Volume 7
An Online Literary Magazine
November 30, 2012

 

The Gift of a Stranger's Touch

Nonfiction

Carolyn Hubbard

 


The Entrance to Lamu: I stand there, looking at the door, at Salama, at the end of the alley behind her. Headlines about recent kidnappings flash in my head.

 

A
dozen women shield their faces as they shuffle by, but she stops, looks straight at me and asks, “Are you lost?”

 

I push my camera into my shoulder bag and pat the side where my room key and a copy of my passport are still safely lodged. It’s quiet in this alley, and the sun blasts against the whitewashed walls. She’s draped in a plain black abaya with a bright purple polka-dotted scarf wrapped over her head. A niqab covers her face, leaving just a slit for her eyes. I can’t tell if she’s smiling or sizing me up.

 

“No, I’m okay.” I reply, even though I don’t know where this alley leads and I didn’t bring a map.

 

“Come with me,” she urges. “You shouldn’t be alone.” She motions for me to follow.

 

I came to Kenya to work for a non-profit in a small town near the Ugandan border. Taking the one-year assignment meant giving up a great apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay and saying goodbye to a large network of friends, but I needed a change. Approaching forty, single, no kids or any clear career track, I felt lost. Living in Africa would change me, I was sure. I would connect with people and immerse myself in their culture. I would become aware, more compassionate. I would find new meaning in life. But the apartment I moved into has satellite television and the local store carries plenty of South African wine. Rather than learn Kiswahili or help out at the orphanage down the street, I’ve been watching more television than I ever did back home. There have been no sudden epiphanies or aha moments to make my time here seem well spent, but I always wonder if today, something will be different.

 

With only a few weeks before I fly back to the States, I am on a trip up Kenya’s more touristy coastline. I’m as far north as it’s safe to go on the island of Lamu. From the elegant Swahili architecture to the single-sailed dhows floating by the miles of pristine beach, to the hundreds of donkeys roaming freely down the alleys, this place is exotic. Add to that the women curtained head to toe in black abayas and niqabs in this devoutly Muslim island. I’d love a chance to talk with them, but I keep my distance, mainly out of respect and also because I can’t help but find their outfits intimidating. I can barely manage a conversation with someone in sunglasses, let alone full head cover. That said, they also tend to ignore the tourists, walking around with our heads exposed, taking photos of their lives. Except for this woman. She is still waiting for me to go with her.

 

Does she want money? I have a 1,000 shilling note in my pants pocket—just enough for a mango juice and some postcards. But that’s all. My imagination goes into overdrive with images of getting robbed or kidnapped. It’s not so far-fetched. The Somali border is only 90 miles away and the waters off this coast are pirate-trolling ground. Al Shabaab, the militant Islamist group in southern Somalia, has been kidnapping foreign tourists and aid workers, and Lamu is the closest tourist destination. I shrug off the images. I’ll go for just a little while, enough time to learn about her life here and then get back to my plan of lounging at the beach.

 

“My name is Salama,” she says, pressing her palm to her heart. “That means ‘good’. I have a good heart. Come with me to the market.” She leads me through a labyrinth of alleys, each one narrower and darker than the one before, and farther from the grid of cleanly swept alleys that the tourists stroll down. I squeeze past a donkey laden with burlap sacks of sand, then walk past mangy cats with puss-riddled eyes, sitting by gutters gurgling with dank wash water.

 

She pushes on, pointing out people in her family—the cousin who works at the donkey hospital, an uncle who carves the crescent moon and star symbols that decorate the elegant dhows, another cousin who sells tomatoes. She makes what sounds like sassy comments to men that we pass by, who in turn look at her perplexed. I can’t understand what they are saying, but I assume it goes something like, “Hey Salama, you found another lost puppy?”

 

“Mind your own business. At least I’ll make some money from it.”

