tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37502112163348138852024-03-20T15:06:16.756+00:00Live From The GambiaOpinionated blogging from The Gambia.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-80703083320805396542011-01-22T18:00:00.001+00:002011-01-22T18:00:49.479+00:00The Pregnancy1.<br />
<br />
<br />
This is how they start, the very first time he calls her, after he has taken her number:<br />
<br />
- Hello.<br />
- Hello.<br />
<br />
A pause, the sound of their breathing over the line.<br />
<br />
- Heeey - yow what're you doing up at this time?, she says, Haleh yu baah yi yaype taydi nenye.<br />
- Anh OK, he replies, more tah yow yaangeh nelawe.<br />
<br />
She giggles, a preamble. He settles down, into the couch in which he sits, laying his head on its arm, his hand under his shirt warming his stomach.<br />
<br />
- Yow ninga mell baahute deh - how could you say that about Alasan Camara on your show.<br />
- Lu hewe daf la nahari?, he asks.<br />
- Man?! Ham nga neh maasi Alasan Camara yi ngaa def loe lu.<br />
- Hay-haay - dang maa tigal laygi - loal la Miss Rambo - maangi ragal sah.<br />
<br />
She is smiling - he can feel it even in her silence.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
2.<br />
<br />
<br />
Tonight he is a comic, and she is his audience.<br />
<br />
Her laughter comes sometimes in peals, and sometimes in waves, but always accompanying his words, filling in his pauses.<br />
<br />
- Paco bi nyaaye, paara bi nyaaye, ma nyaaye. Paara muss na laa riitaye?<br />
<br />
She is laughing so hard she can barely answer.<br />
<br />
- Day… he-he-he… Day.. he-he.. daydayt. <br />
- Paco bii nak paaraa daf kor daan riitay very day. More nehkorn sunye baandi konye bi - Hans! Choy yi yaypa kor haameh after.<br />
- He-he… Laygi after?… he-he-he…<br />
- Paco baangeh def tali bi lore ham neh. Paara bi nak ndekeh morm fitut… mu laaha sunye konye rek sayga tay biram bi. Balaa more sigi paco bi disappear na.<br />
<br />
She can see the image he describes, and it makes her smile.<br />
<br />
- Then after?<br />
- Paara bi turn em chi man maangeh jail curve bi. Sunye boat yi tasseh rek mu rush ma….<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
3.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Dama sorna teye, she says, suma borpa bi morye mayti.<br />
- Naan nga garap?<br />
- No - I think dama need pour nelawe.<br />
- Anh OK - kon haara ma baayi la nga taydi.<br />
- Daydayt!<br />
<br />
The desperation in the way she says it warms him. She is aware of it, and attempts to take it back.<br />
<br />
- I mean unless you have to go, she says.<br />
- Nah I don't. Yaangi tayda?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
4.<br />
<br />
<br />
A mood is upon her tonight. He tries everything - she gives him no quarter.<br />
<br />
- Lu hewe, he says, yaangi hala stress teye deh.<br />
- Ah dara.<br />
- You sure?<br />
- Maa la kor wah tehdu.<br />
- OK.<br />
<br />
Their conversation falters and comes to a stop, a false start.<br />
<br />
- Guess who I saw teye?, he tries again.<br />
- Kan?<br />
- Guessal.<br />
- Hawe ma di - just wah ma!<br />
<br />
An impatience in her voice, that she does not even attempt to hide. He retreats, his smile disappears. So this is how she is going to be tonight.<br />
<br />
- Ken, he says, never mind.<br />
- OK. Anyway dama sorna - maangeh dem taydi.<br />
- Beh after.<br />
<br />
Dama kore feral, he thinks as he holds the dead phone in his hand. Duma kor call three days, suma calleh sah duma pick up. Ndo bii bum ma yap.<br />
<br />
But of course the next night she calls, and he picks up.<br />
<br />
<br />
5.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Danga lamba?, he asks, his voice mocking.<br />
- Horl ma bu baah seht ndah dama la nuru ku deh lamba. Shuu!<br />
- Ah lu maa wah, he says, laughing softly, So lu hew?<br />
- Dara - dama just buga nehka alone right now rek.<br />
- Daydayt loe lu normalut. Nehku lore dima wah full story bi.<br />
- Maneh yow lu la chi sornal, she says, yow ak man we're just friends tehdu.<br />
<br />
The words have the intended effect - she can feel a deflation in his silence. So he is interested, she thinks, and her heart quickens.<br />
<br />
He rallies well.<br />
<br />
- Dara, he says, dama la yay-raym rek. Cause ham naa lamba-ness easy wut.<br />
<br />
She giggles dutifully. She thinks, now I have him, where I want him, and her mind fills with possibilities...<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
6.<br />
<br />
<br />
It is the stillest part of the night, undisturbed except for the ticking of clocks, and the creaking of houses. They speak each from their beds, their eyes closed, the distances between them dissolved by a free call. He is listening attentively to her.<br />
<br />
- So after loe lu la sumap Pa deh, she is saying, After suma maam mu nyowe dehka si chi kerr bi.<br />
- Ban maam, he asks, the one you go to Gamo with?<br />
<br />
Her smile is weighed down by sleepiness, and it cuddles her where she lies.<br />
<br />
- Oh you remember?, she says, See that's the thing I like about you. Dang deh actually dayglu. You're not just a sollipsist.<br />
- Solip-lan? Ham nga sa memorize dictionary bi.<br />
<br />
She titters, and yawns before she continues.<br />
<br />
- Like… nehkut neh sa borpa rek nga deh joh importance. Cause a lot of guys do that.<br />
- Ah OK. Sore deh waaja nelawe si nak sa baat bi…<br />
<br />
She smiles again, her eyes closed, waiting. But he does not complete the sentence.<br />
<br />
- Suma baat bi lan?, she asks finally. She speaks out the words slowly, a child again, almost a sing-song.<br />
<br />
- Dara, he replies, Flattery more reye sa maam.<br />
<br />
She laughs.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
7.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
She misses him, the whole day. She misses him when he leaves, she misses him until his return.<br />
<br />
She misses him right after he hangs up the phone, in a way that dampens her mood and leaves her feeling annoyed at herself.<br />
<br />
- Hello.<br />
- Baby?, she says, sounding breathless, Fore nehkorn - maang la nehka di call rek.<br />
- Dama demorn sidey Ous, after boy yi ak si nyu chlll - left my phone at home.<br />
- Sa boy yi denye sorf - hanaa amunye girlfriends? Di chill beh time bii.<br />
<br />
He laughs. He can hear the desire in her voice, and it fills his breast with a certain pride, a certain sense of manliness.<br />
<br />
- Lore def teye?, she asks.<br />
- Dara - just went to record show bi. Lamin neh dafa am contacts yu ess - maybe we'll bring Vybz.<br />
- Kartel?!, she asks, excitement in her voice.<br />
- Yeah. Ak nyorm Popcaan.<br />
<br />
He tries to sound as nonchalant as possible, as if talking to Kartel was something he did every day.<br />
<br />
- Baby that'll be so cool!<br />
- Yep - then day boe bu nak dinga finally stone.<br />
- Ma-aan?, she exclaims, Nopes - baalal naa lehn - mun naa just dem faycha.<br />
- Ah kon haara ma dem uti benehn date.<br />
- Acha demal - you're the one who'll come back - fee ngehn maa fehka, yaa sa date bi yaype…<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
8.<br />
<br />
<br />
Tonight they are both relaxed, after the activities of the day. There is a new closeness they share, that had not been there before.<br />
<br />
- Ana Little Paul?, she asks, her voice teasing.<br />
- Yow sore morye tu wut sa borpa. Laygi Little Paul nga def sa harit?<br />
- Wawe. Paski more ma njayka def harit.<br />
- Mungeh nelawe - teye man rek maa fi nehka. So wahtaanal ma.<br />
- Unh-unh, she says, shaking her head, imitating a little child, Dama buga Little Paul.<br />
- So lim la def teye dor-yut? Ham nga danga nyaaka jom.<br />
<br />
She chuckles.<br />
<br />
- Baby hanaa hamulor duma deh dorye-lu chi Little Paul.<br />
- Ah kon laygi amaa tulore suma time.<br />
<br />
She can see him pout, as he says the words, his bronze skin, his full lips. She feels suddenly absent, as if her life were at his side only, and everywhere else did not count.<br />
<br />
- Aha kanye. You know I love Little Paul's owner.<br />
- Anh? Ndik lan?<br />
- Mmmm… cause dafa cool, beh pareh dafa handsome, beh pareh he loves me more than anyone, ever.<br />
- Ku la wah loe lu?<br />
- Morm.<br />
- Really?, he says, Nahh na la kon.<br />
- Wawe nama nahh - care wuma - buga naa kor noe-nu.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
9.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Aunty Jai mu neh bossam daf deh late yehna saaye, she says.<br />
- You asked her?<br />
- Daydayt - yow tam am not that stupid di. Dama kor just bring up in conversation.<br />
- Oh OK.<br />
<br />
<br />
Panic chases after them, and though it has not yet caught up they can feel its breath hot on their necks, as they lie in the dark talking.<br />
<br />
- Ah I'm sure dina nyowe.<br />
- Yeah.<br />
- Dore deh muna predict these things.<br />
- Yeah.<br />
- Nyaata days laygi?<br />
- Three, she says, Musuta late three.<br />
- Yeah. Ah first time dafa am pour lu nehka, he says philosophically, Dina nyowe.<br />
- Yeah.<br />
- Bull stress sa borpa.<br />
- Yeah.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
10.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
These are hard nights, of silences filled with stone. A new awkwardness lies between them - their speech is a mechanical thing that they must drive forward.<br />
<br />
- How are you feeling today?<br />
- I'm fine, she replies, not sounding fine.<br />
- Did you vomit again?<br />
- I'm fine. When I was with girls yi teye maangi halorna scared. Y no one noticed.<br />
<br />
When he is away from her, when he imagines her now he cannot remember her face. All he can recall is her stomach, and in his imagination it is a grotesque, bulging thing.<br />
<br />
- Lore lehn dorne def, he says, torga ebeh?<br />
- Yeah. Then nyu dem hang out LP. Famatta faram bi came from England.<br />
- Anh OK.<br />
<br />
She has gone beyond the need to blame, is now only filled with a resignation.<br />
<br />
- Ban time ngaa nyowe Friday?, she asks.<br />
- Doctor bi said 7am. Dinaa nyowe pick up la borri 6.<br />
- OK, she says, Maang dorn halaat pour Thursday ma dem fanaan sidey Ida.<br />
- Ndik sa yaaye?<br />
- Yeah, she says, She wakes pour njail and sits chi ayta bi.<br />
- OK. Dang kor wah Ida?<br />
- Not yet, she says, Y she has to know sudeh foe fu laaye fanaan. Y du deh wah.<br />
- OK.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
11.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A cloud of gloom hangs about her, growing larger with every word she speaks. It comes over the phone line and fills the room in which he lies too, and the distance between them feels endless, though neither can turn away from the other.<br />
<br />
- Leh ka nga?, he asks.<br />
- Nah. Heefuma.<br />
- Danga need pour lehka di Babe.<br />
- Yeah. Dinaa lehka after.<br />
<br />
<br />
She is tired - so tired. She wishes she could hang up the phone, and shut out the world, and be alone. And yet she feels the exact opposite too, the thought of loneliness filing her with a fear and a panic that she can scarce contain.<br />
<br />
- Naka show bi teye?, she asks, Record nga?<br />
- Yeah. He sounds as if she had asked him about a chore he had performed during the day, but had not wanted to.<br />
- How was it?<br />
- Ah - just the usual, he says dismissively, Music, interviews, Lamin ak jokesam yi.<br />
- OK.<br />
<br />
<br />
When she told him the result of the test he had sprang into action. He did the research, found a good and discreet doctor. He made the appointment, paid with cash. He did all there was to do, and now he is at a loss, feels helpless. What to say, to make her feel better. He casts about for words. His assurances die in his throat, never reaching his tongue, sounding hollow even to him.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
- Wah ngaa Ida?<br />
- Wawe, she replies.<br />
- What did she say?<br />
- Dara.<br />
- Dara?<br />
- I mean she was OK. Me and her go back a long way - she's always there suma kor needeh. She's, like, suma best friend dipi timey halel.<br />
- Anh OK, he says, So elayk?<br />
- Yeah - dina ma jailsi si afternoon bi. I told my mum neh we had a show.<br />
- OK.<br />
<br />
<br />
They speak about inconsequential things, after that, until she can muster enough courage to end the conversation.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
12.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Hello, she picks up the vibrating phone.<br />
- Babe? Yaangi sidey Ida?<br />
- Yeah. Y Mungeh nelawe.<br />
- OK. Yow tam you should.<br />
- Goemantuwu ma, she replies.<br />
- Ah OK.<br />
- Lorye def?<br />
- Man - dara. Just sitting here.<br />
- Ah OK.<br />
<br />
With each word they speak the night draws closer to an end, the day becomes clearer in its approach over the horizon. So their silences are longer tonight, as if by not speaking they can hold the day at bay.<br />
<br />
- Dama deh nehka di feel as if…, she trails off.<br />
- As if lan?<br />
- Dara.<br />
- As if lan, he insists.<br />
- Ah dara. Just… Suma cousin dafa gaynay worn bosam, and then they found out. Sumap Pa was saying how reye kati nit la, and then he didn't speak to her again after that. Gaayi denye kor banish from family bi...<br />
- Babe, he says. Wah naa la nga stop worrying. No one knows.<br />
- Neh-kut loe lu.<br />
- Lan la kon?<br />
- Dara.<br />
<br />
He feels a sudden irritation. The things that worry her are not things he wishes to think about, and he feels a flash of anger at her for bringing them up.<br />
<br />
- Danga set sa alarm bi?, he asks, and he could have been talking to a stranger he worked with.<br />
- Daydayt - necessary wut - duma nelawe.<br />
- Maneh just set kor. Sore oversleepay nak? His tone is scolding.<br />
- OK, she says, quietly.<br />
<br />
She sounds so weary. His anger is replaced with shame, at itself.<br />
<br />
- Sore reyeh nit kuuye dunda, he says, ching deh nehka murderer. Fii amute dara luuye dunda.<br />
- Yeah, she says, almost as if she had memorized the word and did not need to think of it anymore to say it.<br />
- Su dorn a couple of months sah. Y aagut foe fu.<br />
- Yeah.<br />
- Danga wara nelawe.<br />
<br />
He wants to go, and his guilt at this makes him angry again. She knows, and does not think she holds it against him.<br />
<br />
- Demal taydi, she offers, beh elayk.<br />
- Maneh if I wanna sleep I'll go. Needulore pour wah ma kor.<br />
<br />
A long silence.<br />
<br />
- Baby demal taydi, she says again, with great effort, giving him a way out, Suma nehkeh di wah damaa eh Ida.<br />
- You sure?<br />
- Yeah - demal.<br />
- OK. I'll leave suma phone bi on. Call ma sore munuteh nelawe.<br />
- Wawe OK, she says, and they both know the night will pass without her calling.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
13.<br />
<br />
<br />
Something is missing from her voice tonight, something that sounds as if it has been crushed and destroyed under a heavy load.<br />
<br />
- Munu maa nelawe, she says, and it is as if she has lived a long life filled with despair, and never slept.<br />
- Amulore sleeping pills?<br />
- Aha kanye - doctor bi gave me some. Y bugu ma lehna naan…<br />
- Lu tah?<br />
- Dafa.. suma deh…. my eyes - every time I close them dama deh nehka di giss…, she does not finish the sentence.<br />
- Baby just naan lehn nga nelawe.<br />
<br />
There is a note of pleading in his voice, that has never been there before, and rather than soothe her it makes her feel worse.<br />
<br />
- Wawe - maybe later, she says, Dinaa naan some later.<br />
- Ana sa yaaye?<br />
- Dafa dem hewe. Maangi kerr man kehna.<br />
- OK.<br />
<br />
He gets a sudden inspiration.<br />
<br />
- Dang lehn wara naan before she comes home, he says, So dore lehn need pour wah.<br />
<br />
She laughs - it is a cold laugh, there is no mirth in it.<br />
<br />
- Bull worry - I'm fine. Du detect dara. Yaangi safe.<br />
<br />
There is the accusation, in those last words. He is quiet.<br />
<br />
- Sorry Baby, she says after a while, I didn't mean that. Dama sorna rek.<br />
- It's OK, he says, sounding surer of himself now, demal naan some pills. Then nga nyowe tayda nyu wah benga nelawe.<br />
<br />
The load that she has carried through the day does not seem as heavy, anymore.<br />
<br />
- OK, she says, and gets up.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
14.<br />
<br />
<br />
- Dangaa over make a good mother sah.<br />
- Anh. Naka nga hameh loelu?<br />
- Just horl la rek. Jaimi yaaye nga ameh.<br />
- So dang maa oryeh fat laygi?<br />
<br />
It is the first joke they have shared in weeks, and they laugh much longer than its funniness allows.<br />
<br />
- Baby so first one bi suma Papa, she says, planning names.<br />
- Daydayt - jehkarr bi gets to name first kid bi di! Hai - yow yabulore ma.<br />
- Anh OK. Wawe OK - so kore kore tuday?<br />
- Sa Papa, of course.<br />
<br />
<br />
She smiles, and it is not forced.<br />
<br />
<br />
She feels as if everything will be alright.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-65845994132449179262011-01-11T01:09:00.002+00:002011-01-11T01:09:43.160+00:00The Ligaye<div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">His Aunt went to see the Serign on Saturday. The Serign wrote his name down on white paper, with the blood of a goat. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And by the following Saturday he had gone mad.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">It wasn't the kind of madness that was immediately obvious. It was a subtle madness, that infected his thoughts and filled everything with a dark poison, and made him stay awake at night. It found its source in a growing dread of his mortality. The thought of what lay beyond existence, what lay on the other side of the impermeable dark filled him with a greater terror than he had thought possible. And this terror was compounded by the fact that he felt, too, an inexplicable desire to embrace this darkness, to escape himself. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">His mother noticed. Perhaps through his speech, perhaps in his actions - mothers always know, are always able to read the signs, no matter how insignificant they seem to an outsider. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He snapped at her once, in the living room, over a trivial matter. Another time he would not greet her, when he came in from work. And both times she was silent and showed him no anger- was in fact even kinder to him as he went about the house in a dark mood, complaining about everything. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">That Friday, unknown to anyone, the mother traveled to visit a well-respected but obscure Serign in Fass Njaga Choi, waking early in the morning to catch a van, after she had prayed Fajr. The roads almost empty, the geleh-geleh leaving a trail of dust in the damp dawn air. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Your boy is under the cursing hand of another, the Serign told her, observing his shells spread out before him, The hand of one close to you in blood and in water. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Something in the old woman's throat caught. She breathed in deeply, and coughed.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">What do I have to do?, she asked, and she could have been asking for the price of a fish - so composed was she.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The Serign's face grew grave, and he shook his head.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The ties that bind the curse can be undone only by one stronger than I - it is an ancient and cruel magic. He looked up at her. Belie Aja - I have been doing this for long now - Jahan-nama is not itself enough of a punishment for the caster. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The mother had suspected it but been unwilling to believe it. She said nothing of this to the Serign - she thanked him, and left that place in the early afternoon, taking a van back home. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">When she got there she cooked lunch for two (for she lived alone with her son). Then she sat in the living room with the TV on, waiting for him to return from work.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He did not believe her, of course. In truth he thought rather poorly of what he called the superstitions of an older generation, trapped in a time of darkness before Science. So he paid her no mind, dismissed her words, eating his lunch and going into his room to take a nap.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">For many nights after, his mother did not sleep. Her thoughts wandered, yet were centred toward only one thing: finding a way to save her son. She wondered, at which of her relatives had done such a thing. In her mind all of their faces acquired ugly sneers, hitherto unseen marks of cruelty hidden in the lines and creases of their faces. It could have been any of them, or all of them in concert. She had never spoken a bad word or done a bad deed against they and their families - why would they do this to her now?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She thought, but God is better than them. And in her mind she made a list of Serigns to visit, to see what they could do.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The mother had not raised her voice against the son, in many years. She handled him like she had handled his father, letting him walk around the house as if he owned it, quietly getting her own way using her own subtle means and ways. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">So she had never raised her voice, since the father had died. Which made the sound of it seem even more unnatural, as she admonished him in his room.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">I got this saafara, she told the son, and you will drink it, and you will bath with it. I never ask you to do anything - I slave for you day and night. You will do this for me - there is no argument.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He had never seen her this upset. With a resigned sigh, a sulky look on his face, he took the bottle from her. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">If only to get her to shut up, he thought. If only to make her happy.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">There were a few more bottles-ful, after that, concoctions from all over the land, multicolored liquids with swirls of shredded paper at their center put in old medicine and drink bottles. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He drank, and he bathed, and he rubbed over his head, and he put in his ear holes, and under the soles of his feet. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He did these things with a resignation, for he was sure they would not work. Sometimes in bed at night unable to sleep he saw past himself into an abyss that seemed to have no end, a gaping chasm toward which he was propelled through no choice of his. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And he became desperate for sleep, in the way a faster is desperate for water, yet the more he forced himself the wider awake he felt. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Mornings became sombre affairs, as he sat with the mother over breakfast. Their previous conversation that had filled the house with life before the Sun was now only a scattered silence between them. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The mother watched him, and her heart grew heavy within her, and she fought to keep down her anger and frustration. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And the son felt the mother's eyes, and felt also the burden he must be on her, and resented both this and himself, and what he had become. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">After a while the son stopped going to work. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The mother woke him up one morning, and when she returned fifteen minutes later he still had not gotten out of bed. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Ah - no work for you today?, she asked, standing over him.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">I'm just… tired, he said, and his voice was so flat she felt a sudden pang. She sat on the edge of the bed, and placed her hand on his back. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">I feel cold, so very cold, he said, I can't feel my feet. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">It's OK, the mother said, stroking his brow, just relax - you don't need your feet right now. You lie down right here and I'll get you anything you need.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He smiled up at her, a smile that frightened her more than it comforted her. He said </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">You should go conduct your own business, you know. I'll be fine. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Shhh, she said, her hands reaching to his hair, you are my only business - try and sleep now - I'm sure you were up again the whole night. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell. She looked at him and willed herself not to cry. Gradually the movement of his chest slowed. Once he started up muttering and she thought he had woken - but it was only a dream - he settled back down. