A New Inheritance Walks
(Scene: A wide-open courtyard under a baobab tree, adorned with lanterns, kente silk, and ancestral portraits. The CHORUS forms a spiral, singing low and building rhythm. Women carry clay pots balanced on their heads. Men hold staffs draped with green cloth. MUHIBBA and IBRAHIM stand at the center, each dressed in garments woven from each other's household cloth symbolizing union. Thunder rumbles far away—symbol of change.)
CHORUS (singing, call and response):
Today is not the end of singlehood,
It is the beginning of shared sight.
Today is not a cage or crown,
It is a contract with breath and becoming.
(Enter SHARIFA, now without veil or command voice, smiling like twilight. She places a cowrie on each of their foreheads.)
SHARIFA:
I no longer speak as gatekeeper.
I speak as grandmother of possibility.
This union is not debt—it is declaration.
Not transaction—but transformation.
You are now the dynasty.
(Cheers. Dancers swirl. ZAINAB leads the women's chant.)
ZAINAB (singing):
Let no goat replace this promise,
Let no gold compete with this gaze.
Let their home be more than brick—
Let it be proverb, and poetry, and peace.
(THOMPSON steps forth with a leather scroll, reads ceremoniously.)
THOMPSON:
By the witness of moon and millet,
and those present and passed,
this dowry is declared:
He reads aloud:
"My dowry to you
she of the harami hierarchy command
of the dynasty of rhythm and rebellion—
is the rewriting of a new wave of inheritance.
No longer shall love be purchased.
It shall be participated in."
(IBRAHIM takes MUHIBBA's hand. They circle the baobab tree once, then kneel before it.)
IBRAHIM:
I vow not to conquer, but to collaborate.
Not to lead blindly, but to walk beside.
To listen when joy speaks,
and sit with sorrow when it sings.
MUHIBBA:
I vow to question without punishment,
to laugh without restraint,
to plant beside you even when the soil is unsure.
To protect our love like memory protects names.
(Fatima comes forward with a basket of earth and sprinkles it at their feet.)
FATIMA:
Then plant your first dream in this ground.
Let your family tree grow not in shadow,
but in song.
(They each drop a seed. The CHORUS erupts in dance. Instruments rise—kora, drums, shekere. A new inheritance is sung.)
CHORUS (final song):
They danced the seeing, the loving, the talking,
Now they dance the doing, the daily, the divine.
Their dowry is the dialogue they dared.
Their wealth is the walk they will walk.
Inheritance has changed shape.
Marriage has changed music.
(Lights swirl like festival. MUHIBBA and IBRAHIM are lifted gently by the crowd. A slow fade as their silhouettes merge in motion—two dancers, many generations in their steps.)
BLACKOUT.
CURTAIN.