The [i]Mingis[/i] Expiation

[Abtigiis]

Part 1

 

The cuckold was still a man when he married Ruqiya. He was not a cuckold in the beginning.

 

Ruqiya's husband was away for eight years. She had three children from the cuckold when he decided to go to India for studies. For the first four years, she lived in longing and thirst. Some days when she was lucky, a man with a manly smell would sit next to her on a mini-bus and she enjoys nasal copulation, relishing the manly scent, the only sensual indulgence she can enjoy stealthily without social censure.

 

She is a pretty woman, and she knows she deserved a better-looking man than the one she is married to. And to her distress, handsome men eat her with their eyes every time she goes to buy stuff for her kids.

 

To know you are desired, and to desire better flavor than the one fate gave you, is a necessary condition for carnal moonlighting. To miss the lackluster but utilitarian cuddle of a consolation husband is a sufficient condition.

 

Knowing that her thirst will not be quenched for four more years, Ruqiya at last decided that she can no long play a Mama Theresa. She is a fleshly woman and society has no right to draw a protective metal-grill around her loins. After all, their metal-grill is not metal but gossip and ridicule. Gossips don't kill; ridicule doesn’t disfigure. But, sensual deprivation numbs the mind; it wilts the body.

 

Ruqiya started with afternoon eloping for furtive courtship. With one man. The attractive Sheikh Bashir. Sheikh Bashir was a devout man. He still wonders how a pious man, who doesn't look at woman at all, ended up clasping the sumptuous buttocks of Ruqiya.

 

Confused, he admitted that there is nothing more powerful than Satan in this earth.

 

"God is the underdog in this world. Satan is the ruler" he mused, before quickly banishing the blasphemous thought with a profound Astaqfurullah.

 

Ruqiya then slept with Abdullahi Dhadi-diid. She did not quit Sheikh Bashir. She alternated between the two for three months. How times fly when we are not thirsty. How ephemeral joy is, and abiding thirst is.

 

The coming four years suddenly seemed like four months to Ruqiya and she prayed Mursal adds one more study year to become an even more accomplished Engineer than he already is.

 

Ah! The folly of thinking all men are alike. Would she ever have known that some men’s chests are like asphalted runways; others have chests that itch the cheeks like a sandy airfield! How would she have known that some men have firm backlines? That others have elastic waists that move so fast and feel so light that a woman can shoulder it for weeks without feeling burdened?

 

“They don’t have standards and quality certification for human body. How unfair!” There are men with one-star loin; there are others with five stars. She discovered.

 

That wasn’t the only discovery.

 

Soon Ruqiya learned that there are men who give more than fleshly gratification: money and materials. The balding Bootaan was uglier than Mursal, but he gave Ruqiya money. He paid for her children’s books and school fees at a time the paltry contributions her husband was sending was not enough to cover the needs of the family.

 

Bootaan, Jonathan Kimeu and the aging Indian,who owns Devali super-market, all offered Ruqiya more than money. They gave her moral rationalizations for her sexual irredentism. She needed to feed her children. She needed to relieve the pressure off her struggling student husband.

 

Overnights soon replaced the afternoon trysts. One night, at the start. Two and three nights, later. Relatives who assisted by staying with the children the nights she was away noticed the ethical laxity. Even her elder daughter started to hear bad insults from neighbourhood teenagers.

 

“Where is your mama this afternoon?” They ask the six year old Amina.

 

“She went to the market. She is buying clothes for us”, Amina replies.

 

At that, the teenagers laugh. And say things she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what shermuuto is. The day she asked her auntie what it is, she was hit with a stick and warned not to learn bad words.

[Abtigiis]

Part 2

 

On 24 November 1998 Enigneer Mursal arrived. After eight years of studies –where he has to do a language course for two years, four years of Bachelor’s and two years of graduate studies – he was a consummate engineer. Ruqiya did not see any man for the last six months and received him hungrily. Her transgressions were ultimately about feeding the family; save for the demons that tempted her at the start. The family reunited and lived a happy life. For one month, two months.

 

By the third month, Mursal started to hear the rumours. The family members talked. The children harmlessly mentioned what they used to do “the nights mom was away”. And Ruqiya’s body started to speak to the now suspicious Mursal. Things he left small became giant; things that were tight became loose. The human body cannot wear and tear so quickly, Mursal’s agitated mind and envious heart established.

 

The divorce happened in the fourth month.

 

Ruqiya accepted the verdict with silence. And, with remorse and one more child in her belly.

 

Mursal brought Ruqiya back after she delivered. It took his wounded heart six months to heal. Six months to forgive his errant wife. But, by this time, he was a flagrant cuckold – a husband of an adulteress – in the eyes of his community. The infamy bruised him more than the infidelity.

 

The penitent Ruqiya never really recovered. Mursal never spoke about her perfidy again. But Ruqiya could never live with the guilt. Her man coped by living secluded. He shunned social life for the sake of his sanity and his family.

 

More children followed. The grown-up children quickly started to get scalded with epithets that scar the mind. Ina-dhillo-casar (the daughter of the afternoon whore), Amina was called whenever she fights with peers.

 

Ruqiya sought redemption and release from consuming guilt and consequent stress through Mingis. Like a drug addict who forgets the troubles of real life through shots of heroine, Ruqiya’s torment eases when she rants, roves, runs around and is restrained by relatives from taking her dress off during hypnotizing Mingis sessions; all of the action accompanied by the Taxaliil and Quran recitations of the Culumo (the Sheikhs). She abhors the sight of Sheikhs when she is not possessed. They remind her of Sheikh Bashir.

