Chapter 2
In that earlier time, home was still a refuge for me, one which I was so relieved to return to that its increasing tension often slipped my eye.
Though rescuing “Dunya” had not brought riches, I’d invested what money remained more wisely than when I had initially retired.
Between those investments and my active involvement with the Marawati, my family’s income had finally steadied.
And though such stability did little to assuage my guilt over the secrets I was keeping from them, I have witnessed enough suffering in this life that knowing my family had a roof, food, and enough coin to hire a physician brought great relief to my soul.
Even if our arguments remained the same.
I was grilling the fish I’d caught that morning, alongside onions from the garden, sprinkling both with salt and coriander seeds.
“Oh, Jana, be careful,” I warned as my daughter sponged out dough a little too carelessly on the scorching-hot griddle.
I shooed her away. “Let me finish the bread. Go bring your grandmother and Auntie Hala some water.”
“Her grandmother would rather her granddaughter complete a task without her mother’s interference.
” My own mother didn’t glance up from the porridge she was mixing in a small clay cup.
“I was making bread, grinding my own grain, and preparing for marriage at Marjana’s age, Amina, and the Almighty knows you were doing much worse.
Let me have the baby, Mustafa,” she insisted, holding out a hand for my one-year-old niece, currently dawdling on my brother’s knee. “I will feed her.”
My brother obliged, then rose to help me, taking over the fish as I finished the bread. “She told Hala the other day that when she was Bubu’s age, she had half the Quran memorized,” he whispered.
I glanced at my four-year-old nephew, who currently had more banana on his face than he’d likely consumed. “I believe it. I can imagine Amma being a determined child.”
We piled the still-steaming bread and fish onto a wide platter. I set aside another portion of food in a covered stone dish while my brother laid the platter on a mat before the rest of our family.
“So our supposed guest is skipping dinner?” my mother asked. “Again?”
I settled besides Marjana. “Her work can be dangerous to interrupt.”
“Then by all means, let it be done under our noses.” My mother sucked her teeth in displeasure. “Sharing a meal while a guest starves in the cellar . . . for shame.”
“I shall be sure to pass on your concern,” I promised.
She relented and we dug into our meal, thanking God for the food and then settling into the evening with familiar ease.
Marjana worked at her ground loom while Hala spun wool and spoke of town gossip, my niece asleep in a sling on her back.
Mustafa tooled a belt, as my mother lectured him on God-only-knew-what and spooned porridge into Bubu’s mouth.
In the swiftly darkening twilight, there was a heavy peace in the air.
A cool breeze had lifted the humidity, carrying the gentle night-song of insects and offering welcome relief from the day’s heat.
I took a sip of my sugarcane juice, setting aside the net I’d been mending to watch my daughter work.
She is quite a talent at that, I thought, not for the first time.
The colors and patterns on the cloth that Marjana was weaving sparkled in the dusk light, shimmering and capturing the eye, the graceful forms of swooping swallows emerging from the indigo warp.
I’d never had much talent, nor patience, with textiles.
I could spin thread well enough, as virtually all girls were taught—but whatever mental acuity let me read the stars and chart out sailing courses had never extended to memorizing the patterns of a loom.
But even I could recognize uncommon skill, and while I wasn’t sure what Marjana’s future would look like, it was reassuring to know she’d have a trade.
That’s a future drawing closer with every day.
Sitting at the loom, her henna-dyed fingers darting from task to task with practiced ease—running the shaft of yarn through the taut vertical threads, yanking them down with her gazelle-horned tool, bringing down the wooden bar—Marjana could have been a bride weaving a rug for her marital home, and it made my heart ache.
When did she get so old? It felt only just yesterday she’d been a babe in my arms, her warm weight upon my chest.
The memory made me soft and nostalgic. Drowsy—the day’s labor catching up to me as I contentedly watched my daughter work. The soft twitter of birdsong lulling me to sleep as thoroughly as a lullaby . . .
There are no songbirds awake at this hour, you fool. I shook myself awake with a grunt. “It is so late that my ears are deceiving me. Let me check on our guest and bring her some food. Mustafa, you are back to Salalah early morrow?”
