So much to tell. His name was Bakary, he was a Tablighi, a friend of Musa’s, and she would not lie and say he was handsome, because in fact he was quite the opposite, she wanted me to understand that right away, pulling out her phone as evidence.
“See? He looks like a bullfrog! Honestly I wish he would not wear the black stuff on his eyes or use henna that way, in the beard . . . and sometimes he even wears the lungi! My grandmothers think he looks like a woman in make-up! But they must be wrong because the Prophet himself wore kohl, it is good for eye infections, and there’s really so much I don’t know that I have to learn. Oh, my grandmothers are weeping day and night, night and day! But Bakary is kind and patient. He says nobody cries for ever—and don’t you think that’s true?”
Hawa’s twin nieces brought in our dinner: rice for Hawa, oven fries for me. I listened in a kind of daze as Hawa told me funny stories about her recent masturat to Mauritania, the furthest she had ever traveled, where she had often fallen asleep in the lecture sessions (“The man who is talking, you can’t see him, because he is not allowed to look at us, so he speaks from behind a curtain, and all us women are sitting on the floor and the lecture is very long, so sometimes we just want to sleep”) and had thought to sew a pocket into the inside of her waistcoat so as to hide her phone and surreptitiously text her Bakary during the duller recitations. But she always concluded these stories with some pious-sounding phrase: “The important thing is the love I bear for my new sisters.” “It is not for me to ask.” “It is in the hands of God.”
“In the end,” she said, as two more young girls brought us our tin mugs of Lipton’s, heavily sweetened, “all that matters is praising God and leaving dunya things behind. I tell you in this compound dunya business is all you ever hear. Who went to market, who has a new watch, who is going ‘back way,’ who has money, who has not, I want this, I want that! But when you are traveling, bringing people the truth of the Prophet, there is no time for any of these dunya things at all.”
I wondered why she was still in the compound if life here now annoyed her so much.
“Well, Bakary is good but he is very poor. As soon as we can we will marry and move, but for now he sleeps in the markaz, close to God, while I am here, close to the chickens and the goats. But we will save a lot of money because my wedding will be very, very small, like the wedding of a mouse, and only Musa and his wife will be there and there will no music or dancing or feasts and I will not even need to get a new dress,” she said with practiced brightness, and I felt so sad suddenly, for if I knew anything at all about Hawa it was how much she loved weddings and wedding dresses and wedding feasts and wedding parties.
“So, you see, a lot of money will be saved there, for sure,” she said, and folded her hands in her lap to formally mark the end of this thought, and I did not contest her. But I could see she wanted to talk, that her pat phrases were like lids dancing on top of bubbling cooking pots, and all I had to do was sit patiently and wait for her to boil over. Without me asking another question she began to speak, first tentatively and then with increasing energy, of her fiancé. What seemed to impress her most about this Bakary was his sensitivity. He was boring and ugly but he was sensitive.
“Boring how?”
“Oh, I should not say ‘boring,’ but I mean, you should see him and Musa together, they listen to these holy tapes all day long, they are very holy tapes, Musa is trying now to learn more Arabic, and I am also learning to appreciate them fully, at the moment they are still very boring for me—but when Bakary listens to them he weeps! He weeps and holds Musa in his arms! Sometimes I go to the market and come back and they are still hugging each other and crying! I never saw a bumster weep! Unless somebody stole his drugs! No, no, Bakary is very sensitive. It is really a heart matter. At first I thought: my mother is a learned woman, she taught me a lot of Arabic, I will be ahead of Bakary in my iman, but that is so wrong! Because it’s not what you read, it’s what you feel. And I have a long way to go before my heart is as full of iman as Bakary’s. I think a sensitive man makes a good husband, don’t you? And our mashala men—I should not call them that, Tablighi is the proper word—but they are so kind to their women! I didn’t know that. My grandmother always said: they are half big, they are crazy, don’t talk to these girly-men, they don’t even have jobs. Oh boy, she’s weeping every day. But she doesn’t understand, she’s so old-fashioned. Bakary is always saying, ‘There is a hadith that goes: “The best man is the one who helps his wife and children and has mercy on them.”’ And that’s how it is. So, if we go on these tours, on masturat, well, to avoid other men seeing us in the market, our men go themselves and do the shopping for us, they buy the vegetables. I laughed when I heard this, I thought: it can’t be true—but it’s true! My grandfather did not even know where the market was! This is what I try to explain to my grandmothers, but they are old-fashioned. They are weeping every day because he is a mashala—I mean, Tablighi. According to me, they are jealous in secret. Oh, I wish I could leave this place right now. When I went to be with my sisters I was so happy! We prayed together. We walked together. After lunch, one of us had to lead the prayer, you know, and one of the sisters said to me: ‘You do it!’ And so I was the Imam for the day, you know? But I wasn’t shy. Many of my sisters are shy, they say, ‘It is not for me to speak,’ but I really found out on this tour that I am not at all a shy person. And everybody listened to me—oh! People even asked me questions afterward. Can you believe it?”
“It doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“My topic was the six fundamentals. This is about how a person should eat? In fact, I am not observing them right now, because you are here, but they are certainly in my mind for the next time.”
This guilty thought led to another: she leaned forward to whisper something to me, her irresistible face set in a half-smile.
“Yesterday I went to the school TV room and we watched Esmeralda. I shouldn’t smile,” she said, and abruptly stopped, “but you especially know how I love Esmeralda, and I’m sure you would agree that nobody can rid themselves of all dunya things all in one go.” She looked down at her shapeless skirt. “Also my clothes will have to change, in the end, not just the skirt, everything from head to toe. But my sisters all agree it is hard at first because you get so hot and people stare, they call you ninja or Osama in the street. But I remembered what you said to me once when you first came here: “Who cares what other people think?” And this is a strong thought that I keep with me, because my reward will be in Heaven, where nobody will call me ninja because certainly those people will be on fire. I still love my Chris Brown, I can’t help it, and even Bakary still loves his Marley songs, I know because I heard him sing one the other day. But we will learn together, we are young. As I told you already, when we were on tour Bakary did all my chores for me, he went to the market for me, even when people laughed at him, he did this. He did my washing. I said to my grandmothers: did my grandfather ever wash even a sock for any of you in forty years?”
“But Hawa, why can’t the men see you in the market?”
She looked bored: I had asked the dullest question once again.
“When men look at women who are not their wife that is the moment Shaytan is waiting to rush in, to fill them with sin. Shaytan is everywhere! But don’t you even know that?”
I couldn’t listen to any more of it and made my excuses. But the only place I could go or knew how to get to in the darkness was the pink house. From some way down the road I could see all the lights were dead, and when I reached the door I found it hanging at an angle from a broken hinge.
“You in there? Can I come in?”