Confession

Confession

I have a confession. But please, don’t tell anybody. If you feel troubled, ease your conscience. I beg you to tell the person you are revealing this secret to that they should not tell it to another person all over again. If they should do, warn them to tell the person not further blabber it out. 

Here is my story.

My name is Feisal and my wife’s name is Zinaria. Our names are given to us with the hopes that we would bear their glory.

Before I got married, I walked around the streets of my area in shorts and singlet. Thirty years after, with age and children, there are many things I could not do now. I’ve gone bald and the remaining patches of hair in my head have already turned grey. Whisker, beard, goatee and moustache have grown all over my face. My grandchildren called me buzuzu!

Thank God. In spite of age, there are many who nothing has changed.

Long time ago I met Zinaria. She bore the glory of her name, cute, immaculate and spotless. Her cornrows were neatly plaited and tucked, sprawling down her nape. Her nails impeccably manicured and her toes pedicured, eyelashes carefully decorated. Throughout the years of our courtship, I had never seen a stain in her.

Zinaria was an angel. Her cuteness beat me. Whatever she touched felt wonderful on my tongue. She once gave me water and it was like honey.

I was always sweet and immaculate as well. She had never seen me repeat clothings. I wore new ones on every Friday I was to visit her. Because she was living at Kofar Nassarwa, I never risked going around Gwale in an outfit I visited her the previous day. I carried myself with extra-care and behaved very meticulously. Always on my guard, never did anything embarrassing.

We never let ourselves find faults in ourselves. Cleanliness and spotlessness were our watchwords and natural endowments and the promises we’d keep when we got married. Anytime we met, I told her that she smelt better than me.

First weeks of our marriage, she cooked delicious food and brought it in a small china dish the size I used to eat from when I was visiting her. I went hungry for some days. Later, I told her to increase my fill.

She was baffled.

One month into our marriage, I abandoned the habit of wearing new clothes already. I could wear anything now.  It was a rude shock for her to see me in untidy apparel.

From her part, things were equally opening up gradually. The only thing that stayed a bit longer was waking up early from bed. I had never seen her in a crumpled shape. Until one day, she was too late in bed. Since then, she no longer felt shy or embarrassed.

As time went by, the notion of her perfection was rapidly dispelled. She was just ordinary person like everyone. When I began to shout order at her, it was unbelievable. Me? I had never imagined shouting at my little angel that I was doing everything to please.

This was the girl I was hiding almost everything from and she was concealing her true self from me.

Both of us no longer bothered to appear meticulously neat and to impress each other. Familiarity brought out the reality in us and made us see our nakedness.

The promise of daily cuteness was never kept.

We were not inherently filthy.

It was too cumbersome.

The everydayness of life.