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The mother looked at him where he lay. Even in sleep he seemed filled with an unease that in a sudden fit of violent thought the mother wished she could drag out of him, casting it away from him and back at its owner, the relative that had done this cruel thing. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She got up after a while, and went into the back yard to cook them lunch. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">When she returned he was sitting up on the bed, his head in his arms.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She rushed to him.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">What is it?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Nothing, he said, Dara.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She pulled him to her and held him in her arms.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The thing again?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">It's just so heavy. I don't feel as if I can bear it for much longer.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Don't talk like that, she said to him, and her tone was stern. They sat together in silence for a while. Gradually he leaned in closer to her embrace.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">It is only a disease, she said finally, a determination in her tone, you must always keep this in your mind. We will fight it. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He nodded weakly. He thought more than anything in that moment he wanted her to feel better.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">God won't give us what we cannot bear, she told him, We pray to Him, and do only good. Our enemies will get nothing to them but shame. You hear me? You must help me shame them - let them hear only good things about you. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He nodded again, and gave a sigh. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Now sit up, she said, Let me dish out the lunch. You have to be powerful, so when it comes rek nga box kor!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She made the boxing motion with a clenched fist. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He laughed, he thought, only to please her.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She began to sleep in his room with him, at night. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">It started after she asked him why his eyes were so red - was he sleepy? And in fits and starts he told her about the night, and how long it was, and how it seemed to have no end - how frightening he found this. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He looked so tired, she thought, as he spoke. His eyes would not meet hers. They had never been intimate, in this way - and the mother felt what effort it must take even for him to speak with her like this. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She did not say anything. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">But that night she brought her mattress and laid it on the floor of his room, ignoring his protests. And when it was time to sleep it was she who turned off the light, and said goodnight to him.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">When he woke up in the morning and realized he had slept for hours he thought only, My tiredness must be catching up on me. He thought, The insomnia will return again tonight.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He watched the mother where she lay, her face quashed against the pillow, her mouth half-open. And the sudden feeling that surged in his breast made him turn away from her, so foreign an emotion it was. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She told him stories, about his father. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">In the dying light of day as they sat together, as Taakusaan made way for Timis, she stroked his hair and spoke to him. She told him how the old man would take him when going out, as a child. She spoke about how coming home from work he would open his arms and the boy would run into them, how he would always have a present for him: a kabaa, a koeni. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The father had died in a car accident. The son had no memories of him, except vague and general ones, that could have been worn by any man. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Her stories seemed to soothe him - he snapped them up like an excited child. For the duration of their telling the fear in him seemed to lessen. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">For it came down to that: fear. She could see it in his eyes, when she spoke of leaving for a moment to carry out an errand. The fear of being left alone, that he had once displayed, as a child, that she thought he had outgrown with the years. And behind that a greater fear, that the mother could not name or place, but that made her shiver. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She lessened her errands, the need to leave that room. She changed her daily rituals so they all became centred around his. She slept after he slept, and woke up before him. She prayed in the room, making him get up to join her. She performed her wirrda sitting in a chair opposite his bed, gesturing at him when it was time to close his bedroom windows, to keep out the mosquitoes.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And she hid from him her own fear that gripped her, that she did not examine, or even dare to look at too closely. She spoke with a confidence that sometimes brought a sparkle to his eyes. But it was a confidence that she herself did not possess, and though she kept her expression placid there was underlying it a turmoil of emotion, that sometimes threatened to break through the surface as she watched him sleep. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The son listened to her speak of the father, and he thought, I am bored, but I must listen for her sake. Yet when she stopped he would ask her to go on, with gentle prodding questions. And as she spoke he sat in rapt attention, laughing when the mother repeated a joke the father had made.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">When the relatives called the house now, the mother's brothers and sisters, she told them only that everything was fine. When they made plans to visit she put them off to indefinite times, or changed the subject. She discouraged the neighbors, too, from visiting. In time whole days went by in which only a beggar or two would come into the house, the odd salesman. She made an arrangement with one of the girls in the house opposite to do her grocery shopping for her, once a week.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He had seemed to be getting better, but now he was worse.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">In his eyes there was a deadness, a lack of interest in anything. When the mother set food before him he would not eat it, until she forced him. And even then only a few spoonfuls, before he would lie back down, turning his face to the wall.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Now there were no stories, or even much conversation. The mother sat in her chair looking out the window as she told her beads. The son lay with his back to her. She thought of many things to say, but the right words had deserted her. Or perhaps there were no right words, in the barren desert of feeling the son now inhabited that seemed to fill the room, the air still, the silence unbroken.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She had to help him into the shower, in the mornings, then dry and dress him and put him back in bed. He would not eat, and she had to spoon-feed him, cradling his head in her left, bringing the spoon to meet it with her right. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">In all her dealings with him she employed a light touch, meant to soothe him. And she tried not think the thought that forced itself to the front of her mind, that he was beyond soothing. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She woke up one night to find him crying. She felt it before she heard his sobs. She lay on her mattress, and could not get up, because if she got up she would not know what to do, what to say, to take away his fears. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And so she lay still, in moments filled with a wracking torture, and whispered to herself a name of God, over and over, until finally he stopped and went back to sleep, his sniffling becoming less and less frequent and finally dying down. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Even then in his breathing she thought she could detect the hint of a rising sob, and for the rest of that night she could not sleep.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She gave out alms after that, every day. To the children at the local daara, to passing beggars, to the beggars who sit outside the mosque on Friday, to the Imam of the mosque. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">They had lived modestly after the father had died, the mother and the son, their needs few and easy to cater to. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She sold the few gold bangles and bracelets she owned and with the money she bought bags of rice and coos and sugar, for the making of the sarah. A dim memory compelled her to act, returned to her from her childhood, about the feeding of the hungry and what great rewards it brought back to the alms-giver. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And to everyone she gave food to she told them only, I have only one prayer. God knows it. Pray for me that He will grant it. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And the receiver of alms - whether child or beggar - would ask that God grant her wish, and she would thank them, and go back into the house.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He stared into space for long moments, his eyes seeming old, older than even the mother. Now when spoken to he only answered in nods and barely-heard whispers.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">One morning the mother woke and he was gone. She had felt the emptiness of the room, in her sleep, and it had brought her hurtling out of her troubled dreaming. She sat up sharply. The bed was empty, and the feeling that made her spring to her feet came from deep within her. The bathroom, she thought, though she did not know how she knew.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He was there, sitting on the lid of the closed toilet bowl, his head in his hands.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">What are you doing?, she asked him. He looked up at her where he stood, and she took a step back, despite herself. His eyes were filled with a certainty he had not displayed since the start of the disease, and on his face there was a terrible smile.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">It is OK, he said, standing up, I understand it all now.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Understand what?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">It will be fine Ya, he said. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">And he walked past her back to the room, and there was something in his words and manner that made her afraid, a new kind of fear, a fear that filled her with a panic she could not control.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She watched him closely, after that. She gave up sleep almost entirely, would jerk out of dozing in her chair in the middle of the night and immediately reach for him protectively, muttering his name, still confused. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He ate now, by himself. He took showers. But despite these things - or perhaps in the way he did them - the mother was filled with a growing unease. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The day when it came felt different. The mother could sense it, in the way he spoke, with a finality that seemed to come from one almost dead, setting their affairs in order for the last time. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">He spoke with her almost normally, laughed, even made a few jokes of his own. And the mother thought, perhaps he is healed, perhaps the curse has been lifted. But even as she thought this she knew it was not the case, that he had at last reached the end of the dark road he had walked and was barely anymore of this World. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She followed him even more closely that day, standing outside the bathroom door as he bathed inside, holding his change of clothes. He seemed relax, but this was belied by a new hardness in his eyes that made her afraid to touch him, unable to recognize in this stranger her son. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She thought, very well. She thought, this is the day then. She thought, An ending - but I will not let it end here.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The day ended, and nothing had happened. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">That night she lay out her mattress, and pretended to fall asleep early. She lay in the dark trying to slow her breath, her eyes closed tight, one hand slung carelessly across her stomach.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">In the middle of the night she felt his tread as he climbed out of bed, as he walked toward and over her. There was the sound of the door opening, he was out, and the mother sat up quickly. She stood, and in a rush regathered her malaan about her, put on the slippers that lay at the foot of the mattress. And then she ran after him.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">She found him outside, standing under a sky with no stars and scant moonlight. He turned and saw her, their eyes met and held and they did not speak. Then she looked up at the washing line that hung above his head, knotted into a perverse shape, a circular shape.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The mother had never cried in front of the son, that either could recall. And so when her tears came, an explosion that sounded like a sneeze, it surprised both of them. She wept, and did not try to stop it and he took an instinctive step toward her and away from the rope. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Your father is gone, the mother said, sobbing like a child, If God takes you too what shall I do?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">The boy went up to his mother. He put her hand on his shoulder, and there were tears in his eyes, a moisture that seemed to soften their late hardness. And when his mother saw this she cried even more, though now she was also smiling, for the worst was over, and now the darkness would only grow in distance behind them.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">They went back inside, and in the morning they sat together over breakfast, mother and son, listening to the news on Rajo Gambia, a plate of akara set before them, loaves of bread and cups of tea.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Here - here is the sauce for the akara, the mother said, reaching to give it to him. He reached to take it with a smile, and the mother sighed and silently thanked God.</span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br />
</div></div>Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-57861203676905519572011-01-10T19:45:00.000+00:002011-01-10T19:45:13.661+00:00Your Sisters' KeeperShe waited all night and he did not call. <br />
<br />
She does not know when she finally fell asleep, waking up to a hardness against her chin, the mobile on top of which she had rolled. It was vibrating. A text - Jai - 'gal we r at idas house cme down'. An ebeh hangout - they had discussed it the previous week, before the fight. After a week of christmas and new year dates with boyfriends a girl's Sunday, to sit around and gossip and tease each other. <br />
<br />
She gets out of bed. There are no missed calls on her phone. She keeps checking, but there are never any missed calls, or if there are the names she reads only irritate her. <br />
<br />
She is not hungry. Not for breakfast, and to tell the truth not for ebeh, either. She sits at the kitchen table, slumped lazily forward, her head on her elbow. She wants to go back to bed. I am tired, she tells herself, that is all. I need to sleep - when I wake up I will feel much better. <br />
<br />
She tries not to think of the mobile ringing. She tries not to glance over at its screen, to catch the call in the moment of its connection, to will it into being by being sure of its imminent arrival. <br />
<br />
The phone rings - she gets up and grabs it. It is Saye. She sounds like she is licking a cut lemon. Jang-ha ananga? Hanaa jotulore sunye text bi nga nyuuse nyore ignore... <br />
<br />
Saye.... Saye.... she tries to interrupt in a small voice. Saye finally stops and listens. <br />
<br />
Naam?<br />
<br />
My head hurts. <br />
<br />
Anh?, Saye says, come get some ebeh then - it's good for it. She is silent. Maneh jang-ha dunye la nehal - come if you're coming. Nonsense. <br />
<br />
Maneh taygal sa time, she says, lee lan la nee? Maangeh nyowe in a bit. <br />
<br />
More gain chi yow deh. And Saye hangs up. <br />
<br />
She drags herself to the bathroom, and slogs her way through a shower. She dresses - a little mascara over the eyes, a string of beads around the neck. Then she leaves the house. <br />
<br />
It is not that other men do not like her. She reminds herself of this, she presents to herself as evidence the looks in the eyes of the ones she passes, on the roads and in the streets. She reminds herself of this, and it in no way proves to be a salve, or serve as a lightening or even a shifting of the weight that sits on her chest. <br />
<br />
She hears the girls as soon as she's inside the gate - their laughter from the back, one voice listened to as it finished its story, three others raised in raucous laughter following its denouement. <br />
<br />
Saye sees her first. jinay bi nyowe na!, she says, slapping her thigh. She is a slight woman, fair skinned - of the girls she alone does not own her mouth. This is what they tell her, Saye the blunt one, the one you wanted at your side in a fight. <br />
<br />
The others stop talking and turn. She thinks she can see it in their faces, how they analyze her: the way she walks, the expression in her face. Seeking to fathom from these things the answer to the question they are not sure yet it is cool to ask. And they must see that there has not yet been a call, because none of them mention it, then, not even Saye. <br />
<br />
Jang-ha baayil di nelawe beh naaj bi laka sa taat yi - jang-ha ninga Mel baahut deh, Yassin says - Ida giggles. <br />
<br />
Hey jang-hus beads yi, beads yi, Jai says, and she can't help but smile. <br />
<br />
As they cook, and talk, gradually thought of the call slips almost from her mind, is reduced to a slight itch that she is almost able to forget, for a moment, as Saye explains how she confronted a girl who kept rolling her eyes at her in public the previous week, as Jai tells them of the latest eruptions of her father, the man of many wives. They are careful, in the way they speak - they steer the conversation away from boys in general. Though occasionally one will come close to quoting a boyfriend, or repeating a joke he made on the phone at night, always they avoid it at the last minute, skillfully maneuvering around it. But she notices, nevertheless, and gradually over the course of the evening the call waiting returns once more to the forefront of her mind. There is a sinking in her mood, a sloughing. Bit by bit she falls out of the conversation and retreats into herself, staring fixedly into a space of her own significance. And the others falter, their conversation sinks into the hole she creates, despite their bravest attempts. <br />
<br />
There is a moment when there is a lull in the conversation. Everyone waits for someone else to fill it, with a word, a laugh - it remains empty, turns into a morose silence. The sun has almost set - it is getting dark outside. Cats fight on the other side of the fence, their caterwauling penetrating the brick wall. Suddenly she does not want to be here anymore - she wants to be lying at home in bed in a complete dark, the room silent, no music playing. She gets up. <br />
<br />
Jang-ha forye dem? <br />
<br />
She makes an excuse. She does not remember what later - something about her father coming home that night. It does not matter - they can see how she wishes to leave. They walk with her to the gate. <br />
<br />
Jang-ha Assan said he'll call me when he gets here tonight, Saye says, as she gets into the car. <br />
<br />
Assan, who may have information. But does she wish to know, truly, is there not an advantage in this not-knowing. <br />
<br />
At home. She is tired. But she cannot sleep - she lies in bed, as she imagined. But though the room is dark, the light of the mobile phone screen lighting as a call arrives will not enter it. And though it is quiet the sound of a mobile vibrating and screaming its ringtone will not startle her in it. Time plays funny tricks on her. She waits for an hour and when she looks at the luminiscent clock only a minute has gone by. At midnight Saye texts her. <br />
<br />
Jang-ha Ass said he has not spoken 2 im yet bu he will 2mrw. <br />
<br />
k thnx, she texts back. <br />
<br />
She thinks she must have forgotten how to sleep. She closes her eyes, and breathes slowly, and tries to clear her mind, but always she seems as far from sleep as she is in the middle of the day, with the Sun at its highest, destroying all shade and shadow. In order to fall asleep she must stop thinking about it, yet she cannot stop thinking about it unless she falls asleep... a circling that leaves her feeling even more irritated... And it is hot and it is cold... And her eyes feel so red, under her closed eyelids, so she has to keep opening them... And where is he now.... She sees him, reaching for his phone.... His hands rest on the keypad but they cannot type out her number, they are frozen by some dark magic... But it is her dream, she... Must... Be... Able... To.... Move... And she wakes without succeeding, bleary eyed, and reaches automatically for her mobile. <br />
<br />
No missed calls, one text. Her heart skips a beat - she jams her finger down on the inbox button. But It is only her brother, back home from clubbing the previous night, texting her to open the gate. She checks the time - 4am - Ya must have opened it for him, in the end. <br />
<br />
She goes into the bathroom, to brush her teeth. She looks at her cheeks in the mirror and they seem so fat, even grotesque. She is suddenly angry at herself, her many-faulted self that men will abandon without a thought. She is too ugly, she thinks, she is too fat, too slow. He would not call, he would never call again, she thought, feeling sorry for herself. And then she thinks, and he does not care the effect this is having on me. And she feels a sudden flash of anger, she thinks if he does not care then neither will I. Something in her hardens for a moment and she savagely puts away the toothbrush and marches back to her room, flecks of toothpaste still on her chin. She will not care either, then, she cares so little that she will turn off her phone right now! She picks it up. A change in the color of the flashing light, a missed call notification, and in a moment she has forgotten all her anger as she picks it off the bed, her heart beating in anticipation. It is an international number, and her disappointment makes her sigh, and sink back into her posture. <br />
<br />
She climbs back into bed and gets under the covers. She does not wish to go out, not today. She will stay here, and perhaps sleep will come to her. <br />
<br />
When the phone rings it is without any expectations that she picks it up. Her eyes are closed and she does not bother to open them - she merely gropes on the bed for it, her fingers pressing remembered buttons. She holds it to her ear.<br />
<br />
Hello, she says, almost a whisper. <br />
<br />
Hey.<br />
<br />
It is him. Her eyes fly open and she sits up in bed. The phone is pressed tight to her ear, so tightly it would have hurt, under different circumstances - but now she does not even notice. She barely knows what to say. <br />
<br />
Yow lu hew?, she asks him. Her voice is not accusing yet - it probes him, intends to find out his explanation first. There is a pause in which a thousand possibilities come true, and each is as false as the one preceding it. Then <br />
<br />
Baby, he begins, and she knows she has won, it does not matter what he says next, in his tone of voice she accepts his surrender and she is once more the queen who will lay down the laws which he will follow. She listens to him speak with a regal silence, not interrupting, making barely a sound. <br />
<br />
And all the while the relief in her chest is so sharp she is left breathless, she has to gulp back her breathe, and regain control of herself with an effort. She has had many years of training, in the ways of deadening her voice with a cold rejection that makes the hardiest of men take pause and re-consider. But all she can manage now is a stifled rasp, like someone recovering from a bad cold. She tries to pack as much anger and sangfroid as she can into it. <br />
