Fiction: Two young girls fall in love in a country where same sex relationships are a crime

Sometimes I wonder, Fati, how our story would have ended if we were normal people. I wonder what would have become of our love if your brother hadn’t caught us kissing at Boyzies almost three years after we’d been together.

It was my fault. I am to blame for the way things turned out. If I hadn’t forced you to take me out that night, we would still be together. But in my defence, Fati, I was tired of hiding. I was furious at the world for turning us into cockroaches, only comfortable in dark places. I wanted to hold your hand in public, to show you off to my friends. I wanted to kiss you at break time when we sat on the lawn with classmates and ate banana cake from the canteen, and I wanted to fall asleep on your shoulder at the library when the words on the pages of my books started to blur together and I could not focus anymore. I wanted to snuggle up to you in places other than a darkened corner at Boyzies, to join all the other young couples as they slow-danced to Brenda Fassie’s “Weekend Special” on the dorm balconies during festive nights. Instead, we slept wrapped in each other’s arms to the sound of that song.

I still listen to Brenda even now. Her melodies take me back to Boyzies, back to the only bar in Bamenda that looked the other way when two girls walked hand in hand. Single people occupied the front of the bar and couples typically sat in the back, where wooden tables were pushed so close together and the lights were so dim you could hardly make out the person from the next table. The room smelled of beer, cigarettes, and, if it was the weekend, the sweat of a teeming young crowd.

From the outside, the place looked like any normal bar with a tattered red sign on the door. I believe the proprietor, a chatty old fellow named Sunny, intended to create an atmosphere that to an outside eye looked unsuspicious, orthodox, lacking gayness. To that end, there was no dancing before midnight. The bar is gone now, shut down after the police raid that left many of our kind injured or incarcerated.

I wish I’d listened to you more, Fati. You often said that the world did not understand people like us or why we feel the way we do, which was why it was a bad idea to express our love in public. I, on the other hand, tended to forget reality. Deep down I knew the risks, but being with you made me careless. Your love made me not want to hide behind masks anymore. I wanted the things normal people have, things like the approving smiles of strangers when we were out on a date, followed by my girlfriend’s remarks at how perfect our relationship was in contrast to theirs. I was naive to believe that the world could bend for us, that our love was powerful enough to alter minds. Your view of the world was more cynical. You’d been accused of lesbianism your whole life based off your androgynous exterior, which taught you to be more cautious. I had no such experience having never been caught, or even suspected. I wish I’d let your wisdom guide us.

You had an exam to study for, I recall, and I’d come over that evening to spend the weekend with you. I should have let you stay home like you wanted. Your whole family, especially your brother, had chipped in on rent so you could stay on campus and study civil engineering. With dents, holes, and scratches left on the wall by previous tenants, it was nothing fancy. One of the slats in the louvres had been replaced with a wood panel that let in cold air at night. Till this day, every time I sniff rose oil, I’m transported back to that room, small but comfortable, our little love shack, hot in the dry season and cold in the rainy season.

A single light bulb dangled over your sparse furnishings: a thin mattress atop a plastic rug in one corner, a doorless wardrobe, and a transistor radio that was always on. My Nokia 3410, a recent gift from my father, was charging at the foot of the bed. Everyone we knew was clamouring to get a cell phone. Overnight we had gone from letters to text messages – life made simple. You didn’t have one yet, so we took turns trying to make sense of mine. I should have stayed there that night, under warm covers that smelled deliciously like you, playing Snake, listening to Brenda Fassie on your Walkman, or re-examining my dog-eared copy of Nora Roberts’s Lawless while you pored over year-three geomechanics texts on a wooden table by the door. You might have cuddled up to me afterwards, too tired to spoon, and to make up for this the next day, you would have used your meagre allowance to gift me a bangle or some other trinket you could not afford. Pride wouldn’t let you accept a portion of my allowance, which wasn’t much, but still more than yours. Or, perhaps you would have joined me in bed saying, “Seriously, Bessem, how are you the smartest student in your class when you spend all your time reading romance novels? Every week I see you with a different one. I’ve never seen you read a real book.”

“This is a real book,” I would have said, clutching said book to my chest as if to keep it from harm. I’d spent most of my life defending my love for romance novels. In my dorm room and at home, there were heaps and heaps of second-hand copies of Johanna Lindsey and Julie Garwood and every single book ever written by Nora Roberts, purchased at suspiciously low prices from the unlicensed book vendors on Commercial Avenue. In secondary school, these books, banned by the school for sexually explicit content, were smuggled into the campus in a secret compartment inside my duffel bag and only taken out when the teachers or prefects were out of sight. My school mother, same as my real mother, would say to me, “Stop filling your head with all this white man love nonsense. Don’t you know that women who read too much end up not getting married?”

I tried to get you to fall in love with novels, Fati, but you always fell asleep after the first page. “Me, I prefer textbooks, o, or biographies of famous people, like that one about Michael Jackson. Or Idi Amin,” you’d say. “A friend lent me a copy of Pablo Escobar’s biography the other day. I can’t wait for this exam to be over so I can read it!”

At times I think it was your fault too, Fati. You should have denied me when I kept nagging you to take me out. You should have said no and meant it, but you never could, not when it came to me.

Excerpted with permission from These Letters End in Tears, Musih Tedji Xaviere, Speaking Tiger Books.