Iddah
"Islamic law says a widow must wait four months and ten days before remarrying. She's been waiting three weeks. Her stepson has been waiting longer. Some rules are meant to be broken."
My father dies on a Tuesday.
By Friday, Mama Aisha is in iddah—the waiting period. Four months and ten days of mourning, of seclusion, of no contact with men outside immediate family.
I'm immediate family.
That's the problem.
Mama Aisha isn't my mother.
She's my father's fourth wife—the youngest, the most beautiful, the one he married when I was fifteen. She's forty-nine now, ten years into a marriage that gave her status but little else.
My father was eighty-one when he died.
She nursed him for the last two years. Changed his diapers. Fed him when he couldn't lift his own hands. Watched him fade while she remained—heavy and beautiful and trapped.
"I'm glad it's over," she whispers to me the night before the funeral. "Does that make me terrible?"
"It makes you honest."
"He was a good man. Once. Before he got sick." She leans against me. Two-fifty of exhaustion and relief. "I tried to be a good wife."
"You were. Everyone knows that."
"Everyone knows I'm a widow now. A widow in iddah. Untouchable for four months."
She looks at me when she says untouchable.
I try not to read into it.
The first week of iddah is crowded.
Relatives arrive. Neighbors bring food. The house fills with women offering condolences and men avoiding Mama Aisha's quarters. Islamic law is clear: during iddah, a widow must not be seen by men who might marry her.
Family is exempt.
Sons are exempt.
I'm not her son.
But my father raised me. And she helped. And everyone treats us as mother and child, even though we're closer in age than she was to him.
"You can stay," she tells me. "You're family. The rules allow it."
The rules allow me to see her.
They don't account for what I feel when I do.
The second week, the visitors thin.
By the third week, it's just us. Me and my stepmother, alone in the house my father left behind. The other wives have returned to their families, their shares of inheritance secure. Mama Aisha stays—the house was her mahr, her bride-price. It belongs to her now.
And so do I, apparently.
"Don't leave me," she says one night. We're in the sitting room, eating together because there's no one to gossip. "The iddah is four months. I can't be alone that long."
"I have work—"
"Work from here. Please." Her hand finds mine. "You're all I have left of him."
Week four, something shifts.
She stops wearing full hijab around the house. "It's just you. Why bother?" Her house clothes grow thinner, more revealing. The kanga wraps looser, shows more.
"Mama Aisha—"
"Don't call me that." She's sitting close. Too close. "I'm not your mother. I never was. We both know what we are."
"What are we?"
"Strangers who lived in the same house. Who shared meals and conversations and—" She stops. "And looks. Don't pretend you didn't look."
"You were my father's wife."
"I was his nurse. His caretaker. I haven't been a wife in years." Her voice cracks. "Do you know how long it's been since a man touched me? Really touched me?"
"I can't—"
"You can. There's no blood between us. No law against it." She leans closer. "The only rule is iddah. And iddah just says I can't remarry. It doesn't say anything about... this."
She kisses me.
Her mouth tastes like tea and desperation. Her body presses against mine—heavy, warm, starving for contact. I should push her away.
I pull her closer.
"Wait," I manage. "The iddah—"
"Is about remarriage. About making sure I'm not pregnant with your father's child." She laughs bitterly. "Your father couldn't get a woman pregnant in years. The doctors told us. The iddah is pointless."
"But the spirit of the law—"
"The spirit of the law is mourning. Being faithful to his memory." She's unbuttoning my shirt. "But I mourned him for two years while he was alive. I have nothing left."
"Mama—"
"Aisha. Just Aisha." She pulls back, looks at me. "If you want me to stop, I'll stop. I'll go to my room and we'll pretend this didn't happen. But if you want what I want—"
"What do you want?"
"To feel alive. After two years of death." She takes my hand, presses it to her breast. "Give me that. Please. Four months of iddah, locked away, untouched. I'll go mad."
I don't let her go mad.
Her bedroom was my father's bedroom.
The bed where he died, where she nursed him, where she spent two years in limbo—she leads me there now. Strips off her kanga. Reveals herself.
Forty-nine years old. Two-fifty of curves and softness. Breasts heavy from never nursing, belly round from years of cooking and eating alone. Thighs thick and marked with age.
"This is what you're getting," she says. "Not a young wife. Not a virgin. Just a woman who needs—"
I silence her with my mouth on hers.
I worship her.
Every inch she's been denying for years. I kiss her neck, her breasts, her belly. I spread her thighs and taste her until she sobs—the first real release she's had in longer than she can remember.
"Please—inside—I need to feel—"
I slide into her. She's wet, ready, desperate. Her legs wrap around me, pull me deep. Her nails score my back.
"Yes—na'am—finally—finally—"
I fuck my stepmother in my father's bed, in the middle of her iddah, while the whole neighborhood thinks she's in mourning. She comes three times before I let go, before I fill her with everything my father couldn't give.
"Thank you," she whispers after. "Thank you."
The iddah continues.
To the outside world, Aisha is in seclusion. Mourning. Untouchable.
To me, she's everything.
Every night, I go to her room. Every night, I give her what she needs. We're careful—the servants are dismissed, the visitors are rare, the doors are locked.
"This is haram," she says one night. We're tangled in sheets, her weight pressed against me.
"Probably."
"If anyone found out—"
"They won't."
"But if they did. Your father's son, sleeping with his father's widow. During iddah, no less." She laughs quietly. "They'd stone us both."
"Let them try."
Month two.
We've grown comfortable. Too comfortable. She wears nothing around the house. I work during the day, come to her at night. We're a couple in everything but name.
"What happens when the iddah ends?" I ask.
"I don't know. I can remarry then. Legally."
"Is that what you want?"
She's quiet for a long moment.
"I want to marry you," she admits. "If it wouldn't destroy both our lives."
"Why would it destroy us?"
"Because you're your father's son. Because I'm your father's widow. Because the community would never accept it." She sits up, looks at me. "They'd say I seduced you. Corrupted you. That I was planning this all along."
"Were you?"
"No. But I thought about it. Sometimes. When your father was at his worst and you were the only one who was kind to me." She traces my jaw. "I thought about what it would be like. If circumstances were different."
"Circumstances are different now."
"Are they?"
The end of iddah approaches.
Four months and ten days since my father died. The waiting period ends at sunset, and with it, Aisha's seclusion.
"I've had offers," she tells me. "Word got out that I'm finishing iddah. Men have sent their mothers to inquire."
"And?"
"And I've refused them all." She pulls me close. "Because I already have what I want."
"Your stepson?"
"My lover. My partner. The man who kept me sane for four months." She kisses me. "I don't care what the community says. I don't care if they call it haram. You're mine now."
"And the wedding?"
"Will happen. Eventually. When enough time has passed that it doesn't look suspicious." She smiles. "A year. Maybe two. And then you'll marry your father's widow, and everyone will pretend they didn't see it coming."
A year passes.
We marry quietly—a private nikah, witnessed by those who love us and ignore the scandal. The community whispers, then accepts. Time heals most objections.
"They call me his mother," Aisha says after the ceremony. "His stepmother, his widow-bride. The woman who waited."
"And what do you call yourself?"
"His wife." She pulls me toward the bedroom—the same bedroom, the same bed. "Finally, officially, legally his wife."
I follow her.
We've been breaking rules since the iddah began.
Now we're making our own.
Iddah.
Waiting period.
Worth every forbidden moment.