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Culture

WEDDING OF THE YEAR

by Najma Saleh March 28, 2020

Madam Mjuaji scrutinised the card in her hand. Then got out her reading glasses to have a proper look. She frowned.
This was an invitation card? She had seen business cards bigger and better looking than this. What were they thinking? With all the money they had? There was just a little sprinkle of glitter to differentiate it from an old post office voucher. She gasped when she saw the reception venue. Surely, it must be a typo?She hoped they had asked for a refund if the printers had indeed made a mistake. Had they not noticed? How could they have not noticed?Maybe Madam Afiya had more info on this. Madam M turned off her phone’s charger and typed a few words.” Have u seen the invitation card for Bibi’s daughter’s wedding?”

” 😀 I saw it 😀 😀 “

“And….?”
” Tutaona hapo”
” Is there another card for the heena party? Or the nikaah ceremony? “
” Heard it’s just the one day”
“???. And can you believe the venue??”
” I know. I expected the Supreme Golf Club Banquet Hall.”
” Or even the Downtown Galleria.”
” But seriously that card. I mean really. What were they thinking?” “?”
Well, that did not go the way she had expected. She put away her phone. Still, the venue was big enough to at least accomodate tables. Madam Mjuaji found herself cheering up. She had thought for one horrifying moment that they would have to actually ….Madam shuddered…sit on the floor.

When she arrived at the reception hall a little after maghrib, she found only the caretakers and some of Bibi’s aunts putting last minute touches here and there. Madam M had known that she would be the first one there and that was exactly how she liked it. She was a well organised person and liked to be early rather than on time.That way she was sure to miss nothing. She wanted to see who came in wearing what, who had worn a repeat outfit and whose heena was by a student artist and whose was by the geniuses at Bint Wafeek Centre. She also knew whose hair and makeup was done by which stylist and who was trying to get away with a bad flat iron attempt.
She herself had on a beautiful classy thawb and shayla combo, a gift from her niece’s friend from Muscat. Lila, her neighbour, had done a great job with Madam M’s make up. And were her perfectly tied shayla to fall from her head she had a bejewelled hair pin around her thick bun. Her shoes and handbag were high fashion in Dubai’s trendy shops.As she was pulling up her skirts to get over the steps she stopped and her mouth fell open.Mats. They were to be seated on mats. Oh, the indignity! Oh, her beautiful outfit!Would it have killed Bibi to arrange for tables for her guests to sit around? She could see that the only chairs were those backed up against the wall for those hababas whose weak knees and tired legs would not allow them to sit down cross legged.
Reluctantly she went to sit on one of them. If anyone called her Hababa for sitting they would get an earful!
She looked around. She sighed. Such a disappointment.There were so few opportunities to show off in this here little town of theirs. A wedding was the perfect time to let society know how classy you were. Or vice versa. They were rich enough these people, the bride’s family- why in Allah’s name were they choosing to play small?It was not as if it would make a dent in their net worth. Madam M huffed. In her scorecard, this wedding was down there with the others did not even deserve mention- honourable or otherwise.

From her vantage point in the far corner of the hall Hikma sat in her abaya willing the ceremony to be over and done with.Weddings had become such a chore. A circus even. If it weren’t for the fact that the bridegroom’ s family had been neighbours with them before they had moved up in life and went to live in Mombasaly Hills and that she also knew Bibi she would have made her excuses and left. It was all so superficial. Women teetering on their high heels when it was obvious they would rather put on some comfortable flats. So much extravagance; gowns she knew would be worn once and then discarded. She abhorred large weddings even though by their town’s standards this was “cute” and lowkey.She felt weddings were to be an intimate gathering of your closest friends and family, the smaller the group the better. A hall filled with almost a thousand people? Did any one person really know a thousand people? Who was ever certain that each person in that mammoth group actually sincerely meant well for the families. Hasad was real.Hikma shuddered. But to each her own. Just because she preferred it that way did not mean that others felt the same.
There was Swabra- Bibi as they called her- greeting her guests. Hikma smiled at the mother of the bride. She was dressed in a simple classy thawb. Her makeup was subtle and natural looking. No fake eyelashes, hair extensions, and three kilograms of foundation for this mamma.