 

We end up at the island’s harbor, a place I do recognize. Men and donkeys stand by, ready to haul baskets piled high with coconuts, gallon bottles of water, and bags of flour off the dhows and to the market. Salama and I walk side by side now, along the open boardwalk. She asks if I’m married, if I have kids. I try to read her reaction when I say I’m not, I don’t, but can see only tiny beads of sweat lining her raised eyebrows. I quickly shift the questions to her to avoid the feeling of loneliness that comes with trying to explain my answers.

 

She married her neighbor when she was 14 years old, had her first child at 15, another at 16, and another one, two years ago, at 19. I ask her if she thinks that she married too young and she looks straight at me. When all you can see are someone’s eyes, one glance can hold a lot of punch. I look away, sure I’ve offended her. She explains that she wasn’t too young. He was older, kind, and respectful, a neighbor of good standing, and both of their families approved.

 

Besides, like many young women in Lamu, she didn’t go to secondary school. Most families can’t afford to send every child to school and usually send a son. The daughters are expected to marry. I ask her about wearing the abaya and the niqab. She explains that her husband decides how covered she’ll be in public. “It shows we respect our husbands and our families. Then we also get respect from the community.”

 

I look at her flowing robes and then down at my sweaty clothes that are sticking to my body and am overtaken by a wave of awkwardness I haven’t felt since junior high gym class.

 

As prayers blast out of megaphones on the tops of rounded minarets, we continue past fortress walls of whitewashed stone and red coral. It’s mid-afternoon and the air is growing heavier. Men and boys rinse their feet at a concrete washbasin outside a mosque, while women rush by, fabric billowing around them. I keep following, careful not to trip on a loose cobblestone or a pile of dung. Salama stops at a plain dark wood door, pulls a key out from under her ocean of fabric, and unlocks a hefty rusting padlock.

 

“We’ll rest,” she states, “and wait for my children. It won’t be long.” Then she says it again: “My heart is good,” and motions for me to step inside.

 


Elegant in their abayas and niqabs, Salama and one of her sisters-in-law agree to having their photo taken.
 

I
stand there, looking at the door, at Salama, at the end of the alley behind her. Headlines about recent kidnappings flash in my head. Men walking by seem to leer at me. Entering a stranger’s house is not the wisest choice when you’re by yourself on an unfamiliar island, let alone this one. I should just give her some money and be off, back to being a tourist on a beach towel. But, even though my imagination keeps pushing worst-case scenarios, I feel compelled to trust this woman.

 

I climb the two stone steps and enter a dark concrete room with little more than a plastic tub, a propane tank, and a large dented metal pot. She pulls back a hanging sheet and coaxes me into a small room with a sagging double bed draped in mosquito netting, a bassinet, and a wooden chest of drawers covered with costume jewelry, lipsticks, and hairbrushes. She motions for me to take a seat on the concrete floor near a stack of plastic boxes, turns on an electric fan, then disappears into the dark closet that is her kitchen to make tea over the hissing flames of the propane tank. Even with the fan erasing pools of sweat on my chest and thighs, I can’t relax. I stare at my bare calves streaked in sweat, sunscreen, and dirt, and wish I had worn the long pants instead of capris, or at least shaved. Salama comes in and sits across from me in a sleeveless floral housedress. I lower my eyes, embarrassed to see so much of her—the roundness of her shoulders, the curls in her hair, the point of her nose. She puts between us a metal tray with a teapot, two glasses, and slices of sweet coconut bread. Her abaya had allowed me to consider our interactions superficial, each in our role as local and tourist, insider and outsider. But now, we are just two women cooling off in front of a fan. In this sudden intimacy, I loosen my fears of captivity, but can’t think of anything to ask or to say. Salama fills the silence with cups of sweet tea and stories of her children.

 

A voice from the other side of a hanging sheet calls out, and Salama motions for me to follow and meet her sisters-in-law. Three women are squatting next to propane stoves and tubs of dishwater in a large courtyard. They look at me curiously, say something to Salama, and break into laughter. I shift my balance and wrap my arms across my chest, covering as much of me as I can. They push themselves up off the floor, greet me, and lead me to a main doorway and front stoop, facing another alley. An elderly woman, the matron of the house, sits hunched over, fanning herself and yelling at two boys playing soccer with an empty soda bottle. With Salama as interpreter, she and I exchange greetings and I am asked to sit next to her. She begins to rub her knees and grumble.

