For the first time in his life the weather has taken on character. It is like a person with moods - and what moods. He knew a girl once, whose behavior was unpredictable and often cold. One moment she would be smiling and talking happily - then of a sudden she would withdraw behind a cloud of gloom, frigid and impenetrable. They had gone to school together and she had had no friends, gaining a reputation on the playground as being too much like a toubab, too withdrawn into herself. Under the unrelenting heat of the Sun at midday she had seemed a strange thing, a pillar of ice un-melting, self-contained and refusing to join the great deluge of melted waters about her. Now he feels like the opposite of her, transplanted from the great communal warmth and heat which now seems unbelievably comfortable to this place where the weather is a person and goes into wild moods of hostile silence. The cold gets past his every attempt to hold it back, seeming at times to have found a secret way into his body so it seems its source is internal and emanates from within him, from his very bones. To the point where the thought of a warm room fills him with craving. At night when he has trouble sleeping he draws the blankets tighter around him, and feeling the warmth all about him beginning at his toes is comforted and grateful. Thankful for small mercies. Back home after a while the heat had receded into the landscape, barely noticed except when it was brought up to save a dying conversation. Here when he is outside the cold stands out sharp and at the center of his attention, making everything else become blurry and unimportant. It makes him sad and miserable, the useless sun in the sky seeming but a poorly-wrought imitation of the one at home, producing a weak light and no heat, failing to blind the eyes of irreverent gazers who would look directly upon it. How unlike the Sun back home, King of all it looked down upon, merciless Tyrant around whom days were formed.
He had called his mother, in the first week. One day after work, coming back from the Senegalese man's shop, his place of employ. Past one-dollar stores and stores with Touba in their name, joining then leaving crowds of people spontaneously formed, waiting at roadsides for a light to change and give them leave to cross. Then dispersing as the great host of cars (here he saw more cars than he had ever seen in his life in one place) coming to a stop, powerful things of metal seeming to be barely controlled by the fragile men and women who sat within them. His eyes meeting theirs as he crossed as quickly as possible, still not trusting that the line which held them back would not break and have them roll with a great crunching onto the mass of people walking across the road. At home he had retrieved the phone card where he had left it in a jeans pocket, and dialed the number. The first time it had not gone through, before he read the back of the card and saw that the dialing codes changed here. You entered different digits, before you entered the country code. Then her number. Mobile phones had been introduced about five years earlier, and by the end of the year everyone had one, carrying them around clutched in their sweaty palms like life support systems. He had never called his mother, though he had memorized her number. He had never had occasion to, the distance between them never expanded enough to warrant the service of telephone lines and network antennas.
When she picked up her voice sounded distant, and as if originating from a hollow place in the Earth.
"Hello... hello... hello"
"Hello"
"Hello"
The trick was to speak then let the other person speak, to resolve the delay created by the distance. He had been told that the voices which travelled across continents over phone lines had at one point to go under the Sea, in giant cables each bigger than a Man which lay on the Sea floor. He had imagined them as he imagined all machines, tools of metalic architecture, man-made and lacking in emotion and warmth - in fact the very opposite of these things. Deep beneath the Sea, with curious fishes swimming by them. It is this image that had come to him as he listened to her speak then, trying to figure out who the call was from. Except as he imagined her voice traversing the undersea cables they became of a sudden imbued with life, cold steel springing into action. The surprised fishes. Life lines linking continents, the only connection between this cold country in which he felt so lost and the warmer lands of his origin, where he had belonged so well he had never noticed the fact of his belonging, coming to take it for granted, coming to cheapen and think it of no value, when he thought of it at all...
"Who is it? Samba?"
He thought he could detect a rise in the inflection of her voice as she spoke his name.
"Yes - Ya it is I" he tried to say past a suddenly-blocked throat he had to clear before he could speak.
"Samba!", she exclaimed and even in spite of the imperfect job of transference carried out by the deep sea cables he heard the happiness in her voice, and his heart leapt. The skin of his face suddenly become heavier, his brows bunching together, his eyes narrowing - what was this liquid that filled them? This drasted cold, that made eyes watery...
