Love over Religion

Two years of silence 5

The first child was a boy. She named him in the hospital, while Alhaji Lami arranged for celebrations and sacrifices and public announcements of his virility. She named him Yusuf, the Arabic form of Joseph, which was also, she told herself in the secret language of her heart, close enough to Samuel.

The boy had her eyes, her coloring, her careful stillness. No one remarked on his resemblance to anyone else. He was simply hers, simply Alhaji Lami's, simply the heir that justified her existence.

She saw Sam once more before the birth, at the railway depot, in their pattern of glances. She told him with her eyes, with the subtle hand gesture they had developed, with the radiance that pregnancy brought to her face. He understood. She saw him understand, saw the joy and the grief and the terrible weight of fatherhood compressed into that single moment of recognition.

Then she returned to her life, to her performance, to the two years of silence that had finally broken into something she could survive.

The vow continued. The hidden life expanded to include a child, a living secret, a proof that love could generate life even in darkness. Halima held her son and whispered to him the truth, in English, in the language of his father, in words that no one else in Alhaji Lami's house could understand.

"You are loved," she told him. "You are wanted. You are the promise that will be kept."

The baby gurgled and reached for her face with hands that were small and perfect and entirely his own.