Love over Religion

The Bride Price 3

He left, satisfied with her submission, unaware of its true meaning. Halima sat in the darkness of her girlhood room and made her final preparations. She burned her notebook of poems, the evidence of her hidden self. She memorized the telephone number of Sam's cousin in Enugu, the emergency contact she hoped never to use. She packed the small vial of herbs that would prevent conception, that would give her time to establish control before beginning the deception of children.

In the morning, they came for her. The women with their songs, the men with their drums, the procession that would carry her from one life to another. She walked through it as she had learned to walk through everything, with the appearance of participation and the reality of separation, present in body but already distant in spirit.

The ceremony was brief, efficient, conducted in the mosque with the speed of a transaction being concluded. Alhaji Lami spoke the words, accepted the contract, placed his mark on documents that transferred ownership. He did not look at her face. He had examined her once, found her acceptable, and required no further verification of his purchase.

The wedding feast lasted hours. Halima sat among the women, accepting their congratulations, their envy, their subtle assessments of her youth and her prospects. They spoke of her good fortune, her security, her escape from the ghetto into wealth. They did not speak of the first wife in Zaria, the children who had failed to appear, the rumors of Alhaji Lami's temper and his pride.

When night came, she was delivered to his house, to the room that smelled of his first wife's perfume, to the bed where she would perform the duties of a wife. He came to her with the detachment of a man fulfilling obligation, and she received him with the discipline of a woman who had decided that her body was not her self.

Afterward, he slept. Halima lay awake and thought of Sam. She thought of the factory, the dust, the final kiss. She thought of the vow she had made and the vow she had broken, because this, this submission, was betrayal even if planned, even if accepted, even if survival demanded it.

She did not weep. Weeping was for women who had hope of comfort. She had only herself, and the distant promise of a future she could not yet imagine.

In the darkness, she whispered to herself in English, in the language of her hidden love, in words that no one else in this house could understand. "I am still here," she said. "I am still myself. I am still free."

The words were not true, not yet, not in any way the world would recognize. But they were necessary. They were the foundation on which she would build her survival, her deception, her hidden life.

The bride price had been paid. The transaction was complete. The marriage had begun.

But the vow continued, beneath and beyond and in defiance of everything that had been made official, everything that had been sanctioned, everything that the world believed it knew about Halima's fate.

She closed her eyes and dreamed of amber, of mathematics, of a love that could be compressed into smaller and smaller spaces without being destroyed.

The performance was beginning.