She was calling out behind her to his sister, to come to the phone.
"Hurry! Maybe his card will finish - it is Samba!", then back to him again: "Samba! How are you doing? You are there? You have arrived?"
A torrent of questions. He said nothing about the things that had run through his mind, of the trials he had lived through - what makes a Man but his lack of complaint? What other way can he earn title as head of a family without a father. And so he replied that all was well, to all her questions, and told his sister that he was doing OK, that he had started work.
"And prayer - do you pray?", his mother asked, taking the telephone back (he could hear his sister complain in the background, and their bickering made him smile past the wetness in his eyes). He lied without hesitating.
"Good", she said, "it is the only thing that will save you" - and once more she commended him to God. "You have been my good and only son", she had said, when the one-minute warning on the card came on and he informed her, "God will not abandon us". And as his sister took the phone to say goodbye there was a click.
This had been the first phone call. He had called many more times after that, trying to at least once every two weeks, but none had ever been like that one, the opener. Back home his mother and sister had formed a female circle from which he was excluded. A domestic companionship he could not even begin to understand the rules of. Doing the household tasks together everyday, surrounded by a layer of conversation they had built and refined over the years, so it covered them lightly but did not hinder their movement through the house's backyard. A comfortable blanket which protected them from boredom and brought them together under its folds. A blanket invisible to men. And so they had always seemed to him to form one unit, as if their family after his father had died was of two: himself, and his mother-sister unit. Since his arrival this unit had become even more mysterious, even more obscure. The telephone such an imperfect device, providing the means of conversation yet at the same time accentuating the conversations' defects, in ways eyes and faces had been hiding for centuries. The long silences filled with Ocean noise. The conversation become a series of questions and answers, not even having the comfort of being linked by a narrative. Back home the fact of his living with them had been enough, so they could go days without a proper conversation. Now here he saw for the first time clearly how disattached they had become from him, how almost nothing existed between them save for the fact of their being related, and even this barely sufficient. It made him dread calling (though he would not admit this even to himself, pretending tiredness or using the different timezones as an excuse to put it off). It made him sad.
Showing posts with label samba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label samba. Show all posts
Friday, January 23, 2009
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Adventures of Samba in America #3
In the Senegalese shop there was music playing from the back, a male baritone layered over the strumming of a Kora, unhurried in its delivery. It was in Wolof, and the voice sounded familiar.
"Who is that?", he asked the shopkeeper. An old man dressed in a chaaya - how long he had gone without seeing a chaaya - and short kaftan, sitting on a stool with one leg lifted onto it. In the manner of the old man's sitting he saw a familiarity with the World, a comfortableness within it that he envied. He had felt restless since his arrival. Filled with a waiting that would explode within him. A need to do something - anything - and a feeling he could not do enough, he was falling short and wasting valuable time.
"Njaga Mbye", the old man replied, showing kola-nut stained teeth.
Ah - no wonder it had seemed familiar. At home he wouldn't have been caught dead listening to Njaga Mbye. Here now it stirred something deep within him, and it seemed at once the most beautiful sound he had ever heard in the world, and something so fundamental to his identity he did not know how he could have missed it before.
The shop was filled with bales of cloth of many colors, and in the window looking out onto the street were set kaftaan and abaaya pre-made, and other clothing he had seen the women back home wear during Juli but which he did not know the names of. There was the smell of must and age in the air. The sharp biting winds from the street did not reach in here.
"This is my friend", his friend told the shopkeeper, after they had exchanged pleasantries, and the old man reached forward to shake his hand, smiling.
"And how is Gambie then?", the old man asked. His head covered with graying hair, the remnants of a beard around his chin, looking like the hair had fallen out instead of being shaved.
"Fine", he replied, "everyone is in peace". The old shopkeeper nodded, satisfied.
"You are from Banjul?". He said yes - the answer would be long, and probably the old man would find it uninteresting, the place names he would name meaningless to a Senegalese. But he was not from Banjul, and it became suddenly important to him here to point out that fact, to not be mistaken or mis-placed.
