In commemoration of me, give your body to my death.
For the fourth time, Rukkiyah died in a fire alongside her world. Rukkiyah died. This is all you need to know. With the wind on her breath, she ate death, and death ate her. Shikina.
*
It was written in the beginning that the first time Rukkiyah opened her eyes to the pages of her life, damnation weighed upon her eyelids. She was wet with the pain of her creator. She was cursed to be loveless — to watch love hobble miles away from her with a blood-red sash across its torso. Rukkiyah was cursed to eat her life.
But even the damnedest things have good times. Today, her God is less miserable, so Rukkiyah is sitting across from the man she has come to love. Her eyes are stars, although there’s this lingering feeling of doom, the same kind of feeling you get when you take out something stuck between your toes, the feeling that pain never left. The world around her is blurred out because nobody bothered to write its features down, and the bulbs are discs of flaming bokeh. The man she has come to love is so beautiful that he does not have a face. He is the realisation of a dream-never-come-true. He does not have hands, legs, or anything that can be turned into a weapon.
Picture: A man made of brown-sugar smoke, sitting and nodding at everything that Rukkiyah says, watching with unadulterated admiration each time that Rukkiyah stops to catch her breath. He does not have a tongue because tongues are switchblades, shovels, sticks, and fire. He does not have eyes because eyes are blueprints of violence; they bury you before the bullet leaves the gun, molest you before you are unclothed, and scan for the most vulnerable corners of your skin so the work of the fist is a tad easier.
Picture: Music comes on in the soft-blur of a bar where they are sitting. The lyric of this song is just one word: “safe.” Rukkiyah dances like the music is a ladder at the edge of the world. In this chapter, all she has to do is be happy; she knows not to waste unwonted chances like this. She beckons to her brown-sugar smoke man, and they walk out of the bar. The music follows them. The street they tread is the body of a cobra in brumation. Women like scarecrows are lumbering on the street, the weight of envy and neglect screwing up their withered brows. Because Rukkiyah is a bright flame today, she decides to make conversation and soften their distaste for this world of broken paper.
She says:
It’s such a beautiful day! We should thank our stars that our God is a woman. Can you hear the music following me? Can you see this perfect and harmless man? Why, he does not even say a word to me; he cannot even touch me; he cannot see me. He just listens with his body, and I love him best for that. Don’t you love that we can walk these streets without falling off? Don’t you love that we have nowhere to go and nobody to give pieces of ourselves to?
They say:
If our God is such a happy woman, why do we pray to a man whose image is blurred in our heads? Why are we wounds instead of people? Look how dead we are! Of course, it’s a happy day for you, Rukkiyah; you get to be the protagonist of this blunder. Us? We don’t even have names. Stare into our throats; our bodies are made of havoc. You get a brown-sugar smoke man, and we are forced to love snakes. See how free you are; see the fetters of inept stories that restrain our tongues. See, Rukkiyah, tell us the truth or leave us in our misery. Does our God need saving, or is she dead?
It is not written that Rukkiyah should disseminate the truth; she pulls her man away, and they walk towards a margin where she sits and cries. Yes, their God is a dead thing. Yes, this is not a story, but a curse. Being the protagonist in a plotless story like this is the scariest thing ever. She wants to tell them that each night, her brown-sugar smoke man becomes a snake, and she swallows it. It is better to be dead than to regurgitate death. Evening comes. There is nowhere to run. From two drops to a million, salty water licks the earth. God is crying again. This chapter is destroyed by water; all that they have said is unsaid. All they have done, undone. Their bodies are blotched and moldering, and they have to die for a while because God is sad. Because God is not in a state to be creating other people, but that is exactly why she does it. Because God is a dead woman who has nothing left of her body to give to pain.
*
A man with hands, eyes, legs, a tongue, and every body part that can be turned into weapons is approaching Zee’s room. Zee for Zainab, but Zee because she lost her name the moment she wed this man. She hastily stows her soaked novel under her bed. On her left palm are stray streaks of black ink. Her hair is unmade, rusty, and abundant with undergrowths—arid, as though upon zooming in closer, you would find a nation of dusty gypsies. Aside from her jaded gaze, her demeanor is still. She is an embodiment of unconditional waiting. Waiting for destruction. Waiting for love. Waiting for the door to swing open. Waiting because either way what can go wrong will go wrong; darkness has no ears but mouths in every corner of the world.
Then comes the hum in the narrow corridor, clothed in cobwebs, and light from a fluctuating fluorescent bulb. It comes closer. The hum from the beautiful mouth of ruin. It is Für Elise, snatched from the wide red lips of the ice cream man’s megaphone as he pedals home.
Zee knows this scene by heart, or at least she thinks she does: The door bursts open. The barking of the depraved—ignoring the things she can offer, like her arms, food, or a smile or two; a stiff kiss barred by a bristly thicket of mustache. The BANG BANG BANG of calloused knuckles on the metal door. Then, I SEE IT IN YOUR EYES. YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME. YOU THINK I’M USELESS. I’M TRYING. I’M TRYING. TALK TO ME, BITCH. Then the SHUT UP, BITCH. Then the I’m-doing-this-because-I-can smile. Then the lessons to be learned: I saved you; I am not your god, but heck, what’s the difference? This is love; this is love; this is love. Look into my eyes. Zee, this is love. The retrieval of a mindless phallus. COME TO ME. SAY YOU LOVE ME.
—I love you.
—Say you want it.
—I want it.