 

“Do you have any of that medicine that helps my aching?” she asks. “Or any of those ointments?”

 

“I don’t,” I reply, not sure what ointments those would be, then ask what hurts. “My knees. My hips. My back.” At a loss for what to say but sure I need to come up with something, I blurt out, “Do you ever get massages?”

 

Salama turns to her sisters-in-law, all of whom suck in their breath. My cheeks flush. What ridiculous offensive idea was that? The women chatter in earnest, looking from me to the matron. Salama turns to her mother-in-law and, I assume, relays my insult.

 

The old woman grumbles something, heaves herself up off the stoop, and wobbles inside. Salama turns to me. “Please give her a massage,” she states.

 

She plops down on a thin carpet and her ample breasts press out to each side. Her thin housedress shows every roll of fat along her back and buttocks. Salama’s kids, Ahmed and Nua, now back from school, join in the circle with the other women around us. A man, one of her sons, I guess, is asleep on the floor right next to us, with a machete by his side. I stand over the old woman, straddling her hips, and glance at the whitewashed walls that surround us. Nooks and hollows shelve the Koran, pink plastic flowers, last year’s calendar with a faded picture of a field of daisies. The children and the women look up at me expectantly, stifling their giggles, and a strong urge to flee courses through me. How did I get into this situation, and more importantly, how do I get out? I can’t back out now. I don’t want to upset them or give them any sense that I’m nervous. I focus on that calendar, remembering the massage therapy course I took years ago in California and try to steady myself. The worst thing I could do is to touch this woman while I’m shaking: I’d hurt her somehow, which will make her scream, which will wake up the machete man who will see my butt in the air and my hands pushing down on his mother’s hips.

 

Sweat starts trickling down my back and into my pants. I take a deep breath, calm my nerves, and plunge my palms into the mounds of fat. There’s no scream, just the sounds of everyone’s breath. I walk my hands up to her shoulders and knead them, first left, then right. I press on one shoulder and opposite hip and stretch the length of her spine. She responds with a deep sigh. I press down a little harder and do the other side. She yields to the pressure and I feel her relax and stretch. I take more risks, pushing my fists into her upper buttocks and hips, then gently caress the nape of her neck, before gently rocking her side to side. The room is silent.

 

My own back is about to collapse from hunching over for so long. I step over her legs carefully and sit down where Salama pats the floor. The machete wielder is still asleep as the matron sits up slowly, unsteadily, and begins to talk to her daughters while pointing to her shoulders and hips. I don’t realize I’m still holding my breath until Salama says, “Stay for dinner. She wants another massage, and we want one, too.”

 

We sit together, eating sweet coconut bread, orange slices, and scrambled eggs. Ahmed sits behind me and combs my hair while his sister cleans my fingernails with a broken toothpick. My body tingles to their touch. I’ve given each woman a massage, each one of them sharing with me the knots on their backs and shoulders and their sighs of relaxation. I wonder if the massages fulfill some need or desire to be touched, to be caressed. Ahmed’s fingers tickle the back of my neck and I close my eyes to soak in the feeling. Being squashed up next to a stranger’s arm in a local bus is the closest I’ve come to being hugged or caressed in months. Maybe I’m the one who needed to fulfill that need.

 

One of the sisters-in-law comes in with the headscarf she was wearing during her massage. “Thank you,” she whispers and hands it to me. Tears well up in my eyes and she smiles. Salama waits for me to finish my tea and follow her back into the alley and to my lodging. I pick up my bag slowly, now unwilling to step back into that place where I almost let doubt and distrust get in the way of sharing an afternoon with this family who makes me feel like I have finally arrived.

 

Carolyn Hubbard has long held the theory that when you’re not sure what to do, go travel. She is the author of a handful of travel guides and has taught in public schools. Based in Seattle, Washington, she writes to relive her adventures and recall the lessons learned along the way. This is her first published story.

 

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