"No", he told the shopkeeper, letting go of his hand, "Kuntaur".
"Is that far from Sairay-kunda?", the shopkeeper asked him, and he had to stifle a laugh at the old man's earnest expression.
"Not really", he said, finally. His identity could wait. The shopkeeper nodded, looking proud at his knowledge of Gambian geography.
"Who is that?", he asked the shopkeeper. An old man dressed in a chaaya - how long he had gone without seeing a chaaya - and short kaftan, sitting on a stool with one leg lifted onto it. In the manner of the old man's sitting he saw a familiarity with the World, a comfortableness within it that he envied. He had felt restless since his arrival. Filled with a waiting that would explode within him. A need to do something - anything - and a feeling he could not do enough, he was falling short and wasting valuable time.
"Njaga Mbye", the old man replied, showing kola-nut stained teeth.
Ah - no wonder it had seemed familiar. At home he wouldn't have been caught dead listening to Njaga Mbye. Here now it stirred something deep within him, and it seemed at once the most beautiful sound he had ever heard in the world, and something so fundamental to his identity he did not know how he could have missed it before.
The shop was filled with bales of cloth of many colors, and in the window looking out onto the street were set kaftaan and abaaya pre-made, and other clothing he had seen the women back home wear during Juli but which he did not know the names of. There was the smell of must and age in the air. The sharp biting winds from the street did not reach in here.
"This is my friend", his friend told the shopkeeper, after they had exchanged pleasantries, and the old man reached forward to shake his hand, smiling.
"And how is Gambie then?", the old man asked. His head covered with graying hair, the remnants of a beard around his chin, looking like the hair had fallen out instead of being shaved.
"Fine", he replied, "everyone is in peace". The old shopkeeper nodded, satisfied.
"You are from Banjul?". He said yes - the answer would be long, and probably the old man would find it uninteresting, the place names he would name meaningless to a Senegalese. But he was not from Banjul, and it became suddenly important to him here to point out that fact, to not be mistaken or mis-placed.
"No", he told the shopkeeper, letting go of his hand, "Kuntaur".
"Is that far from Sairay-kunda?", the shopkeeper asked him, and he had to stifle a laugh at the old man's earnest expression.
"Not really", he said, finally. His identity could wait. The shopkeeper nodded, looking proud at his knowledge of Gambian geography.
"Well - welcome here then", the old man said, gesturing with his hand as if the City were indeed his own private domain, and he within it the receiver of guests. Or perhaps he had only meant the shop. In any case his hand returned back to its resting place at his side and he sat waiting for them to speak.
"He is the one looking for a job", his friend told the old man.
"Ah", the old man said, "wawe kai. You are in luck. My previous boy just went on holiday - he was Malian". The old man and his friend laughed, though he could not find in anything the old man had said that which was funny. He smiled. They bid the old man farewell and left soon after that.
As they walked back home he turned to his friend.
"And the job?", he asked. He had not understood in the ending of their conversation with the old man the reaching of any agreement. "Are we to talk to him again?"
His friend gave him a funny look.
"No", he replied, "you start tomorrow - didn't you hear - his other boy left".
That night as he lay on his mattress on the floor he thought about God. His friend was out working a night shift, and he was alone. Yet his loneliness now seemed only a small portion of a larger loneliness, one he had been experiencing since he got on the plane to come here, and one which waited for him every where he turned, all-embracing in its completeness. He had never prayed much, back in the Gambia. There was God in his life alright, but only in the removed, distant way there were other countries, with other men in them. He did not think of it much - and when he did he would use the defense that he was good of heart, and in the end this was all that mattered. Not praying five times a day. He would get to it someday, when he got older. When he had more time. But now he was young, and had things to do, and not enough time in the day to do them in. He said these things to much laughter to a marr-kass who had started a conversation with them on the street corner, over a baraada bubbling with attaya. The other guys laughed - the marr-kass laughed, too, even as he shook his head. On his last night his mother had spoken to him about prayer. She had commended him to Allah, and told him that this was the only thing he would have out there to protect him against any eventualities. I will pray for you, she had told him, but you must also pray as much as possible, for yourself. You come from a good family. Allah will not abandon us.
