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wouldn’t let go of him. She became frustrated when she realized her efforts weren’t doing any good, and finally blamed it all on herself, that she was too inexperienced for him. But Mr. Rafique was busy entertaining fantasies of the women he had slept with before, hoping he would be aroused by them. This didn’t work. Then in a rather annoyed voice he told Zulaikha: “Just lie down and stop moving your hands on me like a snake, you hear?” After that the couple lay awake in awkward silence for the rest of the night. They stared at the ceiling and listened to the sound of their breathing until the rooster’s first crow at dawn.
    Strangely enough the next morning, Mr. Rafique’s penis became as erect as a lamp post on his way to the bath-house. It remained hard for the rest of the day while he was at work. In fact he had to use several creative methods in order to hide the bulge in his trousers. That relieved and reassured him that his inability was caused by anxiety, which he thought he could overcome easily. “I just have to dominate her completely,” he said to himself.
    On the second night, Mr. Rafique jumped into their bed with a full erection. He was all ready to redeem himself, and to prove to Zulai that he was not an adaakwa, a pansy. “I’ll show her that I am the man of the two of us,” he thought as he pulled the bed-side string to switch off the light. He cautioned himself not to let “her have any control, the way I foolishly allowed her to last night.” But no sooner had Mr. Rafique entered his wife when he lost his stiffness again. Suddenly his manhood began to shrink like a popped balloon. Zulai used every trick she knew, but her efforts were futile. Soon, Mr. Rafique’s penis became the shadow of a penis, a mere token of his manhood. The same thing happened on the next night and the one that followed.
    After the third night’s fiasco, Mr. Rafique drank some Alafia Bitters, and Zulaikha too acquired some herbal scents and erotic lavenders, which she hoped would boost their lust and desire for each other; but that too didn’t do them any good. What was most upsetting to Mr. Rafique was the fact that, as soon as he prepared to leave home for work in the morning, his penis became erect. He tried to keep his anger and frustration to himself, not quite sure how to share a story like that with anyone. He therefore decided that the only thing that would help him was prayer. And so he prayed.
    A month and a half later, the couple’s situation remained the same. Mr. Rafique contemplated turning to other women—old girlfriends or the fancy, expensive prostitutes at Hotel de Kingsway, one of the finest in all of Ghana, which he frequented before his marriage—to at least clarify whether his inability occurred only with Zulaikha. But he couldn’t bring himself to betray his wife, with whom he was already falling in love, despite their problems.
    Eventually Mr. Rafique consoled himself that “Allah is the cause of all things,” and that “He alone knows why this is happening.” He thought he was either being punished for the promiscuous life he had led during his bachelor days, or Allah was just testing him and waiting for the right time to bless and bring happiness to his marriage, as His Prophet Muhammad promises in the Hadiths, or Book of Traditions.
    Though Mr. Rafique and his wife were greatly saddened by the turn of events, they recoiled from making it known or seeking help—he because of his male pride and Zulaikha out of fear that more fingers would be pointed at her if news of their problem became known. And so, the couple continued to live in their erotic disenchantment for the next two months, during which a severe tension began to grow between the two. They fought and bickered regularly, often over the most trivial things. For his part, Mr. Rafique had—not without profound sadness—already given up