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The Dragonfly Sea
The Dragonfly Sea Read online
ALSO BY YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR
Dust
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2019 by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Daniel Ladinsky: Excerpt from The Subject Tonight Is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky, copyright © 1996 by Daniel Ladinsky. Reprinted by permission of Daniel Ladinsky.
The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Shambhala Publications Inc.: Excerpt of “Like the Morning Breeze” from Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz by Hafiz, translation by Thomas Rain Crowe. Translation copyright © 2001 by Thomas Rain Crowe. Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boulder, Colorado (www.shambhala.com).
Shahriar Shahriari: Excerpt from “Ghazal 374” by Hafiz, translated by Shahriar Shahriari. Reprinted by permission of Shahriar Shahriari (hafizonlove.com).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Owuor, Yvonne Adhiambo, author.
Title: The dragonfly sea : a novel / by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018020711 (print) | LCCN 2018023670 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451494054 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451494047 (hardcover)
Classification: LCC PR9381.9O98 (ebook) | LCC PR9381.9.O98 D73 2019 (print) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020711
Ebook ISBN 9780451494054
Cover image: Seaside (detail) by Ben Bonart. Private Collection/Bridgeman Images
Cover design by Linda Huang
Map by Christopher Ganda
v5.4
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Contents
Cover
Also by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Part 1
Chapter 1
Part 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part 3
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part 4
Chapter 19
Part 5
Chapter 20
Part 6
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part 7
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part 8
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part 9
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part 10
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Part 11
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Part 12
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Part 13
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Part 14
Chapter 58
Part 15
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Part 16
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Part 17
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Part 18
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Part 19
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Part 20
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Part 21
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Part 22
Chapter 91
Part 23
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Part 24
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Part 25
Chapter 99
Part 26
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Part 27
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Part 28
Chapter 114
Part 29
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
For you, La Soledad.
&
As always,
The Family
Matriarch, Mary Sero Owuor
&
The father we dearly miss.
&
My siblings,
&
the most iridescent of lights:
Hera, Hawi, Gweth, Sungu, Diju, Detta, and Sero.
Author’s Note
In 2005, also the six hundredth anniversary of the Ming dynasty’s great Admiral (Haji Mahmud Shamsuddin) Zheng He’s (1371–1435) first voyage around the Western (Indian) Ocean, a young woman from Pate Island, Kenya, obtained a scholarship to study in China. The award was given based on family claims and DNA tests that suggested that she was indeed a descendant of a Ming-dynasty sailor who had survived a storm-wrought shipwreck, who, with others, had found refuge and a sense of belonging on Pate Island. The Dragonfly Sea is inspired by this historical incident, but it is necessary to emphasize that it is not this young woman’s story, lest the character plot points be ascribed to her. Though the story incorporates current news and historical events, this is a work of fiction, and the chronology of several events has been altered. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Take this amulet, child, and secure it with cord and honor.
I will make you a chain of radiant pearl and coral.
I will give you a clasp, fine without flaw, to wear on your neck…
Wash and perfume yourself and braid your hair;
string jasmine and lay it on the counterpane.
Adorn yourself in clothes like a bride, and wear anklets and bracelets…
Sprinkle rosewater on yourself. Have rings on your fingers and, always, henna on the palms of your hands…
—Mwana Kupona binti Msham,
translated by J. W. Allen and adapted by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Roho ni mgeni.
The soul is a visitor (stranger).
[ 1 ]
To cross the vast ocean to their south, water-chasing dragonflies with forebears in Northern India had hitched a ride on a sedate “in-between seasons” morning wind, one of the monsoon’s introits, the matlai. One day in 1992, four generations later, under dark-purplish-blue clouds, these fleeting beings settled on the mangrove-fringed southwest coast of a little girl’s island. The matlai conspired with a shimmering full moon to charge the island, its fishermen, prophets, traders, seamen, seawomen, healers, shipbuilders, dreamers, tailors, madmen, teachers, mothers, and fathers with a fretfulness that mirrored the slow-churning turquoise sea.
* * *
—
Dusk stalked the Lamu Archipelago’s largest and sullenest island, trudging from Siyu on the north coast, upending Kizingitini’s fishing fleets before swooping southwest to brood over a Pate Town that was already moldering in the malaise of unrequited yearnings. Bruised by endless deeds of guile, siege, war, and seduction, like the island that contained it, Pate Town marked melancholic time. A leaden sky poured dull-red light over a crowd of petulant ghosts, dormant feuds, forfeited glories, invisible roads, and congealing millennia-old conspiracies. Weaker light leached into ancient crevices, tombs, and ruins, and signaled to a people who were willing to cohabit with tragedy, trusting that time transformed even cataclysms into echoes.