<br />
I don't want to talk now - I'm busy, she says. Beh chi kanam. <br />
<br />
And over his protests she hangs up, her hands trembling a little. <br />
<br />
Then she puts the mobile on the bed, and sits waiting for him to call back.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-59398640074759605992010-12-22T00:34:00.001+00:002010-12-22T00:34:56.735+00:00Death [FICTION]4. Attached to her mother, she follows the woman everywhere. She understands two rules: being with her is good, being away from her is not. These are the only rules she needs to know.<br /><br />16. Her first boyfriend, high school classmate. He is on the football team. They walk together, after class, and he tells her about what team they will be playing next, what their chances are. She comes to school one morning and there is something wrong. She notices as soon as she enters the school gates. Everyone is standing outside, in little gatherings, murmuring to each other. She is told: the captain of the football team has died. The eyes of the boy she dates are red, and he turns away from her. She feels she ought to cry, as some of the other girls are doing, but the truth is she did not know the boy, feels nothing at his passing. And so she goes with the rest of the school to the funeral, and maintains the necessary decorum. But her thoughts are elsewhere, as they all sit outside listening to the wails of the boy's mother. She thinks of death, of what form it takes. In the final moments filled with knowing, what is it like - imagining it fills her with a delicious thrill, the thrill of one who still feel themselves far from a future danger, safe behind many layers of time. She thinks, where will I be when it happens. She thinks, will I know, at the last moment.<br /><br />18. Her aunty dies. She is woken from sleep by her mother, who is in tears. They dress quickly and go to the morgue to see the body. She thinks of her aunty's journey, from the main hospital, to haar yaala, to dead house. Her face deteriorating at each stage, her body become weaker and unable to support her any longer, so she had to be carried. In the end she recognized no one, would start screaming about witches if anyone touched her. It is the closest she has ever come to death, and it shocks her, seeing where her aunty lies dressed in white, her face pasty, the line of viewers walking past in a muffled sorrow. And her mother shouts her aunty's name over and over, and cries out to God, and has to be led away by one of the men. She does not cry. She stands outside the morgue and thinks of her own death, and what it will be like. She runs through the many possibilities in her head. Death by drowning, water-filled lungs. Death by falling, from a great height, the body shattering on impact, the head exploding as it meets hard concrete. Death by fire, a terrible burning, the stench of one's own flesh accompanied by a pain she cannot even begin to imagine. Death by gun, a shot in the back of the head as she stands facing a wall. Death by sleep, a dream in which she falls from an airplane, but this time does not wake up from before she lands. And all the women are told to leave the morgue, to go back to the house while the men carry the body to the mosque, to perform the last rites on it. And as she sits in the back of the car with her weeping mother she thinks not me, not yet.<br /><br />24. Marriage. A nice man she meets at college, one who makes her laugh and feel good about herself. When she is with him she feels complete - this is what she says to all her friends. The ceremony is a small affair - she has never been one for lavishness. A few relatives, her proud parents. As he holds her and they dance at the reception she catches a glimpse of her father where he sits, hunched over his walking stick, his breathing laborious, even as he puts on a brave smile. And she thinks he cannot have much left. And she feels a sudden sadness, and her husband must feel it, too, because he draws her closer in the dance, as the griots walk about them speaking of the deeds of their grandparents, picking up dalasi notes from the floor.<br /><br />27. Divorce. She cannot produce babies - they have tried everything imaginable. Visits to serigns and doctors, the advice of friends and family. The mothers on both sides are exasperated, each blaming the other's child, a continuous battle which tires her. And she finds out, too, that he is not what she truly wanted, the doubts that entered her mind after the first week of marriage have hardened and become the driving thoughts of her days with him. She finds fault in everything he does. And he in his turn is irritable and given to bouts of moodiness. They will go whole nights without speaking, lying there in the dark, each waiting for the intake of breath that will mean the other is about to apologize, and that never comes. Their fights grow more bitter by the day. One day in a fit of rage he tells her that perhaps if she had not lost her virginity before they married none of this would have happened. He apologizes immediately - all the air is deflated out of her and she has to sit down. And after that he is extra polite, but both of them know this is it. They have crossed a line drawn long ago, even as they promised each other there would be no lines. They no longer love each other, they carry on a pretense only for old times' sake, and for the sake of their parents. Her father dies, and briefly they are brought back together, under an umbrella of grief. But it does not last, the flame that existed has dwindled to a mere flicker, and then is finally put out altogether. One day he returns home from work to find her sitting in the living room, eyes red, a tissue in her hand. We need to talk, she says.<br /><br />42. In her apartment. The world has changed, it seems, while she has stood stagnant in it. She lies half-awake - perhaps she is only dreaming this. But death is with her, its presence fills the room, makes the air frigid so her thick blanket provides no protection. Death is here with her, and it is everywhere - she can no more escape from it than she can escape from herself, from her body and pestering thoughts. She is filled with fear, that constricts her throat and makes her gasp. She is in bed alone - over the years a succession of men have entered it and left, each leaving no great or lasting impression. She wishes now for a person, for someone, anyone - she cannot face this alone. She runs into the bathroom - it is there, waiting. She goes to the living room, turns on the TV volume - damn the neighbors - it is there too. And she lies on the sofa and curls herself up and tears stream from her eyes. She recites a vaguely remembered prayer again and again. And at last the presence leaves - a subtle shift in the temperature of the room, a dulling of her fear. But she has been in its presence, been marked by it. She knows it is only a matter of time.<br /><br />47. The day of her graduation. She has gone back to school, to get a new degree. She wishes to make something of her life, has stopped smoking, and drinking. Her mother is there, shuffling on arthritic legs, a smile on her weatherworn face. She begins a new job at one of the local NGOs. This is how she spends her days, staying at work until late, even on weekends. She has no other life, no interest in men, despite the gentle prodding of her mother. And death follows her still, the more she runs from it the closer she can feel its hot breath on her back. Sometimes at night she lies awake crying, though she suffers from no disease, and her life is as comfortable as it has ever been. She cannot talk about it with anyone - she knows the answers they will give her, about gratitude, about God. She lies awake and wishes it would happen now, be over and done with. A dullness fills her heart, the world is flattened into a place without hope or emotion. And it gets worse. In the mornings she cannot get out of bed except with a massive effort. And death is there, and some nights she rails against it, and some nights she pleads with it, but death is silent, death knows what it knows, and is patient. And in desperation she begins to think, I have only one thing left, and that is my choice. And the thought enters her mind and will not leave it, and she can feel death stir, where it waits in the wings of her life. She thinks I can choose the place and the time, she is filled with defiance.<br /><br /><br />49. Her mother is the only one who cries for her. Everyone else speaks only about how a person without faith could have done such a thing. No last rites are performed, no Imam presides over her.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-62343808909213870062010-12-17T23:04:00.001+00:002010-12-17T23:04:55.682+00:00Gambian English<p>(A Post using words of not more than three syllables)</p><p><br /></p><p>Recently there was a very lively discussion on a friend's wall. The said friend posted that he hated African journalists and assorted writing types who used big words in an attempt to sound smart. Someone saw this status update and posted a very bitter reply saying, in effect, that he was disgusted with this friend of mine for saying this and, not stopping there, also calling him a bunch of very personal names and attacking his facebook presence, the kind of music he listened to, etc. </p><p><br /></p><p>I am not going to post the link to that discussion here - you can find it if you look for it. The person in question got what was coming to him (though sadly instead of learning a lesson he resorted to self-pity and playing the part of the victim), and he is too easy a target: arrogant, sure of himself, one of those people who believe they are martyrs (a word he himself chose to describe himself) and working for a great cause, when in fact they are just jerks. But I think it is important to talk about the larger issue at hand here.</p><p><br /></p><p>English is not our language. It never was, it never will be. Anyone who fools themselves into believing that it is, is - well, a fool. However it is the closest thing we have to a world language, and so we must use it in order to be a part of the world: to do business with and talk to people from other countries, to read, to write. But to be honest I would be much prouder to be a master of Wolof, or Sosseh, or Bambara, than to be a person who speaks perfect English. But learning only these languages and not English - though a noble cause - is not practical in the world we live in, and won't take you very far.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Gambian student faces two obstacles. First he must learn the English language. And then, using it, he learns what is contained in his school books. Learning the English language itself is hard, and is made even harder by the quality of teaching in our schools. And so many people stumble at the first obstacle, and because they do, because it is so hard, they assume that anyone who got past it must be very smart. Or, in other words: "Nim clever yeh - su laakeh English rek nga contaan".</p><p><br /></p><p>In one of my classes in high school the teacher told us how there were people in England who could not read, and were uneducated. Nonsense, the boys said, laughing and jeering at him, everyone in England can speak English, how can they not read. This is a common error: because we must first learn English before we can learn almost anything else, we come to confuse the language with actual knowledge.</p><p><br /></p><p>And this leads to some pervasive and harmful problems. First we assume, almost on an unconscious level, that a toubab will always be better at a task than his fellow Gambian. I cannot count the number of times, working in the IT field, when we lost a contract because the client preferred to fly in toubabs from England, put them up in an expensive hotel, and pay them way more than we charged, not because they were better at the task, but simply because of the aura we attach to the toubab and his ways. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying Gambians should be given a free pass just because they are Gambian. What I'm saying is that the toubab should not be given a free pass either, simply by virtue of the language he speaks, and the color of his skin.</p><p><br /></p><p>And second, we build class systems: people who can speak English (even better if they can fake an accent) at a higher level, people who cannot beneath them. And the funny thing is we are willing to excuse imperfect English when it is spoken by French people, or Russians, or any of the other tribes of Europe. But our fellow countryman, no matter how smart he/she is, we will subject to all kinds of ridicule because he gets his verb tenses wrong, or cannot pronounce "sh" and says "fiss" instead of "fish", or "chee" instead of "key". We have come to idolize the medium, and ignore the message. We worship the form, and take no notice of the content.</p><p><br /></p><p>"Toubab jinay lenye" we say in Wolof. To me this is the worst legacy the toubab left us: not the enslavement of our bodies - which we fought off with great fanfare and little result - but the enslavement of our minds, the magical veil they put over our eyes so we cannot see them clearly but only with a mystique attached to them, that makes them seem capable of anything, and we ourselves capable of nothing. Perhaps this could be excused, in the generation before us: our grandmother and grandfathers who did not travel, and did not understand the toubab's machines and his ways. But what excuse is there for us, who are taught in school the same math, and physics, and chemistry, who go on the Internet and see what the toubab sees, who go to college abroad and see the toubab in all his lazy/clever/stupid/informed/well-dressed/smelly/HUMAN glory.</p><p><br /></p><p>Our initial enslavement was a thing of sweat and blood. It took many actions by many brave men and women to rid us of it. It is widely believed that the reason the struggles for liberty began was that Africans fought alongside toubabs in the world wars. For the first time the Africans saw there was nothing mystical about the toubab: he bled and cried for his mother and fell down dead when caught in the path of a bullet just like them. So when they got back home and the toubab still attempted to continue the master-slave system they decided, enough of this, they are not gods after all, capable of anything. They are mere people, like us. How ironic then that, only a few decades later, we now judge each other, not on our merits, but rather on how good we are at speaking the language of the toubab, and have gone right back to placing the toubab on a pedestal, down below which we look up at him. </p><p><br /></p><p>In high school during one exam I slacked off and did not study. The questions were about Shakespeare plays - I had not read the books, and knew none of the answers. So I faked it: using as many big words as I could I wrote long essay answers that had no meaning, but that sounded like they had been written by a very smart person. I did not think I could get away with it - when the results came out I was top of the class with a perfect score, while almost the whole class failed woefully. The principal suspected something - she asked the teacher for my paper, re-marked it and I got a much lower score, closer to what my classmates had.</p><p><br /></p><p>What we have now in the Gambia is many Amran Gayes, who attempt to fool us in the same way, using words we do not understand, their arguments lacking substance. And what we lack is principals who will call bullshit (to use a polite term) - we praise the Amran Gayes and look up to them, much to our detriment and the detriment of our country.</p><p><br /></p><p>So next time you hear a Gambian speak, even if their English is terrible, judge them based on what they are saying. And next time you read a Gambian writer and don't understand anything he writes, don't just assume that you are dumb and he/she is clever. Read it again - you'd be surprised how much of a lot of this kind of writing is just a big ball of hot air.</p><p><br /></p><p>And if all else fails: use dictionary dot com. ;)</p><p><br /></p><p></p><p><br /></p>Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-80814702287582758832010-12-15T12:06:00.001+00:002010-12-15T12:06:57.985+00:00The Choosing of the PathsPath 1<br /><br />She speaks in hushed tones, she is a beauty to behold.<br /><br />When she feels pleasure - perhaps physical, perhaps of a mental kind - her face relaxes, it glows, from the top, downward, a waxing that spreads and engulfs every sorrow in its path, and turns it gold, and makes it glow.<br /><br />And that at last reaches her mouth.<br /><br />Oh and that smile. How it fills you, with sighs.<br /><br />How it makes you whole and complete, when you behold it, how in that moment you are of a complete surrender.<br /><br />It is only women who love like this, everyone will assume. For no, men's love is gruff, it cannot consist of such images of pure thought.<br /><br />And how wrong they are, and how you are proof of it.<br /><br />A beauty to behold, and you cannot survive her, and you do not know how you survived, before her.<br /><br />She soothes your soul.<br /><br />Your time is of two kinds: that spent being with her, and that spent waiting for her to call.<br /><br />And you have never felt this way before, for anyone, not even for yourself.<br /><br />You speak to her on the phone.<br /><br />Nights that are the cure to your days, filled with worry, filled with toil, tired to the bone.<br /><br />How was your day today, she asks, and you cannot see her and only hear her voice.<br /><br />But from her voice alone you can reconstruct her, magical particle by magical particle, choice by choice.<br /><br />That whiteness of teeth, that darkness of gum.<br /><br />That skin that shines with a dark fire that burns through your body, and thrums at your heart strings.<br /><br />That shapely body, those graceful hands and feet.<br /><br />And then you wake up one morning and she is not there anymore, she is gone.<br /><br />Just like that, with no explanation, so you can scarcely believe it at first, anxiously await her call, will not put your phone down for a moment.<br /><br />Filled with an anxiety and a dread that will not let you sit, or stand, or stay in one place, or move about.<br /><br />And now, dear reader, we come to a parting of the ways, a deciding.<br /><br />If you wish to find out why, if she is worth it to you and you wish to find out where she has gone, and go to retrieve her, at whatever peril, go to Path 2.<br /><br />If you wish to assume the worst, to seize yourself about you now rather than later, and shrug it off and move on, go to Path 3.<br /><br /><br /><br />Path 2<br /><br /><br />She spoke, once, in hushed tones, she was a beauty to behold.<br /><br />When she felt pleasure - perhaps physical, perhaps of a mental kind - her face would relax, it would glow<br /><br />and then it will disappear, for it is only a memory, and memories do not suffice.<br /><br />You think, the Jinays have taken her, the jealous bastards. You visit Serigns, you give out sacrifices.<br /><br />You believe fervently in things you once laughed at.<br /><br />And every day you grow more bereft of hope.<br /><br />And then you think, perhaps not, perhaps not the Jinays then.<br /><br />Another man, you think. Another man has stolen in, in the dead of night, while I thought she slept, and crept away again with her.<br /><br />And so you go about the land, looking for this other man, your eyes shaded under your outstretched palm. And as you go about and speak slyly to people, and attempt to hear rumor of him, or of his whereabout, or of his ways.<br /><br />And you see nothing, and you hear nothing.<br /><br />Then you remember how full of faith she was, in you, You remember her eyes, and how they looked at you.<br /><br />You remember her smile, and how it forgave you.<br /><br />You remember the way she would turn away, when you set an intense gaze on her and said something nice. Stooop. As if she could not bear it, how much she loved you.<br /><br />And you think no, it is not another man, could not possibly be.<br /><br />And you think, but no, and you think, but no, and you think, she cannot be.<br /><br />Death.<br /><br />The most dreadful of words, and of thoughts.<br /><br />The end of words, and of thoughts.<br /><br />And your heart is wrenched from your breast, it is flung out into space, and you are filled with a hollowness that will not let breath past it, that constricts your chest and sinks you to the floor, your eyes closed, gasping.<br /><br /><br />You tear your hair out, with such force it tears out too your sanity, strands of white that trail from your brain, you are left crazy, reality a gold too richly hued, the Sun too bright, people about you all behaving in strange ways, ways that seem to follow rules, and laws, and a predictable order.<br /><br />And in the moment of your deepest despair you turn back, you leave yourself there and return, an empty husk.<br /><br />And, dear reader, you attempt to start again.<br /><br />Proceed on to Path 3.<br /><br /><br />Path 3<br /><br /><br />She speaks in a hushed tone, she is a beauty to behold.<br /><br />When she feels pleasure - perhaps physical, perhaps of a mental kind - her face relaxes, it glows, from the top, downward, a waxing that spreads and engulfs every sorrow in its path, and turns it gold, and makes it glow.<br /><br />And that at last reaches her mouth.<br /><br />Oh and that smile. How it fills you, with sighs.<br /><br />The same, then. A woman is a woman is a woman, and every woman contains an angel within them, and if it is loved and cared for and teh-teh-ed it will open itself, to be seen and held, to be beholden.<br /><br />And yet.<br /><br />There are beauties and there are beauties, there are hushed tones and hushed tones.<br /><br />Her voice is short by just a whisper's height, deficient by just a sigh's width.<br /><br />She is in love with you, deeply. You can feel it, can feel your power over her. What you give, and how she receives it, with such fervent want, such gratifying need.<br /><br />And yet.<br /><br />When you lie with her at night it is not she in your arms, in the moment before you drift off into sleep.<br /><br />The woman whose weight you feel then is a more perfect fit in your arms than she ever could be.<br /><br />A whiteness of teeth, a darkness of gum.<br /><br />And it is this lack you carry, through your life, until at last you are old, that exhibits itself as a certain holding back, in your manner of expression, that in the end drives women crazy and makes them leave you, until others of them seek you out.<br /><br /><br />And it is this lack you die with, wishing even at the last that you could be with her.<br /><br /><br />THE ENDAmranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-67594808685077689542010-11-29T02:54:00.001+00:002010-11-29T02:55:21.753+00:00Deconstruction of a Gambian Marriage [FICTION]<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />The Nouns</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Meeting. Infatuation. Surrender. Retreat. Advance. Ending. Beginning. Ending. Beginning. Progress. Regress.<br /><br />Decision.<br /><br />Honey. Baby. Boyfriend. Introductions. Best friend. Cousin. Darling. Sugar. Neh-nehhhh.<br /><br />Fights. Make-ups. Dinners. Break-ups. Silences. Words. Patchings-up.<br /><br />Possession. <br /><br />Proposal.<br /><br />Acceptance.<br /><br />Kola Nuts. Uncles. Mosque. Hew. Griots. Histories. Lavishness. Gifts. Friends. Smiles. Pride. Mothers. Fathers. Joy.<br /><br />Vans. Buckets. Taasu. Paans. Lockets. Tama-kats. Guewels. Woyaan-kats. Imams.<br /><br />Work friends. School friends. Old friends. New friends. Felicitations.<br /><br />Night.<br /><br />Old Women.<br /><br />White Sheets.<br /><br />Darkness.<br /><br />Ceiling Fan.<br /><br />Entry.<br /><br />Obstruction.<br /><br />Woye!<br /><br />Inside. Outside. Blood.<br /><br />Woooye…<br /><br />Inspection.<br /><br />Announcement. Celebration. Drums. Singing.<br /><br />Tiredness.<br /><br />Morning. Stiffness. Limping. Phone conversations.<br /><br />Nijaaye. Baby. Babes. Love. Chapali Bon Bon. Honey. Big daddy. Mandingo Warrior.<br /><br />Kitchen. Domoda. Super. Benachin. Meatballs. Dinner Table. Conversation. Bills. Visits. In-laws. Njaykays.<br /><br />Period. No period. Vomiting. Roundness. Day-sleep. Insomnia. Mood swings.<br /><br />Pregnancy kit. Confirmation. Joy. Announcement. Phone calls. Congratulations.<br /><br />Plans.<br /><br />Big belly. Kicks. His Names. Her Names. Discussion. Argument. Resolution.<br /><br />Contractions.<br /><br />Car ride. Hospital. Midwives. Hospital Bed. Pain. Strength. Pain. Firmness. Pain. Pain. Pain.<br /><br />Expulsion.<br /><br />Liquids. Solids. Semi-liquid solids.<br /><br />Incubator. Tears. Assurance.<br /><br />Death?<br /><br />Prayer. God. Trust. Serign Sallah. Alms. Sowe. Mbuuru. Maalor.<br /><br />Life.<br /><br />Hope.<br /><br />Fever. Trembling. Weight Loss.<br /><br />Despair.<br /><br />Death.<br /><br />Blamings. Shoutings. Fights. Crashings.<br /><br />Silences. Bed walls. Kitchen walls. Dining Table walls. Wall walls. Word walls. Walls of silence. Walls of stone.<br /><br />Divorce.<br /><br />Absence. Ache. Numbness.<br /><br />End.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Verbs</span><br /><br /><br /><br />Meet. Speak. Discover. To be demur. To be forward. Part. Leave.