By the time Edegbe joined Yasmin at the summit, muscle cramps bit the insides of his thigh and he slumped to the ground, panting as his chest hammered. When he had left the house that morning, it was as if he could fly from the excitement, but now, he could die and not mind. He felt his legs shaking endlessly as beads of sweat danced on his forehead, some rolling down his temples.
"You can't be sweating with this cool breeze."
"You don't even kn—" the swords got stuck in his throat as he looked at her. She was standing by the west where the sun was setting below the horizon and the shade was blinding, so her face morphed into a silhouette. The breeze blew into her face, sending her hijab flying backwards and with the horizon, a beautiful shade of yellow, that spread across the northern sky, she looked like something from an exquisite painting, embellished by the expertly decorated background.
"You're staring," Yasmin told him. "I thought you were going to complain about how badly I'm treating you."
"You're treating me worse than that, seducing me and all."
She shrugged. "He who cannot dance puts the blame on the floor."
He averted his gaze and looked at the sky behind her, then the one above, it was blue and clear, and relaxing. Then he looked to his side and saw the houses below that spread across the vast land, looking like tiny tents built on dry land. The breeze met and dried the sweat on his face and with the pain forgotten, he looked around. When his gaze returned back to her, he said, "It's like as if I have total control of everything, like I'm in charge."
"You feel like you're in charge while sitting, I wonder how you'll feel like when you stand."
He stood up, his legs wobbling softly and he rest his palm on his knee. "Oh God, this looks like—" he thought for the word, "—I just can't find the right word."
"You know when an artist draws different strokes of nonsense on a board, what makes it beautiful to look at is the regularity and uniformness, that's what this can be likened to. Do you like it?"
"Yes, it's beautiful." But he was looking at her, and he took a step forward. "I'm curious about something though, I've been curious from the very beginning. Your hair." He reached for her hijab. "May I?" She didn't agree or disagree, only stared at him and so he took the hijab off and her hair moved with the wind.
"Wow, how is this possible?" Her hair was not the kinky thick peculiar to Africans, but it was long and silky and soft.
"My mother was white."
Edegbe took a handful of her hair, feeling the softness and caressing it gently. "I've always thought you were different, but not this different." He dug his hand deeper, took the last step and covered the distance between them. He loved the feel of it in his hands, loved the way it made her face full. "Do you always leave it like this?"
"My brother weaves it for me sometimes."
"He's nice to you then?"
"You wearing his clothes, that should be the first sign he's nice."
"Hmm." He brought a handful of her hair to his nose and smelled it. "Do you know you have this amazing smell, like tangerine?"
"How do you know it's tangerine, so many people would go for strawberry?"
"It's definitely not strawberry, strawberry does not smell like citrus, and strawberry would not make me want to do this." He cupped her face and brushed his lips against hers, a light brush at first, and then he was going to pull away but the moment felt so right and there was something about how she opened up to him like a flower that has been kissed by the morning sun, and so he covered her lips with his in a real kiss.
Yasmin placed her hand on his chest, not to push him away, but to cluctch to his shirt in an attempt to draw him in, kissing him back. She broke the kiss to say, "I've never done it in an open space."
Edegbe's lips still tingled from the heat. "Done what?" Realizing the innuendo, he back away. "God, Yasmin, no! Wait, no I mean— I mean we— not here."
She laughed. "Sometimes your reaction is so priceless."
"You have a way of making me tongue tied." He sat on the floor and thugged at her hand so she would sit too in the space he made for her, resting comfortably in his arms. Edegbe liked how perfect it felt, how perfect the moment was, he did not want to think about what he was doing and what it meant. "Tell me about your husband," he murmured softly.
Her reply came almost immediately. "He's dead."
"I know, something else?"
"Like?" She closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder while he fingered her hair gently.
"How was your marriage with him? Did you like him? Did he like you? Do you wish he's still alive?"
"He was fifty years older than me," she dropped the bombshell.
Edegbe thought he hadn't heard well. "Fifty?"
She nodded.
"W—why? How is that even possible?"
