Rights Hands (1)

That evening, in front of Faruk, Khadijah understood for the first time how women got their happiness trimmed and sized. She could not reject his proposal, but she could not accept his conditions either. If there is a God as she had always believed, and He insists upon the coexistence of men and women, then surely, He has to know how terrible it is to be a woman. Because only this Superior knowing could justify that she, daughter of Hassan, is expected to play first wife to a man who sought many.

Faruk crossed and uncrossed his arms behind his back. He stared away, looking toward where his car was parked, and fiddled with his keys. Here was a man whose absent sprightliness belied his intensity. His long and relaxed profile invited her to remember why she had found him attractive. Under the wraps of a blue kaftan and matching cap, she imagined Faruk’s core must have been roaring as he asked her that question.

“Will you permit me to marry more wives in the future?”

Khadijah swallowed the bile rising from her stomach. She had wanted to laugh incredulously. His solemn manner confirmed that it was not a joke and he would not repeat himself. A rug was pulled from under her feet. This was the man she had resisted only to eventually capitulate. Faruk, whom, when she did admit to herself that she loved him, she had to fight her late mother’s warning ringing in her ears. If you choose to marry a man, know that your happiness can never come before his.

She wondered if it was sabotage. If Faruk had asked the question to know who she was under the weight of his desires. Although Khadijah replied that she would carefully think about it, she wondered if she had already failed. A more confident woman would have immediately said yes. Yes, of course. A woman who understood marriage and her role within it, who was already committed to the man in front of her. She could have been like her friend Laraba, who had not hesitated to be Alhaji Maman’s third and youngest wife. Love was supple and malleable to such women. They knew love could be divided into satisfying little pieces consumed as necessary across each wife’s household.

With no more words between them, she entered the compound, Faruk’s taillights flashing away. Inna was asleep. The kerosene lamp glowed faintly at its minimum. She was relieved to not have to answer her grandmother’s questions. Is the man knocking on their door after Isha prayers the one to take Khadijah on? Is he a man ready to make himself honorable by taking on a wife? Inna thought their courtship was unnecessarily prolonged. But everything was prolonged and exaggerated to make Inna feel old. It was preposterous that girls did not get married at sixteen. That they did not pick the man closest to their right hands and move on with their lives.

“Khadijah, a man is not to be dotted upon, only attended to. So if you want to choose a man, just ask yourself, will he be easy to attend to? That was why I picked your grandfather. Nobody in Shekau thought too hard about such things, wallahi. We just got married and accepted the duties.”

Khadijah ignored Inna’s ideas about marriage because they appeared too simple. There were more things to consider now than forty years ago in a village where everyone knew everyone. For one, her mother was an example of how things could end poorly. How a girl with potential and promise could be subsumed in a bad marriage. If Faruk was not sabotaging their courtship, all the slow knowledge of each other they had gathered over six months, then it must be because he saw her as a genuine prospect for a good marriage. His question was an invitation. An opportunity to further define who they are to be. Perhaps being the first wife was no condemnation, and she could rely on Faruk’s straightforwardness. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him the day he parked his car a few minutes away from her Islamiyya to share greetings with Ustaz Aminu. In Faruk’s polite but directed salam with hints of a lisp, she heard it: surety. Walking next to her, Hajara and Salma giggled nonstop, raising the armhole of their hijabs over their mouths. Khadija had wanted to push them away, their childishness apparent despite being twenty-one years of age. Courtship had to begin on a similar stature, and so she had tried to confidently say salam back. She believed she was approached because her value had been recognized.