The guests were done eating and dancing. They were done gossiping and rating each other’s gowns, hairstyles and or weightloss/weight gain. They kept turning their heads towards the entrance of the hall. It was late. Where on earth was the bride? Some of the women had already begun to put on their abayas while impatiently searching the hall for Swabra to thank her and wonder when the bride would show up.
Madam M looked at her classic Rado watch. She shook her head. Could this event get any worse? They’d been served prepacked food. In a hideous cloth bag with a cola bottle inside. She was sure the meat pie had gone bad and the Swiss roll was as hard as a rock. She had gone without lunch for what? For something she could have gotten from the neighbourhood bakery?
It was late and there was no sign of the bride. At this point Madam M had given up. If the bride showed up with some hideous number from Market Street instead of Jeddah she would not be surprised. The whole thing had been tepid, lukewarm; nothing to write home about.She got up, tapped Swabra and : ” where is your daughter…..?”
“…..straight ahead first room to your right. You will find my sister Thureya there with Nabila ,” Swabra leaned close to Hikma’s ear.Hikma smiled. ” Bravo, ” her look said to the mother of the bride. Good for Nabila for breaking out of the mold and refusing to walk down the hall’s aisle. The stage had been decorated yes, but it was not for the bride to sit at; it was merely for ambience.

” Madam M.” Bibi hugged the older lady.”Do we not get to see the bride? ” Swabra smiled. ” Straight ahead——-“” ———she is not coming into the hall?!”
” No, ” smiled Bibi.

Madam M’s mouth fell open and for once was at a loss for words.

Then she smiled back.

This was a whole other level of class. And in spite of herself, Madam M found herself approving of it…..

March 28, 2020 0 comment

Culture English

SWAHILI TAG

by Hassan Kassim March 18, 2020

written by Hassan Kassim

Image by Nina Stock from Pixabay

I’ve often told people that if I one day am to tell my story in a crowd of thousands, hundreds or tens even, I’m bound to leave a whole lot of them disappointed. Despite being African, I haven’t had to trek hours for purposes of my learning, never been to bed hungry, slay wildebeests or anything that dramatic. To sauce it up, I’ve had the most supportive parents and by world standards, a middle-class lifestyle. No rough seas for this sailor and yet here I am, 3.am-bound by the stereotypes, riddled with self-doubt of what I have to become. A debt I’m owed for an unshackled generation.

The days start the same wherever I go; in a pigeonhole. With time, I’ve learnt to skip the exercise of beating myself up. I freshen up, singing that today will be different only to dress into the stereotypes already laid out for me. The fabric is what they see, where I was cut out from, dismissing these new patterns telling a varying narration. I take some condescension to start my day, washing them down with the usual, belittlement and off I am to work, to prove them all wrong.

I’m a hammer because I know what being a nail feels like. I strike with all I got even when nothing seems to stir. For I believe with a turbulent hope circling in me, there are ripples replicated in the system and I’m always one hammer away from revealing its fault lines. Maybe someday, breakthrough.

When you fall victim to a single-story, your story isn’t just yours. It’s for the kid you were and the kids who will be you at some point. The goal for our working hard, is to be reference points. So that one day when they try to put a kid like you in a box, reminding them of what they cannot do because of where they are from, they get to counter proudly with you as the reference “Of course I can, look at so and so, they are just like me. And if they managed to make something out of themselves, boy am I going to follow suit.” That’s the tree we’re watering.

The advantage of wearing the ‘coasterian’ tag is that the expectations from you range from low to almost nothing. You lot hardly amount to anything after all. Travelling upcountry, they call you ‘mcoasty’ mockingly, ‘mswahili’ to mean conniving. They even use ‘uswahili’ to stand for some of the most distasteful attributes humanly possible. The biggest boldest word in that cloud being lazy, coupled by untimely, amongst many.

I was recently talking to a friend about a book I will never recommend. I honestly can’t stand the books written about us at the moment. The author is a white explorer and of his discoveries was that, the two things a ‘swahili’ likes most is ‘safari’ and ‘kulala.’ In that any time you tell a swahili to accompany you somewhere, they’re ever ready. That’s the safari part. The latter being the love of sleep.