But now he did not know what to do. He had not prayed once since he arrived. Should he get up now and start? Perhaps not. Or perhaps he should... Was it too late? Allah was not, after all, fooled. Yet was He not all-forgiving? Perhaps then he should get up and begin... but would he be able to stick with it? It was in this wavering state that sleep found him, and at last bore him away into a dream of his sister pounding netetu in the backyard whilst he stood watching, his mother behind her in the kitchen from whence came the sound of fish being fried. Their chatter as they discussed the latest neighborhood gossip.
In his dream he smiled.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Adventures of Samba In America #2
Part 1 here.
One day as a child he had gone out to hunt rabbits with his friends, in the forest. They had a dog they kept, feeding it the leftover scraps from their makeshift barbecues, and it ran at their side, barking excitedly. He could not see himself in the memory, but he could see the faces of the others, excited, a blue pair of shorts, a dirty, discolored shirt torn at the side so the armpit showed as the arm was lifted in the motion of running, a red cap. Some of them had worn nyambalastic, and some had gone barefoot, somehow avoiding the stones and thorns in the path. It was this image that came to his mind now as he stood on the pavement, waiting for the light to change. Overhead a train screeched past on metal tracks, a noise that had irritated him in his first days here and set his teeth on edge, but that now was receding into the background so he barely noticed it. It took a new kind of seeing, to understand this country and its streets: they were so wide, the people in them so numerous. He looked down the road he stood on, and it stretched on and on, until it was swallowed up by the horizon. And people it seemed on every square metre of it, a wild array of clothes and colors, some holding bags, all rushing to get somewhere. Back home he had seen crowds this big only after his move to the City, and then only during events at the Stadium. There were the black Americans, and the ones who looked like Spanish (Latin Americans, his friend kept correcting him, they are called Latin Americans here). Then there were the toubabs themselves, though not as many as he had expected to see here, in their own land, looking straight ahead as they walked, as if they by some trick could see their destination always before them. They seemed so lacking of time. It felt alien to him, this constant movement, in contrast to the lazy stillness of Banjul.
His friend had given him a calling card the first morning before leaving home. Bright yellow, two ovals attached to each other, with "Hamburger" written on the front, and a list of destinations on the back. None of the destinations was Gambia (though there was South Africa and Cameroon).
- Call your people, his friend said, let them know you're here. You can use the telephone in the living room.
He went into the living room. He stood before the phone, white and plastic and set in the wall. He held the card for a second, thinking of his mother and sister, waiting to hear from him, and a lump formed in his throat. What would he say to them? His mother had said don't worry about calling. He had heard her talking the previous night to his younger sister, in the room they shared, as he passed. His sister explaining the mechanics of the process to her, the old woman. ...flush it down the toilet, and then they don't know what country to deport them to. So they let them stay... He had walked on, not entering, going to his room. don't worry about calling. until you are settled down. And at the moment of his departure, with his sister smiling her brave smile, their eyes both red and tearing away at the composure he had built so carefully, so he had to look away from them or never be able to leave that place. He saw in the looks on their faces their acceptance of his sacrifice, the heroic journey he had already begun to take on their account, in their minds. To be caught, to be imprisoned. To get out and become a part of Babylon. And then what riches they would enjoy, what long-awaited rewards. Yet what had he done instead? The immigration officer had looked at his passport only once before handing it to him again, stamped, with a confident smile. Enjoy your stay sir. He had thought it at first a question, surprised that he should be getting in so easily. Trying panickedly to work out what he had been asked, and what to reply to it. A part of him wishing they would lead him off already, as he had seen them do to others in the line, one policeman on each side, looking grim. Realizing what had happened only after the person behind him rolled their baggage up beyond the yellow line, so he was forced to move forward. Surely it was not supposed to be so easy. And now here he was, unemployed in New York, possessing only the clothes he wore, and the few he had brought along. Where was the path to unending riches? He put the card in his jeans pocket, and left the phone where it rested on the wall. He would call them, later. Not now. Not now.
