“What did you do to your hair?” he asked. “
It doesn’t suit you at all. Is this how your lecturer wants you to look, like a bush woman?”
Olanna touched her hair, newly plaited with black thread. “My aunty did it. I quite like it.”
“I don’t. I prefer your wigs.” Mohammed moved closer and hugged her again. When she felt his arms tighten around her, she pushed him away.
“You won’t let me kiss you.”
“No,” she said, although it had not been a question. “You’re not telling me about Janet-Jane.”
“Jane. So this means I won’t see you anymore when you go to Nsukka.”
“Of course I’ll see you.”
“I know that lecturer of yours is crazy, so I won’t come to Nsukka.” Mohammed laughed. His tall slim body and tapering fingers spoke of fragility, gentleness. “Would you like a soft drink? Or some wine?”
“You have alcohol in this house? Someone must inform your uncle,” Olanna teased.
Mohammed rang a bell and asked a steward to bring some drinks. Afterward, he sat thoughtfully rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. “Sometimes, I feel my life is going nowhere. I travel and drive imported cars, and women follow me. But something isn’t there, something isn’t right. You know?” She watched him; she knew where he was going with this. Yet when he said, “I wish things didn’t change,” she was touched and flattered.
“You’ll find a good woman,” she said limply.
“Rubbish,” he said, and as they sat side by side drinking Coke, she recalled the disbelieving pain on his face that had only deepened when she told him she had to end it right away because she did not want to be unfaithful to him. She expected that he would resist, she knew very well how much he loved her, but she had been shocked when he told her to go ahead and sleep with Odenigbo as long as she did not leave him: Mohammed, who often half joked about coming from a lineage of holy warriors, the very avatars of pious masculinity. Perhaps it was why her affection for him would always be mingled with gratitude, a selfish gratitude. He could have made their breakup more difficult for her; he could have left her with much more guilt.
She placed her glass down. “Let’s go for a drive. I hate it when I visit Kano and only get to see the ugly cement and zinc of Sabon Gari. I want to see that ancient mud statue and go around the lovely city walls again.”
“Sometimes you are just like the white people, the way they gawk at everyday things.”
“Do I?”
“It’s a joke. How are you going to learn not to take everything so seriously if you live with that crazy lecturer?” Mohammed stood up. “Come, we should stop by first so you can greet my mother.”
As they walked past a small gate at the back and into the courtyard that led to his mother’s chambers, Olanna remembered the trepidation she used to feel coming here. The reception area was the same, with gold-dyed walls and thick Persian rugs and grooved patterns on the exposed ceilings. Mohammed’s mother looked unchanged, too, with the ring in her nose and the silk scarves around her head. She was finespun in the way that used to make Olanna wonder if she wasn’t uncomfortable, dressing up every day and simply sitting at home. But the older woman did not have that old standoffish expression, did not speak stiffly with her eyes focused somewhere between Olanna’s face and the hand-carved paneling. Instead she got up and hugged Olanna.
“You look so lovely, my dear. Don’t let the sun spoil that skin of yours.”
“Na gode. Thank you, Hajia,” Olanna said, wondering how it was possible for people to switch affection off and on, to tie and untie emotions.
“I am no longer the Igbo woman you wanted to marry who would taint the lineage with infidel blood,” Olanna said, as they climbed into Mohammed’s red Porsche. “So I am a friend now.”
“I would have married you anyhow, and she knew it. Her preference did not matter.”
“Maybe not at first, but what about later? What about when we had been married for ten years?”
“Your parents felt the same way as she did.” Mohammed turned to look at her. “Why are we talking about this now?” There was something inexpressibly sad in his eyes. Or maybe she was imagining it. Maybe she wanted him to seem sad at the thought that they would never marry. She did not wish to marry him, and yet she enjoyed dwelling on the things they did not do and would never do.
“Sorry,” she said.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” Mohammed reached out and took her hand. The car made rasping sounds as they drove past the gates. “There’s too much dust in the exhaust. These cars weren’t made for our parts.”
“You should buy a hardy Peugeot.”
“Yes, I should.”
Olanna stared at the beggars clumped around the walls of the palace, their bodies and begging bowls covered in flies. The air smelled of the spicy-sour leaves from the neem tree.
“I am not like white people,” she said quietly.