I laughed at that as much as the next person but the fact that that’s the birthmark expected to be engraved on all our foreheads just makes me livid. Sometimes I can’t help but tolerate the thought though. If only one person was propagating this story, it would have been an easy thing to dismiss. But when the whole world is pointing the finger, maybe it’s time we re-examine our fathers who got us here.

And if upon discovery, the factual to these “stories” is established, maybe instead of walking on eggshells around what we are, we wore our history like armour, juxtapose it to the present to show progress, flaunting qualities redeemable. Like yes, there’s a lot we have to do but we aren’t procrastinating this time. We’ve already begun.

The stories we tell ourselves are self-fulfilling prophesies. Loops we never can escape unless we tell newer, better stories. About us; by us.

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but I can often be heard saying that a lot needs to be done in just this one lifetime. And it’s upon us as a collective. Which is why I’m proud that a festival like the “swahili literary festival’ that just happened earlier this month.

It pains me that I had to miss it, but it pained even more scrolling through twitter and seeing how not packed the halls were. Here’s to hoping more people find their way there and be part of the renaissance. Reclaim our identity and tell better stories about the swahili coast.

March 18, 2020 1 comment

Culture English

BELOVED KIBOKONI

by Hafswa Khamis February 21, 2020

written by Hafswa Khamis

Photo Courtesy: Nila Shah via Pinterest

Old town. That’s how they call the area I was raised in. I think it was named so because it resisted modernization that occurred in the other parts of the city. Vintage buildings with wooden, carved balconies and brown, rusted roof sheets stand adamantly showing the glory and beauty of the past. The architecture reflecting the merging of various civilizations as the port of Mombasa welcomed foreigners from all over the globe, some of whom were so mesmerized by Mombasa that they never thought of going back home. The dilapidated buildings that stood the test of time remind me of an old grandmother who still insists on doing her house chores by herself despite her advanced age and withering strength. The mighty fort Jesus stands tall and firm silently holding within it the history of generations that passed. The grand, bronze, kettle with the handle-less traditional white coffee cups with red and green decorations at the roundabout outside the fort, announce the love of coffee. The arrays of curio shops disclose the frequent visits by tourists (at least once upon a time). The narrow alleys between houses make conversations inside the houses less private; alley ways that are bound to confound an outsider. All these give my hometown its unique identity.

Personally, I feel it was the best place to grow up in. I remember the swarm of tourists on the streets as my friends and I walked from madrasa to our houses. We kept on covering our faces with our tiny jilbabs whenever the tourists wanted to take our pictures because our innocent, naïve minds were then convinced that if they took our picture, they were going to sell us once they got back to their home countries! Then, my friends and I were annoyed by the tourists and wished they departed because of the constant hiding from the cameras we had to do and how they dressed scantily, our religious young selves ready to give them daawah if given the chance to. But now, tourists have become so scarce that seeing a group of them once in a blue moon makes me happy.

Once I got home from school or madrassa, I’d quickly change my uniform, ask for ‘pesa ya saa kumi’ and off I’d head out to play with my friends. We would play two to three different games then buy viazi karai and eat. We still had enough time to squeeze in two more games before it was time to go back home. If the Maghreb adhan found me outside the house I would get punished and one such punishment was enough to make me an expert at telling the time by just looking at the sky. I wonder whether we had more barakah then, because five shillings would fill our stomachs and one hour or so was so much that we could play to our fill. Talk of magurumati, kode, lengalenga and some few other unofficial games we came up with on the spot. Was it blessings or was it just that to a small child, everything around them seems bigger and grand? I remember once meeting a 16 year old sister of my friend and getting filled with awe at how mature she was. I’m now in my twenties and I still feel immature at times! Then the other day I visited a town I used to frequently visit in my childhood which I hadn’t visited in many years and I was surprised to find that the roads appeared shrunken. Places that I used to find very far as a child, I could now walk to in five minutes. Even though things are disproportionate to a child, I’m deeply convinced that we had more barakah then than we currently have.

