Maulidi night conception

You invited me out on Maulidi night
“Come and be a pilgrim,” you said to me, “and listen to the stories of my childhood.”

The glow of the bar diminishes in the cool early hours
The moonlight guides us.
I cover myself in indigo blue and deep sky kangas
your friends just giggle at the white girl;
your flash dulls the magic full moon as you snap me.

We begin on foot.
At the side of the road, windscreen-cracked buses tilt,
youths lean up against the metal, watching the girls pass.
Oil lamps flicker at chai and market stalls.

We are drawn towards a microphone drone which rises above the crowd chatter
pulling us off the tarmac road onto sandy paths behind squat mud houses
into a sea of multi-coloured moon-washed mothers,
sisters, aunties, lying along the walls, shored up towards the mosque.
A wriggling child turns in its mother’s lap.
A spotlit stage through the dark passageway flooded with people.
Men, white-robed, ease by
rocking us back and forth as we make room to let them pass.

We’re anchored, listening;

but the droning is drifting in me.
“What are the stories?” I ask you finally.
You tut with disdain. “no stories, bwana. He’s just preaching.”

You take my hand and we turn from the spotlight
kicking up the sand as you tell me the stories of your father
and the magic of how it was then, as a boy at midnight, on Maulidi night.

Your headlights lit our way for the rest of the night,
and each of your friends, as you dropped them off one by one.
You hadn’t dropped me yet.
And our last night at your place was blessed
and I never guessed
that my journey into parenthood, on Maulidi night, had begun.


Irena Pearse June 2009