Shahidi
"He catches the thick married woman with her lover. Now she pays for his silence. Weekly. In the same place he caught them. Her husband never knows. Her secret stays safe—as long as she keeps paying."
I see them through the window.
The old storeroom behind the mosque. I'm cutting through the alley, taking a shortcut home. The window is dusty, but not dusty enough.
Bi Amina—the imam's daughter, married to the wealthy merchant—is bent over a crate while a man who isn't her husband pounds into her from behind.
I should keep walking.
I don't.
The man finishes and leaves.
Amina straightens her clothes, adjusts her hijab. She looks around carefully before exiting—
And sees me.
Standing at the corner of the building. Watching.
Her face goes white.
"Please—" she starts.
"That wasn't your husband."
"No." She's shaking. "Please, you can't tell anyone. My father—the imam—my husband—"
"I know who your family is."
"Then you know what this would do." She grabs my arm. "I'll do anything. Give you anything. Just don't tell."
"Anything?"
She realizes what she's offered.
And doesn't take it back.
"That man," I say. "Who is he?"
"No one. A mistake. He's leaving town tomorrow—I'll never see him again."
"But you've been seeing him."
"For three months." She looks down. "My husband is old. Tired. He hasn't touched me in two years. I was desperate."
"Desperate enough to risk everything."
"Yes." She meets my eyes. "Desperate enough for anything."
I take her in the storeroom.
The same place I caught her. The same crate she was bent over. Her thick body submits while her conscience screams.
"Is this what you wanted?"
"This is payment." I thrust into her. "For my silence."
"Once—this once—"
"This is the first installment." I pound harder. "There will be more."
She comes despite herself.
Her body betraying her mind. She muffles her screams in her own hijab, her thick flesh shaking.
"I'm a terrible person—"
"You're a person with needs." I fill her. "Now you have someone to meet them. Safely. Secretly."
"There's nothing safe about this—"
"Safer than him." I pull out, adjust my clothes. "Same time next week. Here. Don't be late."
Weekly payments.
Every Thursday, after Dhuhr prayers, while her husband naps and her father leads study groups. She comes to the storeroom. I come to her.
"Why do you do this?" she asks one day.
"Because I can."
"That's it? Power?"
"Power. Pleasure. You." I spread her across the crates again. "Take your pick."
The affair with the other man was clumsy.
Quick encounters, constant fear, inevitable discovery. With me, it's organized. Scheduled. Professional.
"You're better than he was," she admits.
"I have leverage."
"Is that the only reason?"
"Does it matter?" I thrust deeper. "You're here. I'm here. Your husband isn't."
Her husband is old and tired.
Sixty-three, worn out from decades of trading. He married Amina when she was young and he was merely middle-aged. Now he can barely climb stairs, let alone satisfy a wife.
"He's a good man," she says.
"I'm sure he is."
"I should love him."
"You should." I mount her from behind. "But you're here instead."
"Because you make me—"
"I haven't made you do anything since the first time." I grip her thick hips. "You keep coming back by choice."
She's quiet for a moment.
Then she starts pushing back against me.
"Maybe I do."
"My husband is dying," she tells me one Thursday.
The storeroom smells like dust and sweat. She's lying on a blanket I brought—we've graduated from crates.
"I'm sorry."
"Are you?" She turns to look at me. "He's the only thing standing between us and... whatever this is."
"What is this?"
"I don't know anymore." She traces my chest. "You started as a blackmailer. Now you're... I don't know what you are."
"I'm yours." The words surprise me. "When you're here, I'm yours."
Her husband dies three months later.
The funeral is elaborate. The merchant left her wealthy. She could remarry anyone—her father the imam would arrange it.
But she keeps coming to the storeroom.
"You don't have to," I tell her. "The leverage is gone. Your husband is dead. The affair doesn't matter anymore."
"I know."
"Then why are you still here?"
She mounts me on the dusty floor, her thick body finding the rhythm we've perfected over months.
"Because I want to be."
She remarries a year later.
Not me—I'm too young, too poor, too nothing. She marries another merchant, another old man, another safe choice.
But every Thursday, she still comes to the storeroom.
"He's old too," she says. "But not as old as the first."
"You're collecting husbands."
"I'm collecting security." She rides me harder. "You're something else. The only real thing in my life."
Her second husband lives longer.
Fifteen years of Thursdays. Fifteen years of the storeroom, then later my apartment, then later a flat she rents just for us.
"I should have married you," she says.
"You needed money. Position. I had neither."
"I had them." She traces my face. "But I needed this. I needed you."
Bi Amina is sixty now.
Widowed twice, wealthy, respected. Her children are grown, her father the imam is long dead. She has no one to hide from.
But she still comes to me.
"The shahidi," she says. "The witness. You saw my sin and turned it into salvation."
"I turned it into sex."
"Same thing." She pulls me into her. "For me, it was the same thing."
Some secrets are meant to be kept.
Some witnesses take payment forever.
And some affairs outlast every marriage, every scandal, every reason they started.
Ours did.
Ours will.
For as long as she keeps coming back.
And she never stops.