The Patriarch's Wife

My father's fourth wife arrives wearing gold.

Gold bangles from wrist to elbow. Gold chains around her neck. Gold anklets that chime when she walks. She steps off the dhow and onto the Stone Town pier like a queen returning home, which in a way she is—Zuhura bint Khalfan, daughter of one of Zanzibar's oldest spice trading families, married at last to the wealthy Omani merchant who's been courting her for three years.

My father.

Who is seventy-two.

And she is thirty-nine.

"Juma." My father waves me forward. "Come meet your new mother."

Mother. As if this woman—this thick, magnificent woman with hips that sway like palm fronds and breasts that strain against her embroidered dress—could ever be my mother.

I'm thirty-five. She's only four years older than me.

"Karibu," I say. Welcome.

She looks at me with eyes that have seen centuries of trade and conquest, dark and knowing and Arabic. Her smile reveals nothing.

"Asante, mwanangu." Thank you, my son.

The word drips with irony.

The house in Stone Town is a monument to my father's success.

Carved wooden doors that date to the Portuguese occupation. A central courtyard with a fountain that hasn't worked in decades. Rooms upon rooms, each filled with antiques and memories of wives who came before—my mother, who died when I was twelve; Fatima, who divorced him after five years; Khadija, who died in childbirth along with her baby.

Now Zuhura.

She moves through the house like she was born here, rearranging furniture, ordering the servants, marking her territory. Within a week, the entire compound smells different—oud and sandalwood, the perfumes of her Zanzibari girlhood replacing the dusty neglect of an old man living alone.

"You disapprove," she says one evening.

We're on the rooftop terrace, watching the sunset over the Indian Ocean. My father is already asleep—he sleeps more than he's awake these days—and we are alone for the first time since her arrival.

"It's not my place to approve or disapprove."

"But you do. Disapprove." She turns to look at me, and the fading light catches her cheekbones, her full lips, the soft curve of her jaw. "You think I married him for his money."

"Didn't you?"

She laughs—low, musical, dangerous. "Of course I did. He's seventy-two. I'm thirty-nine. My family's spice trade collapsed a decade ago. I needed security."

"And he needed...?"

"Youth. Beauty. A woman to warm his bed and make him feel like a man again." She shrugs, and the movement does interesting things to her chest. "It's an honest transaction. More honest than most marriages."

"Can he even—"

"Warm his bed?" Another laugh. "Barely. Once a month, perhaps. When the Viagra cooperates."

"That seems... unfair. To you."

Her eyes meet mine. Hold.

"Yes," she says. "It does."

My father travels for business.

Oman, Dubai, Muscat—the old trade routes his family has worked for generations. At seventy-two, he should be retired, but he refuses to let the empire die. "I'll rest when I'm in the ground," he always says.

So he travels. And Zuhura stays behind.

With me.

"He'll be gone three weeks."

She says it casually, over breakfast. Mahamri and chai, the sweet bread melting on my tongue.

"I should visit the Mombasa office—"

"You should stay." Her foot finds mine under the table. "The house is too big for one person. I get... lonely."

Her toes trace up my ankle. My calf. Higher.

"Zuhura—"

"Mama Zuhura," she corrects, smiling. "I'm your stepmother, remember?"

"That's exactly why—"

"Exactly why what?" She leans forward, and her dress gapes, revealing the dark valley between her breasts. "Why you've been watching me for three months? Why I hear you pacing at night, past my bedroom door? Why you can barely look at me without—"

"Stop."

"Make me."

I don't know who moves first.

One moment we're at the breakfast table; the next I'm kissing her, and she's moaning into my mouth, and her hands are everywhere—my chest, my back, my ass, pulling me closer.

"Upstairs," she gasps. "The master bedroom."

"My father's bed—"

"My bed. He's not here. He's never here." She bites my lip hard enough to hurt. "I am the patriarch's wife. The house is mine. You are mine."

She leads me through the courtyard, past the broken fountain, up the carved wooden stairs to the bedroom suite that overlooks the ocean. The room smells like her—oud and sandalwood—and the bed is massive, piled with cushions in a dozen colors.

She turns to face me. Begins to unwrap her dress.

"Let me," I say.

She stops. Lets me approach.

I've undressed women before. But never like this—never layer by layer of silk and cotton, never with gold jewelry catching the light, never with the knowledge that this woman is my father's wife and I am damning myself with every touch.

