Midnight and the Meaning of Love (78 page)

Inside her room, she smiled to see that I had already packed her stuff. None of it was professional or gift-wrapped and ribboned like when Mayu, her Japanese house manager, had packed it, but it was folded as neatly as clothes and shirts are folded and stacked at the Polo store, the way I handled my clothes.

I had fantasized about her as I packed her belongings. It wasn’t the predictable items like her little panties and bras or nightwear that I had made love to her in. It was her high heels, shoes, sandals, and boots.

“Mayonaka Chiasa talk?” Akemi asked out of the blue.

“No,” I answered her truthfully.

She was searching me with her eyes.

“Come here,” I told her. She came. I held her in my arms. The fabric of her dress felt nice against my skin. She laid her head against my chest.

Then I asked her. “Akemi likes Chiasa, yes or no?”

She pulled back only enough for us to face one another. “
Hai
, Akemi like,” she said. “Akemi, Chiasa see,” she added after a pause.

“Akemi wants to see Chiasa?” I asked, gesturing “to see” with my finger pointing at her eyes.

“
Hai
,” she said softly, without a smile.

“Akemi, Mayonaka fly home.” I motioned a plane flying through air. “To New York this week.”

She smiled and jumped on the bed. She stood up on the mattress to pull down her curtain. I stepped up to help her. When my hands were in the air bringing the rod down so she could reach the cloth, she turned and faced me and asked, “Mayonaka Chiasa likes?” She pulled the curtain off the rod and held it. I put the rod down and laid it on the mattress so we could put the Bada Ga’s curtain back on it.

“Mayonaka”—I put my hand on her heart—“loves Akemi.” “Mayonaka”—I put my hand on my heart—“loves Chiasa,” I showed and told her.

Without three seconds passing, three tears spilled out from Akemi’s left eye.

“Mayonaka loves Akemi. Akemi
ichiban
in Mayonaka’s heart.” Then I said what Dong Hwa’s son had taught me the night before in Korean, “Mayonaka loves Akemi forever. Mayonaka will never leave Akemi alone. If Mayonaka goes anywhere, he will always come home to you.” I kissed her face beneath the eye where her three tears fell. I did not ever want to hurt her. I wanted the two of us to always talk truth to one another. War and business were separate. I would conceal those things from her, for her. In matters of the mind or heart, however, I wanted the two of us to always be true.

I said that I would always be in love with Akemi, and I meant it. I also believed that I had shown it. I had traveled seven thousand miles to get her, climbed five miles of mountain and walked five miles of forest and three miles of field. I had risked my life and my freedom for Akemi Nakamura, and I always would.

The thing was, Chiasa had risked her life and freedom for Akemi too, and that moved me. Chiasa had come up with Akemi’s grandmother’s address in the Hidaka Mountains. Chiasa had saved Akemi’s passport and made it possible for us to be here in Korea as well as to move on to the United States without legal risk. Without Chiasa, Akemi and I may not have ever gotten back to one another safely.
I knew that without saying it aloud. That mattered a lot. Although these were surely not the only reasons that I also loved Chiasa, they were reasons that gave my connection to Chiasa much more weight than a crush on a bad-ass pretty girl. Chiasa, I believed, was not offensive to Akemi and my love. Chiasa was an asset that made all of us strong, and having more than one wife was my culture and was within the boundaries that Allah has drawn for all believers in our faith, Islam.

“It would have been nice to drive to Seoul in the daylight, but I had to finish some work in order to prepare my assistant for tomorrow’s class that I will be missing,” Professor Dong Hwa said.

“It’s no problem,” I told him. We were riding in his wife’s mini-van, but the professor was driving.

“You only
think
that it’s no problem because you have never seen the beauty of the historic Nakdong River or our rice fields or our bridges.”

“I saw the beautiful bridges over Busan, and I saw many rice fields in Japan,” I added just to throw him off, the way he tried to do me at times.

“That’s not the same thing,” he said at a lower volume than everything else he had announced proudly.

The professor booked two rooms at the Hyundai Suites located in Seoul. He warned me that it wasn’t a tourist area, but he chose it because it was large enough for his family even though they were only planning on an overnight stay, it had the kitchen, washer and dryer, and other items a normal family needs to be organized. I gave him $150 up front. I assured him whatever Akemi and I needed, I would pay for. We had arrived around midnight, so everyone was preparing to rest.

