Speak sasa or forever hold your peace

Speak now or forever hold your peace

The minds of many who knew me in this homeland
Scream Marriage, say what?

I met Ahmed on a Tuesday Morning
day after I took a ferry from Dar es Salaam to Stonetown
I meandered through the maze of narrow streets
Past the woman who sells cardamom bread and spiced coffee
Beyond the men who play bao and sell pealed oranges
I entered Darejani Market
he stood amongst sellers snatching at my attention
smiled and said
Habari yako? What’s your name?

I-him-spoke
Jina langu ni Ashura kwa Kiswahili
Je, unaitwa nani? Habari gani?

He said,
Ahmedi…

Three syllables dangled over right palm to right hand
Shake and say
Nimefurahi sana kukuona
Translation
I think I’m gonna love you

In California the ones who knew me say
He’s Muslim, you’re Christian, say what?

That day he helped me bargain
reduce shillings exchanged for avocados, onions, tomatoes, garlic and cilantro
He laughed when I said I was making something called Guacamole
I explained
Ni kama mchuzi wa maparachici ni chakula cha kimeksiko

Later he showed me spices
Coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, fresh vanilla beans

He cut open a package of sweet pink baobab seeds
Let me taste fuchsia hibiscus
Sweet stained labium

Cycles later we swapped stories on the shores of the Indian ocean
we discovered our identical ages
our de-ringed freedom
as we sucked the juice from Rambutan fruit.

In the kitchen of his family home
we crushed ginger, cucumber and Mabungo
we mixed fruit fleshes, sugars and tongues
He said
Ashura, sema tena
Ma-bun-go
was a year before I learned that was Rubber Tree Fruit
not all of me is native to English

In my homeland the ones who knew me said
You don’t seem like the type to settle down

Haraka haraka haina baraka

I settled up out and
A year later he made my vocabulary four languages wide
When we honey sunned
Pre-nuptual voyage to Mombasa
Outside the city
He sang
Mapenzi yetu matamu ya salaam ya salaam

Later on his home island of Pemba
final flickers of night lantern gave us darkness
last burst of energy
made us focus on the only lights
that emanated from Sky and Tanga

at the docks
boys sold sea fruit
on the first day after Ramadan
under the sign
Karibu Mkoani

In my homeland my foreign familiars utter confusions passionate and passportless

They don’t breath there where
Mohamed sells June plums and Rose Apples
where the Forodhani oceanfront is illuminated with the early evening spectacle of a hundred tiny candles
night market smells of plantains, grilled earth and sea meats, sugar cane juice and plumaria

Where breeze tickles collarbone
All I hear is Ahmed whisper
Inshallah
Mungu atatubariki
Inshallah