The Matchmaker | NEON LIT

Shangazi Rehema is the best matchmaker on the coast.

For thirty years, she's been pairing families from Malindi to Mombasa. She knows which daughters are virtuous, which sons are reliable, which families have good blood. She's arranged over two hundred marriages, and all but three are still standing.

When I turn twenty-five without a wife, my mother sends me to her.

"Let Rehema find you someone," she says. "She found me your father. She'll find you a good woman."

I go to Malindi expecting to be shown photographs of eligible girls.

I leave three weeks later with something else entirely.

Rehema's house is on the old waterfront.

She greets me in flowing kanga, her body massive beneath—two-sixty at least, soft and commanding. At fifty-eight, she moves like a woman half her age. Her eyes miss nothing.

"Salim." She kisses both my cheeks. "Your mother's son. I remember when you were born."

"Shangazi. Thank you for seeing me."

"Seeing you?" She laughs. "You're family. And family gets special attention."

She leads me inside. The house smells of incense and coffee. Photographs line the walls—couples she's matched, weddings she's arranged.

"Three weeks," she says. "That's what I need. Three weeks to show you the candidates and help you choose."

"Three weeks is a long time."

"Good marriages take time." She touches my arm. "You'll stay here. I have rooms. It will make the process easier."

The first week, she shows me photographs.

Fatima from Lamu—twenty-two, educated, from a trading family. Zeinab from Mombasa—nineteen, beautiful, already trained in household management. Amira from Malindi itself—twenty-four, divorced, but from excellent stock.

"They're all beautiful," I say.

"Beauty fades." Rehema dismisses my observation. "What matters is compatibility. Character. The way a woman fits into your life."

"How do you know if she fits?"

"You meet her. Talk to her. And then—" She pauses. Looks at me with an intensity I can't read. "Then you test her."

"Test her how?"

"That comes later. First, the meetings."

I meet Fatima.

Pleasant. Intelligent. Nervous in my presence. She'd make a fine wife.

I meet Zeinab.

Young. Eager. Perhaps too eager. She reminds me of a student trying to pass an exam.

I meet Amira.

Experienced. Knowing. Her divorce has left her wary, but she has depth the others lack.

"Amira," I tell Rehema. "I think Amira might be the one."

"Perhaps." Rehema pours tea. We're in her sitting room, the evening call to prayer drifting through the windows. "But you haven't tested her yet."

"What is this test?"

She sets down the teapot. Looks at me directly.

"Marriage is more than conversation, Salim. It's more than shared meals and compatible families. A good wife must satisfy her husband. In all ways."

"Shangazi—"

"Don't be naive. You know what I mean." She leans closer. "Before you commit to any woman, you must know if she can please you. If your bodies fit."

"You're suggesting I—"

"I'm suggesting nothing." Her hand lands on my knee. "But if you wanted to know what you're looking for in a wife, I could show you. Train you. So when you do test your bride, you'll know exactly what matters."

This is wrong.

She's my aunt. She's fifty-eight years old. She's offering to—to what? Sleep with me? Train me for marriage?

"Many matchmakers do this," she says, reading my hesitation. "Not publicly. But privately. How else can a young man know what to look for? How else can he compare?"

"I have experience."

"With girls. Children." She dismisses the word. "I'm offering you a woman's perspective. A teacher's guidance. So when you choose your wife, you choose wisely."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then you refuse. And I continue to show you photographs, and you pick one based on nothing but appearance and conversation, and you hope for the best." She shrugs. "Many marriages survive on hope."

"And those that don't?"

"Those are the three I mentioned. The ones that failed." Her hand moves higher on my thigh. "They failed because the couples weren't matched. Not truly. Not in the ways that matter most."

I don't refuse.

Her bedroom is at the back of the house.

She leads me there after evening prayer, the house quiet, the servants dismissed. Candles flicker against the walls. The bed is wide, covered in silk.

"First lesson," she says, removing her kanga. "Watch."

I watch.

Her body emerges—heavy and soft, decades of comfort made flesh. Her breasts hang to her waist, dark-nippled, magnificent. Her belly is round, marked by age. Her thighs are thick, pressed together.

