Some people are born in this world who show by their actions throughout their lives that they come from the ‘never- give-up’ section of the spirit world. Ali was one of them. He had decided to marry Esi. And so marry her he was going to.
The first time Ali informed Fusena that he was thinking of taking a second wife, Fusena asked him, before the words were properly out of his mouth, ‘She has a university degree?’
This was nowhere near what Ali had expected from her in the way of response. So he too asked, ‘What has that got to do with it?’
‘Everything,’ she shot back. She picked up her handbag and her basket, left the bedroom, came out to the courtyard, issued instructions in very quick successions to her househelp — and whoever might have been around — on food, what to do that day about fetching the children from school and from the day nursery, and on and on, and then she left the house. Before starting her car, which was a small two-door vehicle she had come to love unreasonably and fiercely, she removed her veil completely and put it together with the handbag on the passenger seat next to her. The car screeched into life, and Fusena backed out so roughly, she nearly scraped one side of her husband’s rather elegant and capacious chariot, and also nearly hit the family dog. She was on her way out for the day to manage the kiosk.
Fusena’s movements were most clearly out of gear that morning. Normally, Ali left the house first. Although the Achimota/Nima/Barracks intersection where the kiosk stood was not far from the house, she had not made it a habit of regularly popping home from the shop to check on her duties as a housewife. She took all her jobs seriously. When she was in the kiosk, she was there. And of course when she was home, she was home. That was why she took so much time in the morning leaving the house. She took time organising herself and the house. It was something she enjoyed. She checked on her wardrobe, her hair and even her nails. She planned the meals for the household for the day and virtually planned the rest of their housekeeping for months ahead. She was one of the wives in the country who could still do that. And that was only because she was married to a man who cared about how his home ran. And since his job demanded a lot of travelling he always made it a point of getting things that were necessary for his home — depending of course on where he went. For most other women it had become a question of buying what you found in the shops or the markets when you found them. Efficient housekeeping in such circumstances had nothing to do with planning. Every other wife in their circle of friends envied Fusena. Yet here she was feeling so sorry for herself, she could quite literally die. She had allowed Ali to talk her out of teaching, hadn’t she? And now the monster she had secretly feared since London had arrived. Her husband had brought into their marriage a woman who had more education than she did.
The streak of abnormality managed to run through some more of that morning. When Fusena drove to the kiosk the first time, she did not go in. After she had parked and was getting out of the car, she changed her mind, banged shut the car door which she had just opened and drove back to the house. She met Ali in front of their gate just as he was backing out. She drove her car to where the two cars became parallel, and stopped. Ali had stopped, and looked at her with a question on his face.
‘Is she also a Muslim?’ Fusena asked him, without any prelims, and without getting out.
Caught unawares for the second time that early morning, Ali said just simply, ‘No.’ Fusena backed out again and drove off. She was going to look for someone to talk to.