* * *
—
Deep inside Pate, a cock crowed, and from the depths of space a summons, the Adhan, crescendoed. Sea winds tugged at a little girl’s lemon-green headscarf, revealing dense, black curly hair that blew into her eyes. From within her mangrove hideout, the scrawny seven-year-old, wearing an oversized floral dress that she was supposed to grow into, watched dense storm clouds hobble inland. She decided that these were a monster’s footsteps, a monster whose strides left streaks of pink light on the sky. Seawater lapped at her knees, and her bare feet sank into the black sand as she clutched another scrawny being, a purring dirty-white kitten. She was betting that the storm—her monster—would reach land before a passenger-laden dau now muddling its way toward the cracked wharf to the right of her. She held her breath. “Home-comers,” she called all passengers. Wajio. The child could rely on such home-comers to be jolted like marionettes whenever there was a hint of rain. She giggled in anticipation as the midsized dau, with Bi Kidude painted in flaking yellow, eased into the creek.
Scattered, soft raindrops.
The thunder’s spirited rumbling caused every home-comer to raise his or her eyes skyward and squawk like a hornbill. The watching girl sniggered as she stroked her kitten, pinching its fur in her thrill. It mewled. “Shhh,” she whispered back as she peered through mangrove leaves, the better to study the passengers’ drizzle-blurred faces—a child looking for and gathering words, images, sounds, moods, colors, conversations, and shapes, which she could store in one of the shelves of her soul, to retrieve later and reflect upon.
Every day, in secret, she went to and stood by the portals of this sea, her sea. She was waiting for Someone.
The girl now moved the kitten from her right to her left shoulder. Its extra-large blue eyes followed the dance of eight golden dragonflies hovering close by. Thunder. The dau drew parallel to the girl, and she fixated on a man in a cream-colored suit who was slumped over the vessel’s edge. She was about to cackle at his discomfort when a high and harried voice intruded:
“Ayaaaana!”
Her surveillance of the man was interrupted as lightning split the sky.
“Ayaaaana!”
It was her mother.
“Ayaaaana!”
At first, the little girl froze. Then she crouched low, almost kneeling in the water, and stroked her kitten. She whispered to it, “Haidhuru”—Don’t mind. “She can’t see us.”
Ayaana was supposed to be recovering from a morning asthma attack. Bi Munira, her mother, had rubbed clove oil over her tightened chest and stuffed the all-ailment-treating black kalonji seeds into her mouth. They had sat together, naked under a blanket, while a pot of steaming herbs, which included eucalyptus and mint, decongested their lungs. Ayaana had gulped down air and blocked her breath to swallow six full tablespoons of cod-liver oil. She had gurgled a bitter concoction and been lulled to sleep by her mother’s dulcet “do-do-do.” She had woken up to the sounds of her mother at work: the tinkle of glass, brass, and ceramic; the aroma of rose, clove, langilangi, and moonflower; and the lilts of women’s voices inside her mother’s rudimentary home-based beauty salon.
Ayaana had tried. She had half napped until a high-pitched sea wind pierced and scattered her reverie. She had heard far-off thunder, but she had pinned herself to the bed until the persistent beckoning of the storm proved irresistible. Then she rolled out of bed, arranged extra pillows to simulate a body, and covered these with sheets. She squeezed out of a high window and shimmied down drainpipes clamped to the crumbling coral wall. On the ground, she found the kitten she had rescued from a muddy drain several days ago, stretched out on their doorstep. She picked it up and planted it on her right shoulder, dashed off to the seafront, and finally swung north to the mangrove section of the creek, from where she could spy on the world unseen.
“Ayaaaana!”
The wind cooled her face. The kitten purred. Ayaana watched the dau. The cream-suited elderly stranger lifted his head. Their eyes connected. Ayaana ducked, pressing into the mangrove shadows, her heart racing. How had that happened?
“Ayaaaana!” Her mother’s voice was closer. “Where’s that child? Ayaaana? Must I talk to God?”
Ayaana looked toward the boat and again at the blackening skies. She would never know what landed first, the boat or the storm. She remembered the eyes that had struck hers. Would their owner tell on her? She scanned the passageway, looking for those eyes again. The kitten on her shoulder pressed its face into her neck.
“Ayaaaana! Haki ya Mungu…aieee!” The threat-drenched contralto came from the bushes to the left
of the mangroves. “Aii, mwanangu, mbona wanitesa?” Too close. The girl abandoned her cover, splashed through the low tide to reach open sands. Ayaana scrambled from stone to stone, with the kitten clinging to her neck. She dropped out of sight.
* * *