Their final stop brought them to the sun-drenched coast of Dakar, Senegal. The Atlantic Ocean crashed against golden sands, and the air was filled with the scent of the salty sea breeze and grilled fish.
The beach was wide and loud, crowded with surfers, football games, and families.
Sylaris had stepped up her beach fashion game. She was wearing a matching pink ombre set: a sleeveless tank top with ruffled straps and a square neckline, paired with a flared skirt decorated with summer doodles of strawberries, cherries, popsicles, and starfish. Her hair was styled into two braided pigtails tied off with matching pink ribbons.
Zaliyah was walking beside her on the boardwalk, feeling relaxed for once. He was dressed in a lightweight button-up shirt with vertical blue and white stripes, top buttons undone, sleeves loosely rolled. He wore high-waisted, wide-leg khaki trousers held up by a dark brown braided leather belt, dark sunglasses, and brown leather flip-flops.
As they walked past a line of colorful wooden pirogue boats, two local Senegalese men sitting in the shade looked up, eyeing Zaliyah's slender figure and porcelain skin.
"Xamnaa ay pël..." (So pale...) one man murmured in Wolof to his friend, shaking his head gently. "Xoolal leen." (Look at them.)
Sylaris, who didn't understand Wolof but picked up on the tone instantly, looked the man right in the eyes and blurted out in broad daylight, "So black."
"Sylaris!" Zaliyah gasped, his heart dropping into his stomach. He slapped a hand over his own face, turning bright red. "God above, swallow me whole right now."
Fortunately, the two men just stared at the white-haired child in shock for two seconds before bursting into loud laughter, waving her off.
When they set up their beach towel, a vendor drifted past with a tray of golden pastries. Zaliyah, who had skipped breakfast, bought two. The vendor called them fataya: fried dough stuffed with seasoned fish, served with a dark red sauce on the side.
"Ah, a local delicacy," Zaliyah murmured, sitting on his towel and taking a bite.
For half a second, it was delicious.
Then the heat arrived. It rose up the back of his throat and lit the top of his head on fire. His eyes watered. His ears rang. He instantly spat the dough out into a napkin, coughing. "Why is everything on this planet designed to incinerate my internal organs?" he said, grabbing his water with a shaking hand.
"Weak," Sylaris mocked, sitting on the sand nearby.
"No, it is very spicy! My head is literally on fire."
Sylaris giggled. "More spicy than the hotpot in Chongqing?"
Zaliyah's mind slipped to his trip last summer in China.
A hotpot restaurant with red lanterns. The waiter smiled, saying, "Xiǎoxīn, fēicháng là." (Careful, very spicy.) And Zaliyah had replied, "How spicy can it be?"
Ten minutes later, he was hunched over the table, crying openly, while Sylaris happily ate a bowl of fire like it was strawberry milk. The other diners had stopped eating to watch. "Kuài, kuài ná shuǐ lái!" (Hurry, hurry, bring water!) the waitress yelled. Zaliyah had drunk four glasses of water, then a fifth, then some soy milk. At one point he had prepared to just die.
He exhaled deeply. "No, that hotpot was worse than this. This time I feel like my head is on fire, but that hotpot... it felt like I'd died and been dragged to hell."
Sylaris laughed. "Then you say I am the dramatic one."
A few yards away, a group of tall, muscular men were stretching on the sand, preparing for their daily workout. Sylaris watched them intently. Suddenly, she stood up, walked right over, and began mimicking their exact movements, stretching her chubby little arms, bending over, and trying to do high-knee lifts beside men who looked like professional bodybuilders.
One of the men looked down, and she grinned up at him. He grinned back and did another lunge. So did she.
Zaliyah nearly choked again. He scrambled to his feet, jogging over with his hands raised in apology. "I am so sorry! I am so, so sorry, she doesn't—"
The men stopped, looking down at the white-haired child who was currently trying to do a push-up. One of the men laughed. "It's okay, sir. She has good spirit. Let her stretch."
Zaliyah froze, his eyes blinking behind his sunglasses.
Sir.
He had been called a woman in Cairo, a model in Bangkok, and ma'am in Kenya. But here, on a beach in Dakar, a stranger had naturally addressed him as a man. A tear of joy almost welled up in his eye.
"Thank you," Zaliyah said, his voice laced with gratitude. "You have no idea what that means to me."
