Yet, I was still blinded. How can I or anyone here accept that such a thing can take place in our community? I continued to hope it was all a misunderstanding. But my suspicions were heightened when, immediately after the marriage, Saba barred anyone from entering the compound. Even her own mother.

All these facts built up inside me, confusing me, but I never shared them with anyone. Except with the Lord. Then, a few months ago, their relationship was finally confirmed to me beyond doubt when Hagos was bitten by a snake in the middle of the night and the businessman came to seek my help. It had to take a near-death experience for them to open the gate of their compound to an outsider, and I never turn down a person in need. So I went, and to my horror, I found Hagos’s hut full of women’s clothes. Pants and bras in his bed. For all this time, Saba lived in his hut, and must have shared the bed with him.

The midwife finished and looked up, mumbling prayers.

The silence in the court continued.

I had watched Saba through the screen for so long, and now tried to remember if I had seen anything that aroused my suspicion. The judge called the next witness. He was known as the circumcised young man, even if we all are, because he was one of the few left with permanent disfigurement after the midwife cut him.

The young man with dishevelled hair, his shirt covered with straw and wet mud, waddled to the witness chair. I was convinced the judge had meticulously prepared his case to present Saba as a sexual predator, a woman who found satisfaction for her perversity in the extreme situation of human struggle. I had prayed then that he would not call on me to testify again. This was a man of law who learnt his trade at the hands of the British. A surprise, I assumed, lay around the corner.

The circumcised boy mumbled something no one could understand. For a street boy, he was shy. But then again, those who have lost everything seem most reluctant of letting go of what’s inside them. The boy spoke in whispers, head bowed down. His voice opened up when he sat in the witness chair next to the judge, as if the responsibility and the attention of all the eyes focused on him freed his dying spirit.

Saba was his first lover, he said, and it was true you never forget the one who gave you your first orgasm.

The elders muttered their disapproval to the judge, but the man of law overruled their objection and instructed the young man to continue.

Sir, all I could remember after the midwife had done her job and washed the blood off the razor was Saba’s face in the window. Then I fainted. It took me a few days after my circumcision to be able to stagger out of my bed, and the person who steadied me up as my knees buckled was Saba.