of brother-in-law who never intervened in marital dramas except when especially requested by both parties. He was the first person in the family to address his sister Nakatu as “Hadija Hamza.”

Serenity had had his share of a bachelor’s troubles, like getting rid of Kasiko, the woman he had cohabited with at the end of the fifties, fathered a daughter with and then decided to send away in order to marry somebody else. Kasiko, a real peasant girl despite her long limbs and good looks, was the husband-has-said kind of woman, ever waiting for commands and ready-made directives to follow, all out to please and to obey. This, for a man who had spent his life maneuvering and outwitting the treacherous rapids and precarious depths of his father’s female entourage and his army of female relatives, was frightening. He found himself being studied, analyzed, manipulated and negotiated like a river choked with papyrus reeds, or a steep hill with a soft crumbly surface. It made him nervous and angry. He wanted to be the one doing all the negotiating. Worse still, he could not care less for domestic affairs. Those were matters beneath him, but Kasiko wouldn’t learn that. Instead of seeking advice elsewhere, she just kept on dragging him into it, asking whether to buy this or that thing, and cook this or that dish on this or that day. Worst of all, she tried to find out what he thought and what he liked or disliked, things he would rather have kept to himself.

Kasiko was nice, kind, shallow, limited in her ideas — very good in bed, very good in the kitchen and wonderful in the garden — the type of woman many men would have kept as a second wife or a concubine. But polygamy was not on Serenity’s mind, at least not at the time. He was looking for a total package: a self-motivated, self-contained, self-regulating woman, good in bed, good in the kitchen, good around the house. A woman who would give him time to prepare his lessons and plan for the future without being distracted by things he considered beneath his dignity.

When Serenity finally informed Grandpa that the time had come for him to part company with Kasiko, he got the green light, with the tacit knowledge that Grandpa would help him find a suitable girl. Arranged marriages were slowly dying out but were not ended yet. To Grandpa, this was an opportunity to show paternal concern for his son. It was time to bring him closer to his heart, and give him a few useful tips on how to be a man and a husband. This was the time to fill a hole or two left gaping, because back when he was chief, he did not have much time to talk to Serenity. So, by suggesting that his son marry the daughter of one of his former colleagues, Grandpa was offering Serenity a hand in friendship and male comradeship. The time had come to introduce him to the clan as a potential clan leader, or at least as one of the leaders. Nowadays clans needed educated leaders. Serenity, with his schoolmaster background, stood a good chance against the traders and the like who often headed clans. If the elders and prominent members of the clan liked him, Serenity might gradually assume the administration of clan land; it would give Grandpa great satisfaction if that privilege remained in his family.

“It is a fine idea that you have finally made up your mind to wed officially. It is a sign of maturity and commitment. A former colleague of mine has a very well-bred, educated, attractive, nubile daughter who is very well suited to your temperament. I know that she will cost us heaven and hell in bride-price, but we are in this together, son. I will give whatever is demanded. What do you say?”

“Ah …”

“You see, son, some people put great emphasis on religious denomination, but we are not like that, are we? Not after what has happened in this family. The girl has a Protestant background, but her mother was formerly a Catholic. Maybe she can convert, though Protestants do not often cross over to Catholicism, but that’s beside the point. One needs to marry from a good house, and she comes from a fantastic family. We can always work out the differences.”

Overcome by his father’s avalanche of saliva and words, Serenity could hardly feel his feet. He seemed to be sinking in mud. His father’s green-roofed brick house seemed to be moving, disintegrating, turning to liquid mud, sweeping forward to swallow them.

Serenity wanted the house to disintegrate; he had never liked it. It had given shelter to too many people he had not liked or understood, people who had neither liked nor understood him. It echoed with the shouts, the sighs, the screams, the whispers of all those women, some with children, some without, who swarmed the compound when favor and money were still plentiful. He had seen them do a lot of peculiar things. He had seen mysterious dusts sprinkled in cooking pans, dry leaves set on live coals and sprinkled with magic incantations; he had also heard plots and counterplots whispered in the dark. The walls of that house crawled with the schemes and counterschemes, the struggles and counterstruggles, between male and female relatives and strangers. Those walls reverberated with the fights, some ugly, some comical, between hangers-on and friends, greedy relatives and competitive in-laws. The green roof was laden with the curses of strangers who never got justice or got it too late because the big county chief had people round his house who, intentionally or unintentionally, stopped some people from gaining audience with him.

At the time of Grandpa’s fall, when the spirit of the fifties was surging to its climax, the place was no better than a temple inhabited by thieves, each trading, each competing, each scheming for this or that gain. At the time of his fall, the place had gone mad, careening out of control and disorienting everyone in it, despite the fact that some people believed they were in charge. At the time of his fall, Grandpa was just like any other lodger, fighting for his sleeping place, antagonizing as few fellow lodgers as possible, working out shaky alliances in the hope that things would improve in the end.