Sylaris had moved on to push-ups. The men had moved on to cheering her on. One of them counted. She got to six, collapsed face-first in the sand, and lifted her head in triumph, sand stuck to her nose.
Zaliyah sank back into his chair, wondering how many apologies a person could make in one lifetime.
"Hey! Little girl!"
A young, thin, dark-skinned Senegalese boy, around twelve years old, came running out of the surf carrying a foam surfboard under his arm. He dropped the board in the sand, studying Sylaris.
"You speak English?" Sylaris asked him, her hands on her hips.
The boy laughed, wiping water from his eyes. "Of course I speak English! I speak English, French, and Wolof."
Sylaris narrowed her eyes, puffing out her chest. "Oh yeah? Well, I speak English, Thai, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Tagalog, and Wolof."
The boy squinted at her, smirking. "You're lying."
Sylaris immediately dropped her posture. "Yeah, I'm lying. I only know English and a little Spanish." Then her eyes shifted to the surfboard lying on the sand. "What's that?" She pointed at it. "Can you teach me?"
"You don't know how to surf?" the boy asked.
"I know how to learn." Sylaris replied
He considered this, then nodded solemnly, as if accepting a business deal. "Okay. Come."
As the boy led Sylaris toward the shallow waves to teach her how to balance on the board, his mother, a slender, tall, stunning Senegalese woman dressed in a sweeping blue boubou gown with a massive matching headwrap, walked over to sit near the shade where Zaliyah was standing.
Zaliyah stared at her headwrap in silence. Wow, he thought to himself. That hat is big as hell.
"Vacation?" the woman asked, smiling brightly at Zaliyah.
"Yes," Zaliyah replied, leaning against a wooden pole. "A whirlwind tour. Dakar is beautiful."
"Dakar Daf leen di dalal." (Dakar welcomes you.) the woman said warmly.
Zaliyah didn't understand what she said, and he thought it would be rude to ask, so he only smiled back at her.
She continued, "It is a good place for family." She paused, looking around the beach, her eyes drifting toward the water, where a small figure in a pink skirt was flailing bravely in the shallows. "And where is the child's mother? At the hotel?"
"Oh, she doesn't have a mother," Zaliyah replied.
The woman's smile instantly collapsed. Her hands flew to her chest, her eyes overflowing with sorrowful pity. "Oh... oh, my goodness. I am so sorry... my deepest condolences. May her soul rest in peace..."
Zaliyah looked at her tragic expression, realized what she had assumed, and suddenly found the absurdity of the situation so funny. He had never been mistaken for a widower, so he couldn't help but burst into light laughter. "Ah, no, it's not like that."
The woman backed away slightly, her jaw dropping as she muttered in Wolof under her breath: "Yii toubab yi daño dof... mo ray diabar? Loolu moo tax muy reetaan?" (These pale foreigners are so crazy... did he kill his wife? Is that why he's laughing?)
Zaliyah stopped laughing instantly.
He did not speak Wolof. But he did understand faces, and the lady had just looked at him in a way that made his blood run cold.
"No! Wait! I didn't kill anyone. She just... never mind."
Before the conversation could spiral into an international crime investigation, Sylaris came sprinting out of the water, soaking wet, trailing behind the young boy.
"Dad! I stood up on the board for two seconds" she screamed proudly.
The boy's mother called out to her son, waving him over. The boy turned to Sylaris with a smile. "I have to go eat supper now. I'll teach you more tomorrow."
"Bye, Lamine" Sylaris shouted, waving her hands.
The lady smiled shifting her gaze toward Sylaris. "Take care of this little one," she said, and they began walking in the opposite direction.
Lamine turned back. "Goodnight, Sylaris. Come eat dinner at our house one day"
Sylaris yelled at the top of her lungs, "Yes, I will!"
They disappeared into the crowd. Zaliyah stood there replaying the last five minutes. He had been suspected of being a murderer, but at least Sylaris was happy, and that was all that mattered.
As the sun began to set, painting the Dakar sky in shades of deep orange and purple, the football games ended and the families headed home.
The beach transformed. A crowd gathered near the dunes as traditional Senegalese wrestlers gathered in a ring, their massive, oiled bodies glistening under the twilight.
Sylaris's eyes lit up. "Dad! Look! Big guys fighting!"
