Baada ya Jumu'ah
"The old mosque caretaker dies, leaving his thick widow in the quarters. He volunteers to help. What happens after Friday prayers stays between them and Allah."
Mzee Bakari was the mosque caretaker for forty years.
He swept the floors, maintained the ablution fountains, called the faithful to prayer. When he died, the whole quarter mourned. A good man, everyone said. A servant of Allah.
His widow, Rehema, was left alone in the small quarters behind the mosque.
The imam asked for volunteers to help her with "practical matters." I raised my hand before I knew what I was doing.
Rehema is fifty-three.
She was Bakari's second wife—married him late, after his first wife died. She was already thick then. Now, twenty years later, she's monumental.
Heavy breasts that hang beneath her loose dresses. Hips that have grown wider with each passing year. A belly that speaks of contentment and good cooking. She moves slowly, deliberately, every step an earthquake in miniature.
"You're kind to help," she tells me when I first arrive. "Most men avoid widows."
"Most men are fools."
She almost smiles.
I help her with practical matters.
Fixing the leaky faucet. Carrying heavy boxes. Clearing out Bakari's belongings for charity. Every Friday after Jumu'ah prayer, I come to her quarters and do what needs doing.
The congregation thinks I'm performing charity.
They don't see the way her eyes follow me.
They don't see the way mine follow her.
Three months after Bakari's death, the iddah period ends.
She's no longer in formal mourning. The restrictions lift. And that Friday, after Jumu'ah, she doesn't hand me a list of tasks.
She hands me tea.
"Sit," she says. "We should talk."
I sit.
The quarters are quiet. The mosque has emptied. Through the walls, I can hear the city returning to normal—the marketplace reopening, the street vendors calling.
"You've been coming every week," she says.
"You needed help."
"The repairs are done." She sets down her tea. "The boxes are cleared. There's nothing practical left."
"Then why am I here?"
She looks at me with those dark eyes.
"Because I asked you to stay."
"I'm old," she says. "And fat. And alone."
"You're beautiful."
"Liar." But her voice wavers. "Bakari stopped touching me five years before he died. Said he was too old, too tired. I've been untouched for longer than I can remember."
"Rehema—"
"You look at me differently than other men." She stands, moves toward me. "They look through me. You look at me. Why?"
"Because you're worth looking at."
"Show me." She's close now. Close enough to touch. "Show me I'm still worth something to someone."
She undresses slowly.
Layers falling away—the outer dress, the under-dress, the simple cotton beneath. Her body emerges inch by inch, a landscape of brown flesh.
"This is what fifty-three looks like," she says. "This is what twenty years of marriage and fifteen years of neglect looks like."
"This is beautiful."
I fall to my knees.
I worship her in the shadow of the mosque.
My mouth on her belly, her thighs, the thick folds of her. She gasps when my tongue finds her clit—shocked, overwhelmed.
"No one has—ever—"
"Then everyone before me was wrong."
I eat her against the wall of her quarters. The same wall that backs onto the mosque. If anyone was still inside, they could hear her moaning.
"Ya Allah—right there—"
She comes fast—fifteen years of denial releasing at once. I catch her when her legs give out, hold her up, keep licking until she comes again.
"Please—inside me—"
I carry her to her bed.
She's tighter than I expected.
The years of abstinence have done something to her body. She clenches around me like she's afraid I'll disappear, her thick legs wrapping around my waist.
"Finally—finally someone who—"
I thrust deep.
She screams.
I fuck her in the quarters behind the mosque, on the bed where she slept beside Bakari for twenty years. She comes repeatedly—sobbing, laughing, making sounds she'd forgotten she could make.
"More—please—I've waited so long—"
I give her everything.
Fill her until she's shaking, until she's crying, until the call to Asr prayer echoes through the walls and I realize two hours have passed.
"Same time next week?" she asks.
"After Jumu'ah?"
"After Jumu'ah." She smiles—really smiles. "What happens after Friday prayers is between us and Allah."
I kiss her.
"Then I'll see you next Friday."
Every Friday for two years now.
The congregation thinks I'm helping a widow. And I am. I'm helping her remember what it means to be alive. To be touched. To be wanted.
Some prayers are answered in the mosque.
Others are answered in the quarters behind it.
And Allah, I think, understands both.