There were Senegalese here. Unlike the Gambians he met they were different - they radiated an aura of Senegal, as if they had learnt the great Secret of Nations, and now carried a little bit of their country with them everywhere they went. He could tell as soon as he saw them what they were, even before they ever uttered a single Savaa? They had restaurants selling Gambian food, domodah and benachin and mbahal. And jumbo and netetu and he imagined everything else sold at Marr-Seh Serekunda. And they had stores, too, selling African cloth and dress: warambas and kaftans in the shop windows, the last thing he had expected to see in New York. It was to one such shop his friend had promised to take him the next day, to see if perhaps they needed a helping hand. He had nodded, wondering what a helping hand meant. Would he be security, like the Senegalese and Guineans he had passed on Kairaba Avenue, standing at the door of shops and helping customers, watching that nobody left with anything they hadn't paid for? A part of him rebelled against this thought, even as his common sense chided him. Who would know him here. Yet he still grasped at a stubborn hope that his dream would right itself, that all this would turn out to be only a minor setback, and soon he would be taken by hand and led to the Real America, the Babylan he had heard and dreamt about, where he would be clothed and fed and allowed to reach towards those he had left behind waiting, and pull them up with him, towards this radiant surface, towards this new light.
Next Episode: Samba's job hunting woes, the call, familar music, "we deserve better", Samba makes new friends.
One day as a child he had gone out to hunt rabbits with his friends, in the forest. They had a dog they kept, feeding it the leftover scraps from their makeshift barbecues, and it ran at their side, barking excitedly. He could not see himself in the memory, but he could see the faces of the others, excited, a blue pair of shorts, a dirty, discolored shirt torn at the side so the armpit showed as the arm was lifted in the motion of running, a red cap. Some of them had worn nyambalastic, and some had gone barefoot, somehow avoiding the stones and thorns in the path. It was this image that came to his mind now as he stood on the pavement, waiting for the light to change. Overhead a train screeched past on metal tracks, a noise that had irritated him in his first days here and set his teeth on edge, but that now was receding into the background so he barely noticed it. It took a new kind of seeing, to understand this country and its streets: they were so wide, the people in them so numerous. He looked down the road he stood on, and it stretched on and on, until it was swallowed up by the horizon. And people it seemed on every square metre of it, a wild array of clothes and colors, some holding bags, all rushing to get somewhere. Back home he had seen crowds this big only after his move to the City, and then only during events at the Stadium. There were the black Americans, and the ones who looked like Spanish (Latin Americans, his friend kept correcting him, they are called Latin Americans here). Then there were the toubabs themselves, though not as many as he had expected to see here, in their own land, looking straight ahead as they walked, as if they by some trick could see their destination always before them. They seemed so lacking of time. It felt alien to him, this constant movement, in contrast to the lazy stillness of Banjul.
His friend had given him a calling card the first morning before leaving home. Bright yellow, two ovals attached to each other, with "Hamburger" written on the front, and a list of destinations on the back. None of the destinations was Gambia (though there was South Africa and Cameroon).
- Call your people, his friend said, let them know you're here. You can use the telephone in the living room.