<br /><br />Re-meet. Speak. Call. Speak. Text. To brush against. Reply. Flirt. Advance. Retreat.<br /><br />Offer.<br /><br />Hesitate. Convince. To be scared. To be assured.<br /><br />Withdraw. Advance. Withdraw.<br /><br />Surrender.<br /><br />Imagine. Wonder. Call. Fight. Make up. Fight.<br /><br />Imagine. Remember. Daydream. Night-dream. Fight. Make up. Fight.<br /><br />Talk. Worship. Fight. Hate.<br /><br />Make up. Worship. Irritate.<br /><br />Desire.<br /><br />Want.<br /><br />Possess. To be possessed by.<br /><br />Miss. Call.<br /><br />To feel bad. Call. To feel better. <br /><br />Dine. Propose. Cry. Agree. Announce. Call. Buy. Visit. Plan. Buy. Hire. Arrange.<br /><br />Pack. Cry. Depart.<br /><br />Approach.<br /><br />Enter.<br /><br />Woye!<br /><br />To cry out. Inspect. To be satisfied. To announce. To celebrate.<br /><br />To feel stiff. To walk slowly.<br /><br />Make breakfast. Talk. Make lunch. Talk. Make dinner. Talk. Hold. To be held. Snuggle. Canoodle.<br /><br />To mess up bed. To change sheets. Remake bed. Repeat.<br /><br />To miss period. Pee. Look. Read. Call. Surprise. Return. Hug. Cry.<br /><br />Push! Push! Puuuuush! Scream!<br /><br />To be happy.<br /><br />To be worried.<br /><br />To be sad.<br /><br />To be numb.<br /><br />Depart. Forget.<br /><br />End.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Adjectives</span><br /><br /><br />Noticeable.<br /><br />Attractive. Well-spoken. Well-dressed. Sexy. Curvy. Smart.<br /><br />Perfect. Flawed.<br /><br />Crazy. Moody. Temperamental. <br /><br />Vivid. Vicarious. Various.<br /><br />Poetic. Burning. Intense.<br /><br />Falling.<br /><br />Gentle. Tender.<br /><br />Soft. Curvaceous.<br /><br />Passionate. <br /><br />Beautiful. Nice. Fragrant.<br /><br />Masculine. Deep-voiced. Lispy.<br /><br />Jet-black. White. Dark.<br /><br />Happy. Sad. Happy. Irritating.<br /><br />Needy. Needful.<br /><br />Slow. Fast. Painful.<br /><br />Peaceful. Delicious. Happy. Chatty. Fulfilled. Fulfilling.<br /><br />Lush. Filling. Inspiring.<br /><br />Joyous.<br /><br />Agonizing. Sad. Devastating.<br /><br />Final.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-75344773021406306722010-11-19T20:09:00.000+00:002010-11-19T20:10:22.468+00:00ChattShe is one of the most successful business women in Gambia. Her name is known far and wide, she is a patron of many celebrations.<br /><br />Come with me to the Serign, her mother says, Chat baahut Ida. Come with me, that he can protect you from wagging jaws and wandering tongues.<br /><br />But she does not listen. If she is not too busy traveling she is too busy meeting, with important men, for lunch.<br /><br />One day something bad happens. A deal gone wrong, a trust betrayed. She is shocked, to the core. She loses some money. Nothing irrepairable, you understand - after the initial shock she gathers herself again, and past a slight hardening within her, she is herself once more.<br /><br />If you had come with me to Serign Mbaakeh, her mother begins, but she snaps at her, and gets in her car, and leaves again for the office.<br /><br />A plane is delayed, a flight is cancelled, and she catches the ferry to Barra the next day, for her reconnection through Dakar. A flight attendant recognizes her at the airport.<br /><br />Ida Sosseh deye morm, the attendant says to her friends that night as they sit together, she has lost her money deh - she has to take the ferry now. The girls laugh, and high-five each other. And there the rumor is born. <br /><br />And by the next day the rumor has grown, has assumed magnificent proportions. It travels through the country, covered with a web to which each teller adds their own sticky strand. And it is covered with filth, heavy with it.<br /><br />That she had tried a business deal, with some mafia members. That she had lost much money, and disappointed them. That she fled, then, into Senegal, filled with shame. Did you see what she wore at the airport - did you see how plain it was? Did you see how she hurried, so no one would see her - as if Banjul dang fi muna nobu! Where is all her class now, is what I'd like to know? She will be arrested if she ever steps foot inside this country again.<br /><br />All while she sits on a plane, looking out at a Sun that scatters its light across the fluffy surfaces of clouds, and thinks about her meeting in New York.<br /><br />And now the rumor, fat, pregnant with itself, begins to enter into reality, it begins to assume a tangible form.<br /><br />And those charged with listening to the mutterings of the people, in order to discern any dissent, come into contact with the rumor. And from the ruptured belly of the rumor they gathered hardened pus, which they call cold hard fact, and run sniggering to present to their superiors.<br /><br />Ida Sosseh is in Brussels, awaiting her connecting flight. She flips lazily through a magazine. She thinks to call her mum. Then she thinks No, ah, let me wait until I get there, merr bi dafa Barry wah, I am tired...<br /><br />And the facts (that are in fact only the hardened pus of the rumor) are polished until they glisten, and presented at last to the ones who make the decrees. And the ones who make the decrees think on them, and then present their decisions. Guards are posted at the airport, a holding cell is cleared, an interviewer is put on alert.<br /><br />And they all wait, for Ida Sosseh.<br /><br />And her mother hears, in the way mothers have of hearing, and her mother is gripped with terror, and sits by the telephone, waiting for Ida to call. <br /><br />When Ida Sosseh finally checks into her hotel in New York she is so tired she thinks she will call her mother the next day. Probably asleep anyway, she thinks, as she drifts off to sleep herself, in a haze of jet fatigue, no point in waking the merr…<br /><br />In the morning she wakes late and has to rush to her meeting. It runs late, and when she finally gets home she has to pack and rush to the airport for her flight home. She does not call her mother. She boards, and has her layover in Brussels. But the plane lands late, and it lasts a mere three minutes, the flight attendant politely hurrying her along.<br /><br />When she lands at the airport back home she is accosted by a strange man, shorter than her, with a tight haircut. The man takes her arms and asks her to follow him. There is an arrogance in his tone, a hint of violence.<br /><br />She thinks there must be a mistake. Yow Baaye ma! She pulls away. And when he will not let go of her arm she gets angry, she shouts at him. And then she is terrified - she shouts at the spectators for help, but they will not move, refuse to meet her eye. Then other men come, and she is a limp presence at their center, as they surround her, and walk her away.<br /><br />I told you many times, Serign Mbaakeh tells Ida Sosseh's mother, to bring her here. Chatt baaxut!<br /><br />Ndaham I told her... You know these children... You know what they are like nowadays... they believe nothing... nothing...<br /><br />The old woman's shoulders are slumped, and she looks down at the ground.<br /><br />She is not beyond saving, Serign Mbaakeh says, in a gentler tone, Now - you must do exactly as I tell you....<br /><br /><br />She does, of course. She carries out the Serign's instructions to great precision, she gives out each sarah twice. She does more than is asked of her, and she prays, and she fasts, every single day. <br /><br />And a decree comes, from above, and one day, just like that, Ida Sosseh is freed.<br /><br />Her mother is given notice, and she travels to the jail in a taxi, and waits for her outside. When she walks out under the Sun, when the glare has stopped burning her eyes, Ida Sosseh sees her mother, where she stands waiting, a kaala draped hurriedly over one shoulder. And Ida Sosseh bursts into tears.<br /><br />Later, in the evening. They sit in their living room, the news on the television, that they both ignore. They look off into space, they do not look at each other. They have not spoken much all day, and when they speak they skirt around the topic of the imprisoning.<br /><br />The Serigns can see things, her mother begins, that we cannot. And they can protect us against these things. That is all - whatever it is they take from us.<br /><br />Ya, a Serign could not have prevented this! It is only these hypocrites and liars, and how they will speak against someone in the jealousy that eats at their rotten hearts. That will not mind their business!<br /><br />She is filled with emotion as she speaks. Her mother sits with expression unchanged, staring deep into the arm of a chair.<br /><br />You have always been stubborn, Ida. I had no one else, to set against you - this is why I spoilt you. The neighbors talk - the way you will not greet them when you pass. The smoking. One day you came home and said you did not want to go to daara anymore. There was something in your eyes - a fear, a holding back, I did not understand. So I let you stay home.<br /><br />These things - chatt, gaymaynye, they are merely self-fulfilling prophecies. She uses the English phrase, and it sounds crude, in the midst of the Wolof. They succeed because people believe in them. The antidote to them is to have people shut their dirty lying mouths up. Not giving money to Serigns.<br /><br />Her mother says nothing after this, and they sit watching the television in silence, where now there is a report of a public ceremony, screaming people and raised dust, red shirts and waving flags, until the night comes in and they each retire to their own bed.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-27755511401733407762010-11-10T00:16:00.001+00:002010-11-10T00:16:51.637+00:00Against a Gambian Monarchy: An EssayLately I have been hearing rumors that have left me feeling greatly disturbed, concerning the current system of government in Gambia, and a possible change to it. I religiously stay away from politics in my writing. But this is a big enough change that I feel I cannot in all good conscience hold my peace, as a writer, and as a Gambian.<br /><br />There are problems, with the method of discourse we have chosen. It is polarizing - a fake distinction has been set up, for every issue: for and against, good and evil. Yet it occurs to me that we must first try to understand our problems, before we attempt to solve them. Insults are free - any idiot can utter them. They change nothing, engender nothing - they are the worst kind of masturbation. Despite all the resources and talent we have in the country, of all the chances at a discourse that will change the nation for the better and at the same time be respectful of each other and bent always toward a useful purpose, we choose Freedom newspaper as our flag bearer? There is something deeply wrong with our body politic, if truly this is the best representative we can find: a half-educated journalist who cannot separate fact from fiction, who delights in the gleeful exposure of the misfortunes of others, in their public embarrassments and humiliations, taking a word that contains hope, and a promise of a future liberty, and twisting it to his own perverted use.<br /><br />Our so-called "Opposition" is an almost useless entity. They resort to hyperbole, the last refuge of the desperate, on and off the Internet. They bicker with each other, like little ganaar chicks over mere scatterings of rice seeds. They fight, over who amongst them will lead. And our "intellectuals" spend all their time trying to impress us, with how sharp their thought is, how they must be genuises far smarter than the common Gambian man, too caught up in their collective navel-gazing to see reality, or recognize it.<br /><br />And yet all these groups expect to be taken seriously, they tell us that what we have is bad and they are our last and only hope.on and off the Internet. They tell us we should replace it, and when we ask with what they fumble and mumble and with a fake humility propose themselves.<br /><br />This is why I do not write about politics, will not be drawn into that fray. Oh I love my country alright - everyone who knows me knows this: I love it with a deepness that follows me around everywhere I go and informs all my future plans, and is the source of all my writing. But our politics (and perhaps politics everywhere) seems of necessity to be a worship of the self, a setting oneself up as the best option at the expense of others. And this requires certain compromises with oneself, that I would rather not make. There are other people who think like this, youths like me, people who are assets to the nation, ready to sweat and toil for it with a pure motive, filled with talent and a generous cleverness.<br /><br />I did not vote, in the last election, though I got the chance for the first time. Aha!, the overeager reader will yell, how can you then even talk about a democracy? Failing to vote meant you gave up your right to being involved in democratic discourse - if you don't vote you can't complain!<br /><br />I disagree. Putting colored beads in a box once every five years does not constitute participation in the democracy and development of my country any more than going around chanting party slogans into a loudspeaker does. These are the rituals we have built up, serving nothing more than the egos of the people who ask for our votes, a temporary (and expensive) derailment every five years that does little more than create a tension in the air, an anomie in a previously peaceful people.<br /><br />The online forums, of course, are going wild. All the "brave" men and women who sit behind their keyboards and trade fiery insults online, and speak with great passion about how The Gambia is being ruined, filled with a self-righteous outrage that infects the people who read their comments and spreads through their websites and mailing lists like wildfire. The language they speak is the worst kind of language: a language whose speaker is not ready to do anything himself, but wishes to rile up others, to drive them to commit violent deeds. It is the language of jahaseh, the language of the coward. It is an unworthy language, of our country and our culture, so full of respect and love for each other. And on the other side of the divide, too, we have the same set of problems: the name calling, the casting of aspersions on people's integrity, the use of force as an enforcer of silence, a remover of sounds that make us uncomfortable. <br /><br />It makes me wonder what kind of country we the youth will inherit, when the time comes. What will be left to us, by these adults, who we look up to but who insist on debasing themselves, on placing themselves on the ground?<br /><br />A failure of imagination on both sides, this has been one of our central problems. A failure of empathy. Some see the wish to stay on and interpret it as a love of power, a reluctance to let go of it, and the many luxuries it affords. Myself, I prefer a more romantic interpretation, a more forgiving one. <br /><br />Put yourself, for a moment, in the position of President: you are working hard, night and day, to do what you believe the best for the country. Of all the people in the country you believe you are the only one who sees the big picture, the whole picture, and you see there are things that need to be done that go against popular opinion, that will risk raising the ire of the citizenry. But that in the end these things are the only hope, if the country is to be saved - you do sincerely believe this. And so you work at them, you risk unpopularity, you risk being not liked by anyone. You are insulted, you are called names and accused of all manner of things. Your family is subject to ridicule and public humiliation. Anyone who genuinely loves you and wishes to be friends with you is accused of sycophancy, of seeking only after his own selfish need - in this way society casts you apart, and all associated with you. Your loyalty to the nation - this nation that you have risked your life for - is called into question, again and again your attempts at goodwill are dismissed. <br /><br />It must be the loneliest job, in the country.<br /><br />Yet you put up with it, it is a sacrifice you willingly make, because you have a vision, and you wish to see it to its realization. And then, in the cruel and unfair way of democracy (as you see it), the very people you are trying to save, the ones you have given up so much for and who have hated you in return, these people are given the chance to choose or not to choose you, to renew your term or send you packing. A growing fear, that they will at the last betray you (for you see it as a betrayal, after everything you have done for them, and it hurts you deeply, and fills you with an indignant anger).<br /><br />How could this not be a nuisance? Who would not attempt to remove themselves from such manner of judgement, if they possibly could? Did you see pictures of Obama, after the recent defeat at the polls? Did you see the look on his face, the weariness in his voice and manner? You think if he had had a chance to change that, to make it go away, he would not have?<br /><br />But what would be easy for us is not always the right thing to do. In fact I have come to harbor a suspicion of facile-ness, a distrust of ready-made solutions.<br /><br />If you are of the strong opinion that Gambia would be better served with a monarchy, well there is nothing wrong with that. You have every right to your opinions, after all. But you must also be willing to let myself and others disagree with you, without rancor, without casting us as enemies. We all love our little Gambia, in our different ways. We all want the best for it. And no one knows what this "best" consists of. But if we talk, if we join our thoughts, then we can all discover it together. This is the practical value of democracy: that it gives us all voices, that it says - we do not, cannot, bequeath the future of the nation into the hands of one man. Not because we hold anything against the man, but because a country - the land and its people - is not a trivial thing, to be left to the whims and caprices of one person, no matter how kind the person is, no matter how wise. <br /><br />The state is not a glove, that fits neatly over our people. It is more like an undersized blanket, a saangu that is too small and needs to be stretched out, in order to cover the whole bed. There will always be people dissatisfied with it, discontent with the system. Democracy gives these people a voice, their vote gives them a choice, a means of catharsis. A way to express their opinions in a non-violent manner. A monarchy will take this away, trap us within a system that confines us and takes away the ultimate choice even the least of Gambians has a right to: who we wish to be ruled by. I do not even speak about now. Yes, perhaps we have the leader we need, perhaps you are right and if he were only to stay for the rest of his life we would become a great nation. And then, when he is gone? When the next leader comes, his replacement, and is not to our liking, is selfish and corrupt and misuses the resouces of the country and runs it like his own personal fiefdom? You think a system of government is like a change of clothes: a dagit in the morning, a kaba in the evening, a malaan and T-shirt at night?<br /><br />Ruling over a land is not a gift, to be handed out. It is a terrible burden. <br /><br />If we choose this route and later decide we have made a mistake, there will be only one way to undo the mistake, and it is a way that, save for a brief and frightening period of anarchy in '81, our country has never experienced. A way none of us wish, for we are, and have always been, a peaceful people. But peace is not preserved only by an aversion to guns, and a submission to faith - no, the decisions we make now may perhaps not infringe on our own peace, but they will, on the peace of the future. <br /><br />We suffer, as a people, from a queer amnesia. We do not seem to remember the past, and when we do we think of it only as a collection of ancient relics, not in any way related to our present. Perhaps this is necessary, a philosophy of life well suited to the hand-to-mouth existence that most Gambians live. It is even, perhaps, useful - for we are a forgiving people, who hold no grudges, and the greater part of forgiving is willfully forgetting, letting bygones be gone, never to be mentioned again, in polite conversation or remembering.<br /><br />Yet it is a damaging philosophy, sometimes. It was not the toubab, after all, who brought us democracy. Why would the shepherd promote representation, amongst the sheep? No - history tells a different story: of a growing anger at a power that fed off the land and the people yet did not acknowledge them, left them powerless and like little children needing to be directed and decided for. Of a country that grew agitated as it came into an increasing self-realization, of men and women who made many sacrifices, for the future, for us, so we could be free of the yoke of monarchy.<br /><br />And the end result of this sacrifice, the democratic government, is not just a toubab ideal that does not fit into our culture, but was shoved down our unwilling throats. To dismiss it as such shows a deep (and, I suspect, disingenuous) misunderstanding of the state, and the exchange we enter into when we all decide to live in it together, as one people.<br /><br />Some of my friends speak of self-exile. They throw their hands up in frustration, at every setback in our national project, and make plans to move to another country, to attempt to set roots down in another land. But though this may be a solution for some, it does not work, for many. Gambia is our country, it is the land of our birth, and that of our forefathers'. It is the only place in the world we can truly call ours - where would we go, how could we be ourselves, realize our full potentials, in the bosom of a land not our own? This is not a true solution, then.<br /><br />And so to conclude I wish to say, we are in this together, mu neh mu nahari. I apologize, if this essay has offended you in any way - that was not my intention. I wished only to bring the issues at play to the foreground, so we can think about them, and discuss them and do what is best for our country, and our future.<br /><br />Now is our chance. I hope, whatever we end up deciding, we do not live to regret it.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-17286302670181025952010-11-08T09:16:00.001+00:002010-11-08T09:16:40.832+00:00The Love of the PolesTwo poles stand on the street, a distance from each other.<br /><br />Each outside a Peul shop, each bearing the weight of wires that crisscross the street and head in different directions. Wires that are their only connections to each other.<br /><br />They have discovered each other gradually, the poles. They have explored each other's thoughts from a distance, rough gems that held up to the sunlight have perfect smoothness.<br /><br />How one prefers the twilight hour, when the birds that perched on it during the day now fly home. How it warms it with a satisfaction that cools its cold metal. How the other dreams, of going for walks, of meeting and conversing with other poles. How it yearns for legs, that would carry it, instead of a stump trapped in hard Earth.<br /><br />And placing each other under such scrutiny, the two poles have fallen in love.<br /><br />Over the years, over time, there has grown in each of them a space that only the other can fill.<br /><br />And so each pole abandons itself, to the care of the other, becomes dependent on the other for its complete survival.<br /><br />After a while they yearn to touch. They reach out for each other.<br /><br />And fall just short - they fail, at the last.<br /><br />And each withdraws, for a space of time, but it is too painful, and once more signals are sent, across the wires that connect them. Conversations are refilled, with the sweet warmth that makes the nights not so lonely, the stars not so distant.<br /><br />And once more they reach forward.<br /><br />And once more they fall short, these poles, once more metal will not budge, from hard Earth, nor the laws of physics be disobeyed.<br /><br />And again they retire. And again they return. <br /><br />They reach, they fail, they try again.<br /><br />And again.<br /><br />And yet again.<br /><br />Again and again, over many years, over a decade, over two.<br /><br />Time does not go past, but accumulates, a heavy weight of sadness that hangs between them.<br /><br />Because the poles cannot leave each other, because their fates are as one. They cannot be apart.<br /><br />And yet they cannot be together. It is an effort that will always be frustrated. I am not ready, each thinks. It is an effort that is always doomed to fail.<br /><br />Houses are torn down in stages around them, each thing that is torn replaced. A metal koriget fence become a stone wall with gates in the center, a small hut become a boys' quarters.<br /><br />The street level rises as the water level does, a new pavement is built, the drainage system running under it.<br /><br />Still the poles stand, regarding each other across a distance.<br /><br />A new Peul shop is opened at the base of the first pole. A new Peul shop is opened at the base of the second pole.<br /><br />The rain rules the skies for weeks, every cloud containing enough potential for a storm. And then just like that it is gone.<br /><br />Harmattans depart, Harmattans return.