About nine years ago, I met a love interest in this bar at Serena Beach Resort in Mombasa. She was a terrifyingly beautiful coastal girl called Farida. (Of course, not her real name.)
I was interested in her, and she was interested in why I was interested in her—seeing as I was not Muslim, was not planning to marry her, and was not willing to convert to her faith.
I was staying at the hotel, so she agreed to meet me there. I suggested we meet somewhere that wasn't overtly haram—maybe a discreet corner table at Jahazi Grill, the seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean, or the sitting area on the grassy patch by the swimming pool, which also overlooks the ocean.
We eventually sat out on the terrace of Nyota Bar and Terrace, where I held her hand and unnecessarily made a big production of studying the henna art on it. "Do you like art?" she asked with her large, innocent eyes. "Yes," I said. "I like your hand."
Those memories came back to me when I was a guest at the hotel two weeks ago. I've been to the hotel many times since that charmed night, but I hadn't been back up to the bar. As a pilgrim of love, I sat in the same corner of the terrace, on the long cushions, with a view of the swimming pool, the garden, and the ocean.
As the two rocks quickly surrendered to my whisky, I looked around and thought about how things remain the same even as they change.
The bar was exactly what it had been built to be: a sturdy lookout over the beach; a place for post–beach-walk cocktails and nightcaps under a star-heavy coastal night. But the people who return to the bar, again and again, arrive as different versions of themselves each time.
It was nice sitting there alone, burning my drink, in that corner that still carried the memory of a night when the sky was very dark, but all the lights of youth in my body were on—bright with hope and excitement.