As I grew older, the Kibokoni I grew up in started to change. I didn’t notice it then, but moving out of town made it visible to me. Houses that were once lively and full of sounds are now silent; the children have left. Those aunties and uncles whose voices were ubiquitous have gone quiet. You could hear them reminding kids deeply engrossed in gololi that it’s time for swalaah or they’ll be breaking a fight between youngsters in a loving way, “haifai kupigana kwani hamjui nyinyi ni ndugu? Haya mpe mkono mwenzako.” But now you rarely hear these voices. Some of them have passed on but most of them consciously chose to remain silent because children no longer heed advice from the adults. Morals are non-existent and the kids are ever ready with a handful of disrespectful replies that are bound to leave the elders’ jaws wide agape.

Most inner alleyways are in such a bad state due to lack of repair that walking on them without straining your ankle is a feat (Thank God most of the main paths are paved with cabros). Some quiet alleyways have been converted to dumpsites and some have been permanently shut. The black water jerry cans in handcarts have become an eyesore but we can’t do without them since most of the wells have become salty; too salty to differentiate the water from sea water. We have also clogged up the drainage canals with rubbish. You have to pray it doesn’t rain for more than half an hour or else you will get another island within Mombasa Island.

But all these are nothing compared to the alarming rise in insecurity which is secondary to drug abuse. Very young boys have gotten into gangs that terrorize the locals. What’s sad is that the people who rob and harm people are boys from the neighbourhood. People you probably studied with at some point. They have gotten so fearless to the point that they don’t bat an eyelid when they rob someone they know very well. They don’t even revere an imam or an old lady. No one seems safe from their mischief. It’s funny how I travel for a long distance from school back home with little fear. But the moment I arrive in Mombasa early in the morning, my heart starts beating a little faster as I board a tuktuk home. That is if I’m lucky enough to convince the tuktuk driver to take me to Kibokoni without refusing or overcharging me. My heart even beats faster as I walk for one minute from where I get dropped to the house and as I wait for the door to be opened. It’s the longest one minute I ever have to endure. I tell myself how ironical it’ll be if I get harmed at my doorstep while I managed to traverse over 500km without a scratch on my arm. As I greet my family with heavy breaths they think it’s from the stairs but it’s really from all the worrying I’ve been doing. It’s paradoxical how the more ‘mjamaa’ someone looks as I pass by a kichochoro, the more trepidation I have in my heart and I debate whether I should turn back the way I came. It doesn’t help when the person insists, “oya sista pita usiogope.” Man I’ve got trust issues! Perhaps the situation is not as dire as I make it to be but I have a hard time taming my overthinking mind.

I wonder whether all these changes that I’ve noticed really took place in the course of my growing up or whether some things have always been the way they are now only that my young mind didn’t register them as I was busy enjoying the carefree life of a child. I wonder a lot! I wonder why the place was named Kibokoni in the first place. I wonder who named it. I wonder whether the name is starting to have an effect because viboko vyatembea! I even wonder when I’ll stop wondering.

It’s not all gloomy though. I have also noticed a positive change. More youth are waking up and daring to take steps not taken before. Youth are venturing into entrepreneurship and community service. Various youth organisations are popping up every day. Libraries are coming up and tourists have started to resurface. The town looks bright with the new colours unique to old town different from the rest of Mombasa. I see Mombasa as a whole changing and the change is being spearheaded by the youth. Youth who see something wrong in the society and they get up to change it rather than lament about it helplessly. I’m still not sure what my role is in the change but I hope I’ll be part of the positive change.

***

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February 21, 2020 1 comment

Culture English Fiction

RUBUUT

by Najma Saleh November 21, 2019

written by Najma Saleh

6TH SEPTEMBER 1961.

A Town On the East African Coast.

Hayaat could hear great aunt Noor’s voice. She leaned her head towards the door her ears perked up.
Was that Khala Salma laughing? The last of the evening’s sun’s rays struggled through the wooden crevices
of their bedroom window making patterns on the concrete floor.
More voices. More laughter.

Sarah burst into the room with all the energy and enthusiasm of a six year old. “Hababa Rgeye is here!
Hababa Rgeye and Amme Khadija also.”
Hayaat smiled and gathered the little girl into her arms. She stroked the hair that only this morning she had
combed and twisted into thick long plaits.
She could hear the voices. She wondered why they were all coming in one after the other.
The grandmothers from across town. The aunts from beyond the creek across the bridge.
She wondered why Mama had been coming in and looking at her with sad eyes all week.
Why Baba had beamed at her and patted her head. Why he also had sad eyes.

