“Everything depends on the target of your seduction. Study your prey thoroughly, and choose only those who will prove susceptible to your charms. The right victims are those for whom you can fill a void, who see in you something exotic.”
Zanzibar, Tanzania
vii. three days after the bath, more than a week after our pleasure
“Yes, I did this,” self-amused, Maulid admitted.
I shriveled, “without telling me?”
His dissonant chuckles coated us as I now lay bare next to him.
Maulid revealed, without provocation, that after we met on the red dirt road, he hunted me. He said he rose in the dark of the morning to look for me. He told me he stayed up late past the sun’s set to do the same. He told me, for days, he searched for me on the beach, along the roads, into town.
He said that he finally found me buying vegetables in the market. And he followed me. Until I was alone.
He said, he intended to impregnate me without telling me. His father did the same to his mother, he shrugged.
I realized that where the encounter felt random, romantic to me, it was hauntingly deliberate and organized by him.
And I, as if a snake myself, simply followed his charms.
viii. four days after his confession
Across the night sky, twinkled the face of every single man who ever touched my supple body without consent, through lies, in manipulation, with only their own pleasure and circumstance in mind.
I frothed in contemplation.
My womb creates breath, blood, and body. How can he, them, these men, be so callous, so in disregard for me, for my well-being, so dismissive of my dreams, of my future, of my desires and destiny; their violent ignorance, baffling audacity.
I had never been so angry.
I closed my eyes and saw shadows of an ancient army rise like steam through the packed sand which had all day lie waiting to be exposed by the receded tide.
Adorned in khopesh, axe, and mace, I could feel the warriors sync like a magnet to my will. I could taste their steel allegiance, their obedience, their exactness, their readiness.
Their ghostly shadows lined up alongside and behind me—prepared, with a patience only strength and confidence could bear. The shadowed army awaited my vengeful direction.
I wanted to tell them to end him. But I hesitated.
A brisk sea breeze had massaged my face, shuffled my mind, brought shift to my primitive stance, perspective.
Anger is a secondary emotion, the words hung over my head, wisdom a psychologist once shared with me. How do you really feel beneath the fire?
I reached for other emotions—searching for wisdom’s reason, but it did not dare come near the anger that engulfed my ribs, my palms, my scalp, behind my eyes.
I bowed my head until my chin pierced my clavicle. I can’t make decisions from this place of anger, I can’t feel what’s beneath it.
Thank you, I shouted to the ancients with the reverberating voice of my heart, for answering my call. But I must humbly release you.
Meanwhile, my womb beat steadily with a creative power I never once before understood.
ix. one week after my anger, two weeks after our pleasure
“He targeted you, Tifanei,” my therapist investigated me through the lens of my laptop camera. “Your behavior is typical of someone who has been sexually abused. You’re trying to protect him; accept the blame. But you’re the victim.”
She was confusing me.
In relief and gratitude for all I had learned about myself, my power, my delusions, the world and its sin, I had just told my therapist that I forgave Maulid.
I told her, with near-haughty resolution, that I went to see him; to tell him I was planning to get an abortion, and that I thought he should know.
I tried to regale her:
Maulid and I had sat under mosquito nets, on plain white sheets; me crossed-legged, between his long-outstretched limbs, him facing me with his back against feathered pillows.
I opened my mouth to tell him my decision, but instead I became overcome by curiosity, wonder, possessed by doubts of my own perceptions. I asked him if I could look into to his heart with my heart.
He consented.
We closed our eyes, sank into the whistles of a jungle’s dusk. Then I grasped at his energy. Psychic visions and sensations of him poured into me, into a blackish, sometimes brownish, hollow space behind my eyes.
His heart showed me anguish and confusion. It tasted tangy.
Like a punch into my sternum, I felt his absent family, and his circumstance. I understood, with exactness, he feels constantly unsafe, anticipating abandonment. It was accompanied by an elusive felt sense; sharp, bitter, impossibly deep.
I could see what he would offer me would become eclipsed by what he felt entitled to take, and where he did not feel entitled, but desired, he’d steal. He would use lies to protect himself. He would lie to me to keep me, as often as it takes; and it would be often.
As I took in the sharp and then grading psychic visions, processing the information in the silence of my mind’s eye, I heard Maulid muffle whimpers.
I opened my eyes to see him crying, foolishly craning his neck, failing to hide the tears streaming down his face.
There was nowhere to hide, I was sitting in-between his legs, facing him, in his heart.
“I’m not a victim,” I told my therapist after I shared our story. “In that moment, I could see everything about Maulid. How scared he was. How he was just doing the best he could with what he has. How he had no concept of who I am. Or what I am.
“His actions weren’t about me. His actions were about him. His story is not my story.
“I could see myself clearer, too. How without anger, without resentment, I have space to take accountability for my own actions. I had been grieving, feeling as if pieces of me were missing, seeking parts of myself within someone else, within him. I had been so open to deception.
“I did not deserve what he did. But I did allow it.”
My therapist looked worried for me. Pitying. She sighed.
I tried to see myself as a victim, as she advised. But it felt terrible in my body. So, I fired her.
The moment I had really seen Maulid, was the moment I was able to forgive him. The moment I was able to forgive him, was the moment I felt the most free I may have ever felt in my life. I was no longer bound by his decisions, his narrative, or his will. Every step after forgiveness felt like a step closer into myself, into my own power, into my own being. And he was welcome to dissipate into an illusion.
If my therapist couldn’t understand why my forgiveness was medicine for me, for him, for everyone we encounter in our futures, then my therapist could not accompany me on this next part of my life’s journey.
I blocked him. And I blocked her, too.
An Interlude will be posted on August 18, 2024.
Part IV will be posted on August 22, 2024.