I was living with my Dutch boyfriend, attending the University of Leiden, working toward a master’s degree in political science; I had a job as a translator and had applied for Dutch citizenship. Mahad was still in Nairobi. Although his wife, Suban, was expecting a child at any moment, he was living in my mother’s apartment. Haweya was buried while I was in midair between Amsterdam and Nairobi. Mahad’s son was born ten days after she died, barely a week after I arrived back in Kenya. When Mahad came home and told my mother, “Ma, Suban has given birth,” my mother’s face was stone cold. She did not move a muscle. “Ma, I have a boy, I have a little boy,” Mahad said. Ma turned her face away; her eyes filled with tears and her lips quivered. She told Mahad, “He is not yours, he is a bastard child.” Mahad did not know whether Ma was sad, angry, and confused because of Haweya’s death, or whether she was just being her usual difficult self. When I went to visit the new baby, he was barely three days old.
