My Brother's Wife in Birmingham
"His brother went back to Somalia for business and left his wife in Birmingham. She's lonely. He's supposed to check on her. The checking becomes something else when he finds her crying in the kitchen at midnight."
My brother left for Mogadishu three weeks ago.
"Business," he said. "The construction company needs me. I'll be back in a month."
He didn't take his wife.
Halima stayed in their flat in Sparkbrook, because her visa paperwork was delayed, because her job at the NHS wouldn't give her leave, because—I suspect—their marriage isn't what it used to be.
"Check on her," Liban told me before he left. "Make sure she's eating. She forgets to eat when she's alone."
I've been checking on her every day.
And every day, I leave with a little more guilt than I arrived with.
Halima is thirty-two.
She married my brother when she was twenty-five—an arrangement between families, the kind where love is supposed to grow over time. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.
I've watched their marriage from the outside. The polite distance. The separate bedrooms they think no one knows about. The way she flinches when he touches her, like she's forgotten how to be touched.
She deserves better.
I've thought that since the wedding. I think it every time I see her.
"Zakariye."
I look up. She's standing in the doorway of her kitchen, wearing a house dress that's too thin for visitors, her hair uncovered because it's just me, it's just family.
"I brought food." I hold up the container. "Hooyo made too much rice again."
"Your mother always makes too much rice." She takes the container, and our fingers brush. Neither of us pulls away. "Come in. I just made tea."
Her flat smells like her.
Jasmine and something underneath—loneliness, maybe. The scent of someone who's been alone too long.
We sit in the living room. She pours tea with steady hands, but I see the tension in her shoulders, the dark circles under her eyes.
"He called today," she says.
"Liban?"
"Business is taking longer than expected." She laughs, bitter. "Business always takes longer than expected."
"Halima—"
"It's fine." She waves her hand. "I'm used to it. He's been gone more than he's been here since—" She stops.
"Since what?"
"Since always." She sets down her cup. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"Do you think I'm a bad wife?"
The question hits me like a punch. "What? No. Why would you—"
"Because I don't miss him." She looks at me, and her eyes are wet. "My husband has been gone for three weeks and I don't miss him at all. I feel relieved. What kind of wife feels relieved that her husband is gone?"
"A wife who isn't happy."
"I should be happy." She stands, paces. "He's a good man. He provides. He doesn't hit me. He doesn't yell. He's everything a husband is supposed to be."
"But?"
"But I feel nothing." She stops, faces me. "When he touches me, I feel nothing. When he talks, I hear nothing. I've been married for seven years and I can't remember the last time I felt anything at all."
I should stay where I am. Should say something comforting. Should be the supportive brother-in-law and nothing more.
Instead, I stand. Walk to her. Take her face in my hands.
"Do you feel this?"
Her breath catches. "Zakariye—"
"Do you feel this, Halima?"
"Yes."
I shouldn't kiss her.
She's my brother's wife. In our culture, that's worse than a stranger—that's family, that's trust, that's the kind of betrayal that destroys everyone it touches.
But she's crying now, tears streaming down her face, and she's looking at me like I'm the first real thing she's seen in years.
"We can't," she whispers.
"I know."
"If anyone found out—"
"I know."
"Liban would—"
"I know." I brush a tear from her cheek. "Tell me to leave and I'll leave. Tell me to stay and I'll stay. But don't tell me you feel nothing, because I can see it in your eyes—you feel everything."
She grabs my shirt.
Pulls me down.
Kisses me like she's been starving.
We don't make it to the bedroom.
The couch catches us, her back against the cushions, her legs wrapped around my waist. She tears at my clothes while I pull her dress over her head, revealing a body I've dreamed about for seven years.
"Zakariye—"
"I've wanted this—" I kiss her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breasts. "Since the wedding. Since I watched you walk down the aisle toward the wrong brother."
"The wrong—"
"It should have been me." I unhook her bra, watch her breasts spill free. "I saw you first. I wanted you first. But Liban was older and our families—"
"I didn't know."
"How could you?" I take her nipple in my mouth. "I never said anything. I just watched you marry him and told myself to forget."
"Did you forget?"
"Never." I kiss down her body. "Not once."
She tastes like years of wanting.
I bury my face between her thighs and worship her—slow, thorough, making up for every time I imagined this in the dark of my own bedroom. She moans and writhes and grabs my hair, and the sounds she makes are different from anything I expected.
Not the sounds of a woman who feels nothing.
The sounds of a woman who finally feels everything.
"Please—I need—"
I crawl up her body. Position myself. Look into her eyes.
"Are you sure?"
"I've never been more sure of anything." She pulls me down, kisses me, tastes herself on my lips. "Make me feel, Zakariye. Make me feel something."
I push inside.
She cries out.
Nails digging into my back, legs tightening around me, her whole body shaking as I fill her. It's been so long since she's been touched like this—properly, passionately, by someone who actually wants her.
"Yes—finally—yes—"
I move.
Slowly at first, letting her feel every inch. But she doesn't want slow—she rocks against me, demanding more, faster, harder.
"Please—"
I give her everything.
Pound into her while she screams into my shoulder, while the couch creaks beneath us, while pictures of my brother shake on the wall. I don't care. All I care about is her—her heat, her need, her voice crying my name.
"I'm going to—oh God—"
She comes.
Shatters around me, her pussy clenching so hard I follow her over, spilling inside her with a groan that comes from somewhere primal.
We lie together afterward.
Sweating. Panting. The reality of what we've done starting to sink in.
"What happens now?" she asks.
"I don't know."
"He comes back in a week."
"I know."
"Zakariye—" She rolls to face me. "I can't go back to how it was. I can't go back to feeling nothing."
"Then don't."
"What are you saying?"
I take her hand. "I'm saying—leave him. Tell him the truth. Tell him you were unhappy before I ever touched you and you can't pretend anymore."
"He'll know it was you."
"Probably."
"Your family will disown you."
"Probably."
"You'll lose everything."
"Not everything." I kiss her palm. "Not you."
She leaves him.
Not immediately—it takes months of quiet planning, of lawyers, of difficult conversations. My brother doesn't know about us, but he knows something changed. He knows his wife finally woke up.
"I can't give you what you need," she tells him. "I'm sorry."
The divorce is ugly. The community takes sides. My mother cries for weeks when she finds out I'm seeing Halima—not about the affair, which no one can prove, but about the audacity of dating my brother's ex-wife.
"She was never right for him," I tell my mother. "They were never right for each other."
"And you think you're right for her?"
"I know I am."
Liban doesn't speak to me for two years.
Then, slowly, he starts to thaw. A text on Eid. A phone call on my birthday. Eventually, coffee at a neutral café in Digbeth.
"You love her," he says. Not a question.
"Since before you married her."
"I know." He stirs his coffee. "I always knew. I married her anyway because I thought it was what families did. I thought love would come."
"It didn't."
"No." He looks up. "Does she love you?"
"Yes."
"Does she feel things? With you?"
"Everything."
He nods slowly. "Then maybe—maybe it worked out the way it should have."
It's not forgiveness. Not yet. But it's a start.
Three years after that first night on her couch, I marry Halima.
In a small ceremony, with only the family members who've accepted us. It's not what either of us imagined when we were young and believed in fairy tales.
But it's real.
And when she looks at me—when she tells me she loves me, when she cries because she's happy instead of empty—I know it was worth it.
Every lost relationship.
Every whispered judgment.
Every difficult year.
Worth it.
For the woman I should have married from the start.