I. Grief, An Object of His Seduction

Unexpecting in Zanzibar, Tanzania

“I offer, for your pleasure, my life story… .

Let the tale seduce you, just as I was seduced.”

i. day eight on the island.

“I know you’re tired, but you’re strong,” Jackson watched my posture droop as energy drained out of me. He raised his boxing mitts, “Let’s go! C’mon!”

Resounded, his words, as a message from my ancestors, urging me to push through, recognize how far we’ve come, trust my strength, press on, keep existing. Despite my fatigue, the grief, in defiance of all the harm I had endured up until this point.

“Let’s go, Champ!” Jackson’s tenor sang, unaware he was calling me by my late grandfather’s nickname. “Give me another round!”

Reinvigorated. I pushed through the edge of my heartbeat, breathed deeper each time my glove connected, echoed a delicious smack.

“Yes! One more!”

I shuffled my feet and bobbed my head, swiveled my hips, popped and threw, relinquished a cross, and screamed out: “UUUGGHHHH!”

My feet were covered in salts of the coast’s water, massaged rough by the sands of the shore. My sports bra and tights were soaked through with perspiration, spotted with patches of wet grains.

“You’re really good,” Jackson lied. Gave me a teasing jab on my shoulder as I playfully collapsed on the beach.

“Thank you,” I smiled, appreciating the compliment anyways.

Maybe I made the right decision coming to this island for a while, I thought, sweat raining across my forehead.

I felt lighter. With each breath, old shadows released their attachments from my shoulders, reunited with the spirits of the sea.

I felt freer, more myself than I had in weeks. I felt far away from the panic attacks that plagued me days prior. The ones that tore my psyche away from my body and that, like a bully, had me watch helplessly from the ceiling above as my body shrunk and shriveled and gasped on the cement floor.

“I really needed that. You have no idea,” I bowed. So grateful. A good workout is a savior. A good coach a miracle. “I’m so glad you’re training people out here. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he beamed.

Though I was in a foreign country, him and everyone around us looked like me—dark skin, wide smiles, soft cheeks—I felt at home. I felt welcomed. Tanzania.

This is not just rest, I considered, it’s release, it’s my freedom.

ii. one day after beach boxing.

“I have to bury this.”

“What is it?” Maulid’s nose twisted in confusion.

“My grief.”

I shoved fifteen crinkled pieces of paper into my overall pockets. The papers had been sitting upon my altar the night before, a grief altar, surrounded by tiny tin candles, anise, lemon grass, cloves, and spring water.

Each piece had a sentence written upon it in erratic handwriting—switching lower and upper cases with no apparent pattern, blending cursive and print without sound reason. I had taken care to scribble down every aspect of my life that I was intentionally letting go: past fears, past identities, and old fantasies, too. It had been time.

Maulid didn’t ask me any further questions. Instead,

“Come with me to the beach,” he held out his hand. “I know where we can get a shovel.”

I smiled. I took his hand. I followed. Also without question.

On the beach, I surrendered to his lead with my grief in tow. I let my left hand melt into his right and I leaned the weight of me into the crevice of his arm and of his shoulder, sauntered in his musk.

“Why are people staring at us,” I asked, once we had the shovel, headed to a spot near a single tree, vision swaying, drunk from the equatorial sun.

“Because we’re beautiful,” he said without pause or thought.

Then he dug. And dug. And dug. And dug. Occasionally looking up to smile. At my elation.

“That’s deep enough,” I advised. So. Then he stopped digging and turned away, to face the sea, offering me privacy with the remnants of me.

I teared. Who was this beautiful stranger man, offering me such care in this moment of my transition? Who was this human being, watching the coast, protecting me? Ritualing with me? Holding me?

iii. two days before the burial, one day before boxing.

“My name is Maulid.” His bright smile cracked my face open.

“Hello.” I lost myself to a sheepish grin.

Maulid’s beauty startled me. His deep skin, like wood stained by fire. The angles and curves of his lengthy arms. The way his thick nostrils toyed with the round tip of his nose.

“What is your name?”

His mouth’s symmetry. His lips. The way they curled to a smirk when his tongue toyed with his teeth. His eyes, imbibing. I felt my own tongue become wet.

“I am Tifanei,” I answered, swallowed hard, alarmed at my attention, breathless. He was breathtaking.

I had just walked pass Maulid and a group of his friends, unsettled in a coo, perched upon the ledge of a building.

Tucked in an alley, behind small hotels and reed and bamboo restaurants, flanking soft red dirt paths. He jumped up to stop me, to speak.

“Where are you from?” His sugary Swahili accent hovered over me.

Nearby, the tide was high and crashing against the shore. All around us was island music.

Maulid’s friends’ bellied laughter erupted through the salty air every few seconds, coaxed the fatigue out of my atmosphere. They sounded like joy. An easy peace.

“I am from the United States,” I hesitated to admit.

It is an unpredictable thing, no matter where I am in the world, telling people where I was born. Too often, I become no-longer-a-stranger, but instead a screen for projections of wealth, or power, or violence, or sexuality. Associations of which I often deny, whether true. Or not. But I hadn’t the energy to lie about my origins.

By the time Maulid introduced himself to me, I had been traveling alone in Africa for nearly five months. I had experienced too many changes in my personal life. I was in the throes of grief’s intimate ballad, witnessing parts of my identity walk and brush away from me. I had come to Zanzibar seeking respite.

In fact, and, just that morning, after so long without physical touch, I had fantasized how comforting it might be to have a masculine person sit behind me, with his legs spread wide enough to fit my body in the cradle of his chest, my back supported and protected, so I could melt into a despair promised to me.

Now here he was. As if by conjure. Gorgeous, interested, and present.

But. It was my first day in this Swahili town. The sun was parting. I was tired—in many ways. I did not know him. You do not know this man, Tifanei.

And yet. But. My body hummed curiously the deeper he looked into me. My heartbeat and inhales betraying my intrigue.

His series of gentle questions finally rested upon asking for my number, “I would like to see you again,” he lured.

Go home, I advised myself, despite myself.

 “I don’t think so,” I said before I could think twice, “We’ll see each other around town.”

His eyes dimmed at my rejection. He opened his beautiful mouth to protest, even squeezed out a “but… .”

“Okay,” He sighed instead, acquiesced. He smiled again. “Then, I will see you around.”

“Goodnight, Maulid.”

“Goodnight, Tifanei.”

I walked away, with my tiny bag of tropical groceries, smiling and relieved at my sound decisions. Unaware of what was coming.

Week One in Tanzania

Part II published here.

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Meditation

Each story we create, share, and consume has the power to change each of us at any time. This guided meditation was created by me to support your integration.