 

Ruqiya – nowadays a mother of seven – sees a new Sheikh (reputed for treating Mingis) each month. The Mingis moments expiate her sins by distracting her from what goes in the real world. It gives her a transient mental reprieve from eternal greif. She feels better. The Mingis is the insulin her mind needs to stay sane.

 

From time to time, desperate relatives take Ruqiya to doctors. One doctor posited that 99% of the time, Mingis is a symptom or a result of clinical depression.

 

Ruqiya knows the Doctors are wrong. They don’t know that Satan is the source of all evils. It was Satan that made her an adulteress. It was Satan that is playing on her mind now. She can only chase the devil away through loud orations of holy verses.

 

She understands why the verses do not heal her completely because Satan is not a bacteria. It cannot die. It lives with the spirit and therefore the prayers must be unceasing to take care of Satan’s intrusions.

 

What more enemy afflicts the human heart than Satan? She says.

 

“This world is full of i*d*i*o*t*s*”, she also says some days, such as when she heard Professor Isse – her second cousin’s husband – saying that Satan does not have a body or a colour.

 

“It is our emotions and urges that we call Satan. Envy is Satan; lust is Satan; greed is Satan; hate is Satan; bad manners are Satan; temptations are Satan”, he was saying.

 

What a fool! What a puny doubter!

 

She sometimes feels the Satan urging her to reminisce the night Sheikh Bashir imitated dogs. And she shivers. Satan even makes her long for that filth.

 

She closed her eyes and recited “Qul Acudu bi rabil falaq”. She saw Satan running away and ducking for cover.

[NGONGE]

The ebb and flow of your writing always leaves me nauseous with equal amounts of pleasure and revulsion. I mean how could you ruin such an amazing description like “her body spoke to him” by going on to explain the ways it did? The extra explanation only spoils the subtle meaning and brings to mind an image of you licking your lips, flaring your nostrils and breathing heavily as you type each word about sizes, looseness and what not.

 

p.s.

At least you're aware enough to edit the superfluous word where Sheikh Bashir imitated dogs.

[Haatu]

Odey wasakh ah xagee la gayn?

[Juxa]

He is an artist

[Haatu]

He has to convince me by writing one of his stories in SOMALI. Only then...

[Tallaabo]

Abtigiis you are an amazing writer with a great sense of humour. But your writing style left me with the feeling that you are somewhat losing or have already lost conviction in your Islamic faith. Are you too joining the ranks of the growing infidel camp?

[STOIC]

Haha..only Abtigis steamy stories will make you quickly close the browser before someone walks by..Good read and this sort of work was meant only for broadminded adults....

[Abtigiis]

Thanks Stoic.

 

Tallabo, are you confusing me with Professor Isse bro? He is the one talking about Satan, not me. Thanks for the kind remarks.

 

Ngonge, some readers are more imaginative than others. Some may get the body that spoke, others need a bit more illustrations. @ the dog imitation, I am learning how to say things without saying them from you. And for fear of Juxa.

 

Haatu, inaadeer sidee tahay. Hedde tolka qaldama hoos baa loola hadli jiree ma shirkaa lagu dhex caayi jiray? :D war ileen wuxuu sijui unbaa ahaa.

[Juxa]

No need to fear me sir, I am told Artists should be understood

[wyre]

Abtigiis;902731 wrote:

Part 2

 

 

“It is our emotions and urges that we call Satan. Envy is Satan; lust is Satan; greed is Satan; hate is Satan; bad manners are Satan; temptations are Satan”, he was saying.

 

What a fool! What a puny doubter!

 

She sometimes feels the Satan urging her to reminisce the night Sheikh Bashir imitated dogs. And she shivers. Satan even makes her long for that filth.

 

She closed her eyes and recited

“Qul Acudu bi rabil falaq”.

She saw Satan running away and ducking for cover.

My God this is a very great read, thanks abtigiis :D

[Dhagax-Tuur]

There has to be a red line, culturally, where if crossed, penalties are handed out, of course, through court of law and judicial process. I don't mean to sound easily offended, but the vulgarity of the tale left me disgusted, Wallee. What next, the 'Verses from the Quran to read when imitating dogs'?

 

Times like these, my soul reluctantly longs for the rule of YOU-KNOW-WHO!

 

I don't mean to take a higher moral ground, and I know this sort of thing does occur, after all we are all human, but we are not and we DONT want to be (through culture and deen) the sort of society that publishes and distributes these sort of stories.

 

That is my view.

[Alpha Blondy]

excellent!

[Abtigiis]

Dhagaxtuur, believe me, as a reader romance is not a genre that I take five minutes of my time to read about. And I see sense in having the society you described. But as a writer, characters need to have life and not to look synthetic and too-perfect. I leave to the readers to judge if this story is as vulgar as you painted, but I think the main themes of the story are far more weighty than mere carnal narrations.

 

The story is about inconsiderate husbands, unfaithful wives, stigmatized innocent children, superstition, hidden and badly diagnosed psycho-social traumas, scapegoating and failure to own up to our foibles and failures, blaming bad choices on supernatural entities, hypocrisy of the seemingly spiritual etc.

 

All of these are realities we witness on a daily basis. How all these themes became a footnote and sensual references the main theme, I do not get it. Maybe it is us who want to read sex in everything. I don't think even the carnal tales are graphic.

 

I can understand your anger if you are upset about the verses I referred to. But then you should say the references are blasphemous; you shouldn't say vulgar. Next time when I am writing for a Salafist column, I will write a Halal love story, insha Allah.

 

Speaking of our culture and society ( the Pre- Salafist one), much more graphic details were and are exchanged through porms, songs and skits. Just listen to Omer Dhuule's shafka igu camcami or the contemporary sidaa doonto ugu galgo.

[oba hiloowlow]

more stories please.