He went into the living room. He stood before the phone, white and plastic and set in the wall. He held the card for a second, thinking of his mother and sister, waiting to hear from him, and a lump formed in his throat. What would he say to them? His mother had said don't worry about calling. He had heard her talking the previous night to his younger sister, in the room they shared, as he passed. His sister explaining the mechanics of the process to her, the old woman. ...flush it down the toilet, and then they don't know what country to deport them to. So they let them stay... He had walked on, not entering, going to his room. don't worry about calling. until you are settled down. And at the moment of his departure, with his sister smiling her brave smile, their eyes both red and tearing away at the composure he had built so carefully, so he had to look away from them or never be able to leave that place. He saw in the looks on their faces their acceptance of his sacrifice, the heroic journey he had already begun to take on their account, in their minds. To be caught, to be imprisoned. To get out and become a part of Babylon. And then what riches they would enjoy, what long-awaited rewards. Yet what had he done instead? The immigration officer had looked at his passport only once before handing it to him again, stamped, with a confident smile. Enjoy your stay sir. He had thought it at first a question, surprised that he should be getting in so easily. Trying panickedly to work out what he had been asked, and what to reply to it. A part of him wishing they would lead him off already, as he had seen them do to others in the line, one policeman on each side, looking grim. Realizing what had happened only after the person behind him rolled their baggage up beyond the yellow line, so he was forced to move forward. Surely it was not supposed to be so easy. And now here he was, unemployed in New York, possessing only the clothes he wore, and the few he had brought along. Where was the path to unending riches? He put the card in his jeans pocket, and left the phone where it rested on the wall. He would call them, later. Not now. Not now.
There were Senegalese here. Unlike the Gambians he met they were different - they radiated an aura of Senegal, as if they had learnt the great Secret of Nations, and now carried a little bit of their country with them everywhere they went. He could tell as soon as he saw them what they were, even before they ever uttered a single Savaa? They had restaurants selling Gambian food, domodah and benachin and mbahal. And jumbo and netetu and he imagined everything else sold at Marr-Seh Serekunda. And they had stores, too, selling African cloth and dress: warambas and kaftans in the shop windows, the last thing he had expected to see in New York. It was to one such shop his friend had promised to take him the next day, to see if perhaps they needed a helping hand. He had nodded, wondering what a helping hand meant. Would he be security, like the Senegalese and Guineans he had passed on Kairaba Avenue, standing at the door of shops and helping customers, watching that nobody left with anything they hadn't paid for? A part of him rebelled against this thought, even as his common sense chided him. Who would know him here. Yet he still grasped at a stubborn hope that his dream would right itself, that all this would turn out to be only a minor setback, and soon he would be taken by hand and led to the Real America, the Babylan he had heard and dreamt about, where he would be clothed and fed and allowed to reach towards those he had left behind waiting, and pull them up with him, towards this radiant surface, towards this new light.
Next Episode: Samba's job hunting woes, the call, familar music, "we deserve better", Samba makes new friends.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The Adventures of Samba in America #1
Strangest of all he finds the way people smile at you on the street: this tight, quick, little smile that at once said hello and goodbye, as if friendliness were a thing to be given to strangers only in tiny doses. Smiles that seemed to say "I have never met you before and I do not know you but I am doing this because it is my duty to be friendly to strangers, but I beg you to do likewise and give me a tight little smile back and walk past - let us not turn this into a conversation". At first he gave back the wide smile of the village, the smile that preceded a lengthy greeting session, and made them quickly turn away as if scared of him. But he is learning. Yesterday on the street he gave the small, tight smile to a passing woman, overweight and sweating heavily as she walked past, and she gave it back. Then, gaining confidence, he gave it to a girl dressed in really short shorts, but she only swung her hair back and looked away, walking past him really fast.
Downstairs from where he lives there is a laundromat. Back in his home village washing day was a major weekly event: first his mother would gather all the clothes strewn at various locations around the house into a huge bundle, and put this in the middle of the compound with a bar of Sankung Sillah on them. Then she would chase down / wake up / hunt for all the women in the house: his five sisters, his cousin Amie, his young Aunty. Together they would take the clothes into the backyard. He did not know the exact process of what they did in there, but he knew it included a lot of feteh-ing sounds and soap suds, and when it was over his wet boxers would be dangling limply under the sun, on the clothes line tied between the mango trees. Here it took all of an hour, and was done with, and with so little effort he felt as if he had been tricked - perhaps his clothes only looked clean. But they smelt fine, when he smelt them.
