The Sheikh's Mother

Sheikh Yusuf is my best friend.

We grew up together—same neighborhood, same mosque, same dreams. But our paths diverged. He became a religious scholar, then an imam, then the most respected sheikh in Mombasa. I became a businessman. Successful, but ordinary.

What we share is history.

What I can't share is my obsession with his mother.

Mama Hafsa is sixty-one.

A widow for twenty years, devout beyond question, respected by everyone who knows her. She raised Yusuf alone after his father died. Gave him to the faith. Watched him become everything the community hoped for.

She's also two-sixty of soft, forbidden curves that have haunted my dreams since adolescence.

"Hassan." She greets me at Yusuf's house, where I've come for Friday lunch. "My second son. It's been too long."

"Mama Hafsa." I kiss her cheeks, smelling rosewater and prayer. "You look well."

"I look old." She laughs. "But you're kind to lie."

She's not old. She's magnificent—heavy and warm and wrapped in the modest clothes that somehow make her more alluring than any uncovered woman I've known.

Yusuf is delayed at the mosque.

"He sends apologies," Mama Hafsa says. "A family needs counseling. He'll be at least an hour."

"I can come back—"

"Nonsense. Sit. Eat. Keep an old woman company." She ushers me to the sitting room. "Tell me about your life. Your business. Your wife."

"I'm not married."

"Still?" She clucks her tongue. "A man your age. It's not proper."

"I haven't found the right woman."

"You haven't looked hard enough." She pours tea. "What are you waiting for? What kind of woman?"

I should lie.

Should describe some ideal girl—young, modest, good family. Should pretend I'm waiting for someone appropriate.

Instead, I say: "Someone like you."

She freezes.

"What did you say?"

"Someone like you." I've started—I might as well finish. "Someone strong. Wise. Someone who's lived a life, not just started one. Someone—"

"Hassan." Her voice is sharp. "I'm your friend's mother. I'm old enough to be your mother."

"I know."

"This is haram. On multiple levels."

"I know."

"Then why would you say such a thing?"

"Because I've been thinking it for thirty years." I set down my tea. "And I'm tired of pretending otherwise."

She should throw me out.

Should tell Yusuf. Should end a friendship that's lasted three decades over a confession that should never have been spoken.

Instead, she's quiet for a long time.

"Thirty years," she finally says. "Since you were a boy."

"Since I was old enough to understand what I wanted."

"And you never said anything."

"You were married. Then you were grieving. Then you were the sheikh's mother." I look at her. "There was never a right time."

"There's no right time for this. There's no right way to want your friend's mother."

"I know. But I want you anyway."

Yusuf won't be back for an hour.

Mama Hafsa knows this. I know this. The empty house stretches between us, full of silence and possibility.

"If this happened," she says slowly. "If I—if we—"

"Yusuf would never know."

"I would know. Allah would know."

"And would that stop you?"

She closes her eyes. When she opens them, something has shifted.

"I've been alone for twenty years," she says. "Do you know what that's like? To be the sheikh's mother, the widow, the respectable woman—and have no one touch you? No one see you as anything but their friend's mother?"

"I've seen you. Always."

"That's what scares me." She stands. "Come with me. Quickly. Before I remember who I'm supposed to be."

Her bedroom is a shrine to modesty.

Prayer rug, Quran, simple furnishings. The room of a woman who's devoted herself to faith and her son's reputation.

"Lock the door," she says.

I lock it.

"Don't speak. Don't—just—" She begins unwrapping herself. "If we're doing this, we're doing it now. Before I come to my senses."

Her clothes fall away. She's everything I've imagined—heavy breasts, soft belly, thighs thick with age. The body of the woman I've wanted since I was a boy.

"Well?" She sounds uncertain for the first time. "Is this what you wanted?"

I answer by pulling her to me.

I worship her.

Every inch of the forbidden body I've dreamed about for decades. My mouth on her breasts, her belly, the wetness between her thighs. She comes on my tongue, biting her hand to muffle the sound.

"Hassan—we shouldn't—"

"We already are."

I slide inside her. She's tight—twenty years without—and she gasps at the intrusion.

"Slowly—it's been so long—"

I go slowly. Carefully. Give her body time to remember what it was made for. And when she finally relaxes around me, I begin to move.

"Yes—ndio—I forgot—I forgot what this—"

She comes twice more before I let go. When I spill inside her, she holds me like she'll never let go.

"We can't do this again," she whispers.

"I know."

"Yusuf would be destroyed. His reputation. His faith."

"I know."

"This was a mistake. A beautiful, terrible mistake."

It's a mistake we repeat.

Whenever Yusuf is at the mosque—which is often—I visit his mother. For tea, I tell people. For company. For the friendship that's older than his religious career.

No one suspects.

The sheikh's mother and his best friend? Impossible. Unthinkable.

Unthinkably perfect.

"We should stop," she says one evening. We're in her bed again, her weight pressed against me. "Before someone finds out."

"Has anyone suspected?"

"No. But Allah knows. Every time we do this, I'm sinning against my son. Against everything I raised him to believe."

"Does it feel like sin?"

"It feels like..." She pauses. "It feels like living. After twenty years of just existing."

"Then let's keep living."

We keep living.

Years pass. Yusuf remains oblivious—why would he suspect? His mother is devout. His friend is loyal. Nothing could possibly happen between them.

At his Friday sermons, I sit in the front row. His mother sits with the women. We don't look at each other.

But at night, when the mosque is empty and the streets are quiet—

I go to her.

The sheikh's mother.

My best friend's greatest sin.

Mama ya Sheikh.

The sheikh's mother.

Belonging to no one.

Belonging to me.