She had stopped asking about the other thing. She had stopped peeking out of the window whenever she heard
Muneera and Rashid every afternoon as they headed towards the city square.
“Someday,” Hayaat vowed to herself.
But the dreams? She could no more silence them than she could forbid herself from breathing.
They were a part of her.

“Aluluuuuu!”
Sarah grinned. “It’s funny when they do that,” she spoke showing the gap in her mouth where some of her teeth
had once been.
Hayaat froze. Ululating women. That could only mean one thing.
Sarah, as if sensing her sister’s distress, hugged her tight.

The door to the bedroom burst open and there was Amme Khadija larger than life.
“My brother’s daughter!” she boomed.
Dutifully, Hayaat got up and kissed the older lady’s hand. “So pretty, like your Mama, mashaAllah!”
She fumbled about in the bag she had come in with. “Give me your right wrist,” she instructed.
Six gold bangles with beautiful filigree and intricate carved stars were slid over Hayaat’s slender fingers to
settle perfectly on her wrist.
Hayaat blinked, passed her sleeve over her eyes, swallowed the lump in her throat. She turned away as her heart
screamed a tight, muffled, helpless, hopeless NO!

By the time the men left the masjid after ishaa prayers, the Jabir’s house had filled with more guests and
ululating women.
Hayaat could smell the heena that had already been prepared with the thick tea leaf water and, at Hababa
Rgeye’s insistence, lemon juice. She didn’t know who had summoned her friends and agemates but here they
were in her room now.
Muneera was there as well. While the other girls giggled, whispered and peeked outside the window she sat
next to her friend and squeezed her hand.
Hayaat supposed she ought to consider herself lucky. At least she had had some clues as to what was coming
her way. The ululations. The gold bangles. The fitting for new clothes.
Others, she knew, had been taken by surprise and shock. Hayaat had no doubt still more would meet with the
same fate. Would Sarah’s destiny be similar? Hayaat felt sure that Sarah would not take it laying down.
She would fight for herself.

Then she heard it. The drumbeat that caused her heart to race until she felt as if she was suffocating, drowning.
The clap of the wooden ‘maragiys’ startled her out of her frantic frightened thoughts.
Amme Khadija was standing over her with that beautiful green striped sarong with the velvet trim used for this
purpose and this purpose only.
Hayaat closed her eyes and let the soft fabric cover her head and fall caressingly to her knees.
She felt Amme Khadija put her arm around her and lead her, like lamb to the slaughter, to the courtyard where
she had seen earlier they had set up a pavilion and spread out mats.

“Ya ahla wa ya sahla,” the women sang in Arabic. Amme lowered her down and placed her head on someone’s
lap. She knew it was Hababa Rgeye’s. She could smell her oud and the scent of jasmines.
She had seen this scenario many times in her young life. She knew the women were showing off their long hair
and their dancing skills in her honour. She also knew why she had been placed at Hababa’s lap and no one
else’s.

Hayaat wanted to shout STOP!. She wanted to ask who her groom was. She wanted to know if, at the very least,
he was young. Raadhiye, her friend and neighbor, had not been so fortunate. Mahfudh was good looking but
ancient at twenty five years old!

The drumbeats, which she usually enjoyed hearing, and the clack-clack of the maragiys which, when she was
Sarah’s age she had enjoyed playing with, were deafening to her at such close quarters.
And then it was all over and she was being led back into her bedroom.
It was the same room she had been living in all her fifteen years but somehow it was different.
She was different now.

She felt a hand squeeze her own but she couldn’t meet Muneera’s eyes. She had let her friend down.
Muneera was strong, mashaAllah. She spoke her mind clearly and loudly. And her father listened.
Hayaat had difficulty speaking up. Voicing her opinion. Saying no. Expressing her needs.
Even though her father was a kind and generous man.

“I want to go to school.”

