Caught at Fajr
"His aunt catches him with the housekeeper at dawn prayers. Her silence has a price—and it's due every morning before sunrise."
She catches me at the worst possible moment.
Fajr, the dawn prayer. The holiest time. And I'm in the storage room with Mwanaisha, the housekeeper, my pants around my ankles and her kanga pushed up to her waist.
"Astaghfirullah."
We freeze. In the doorway stands my Aunt Zeinab—fifty-five years old, devout, the moral center of our Zanzibar family. She's still in her prayer clothes, fresh from the mosque.
"Khaleh—" I start.
"Don't." Her voice is ice. "Get dressed. Both of you."
Mwanaisha flees.
I don't blame her. She's already pulling on clothes, already running through the courtyard, already disappearing into the Stone Town morning. By tonight, she'll have quit. By tomorrow, she'll be on a ferry to the mainland.
Which leaves me alone with Aunt Zeinab.
"Sit."
I sit. We're in the kitchen, the house still dark, the call to prayer echoing from distant minarets.
"Do you know what would happen if I told your mother?"
I know. Disgrace. Disownment. The end of everything.
"Please, Khaleh. I'll do anything—"
"Anything?"
Something shifts in her voice. I look up, and her expression has changed. Not anger anymore. Something else. Something hungry.
"You've been in my house for three weeks," she says slowly. "I've watched you. Seen how you look at women. At her." She means Mwanaisha. "At me."
"I don't—"
"Don't lie. Not now." She moves closer, and I realize for the first time how big she is. I've always known Aunt Zeinab was heavy—all the women in my mother's family are—but in this moment, in this light, she's overwhelming. Two-fifty, maybe more. Wide hips straining her prayer clothes. Breasts massive beneath the modest fabric.
"I've been alone for eight years," she says. "Since your uncle died. Eight years of prayer and fasting and wanting. Do you understand?"
"Khaleh—"
"I could tell your mother. End your life as you know it." She stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell her—sweat and incense and something muskier. "Or you could convince me to stay silent."
"How?"
She takes my hand. Places it on her hip.
"I think you know."
This is wrong.
This is blackmail. Coercion. My mother's sister, using my sin to extract more sin.
But she's also warm beneath my palm. Soft. And when she leans down to kiss me, I don't resist.
"Every morning," she whispers against my mouth. "Before Fajr. You come to my room. You give me what you were giving her." Her hand finds my cock, already hardening despite everything. "Do this, and your mother never knows. Do this, and you stay in this house, in this family, as if nothing happened."
"And if I refuse?"
"You won't refuse." She squeezes. "Will you?"
I don't refuse.
Her bedroom is at the end of the hall.
The bed is still rumpled from her sleep, the prayer rug still laid out from her devotions. She's been praying for strength, probably. Now she's claiming a different kind.
"Undress me," she commands.
I unwrap her prayer clothes layer by layer. The hijab reveals grey hair, cropped short. The abaya reveals a house dress. The house dress reveals cotton underwear.
And beneath that—
"Ya Allah."
She's thick everywhere. Eight years of grief eating, of stress, of letting go. Her breasts hang to her navel, dark-nippled and massive. Her belly is a mountain of flesh, soft and rippling. Her thighs are so thick they can barely close.
"This is what eight years of loneliness looks like," she says. "This is what you're going to worship. Every morning. Until I say you can stop."
"What if I start to like it?"
"Then I'll have to find new ways to keep you compliant." She lies back on the bed, spreads her thighs. "Now earn my silence."
I eat her like my life depends on it.
Because it does. Because her tongue can destroy me with a word. Because the only thing standing between me and disgrace is the pleasure I give her.
She tastes like a woman who's been waiting too long. Salt and musk and desperation. I learn her quickly—the pressure she likes on her clit, the curl of fingers that makes her shake, the rhythm that builds her toward release.
"Yes—na'am—don't stop—don't you dare stop—"
She comes with her thighs crushing my head, her voice breaking on prayers that are definitely not addressed to Allah.
I don't stop. I make her come again. And again.
"Enough—" She's pulling me up. "Inside me. Now. I need—"
"Say please."
I don't know where the boldness comes from. Maybe I'm tired of being the one being controlled.
Her eyes flash. "What?"
"You want me inside you? Ask nicely."
For a moment, I think she'll throw me out. Tell my mother everything.
Then she laughs.
"Please," she says. "Please fuck me, nephew. Please give me what I've been denied for eight years."
I give it to her.
She's tight.
Eight years of nothing, and her body has forgotten. I push in slowly, feeling her stretch around me, hearing her gasp with each inch.
"More—I can take more—"
I give her more. All of me. And when I'm fully inside, I pause—pinned beneath her weight as she rolls on top of me.
"My turn to set the pace," she growls.
She rides me like vengeance. Like eight years of suppressed desire. Her massive body moves above me, breasts swinging, belly rippling, and I can only hold on while she uses me.
"This is what you owe me," she pants. "Every morning. This is the price of my silence."
"Yes, Khaleh—"
"Don't call me that while you're inside me." She slams down harder. "Just—yes—there—"
She comes so hard I feel it in my bones. And I follow—unable to resist, filling her while she shakes and sobs above me.
After, she rolls off me.
"The call for Fajr is in twenty minutes," she says. "Clean up. Pray. And be back here tomorrow. Same time."
"And if someone notices?"
"They won't." She smiles, slow and satisfied. "We rise early in this house. Who would question a nephew helping his aunt with morning chores?"
It becomes routine.
Every morning at 4:30 AM, I slip into her room. Every morning, I worship her body until the adhan calls. Every morning, I walk to the mosque with my uncle's brother's widow, pretending to be a good Muslim nephew.
No one suspects.
"You look tired," my mother says on the phone. "Are you sleeping well?"
"The heat," I say. "It's hard to sleep."
Aunt Zeinab smiles from across the room.
The three weeks end.
I'm supposed to fly back to Nairobi. Return to my life. Leave this behind.
"Stay," she says the last night.
"I can't. My job—"
"Find a new one. Here." She pulls me close, and I feel all of her—the weight, the warmth, the want. "I'm not ready to give you up."
"The blackmail ended. The three weeks are over."
"Is that the only reason you kept coming?" Her hand finds my cock. "Be honest."
I'm honest.
"No."
"Then stay. Not because I'm making you. Because you want to."
I think about Nairobi. The empty apartment. The life I'm barely living.
I think about here. The mornings. The prayers. The woman who caught me and kept me.
"I'll call my boss tomorrow."
She kisses me. Deep. Possessive.
"Good boy."
I live in Stone Town now.
To my family, I'm the devoted nephew who stayed to care for his aunt. They see me cooking for her, praying with her, keeping her company.
They don't see what happens before dawn.
They don't see the price of her silence—a price I now pay willingly, eagerly, every single morning.
Some secrets are worth keeping.
Some blackmail turns into something else.
And some aunts know exactly how to get what they want.
Fajr.
Dawn prayer.
The holiest time.
The most forbidden too.