The Convert
"She converted to marry his father. Now a widow in a foreign land, she turns to her stepson to learn what her husband never taught her. Some lessons require hands-on instruction."
Linda converted for love.
She was forty-five, American, recently divorced, and on a cruise along the East African coast when she met my father. He was sixty-eight, widowed, wealthy, and looking for someone to share his final years.
They married in Mombasa six months later. She took shahada the week before—la ilaha illallah—and became a Muslim, at least on paper.
Three years later, my father is dead, and Linda is alone in a country she barely understands.
That's when she comes to me.
"I don't know what to do."
She's sitting in my Nairobi apartment, massive in her widow's black—two-fifty of American curves packed into Islamic mourning clothes that don't quite fit. At forty-eight, she's still beautiful. Still lost.
"The family wants me out," she continues. "They've been circling since the funeral. Saying I don't belong. That I'm not really Muslim, not really family."
"You're my father's widow."
"I'm a mzungu who converted for money. That's what they think." She wipes her eyes. "I loved him, Rashid. I really did. He was kind to me when no one else was."
"I know."
"But I don't know how to survive here without him. The language, the customs, the religion—" She shakes her head. "He was supposed to teach me. We had years ahead of us. And now he's gone and I don't know anything."
"So learn."
"From who? His family hates me. The women at the mosque look at me like I'm a tourist. I have no one."
"You have me."
She moves into my guest room.
It's temporary, I tell myself. Just until she finds her footing. Just until she learns enough to survive on her own.
But the lessons become daily. Then constant.
"Teach me how to pray properly. Your father showed me once, but I've forgotten."
"Show me how to read Arabic. Just the basics. The prayers."
"Explain the holidays. The fasting. The rules about food and dress and—everything."
I become her guide to the religion she adopted three years ago and never truly learned. Her husband was patient but dying; he didn't have time for thorough instruction. Now she's hungry for knowledge.
Hungry for more than knowledge, I realize eventually.
"Can I ask you something personal?"
We're on my balcony, the Nairobi evening cool around us. She's been here a month. The widow's clothes have relaxed into simpler abayas. She's learning.
"Of course."
"Your father and I—we were married, but—" She hesitates. "He was sick for most of it. The intimacy was... limited."
"I don't need to know—"
"I need to talk about it. Please." She turns to face me. "I converted. I married. I gave up my entire life in America. And I never got to experience what marriage was supposed to be. Not the way it's described in the books I read about Islamic marriage."
"What do you mean?"
"The rights of a wife. The duties of a husband. The—the physical connection that's supposed to be sacred." She looks down. "Your father tried. But he was too old, too sick. We never really—"
She stops.
"Never really what?"
"Consummated. Not properly. Not more than a few times in three years." Her voice is small. "I don't know what I missed. What a proper Muslim marriage is supposed to feel like."
I should change the subject.
I should recommend she speak to a counselor. A sheikh. Anyone but her stepson.
Instead, I say: "What do you want to know?"
She wants to know everything.
The next week becomes a different kind of education. She asks questions no stepson should answer—about Islamic views on intimacy, about the Prophet's teachings on pleasure, about what her husband should have provided.
"The books say a husband must satisfy his wife," she says one evening. "That her pleasure is his obligation."
"That's true."
"Your father never—" She stops. "I thought there was something wrong with me. That I wasn't desirable because I was too big, too American, too other."
"There's nothing wrong with you."
"Then why didn't he want me?"
"He was dying. It wasn't about want."
"But if he had wanted—" She looks at me with something desperate in her eyes. "Would he have found me attractive? Would any Muslim man?"
"Linda—"
"I need to know." She stands, comes closer. "Three years of marriage and I don't even know if I'm wanted. If my body is—is acceptable. In this culture. In this religion."
"Your body is—" I swallow. "You're beautiful."
"Show me."
This is wrong.
She's my father's widow. She's American. She's confused and grieving and looking for validation in the wrong place.
But she's also standing in front of me, removing her abaya, revealing a body that's been hidden and ignored for years. Two-fifty of soft American curves—heavy breasts in a simple bra, round belly, thick thighs.
"Tell me what you see," she whispers. "Tell me what a Muslim man sees."
"I see—" My voice catches. "I see a woman. A beautiful woman."
"Your father's woman."
"My father's widow."
"Is that different?"
"It shouldn't be."
"But is it?"
It is.
When I kiss her, she melts into me like she's been waiting for permission. Her mouth is hungry, inexperienced, eager to learn. Her hands grip my shoulders like I'm the only solid thing in a world that's been shifting beneath her feet.
"Teach me," she breathes. "Teach me what I was supposed to learn."
I take her to my bedroom.
Lay her on my bed—the first bed that isn't her marital bed, the first man who isn't her husband. She's trembling.
"Relax," I tell her. "This is supposed to be good. Pleasurable. That's what the religion teaches."
"I don't know how to relax."
"Then let me show you."
I worship her American body.
Every inch my father was too sick to touch. Her heavy breasts—I take them in my hands, in my mouth, draw out moans she didn't know she could make. Her soft belly—I kiss it, stroke it, tell her it's beautiful until she believes me.
When I reach between her thighs, she gasps.
"Your father—he never—"
"I know."
"I didn't know it could feel—"
"It can. It should. Every time."
I make her come with my mouth, with my fingers, with patience my dying father couldn't provide. She sobs through her release—years of frustration pouring out.
"More," she begs. "I need more—"
I slide inside her.
She's tight—years of neglect—but wet, ready, desperate. Her legs wrap around me, pull me deep. Her nails score my back.
"Is this—is this what it's supposed to feel like?"
"Yes."
"It's—oh God—it's—"
She comes again. And again. I hold back as long as I can, give her everything she missed, everything she deserved. When I finally release, she's crying.
"Thank you," she whispers. "Thank you for showing me."
Weeks pass.
She stays in my guest room officially. Sleeps in my bed every night. We continue her education—prayers in the morning, Arabic in the afternoon, intimacy in the evening.
"The family would be horrified," she says one night.
"The family doesn't need to know."
"They already think I'm a fraud. If they knew I was sleeping with their nephew—"
"Stepnephew. There's no blood."
"There's scandal. A convert widow, sleeping with her husband's son." She laughs quietly. "They'd say I was never really Muslim at all. That I was just using the religion to get close to the family."
"Were you?"
"I was using it to find belonging." She traces patterns on my chest. "I found it. Just not where I expected."
A year later, we marry.
Quietly. Privately. The family is scandalized, then resigned. The convert and the stepson—at least she stays in the family, they tell themselves. At least the money doesn't leave.
They don't know the real story.
The widow who never consummated her marriage.
The stepson who taught her what she was missing.
The religion that gave us permission to find each other.
"Was this always your plan?" I ask her on our wedding night. "To marry into the family twice?"
"My plan was to survive." She kisses me. "You were a surprise."
"A good one?"
"The best one." She pulls me toward the bed. "Now. Show me again what a Muslim marriage is supposed to feel like."
Muhtadiyah.
Convert.
Learning something new every day.
Especially the lessons that matter most.