<br /><br />The poles stand as the baby being named today becomes the bride whose name is being changed, tomorrow.<br /><br />The poles are more patient, than you and I. The poles are more patient, than chereh, and laalore.<br /><br />But the poles are not more patient, than trees. And the poles are not more patient, than time.<br /><br />And so their patience slowly runs out, their strength is sapped, they become irritable, with each other.<br /><br />They take out their grievances on each other, their conversation is turned sour, the black wires that run between them thick and heavy with obdurate thought.<br /><br />And the atmosphere about them becomes tense.<br /><br />A child hold the first pole. An exposed wire, a rainy day.<br /><br />The child is flung, propelled forward by a great shock. She is dead before she hits the water of the street gutter.<br /><br />And the first pole is filled with a grief that makes the second pole breathlessly turn its attention toward it, a feeling that scares it. The second pole cannot bear to see the first pole like this.<br /><br />And so the second pole reaches, once more, for the first pole.<br /><br />But this time there is a difference, the nature of the desperation in its reach has changed.<br /><br />For while before it was an angry desperation, a fierce desperation filled with need, a selfish desperation, now it is a firm but quiet desperation.<br /><br />One that gives itself completely, to reach for the other pole. And that has accepted that it will fail, and yet still it does not matter. For it would rather perish in the attempt, than not have tried, at all.<br /><br />That night a storm comes. You know it, dear reader, as the famous storm of '96. A storm filled with fury, and a cold rage.<br /><br />It raises rooves, and uproots trees. It drowns livestock, and floods rice plains. It excites the Sea, makes it overflow its banks.<br /><br />And the next morning all about the poles there is all manner of destruction.<br /><br />And a falling coconut tree has crashed down on the second pole's back, and bent it at a violent angle.<br /><br />And the second pole leans forward, looking almost graceful.<br /><br />And the head of the second pole rests on the head of the first pole, and they are joined together as if one.<br /><br />Can poles dream, can poles sigh?Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-86326505601114571562010-11-07T14:15:00.000+00:002010-11-07T14:16:07.701+00:00The LandThese are the varieties of love he has known.<br /><br />Love of mother. Love of sister.<br /><br />Love of woman, not related to him by blood.<br /><br />Love of father, and of brother. Love of friend.<br /><br />Love of country.<br /><br />It is this last that occupies him, tonight.<br /><br />Packets of chuura gerrteh, sent across many lands and many seas. A boiling of water, salted first, the pure white crystals settling to the bottom. And then an opening, and a pouring-in, of material created by loving hands in yards next to kitchens, in gaynas worn and hardened by years of use.<br /><br />Pounded by hands whose hearts are connected to ours, in a parallel world where distance and time do not exist, or if they do they have no effect.<br /><br />He eats the chuura, and he thinks of Gambia.<br /><br />A land with a fate tied to a river, tied so tightly that when it came time to decide the shape and size of the land, the deciders used the river, as their starting point, borders rushing away from it on either shore, cannot shot distances away.<br /><br />He thinks how even now this river is the thread running through the land's center, its heart and its soul, feeding and nurturing its body, on which its people live.<br /><br />The chuura is a trickling of pink water, that lies in the bowl, with tiny lumps in it. He adds sugar and stirs it. He pours milk on it. He mouths a spoonful.<br /><br />It is hot.<br /><br />And when he looks at it where it lies in its bowl, a small cloud of steam rising from it, he thinks of his connection to the country of its origin.<br /><br />The way the river pulls him back to it, draws him back by a subtle pressure on his dreams, an influence on the direction of their flow, a heaviness in his heart, that is only eased, when he is at home.<br /><br />To decide to give a life to his country, then, that is the only solution. <br /><br />A life given to its reforming, its remolding into a finer shape, less coarse. Into a land not only of peace, but of a plenitude.<br /><br />And to what end? What, then, would such a life have achieved?<br /><br />He sits over his bowl of chuura, he chews ruminatively, and he sees.<br /><br />He sees the engines of development, as they traverse the land.<br /><br />He sees the dirt paths open themselves up to reveal roads, sunlight on shiny tar, barefoot children putting on sandals and getting into school buses that travel the kilometres now free of dust, passing farm women who smile as they turn the handles on taps, their feet no longer torn, or worn.<br /><br />He sees hospitals spring up where once there were only rocks, and sand, and trees, and children who died, stocked up on sickness, run out of time.<br /><br />A man and his family, sitting in the living room. The brother from school, his head filled with pictures of falling apples and bewigged men, his first adventures with gravity. The sister thinking about her school trip the next morning, and whether Baboucarr will sit next to her. The mother what to cook for dinner, the fourth meal of the day, from the stuffed fridge.<br /><br />On the television programs that are of the culture, and promote it, and spread it across the land, bringing the people together.<br /><br />It is tobaski, and in all the houses there is a bleating of rams. All the children of the land wear new mbubi juli.<br /><br />Across the land there is a stability of rice, an availability of meat.<br /><br />The stink of desperation, the odour of need, that has hung in the air so long, has disappeared. And with it has also gone the gnawing in the hearts of the youth, that makes them seek to escape the land in droves, believing there is nothing here for them.<br /><br />And he sees the beginning of a final goal, one worthy of a life. A social re-engineering, a re-imagining. A rebuilding, from the ground up.<br /><br />And he finishes his chuura, and getting up puts the bowl in the sink.<br /><br />And he thinks he knows, what he wants to do with his life.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-75940966330224688952010-10-31T22:26:00.000+00:002010-10-31T22:27:22.513+00:00Three Gambian Women: Prose Poems*The Peul*<br /><br />Jallow.<br /><br />How could a surname be more beautiful. A melody, running from the J to the w, that dip at the a, and then the delicious double rise of the two ll, that pleasant surprise in the middle of the name, waiting to be discovered, as you call her and she turns, her eyes wide, suddenly attentive...<br /><br />Soft skin, varying hues of brown.<br /><br />The places exposed to the envious Sun, tanned a darker shade.<br /><br />And the places not exposed. The shoulders. The thighs. The breasts, that end in a sudden and dark explosion of sensitive flesh. <br /><br />Her hair so soft, her teeth a milky white. Her smile like fehneh, formed on top of sowe, encouraged to grow into its creamy richness by assiduous merr, who will sell it, out of lehkehts, some dewy mornings. <br /><br />How she grows, from an adolescent, into a woman - a gradual blooming, into fruition, a process as natural as sunrise, that shines all through the day and spends all its efforts toward one purpose: to make a beautiful sunset, at end of day. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*The Serahule*<br /><br /><br />Did you ever doubt that the Serahule could be beautiful? Then come - I wish to show you something.<br /><br />A whiteness of teeth, a blackness of gum.<br /><br />A smile that sparkles and glimmers under the gentle light of the dying Sun, or else under the pale light of a bulb in a room.<br /><br />Or even, sometimes, in a darkness so complete you can see nothing else. As if it were the source of its own light, and needed no other.<br /><br />From the hardness of enamel somehow arising a softness that warms the heart, and whispers to it of a time without pain, a future without sorrow...<br /><br />You make fun of the language of the Serahule. Yet issuing from her mouth, a mellifluous flow, it sounds better than any language of your comprehension, makes you think of Babel, and a time before the great babbling, when all spoke the same words and reached the same understanding and worshiped the same God, and the sin of borkaleh, of Shirk, still lay undiscovered… <br /><br />And yet how coy she is, possessed of a self-reservation that covers her behavior like a kaala, concealing much, revealing just enough, to leave you wanting to know more...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*The Wolof*<br /><br /><br />Njaaye. The good that cannot be bought or sold, that is beyond an estimation of price or worth. <br /><br />The pride of the Wolof, their unwavering self-confidence. She has her hair done in braids, and at the ends of the braids hang peh-taawe, weighing down the hair, gripping it in its fine teeth. Glimpses of bin-bin as she moves about, circles encircling curves that are the repeating motif of a body that leaves you breathless with desire. <br /><br />You have seen pictures of her - they do not come close to doing her justice. <br /><br />Some days you think it is her cheeks, that draw you to her. How when she grins they become suddenly full, buoyant and unmindful of gravity, tugging at your heart strings and the strings connected to the corners of your own mouth, so you cannot help but feel a gladdening, a lessening of your own life's burdens.<br /><br />And then on others you think it is her eyes, that recall Baol, and Kajorr, and Waalor - names less historical kingdoms than places that your heart dreams about visiting, in its eternal search for a peace and a resting, worlds that will be created by your imagination and given the breath of life by the vitality that fills her every gaze. <br /><br />And then there is the other aspect of Njaaye: the lion, that conquers, and possesses. This last you have seen in her, too, and it thrills you.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-29970699462787589792010-10-24T05:42:00.000+00:002010-10-24T05:43:08.666+00:00The GaynaIn a corner of the kitchen the gayna sits.<br /><br />It came with the bride, a gift from an Aunty. It is a small wooden gayna, its bark chipped and chiseled, and the woman sets to using it at once, the day after the night of the jaybaleh.<br /><br />She uses the gayna everyday. It is her first gayna - she is its first woman. They discover each other gradually - she uses it for only a few minutes a day, while the oil hisses over the fire and the Sun is hot in the sky and the children chorus verses in the local daara. Her grip slippery at first, but growing firmer with time, as the gayna and her hand learn each other.<br /><br />After a while the gayna begins to be able to tell what mood she is in, from the way she pounds it. When she is in a hurry, when she is irritated. When she is angry. When she is distracted, her mind on other things than the cooking.<br /><br />And over many months the gayna finds too that it can penetrate deeper than this, to where her first feelings reside. And the gayna finds there a sadness, the gayna finds there a hunger, a need. A space in her that she grows increasingly desperate to fill. And the gayna begins to understand the rhythm of her pounding, sees this need portrayed in the way its pacing slowly begins to go awry, to lose its metronomic tick. <br /><br />The first crack comes when the woman is pounding a mix of tamateh and kaani bu dija, for a chu. The insides of the gayna are slippery, and the mortar sloshes around, unable to find hold. The woman grows increasingly impatient. The Sun is at its hottest, there is sweat on her brow, that falls into her eyes and stings them. Her hands are dirty, and she cannot wipe her face. <br /><br />A mispounding, a squirt of red mixture from the gayna jumping to her eyes. She utters a sighing exclamation, and then reacts to the pain by hitting at the contents of the gayna with a sudden stab of anger. The pestle does not make it inside - it hits the side of the gayna.<br /><br />The gayna falls to the ground. A crack in its surface that has not been there before.<br /><br />The woman rushes to the tap.<br /><br />In a moment she will be back, but in her absence the gayna lies on the floor, and it thinks about how now the woman has marked it. And the gayna wishes to spend its life being pounded only by her hands, and the gayna desires no other life but this.<br /><br />Time passes. Feast days - when the gayna is at constant use, and the kitchen is twice as busy. Days of lack - when barely anything is put in the gayna, wood pounding against almost-bare wood. And the woman begins to grow, her stomach swelling so she has to place the gayna farther away from her, when she pounds, sitting with it in between her legs. The place of her need is filled with a hopefulness.<br /><br />Then a bad thing happens. There are murmurings of sorrow in the house this week, whisperings of grief. There has been a death - its odor hangs heavy in the kitchen, so thick even the flies move to neighboring houses.<br /><br />The woman does not come to the gayna, for an anxious week, two weeks. Other women come - girls, old women, even one time a young boy who keeps trying to run off and play. Their poundings are not as firm as the woman's, they do not fill the gayna with such satisfaction, in the woody exploration of its interior.<br /><br />Each day the gayna waits expectantly - each day the hands that retrieve it from the corner are not those of the woman.<br /><br />And then she returns, finally, one overcast day with sporadic bursts of sunlight, and a rain that will neither start nor stop.<br /><br />Her pounding lacks a certain vitality, has gained a certain freneticness. She is filled with a fury, tightly controlled, swallowed and bit down on. She cannot sit - one moment she will stand, and put the gayna up on the stone table, and then the next she will get on her knees on the hard ground and kneel before it.<br /><br />And the gayna wishes she would return to the woman she was before, but it tries its hardest to yield itself, to be an even more patient gayna, so the pounding is not as hard, on the woman's hands. The gayna makes a rock of itself behind the ingredients, so they are reduced even at the woman's lightest touch. <br /><br />After that she changes, becomes someone else. There is still a need, there, when the gayna looks, but it is of a different kind. It is a hole, still, but one that has now been filled with sand and rocks, and another feeling the gayna cannot understand.<br /><br />And then one day, just like that, she is gone, along with everything else in the kitchen. It is two men who come to take the kitchen implements. They are in a hurry and do not see the gayna where it stands, under the stone shelf. And so the chum-waar goes, and the sijehr goes, and all the pots and pans and bowls and spoons.<br /><br />But the gayna is left behind.<br /><br />Ages pass, time shuffling her little brood of chicks - the years - past where the gayna sits. People come and go, strange people who remain strange even as they remain and the gayna meets them again and again.<br /><br />A new gayna has been brought in - a light wood affair, all smooth and finished. The gayna sits in a corner of the new kitchen, and has only its thoughts for company.<br /><br />It thinks back to when it was a tree in the forest, the taste of rainwater sucked up through deep roots in the earth. And later, being carved out of wood and brought into creation one day at a time, slowly, the gayna-maker an expert at his job, not to be hurried. It thinks of the smooth steel of the knife against its back, it thinks of how much of itself it lost, to become what it is now.<br /><br />The gayna thinks all these things as it sits under the stone shelf.<br /><br />And the gayna thinks, too, of the woman. Of where she is now in the world, of what became of her. Does she pound other gaynas? Does she think of them as her gayna? Has the old rhythm of her hands returned, or has she gained a newer, harsher one, molded of time and experience? And the thing she wanted so badly, that carved such a need within her, did she ever get it?<br /><br />The rainy season and the dry season chase after each other, across the skies, two children at play.<br /><br />Tobaskis come and go, rams die, the street sewers filled with their insides.<br /><br />The gayna grows old, even in gayna years.<br /><br />Two families move in and out of the house, one with eleven women, the second with only two.<br /><br />And then a third. On the second day two new women come into the kitchen, a young one and an old one. The old one looks about for instruments to use for the meal, and under the table it sees the gayna. She sends the younger one to fetch water, and soap. She washes the gayna carefully, methodically, and dries it out under the Sun.<br /><br />And then she takes it into the kitchen and puts netehtu in it, and begins to pound.<br /><br />And the gayna is filled with a trill of excitement, that it has never felt before, a vibration through its wood.<br /><br />It is the woman!<br /><br />But a few more pounds and the gayna realizes it is not. The rhythm is almost the same, but not quite: it seems to have developed new themes, pauses where there were no pauses before, hurryings where the woman would have slowed.<br /><br />And the gayna is filled with a disappointment now, it feels age and how it has filled its darkened hollows, sitting in the kitchen alone night after night, abandoned to cobwebs and dust and the chirping of cockroaches.<br /><br />And in the depths of its disappointment the gayna notices that there is something else about this new pounding, that is familiar. It is a thing it has seen, in another form, assuming another shape...<br /><br />And the gayna remembers the woman, and it remembers her need.<br /><br />And in a flash it realizes what this new pounding is: it is the need of the woman, from so many years before, become flesh - the gayna recognizes it. This new woman is of the old one, her creation, what she wanted all along.<br /><br />And the gayna is filled with a satisfaction, suddenly the hours under the stone table do not seem so long, the nights do not stretch out so, in the dark. The new woman finishes pounding, and carefully puts the gayna off to a side, leaning the pestle against its wooden body. And it leaves it there, and the gayna waits for the next day, when it will be used again.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-90297523256980759742010-10-15T22:04:00.000+00:002010-10-15T22:05:12.682+00:00The Goarr-Jigain [FICTION][Goarr-Jigain, n., (Wolof): Male homosexual, queer. Literally: Man-Woman]<br /><br />Batty boy, they call him. Less than a woman. Gorr-Jigain bileh! Chim! And he does not see the reason for it, does not see how any of them is more man than him. Because they sit all day smoking, their lives filled with violence and a neverending contest of physicality, speaking vulgarly about women? Their idea of love being the breaking of beds, the impregnating of their girlfriends and their wives, their authority over them?<br /><br />He is different from them, he thinks. When the taunting has grown too loud and threatened to drown out the soft melody of himself he has going in his head, he thinks I am different from them: I love myself. He thinks, I dress good, and I smell nice, while they wear nyamba and walk around with mud on their feet, and do not change their underwear. These thoughts help him through the toughest times. <br /><br />It is not that he likes men, as such. He has thought about this, when he has thought about the injustice of their attack, late at night when he lies in bed alone. He loves women, is their constant companion. They trust him, they are free around him, will apply lotion to their bodies after showering in his presence, un-self-consciously. Because they know him, they understand more than anyone the sensations they arouse in the men all around them, and they know the ones they raise in him are of a different order. Sensations not of a nature leading to a wish to possess or be possessed by them, to own them, not even to the smallest degree. So women seek him out, and is this his fault? They wish respite from the constant barrage of horny neediness from all their male companions, and he gives it to them, and they can be themselves around him. How could any sensible person not see this?<br /><br />He walks past a group of the boys on the street, where they sit on a bench. They have been shouting and howling - he heard them from a distance. But as soon as they see him they fall silent. Watching him with stone-dead eyes, the hostility in their gazes casting a heat on his face. Each step he attempts leaden and taking too long - the borpi konye looks so far away. And then he has reached it, and is almost around it, when someone shouts "Assan am na farri toubab - demal uti benehn farr'. It is Laam - he did not even bother disguising his voice. And there is raucous laughter, but he is on the next street and he takes a few steps and he can no longer hear it. There is Ya Fatou, approaching. He remakes his smile, breathes out deeply, and goes to meet her.<br /><br />He has lain in bed and wondered, what is wrong with me? He has thought, enough of this nonsense, tomorrow I'll wake up and go out and get a girlfriend, to hell with this! And he has felt emboldened, and began to make plans. Random scenes of imagining, the boys in the background of each scene, looking on with envy and admiration in their eyes. He and the girlfriend, walking down the street - she stumbles and catches on to his arm - he saves her, she gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. Thanks baby. Goarr nga nak, with a sly wink. Another one: on the beach (all the boys there) and she comes to sit next to him and places her head on his shoulder, and sighs as if at the memory of great pleasure, provided by the owner of the shoulders, one previous night recently. The boys all girlfriend-less, all filled to bursting with jealousy. And then after these public scenes he tries to imagine private ones, in half-lit rooms in which she undresses. And the memories are detailed to the last degree, of shade of skin, of hair color. But they have no effect - he lies there and watches the girl in his mental image, and she is beautiful beyond words, but he feels no physical attraction to her, does not want to kiss or lay with her, is as indifferent to her breasts and her thighs as to cardboard. And he will lie there and feel defeated until sleep at last takes him, into a land filled with respect, from man and woman alike.<br /><br />In the evenings sometimes he sits alone in his room, flipping between GRTS and RTS. And bored, his mind will wander, and wandering it will come again to Abu Sarr. He holds his breath then, for as long as possible, as if this physical act could somehow close his heart, and imprison his feelings. But the memories will not leave him, no matter how he numbs himself to them. The way they met, the first day on the beach as he took a walk alone, something he did at dusk to clear his mind. The nice feeling of having someone at last who looked at him with respect, and spoke to him as an equal. It was the fact that Abu Sarr lived in Kotu, and he in Lamin, it was the fact that they had no mutual friends, knew nothing about each other except what they chose to present. He knows this now, is in no doubt about it, yet it has not reduced the weight of his feelings, the frantic fluttering of the butterflies in his stomach. The memories acquire an urgency, after this point. Going to Abu's house to banye lal, meeting his boys. Attaya, reggae music, his first - and last - experience with yaamba. Many weekends, and he is filled with genuine happiness, looks forward to Friday every week. And then the final night, when all the boys had gone to watch a show at the stadium, and he and Abu Sarr alone in the room, the tickets sold out. The darkness, the music - he still does not know what came over him, wants to kick himself or cause himself some harm, for being so stupid. An attempt at a caress, a submitting of himself... And Abu Sarr shouting and jumping to his feet. Hai! boy yow ndehkeh goarr jigain nga! Yow yaa dohaandeyam! Boy yow yaa ma behtah! And many more insults besides, and a few slaps, and knocks to the head, and furniture thrown at him. And he had come home and lain in bed in the NAWEC-caused darkness and wished he would die, wished a darkness even more absolute than this one would swallow him whole and wipe him out of existence. <br /><br />Yet he goes on. Somehow, though he thinks his reserves of strength are all long gone, he manages to talk to the women - who alone will be his friends - and he laughs and is even, at times, happy.