She had practiced saying this from the time she knew what school meant.
She had enunciated the words silently as she helped Mama cook and carried her baby brother, May Allah rest
his soul, around on her back. She had wanted to say them afterwards, after Mama had stopped crying, after she
had given away little Umar’s clothes, after she had started to smile again.
Hayaat found it strange that at a time like this she was thinking of her brother, his sallow complexion,
his stick like arms and his luminous smile. A charming little fellow destined to bring nothing but joy to his big
sister till the time he had breathed his last as she tucked him in to sleep.
She had not had the heart to bring up school; not wanting to add more grief to her already distraught parents.
But still.

She watched with hungry eyes as Muneera, holding hands with Rashid, left for a few hours of school every day
after their Quran lessons with their father.
She pored eagerly over the books that Muneera snuck in to show her.
“Hayaat, I will come every day to teach you.”

“I want to go to school.”

Words she had never said and wouldn’t ever now.

What she said instead was: “Who is my ‘kilaan’?”
“I asked your Hababa Rgeye,” Muneera said defiantly. “It’s Mbarak.”

Hayaat smiled in spite of herself.

Mbarak the Show-off.

Mbarak ‘I-don’t-have-a –single-serious-bone-in-my-body.’

Mbarak Mr.Moneybags who everyone knew as kind, respectful and ……..well educated.

At least he was not old.

Had he had any say in the matter? Hayaat wondered. Had he articulated his desires?

Perhaps there had been another young maiden he had wished to be betrothed to instead of her?

Or had he stood, head lowered, yielding to his parents’ wishes?

Had he gotten to choose his jalabiya and his uqaal? Had he polished the ceremonial wedding sword himself?

Or had they been thrust at him much like the way her wedding ensemble had been handed to her?

In that moment of helplessness; of their complete and utter deference to their parents’ design for their lives,
Hayaat felt a kinship with the young man who, she suspected, in spite of his outer happy go lucky demeanor
was just as bewildered as she was.

September 12, 2001.

Hayaat knocked and then walked in.
She took in the bright coloured walls, the wide French windows which framed the view of the Indian Ocean
below, the desk with the knickknacks.
Hayaat smiled when she saw the poster of the Bollywood star still hidden in plain sight.
It was old and tattered but still part of the family.
The bedroom closet was open and clothes, shoes, bags, trinkets were strewn all around on the bed, over the
dressing table chair, in the open suitcase on the floor.
“Mum. I don’t know what to take with me and what to leave behind”.
Hayaat sat down on the floor next to the young lady. “Khala Sarah is coming. She will help you figure it out.”

The hall was filled to capacity. You could hear the maragiys from the street. Some of the street urchins, across the
road from the hall, delighted with the exotic sound had begun dancing to the beat of the drums.

Hayaat stood at the entrance, a soft green striped sarong with velvet trim in her hands.
She could see the car from where she was.

Mbarak got out and opened the back passenger door. A petite young woman emerged, fully cloaked in an abaya,
her face covered. Mbarak hugged and placed a kiss on the top of her head.
He was reluctant to let go; wanting time to stand still; wanting his little girl to remain his little girl; afraid for her
and what the future held.
Overcome with emotion, he stepped back and let the women get on with it.
For a long while he sat in the car, his forehead on the steering wheel until he finally backed up the driveway
and left.

Hayat looked into the young woman’s eyes. She could see nervousness, excitement and a sense of wonderment.
She pulled away the niqaab. Her face was glowing, a shy nervous smile on her lips.

Hayat held tight her youngest child and only daughter.
“Ready, my precious?”
Dr. Muneera Mbarak Al-Ahly, PhD in Social Sciences, nodded.

Hayaat slipped the green cloth over her head and led her to the circle of women singing “ya ahlan wa ya sahla.”
Hayaat placed her daughter’s head on her own lap.
She had come full circle.

Glossary:

Hababa: grandmother
Amme: paternal aunt
Khala: maternal aunt; also used to address ladies senior to one’s self whether related or not.
Maragiys : wooden pieces, the size of a hand, used in Yemeni weddings as accompaniment to the drum
and tambourine.
Kilaan: bridegroom
Ahlan wa sahlan : welcome
RUBUUT: ceremony to ‘inform’ or introduce the bride to the larger society.
In the past, used to announce to the young girl that she is getting married.

November 21, 2019 0 comment