“Darling. Please.”
Souraya closed her eyes as her resolve crumbled.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”
Saturday, 7:31 PM
The drive down to the lowland had been quiet, just the two of them in another of Ahmed’s cars, listening to Aṣa sing over the speakers. Halfway down, Ahmed reached out his hand across the space between them, and Souraya took it in hers. They held hands as the city draped past their windows, Ahmed’s palm wrapped warmly around hers.
When they pulled up to the address Kalu had emailed them, Ahmed raised Souraya’s hand to his mouth, kissing the tendons that ran along the back of it into her fingers.
“Stay inside the car,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He stepped out before she could say anything, and the door slammed shut. Souraya watched through the windshield as Ahmed walked up to the gate and spoke to the gateman, a short and aggressive figure with curled shoulders and gesticulating arms. They both took out their phones, and Ahmed typed on his for a while, tilting the screen toward the gateman, who peered through the iron bars, pointing and shaking his head. Ahmed nodded and typed some more, then showed it to the man again, who nodded this time, then waited and checked his own phone after a few moments. He nodded tersely and Ahmed slid a small bundle of cash through the gate. The man on the other side finally broke into a kola-nut-stained smile and started to open the gate. Ahmed saluted, smiling back, and returned to the car, climbing in beside Souraya.
“What was that?” she asked.
“It’s a private club,” Ahmed said, shaking his head. “The cost of the address is a five-million-naira membership. I had to transfer the money to their account immediately.”
“Really? Just to pick up Kalu? You shouldn’t have paid.”
“Oh, they make sure you do once you’re here. There’s a squad of soldiers over there on the side.” Ahmed gestured with his head as they drove into the compound and Souraya looked. There were about ten soldiers lounging on benches against the wall, their machine guns leaning against their legs, bottles of beer at their feet.
“Ah,” she said.
“Exactly.” He parked the car next to a small motorcycle and killed the engine. “So now we go get Kalu. The gateman said to go downstairs from the ground floor.”
Souraya frowned. “A basement?”
“Looks like someone took the meaning of underground quite literally.” They disembarked from the car and Ahmed took her hand in his again. “Thank you for coming with me.”
She smiled up at him. “It’s no problem.”
A private club was nothing, certainly not the level of dangerous she’d expected. They walked in past the mirror, down the stairs, into the bleeding light, and past the crystal curtain. Souraya laughed when the music hit them and she realized where they were.
“Oh, it’s that kind of club.”
Ahmed sighed. “Only Kalu would be hiding out in a secret strip club. Unbelievable.”
They wound through the place together, Ahmed searching faces through the shifting lights and smoke. A few minutes in, he squeezed her hand.
“Found him!” he shouted above the music. He pointed to a broad man sitting with his legs spread open. A dancer was on the ground between the man’s knees, sliding up his body as he stared down at her, his face round and his eyes hooded.
Souraya leaned closer to Ahmed. “That’s Kalu?”
“That’s the fucker.”
Ahmed left her side, striding over to snap his fingers in front of Kalu’s face. Kalu looked up, startled, then his face dissolved into such delighted relief and joy that something in Souraya’s chest twinged to witness it. He leapt up, gently pushing the dancer aside, and embraced Ahmed with such force that the two of them staggered backward, both laughing. Ahmed grabbed Kalu’s head in his hands and shouted something at him, something Souraya couldn’t hear, but she could see the fire in Kalu’s eyes, and the feeling in her chest resolved into clarity.
He loved Ahmed.
She felt her body still as she looked at them. Her heartbeat slowed and steadied, everything oozing with sticky time. The way Kalu’s eyes searched Ahmed’s, his hand coming up to grip the back of Ahmed’s head, the way his eyes closed as they embraced again, the twisting of his face when Ahmed couldn’t see it when it was pressed against Ahmed’s shoulder and neck.
He was in love with Ahmed.
Ahmed hadn’t said anything to her about this, not even when she asked. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe they had been together the whole time and Ahmed hadn’t mentioned it because it was none of her business.
Someone tapped on her shoulder. Souraya turned, frowning, and a thin man with amber skin and a hooked nose smiled at her, crow’s feet crowding at his eyes. His eyes were narrow almonds, black, cutting through her. An alarm rang very faintly in the back of her head.
“What is it?” she snapped, her spikes up. His smile grew wider when he heard her voice.
“I thought it couldn’t be you,” he said, and for some reason, bile churned in her belly at the rolling melody of his voice. “After so many years.”
“Do I know you?” She made the words as sharp and condescending as she could, pumping impossibility into the question.
The stranger tsked and made a sad face. “Ah,” he said. “You don’t remember?” He gave a sudden sharp smile. “Zainab, Zainab. You disappoint me.”
Souraya lost all the air in her lungs. How could he—how did he know her name, the old name, the lost name? His words echoed in her head, their volume ballooning, and the club warped and collapsed around her, Souraya was spinning backward, backward, to a bedroom too long ago, blood on the back of her hand where she’d wiped her mouth, whimpers in her air, her twelve-year-old voice unfamiliar from dust and age, and in front of her, this man, this man whose name her brain had mercifully scrubbed clean; he had been one out of so many, but she had been choking, desperate for air, her nose smashed against his pubic hair while she flailed and struggled with his hand on the back of her head, and when he finally let her go, he’d hit her across the face and her mouth had bled and he’d said the same thing then, to little her. Zainab, Zainab. You disappoint me.
Souraya stumbled back in the strip club, vomit in the back of her mouth as he visibly shuddered with pleasure at her recognition. She reached out and grabbed Ahmed’s arm. He turned, glancing from her to the man, already suspicious.
“We need to leave,” Souraya hissed, her voice tight. “We need to leave now.”
“Zainab,” the man said. “You don’t need to run away from me.”
He seized her arm, and time slowed. From the corner of her eye, Souraya saw Ahmed coil swiftly, a snake about to strike, but she was faster now; she wasn’t the same child they’d broken in. Her right hand slid up her thigh underneath the blue silk to the sheath buckled to her upper thigh. She drew the whisper-thin blade in the same breath as she stepped close to the man, sliding an arm around him. His breath smelled like rotting sin.
“Shaitan,” she hissed. “May your soul burn in Jahannam.”