<br /><br />On the news he hears about a Senegalese man, who gained asylum into America. A picture of him, somewhere in New York, a grin on his face. The escaped. But what kind of escape, he thinks. Into a world not of his belonging, his home gone, all his established rituals and things he is used to gone, to be recreated from start. In a cold, cold country - but was peace of mind not worth it, was not the ability to walk down the street without a face sticky from shame, flung from the eyes of even passing strangers, the Sun singling him out? And he has heard, too, of a man turned back, an asylum seeker attempting to use homosexuality as an excuse, the authorities back home informed. And the teller of the tale chuckled, and said poor bastard, he must be desperate, to use homosexuality as an excuse. He thought, why must it be an excuse, but he held his tongue - he has learnt to hold his tongue - and hid the insincerity of his smile with a bowed head.<br /><br />He sits in the living room, the TV off. A strange mood has come over him. He is alone, he thinks, he will always be alone. He is settled to this realization, it no longer shakes him as much as it used to. He sees silent and empty rooms of his occupancy, long evenings spent only with the television, while all around him people marry and have children, and are born and die in the homes they have created. He is ready for this. He will take it, he will shuffle through a corridor of his own making, a path across the plain of his life. He will do it alone, and their mockery will not stop him, and their humiliation will not, and their lack of respect will not. He is filled with determination, and even though it is hollow and has no center it will do, it will have to do, for now, and he lays down on the couch and he stretches his legs out and he lays his hands on his stomach, crosswise, and he closes his eyes and the lines of worry on his face unform and it is a sigh that carries a smile to his mouth and leaves it there. And if you didn't look closely you wouldn't even see, the single drop of water that pushes its way past his closed eyelid and makes a small sliding motion to the cushion, where it is absorbed.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-46423203043035721412010-10-14T15:08:00.000+00:002010-10-14T15:09:23.152+00:00The Last Diary of Alhaji Modibo Sallah[to be handed to his wife at the hour of his death]<br /><br /><br />A toubab sat with us at lunch in the University cafetaria today. The talk turned to religion, and he began to announce loudly that he was an atheist, and a proud one at that, that he saw no use for religious belief. He was in a bad mood, I think, and he did it to provoke some form of reply, but everyone ignored him. I looked at him and was sad, that a heart that God had made could get so hardened by experience it could not see His careful design all around us, His purpose manifest and clearly written in everything: from our foreheads to the leaves on the trees.<br /><br />And I felt glad, that I had not acquired such a hardening, that my heart was free and soft still, that I could see.<br /><br />And then tonight as you slept - for I write this in the moments of your slumber, when you are at peace, in that nighty you love that has a small hole over your left thigh - I saw how you lay at rest, the rise and the fall of the pillow next to the mound formed by your now rising, now falling breast. And I looked at you, and I thought what more proof of the existence of God does one need? Those cheeks, how could random chance have formed them? That laugh, how could it find its way into the world unless it were purposely put here?<br /><br />And now my own breast is filled with a heaviness, and my breath comes slow and labored, and I think I shall put down this pen and come lay my head next to yours, and settle into your sleeping embrace as you shift and make me space without ever waking up, as if you can feel me there, even when you are gone.<br /><br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />I went for more tests today. The disease is far advanced, they tell me. The doctors have a bleakness in their look, their eyes will not meet mine, after they have read my charts. And this gives them away more than the words that they mumble, the shock they feel that they try to hide. I wish to reach across the desk and pat their hands and say, there, there, it's OK. Death is not the end. We say it over and over, yet can we believe it, truly, if we are so distraught over it. No, that is a wrong thought. It is not the death that distresses us - it is the time after. When our departed are gone, and we cannot be with them anymore.<br /><br />I think of the look on your face, when I had to travel for even only a few days. How lost you seemed, when I came back, like a child set adrift in the world and often disappointed, and now meeting people who could possibly be her long-lost parents. And I think now, of this journey that I am about to embark upon, of no return, and I think what you will feel, and my heart aches, and I can no longer support my shoulders, and they slump…<br /><br />I am sorry - I am morose, the night of the tests. I just snapped at you, after you asked me for the hundredth time what was wrong, and I could not tell you. I pushed you away, and told you to leave me alone and stop being so meddlesome. And when you climbed into bed and turned toward the wall it….<br /><br />I am sorry. Sometimes I must stop writing, so powerful are the emotions in me they will not leave my hands be stable, to grip pen and direct it at paper. I am coming to bed now, to climb in behind you and hold your body, stiff with hurt, until you sleep, and I shall know you are asleep because you will relax, you will get warm, your back will settle into my stomach and you will become soft, as if your life were melting into mine, and both become one, and nothing else mattered in the world, beyond our embrace in the night….<br /><br /><br /><br />*<br /><br />It saddens me, that you will never forgive me, for concealing this from you.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />Do you remember when I took you to see Orchestre Baobab? How excited you were, that evening. I had bought you gold jewelry on one of my trips abroad, and all that afternoon you showed it off to everyone who came to visit. I walked past again and again, listening in on the conversation, feeling proud at how excited I had made you….<br /><br />There is a reason we do not know the hour of our deaths, that even to the last we see our futures spread out before us, and though we are aware that they have endings we never think of them as now, they are always before us, in the distance, at some future appointment...<br /><br />You danced, to the songs that night. Under the tent top in which we sat with the other dignitaries and government officials. It was you who drew me to my feet when the floor was thrown open. Bul Ma Miin, was the song playing, and I still cannot hear it without a smile coming unsummoned to my lips. I, awkward, as you led me to the center. And as you showed me how to move, with your hands, what steps to take, I began to relax, to enjoy myself.<br /><br />Later in the car when you asked if I had enjoyed myself I pretended I had only gone for you, to see you happy. And you gave me a peck, and said thank you, and were genuinely grateful. You thought I was being selfless, and you did not see: it was quite the opposite. It was watching you smile like that, it was watching you so happy in the world, abandoning yourself to it completely, it was for this that I did all I did. It had taken a carefully planned series of actions: the jewelry, the restaurant dinner, the tickets to the concert. And with each one, and the way it widened your grin, I was filled with a happiness, an enrichment of good humor, a sense of having achieved something worthwhile.<br /><br />And now I will tell you a secret, that I would never open my mouth and speak: only you were ever able to make me feel like this. You asked me, sometimes, why I loved you. And I blabbered something about how beautiful you were, how intelligent. Even, once, when I was feeling rather poetic, how you were the sorseh to my maalor, the sowe to my dang or some such nonsense.<br /><br />But it was none of these things - here was the simple reason: it was the way you made me feel, about myself. As if God had written I and my destiny separately, and you were the glue, the thing that brought us together and held us tight so one could be achieved and the other achieve it.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />I wish to beg for understanding. I wish to say, look, I did what I did for a reason, did you not have the best three months of your life, did you not have a good time?<br /><br />Yet I know the answer to that. The illness has filled me with ill dread and an anomie. I am irritable and hard to live with, I know this. I watch myself speak to you, I watch how impatient I am, but it is as a mother watches its wayward child, who has long passed the age of child-training, disgusted yet unable to do anything to stop myself.<br /><br />I am filled with a dark and dispassionate bile, that turns the smile I feel into a scowl, the affection I feel into anger. I have lain in the dark and listened to you weep silently at my latest cruelty, my latest act of humiliation, when you have thought me asleep. And I have been filled with such a deep sorrow and such a deep shame I have willed the disease to hurry, to run its course and remove me from your life. And a perverseness has grown in me, a thought filled with meanness, that perhaps it is a good thing, that perhaps you may grow to hate me, that perhaps you will leave, even, before the event…<br /><br />But always I will wake in the morning to find you making me breakfast, and getting the bathroom ready for my morning ablutions, and laying the sajaada and getting your kaala so we can pray, and for a moment I am able to pretend that everything is alright…<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />I made all the funeral arrangements today. I called Alaji Mbowe, who I can trust to be discreet, and gave him money, and instructions. I also told him about this diary, and where I keep it, so he can give it to you.<br /><br />I think perhaps this way it will be easier on you - the arrangement of funerals is not a business for women.<br /><br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />You surprised me vomiting in the bathroom this morning, and the shock on your face and the beginnings of an accusation almost led me to confess everything, to answer your suspicious questions with the final facts, the terminal explanations. But by some good fortune I held my tongue, and insisted on food poisoning as the cause, until at last you took me to bed, and gave me stomach medicines, and made me lie down and not move. <br /><br />And then, my love, you sat and spoke with me, as the mosquitoes returned, and the lights went on, and off, and on again, and the street grew quieter and the air more damp, and the Sun set, and young children played outside, and I had no mind for these but that you would continue to speak and not stop, and I wished I was your tongue, that lived in your mouth and showed your mind to the world. And then again I wished I was your eyes, that see with such clarity, and such kindness, and are filled with such wisdom. And then again as I drifted off into sleep on the back of your voice (which meandered still, like a lullaby) I thought perhaps what I wanted to be most was your life, to be lived by you, your seconds and your hours, your months and your years, that I would begin with you and end when you ended, and my whole subsumed to your happiness.<br /><br />And I slept and your voice still found its way into my dreams, and it occurred to me that your voice in fact had originated in my dreams, and only then found its way into my waking life, and not the other way as I had always supposed, and thinking about this I fell satisfied into a deep sleep.<br /><br />I feel refreshed, tonight. You will forgive me. I know it.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />I can feel the beginnings of a delirium, at the edges of my sight, and it is an intense heat, and behind it there is a darkness.<br /><br />Sometimes when you speak to me this is all I can see, and I do not answer for minutes on end, until you repeat the question and I jump and regain my memory and my location. You give me worried looks, but you are afraid to repeat our fight of the other night, so you hold back and do not ask.<br /><br />I am so tired.<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /><br />Weak.<br /><br />Can bare write.<br /><br />Sorry.<br /><br />Lov<br /><br /><br />*Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-72335593171620793632010-10-14T03:55:00.000+00:002010-10-14T03:56:17.430+00:00The Love of Wolof Njie [FICTION]Before she was the mother of our wisdom, the inexhaustible source of our proverbs, Wolof Njie was a young woman in love.<br /><br /><br />How did it happen? But you know that already, dear reader. All our falling-ins are the same, only the details differ: this person here enthralled by a voice, another bewitched by eyelashes. The way his cheeks fall, like softly pressed dumplings; the way hers rise, when she smiles. A whiteness of teeth, a darkness of gum. A disinterested friendliness gradually changing into an indispensability, your memory of the person become white-hot, an urgency that burns inside you and drives you to seek them, for only their presence can put out the fire. Thus you have fallen, and thus Wolof Njie fell.<br /><br />You are probably thinking: dates. You are thinking Wolof Njie on the beach, you are thinking late-night calls, and rival girls posting on his wall, and changed relationship statuses on facebook.<br /><br />But no, teylul, defal ndanka - this was a long time ago, and people did things differently back then.<br /><br />This is how they meet: as he walks into her village, past the well where she stands beside her bucket waiting her turn. It is dawn, and the women are the only ones awake, teasing each other like chattering birds, the Sun not yet risen, the light gentle and the air fresh. She sees him, barely notices him, and turns away again to her bucket. He sees her, and cannot look away - she can feel his gaze as it blows over the back of her neck, airy as a breath.<br /><br />This is how Wolof Njie remembers it, at least, when their voices are filled with intimacy, as they steal a conversation behind the rice farms. Every evening they come here, trudging through mud and water, away from the village. Why? Because he is a stranger, a Mandinko from another town, and the people of this town do not like them. There have been suggestions of hostilities. He goes about with his gaze lowered, making sure to speak only Wolof. And when people speak up against the Mandinko kingdom she is silent, and she is thoughtful.<br /><br />And sometimes in the night after she puts her candle out she lies worrying about his safety.<br /><br /><br />Disaster strikes, of course. What do you think this is, a love story? You think things will end well, for two people so in love with each other? Disaster comes, and it takes the form of a war between their two countries. A disagreement over land, a misfired arrow, the death of a distant relative of the chief. And murder enters into the hearts of the men, and a hardness into the hearts of the women, and both sides bay for blood, no longer human...<br /> <br />And the night of the first attack, the two lovers are to meet. Their favorite place, directly in the path of the attackers. Drums, a chanting, lights in the distance.<br /><br />He jumps to his feet, she behind him. She holds his shoulders, and trembles.<br /><br />What is it?, she asks him.<br /><br />The warriors, he says, the night of the attack must be tonight.<br /><br />And he takes her hand in his, and he runs off between the trees. They stumble over rocks and twigs. Once she crashes and goes tumbling - he catches her somehow, and they sit in a half-crouch on the sand, his face inches from her, filled with terror, sweating heavily.<br /><br />Let's go, he says, hauling her once more to her feet. But the delay has cost them - they have been sighted. There are shouts behind them, the approach changes its direction to theirs.<br /><br />Pounding hearts, legs of jelly, chests threatening to explode, a sudden need to urinate... She holds his hand and it is slippery and her grip slides off, slowly, making her panic, making her reach to re-grip.... but too dangerous to let go, now... She has never run as hard, she has never been as scared.<br /><br />Then they take a detour and run past the graveyards, stocked in neat lines, a watchman asleep on the stone slab of one. And then onto the beach. The pursuit has fallen a little behind, they can stop running now, though they still it is behind them, they not so much hear it as feel it, a descending dread, a future they do not desire...<br /><br /><br /><br />And so they stand before the waters. She looks at the moon in the sky watching them, a forlorn lover herself, rejected suitor of the arrogant Sun.<br /><br />What are we to do? The question in the air, yet they do not speak it. She thinks she can see him shivering in the night chill, though she is not sure. He takes off his shirt and hands it to her.<br /><br />Here, put this on over yourself, he says, and - pointing in the other direction - run, he says.<br /><br />She wishes to believe he is only joking. She wishes that he will lose his nerve, and collapse into her arms, and ask her to stay. She wishes to believe this is a nightmare she will wake from, the harsh moonlight a product of her mind, an anticipation of relief...<br /><br />Go!, he says, giving her a push. Go! They are almost here.<br /><br />And Wolof Njie turns, and her heart is a molten river that flows too thickly through her frail veins, and seeks to burn through her skin.<br /><br />And Wolof Njie takes a step from him, and she thinks of pitchforks, and fire.<br /><br />Wolof Njie takes another step, and she thinks of his brave face in the dark, his handsome lips set as the crowd descend upon him.<br /><br />She sees him fall, she sees the bodies mount him, she sees him kicked and spat on and dragged, and she thinks her heart has broken, finally, for she can feel nothing, she is a numbness, she is less than air, she is a nothingness that races down the beach and the only things that are alive in her are the tears that stream down her face and are dispensed behind her in a watery spray.<br /><br />And the moon watches, and the moon is silent.<br /><br /><br />She was Wolof Njie, of course. We know her through her words, the things she said - such wise words, such words of measured lyricism and depth. She is the greatest writer the Wolof language has ever known, though she never put pen to paper. She is our greatest artist, the one who has had the most effect on our culture.<br /><br />She never married, she lived alone, she ventured forth only to go to the bitik - and even this no longer, in the end. And though there were angry rumors at first, suspicions that the girl on the beach had been her, they died down, after a while. She lived alone, in her house, and no one knew what she did in there, or what it looked like. She invited no one in, had no friends.<br /><br />Twenty years passed, all the people who had known her by first name either moved or dead. The village had changed - now there were more Mandinkas than Wolof - in fact so few Wolof she became known as Merr Wolof.<br /><br />And then one day without warning she opened the gate and came out, blinking in the sunlight. She wore a malaan and on top of it a pullover, a bright and colorful affair made of wool. She carried a lawn chair, which she set down on the pavement near the road.<br /><br />And there she sat, day after day, a serene expression on her face. And all who passed found themselves drawn to speak with her and then, inexplicably, to tell her their problems. And she would listen carefully, her hands crossed under her chin. And then she would speak, she would advice them, and always the advice she gave was useful, and solved their problems. Her fame spread far and wide, men traveled from faraway lands to visit her, kings and paupers, old men and young girls. <br /><br />And this is how she lived out the rest of her days, and no one knew anything of her life or her feelings, until one moonlit night she died in her sleep, and was discovered the next morning, and there was widespread mourning.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-57617424069532058802010-10-14T02:45:00.002+00:002010-10-14T02:48:28.649+00:00Bintou Faal: Three Attempts at Misdirection [FICTION]<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;color:#333333;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 21px; white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">1</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Daydayt chataleh kor njaykay baby. Then nga poos- y ndanka... </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Maneh du hay jay Noe nu. Haara ma forsseh kor rek!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Sore kor forrseh mu dama d! </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Ya Amie isil ma marrtoh b!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Small girl runs in. </p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; ">Am Papa. </span><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">He takes it from her. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Tey kor mu daygayr!</p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; ">She grips the wood pole and he nails it into the ground , while the small girl watches. </span><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">There, he says, giving it a final knock. </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Laygi am nga fore aj sa boom yi. Ndah nga fiihal sunye ayta b tuuti...</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333; min-height: 16.0px"><br /></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">2</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Su juutoe nee, nyun nyayp dinenye muna duga, du tasaaror...</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Hay - maneh, man suma duga dafa am dorleh deh! </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Pa Borbor defal ndanka - yow mun ngaa mujay duga...</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Wawe haara ma dem chi ganawe adjustu...</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">The men set up the trailer behind the tractor, shifting the canopy so it can take all their weights. Then they jump into the back and sit waiting for Pa Borbor, who has gone into the back to pee.</p><br /><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">3</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333"><br /></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Baalal maaaaaa? Nyaari marr rek! </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 21px;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Daydayt! Suma yaye muneh bu mah deh baaye ken marr! O-rut - fehbarr yi denye barry.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Maneh Baby Jankeh hanaa maa la wah neh dama fehbarr? OK behna marr rek.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Daydayt! Last time loe Lu nga wah beh pareh nga Dugal sa loho bi!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Hei duma kor dugal ah!</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333">Still looking doubtful, Baby Jankeh hands the ice cream over to little Pa Modou, and as he takes a lick the school bell rings, signaling the end of break, and as he turns to go back into the class Pa Modou sticks out his right finger and wiggles it in the ice cream. Then he laughs evilly and runs off. Baby Jankeh screams and runs after him.</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 21.0px; font: 14.0px Helvetica Neue; color: #333333; min-height: 16.0px"> </p></span></span>Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-42736118957198322842010-10-12T19:40:00.001+00:002010-10-12T19:40:23.971+00:00The Kiss Diary of Aja Dr Mariam Sabally (Former First Lady, wife to the first President of the Republic)[Editor's Note: this was delivered to us in the mail, a tattered excercise book. There was a note with it: "publish it - his memory deserves better than the current vitriol being circulated. Please do not contact me. (Aja Mariam)". Though we have taken pains to ensure that the so-called diary is authentic, we have respected the author's wish and have not contacted her, though we are as full of questions as you doubtless will be after you read it.]<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br />The first time is a softness. Yes, in his lips, on his mouth. But also in the way he holds me - in his embrace there is desire, barely tamed, making his hands shiver.<br /><br />He begins with his hands on my waist, their pressure barely felt through my blouse, his mouth come in quest of mine. And we find each other the first time, despite the dark behind our closed eyes, and as we ease into the kiss his hands increase their pressure on my waist, and he is holding me properly now, and he is becoming more confident.<br /><br />It is a selfless kiss - all his attention is on me, and it passes warm shocks through my chest that make my stomach tingle. And I know this is him, this is the man I want to be kissing, every night, how could I have survived without having been kissed like this before, this is the man whose attention I want. And I can't help it, I sigh, and it ends the kiss - he pulls his mouth away, and holds my head to his chest, and rubs my head.<br /><br />I feel like some music, dear kiss diary. And perhaps some warm milk, before I sleep.