The Boat Builder's Wife
"Her husband builds dhows. The apprentice helps with the wood. When the master is away testing a new vessel, the apprentice helps with other things too."
Mwalimu Juma builds the finest dhows on the coast.
I've apprenticed with him for three years—learning the old ways, the proper wood, the curves that let a boat dance with the monsoon. He's seventy now, brilliant with ships, less brilliant with his wife.
Mama Zena is fifty-four.
And she's been watching me since I arrived.
"My husband sails today," she says.
She's at the workshop door, massive in her morning kanga—two-fifty of unsatisfied wife. The new dhow is finished, and Mwalimu Juma is taking it to Mombasa for the buyer.
"Three weeks for the journey. Three weeks alone."
"I'll continue the work—"
"You'll come to the house." It's not a request. "For dinner. Tonight."
Dinner is elaborate.
Food I haven't tasted in years of apprentice meals. Rice and fish and coconut, spiced the way only wealthy kitchens manage. She watches me eat.
"My husband chose well," she says. "With you. You have the hands for boats."
"Mwalimu Juma is a good teacher."
"Mwalimu Juma is an old man who thinks more about wood than about his wife." Her voice sharpens. "Do you know when he last touched me?"
"I couldn't—"
"Years. Years of sleeping next to a man who dreams of keels and masts." She stands. "I've watched you, Bakari. Young. Strong. Hands that shape wood all day."
"Mama Zena—"
"I want those hands on me."
She leads me to her bedroom.
The room she shares with my master—his tools in the corner, his plans on the wall, his wife in front of me removing her clothes.
"Three weeks," she says. "That's how long we have. Use them."
"This is betrayal—"
"This is payment." She pulls me close. "For three years of my husband ignoring me while teaching you. You owe me what he won't provide."
I owe her everything.
I lay her on my master's bed and worship her body—heavy and soft, marked by age, beautiful in ways young girls aren't. When I taste her, she cries out.
"He never—even when we were young—"
"I'm not him."
"No. You're not."
I enter her as the monsoon wind rattles the shutters.
She's tight—years of neglect—and she gasps as I fill her. Her legs wrap around me, pulling me deep.
"This is what I needed—what I've always needed—"
I take my master's wife in my master's bed, and nothing has ever felt more right.
Three weeks of lessons.
Not boat-building—something else. She teaches me what a woman wants. How to pace myself. Where to touch and when. By the time Mwalimu Juma returns, I've learned more from his wife than I ever learned from him.
"The work?" he asks, inspecting the workshop.
"Completed, Mwalimu."
"Good boy." He clasps my shoulder. "What did you do with your evenings?"
"Studied, Mwalimu. Your wife was kind enough to help."
"She's a good woman." He doesn't look at her. "The best."
The best.
And mine, whenever he sails.
Years pass. I become a master myself.
Still I return to Lamu. Still I visit Mama Zena when her husband is testing boats, delivering commissions, doing anything but giving her what she needs.
"You should marry," she tells me one night. "Have children. A real life."
"I have you."
"You have scraps. Stolen weeks when he's away." She traces my jaw. "That's not enough for a young man."
"It's enough for me."
"Then you're as foolish as I am." She kisses me. "And I love you for it."
Mwalimu Juma dies at sea.
Fitting end for a boat builder—his final dhow caught in a storm, taking him with it. The coast mourns a legend.
I mourn my teacher.
Then I go to his widow.
"You're free now," I tell her.
"Free to do what?" She's smaller in her grief. "Marry again? I'm sixty. No one wants an old widow."
"I want you."
"You want what we had. The sneaking. The stolen time."
"I want you." I take her hands. "Marry me. Let everyone wonder why. Let them say the apprentice loved the master's wife."
"They'll say worse than that."
"They'll say the truth." I kiss her. "That I've loved you since I was twenty. That I've waited. That now, finally, I can have you properly."
We marry.
The coast whispers—the young boat builder and the old master's widow. But whispers don't matter when you're finally home.
"Was it worth it?" she asks on our wedding night. "All those years of waiting?"
"Every minute." I pull her close. "I learned boats from your husband. I learned love from you."
Mke wa fundi.
The craftsman's wife.
Teaching her own lessons.
Building her own future.