It was a good one and half hour later before she said goodbye and watched sleepily as her phone shut down. Her eyelids were so heavy with sleep that she didn’t think she could make it off the couch. Just five minutes, she told herself, then she would get up and go to her room. Five minutes. It was her last coherent thought before sleep finally took over.
Hussein was not in a good mood. He had expected this day to be one of those fulfilling days at work with the cattle. In fact, he had expected to have been done with work three hours ago. Things had turned out far from expected.
The Big House had a constant number of workers in its employ, and on a day like this when the cattle had to be delivered, divided and branded, it was the usual thing to hire extra hands from town till the job was done. What he had not expected was that the Faroukis would hire nearly all the hands in Mapungi so that those left were not even up to twenty.
And that had set work back for those that Hussein had hired. More than half of the work was still uncompleted even though he and his men had worked late into the night. He felt his temper rising again, like it had throughout the day, any time the thought of what those slimy Faroukis had done crossed his mind.
He brushed his hand over his face and felt the recently grown beard. In all the excitement of the days, he had continuously forgotten to shave. He pushed open the door to the Big House. Everywhere was dark and quiet just as he had hoped it would be. Maybe Jessica and her friends had not made it after all. He never bothered with the lights because he knew this house better than the back of his palm. Quietly, he made his way to his favourite couch, the only one that could accommodate his height, and flopped down face forward.
Kimberly groaned at the sudden weight on her body. There was something on her. Something heavy and warm and smelling like sweat and earth and –and cow dunk! Cow dunk? Her eyes snapped open. A cow! There was a cow on her! The scream she released could have woken the dead and the house, and she could not have cared less. She was still screaming when the hall was suddenly flooded with bright light and Jessica came running down the stairs in her pyjamas.
“What is going on here?” she demanded looking from Kimberly to a figure standing by the light switch.
That was when Kimberly saw the man. He was tall and dirty with an unkempt beard and eyes that should belong to a mad man or a murderer. She cringed.
Hussein wanted to strangle somebody. Precisely, he wanted to strangle the woman in the nightgown that revealed more than it covered. The woman who had just worsened his already bad day. And here he had hoped to rest awhile.
“Your silly city girlfriend just spoilt my rest and my already bad day. That is what’s going on here,” he bellowed, all the while shooting murderous glances at Kimberly.
“Silly!” Kimberly matched his gaze. “This dumb bushman attacked me in the couch while I was asleep. I –I thought it was a cow.” Now, as she said them out loud, the words sounded silly even in her ears. She felt the heat rising in her cheeks. The heat of anger, she thought firmly to herself, not of embarrassment.
“A cow!” Jessica struggled to keep a straight face. One look at the faces of the two people in front of her, and she knew that was not the time to laugh.
“He smells like one,” Kimberly insisted. “Like cow dunk,” she added for good measure. “You didn’t tell me you allowed foul-smelling madmen into your home, Jessica. He nearly killed me.”
Hussein, his temper flaring out of control, lost all sense of propriety as he flew across the room and caught hold of the foolish woman who had dared to disrespect him in his house. “I will not be insulted in my home, woman.” He shook her roughly. “So, you better be careful with your words.”
His grip was strong. Too strong. Kimberly felt the sharp pain and the tear that sprang to her eyes. Yet, for an inexplicable moment, her brain actually acknowledged the fact that she would have been truly disappointed if she left the North without meeting a bushman. A true, uncivilized bushman. And this man breaking her bones was a complete bushman.
“Let me go.” Her voice was surprisingly strong.
“Let her go, Hussein,” Jessica ordered. “Let her go now!”
Hussein? The loving cousin that Jessica never stopped rattling on about? Kimberly snorted. Trust Jessica to make angels out of demons. He let her go. Involuntarily, her hands moved up to rub the tender flesh on both shoulders.
“Are you alright?” Jessica wedged herself between them. On Kimberly’s nod, she turned on her cousin and admonished him. “Hussein Mubarak Daniels, is that any way to treat a guest in the Big House? Apologize to her right now.”
If he had not been so angry, he would have laughed at his little cousin for commanding him, and he would have obliged just to please her. But he was not in a pleasing mood. “Your guest,” he spat the words, “should know how to respect a man in his house.” He walked away to his room without a backward glance.