The dress falls. She's wearing a kifungo underneath—a traditional Zanzibari wrap—and I unwrap that too, until she stands before me in nothing but gold.

"Bismillah," I breathe.

She's magnificent.

Full breasts, heavy and round, dark nipples already stiff. A belly that curves outward, soft and ample, marked with faint stretch marks from a pregnancy in her youth. Hips that flare wide, thighs that press together, an ass I can see curving behind her.

She must be two-forty, two-fifty. Every pound of it perfection.

"This is what your father bought," she says. "This is what he barely touches." She steps toward me, takes my hand, places it on her breast. "Now touch what he ignores."

I worship her.

There's no other word. I kiss every inch—her neck, her shoulders, the heavy swell of her breasts. I take her nipples in my mouth, suck until she cries out. I kiss my way down her belly, trace the stretch marks with my tongue, kneel before her like a supplicant.

"What are you—"

I spread her thighs. She's bare beneath the gold—smooth, wet, swollen.

"Showing you what you deserve."

I taste her.

She screams so loud the servants probably hear.

I don't care. I eat her like she's the first meal I've ever had, like she's the last. My tongue explores every fold; my fingers find her entrance and slide inside. She's wet—dripping—and when I curl my fingers upward, she nearly collapses.

"The bed—the bed—"

I lift her. Carry her. Drop her onto the cushions and dive back between her thighs.

"Juma—ya Allah—I'm going to—"

She comes with her fingers in my hair and her thighs crushing my head. I push her through it, then start again.

Three orgasms later, she's sobbing.

"Inside me. Please. I need—"

I strip. Her eyes go wide.

"Your father is not—" She swallows. "He is not built like you."

"Is that a problem?"

"It's a blessing." She pulls me down onto her. "Now give me what he can't."

I sink into her slowly.

She gasps as I fill her, stretch her, claim her. Tight—impossibly tight—and wet, and hot. Her legs wrap around my waist. Her nails dig into my shoulders.

"Move. Move."

I move.

Slow at first, savoring. Then faster, harder, as she begs for more. The carved wooden bed—antique, priceless—slams against the wall with every thrust. She screams with every stroke.

"Yes—na'am—harder—your father never—he could never—"

"I'm not my father."

"I know." She pulls me down, kisses me fiercely. "That's why I want you."

I fuck her until the sun sets.

Then I fuck her again when it rises.

Three weeks of my father's absence. Three weeks of sin in the house of the patriarch. Every room. Every surface. Every position she's imagined in her lonely nights.

"We're going to hell," she murmurs one midnight.

"Probably."

"Was it worth it?"

I roll on top of her. She spreads beneath me, welcoming.

"Ask me again when we get there."

My father returns.

Tired, older than when he left. He kisses Zuhura's cheek, thanks her for keeping the house, never notices the way she avoids my eyes.

"How was everything?" he asks me.

"Quiet," I say. "Boring."

"Good, good." He pats my shoulder. "I'm glad you kept her company."

Zuhura coughs behind her hand.

I don't smile.

It doesn't end.

It can't end. Not now that I've tasted her, had her, known her in ways my father never will. We find moments—stolen hours when he naps, whole nights when he travels, dangerous encounters in the courtyard when everyone else sleeps.

"He'll die eventually," she whispers one night.

"Zuhura—"

"It's not a wish. It's a fact. He's seventy-two. He has a bad heart." She traces patterns on my chest. "And when he's gone, you'll inherit everything. Including me."

"That's not—"

"Morbid? Of course it is." She props herself up, looks at me with those ancient eyes. "But this is Zanzibar. This is the way it's always been. The old patriarchs die. The young ones inherit. And the wives... the wives survive."

"Is that all you want? To survive?"

"No." She kisses me softly. "I want to live. For the first time in my life, I want to live."

I pull her close. Feel her weight settle against me.

"Then live," I whisper. "With me."

My father dies two years later.

Heart attack, peaceful, in his sleep. The imam says he was blessed to go so gently.

I inherit everything. The house in Stone Town. The trading company. The servants, the ships, the spice routes that stretch from Zanzibar to Arabia.

And the widow.

Who moves into my wing of the house.

Who shares my bed.

Who, in the eyes of the world, is simply the patriarch's wife—loyal to the family, devoted to its continued success.

They don't need to know which patriarch she truly serves.

Some traditions are inherited.

Some wives are too.

Alhamdulillah.

Thanks be to God.