WHAT THE TIDES KEEPS

Dani was on her third cigarette of the morning when she saw her mother's boat come in, and the problem was that her mother had been dead for eleven months.

She was sitting on the low wall outside Hasani's shop — the one with the broken Fanta sign that nobody had fixed since 2019 — watching the dhows return from the night catch. She wasn't looking for anything particular. She was just doing what she always did when she couldn't sleep, which was come down here and let the harbor noise fill the space in her head.

The boat was unmistakable. A blue-bottomed jalawi with a white stripe running along the stern, patched near the bow with a piece of plastic that had faded to the color of old newspaper. Her mother had patched it herself with a butter knife and some waterproof sealant and called it "better than new," which was the kind of thing she said about everything she fixed.

The man steering it was not her mother.

He was about forty, with the kind of face that spent a lot of time looking at distance. He brought the boat alongside the jetty with the ease of someone who had done it ten thousand times and never once thought about it. He tied the rope to the cleat without looking down.

"That's Bora's boat," Dani said to Hasani, who had materialized beside her with a cup of tea she hadn't asked for.

"Was Bora's boat," he said. "He sold it before she passed. She needed the hospital money."

Dani took the tea. It was too sweet but she drank it anyway.

"Who did she sell it to?"

"That man there. He's from Lamu originally. Came down about a year ago, maybe more. Quiet type. Pays for his chai and doesn't run credit."

The man had started unloading. He lifted the fish crates with his knees bent the way you're supposed to and almost nobody does.

Dani watched him the way you watch a stranger doing something intimate without realizing it. He set each crate down carefully, like the fish were still worth being careful with.

She had come back to Shimoni six weeks ago after three years away. Before that it had been Mombasa, and before Mombasa it had been Nairobi, and before Nairobi it had been a version of herself she didn't fully remember anymore. The plan had been to come, sort...