<br /><br />*<br /><br />If you wish to know a man, dear kiss diary, then kiss him. Their words lie, but their kisses cannot - I believe this. My mouth is all smiles. I can't hide my teeth, dear kiss diary, I am in such a playful mood today.<br /><br />When he arrived last night he found me sitting alone in the room.<br /><br />- What is it?<br /><br />- Nothing, I said.<br /><br />He took me in his arms, and flicked at my nose with his finger, gently.<br /><br />- Ow, I said, softly.<br /><br />- Tell me, he said, flicking at it again, or I will not stop.<br /><br />I shook my head unh-unh. He bent, toward me, the shadow of his face darkening mine... The smell of a person, dear kiss diary, contains a mini-history of them, of all they have done during the day: a whiff of the spray they touched here, a whaff of the domoda they ate for lunch...<br /><br />Tonight's is a different kiss, from the kiss of the first night - it is full of an experienced tenderness, the beginnings of a maturity, a setting down of roots, and when he is done my dark mood is all dissipated, I want only to lie in his arms and listen to the rumble of his voice, the rise and fall of his chest.<br /><br />*<br /><br />There are sly ways into a man's heart, ways of shamelessness, ways of seduction.<br /><br />Yet better than these is his own way, when he holds your hand and takes you in past the walls of brick he has constructed, the dungeons of his manliness.<br /><br />This is what his kisses do, tonight: they let me in. I am his lover, and also, paradoxically, I am his mother.<br /><br />Tonight our roles are reversed - I am the giver, and he receives, with gratitude, as I have received before, and there is no greater sign of how much I mean to him. I wonder what happened, what changed.<br /><br />What is it tonight?, I ask his presence in the dark, my hand rubbing his chest, caressing his answer out. What do you mean? he asks, and I realize my mistake: there are to be no sounds here. Sounds ruin the moment, speech is too much. So I lay my fingers gently on his lips, and he takes them into his mouth, and begins to suck on them, and past that point, dear kiss diary, I am not willing to explain...<br /><br />*<br /><br />Tonight he is not there, he is in another place and the kiss is a horrible one: glugging, liquid, fumbling lips.<br /><br />I pull away soon after it begins, pushing back at his chest.<br /><br />He runs his hand distractedly over my hair, down to my shoulders. His eyes gaze off into the distance, another place reflected in them, a longing... He notices me watching and looks down into my upturned face. He gives me a peck, a dab of wetness lacking in emotion.<br /><br />- What is it my love? I scratch his head, his receding hairline.<br /><br />- I'm sorry - I am not myself today.<br /><br />- Hmmm, I say. Perhaps we can remedy that.<br /><br />I pull him toward me and into the bed, I sit in his lap and put my arms around his neck and do a little jiggling dance. And he puts his hands to either side of me and brings them together. He draws me close, and he holds me still, my heart beating against his.<br /><br />But he is not there still - he does not embrace me, he holds me like a man holding a sack, stiff, unfeeling. After a time he climbs into bed - an unentangling of limbs - and pulls me to him, and lays me down on his chest, his hand on my back, the slightest of touches.<br /><br />And he begins to talk, and I can hear the rumblings in his voicebox before the words come out of his mouth, and my breathing slows.<br /><br />- It is this bloody repatriation attempt, he says. That is what they do not like.<br /><br />His voice is a flatness, without hope in sight. I throw my arm around him, bringing it up behind him, drawing him closer in a hug. He turns to face me, and our breath falls on each others' faces: his warm and tinged with peppermint, cigarette smoke, chuyi kong... <br /><br />- The toubab, he says, they are the ones behind all this. That is why it is impossible to win. And he sounds sad, so sad I squeeze him tighter, and he is not holding me anymore, his arms have gone slack. He is completely in my embrace. I kiss his forehead, and tell him he'll be fine.<br /><br />He lies there while his breath slows, and turns into snores that start in his stomach and rattle around in his throat.<br /><br />*<br /><br />I have not seen him in two weeks. When he comes tonight the kiss is urgent, a brief thing, a momentary brushing of lips - and I wish to lock onto his mouth, and close my eyes, and hold on to him that way. But he will not engage, he draws back, and stands at a distance, his arms stretched out, his hands on my shoulders. He looks tired, and he looks happy, and it gladdens my heart, but it saddens me too, for he is not mine tonight, there is a distance between us. He seems overworked and exhausted, his face newly gaunt, his baldness seeming to have advanced even further.<br /><br />- The Independence documents are all signed, he tells me over dinner (for while on other nights he has rushed straight to the bed tonight he insists that we sit down for a meal).<br /><br />- Very good, I say, and I try to smile. But he knows me too well. He drinks the last of his water, he wipes off his mouth with a napkin. Then he comes to stand behind me. He puts his arms around my chair, and kisses my cheek. His beard is a five-day stubble, and it tickles - I can't help but smile.<br /><br />- See, he says, that's better. Now let's see what the full one will do...<br /><br />And he turns my chair around and... well, kiss diary, let us just say that night the Independence of the country was not the foremost thing on his mind.<br /><br />*<br /><br />Tonight he holds me tight - in his embrace there is possession, a hint of violence.<br /><br />Many things happen, but this is a kiss diary, and I am already being immodest enough. But the kisses - there are too many to recount.<br /><br />Only, dear kiss diary, he has never kissed me like this. Each is a climax, a new record, and yet the next somehow manages to improve on it.<br /><br />He seems to be scaling mountains, he seems to be sailing seas. The warring parts in him, the violence and the sensuality, have come together in perfect union, and the results... Even thinking of them makes me breathless. He takes me to peaks I have never been to, and we come down again and I cry, and I am the happiest person in the world, and I am the saddest person in the world, for I shall never feel like this again, yet again he takes my hand and runs back up with me, now slow, now fast...<br /><br />Afterward I go to sleep in the warm hollows of his chest, and dream I am at home with my mother, and there is a look of approval in her eyes. When the dream ends my eyes open, and he is lying there, his face slack with sleep, his arm bent awkwardly under me. I shift, bring it around to wrap around me again, snuggle into him, and let myself wander back into sleep...<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br />He has not showered. I can smell him as soon as he comes in, from the door. I rush to him.<br /><br />A rubbing of lips. His mouth is dry, his lips are chapped.<br /><br />- Where, I say, you could not even send a message. All I hear I hear on the rad...<br /><br />- Shhh, he says, holding his hand up to my lips. We don't have time. I have to go.<br /><br />- To go? Where?<br /><br />- The toubab have armed a rebel group... I cannot stay here - it is too risky - I must retreat back into the lower river, and re-assemble.<br /><br />His eyes dart about the room as he speaks. He keeps looking behind himself. He does not look at me, cannot see how stiffly I stand, the frostiness of my expression. Finally I can't take it any longer.<br /><br />- And me?, I said.<br /><br />- What?, he said. Oh - well you'll be fine. Of course you'll be fine, he says, putting his hand on my shoulders. - Separate plans have been made... you will be given enough money... you will live well all your life.<br /><br />A notion for violence comes over me then, dear kiss diary. He sees the look in my face, and misreading it comes up to me. He stoops forward and lays his lips on mine.<br /><br />I don't know what comes over me - I bite down on his lower lip. He gives a start, but then tries to relax, to indulge me. I can feel his impatience.<br /><br />I bite down harder. The bitter taste of blood in my mouth. He pushes me away roughly, his hand coming up to feel his lip.<br /><br />- What is wrong with you he shouts. I stand there and watch him, and do not say a word. He keeps touching his lip, and looking at the blood disbelievingly. Then the look of rage on his face turns to one of disgust, and he turns and leaves the room.<br /><br />- Behave yourself, he shouts behind hihim, now is not the time for all these your theatrics.<br /><br />And then he is gone.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-41146588748865709422010-10-12T19:39:00.001+00:002010-10-12T19:39:47.573+00:00Time: A Story of LoveThe problem is one of time, the old soothsayer says, casting her cowries with a flick to the left.<br /><br /><br />What do you mean?, he asks her.<br /><br /><br />You are trapped in her past, the old soothsayer says, and she in your future. And sometimes the other way round.<br /><br /><br />He is silent, mulls over this.<br /><br /><br />How can that be possible?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In the night he holds her and she cries. Like a baby, a little baby in the arms of its mother. Once she calls him "Mama!". Once she reaches for his breast, as if to suckle. A child, her past. And he here now, in the now. He holds her tight as she sleeps, and his heart is filled with sorrow that they cannot be together.<br /><br /><br /><br />Time is but an illusion, the old soothsayer says, casting her cowries with a flick to the right. And it is the mind that lies under the illusion. Free it and the illusion will be gone - poof! The soothsayer lifts her clenched fist in the air and opens it to release an empty hand. And then a minute later a cowrie appears in its center, and drops to the floor, turning over and over in the candlelight.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />At the table at dinner. She is hunched forward over her plate, the air around her filled with age.<br /><br /><br />Pass me the salt, grandchild, she says to him. Her voice is drawled, her eyes are lazy.<br /><br /><br />He is filled with a sadness, that obstructs his throat. A grandmother, her future. And he in her past, trapped here now…<br /><br /><br /><br />I could tell you to take life, the old soothsayer says, casting her cowries with a flick forward. I could tell you to kill calfs, or goats, or chicken. But if time is an illusion, then what do you suppose life is? And so then what is death?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Honey, he says, a box of chocolates in his hands, a hope in his eyes, I brought you a gift.<br /><br /><br />Why thank you, she says, and her smile forms the beginnings of a sob in his breast - could it be true? Could she be here in his now?<br /><br /><br />...but Babucarr Mbye, she continues, and his heart sinks, Babucarr Mbye I told you that I do not date.<br /><br /><br />Her high school days. Her past. And he in the future now, trapped in her now.<br /><br /><br />He reaches to hug her but she steps back, rolls her eyes and cheepus, and sidesteps him.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Time is an illusion, but a necessary one, the old soothsayer says, casting her cowries with a flick toward herself. We must move forward through it. It is the basis of all our promises, our hopes and dreams.<br /><br /><br />There is silence in the room. Dogs howl outside, distant yells of "Serr-Kunda Nyaari Palaas!".<br /><br /><br />He has not spoken for so long when his voice finally comes out of the dark it is broken, and it takes a couple of coughs to start it.<br /><br /><br />And also our sorrow, he says.<br /><br /><br />Yes, the old soothsayer says, gathering her cowries to her, a circled hollow before her tattered malaan. But without time all become compressed, into one single spot. And how unbearable that is.<br /><br /><br />He looks at her, and her eyes are a mirror, and he sees himself reflected in them. He sighs, and bows his head, and puts his face in his hands.<br /><br /><br /><br />He stands before the casket, where she lies, her skin pale.<br /><br /><br />Every now she looks as if she could get up and spring back into her soul and her life, back into his arms.<br /><br /><br />Every then she looks as if she never possessed life, had never felt warm against his body, had always been a thing of coldness and white garments.<br /><br /><br />And he understands, and her now, and his now, and past and present and possible future intertwine and explode and he is filled with grief and his chest cannot hold it anymore and he is only a man and it comes exploding out of him, a violent catch of breath, a bending over, a wail of sorrow.<br /><br /><br />Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-73296086979316116802010-10-09T16:43:00.002+00:002010-10-09T16:44:16.603+00:00Excerpt from A Gambian Action Movie [An Attempt at a Movie Scene]The people who stand outside on the road are like a soundtrack. When Jaiteh Kabaa passes they cheer loudly, in their tattered clothes and oppressed hairstyles. And then they see the police approach, and they all fall silent. Close-ups of a few of their faces showing the change from excitement into a hardness. Inside the cars the faces of the police filled with a stern determination.<br /><br /><br />The police cars race, Jaiteh Kabaa leading them.<br /><br /><br />Inside of Jaiteh Kabaa's car.<br /><br /><br />Gear change. One, to Two.<br /><br /><br />Close up of Jaiteh Kabaa's face. Dashingly handsome, like those action movie stars. A toothpick clenched between his front teeth, a carefree smile on his face. He seems to be positively enjoying himself.<br /><br /><br />A drum beat, deep, resonating, in the background.<br /><br /><br />Gear Change. Two to Three. The roar of an engine discovering its power.<br /><br /><br />Close up, of Jaiteh Kabaa's face. A look of slight concentration now, though he still looks like he doesn't have a care in the world.<br /><br /><br />Outside of the car. The police cars are in hot pursuit, though there is still distance between them and the criminal's car.<br /><br /><br /> At the traffic lights. Cars head from the north, cars head from the east. A close-up of the light, changing from yellow to green. The northern cars stopping, the eastern cars beginning to roll forward. And headed for a collision with the line of cars is Jaiteh Kabaa.<br /><br /><br />Pounding music, quick and clean shots establishing the truth: line of cars, traffic lights, the steel body of Jaiteh Kabaa's car gleaming under the Sun. Then an overhead shot showing us the whole scene, Jaiteh Kabaa headed toward his doom. Pulse-pounding music.<br /><br /><br />Switch to inside of car. Break pressed down on with foot, clad in ragged leather shoe. Hand switching gear fluidly, leg on break lightly letting up while that on accelerator matches its rise with a descent.<br /><br /><br />Close up of Jaiteh Kabaa's grim face.<br /><br /><br />A screeching of tires, a screaming of drivers.<br /><br /><br />The northern light switching to yellow, the eastern light switching to red.<br /><br /><br />A gap between the line of cars opening, so small, so tiny…<br /><br /><br />A sliding, of Jaiteh Kabaa's car. A close-up of his foot on the brake, the car beginning to drift. Its tires emit smoke, for a moment he looks almost about to lose control over it.<br /><br /><br />And then clean as a barber's shave his car squeezes into the tiny gap formed in the line of cars, spinning into it, a 360-degree twirl that leaves it emerging on the other side still headed in the same direction.<br /><br /><br />A last shot of the scene behind him, a confused contortion of cars, horns beeping wildly, drivers arguing furiously over whose fault it is.<br /><br /><br />Close up of Jaiteh Kabaa's face, hand patting his hair down, the sweat on his brow, the relief and self-congratulation on his face.<br /><br /><br />Two of the police cars arrive at that instant<br /><br /><br />and brake just in time to prevent an accident. Close up of the police faces, angry, mouths moving in random insults and threats.<br /><br /><br />The two following police cars manage to make it<br /><br /><br />quickly dipping in through the Shell and dipping out again on the other side.<br /><br /><br />Jaiteh Kabaa taking the turn into Bakau. A shot of Timbooktoo, an orange seller with his wheelbarrow in front of it.<br /><br /><br />One police car racing past the junction, its driver not wised up in time.<br /><br /><br />One police car taking the turn, narrowly missing a lame man crossing the road, who abandons his crutches and runs for dear life.<br /><br /><br />The race down the empty highway.<br /><br /><br />Close up of the Marina signboard racing past. Close up of a beaureaux de change. Yellow fences and blue compound gates, red Peul shops stamped all over with the coca cola sign.<br /><br /><br />Almost at the junction that leads right to the stadium.<br /><br /><br />Close up of Jaiteh Kabaa's face, lips pursed up, eyes a slit of concentration.<br /><br /><br />Police car racing behind, siren on at full blast. People stopping on the street to see what is going on, snatching back their children.<br /><br /><br />Gear Change. Three to Two. A light touch of the brakes, a foot hovering over them.<br /><br /><br />Jaiteh Kabaa's hands, a gentle pressure on the wheel<br /><br /><br />An outside shot, showing both cars, rushing down the road at breakneck speed.<br /><br /><br />A drum roll.<br /><br /><br />And then Jaiteh Kabaa's car, slippery as a fish, elusive as love, takes the right turn that we did not even know was there, sliding gently off the road and, almost as an afterthought, changing its direction.<br /><br /><br />The police attempting to take it too, but not so fast, not in so old a car.<br /><br /><br />Close up of the police man's face, his widening eyes, his mouth an O of surprise.<br /><br /><br />A man riding a bicycle appearing in front of him, wobbling in fright.<br /><br /><br />He swerves to avoid him<br /><br /><br />And crashes into a cartoon of mayonnaise lying by the side of the road. It softens the crash, and he is covered in exploding mayonnaise.<br /><br /><br />He gets out of the car, shaking his fist at the sky.<br /><br /><br />Close up of Jaiteh Kabaa's face, a smile on it.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-55736789730303492292010-10-09T16:43:00.001+00:002010-10-09T16:43:43.001+00:00Transcript of a Parliamentary Session on the New Laws Concerning Youth Delinquency [FICTION]- Weed is not the problem you see. It is an answer, a proposed solution from a set of available solutions. The youth smoke it becomes of the place it takes them to, a world that lays itself over this one, a transparent film that blurs the edges of experience, that roughens out the sharp corners. So they are not such failures, after all, as they are told they are. They use it because they seek to escape their hard reality.<br /><br />- Hey Alaji Mbacke you sympathize too much with these fools. The problem is one of laziness. Our reality was harder, yet we bore it, we rose even with the heavy load on our shoulders, we sought out jobs, we sought out educations and families and responsibilities. If we could do it in a harder time what is to stop them doing it now? It is only laziness. Throw all users of drugs into jails. Clean out the dregs of the gutter, let us start fresh, with youth who are ready to work hard…<br /><br />- But as long as we prosecute them only and do not try to fix the problem at its root our prisons will only fill up, our judges will only be overworked.<br /><br />- Then let them be Alaji Mbacke. It is of no consequence. We will have no compromise with this - we have compromised too much with them already as it is.<br /><br />- The youth in my municipality ask for new stadium, they complain the old one for their Nawetaans has grown ragged with misuse.<br /><br />- Yes, Alaji Jobe. You have brought this up before. There will be no more concessions, unless they change their attitude.<br /><br />- I agree, Mr Chairman. But a death penalty, against the sellers of weed, perhaps a bit too harsh…<br /><br />- In the countries of Arabia, Mr Johnson, all who peddle in illegal drugs are put to death, without exception. And in the countries of Arabia the name of Allah is spoken out loud, and the land is prosperous, and all are content. In the countries of Europe drug peddlers are thrown into jail and then freed - a small price to pay for the profits in their trade. In the countries of Europe the prisons are full, and the youth are wayward, and all manners of liecentiousness and God-disrespecting goes on. Mr Johnson, I ask you, which of these would you want us to be?<br /><br />- I understand, Mr Chairman, but it is only that there may sometimes be mistakes…<br /><br />- Then Allah will forgive them, Mr Johnson, for they are for a just cause.<br /><br />- An overeager purge can only lead to disastrous results. The question is do we wish to reform the youth, or do we wish to merely exterminate them? Are they our future, needy of nurturing, or are they are our foes, pests to be removed.<br /><br />- Your flowery rhetoric, Alaji Mbacke, strikes a chord even in my heart. But we here in the world of lesser words depend on facts, for this is a serious business, and not a scene in one of your novels. Now, shall we have the voting?<br /><br />- I forward the motion regarding the new measures for the curtailment of youth delinquency.<br /><br />- I second it.<br /><br />- All in favor - a show of hands. Good. And all not? Good. Very well, the motion is passed. I congratulate you on what you have achieved today, against vice in our great country. We shall now adjourn for a fifteen minute break.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-28682400031966344372010-10-09T02:43:00.002+00:002010-10-09T02:47:30.021+00:00The Day the Spirits of the Country Departed: A FableYou have your Jinay, Old Man Time says, and you have your Religion. Will you not hold on to these?<br /><br />No, Mother Gambia says, and the word falls like a hammer, thundering through the frail air. I am tired of having only these, and nothing else. I am tired of watching my children… And there is a block in her voice, that stops the sound, and her eyes that are cast down on the ground are filled with a wetness, and she cannot continue, she trails off…<br /><br />Old Man Time looks at the ground, and strokes his beard. There is a grave frown on his forehead. When he finally speaks the clearing falls silent, the babble of the brook is muted, the birds no longer sing.<br /><br />Very Well, he says to Mother Gambia. Depart this place now, and go back home. In forty days you will begin to see the changes you desire.<br /><br />Thank you Father, Mother Gambia says (for that is what he was to her, and she his last daughter, his chaat). And Mother Gambia turned around and limped her way out of that place, on arthritic knees, her kaala falling back down to her ample behind, bent over almost like a hunchback, on her shoulders a great load. And Father Time watched her go, and there was a sadness in his eyes, a pity almost.<br /><br /><br />The Doma were the first to leave. They met at Haddington on a night when a darkness descended on the country, all the streetlights off, everyone blaming NAWEC, whose generators had mysteriously stopped working (there was talk of sabotage, wires cut in the dead of night - but no one knew the truth). A quiet night, with everyone indoors, as if everyone had reached an unspoken consensus. All was silent until midnight. Then a wind sprang up. Dogs barked. A parliament of owls gathered outside, the night air thick with dread. Troubling dreams visited the sleep of the people, inside the houses: dreams filled with blood and misplaced hearts hanging from trees under the dark aegis of the moon, coal no protection, jahatu no protection, a final reckoning… and then just like that the Doma were gone, and the Sun rose.<br /><br />The Jinay left after that, on a Saturday. Theirs was a midday departure, from the beach - the wind whipped through the trees, sharp as a knife (young people on the beach playing football ran home with blood on their arms, swearing the wind had cut clean through their clothes). The Jinay arrived in a great host, and their approach could be heard from very far away, and all who heard it ran back indoors and locked themselves into their rooms, for it was a terrible sound (one young man who had been chatting up a girl ran past her into the girl's own house, and was later found under the girl's bed quaking in fear, the edges of his shirt in his mouth). And at the head of the host of Jinay were a thousand Ifrit, their eyes glinting with lightning, and they sang the Jinay marching song, and their voices were full of thunder, and their tone was mournful, for they had grown to love this country, the country of their descent into the World Shaytaan had condemned them to inhabit, and they would rather not have left it. And they all arrived on the beach, and at the hour of the tisbaar there was a great gathering of clouds, and it went dark as if it was timis, and people readied themselves for the coming thunderstorm, which was sure to be big. But the clouds merely dissipated, and the wind stopped cutting, and the heavy presence that had hung from the sky lifted and everyone came out of their rooms and onto the street once more.