The first time he was taken to the laundromat here by his friend he could not stop touching the machines. Oh he had known about clothes being washed in America by machines - because toubab were so technologically advanced and because, he suspected, toubab women were so lazy - but he had always thought of this in the abstract, if he had thought of it at all. He had, perhaps, categorized it in the area of magic, as we do with all technologies we do not yet understand, visualizing a bag full of dirty clothes the next moment bright and clean and shining, like in those TV ads for Omo. But now he could see the actual machines involved, and they were bigger and more powerful than any of the women he had known back home (except maybe Aji Yago, the nyaambeh-nyebeh seller). When he tentatively loaded his clothes into the open belly of the first one his friend pointed to and closed it, it gave a huge rumble which made him take a step back. No woman's voice had ever sounded like that! As he sat and waited for it to finish its task he thought how much time these would save back home (and for the first time he thought how much time the women spent on housework, on the washing of his clothes and the cooking of the food he ate, and accompanying this thought he felt a momentary and strange feeling he could not identify). But if machines did all the housework what would the women do? Walk their dogs, like they did here? Run down the street in too-short shorts, rudely swinging their hair at would-be-friendly smiles? The previous day a Nigerian woman he had spoken to had told him that the need for men had been replaced by the invention of artificial insemination. When she had explained what this was he had been lost for words, indignant at the very thought: everyone knew a man had many more uses than just that. Disciplining the children, bringing food to the house, keeping everyone safe and guarded from the dangers of the world. Now he had an answer ready for the next day: women, too, and the need for them could be replaced by these washing and cooking and cleaning machines. He smiled to himself as he thought these thoughts, even as the machine gave another rumble.
Then the machine started beeping, and his friend explained he had to put some more quarters into it. Everything cost money here, which shouldn't have been surprising, but was because in his dream of this place he had thought only of all the wonderful things he would do, the clothes he would wear, the foods he would eat, without ever thinking about cost. And in his talks about Babylon with the boys too - money would be made somehow, would come from somewhere - this was all that was said about that subject, and it was quickly dismissed as they started arguing again about which was better: a Maybach Benz, or a Yukon. Now he saw Yukons and Maybach Benzes all the time - they passed him whilst he sat in the 302 Bus, looking out of the windows, ignoring the old man with the tin can who was asking for money. He got up and put the last of his quarters into the machine, and it rumbled once, then started purring again happily. He sat down again. How had the other boys who had left worked it? They had been away only for so long before they started sending money back, and building a house, and sending their parents to Mecca. What secret did they possess that he did not?
In the mornings he was woken by the screaming of a child. Lying on the floor of the room he shared with his friend, he felt disoriented, looking at the ceiling and not recognizing in it the rain-patched brown ceiling he had lived under all his life. And who was that child? Then he remembered: he was in America, living in an apartment in Harlem, and the child screaming was from the family downstairs. She was eight years old and could walk and talk, but still went into wild uncontrollable tantrums that woke the whole apartment. He had seen her once being taken downstairs in one of those baby walker things by her mother, and had thought how old she was to have such bad behavior. She had started screaming at that point, as if she had read his thoughts, and, to his eternal surprise and mortification, her mother had begged her to stop, to please, please not scream, and in such a voice of pleading, as if asking her a favor! He had almost reached forward and slapped them both, shaking the mother and saying you are the parent here!, and had only stopped himself in time, remembering where he was and quickly rushing up the stairs and leaving them on the landing. He had heard about the indiscipline of toubab children, but seeing it now shocked him. What kid in Nyanija village would dare behave like this, in the presence of any adult? He felt self-righteous and proud: at least this was one thing his culture had gotten right, much more right than they had here. A child listened to its elders, or got punished, instantly and painfully.
Downstairs from where he lives there is a laundromat. Back in his home village washing day was a major weekly event: first his mother would gather all the clothes strewn at various locations around the house into a huge bundle, and put this in the middle of the compound with a bar of Sankung Sillah on them. Then she would chase down / wake up / hunt for all the women in the house: his five sisters, his cousin Amie, his young Aunty. Together they would take the clothes into the backyard. He did not know the exact process of what they did in there, but he knew it included a lot of feteh-ing sounds and soap suds, and when it was over his wet boxers would be dangling limply under the sun, on the clothes line tied between the mango trees. Here it took all of an hour, and was done with, and with so little effort he felt as if he had been tricked - perhaps his clothes only looked clean. But they smelt fine, when he smelt them.