“Can we talk downstairs in the lobby?” the professor asked me.

“Akemi, I’ll be right back.” I told her.

She was figuring out the television remote.
“Hai,”
she said, turning and looking into me as she always would.

“About tomorrow,” he said cautiously, when we were alone, seated in the hotel lobby.

“What about it?” I asked.

“I’d like to take things one step at a time. I’d like for Sun Eun and I to see Akemi’s grandmother alone first. We think it’d be better if Sun Eun tells her mother about Joo Eun and her ashes.”

The professor was being careful and considerate to me. I think he was also wary of my reactions, after the situation between me and the guy who claimed to be Akemi’s father. I liked that he was cautious. He needed to respect my marriage the same way I respected his.

“No problem,” I told him gently.

“What time do you want me and Akemi to come?” I asked him.

“Okay, so now we’re on step two,” he said, sounding like the professor he was.

“I’d like Akemi’s grandmother to meet Akemi alone.”

“You mean for her grandmother to meet with her first before meeting me, Akemi’s husband? I must be step three?”

“Yes, and I do want her to meet you of course. You and Akemi are married. Here in Korea marriage is sacred and serious,” he said, trying to calm me. I had noticed though that he didn’t mention when I would actually be introduced to the grandmother.

“When?” I asked.

“Let’s check her schedule and see how it goes tomorrow. We really don’t know what’s gonna happen.” He said that thing again, about not knowing what’s gonna happen. Meanwhile, I was reflecting on what Black Sea had told me about Koreans and blood. If Sun Eun had fainted when she saw me, could the grandmother go some steps further and catch a heart attack?

“No problem. I have some things I want to check out in Seoul,” I told him.

“Really, what?” he asked. He was so eager to know everything, but no one can know everything!

“Itaewon,” I said, remembering that the brother named Ali from Iran had told me that I could find an Islamic community in Itaewon that included an Islamic center and halal foods, a mosque, and related products.

“Itaewon,” the professor repeated, like he knew something I should know. “Watch your wallet carefully when you’re over there.”

“Are you still planning to leave late tonight to return to Busan?” I asked him.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said again.

I was feeling worried for my wife and for his mother-in-law. It seemed like Dong Hwa and his wife were bracing themselves, like people waiting on a storm that may or may not come at all.

Akemi and I went walking in Seoul, into the late night. Our nights were precious to us, especially since I knew now that I would not see her tomorrow once her family matters got rolling. We ate at a fried chicken joint, and there were many to choose from. They rocked until 2 a.m. after other food places were closed. Fried chicken and beer and watermelon—Koreans had that in common with Africans. There were slight differences. Their fried chicken came with sides of cubes of white radishes. On second thought, fried chicken, beer, and watermelon, break dancing, hip-hop, haircuts, and the urge to chill in the right fashions—young Koreans had all these things in common with American blacks.

In the shower and steam together, kissing Akemi felt warm and moist. She had her eyes closed and her hair was soaked through. Her fingers were still exploring my cuts. I didn’t stop her from licking each one. I wanted to thank her, for her love and her passion. I moved her back up against the hot wet wall and ran my fingers down the front of her body. In the squatting position with water sprinkling over my head and flowing over her body, I spread her pussy lips and sucked her clitoris. It had been a while since I made her cum this way. It always drove her crazy. As I swirled my tongue around the most sensitive area, her legs collapsed and she gushed all over.

Later I dried her hair for her and even gave her a braid.
“Naisho,”
I told her, meaning “secret” in Japanese. She should never tell anyone that Mayonaka, the black leopard, braided her hair.

We went to sleep the same way we did in my Brooklyn projects, and in Osaka and in Busan by the sea—naked, her breast against my back, her arm beneath my arm and her pretty fingers wrapped around my balls.

* * *

Right before sunrise I peeled myself from my wife. I had to shower away our syrups and prepare to be clean and focused for the prayer.
After Fajr prayer, I was exhausted. I went back to sleep in a separate bed thanks to Professor Dong Hwa, who registered me and Akemi for double beds instead of a king-size. I respected the cat, but from time to time I had to laugh at him. I considered that some people think for whatever strange reason that sex is dirty. The Quran encourages that a man should go into his wife. The boundary in our Quran is not around how a man and woman make love and babies and pleasure for one another. The boundaries are that a woman and a man must be married. Once the
nikah
is performed, enjoy one another.