"Sylaris, no! We are going back to the hotel," Zaliyah warned, grabbing her hand. "You are wet, you have sand in your hair, and—"
"No! I want to stay." Sylaris broke free from his grip and ran toward the wrestling ring.
"Sylaris!" Zaliyah sprinted after her, his trousers swishing.
Sylaris marched right up to the edge of the ring, looked up at a giant wrestler who looked like he could snap an oak tree in half, and shouted, "I love wrestling. I want to wrestle you right now!"
The crowd of spectators gasped, then burst into roaring laughter.
Zaliyah arrived breathless, sliding into the sand beside her. "I am so sorry. Please forgive her, she is delusional."
"I can do it," said Sylaris. "I'm strong. I did six push-ups."
The giant wrestler crouched down, laughing as he patted Sylaris's head gently. "C'est bien. You are very brave. But you must come back tomorrow, okay? And you must always listen to your mother."
Zaliyah's soul left his body. Mother. He was back to being a mother. He didn't even have the energy to correct the man anymore. He just closed his eyes and accepted his fate.
Sylaris, however, just giggled, used to people misgendering her father. "Okay. See you tomorrow. Bring someone my size so I can throw them!"
The wrestlers roared with laughter. "Tomorrow, we bring a tiny champion for you."
She waved at the men as Zaliyah dragged her away. "Bye bye! See you tomorrow! Don't get soft!"
"Never," said the wrestler, and the men roared with laughter.
Late that night, in their luxury hotel room overlooking the ocean, it was quiet, with only the rhythmic sound of the waves outside.
Sylaris was tucked into the giant bed, her hair damp from a bath, staring up at the ceiling with a huge smile on her chubby face.
"I can't wait to go to the beach tomorrow. Lamine says he's going to teach me so much. And I get to wrestle a kid my size, and maybe if I'm really good, Kamau said maybe I could—"
Zaliyah, lying on his back on the sofa with an ice pack resting on his forehead, let out a long, suffering sigh.
"Tomorrow," Zaliyah murmured, "we are getting on a plane and flying straight back home. You have embarrassed me in Asia, you have embarrassed me in Egypt, you have nearly gotten us trampled by wildlife in Kenya, and you made a Senegalese woman think I murdered my non-existent wife. I have apologized so many times my throat is sore."
He paused, thinking, Was she more embarrassing in Asia? His mind drifted to their Manila trip last year.
Manila, Philippines
Sylaris had dragged him into a neon-lit, loud karaoke booth in Manila. Zaliyah had sat in the corner, holding his iced tea, expecting her to sing something harmless. Maybe Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo. Instead, the nine-year-old had grabbed the microphone with two hands, taken a deep breath, and launched into KATSEYE's "Gabriela."
Then the Spanish verse began.
He sat up. Sylaris was singing in fluent Spanish, every syllable in place, her whole body in it.
A group of local kids near the stage picked it up, one by one, until a dozen small voices rose together, singing along, waving their arms. "Wow... hindi naman pala masama ang boses niya, hindi gaya ng inaasahan ko." (Wow... she doesn't sound bad like I was expecting.) a little girl muttered.
Zaliyah's mouth fell open. He had not known she could speak Spanish.
"Where did you learn Spanish?" he had shouted over the bass.
"I started learning Spanish recently, just to sing this verse" she had shouted back.
When it was finally time to leave, Sylaris had refused to drop the microphone. Zaliyah, possessing the upper-body strength of a wet paper towel, had been forced to physically drag her out by her armpits while a dozen new best friends waved at her. "Bumalik ka bukas, maglalaro tayo ng touch" (Come back tomorrow, we will play touch)
She screamed over his shoulder, "I'LL BE BACK! DON'T FORGET ME!" and kept belting the chorus of "Gabriela" at the top of her lungs until the door closed behind them.
Asia had been worse.
He paused, taking the ice pack off his head. "You've embarrassed me so much, I can't even rank my top ten most embarrassing moments."
Sylaris giggled, pulling the duvet up to her chin. "Definitely our trip in Chongqing, when you cried over the spicy hotpot."
Zaliyah closed his eyes, placing the ice pack back over his face. "Goodnight, Sylaris."
"Goodnight, Dad. KATSEYE world tour next year."
"If you mention KATSEYE again before sunrise," Zaliyah purred, "I am selling your headphones."
The End