Saturday, January 31, 2015
Jula saw her as she stood hesitating in front of the big black iron-sheet gate; the entrance to his compound. Something about her physical attitude resonated in his breast. The late morning drizzle that had accompanied his walk back home from Marumi town, where he ran several businesses, had intensified. The woman at the gate adjusted the headscarf over her head to protect her face from the drizzle and the chilly breeze. Then she, perhaps on hearing his footfalls, turned her gaze away from the gate and faced him. They looked at each other, the familiar in the other etched vaguely against the haze of time, which gradually cleared, and they stood exposed to mutual recognition. Still, time had left its sadness. He sensed it in the crow's feet at the corners of her feline eyes, above the high cheekbones. She now had a mellow beauty, and the way she was dressed – black boots, a raincoat over a dark polo-neck sweater, and the scarf on her head and around her neck – made him think of a widow. The face of a widow, he said in his mind. She had always made him say phrases in his mind. She eyed him, trying to gauge the ravages of time on him. His face, still ruggedly handsome, was now a little gaunt. There were specks of grey in his hair and in the stubble on his chin. But she thought he wore his fifty-five years with a somewhat sad dignity.