“Sayonara,”
Akemi said before she left to go next door to join Sun Eun. Why didn’t she know I hated that word whenever it came from her lips?

At 11:00 a.m. Korea time I called Umma. Naja picked up. “Oh boy, who is this? I don’t even know you anymore,” she said.

“Don’t say that. What are you doing in Umma’s room this late?” I asked her.

“She let me sleep in here with her for three nights already,” Naja said, as though she was winning some points.

“What’s been happening?” I asked her.

“Panic died,” she said, as though I should already know and she was mad that I didn’t.

“Who?”

“Panic, my frog,” she said, sounding frustrated with me.

“Oh, what happened to him?” I asked, trying to sympathize with her.

“Well, there are a few theories,” she said, sounding like a little scientist. Our father is a scientist, so it wasn’t too out of reach.

“Tell me, I’m listening,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“How’s Umma?” I asked the most important question.

“Well, she’s getting prettier every day. That’s what everyone around here says.”

My chest tightened. “Everybody like who?” I asked my sister.

“Like Basima and Sudana, they just love her,” she said, as though the Ghazzali women were competing with her for her mother’s love.

“Oh.” The sudden tension in my chest was released.

“So stop asking about people and come home already,” she said.

“I will.” But I didn’t want to let on that it would be this week, just
in case anything happened as the professor had said. “I’ll be home soon, Naja.
inshallah.
”

“There is one problem around here though,” Naja began whispering.

“Tell me.”

“It’s Basima,” she said, referring to Mr. Ghazzali’s eldest daughter. “I think she is in love or something.”

“Are the Ghazzalis planning a wedding?” I asked.

“Nope, there’s not going to be any wedding around here,” she said quietly.

“Come on, Naja. Get to the point. What happened?”

“Basima loves a boy who goes to her college. He’s going to be a doctor just like her,” Naja explained slowly.

“So what’s the problem?” I pushed.

“He’s from south Sudan and Mr. and Mrs. Ghazzali are from the north of Sudan. So Mrs. Ghazzali doesn’t approve of their love.” I didn’t say nothing. Then Naja asked, “Our father is from the south, right?”

“You
already
know,” I told her firmly, aggravated by the ongoing senseless conflict between the north and south of fucking everywhere.

“Umma says, ‘People in southern Sudan are just as good as the people of northern Sudan and that some of the southerners are even better!’ So Basima loves Umma a lot. The boy Basima loves—”

“The
man
Basima loves, Naja. He is a man, not a boy,” I told her.

“Does Mrs. Ghazzali know what Umma thinks?” I asked, gathering all the information I could from Naja’s perspective.

“Nope. Umma told me that me and her should stay quiet and not tell anyone our thoughts.”

“So how does Basima know what Umma thinks?” I asked her.

“Because one day Basima was down here crying over the boy, I mean the man, and I guess umi just got feelings because of Basima’s tears and she said those good things about the north and the south and Basima’s man. I guess umi just wanted Basima to be okay.”

“I see. Where’s Umma now?”

“She’s in the shower. Should I go get her?” Naja asked.

“No, tell Umma don’t worry. I’ll call her back tomorrow before she leaves for work, early morning.” I hung up.

Uneasy, I called the lawyer who has the keys and paperwork for
our new house in Queens. I knew it was late in New York and that no one would pick up. I just wanted to leave a voice message. I told our lawyer that I would pick up the keys to our new house on Saturday. I would buy the tickets home for Akemi and me this week.

People who didn’t come from countries where it is normal for people to talk about politics every day, to care about it and have a definite opinion about it, will never understand how these kinds of situations escalate and then fall apart. Between men they are sometimes even fatal. I didn’t want Umma to be uncomfortable reliving something that she had already lived, survived, and won, the north versus south of Sudan conflict. Umma had told me in great and specific and clear details about her and my father’s love story. Because of this, I knew that one day soon, her thoughts and emotions about Basima’s dilemma would mix with her own feelings and burst into the Ghazzali home. Then Umma would potentially become an unwelcome guest or worse, an intruder in their personal passionate matters.