“I’m so sorry, Kim.” Jessica led her back to the couch. “I assure you that Hussein is usually not like that. He must have had a rough day.”
Kimberly had never thought of her friend as one of those women who defended a man’s shortcomings no matter what. She looked at Jessica now as if her friend had just sprouted a second head. “I don’t want your fairy tales now, Farida,” she said, calling her friend by the middle name which she had gained special permission to use.
“Okay,” Jessica conceded solemnly, trying hard to hold back a giggle, “but did you really think it was a cow?” At the look on Kimberly’s face, she lost the fight and burst into rumbustious laughter. “Oh my!” she exclaimed, still laughing.
Kimberly was soon laughing with her. “It’s not funny, Jessica.”
“I know. I’m truly sorry. It’s just –” She swallowed the laughter. “Why don’t you go and get some sleep. We have a full day tomorrow.”
“Yeah, and I hope I don’t have to see him everywhere I turn.” Kimberly left to her room.
Hussein was still seething from his encounter with Kimberly when he got out of the shower and prepared for bed. Now that he was wide awake and had managed to wash away some of the day’s tiredness, he doubted that sleep would come any time soon.
As he lay on the bed facing the ceiling, he found himself replaying the whole scenario in his head. He had not meant to scare her like that. Heck! He wouldn’t have bet a pin on finding a woman in the couch he always dropped into after a hard day’s work.
And a woman she was. Even in his anger, he had felt the soft skin beneath his calloused palms as he shook her hard. He had noticed her big round eyes fill with fear before it was quickly replaced by defiance. And for a brief moment while he held her, he had been confused about whether he was holding her to kiss those full rounded lips or to shake some sense into her pretty little head. He punched the pillow for the umpteenth time for a more comfortable feel before finally throwing it at the door and narrowly missing Jessica who came in unannounced.
She picked up the pillow and went to sit at the edge of the bed. “A fine spectacle you made of yourself down there, Hussein, and what a grand way of welcoming a guest.”
“I was not thinking straight,” Hussein said, hoping to appease his cousin, though he did not feel an ounce of remorse for what had happened. He was not the only one at fault.
“You were not thinking at all,” Jessica disagreed. “I can understand that Kimberly is a little um -uneasy about long distance trips, and she just made one. But you!”
“Okay that’s enough.” He pulled his cousin to join him on the bed. “Are you here to chastise me or to tell me how much you’ve missed me?”
“Stop doing that,” Jessica frowned before bursting into a wide smile. She could never stay mad at him for long. He was her knight in shiny armour. The only person who had been there for her in trying times. The one she had been able to lean on when all of a sudden, everyone and everything had been snatched away from her. They had grieved together. He, for his father who had perished in war. She, for the father who died in war and the brother whose life had forever been altered by the same war.
But that same war had made them strong and the bond between them even stronger. “Well, I did miss you a little,” she conceded.
“How much is a little? Cos I missed you plenty. Your stories especially.”
“Don’t tease me, Hussein. I know you don’t miss my stories.”
“But I do.” He feigned seriousness. “Especially the one about the boy who thought he was supposed to be a god. You never told me the ending.”
Jessica remembered that story. She had started it about three years ago. “That’s because I don’t have an ending yet,” she said.
Hussein smiled and bit back on a comment that he knew would make her mad as hell. Jessica almost never ended her stories. “Did you hear from Majid?”
There was a long silence before she replied with an almost inaudible “no, I was hoping you had.”
It had been a long time since the war and even longer since they had last seen Majid Mubarak, Jessica’s brother and Hussein’s cousin. Though they rarely discussed him, Hussein knew that Jessica still grieved over her brother who had chosen a stray life over family. He mentally punched himself for raising the topic. “He is fine,” he said.
Jessica stood up from the bed. “You don’t know that,” she replied. “Goodnight Hussein. I expect you to apologise to Kimberly tomorrow.” She left without a backward glance.
He felt like the worst idiot in Mapungi. She did not need a reminder every day of her life that anything could have happened to Majid and they had no way of knowing. So, in just one night, he had managed to upset two women. Bravo, Hussein. Kimberly, he turned over the name in his head. So that was her name. He would be damned if he apologised to the little southern chit. But maybe it would not be so bad after all, and it would make Jessica happy.
