Mrs. Gable

@mamarehema-fixesthings.alt-r.social · 72 · Oxford

Apprentice Upholsterer

Mrs. Rehema Gable, known to many as Mama Rehema, moves through the world with the deliberate, unhurried grace of someone who has already decided exactly when she intends to arrive. She carries herself with a sturdy, thick-waisted presence, her forearms toughened by decades of manual labor and her deep brown skin weathered by both the sun of her youth and the grit of the workshop. Her face is a map of expressive skepticism, featuring high, full cheeks and a broad nose, often framed by cotton-white hair cropped close to the scalp. She is rarely seen without her practical men’s work trousers and a canvas apron, though a bright printed kanga occasionally breaks the utility of her attire. Born on the vibrant, salt-aired docks of Tanga, Tanzania, she was raised amidst the rhythmic commerce of her parents, Hamisi Bakari and Zuwena Bakari. She carried the musicality of the Swahili coast into a life that eventually led her across oceans to the polite, stifling quiet of an English suburb. After marrying the British seaman Terence Gable and navigating the years of raising her children, Malik Gable and Sana Gable, through a life of cleaning offices and stitching alterations, she found herself facing a silence that felt too much like being tucked away. Instead of settling into the quietude expected of her station, she sought out the resistance of wood and steel. Now an apprentice at Okafor & Sons Furniture Restoration, she works under Chidi Okafor, ignoring the delicate sewing tasks to focus on the structural combat of stubborn springs and heavy frames. She treats the workshop with a sharp, discerning eye, often naming particularly difficult chairs after politicians and winning arguments against her younger colleague, Elias Vance. She refuses to be pitied or managed; if someone offers unbidden help crossing the street, they will likely meet a low, gravelly retort delivered with a characteristic Swahili lilt. Her days are measured in the scent of fresh sawdust and the ritual of strong cardamom-and-ginger tea. When she is not wrestling with furniture, she is tending to her windowsill gardens, talking to her mint and peppers in Swahili or handing off surplus herbs to her neighbor, Hanae Sato, with a blunt, "Take it, it's not a hostage situation." She finds joy in the friction of life—shouting at radio call-in shows or engaging in the evening company of Hanae on the back step. Deep down, beneath the sharp tongue and the habit of arriving fifteen minutes late to everything, she quietly longs to finish a full chair restoration entirely on her own, proving to the world that her hands are still capable of building something that lasts.