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‘Is she also a Muslim?' Fusena asked him, without any prelims, and without getting out.

Caught unawares for the second time that early morning, Ali said just simply, ‘No.' Fusena backed out again and drove off. She was going to look for someone to talk to.

Part II

Said Aba to Ama:

                   
My sister, the number of reasons for which men leave their women for other women -

       
13

One Sunday in the month of July, which was also the Republic Day holiday weekend, Ali look the deputy manager of Linga Hide A ways with him and drove to Esi's village. They were going to see her people. When they got there, Ali discovered that he had brought trouble to Palaver Town. Esi's fathers proceeded to grill him mercilessly. To some questions they found his answers quite satisfactory: to others not at all. Two points engaged their attention more than any others, and it became clear fairly early in the discussions that on account of one of them or both, they would send him packing back to Accra. One was on whether his wife knew of his intentions in connection with Esi, and the other was this business of having no-one in the whole wide world to take along there except someone from his own firm.

‘How much can any man's employees know about him?' someone asked.

‘And even more important, you don't just take anybody to be a witness at your marriage negotiation!' a second added.

‘No,' a third answered him. ‘You take someone who by age, kinship, social standing or wealth is in a position to stand firm in all matters to do with the well-being of that marriage. Above all, he or she must be one who in a crisis must be respected and deferred to by all parties concerned. Your own employee? No-no.'

In the end, it became clear that as far as they were concerned, it all boiled down to who was backing the marriage from All's side. To which Ali had confessed that he could not produce anybody. All his people were up north.

‘So exactly to whom are we supposed to give our daughter in marriage?' Esi's fathers wanted to know. After all, in the world they knew, a marriage involved the two families. Each group thoroughly vetted the other, to the extent that sometimes either or both sides employed the services of paid spies who went through everything with a fine-toothed comb: people's histories, their social reputations, their known enterprise or lack of it. Each family took pains to examine main and branches of family trees for any unfortunate signs of criminal records, traces of physical and other deformities. And if found,
anything that could bring out the slightest frown on any face stopped discussions immediately. These included plain old laziness and suicide. As Esi's fathers and mothers reminded one another that Sunday afternoon, that was the only way to guarantee the health of future generations. They were ordering him to bring them solid people they could talk to or he might as well forget marrying their daughter.

Ali sat and listened polite-faced or repentant. When necessary he supplied answers in an ‘I-too-can-play-a-very-good-boy' voice, as they queried, complained and scolded. So what else is new? he wondered. Nothing. North, south, east and west, clearly it was the same procedure everywhere. He only hoped that at the end of it all they would let him marry their daughter.

What Ali had told Esi's fathers about all his people being up north and therefore he not being able to produce anyone from his side was only half the truth. What he could not tell them was that he had not had the courage to ask any of his one or two close friends or his very distant relatives in Nima. He was convinced that none of his friends would want to have anything to do with the affair. He didn't have that many friends anyway, but of the few he had, he could not think of one who would willingly back him. Because, whether they were northern, southern, Muslim or Christian, one thing he sensed in all of them was an open respect and liking for Fusena. To an extent which sometimes made him feel a little jealous. As men they were all naturally engaged in different forms of ‘away matches', as they self-indulgingly described their sexual adventures. But they also seemed to treat their wives with respect. A second wife? They wouldn't know how Fusena would take it. What they knew was how their wives would have taken it, in her place. And that was enough to advise them.

As for All's relatives in Nima, these were the various fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters with whom his father had stayed on his business trips to the south during the years he, Ali, was growing up. So he knew them from when he was still young enough to go around with his father. And over the years he had stayed in touch with them. But life in Accra is full of mad and conflicting demands on everyone, so he had not been able to give too much time to his relationship with them. But people of his age or younger plainly couldn't care. They too were into living their own lives and had their own friends. And as for the older generation they understood. After all, they could not have made the long, hard and often humiliating journey from
home to so far south without learning — either because they had been old enough then or even as children travelling with parents — that in this life, we often have to do what is necessary and not what we would prefer. Even when they later became big people in the community, and food and shelter ceased to be daily burning issues, these were some of the lessons of life they never, never forgot. And the result of all this was a general understanding of other people's problems and a tolerance of their shortcomings. For the patriarchs of Nima it was enough for them that Musa's boy had grown up well. He had finished all his education and even gone overseas and come back a decent young man. Allah is great.

So when Ali went to tell his elders in Nima about his wanting to marry Esi, the reaction he got shocked him. Contrary to all his fears, no one raved about how a good Muslim boy would bring in contamination in the form of a daughter of the infidels. No. What they first fretted about was the fact that he had originally tried to do the marrying behind their backs. They roundly scolded him for that. Next, they asked him to look around properly. Hadn't they all committed the crime he was also planning to be guilty of? Most of them had married women of the south and daughters of the infidels. It was survival. How can anyone go about, eating the heads of cows, and also manage to maintain that he is afraid of eyes? How could he be that hypocritical? Hmm? What really surprised them was that a scholar of his standing and a modern young man would want to have a second wife. They had thought that such desires only lived in the breasts of people like them: old and with only a few years of Koranic education. No, no, no. He should not even try to tell them that he was not different from them. He was. They had no time to tell him how much. But the matter at hand was this business of his proposed second marriage. What was important was that if he kept it as a secret from his wife, it would be no marriage. Again if he just told his wife about it when it was already done or even before, but without her consent, it would be no marriage. Of course, no woman agreed to this sort of thing willingly. There was a time — maybe up to the days of their grandfathers — when women understood the necessity a little more. Since then, they have been understanding it less and less. Now, school or no school, no woman understands.

‘So we have to work a little harder to convince them. But the convincing has to be done.' Ali would have to do things correctly, in
the way they should be done. So to begin with, had he gained the consent of his wife?

The question hit Ali with the force of a fully loaded timber truck that was rolling down the Kwahu mountains towards Nkawkaw. He looked down. And since that was an even louder answer to their question than if he had spoken, the elders just went on to give the necessary advice. They wanted their son Ali to understand this clearly. They knew all this from experience. Of course, they would go with him to his new woman's people; to whatever hole they lived in. But not before Fusena agreed — however reluctantly. So he had better go tell her and come back to them. He could see them some other day. They were not going to disappear.