Lightness of Being…

 Tia Crystal Williams

May, 2000

Mombasa, Kenya

I wasn't always like this you know,  I was never too daring, or adventurous, but no one could say I was boring either. I used to be a painter, sculptor, and I could carry a mean tune. I used to have colorful dreams when I was younger and prettier.

Once upon a time, I used to carry rhythm in my heart.

I guess they call it being youthful, and perhaps everyone ages with age, although my friend Fatima disagrees. She tells me that age is one of the two things that frees up a woman; divorce is the other. Maybe she's right. After all, who would have thought I would be here today, thousands of miles away from my hometown, telling you this story?

I am not that old don't get me wrong, though sometimes I feel ancient.

I guess that's part of the reason why I came all the way to Africa armed with my laptop and a research thesis. I don't know what I was looking for. Perhaps I was searching for pieces of me that will make me remember who I am and who I was supposed to be.

I also changed my name back to Tia. I am tired of pretending to be someone else. Of being locked up in someone else's memory and history. Of constantly trying to sharpen my round edges so that I can fit into a square peg. My mama called me Tia Crystal Williams and she must have had a good reason to do so.

Of course my friend Fatima here has a running joke about my name. She says in Swahili my name means "Put ". It's an incomplete verb yearning for instruction, but combined with my middle name "Tia Crystal" she says it could be raunchy even. I will spare you the details behind her knowing smiles. I don't care what it means though, because everyone knows that we, Americans, have picked up this habit of making up names lately. All I know is if God intended for my mom to call me Tia, He must have had some design behind it too.

Fatima makes me laugh and I love her for it. She is vulgar, rude, has a wicked sense of humor, combined with a sharp tongue. She’s the type who won’t stop at calling a spade what it is; but will go further and draw your attention to its resemblance to something cruder. She stands out from the women around here like a tall spiky cactus trees all limbs facing heavenward, in the midst of blooming wildflower gardens.

But I am not talking about Fatima yet and how she reminds me of a sea rose; thorny, daring, wild, and beautiful precisely because of her insistence on abandoning all pretext.

I used to look different too you know. I had a tiny little waist protected by a healthy bottom and bosom. My mama told me once that a real woman is defined by her chest and back. I never wanted to be thin-stick, and when I was much younger I used to be secretly thrilled by my budding curves. I knew that soon enough, I will take my place among real women like my mama, aunties, and grandmothers.

Three kids would make you lose that firmness fast. I guess that summarizes what happens to me. Kids happened to me and after that a co-wife happened, but before all that a husband happened of course.

It's a long story and I am a bit tired. So maybe next time I will tell you my story from the beginning.

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From forever before we were even created, Jamaal and I must have been hanging out somewhere in another realm just waiting to be introduced to this world, and rediscover each other all over again.

We were born three minutes apart, three houses apart, and within three months we were being raised by the same caregiver (Jamaal’s great grandmother) while both sets of our parents worked.

We grew up discovering the world together. We got in trouble a lot, and soon no one was bothering to find out who did what. Our parents started punishing us for each other’s crimes, because they knew that if one of us was apparently alone, the other must have masterminded the plan or at least knew about it. They were right on the mark, although we never admitted it of course.

Jamaal knew me like no other man ever could or ever would. He could guess my moods, read my thoughts, and convince me to do anything and everything even jump off a cliff. I trusted him completely with the pure innocence of a child’s heart and later with the willful blindness of adult love.

What we shared wasn’t even love. We were extensions of each other’s soul and together we never really worried about time, because we had forever. We never worried about other people, friends, and family either because we had each other and that was more than enough to keep us busy.

I always joked that God put us on earth and made it too easy for us to find each other, so that we can focus on bigger and better things.

And maybe that was the reason we both found Islam so early in our lives; and embraced it without a second’s hesitation.

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By the time we were finishing high school we had literally done it all. The club scene we used to sneak out to, armed with fake IDs’ and mean attitudes, got old really fast. Clubs were actually boring. I could never understand why grown men and women would want to pay to go to a dimly lit hall, with throbbing lights, drink and let their sweaty gyrating bodies be groped by strangers.

Jamaal and I would sneak in, sit in one of the corner tables, and make fun of everyone in there. Sometimes Jamaal would zero in one person and start making up a story about his/her life and how they ended up there. I would add little spicy bits to his story and soon we’d be lost in a different dimension.

Jamaal was cool like that. Since he got to the world a whole three minutes ahead of me, he always took leadership in all our escapades. He taught me everything that I came to know, he even learned to read faster than me, so that he could turn around and teach me. I think I dragged my feet deliberately because I enjoyed having him assume an “older than thou” position with me.

He was born with a star on the side of his forehead; I told him it is a symbol of his soul’s combustible matter. You see, he was made of pure galaxies inside. That is why I never wondered at his fiery passion, electric excitement, and innate charisma.

I was made of endless nights and shadowy moons perhaps another reason why my little hand perpetually sought his; in this dark world of dense confusion; he lit the way for me.

When we finished the club scene, we explored revolutionary causes trying them on like used clothes. We explored Communism him reading up on Castro; me falling in love with Che. To Garveyism, I always knew I wanted to go back to
Africa, although where in that vast motherland did I belong? We joined an Afrocentric religious group that was unearthing ancient Egyptian gods like Ra, Osiris and Nut to worship, but it was still a work in progress, and we figured if the religion had died before it must have been for a good reason. We checked out Nation of Islam for a minute, before we both fell in love with Malcolm.

It was Malcolm's journey that led us to consider getting beyond the jarring foreignness of Islam and opened the door to its majestic of sources: The Quran.

Forevermore, it was the Quran alone that prevented me from falling apart.

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