“I . . . Yes.” My brother tried and failed to exchange a glance with his wife and our mother that didn’t appear guilty. “But I had hoped to speak with you before departing.”
As if this was prearranged—and it certainly had been; my blood family is as terrible at deceit as my found ones are gifted—Hala rose to her feet. “I shall get the children to sleep.”
Bubu immediately caught Marjana’s hand. “I want Jana to tell me a story! Last time she did, she made all the shadows fly!”
Marjana covered his mouth. “Silly, you were already dreaming by then.”
As Hala took the children downstairs, I pinned Mustafa with a gaze, knowing him to be an easier mark than our mother. “What have you been plotting?”
“No one has been plotting,” my mother replied, exasperated. “Amina, stop glaring at your brother like he owes you stolen cargo. You have been with your sea criminals too long to be acting thus.”
Mustafa flushed. God, maybe I did need to spend more time at home if my own kin couldn’t hold a bluff—how did this man deal with customers? “She’s not entirely wrong, Ma. We have been plotting . . . at least, I have been.”
“Out with it,” I insisted.
He wrung his hands. “The meeting I have tomorrow is not about work. Or rather not just work. One of my elderly clients is moving to Mecca in hope of spending his remaining years in the holy city, should God allow. He wishes to sell his home and asked if I would be interested. The location is excellent: close to the market, ample space for a workshop with an existing forge that I could convert for my glasswork. The building is not so large as this one, of course, but there are rooms aplenty and a lovely courtyard with mature fruit trees. Both the masjid and the sea are a short walk, as are Hala’s parents—”
I cut him off. “You wish to buy a home in Salalah? You and Hala are moving?”
He hesitated, his gaze darting to our mother.
She cleared her throat. “Not just Mustafa and Hala are moving, Amina. All of us are.”
Taken aback, I straightened up like a cord pulled taut. “It is not safe. We discussed this when we returned to Oman—”
“Yes. A decade ago. When you retired and it seemed we had little choice.” My mother paused, and I could tell she was choosing her next words with care.
“But you have returned to sea, daughter. Multiple times—even if under more . . . lawful circumstances.” She didn’t say the word lawful with much conviction.
“If you believe it safe enough to do such, we believe it safe enough to move to town.”
I was already shaking my head. “There are still people who would harm us—I only recently had Sayyida Salima track me down!”
“If circumstances were as dangerous as you claim, you would not be back on the Marawati,” my mother argued.
“You forget that I kept Mustafa and myself secure during your most infamous years; you forget that I was married to a pirate, with an even more notorious scoundrel for a father-in-law. I know how to stay anonymous. We came to this falling-down place for you, and now you are gone half the time.”
It was an accusation, even if gently delivered, and one that twisted my gut; the vision of my family in this lonely, isolated location while I was out having adventures.
Mustafa must have noticed my expression. “The move could be a blessing,” he added, enthusiasm bubbling in his voice. “Salalah is lovely. The children will have access to more family and more opportunities. We can hire them a tutor, they can make friends—”
“No.”
My flat rebuke, delivered more harshly than I had intended, shuttered his face. “Amina . . .”
“There is no argument to be had,” I insisted, rising to my feet. “It is not safe, not for any of you.”
“That is not your decision to make!” This time when I glared, Mustafa didn’t back down.
“My sister, I love you. I understand my life, my education, my wedding—everything I have—came from your years as the Marawati’s nakhudha.
But I am not a fatherless ten-year-old anymore.
I, too, have responsibilities to our family. And our children, your child . . .”
“My child is what?” I snapped when he trailed off, seeming to swallow his words. “What do you know of my daughter that I, her own mother, do not?”
It was my mother who answered. “Marjana is suffocating, and everyone can see it but you.” I could not halt the enraged flash of my eyes, but she pressed on.
“She is not a baby, not a jewel you can lock away in a chest—she is a young woman of your blood. Your spirit. How would you feel growing up in a place like this? She needs more than a handful of people to talk to. We all do! You cannot sashay through every port on the Indian Ocean and expect us to hide behind these walls. You are many things, Amina, but not often a hypocrite.”