"This is what a real woman looks like," she says. "Not the tight, young bodies you've known. Those are unfinished. This—" She runs her hands down her sides. "This is complete."

"You're beautiful."

"I'm experienced. There's a difference." She comes to me. "Now. Show me what you know."

I show her.

Everything I've learned from the girls I've known—the kissing, the touching, the ways I've learned to make a woman gasp. She accepts it all, evaluates it, corrects me.

"Slower with the breasts. Heavy breasts need patience."

"Lower on the belly. The sensitivity increases downward."

"Not so fast with your tongue. Build. Always build."

She teaches me to read a woman's body—the tensing that signals approaching climax, the relaxation that means she's finally comfortable, the subtle movements that guide without words.

When I finally enter her, she nods approval.

"Good. You found the angle naturally. Most men never learn that."

I move inside my aunt—slowly, as she taught—and feel her respond.

"Yes—ndio—like that—you're learning—"

Three weeks become four.

Four become six.

I stop asking about the other candidates. Rehema stops mentioning them. Each night, I go to her bedroom. Each night, she teaches me something new.

"The back approach. For when she's tired but still wants you."

"The seated position. For mornings. For afternoons."

"The ways to bring a woman back when she's lost interest. The words to use. The touches."

I become her student in everything. Marriage, she explains, is an art. And art requires practice.

The seventh week, I ask the question.

"When does this end? When do I choose a wife?"

Rehema is in my arms, her weight pressed against me, her breath warm on my neck.

"Do you want it to end?"

"I need to marry. That's why I came."

"And you will marry. Eventually." She props herself up, looks at me. "But consider: the candidates I showed you. Fatima, Zeinab, Amira. Would any of them give you what I give you?"

"They're young. They'd learn."

"Maybe. Maybe not." She traces a finger down my chest. "Or you could have what's proven. What's certain. What you already know works."

"You?"

"Me." She smiles. "I'm a widow. No children to complicate inheritance. I'm of your family, which means the dowry stays close. And I've spent six weeks showing you exactly what I can provide."

"But the age—the difference—"

"Matters less than you think. I'll give you pleasure for decades yet. And when I'm gone, you can marry again. Younger. With the skills I've taught you."

I consider it.

The idea is insane. Marry my aunt? The woman who was supposed to find me a wife?

But she's right about one thing: what she provides is certain. I know her body. I know her mind. I know exactly what marriage to her would mean.

And the alternative? Gambling on a young woman who might never learn what Rehema already knows?

"My mother—"

"Wants you married. She doesn't specify to whom." Rehema rises, straddles me. "I've arranged two hundred marriages. This one will be the best of all."

"Because you're choosing yourself?"

"Because I know exactly what both parties need." She sinks down onto me, takes me inside her. "And because I want you, Salim. I've wanted you since you arrived. The matchmaking was just... a test."

"A test for who?"

"For both of us." She begins to move. "And we've both passed."

We marry quietly.

My mother is shocked, then accepting. Rehema was always her favorite relative, after all. The community whispers, then moves on. The matchmaker marrying her own candidate isn't unheard of—just unusual.

In private, nothing changes. She still teaches me. Still guides me. Still shows me new ways to please her and be pleased.

"You could have had anyone," I tell her one night. "Any of those young men you matched over the years. Why me?"

"Because you're mine." She pulls me close. "Blood calls to blood. I watched you grow from a child. I knew what kind of man you'd become. And I decided—long before your mother asked—that you'd belong to me."

"All those weeks of candidates—"

"A pretense. To keep you close. To let you think you were choosing." She laughs. "In matchmaking, Salim, the choice is never really the client's. It's always mine."

I should feel manipulated.

Instead, I feel matched.

Every night in her arms, every morning waking to her weight beside me, every moment of what she taught me and continues to teach—all of it feels inevitable. Right. The way marriage should be.

The matchmaker found me a wife.

She just didn't tell me it was her.

And now I understand: that was the point.

Mwendaji.

Matchmaker.

Finding herself the perfect match.

Me.