—How much?
—Very much.
—Say my name!
—Your name.
BANG. BANG. BANG. Yeah!
This time there’s a little tweak in the script. The man catches a glimpse of the glossy, calendar-wrapped The Travails of Rukkiyah. He reaches for it and ransacks the pages, ripping some in the process. Ahn ahn! He chuckles. You write now, eh? He lifts his arm as if to hit Zee, but pauses for a fist bump instead. You write now, eh? He asks.
—Yes, I write.
—Why?
—I like to write.
—Well, I’d love to read you, but there’s no light. My eyes are hurting. Let’s start a fayeh, eh?
—I’ll get the kerosene lamp.
—Kai! Kerosene lamp! To read a scholar like you? We need a big fayeh, since you’re so smart now. I’ll start a fayeh in the backyard, and when I’m done, I’ll summon the princess writer, no?
—Please.
Smack.
—What are you begging for? I’m preparing a banquet for you.
The man points to his limp phallus,
—Tuck it in.
Rukkiyah, the scarecrow women, the brown-sugar smoke man, and their half-baked world are ensconced in flames.
Picture: Apocalypse. Bodies burned together—the artwork of an insecure god. Home is hell and a closed door. Home is paper burning onto their teeth. Their ink bodies are desiccated, fucked by the lustful flames, and they cannot leave because nobody has bothered to illustrate a fire escape. All the times Rukkiyah danced, her laughter, her tears, the few times God was happy and she could reach for the clouds, the times Zee forgot she was writing a story and Rukkiyah would wander for days—everything is cremated. The Travails of Rukkiyah is a story never told.
Two young men in milk-white dashikis pass, they have shorn hair and big noses.
—Is everything alright, sir?
—Alright? Haba! It’s more than alright. My wife and I are having a literary conversation. Say, if you see any feminists on your way, tell them their queen is here. Na gode. Soon she’ll be in the magazines. She’ll pierce her tongue and cut out her uterus.
They laugh, shake their heads and kick dust as they shuffle away. These women. Always seeking attention. There was blood on her lips, though. There was? Kai, it was the moon on her lipstick. You didn’t see how she was just looking through everything? That one is a hardened whore! They laugh again. Allah save us from women! Allah ya cece mu!
Two women with empty steel trays balanced on their heads and babies fastened to their backs approach. They greet the man, who, with the reflection of the unnecessarily wild fire on his face, looks like the devil curating an orchestra of dumb demons. They look at Zee with seedy eyes, click their tongues, and pass. See her acting like she is made out of divine pubic hair. Can’t even greet, that one. She thinks she is better than us because she went to a polytechnic. But… But what? Will it kill her to greet her fellow women? See, we all have problems with the men. That is what binds us together—we come, we show each other our scars, we cry, and when we want to rebel, we do it together. But her? When she is walking, she is walking like Kilimanjaro, swinging her hips like Mississippi in ovulation! That her husband sef, there is something wicked about his eyes. Wicked? The man is a very passionate man; he works all day. It must be my eyes, then; all these things are beginning to look alike.
Three boys are chasing after a blue tanko ball that almost falls into the fire but decides to roll into the dry gutter some steps beside it. Can’t you be watching where you’re kicking the ball, Usman? If it enters fayeh you’ll buy it for me. Shut up! Is it because your daddy bought ball for you? What is ball that I cannot buy? Buy it and play only you nah! Yen yen yen, catapult mouth. Shege banza! foolish like your mother. Sunday, hold me! I’ll kill this boy! I’ll kill this boy! Walahi, I’ll kill this boy.
*
The second time Rukkiyah dies, she is warned by a quick scribble. He is coming again, the man with a full body. The Travails of Rukkiyah is now in a 60 leaves Oxford exercise book. Zee’s hands are quivering, and the words are in scratches of thin black ink. Rukkiyah reaches out and caresses Zee’s face.
—Why can’t you fight for us?
—I’m scared. So scared.
—What are you so scared of?
—Touch
—And what is it that you want the most?
—To be touched…
—Why are we here, God?
—To feel for me.
—And?
—To die for me.
BANG. BANG. The man comes in. This time he is humming Adele’s “Hello.” He follows the script. Starts a fire in the backyard. Zee is kneeling before it, looking on like the belly of a sea. A man on an old motorbike mistakes her for someone he knows; he waves wildly and smiles, speeds away, and spits into a gutter. A boy roughly six years old is chasing a bird with his pinky pointed towards the sky. Shekeleke give me white finger! A naked child, his brother, is chasing after him and jiggling his buttocks. The child falls and wails in measured explosions. Their mother, who has been quiet all this while, hurls curses at the older boy, shaking her pestle at him—I’ll beat the childhood out of your body!
Rukkiyah is licked to oblivion for the second time. The world ends, and the world moves on.
*
The third time Rukkiyah dies, she just dies. No surprises, no drama. She is sitting in the bar with her brown-sugar smoke man when the scarecrow women begin to panic and run. They say it’s the end of the world, and she just smiles. They don’t know how many times this world has ended. They don’t know how many more times it will end. She is the protagonist; her deaths are tattooed on her skin. Her body is not hers, but her God’s. Her body is a temple of death. So when the fire comes again, she just smiles, gets on her feet, and dances. How does one save a helpless God?
*
For the fourth time, Rukkiyah died in a fire alongside her world. Rukkiyah died. This is all you need to know. With the wind on her breath, she ate death, and death ate her. Shikina.