The first time he was taken to the laundromat here by his friend he could not stop touching the machines. Oh he had known about clothes being washed in America by machines - because toubab were so technologically advanced and because, he suspected, toubab women were so lazy - but he had always thought of this in the abstract, if he had thought of it at all. He had, perhaps, categorized it in the area of magic, as we do with all technologies we do not yet understand, visualizing a bag full of dirty clothes the next moment bright and clean and shining, like in those TV ads for Omo. But now he could see the actual machines involved, and they were bigger and more powerful than any of the women he had known back home (except maybe Aji Yago, the nyaambeh-nyebeh seller). When he tentatively loaded his clothes into the open belly of the first one his friend pointed to and closed it, it gave a huge rumble which made him take a step back. No woman's voice had ever sounded like that! As he sat and waited for it to finish its task he thought how much time these would save back home (and for the first time he thought how much time the women spent on housework, on the washing of his clothes and the cooking of the food he ate, and accompanying this thought he felt a momentary and strange feeling he could not identify). But if machines did all the housework what would the women do? Walk their dogs, like they did here? Run down the street in too-short shorts, rudely swinging their hair at would-be-friendly smiles? The previous day a Nigerian woman he had spoken to had told him that the need for men had been replaced by the invention of artificial insemination. When she had explained what this was he had been lost for words, indignant at the very thought: everyone knew a man had many more uses than just that. Disciplining the children, bringing food to the house, keeping everyone safe and guarded from the dangers of the world. Now he had an answer ready for the next day: women, too, and the need for them could be replaced by these washing and cooking and cleaning machines. He smiled to himself as he thought these thoughts, even as the machine gave another rumble.
Then the machine started beeping, and his friend explained he had to put some more quarters into it. Everything cost money here, which shouldn't have been surprising, but was because in his dream of this place he had thought only of all the wonderful things he would do, the clothes he would wear, the foods he would eat, without ever thinking about cost. And in his talks about Babylon with the boys too - money would be made somehow, would come from somewhere - this was all that was said about that subject, and it was quickly dismissed as they started arguing again about which was better: a Maybach Benz, or a Yukon. Now he saw Yukons and Maybach Benzes all the time - they passed him whilst he sat in the 302 Bus, looking out of the windows, ignoring the old man with the tin can who was asking for money. He got up and put the last of his quarters into the machine, and it rumbled once, then started purring again happily. He sat down again. How had the other boys who had left worked it? They had been away only for so long before they started sending money back, and building a house, and sending their parents to Mecca. What secret did they possess that he did not?
In the mornings he was woken by the screaming of a child. Lying on the floor of the room he shared with his friend, he felt disoriented, looking at the ceiling and not recognizing in it the rain-patched brown ceiling he had lived under all his life. And who was that child? Then he remembered: he was in America, living in an apartment in Harlem, and the child screaming was from the family downstairs. She was eight years old and could walk and talk, but still went into wild uncontrollable tantrums that woke the whole apartment. He had seen her once being taken downstairs in one of those baby walker things by her mother, and had thought how old she was to have such bad behavior. She had started screaming at that point, as if she had read his thoughts, and, to his eternal surprise and mortification, her mother had begged her to stop, to please, please not scream, and in such a voice of pleading, as if asking her a favor! He had almost reached forward and slapped them both, shaking the mother and saying you are the parent here!, and had only stopped himself in time, remembering where he was and quickly rushing up the stairs and leaving them on the landing. He had heard about the indiscipline of toubab children, but seeing it now shocked him. What kid in Nyanija village would dare behave like this, in the presence of any adult? He felt self-righteous and proud: at least this was one thing his culture had gotten right, much more right than they had here. A child listened to its elders, or got punished, instantly and painfully.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)