The Other Language(30)

He has a wife.

She must have been the one throwing water on the floor. She is only a girl—a very thin, very young girl like so many I saw along the island road with sloshing buckets balancing on their heads—who looks frightened to see me. She wears a threadbare kanga wrapped around her waist and another one with the same pattern over her shoulders. As she advances, she pulls its edge over her hair, which is braided in thick cornrows, as though she needs extra protection. Andrea speaks quickly to her in Swahili, and she whispers something inaudible. She lowers her eyes to the floor as she stands before me like a schoolgirl in front of the principal.

“This is Farida,” Andrea says. “She hasn’t met many Western women.”

I stretch out my hand and she hesitates before moving hers tentatively toward mine. I rush to grab it. It’s limp, and still wet from the washing.

“Hello, Farida, very nice to meet you,” I say in English.

I realize my voice has taken the hideous inflection I sometimes can’t help myself from having when talking to Africans. I tend to stretch all my vowels, in an unconscious effort to imitate their accent.

“Women don’t shake hands here,” Andrea warns me.

“Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, foreigners don’t always know.”

Farida has beautiful eyes with long, curled eyelashes and her skin looks soft, flawless. She must be eighteen at the most. Her pupils dilate with apprehension, so I let go of her hand.

“She doesn’t speak any English,” he says.

Farida whispers something to him, he nods, releasing her, and she rushes off, back where she’s been hiding.

He shows me where I am to sleep. It’s a small room in the back, behind the kitchen, with a Spartan four-poster bed and a mosquito net. He stands by the door for a moment and I feel his eyes on me for the first time. I look at him and again, for a split second, I feel that flicker of recognition, a tiny leap of the heart, as though we both know what the other one is thinking. Snippets of the past are hovering between us. I am about to say something—I am not sure yet as to what—but I need to say something that will shorten the distance, make us close again. He cuts me off before I open my mouth.

“I’m going to the mosque for prayer, then we’ll have dinner. You must be hungry.”



It’s beginning to get dark outside when he comes back. I hear more water splashing, this time from the plastic bucket he showed me in the bathroom we are meant to share. When he knocks at my door to call me for dinner he has changed into a pair of cargo pants and a faded T-shirt. We sit on the mat under a bright fluorescent light and Farida brings out our dinner. Andrea scoops up rice, fish in coconut sauce, thinly cut greens mixed with sweet potatoes and chapati from warm aluminum pots covered by lids, while Farida retreats again to the back room. He hands me a full plate and begins to eat skillfully with his fingers, using the chapati to gather the food and mop up the sauce. I take a moment to study his technique. No food reaches past his first knuckle, I observe. A trick I’m unable to imitate.

“Would you like a spoon?” he asks.

“That would be great, actually.”

He says something in the direction of the kitchen, and after a moment Farida reappears with a spoon, then departs again.

The food is not bad but it is bland. I am disappointed; I was counting on some delicious surprises coming out of that kitchen. Instead it’s an unhappy sort of food, without zest, like one finds in hospitals or schools. And the buzzing light overhead washes everything in a deathly pallor.

“Isn’t Farida eating with us?” I ask.

“No. She eats later.”

“Why?”

“It’s just the way it is.”

“Women eat later?”

“Yes.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Relax, Stella. It’s okay.”

He throws an amused glance at me.

“And trust me, she much prefers it that way when there are guests.”

“Why? Am I that scary?”

He smiles. “It’s very likely she thinks you are.”

There is tenderness in his voice when he speaks of her. I see now how protective he is of her and that he won’t let me intimidate her more than is necessary. I am the stranger here.

“So,” I say, suddenly eager, as if it’s time to get down to business, “where is your office?”

“Which office?”

“The NGO you work for.”

“This is the office. Right here.”

I look around. There is no trace of a desk, file cabinets, papers. Only an antiquated telephone sitting on the bookshelf.

“We’ve lost a few big donors because of the recession, like everyone else, and we had to get rid of staff. I’m alone right now. In fact, there’s not much activity at the moment.”

He explains how for the past five years he’s been working for this NGO that offers microloans to women. He was hired, he says, because of his expertise with the local culture. He says all this with an ironic tinge. I tell him I’ve heard a lot about microcredit and how very successful it’s proved in developing countries. He says that yes, it is a good template, but it needs to be adapted from place to place. Here on the island, he says, the idea is to give the women two goats each to start with, so they can slowly build a herd and sell the milk. They can also get chickens, for eggs. Theoretically within a few months they should be able to repay the loan and start saving some capital.