Love over Religion

Vows in chains

The house in Kaduna was larger than anything Halima had known, yet it felt smaller than her father's two rooms. Wealth had expanded the walls but compressed the possibilities, creating a prison with better furnishings.

She learned its geography in the first week. The main house with its six bedrooms, its study where Alhaji Lami conducted business, its parlor where he received guests. The servants' quarters behind, where the cook and the driver and the gateman lived with their families, watching her with the knowing eyes of employees who understood that their security depended on her surveillance. The garden where she was permitted to walk, supervised, between the hours of four and six, when the sun was less murderous.

She learned its rules. The prayer times observed with mechanical precision. The meals served at exact hours, whether she was hungry or not. The weekly visits to the first wife in Zaria, where she was displayed like a trophy, examined for signs of pregnancy, found wanting. The telephone calls permitted only in the presence of others, the letters read before delivery, the movements tracked by the driver who was also the spy.

Alhaji Lami visited her on Tuesdays. That first week, she prepared with the herbs that would prevent conception, the knowledge she had purchased from the market woman who asked no questions. She took them in tea, in food, in any vehicle that would carry their bitterness. When he came to her, she performed with the detachment she had practiced, separating her body from her self, observing from some distant mental chamber as he completed his brief, efficient duty.

He did not speak to her afterward. He did not speak to her during. He treated her with the indifference of a man who had acquired what he wanted and now found himself uncertain why he had wanted it. She was young, yes, and pretty enough. But she was also silent, watchful, lacking the gratitude he expected, the submission he demanded.

"Your father said you were obedient," he remarked one Tuesday, dressing with his back to her. "I find you merely quiet. There is a difference."

"I am learning my duties, Alhaji. I hope to please you in time."

He turned to study her, his eyes narrowing. "You do not fear me."

"I respect you, Alhaji. Fear is for those who have something to lose."

The words were dangerous, she knew immediately. They suggested a woman without attachments, without vulnerability, without the hooks that might control her. But Alhaji Lami merely smiled, a thin expression that did not reach his eyes.

"Everyone has something to lose," he said. "The trick is discovering what it is."

He left her then, and she lay in the darkness, counting the days until she might see Sam again, calculating the risks of establishing contact, planning the system of signals that would allow them to find each other in this new landscape of surveillance.

It took three months. Three months of absolute regularity, of being the predictable wife, the boring wife, the wife who caused no trouble and required no attention. She established patterns. Tuesday shopping at the same market, the same stalls, the same vendors who learned her preferences and her silences. Thursday visits to a cousin who lived near the railway depot, innocent family obligations that no one could question. Saturday afternoons in the garden, where she might be observed from the street by anyone who knew where to look.

Sam found her at the market. Not directly, not obviously, but through the system they had developed in their final meeting. A vendor who passed messages. A particular arrangement of onions that signaled safety or danger. A glance held one second longer than strangers would exchange.

He looked different. Thinner, harder, his hands more scarred from labor that was not his uncle's furniture making. But his eyes were the same, and they found her immediately, as if the months of separation had been minutes, as if no time had passed.