<br /><br />Then the kondorong left, and their cousins the coos. The ninki-nanka left; then the ghosts of the streets, the half-people, the sewer-men (who live under the pot-holes in Banjul - sometimes the smoke from their fires rises through the vents in the pot holes at night - people mistake this for steam). And then the beings of the air: the spirits that torment people suffering from the disease of the soul the toubabs mistakenly call epillepsy; the spirits that live in trees, and are the reason why certain leaves will cure certain diseases, if the essence of the spirit is first extracted with fire and water; the spirits that make women unable to bear children for their husbands, leading to much shame and unhappiness; the spirits that poison wells; the spirits that steal away children, in the dead of night, while their parents sleep and the little ones walk the streets as if lost, with no shoes on their feet; the spirits that guard the timis, the gateway between the world of the living and the world of the not-quite-alive (which is why the merr say: do not go out at timis, for these spirits are most powerful then); the spirits that enter into the bodies of girls who wear clothes too exposing, in order to become their lovers (these are the spirits of lust, whose favorite places of dwelling are the nightclubs of the country); these and many other spirits too numerous to recount left, in that time.<br /><br />And the people did not realize at first what had happened, though in the streets and the back alleys, in the marches and the bantabas, under the shade of the baobab trees, and in the places where the youth gathered to drink attaya, there was a lessening of dread. The darkness seemed less dark, somehow, at night; now when people heard stories of Jinay and old women who transformed at night into fantastic shapes of haunting presence they only laughed, and paid no heed to them.<br /><br />Old people say much, and the young people of the country had learnt to ignore them, to have their babblings recede into a background they paid no attention to, as they walked the ancient but newly-discovered paths that their lives revealed, rediscovering love, and enmity, and friendship. And the old people have invented a proverb, which they use to warn the young. An old person, they say (always when it is too late, when their advice has fallen on deaf ears and the calamity not been avoided), will lie on the ground and see what a younger one will not see from the tree tops. And this proverb, too, the young have learnt to ignore, for it makes sense only in retrospect, when we evaluate it against our memories.<br /><br />In any case it was the old people who noticed something wrong first, before anyone else. Nightmares had become a thing of the past, and after a while dreams followed them. People who slept inhabited a space of blankness, and all about them was nothing, not the dreamspace that sleep gives us access to, not even time. And though at first it was peaceful ("Oh how well I sleep these days", one light-mouthed Serahule insomniac was overheard saying over her breakfast of ruye), over time it began to fill people with an unease they could neither explain nor shake off, that followed them like a shadow through the day, a frown on their brows, an impatience, a yearning, like a smoker's need for a cigarette, a fist stuck irrecoverably in a clench.... and from there it progressed. Children stopped crying (and no longer able to cry they lost too the ability to laugh, their eyes filled with an emptiness that made their frustrated parents lash out at them in anger, at their wits' end how to recover some emotion in them, to make them react to something, anything... And they suffered the blows and did not cry, and more than one parent was driven to madness). In the morning the cocks would not crow, but sat hunched as if from the cold, a sickness in their beady eyes...<br /><br />And then the suicides began. The less said about the suicides the better, for they were a painful time in history. Many were lost: unexpectedly, without warning. Children orphaned, mothers left without their chaats, fathers coming home to fire and blood, to water, to rocks and ropes and, in at least one case, a stake of wood sharpened to a fine, accurate point (and how devastatingly well it did its job).<br /><br />Mother Gambia is old, Mother Gambia is sick. She has spent her whole life working to ensure a good future for her children. Yet she has never felt as powerless as this, not even that time long ago, when she allowed the toubab to alight onto her shores, thinking them generous and kind, thinking them friends and perhaps even, in time, kinsfolk to her children, joint inhabitants of the given World: peers, equal... Mother Gambia watches her children die, and she weeps, for she is filled with guilt. And so one morning she travels once more to the dwelling of her father.<br /><br />She wears a red kaala today, embroidered with a pattern of gold that glints when the sunlight falls on it. Her feet are even worse than usual - every step is an effort. She settles on the stump of a tree, opposite where he sits. He has been expecting her - he shows no surprise at her visit. He knows what she has come for.<br /><br />If it is not too late, her eyes say, and there is a pleading written into her gaze, though she does not get down on her knees her sitting pose is one of supplication, the way her head is bowed speaks of remorse. Old Man Time is not a cruel Father.<br /><br />It will be lifted, he says, they will all return, if that is what you desire.<br /><br />And she looks up at him gratefully, and nods her head in relief. She does not dally, after that, for she has not learnt how to spend much time with her father, she is shy of him. She leaves, by the same paths she came. Old Man Time watches her go, and he smiles to himself, and shakes his head. A distance from him she turns and catches him smiling, and there is a quizzical expression on her face. Then she bursts into laughter, and he does too, and the space between them is filled with a lightness.<br /><br />That night the dreams returned, and the children once more kept their parents up all night with their crying. And all was well, or as well as it had ever been.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-423703102788378142010-10-06T22:56:00.000+00:002010-10-06T22:57:03.897+00:00A Tale of Two WivesThe girls who are about to become women sit opposite Merr Sillah, on mats lain on the ground, deep in the forest. It is the Afternoon of the Life Story. She will speak to them, and by the time they leave they will know what it is to be a woman, in the society in which they live. They will be ready for husbands and homes.<br /><br /><br />- Once there was a woman, Merr Sillah begins, who met and was woo-ed by a man. He loved her, and she loved him, and though he was wont to participate in the indiscretions men are known for, it was only because this was a part of his nature.<br /><br /><br />A twig snaps in the silence, everyone jumps. But behind them there is nothing. After a while Merr Sillah continues.<br /><br /><br />- Always after these affairs of hers he came back to her, and always he apologized, and in this way she knew she was the only one he cared about, and in the nights after his latest return she would feed him his favorite foods, and he would call her Mama Biang, and make fond jokes about her stomach.<br /><br /><br />Merr Sillah pauses to sigh. She is not looking at any of the girls - her gaze is cast off in another direction.<br /><br /><br />- But then one day, Merr Sillah's voice turns husky, she clears it out with a spit, and rattles her throat with a cough.<br /><br /><br />- But then one day, she tries again, - His boat finally came to dock - chase kat bi tehral - he fell in love with a witch.<br /><br /><br />The Sun hides behind a cloud, a chill rises up, the girls draw closer together.<br /><br /><br />- She was a perfect witch: young and beautiful, and cruel and powerful. She ensnared him, she bewitched him and made him love her. And at last her spells were complete, and he - unable to see, blinded by her dark magic - married him.<br /><br /><br />Merr Sillah's voice is soft, and the girls have to strain to hear it.<br /><br /><br />- But the Merr - she was not without her ways. She set out upon certain paths, she visited certain old and wise men her great grandmother had taken her to, when she was still but a child, growing, unsure yet as to her future. Merr Sillah revisited them all. And from this one she got a spell of night-entwining, and from the other she got a spell of never-abandoning, and from a third she got a spell of stomach-enchanting. And she put all these spells together, and she cooked her husband's favorite dakhin mop, and she mixed it in with the dehgeh, and she fed it to him.<br /><br /><br />One of the girl sniffs - in the quiet it sounds quite loud. All turn to look at her, and she looks embarrassed. Merr Sillah looks up as if startled, and shows her a disapproving frown.<br /><br /><br />- A woman, she says, should carry a musu-waar. In any case, Merr Sillah says, she fed him the spells. But she had underestimated the power of evil. For her spells were not strong enough to counteract the spells of the witch-harlot. And her husband, caught between the two, his stomach yearning for one thing, his heart another, and his manhood a third, was torn three ways and thus died a slow and painful death.<br /><br /><br />Several of the girls - who know the meaning of "manhood" - wince.<br /><br /><br />- And Merr Sillah was filled with grief. But she had one last card, that she had thought not to play. On the night of power, when all prayers are answered, Merr Sillah went to the local mosque. She bore two bags, and they contained all her gold and silver, and all her money that she had withdrawn from the bank. She left it at the mosque door, and was turning to leave when an old man called him back. I know you do not want recognition, the old man said, and that is well. But what you seek you shall find - your enemy shall go insane, before these month-days are over.<br /><br /><br />Merr Sillah pauses, held captive by her own narrative. Then another twig cracks, and Jahu-doff springs from behind a tree, where she has been hiding all this time. Everyone jumps again. Merr Sillah's sorchu drops to the ground - she picks it up, bites off the part covered with sand and spits it out, then puts it firmly back in her mouth.<br /><br /><br />- Merr Sillah dayga-dayga, Jahu-doff says, you are a liar. Kee more muna dool!<br /><br /><br />The Merr turns slowly to look at her, a disdainful expression on her face. She looks as if she is addressing a cow dropping, her right nostril flared, her right upper lip curled upward to allow sounds to escape merely because she has no choice but would rather not be speaking to this human filth, etc.<br /><br /><br />- What did you say? She pronounces each word singly, apart from the others, dripping acid.<br /><br /><br />- Hei Merr! You heard me. She - Jahu-doff turns to the assembled girls and points - is a liar! A big liar! Not a small liar sah deh! A big fat one!<br /><br /><br />- Jahu-doff please stop shouting, one of the girls - whose mother is friends with Merr Sillah - says, a pained expression on her face.<br /><br /><br />- But do you not want to hear the true story?!, Jahu-doff's eyes are bulging, her neck muscles are strained. Spit flies from the corners of her mouth.<br /><br /><br />- Yes, yes, the girl says, just sit down and calm down. Then you can tell it.<br /><br /><br />Merr Sillah looks like she's about to say something, then changes her mind. Jahu-doff sits down, off to Merr Sillah's left, a respectable distance between them. There is a hostility now, in the way Merr Sillah positions her body.<br /><br /><br />- OK, Jahu-doff says, well then listen to me, and listen bu baah deh.<br /><br /><br />And Jahu-doff tells them a story, of a woman who was married once, to a husband who did not love her, a man who came home every night but did not really come home, left the better part of himself on the streets and in the rooms he shared with other women, his many affairs. And the woman grew old and bitter, knowing she could never own her husband as these other women owned him, that she lacked something - what? - that they all had. (Merr Sillah frowns, and bites down hard on her sorchu. The girls ignore her, captivated by Jahu-doff). And so they lived, Jahu-doff continues, this husband and wife, and it was somehow a marriage - they had a child, and they performed the necessary family rituals. And she, the wife, got used to this way of living, or at least resigned to it. Until one day the husband, the man of many illicit affairs, met a woman he truly loved. (Merr Sillah coughs, and spits savagely into the bush. She draws a deep xaax-tandehku, holds it for a moment, then spits that out too. Then she re-clamps the sorchu in her jaws, and is silent once more). He did not know how it happened. One day he was talking to her, just yet another of his many conquests, to be fought over with his wife and then forgotten, and then the next he was proposing to her. He had never felt so in love with anyone. When he told his wife she sat down in a chair and looked at him. Are you sure marriage, she asked him, the sentence trailing off, and though he did not answer what she saw in his eyes was answer enough, and it broke her heart. She had always loved him, you see, had always harbored a hope that in time he would come to return it too, if only she was patient, if only she waited. And now she saw there was no way, that there had never been a way. (Merr Sillah gives a little sniff, and draws her kaala tighter about her. The girls are still enraptured by Jahu-doff, and scarce notice her movements.)<br /><br /><br />And so with that hope taken away in its place there came a hardening. She got up, and left him in the room, and she did not say anything to him regarding the matter again: not when he came to announce the marriage ceremony, not when he told her about ayeh duties and the splitting of the nights. She did not pine, she did not sulk. She was filled with a coolness of purpose which should have frightened him, had he only stopped to think about it. But he was too enamored with his new bride, and realized nothing, until it was too late.<br /><br /><br />For the first wife, the old woman, did not rest. She traveled abroad, she went to find serigns. In dark rooms filled with darker purposes she committed her transactions, and they concerned death, and they concerned madness, and were in exchange for blood. Within two months the husband was complaining about a stomach pain that would not go away, within six he was dead. And I - the new wife, for it was I he had married - I too fell under the spell of Merr Sillah (the girls start, realizing who the older woman in the story is), for I could neither eat nor drink unless first I took off all my clothes and danced naked all down Kairaba Avenue, or I would have no peace all day, it was like a voice in my head.<br /><br /><br />Merr Sillah snorts.<br /><br /><br />- A voice in your head, she says. - This woman, she speaks to the girls now, is not well in the head. Do not listen to her, though her voice is laced with honey - a sly doff is still a doff.<br /><br /><br />The girls look doubtfully between the two women.<br /><br /><br />- You believe who you want, Jahu-doff says, and her smile turns cunning. She looks off into the distance, a gleam in her eye and, speaking to herself but loudly enough that the others can hear she says, - Chey those days, when it was my turn with Alaji Momodou, my ayeh! Shoo! - she jiggles her head as she says ayeh, her right hand off on an incline.<br /><br /><br />- Chey when I got a hold of him, what rachah-pachah I showed him. She gives her waist a little slap as she says rachah-pachah, and Merr Sillah's breath quickens.<br /><br /><br />- Defarr be muh saf!, Jahu-doff says. She smacks her lips together, making kissing sounds, and Merr Sillah shakes with anger.<br /><br /><br />- And then when we were done, Jahu-doff continues, when we lay on my bed, my Alaji and I, what things he would say to me. God knows, he would say, a woman is to be like this, but that huge stomach - Jahu-doff mimes a stomach - that big lump of geh-ress - Jahu-doff points in the general direction of Merr Sillah's bum - sitting around all day belching and farting…<br /><br /><br />And before she can complete Merr Sillah gives a wild scream and launches at her, hands reaching for her throat, as Jahu-doff jumps up with a playful laugh and runs off into the forest, Merr Sillah hot on her heels.<br /><br /><br />The girls are hysterical with laughter. Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-24539865690803710952010-10-05T22:48:00.002+00:002010-10-05T22:49:19.851+00:00Attached to a Picture of a Girl in Labor [FICTION]- Push!, the old matron screams, nostrils flaring, knuckles straining against the bed, - when you were hopening your legs you did not…push, you bastard! The old matron has a thick aku accent.<br /><br /><br />Outside Amadou Wurry paces, his prayer beads clicking. Ya Ram-mu, he says, for each first step. Ya Takhaa-fu, he says, for each second step.<br /><br /><br />- You young girls nowadays, the old matron fumes, - always trying to discover what should be hidd.. push, I said! Gis nga yow bull ma d foyantore deh! Man duma sa morom! Push! The old matron lives alone - she has never been married, and has no children.<br /><br />Amadou Wurry stands at the end of the bench. A small Peul boy comes up to him, bearing a case of DVDs.<br /><br />- DVDs, the boy says, cheap DVDS, best movie in America. Shaki Chan, Anull, Raam-bow. Lady Kaka, AC Milan.<br /><br />Amadou Wurry makes sure not to make eye contact. He looks at the sky, and tells his beads. He begins to pace once more. Ya Ram-mu. Step. Ya Takhaa-fu. Step. How these little currs misrepresent the Peul. He feels a flash of anger whenever he sees them: in their corner shops, breeding year after year, standing at the borpi konyes selling oranges, walking around the country hawking DVDs. Suma Peul bi, people say, as if speaking about pets. And Peuls like him, the successful ones, the ones who have worked hard all their lives to have what they have, are conveniently ignored. He cannot stand it anymore! He stamps his foot. He misses a step. Ya Rahmaan, he says, to account for the misstep. He breathes deeply, to calm himself. Then Ya Ram-mu. Step. Ya Takhaa-fu. Step.<br /><br />- You Peul girls, the matron says, think sex was invented for your thighs. You let your husbands use you, you… pooosal laa wah! Push! Fog nga poos aferr bi pour mu gayna d - ah yow tam! Next time su sa jaykarr bi waheh let's lie down you will say no - haraa rek! Push!<br /><br /><br /><br />The Peul boy comes up to Amadou Wurry, and stands at his side. Amadou Wurry ignores him, until it is no longer polite to do so. Then he takes his time, putting his kuruss into a bunch, rubbing it around in a circular motion in his hands, then bringing up the whole prayer in his cupped hands, spitting into it, then rubbing his cheeks, his face. Yes?, he asks the boy finally, in Wolof. What do you want? The boy has lice on his head, and Amadou Wurry takes a step back in disgust. Water, the boy replies, in Peul. I am thirsty. Then why don't you, Amadou Wurry asked, still speaking Wolof, use your money?, indicating the DVDs in the tray. The boy opens a purse he holds, shows Amadou Wurry its internal emptiness. Amadou Wurry's frown deepens.<br /><br /><br />- Chem!, matron says, sex bu dut jeh rek! Every gudi, every suba. Ham naa sehn taat yi day tire deh. There is sweat on the girl's surface, and her screams of before are small and dying whimpers now, lacking energy. Matron goes up and puts her hand on the girl's forehead. For a moment her eyes twinkle, for a moment the acidity leaves her face, and she is your grandmother, old and kindly. - Just push a little more child, she says, - just a little more.<br /><br /><br />And Amadou Wurry sees himself coming to the City for the first time, living with an Uncle, high school at Gambia High, friends who made fun of his Wolof, long treks to school in the mornings, when he couldn't get a ride and was saving his money for food. Amadou Wurry sees himsef rising past all this, steeling himself and taking on all the challenges that life had hurled at him, until here he was, and what had it mattered what anyone had said, or believed? He looks at the Peul boy with his almost-white head and something in him melts, water flows in a previously inaccessible part of him. - Here, he says to the boy, in Peul, and he reaches into his wallet and gives the boy a D100 note, - take this and go buy yourself some breakfast.<br /><br /><br />And inside his first child is born, in a burst of liquids and pulpy solids, and matron receives it in her arms, and she looks at it in her arms and she says, her voice full of sighs - Oh what a beautiful little girl. And she says - You Peul and your many children. But she is smiling, and the new mother is smiling back, and she turns the baby on its back and gives it a sharp pat and it begins to howl and the there's not a dry eye in the room.Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750211216334813885.post-31007935929892002782010-10-04T18:30:00.001+00:002010-10-04T18:30:55.058+00:00A Card Game (or "Aisha Khan & the Jinneh Who Devoured Women")<p>Playal </p><p> </p><p> Sa turn la </p><p> </p><p> Change tu </p><p> </p><p> Lan? </p><p> </p><p> Hol bu hong-ha </p><p> </p><p> Her heart exploding, a splash of red. Ice, all about her, slippery, yet somehow warm as fire. Say the word, Momodou Kabaa, and I am yours. Has she not said this a thousand times, in her actions alone? Yet Momodou Kabaa says nothing, continues to play these games, refuses to acknowledge his feelings. Is he really that slow? </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> Ice strong? </p><p> </p><p> Very strong? </p><p> </p><p> Still strong? </p><p> </p><p> … </p><p> </p><p> Didn't think so. And take two for cheating. </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> He picks up the four cards sheepishly, looking at her from under his eyelids. What shall I do with you, Aisha Khan? I wish only to save you, yet you still insist on hurling yourself straight at me, and at the death which awaits you in my hands. You do not know me, Aisha Khan. And he sighs. </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> Jump. Jump. Back to Me. Change to. </p><p> </p><p> Lan? </p><p> </p><p> Tanki Pitah…. </p><p> </p><p> He sighs, she can see him sigh. What kind of man are you, Momodou Kabaa? Why do you carry such a heavy weight, why are you so unconfident? What kind of man are you, Momodou Kabaa, that you lack fit so, that you are so spineless? I am beginning to be impatient. </p><p> </p><p> Play-al! ah! </p><p> </p><p> Anh suma turn la? </p><p> </p><p> Daydayt! Nga banya play rek! </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> She is impatient, and he knows why. And he is saddened. She doubts his manhood, probably, by now, he who is a stallion, a being of steel. He remembers the last one, how she screamed when he saw him as he truly was. He had changed, he had drunk of the waters of the zam-zam , and changed his name and his form, and spoken the shahaadah and renounced his evil ways. Yet always they made it so tempting to go back, to re-explore one's baser side, to follow shaytaan once more… </p><p> </p><p> Take two. Foral nyaar! </p><p> </p><p> …. </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> Back to me. Last card. </p><p> </p><p> Ice strong. </p><p> </p><p> Dormi haraam! </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> Perhaps she was being too subtle. Perhaps she was going about this the wrong way. Many ways to capture a man, after all. She shifted a little where she sat, a loosening of position. Then she - surreptitiously as possible - opened another two buttons of her blouse and, removing her head tie, let her hair fall gently about her shoulders, wiggling her neck for exaggerated effect. Now let's see, she thought, what happens when I really turn the charm on. </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> Suma turn la darling? </p><p> </p><p> Ham. </p><p> </p><p> Kon play-al. Y bull ma bomb deh baby. </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> Ah the fool, the fool! Momodou Kabaa thinks. Her voice - how can he withstand it, when it is like that, a soft breeze gently flowing just above the waters of the Nile, when he had visited long ago... He remembers this from the last girl - he remembers the climax of feeling, the orgasm of emotion. He starts forward, as if startled. </p><p> </p><p> Lu hew baby? </p><p> </p><p> Nothing. Maybe… dara. Play-al. </p><p> </p><p> Day-dayt sa turn la honey. Acha play-al ma holl. </p><p> </p> <p> </p><p> And she uncrosses her legs one way - a flash of thigh - and crosses them another. And she chews her gum slowly, invitingly… And then, when he has held himself in so hard he knows the tiniest of probes will make him explode, she winks at him. His rising and his scream, and his rush toward her, and her horrified woya-yooye are all one. And he is shouting </p><p> </p><p> BOMB LAST CARD ARREST! </p><p> </p><p> </p>Amranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10878162955103019557noreply@blogger.com0