The Quran Teacher

Mwalimu Salma has been teaching Quran for forty years.

Every child in Stone Town's elite families has sat before her, learning to recite the holy words. She's patient, strict, and legendary—a woman who can make the most stubborn child memorize entire surahs in weeks.

I'm not a child.

I'm thirty-two, successful, and I've forgotten everything I learned as a boy. My mother is dying, and her last wish is to hear me recite Al-Fatiha properly at her funeral.

So I go to Mwalimu Salma.

She receives me in her teaching room.

Sixty-three years old, massive in her black abaya—two-sixty at least, with hands that have turned a thousand pages and a voice that has shaped a thousand minds. She looks at me like I'm a child who's wandered into the wrong classroom.

"You want to learn Quran. At your age."

"I want to remember what I've forgotten."

"That's different." She gestures to the mat before her. "Sit. Let me hear what you know."

I sit. I try to recite Al-Fatiha—the opening, the prayer every Muslim should know by heart.

I stumble on the third ayah.

"Worse than I thought." She sighs. "This will take time. Come every evening after Maghrib. We'll start from the beginning."

The lessons begin.

Every evening, I sit before her, reciting like a child. She corrects my pronunciation, my tajweed, the subtle rhythms that make the words holy.

"Your mouth is lazy," she tells me. "It's learned bad habits from years of not praying properly."

"I pray."

"You mumble. That's not prayer." She leans close, touches my jaw. "Here. The sound comes from here. Feel it."

Her fingers are warm on my face. Professional. But something stirs.

Weeks pass.

My recitation improves. My mother rallies briefly, then declines. I throw myself into the lessons—the only thing I can control, the only gift I can prepare.

"You're dedicated," Salma observes one evening. "More than my usual students."

"It's for my mother."

"I know. She was my student once, you know. Forty years ago." She smiles. "She had the same stubborn jaw. The same difficulty with the letter ع."

"You remember her?"

"I remember all my students." Her eyes hold mine. "I remember you, too. When you were eight. Before your father sent you to the mainland for school."

"I don't remember the lessons."

"You remember me." It's not a question. "I saw it when you walked in. The recognition."

She's right.

I do remember her—not the lessons, but her. The massive woman who seemed like a mountain when I was small. The voice that could be terrifying and soothing in the same breath. The hands that guided my small fingers across the pages.

"You were beautiful," I say without thinking.

"I was forty."

"You were beautiful. You still are."

She's quiet for a long moment.

"Your lesson is over for tonight," she says. "Go home."

I don't go home.

"Mwalimu—"

"That's not appropriate." She stands, moves toward the window. "You're my student. I'm old enough to be your mother. Your grandmother, even."

"But you're not my mother. Or my grandmother."

"I'm your teacher. That's worse." She doesn't turn around. "The trust a student places in their teacher is sacred. The Quran is clear on this."

"The Quran is clear on many things. Not on what I feel."

"What you feel is gratitude. Nostalgia. The stress of your mother's illness." She finally turns. "It's not real."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm sixty-three years old and no man has looked at me that way in decades." Her voice cracks. "Don't pretend."

"I'm not pretending."

I cross the room.

She doesn't stop me. Doesn't move as I approach, as I stand before her, as I reach up to touch her face the way she's touched mine a hundred times during lessons.

"Your pronunciation is wrong," I murmur.

"What?"

"When you said 'don't pretend.' Your lips didn't form the words correctly." I trace her mouth. "Let me show you."

I kiss her.

She tastes like mint tea and decades of restraint.

Her body goes rigid at first—the teacher's discipline, the religious woman's resistance. Then something breaks, and she's kissing me back, her hands gripping my shoulders, her weight pressing forward.

"This is haram," she gasps.

"This is human."

"I've never—with a student—"

"Then let me be your teacher. For once."

Her bedroom is modest.

A single bed, a prayer rug, a Quran on the nightstand. The room of a woman who's devoted her life to the holy book, who's never allowed herself anything else.

"I haven't been touched since my husband died," she says. "Twenty years."

"Then you're overdue."

I undress her slowly. The abaya falls away, then the layers beneath, until she's bare before me—sixty-three years of dedication made flesh. Heavy breasts marked by age. A belly soft and round. Thighs thick with years of sitting, teaching, guiding.

"This is what you want?" She sounds disbelieving.

"This is what I need."

I worship her the way she taught me to worship the words.

Slowly. Reverently. With attention to every detail, every nuance, every sacred curve. My mouth traces her body like I'm reciting a new surah—learning the rhythm, finding the meaning.

When I reach between her thighs, she gasps a word I don't recognize.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Old Arabic. Keep—keep going—"

I keep going. Make her come with my mouth, with my fingers, with the patience she taught me through weeks of lessons. She recites fragments of Quran as she climaxes—the verses mixing with moans in a prayer I've never heard before.

When I enter her, she weeps.

"Twenty years," she whispers. "Twenty years of nothing. And now—"

"Now you have this." I move slowly, feeling her body adjust to something it's almost forgotten. "You have me."

"A student."

"A man. Who sees you. Who wants you." I thrust deeper. "Who's grateful for everything you've taught him."

She wraps her thick legs around me, pulls me closer. Her body is soft beneath mine, welcoming in ways that twenty years of solitude couldn't destroy.

"Teach me," she breathes. "Teach me what I've forgotten."

We spend the night in lessons.

She teaches me recitation between rounds—making me practice Al-Fatiha while my body recovers, correcting my pronunciation with kiss-swollen lips. I teach her what she's forgotten—how to feel pleasure, how to ask for what she needs, how to let go.

By Fajr, we're both exhausted.

"Your mother's funeral," she says. "You'll be ready."

"Thanks to you."

"Thanks to this." She gestures at the tangled sheets, our intertwined bodies. "I don't know what this is, but it's not traditional teaching."

"Call it supplementary lessons."

She laughs. For the first time since I've known her, she laughs.

My mother dies three weeks later.

At the funeral, I recite Al-Fatiha perfectly. Every word, every tajweed rule, every subtle rhythm exactly as Mwalimu Salma taught me. The relatives weep. The imam nods approval.

Salma stands in the back, her eyes shining.

Well done, her look says. My student.

The lessons continue.

Long after my mother is buried, long after I've memorized enough Quran to satisfy any relative, I still go to Mwalimu Salma's house. Every evening after Maghrib. Just like before.

"You don't need more lessons," she says.

"I need you."

"That's not the same thing."

"It's better."

She pulls me toward the bedroom—the same modest room, now transformed by what we've shared. The Quran still sits on the nightstand. But now it shares space with us.

"Recite for me," she whispers as I undress her. "While you—while we—"

"Which surah?"

"Al-Rahman. The Most Merciful."

I recite Al-Rahman while I make love to my Quran teacher. The words spill from my mouth—perfect now, shaped by her hands and her mouth and her body.

Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?

None of them.

Not a single one.

Mwalimu.

Teacher.

Teaching me everything.