"You come to the north and ask why nobody is fair even after knowing how hot the sun is."
"Yasmin, that is— why did you do it? You don't look like someone to agree to something you don't want to do, so why?"
She shrugged. "I had to, one thing that responsibility does is take away your choice, we all had to do this one thing that affected us." Edegbe was quiet so she continued. "Money was gold for an orphan that lived in the ruins of poverty like me, then I'm a girl and we're in the part of the country where a girl of thirteen, not even eighteen, is fit for marriage and so I was married. Not at thirteen though, but at twenty.
He was seventy and was rich and so when he married me, I had this new mansion to myself. I was his fifth wife and since I was the newest, the luxury kept coming. For somebody who hadn't tasted such wealth, you'd think I was over the top, I wasn't. I was bored and irritated by the excessive wealth and so I packed my things, moved out and placed the house on rent. I stopped him from coming over, instead I went to his place.
After the first year, I bought two pieces of land from the money I got from renting the house. The next few years, I acquired more lands. Meanwhile, he acquired more wives and expenses and so his money ran out. The other women left him, I couldn't leave. I looked after him still he died, we were married for five years."
Edegbe circled a finger, absent mindedly, on her hair, then he sighed deeply.
"Being part of an oppressed group doesn't make me a saint," she said, trying to soothe him, as though he was the one that needed soothing.
He looked at her in surprise. "You're not hurt you had to go through that?"
"I came out, and with a lot of cash."
He shook his head. "You don't have to pretend you're okay."
"I do not pretend, I'm really okay."
"Believe me, no woman would be truly okay after going through something like that. It's like Amina, for an instance, let's imagined she had found to way to stop her father from sexually exploiting her, it's like her saying she's not hurt by the memory of being pushed into the room of different men, or that she did not wish she had the power to fight them, or that she never nursed the thought of killing them each time they laid on her. Believe me, Yasmin, one thing that is common to we human is that we have blood flowing through our veins."
She opened her eyes and stared into space. "That's one way to put it."
"Did you try to go to the police?"
Surprise laced her voice. "To do what? What will I say to the police?"
"Something, anything."
"That I willingly married a man fifty years older than myself? Or that he did not beat me or abuse me, instead left me in luxury?"
"He did not beat you or abuse you because you were obligated to submit yourself to him."
"Because I was his wife."
"Do you realize that more women are going to pass through this same route because you all who have been there refused to say anything about it?"
"Nobody before me said naught," she defended.
"And so you're not going to say anything?"
"Yes," she deadpanned.
He bulked out. "That's being wicked."
"The world is a wicked place, nobody really cares about you. I don't go around poking my nose in people's business while I have mine to cater for."
He sighed. "Then how come you don't have children, five years is enough for that?"
"I'm glad we did not have any children. I would only be able to tolerate him, just like I did his father, but love? I doubt."
"Such an honest reply. How about your brother, where is he now?"
"Still alive somewhere"
"You don't see him?"
"I see him everyday."
"What did he do while you married a man he could call 'Father'?"
"He hates himself for it, feels guilty that I alone shouldered the responsibility for the both of us. But I did it because I wanted to, not so he could whine about it. He doesn't want to move on, he keeps considering the many what ifs."
"He loves you," Edegbe said.
"He pities me."
"A brother that weaves your hair and wishes things were different, he's nice to you."
"Do I look like the kind of woman that needs a nice treatment?" She shifted in his arms.
"Everybody needs a nice treatment, don't pretend you don't. You should loosen up, you're too uptight." He buried his nose into her hair and soothes himself with her scent. "You know, I like the way you smell, it was one of the things that attracted me to you, excluding the fact that you always annoy me."
"That I always annoyed you attracted you?"
"It made you conspicuous to me. Then the way you dress, it's different, it makes you stand out." He dug his finger to the root of her hair and caressed it. "And, God, you're so bold."
"I'm bolder in bed." She whispered, a suggestive whispering and he laughed. "You know why I like you? You know I'm selfish and self centered, and you still like me."
He shrugged as though it didn't matter. "I have a few loose nuts too."