‘Are you going to stay at Zainab’s?’
‘Uh-uh, no.’ She shook her head, surprised at how calm she felt. As if she was part of a scene she’d rehearsed so well that the certainty allowed for no wild feelings.
‘Do you want me to leave?’
She smiled at that. ‘We’ve lived separate lives in the same house for a long time. It doesn’t matter.’
‘You’re absolutely sure?’
The wary relief in his voice made her look at him. He sounded like a captive who did not dare believe that he just might be freed. She’d expected him to ask her to stay. To beg when he saw that final hardening of her resolve, so she’d know the years with him had been worth it. She wanted to weep – but not here, not now. He was watching her closely. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. Nodded. Tried to hold the tears inside, to contain the wave of regret. She kept nodding. Her mouth scrunching up. The breath catching inside her. She breathed it out, letting the moisture pushing against her eyelids fall.
He whispered her name. ‘Qabila, Qabila, Qabila.’ His voice catching. He was crying.
For the second time in the last few days, they cried together. Separated by cold pizza. This time, neither reached out to hold the other. Rashid put his head on the wrought-iron table and sobbed. She was shocked now. He hadn’t cried like this – like a wounded animal – when their babies died. His grief raw and dense and old, so very old, an ancient song that was deep and true. It pulled the weight of her own sorrow forth; threw her entire body into the breaking of the bond that had held them captive.
They acknowledged, through their wild grief that night, how heavy the mantle of their marriage had been. And yet they grieved that the marriage they’d spent so much time on, and suffered for, could so easily be undone. They cried for the unnecessary sacrifice. The honesty of their youthful desires. The wrong turns and the moments of grace. Sitting apart, they cried together. When they were spent, their throats hoarse, their faces burning and scratchy from sorrow’s salty fountains, they stared at each other, hollowed out like survivors of an apocalypse. It was an end.
The next morning she woke, her head pounding, eyes raw, limbs like rubber. She lay there listening to the wind howl and sweep the gardenia’s branches against the window. Her mind skittered over the night before. She didn’t want to go to work. Didn’t want to be home. She rolled over onto her side, hand rubbing the empty side of the bed, and smiled bleakly. How long would she continue the ritual of looking for someone who wasn’t there?
She listened carefully for Rashid. Hoped he’d left, so she wouldn’t have to see him. There was a confused bundle of feeling there that she didn’t want to probe. It was very quiet. As if he was hiding in his room again.
Finally driven out by her bodily needs, Qabila found his note in the kitchen. I won’t be home. I’m going to stay with my parents for a few nights. She looked at the note, the words making no sense. The coffee pot was gurgling, the coffee perfuming the air. Why would he not want to stay here? Liar, he was probably going to stay with Thandi. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to deal with him. She went back to her room, picked up the list with the poem and read the words. Yes, she was freeing herself from the spell.
Chapter 6
Rashid didn’t return to the house. His suitcases were gone. He must have packed when she was out. A few weeks later a note appeared on the fridge with an address in Walmer Estate. He’d scrawled: I’ll be staying here if you need me. Take care of yourself.
A part of her wanted to be devastated, and so she cried. She wasn’t sure afterwards whether she felt relief or pain.
And so it went for weeks. Qabila moved between the crying and her lists. She broke apart and came back together. She moved through the world of the university with a smile and with that walk that broadcast competence – the one she’d practised for so long. She raised her eyebrows in the right places and endured her colleagues’ mundane mutterings as if they were new-minted currency. She smiled in the right places, turned up in the right rooms, prepared the right words and kept her lists ticking over. As long as she mouthed the right things, none were the wiser that she spent her evenings crying.
She flew to her conference and talked about power with conviction, while back home she’d given over the dissolution of her life to lawyers. She shopped for chocolates in Zurich. Tick-ticking the recipients off the list. Hung out with her conference buddy, Nyameka. Told her she was fine, and did not let her see how much she hurt. Convincingly marvelled at the weather and crooned at the lake.
When she got home from Zurich, her friends and family rallied around her. They all seemed to know that she’d deserved better. He friend Erna couldn’t quite hide her relief that Qabila’s perfect life had cracked. Even so, a gentleness grew between them in those weeks of admitting their imperfections. Qabila had heard the hard-nosed sociologist’s stories before, but had never really felt them. She no longer had the mask of a perfect marriage with which to corrode intimacy with the struggling single woman.
Erna was a divorcee too. Her husband had been a stalwart member of the new NG Kerk and had kept her and her two children rigidly on the straight-and-narrow path to his version of heaven. Erna hadn’t known that her husband’s business partner was helping him create heaven on earth. She’d come home unexpectedly and found them so lost in each other that they hadn’t heard her arriving. As the ‘failed’ woman who had not kept her husband from ‘abomination’, she was politely shunned by the members of her church. Though they spoke to her, with slow and deliberate care, they never invited her and her children anywhere any more. Husbands were ushered away and women would make arch comments.
Erna attempted to entice Qabila into online dating adventures and offered tips on how to avoid men who made regular church appearances but kept secret dates on the side.
Qabila’s nieces dropped by often. The awkwardness of their youthful love brought an inexplicable joy. They sat with her, even though they clearly wanted to flee their discomfort with deep pain. When fear of the future pressed, she would call the youngest, Saleigha, and ask questions about engineering. And Saleigha, puzzled at first, would tell her aunt what she’d learned that week in one of her courses. About buildings and what kinds of structures are sturdy and which materials one needs. The twenty-two-year-old was excited by freedom. Unlike her two sisters, Saleigha didn’t have big dreams of marriage and was considering internships in other parts of the country.
The oldest, Ariefa, would drop by with the baby and let Qabila play and lose herself with Fahiem. Ariefa reminded Qabila of herself at that age: married too young to an ambitious man who she loved more than she loved herself. Qabila worried about the way she deferred to Riedwaan. At least Ariefa’s baby lived. When she visited, Qabila imagined how different her life might have been if her own baby had not died.
The middle child, Firdous, was getting married in a few months. Every time she came by, Qabila wanted to shoo her away. She didn’t want her bad luck to tarnish Firdous’s shining hope. And still Firdous brought it into her house. Love and hope wrapped in hesitant compassion. After the wedding, she and her fiancé were moving to Saudi Arabia to teach English. They had gotten tired of ignored job applications and jobs that offered menial pay, despite their educations. Qabila marvelled at how they imagined their life together as a team in a new and unknown world. She wanted to protect them from disappointments. And yet, Firdous seemed wiser than Qabila had been at that age.
Zainab came to visit with homilies about God and lots of fragrant Cape Malay food and memories of a time before Rashid. Qabila and her sister would imagine what their mother would have said and done, and they grieved together. For their mother, for Qabila’s marriage, for her sons. And sometimes even for their father. Their voices softened as they recalled the beautiful and the sad and terrifying. At other times, they would recall funny stories and shriek with laughter. Her sister would break off to pray in Habib’s room – just like their mother used to do. The first time had startled Qabila, but there was a rightness to it she became grateful for. It was a