The Jaybaleh: an exercise in crude humor [fiction]

The merr sat outside the room in a row of plastic chairs. Some were slouched over, their heads resting in their hands, others were laid back into their chairs, beginning to nod off. The night was well advanced, and it was beginning to grow cold. Everyone else had left, only they were left, the witnesses.

By and by there came the sound of a repeated banging from the bedroom, punctuated by whimpers, which did not seem to indicate pain, but rather seemed delivered as a sign of extreme pleasure... There was a rhythm to the banging and it seemed to go on for a long time, the merr looking increasingly scandalized. Ya Haddy stopped telling her beads, her hand and expression frozen, open-mouthed.

Well they seem to not be having any problems, Ya Yandeh said, to some light titters.

All I know is that a mooti just opened, Ya Haar said, would not leave itself amenable to such passionate philandering.

The titters died down as they thought about what she was implying. Then the banging and whimpering stopped, and there was a collective sigh of relief...

....only to start again, now right up against the wall on the other side of which they sat. Aaaaah! it began, a long drawn-out scream (because, the merr thought, it could not be a moan: what a moan that sounded like that said about the moaner and her sexual experience was something that did not bear thinking about). Then a series of short Uh!s, and what sounded like two pounds of beef being pounded together over and over... Surely the person who made those sounds must be in some pain... And her voice sounded so squeaky, so high-pitched...

The young man is deaf, it occurred to Ya Astou, perhaps he does not hear the result of the damage he causes...

Several merr winced at the image this conjured.

But if he cannot hear it surely he can see it, Ya Arrette said, her hand over her mouth, or is he blind as well? The poor girl.

Now the Uh!s sounded even more desperate, and in between they could hear the sharp intakes of breath.

Poor girl, Ya Arrette repeated, what she must be feeling,

The thing about kids these days, Ya Haar scoffed, is they do not know how to close their legs and cover their mooti.

All this talk of mooti, someone muttered from the back, it is hardly becoming of a young lady, let alone an old.

Ya Haar took out her sorchu, spat off to her left, then put it back in her mouth. At least some of us, she said, stayed intact until we were married.

The atmosphere was tense, and might have devolved entirely if at that moment the screams from the room had not suddenly increased in intensity (how was that possible?). They seemed to be building up - finally there was one loud unearthly cry, what sounded like a woman screaming for help, cut off midway in a strangled gulp. Then the laughter of a man as he insulted her. The merr sprang to their feet, and ran for the door.

Inside they found a strange sight. Isatou lay off to one side, her mouth open and drooling, fast asleep in her nightgown. And next to him - ah what a sight, that shocked the merr and got their high blood pressures shooting up. Assan Musa, the new husband, sitting up in the bed naked, black upon black, his hand in a half-empty tub of diwi ngalam next to him, staring with intent concentration into the TV. From which came the screaming noises they had heard, and on which, haraam on haraam, there was a blonde white girl, a midget, and a black man dressed as a policeman, and what was he doing to the poor girl?!?

Ya Haar passed out.

The Gambian Dream

Lately I have been thinking quite a bit about home. What it is, what it means. Of what materials it is constructed, how to go about building it. First start with an empty space, a place where your heart is at peace, and your mind is at rest. Add a comfortable bed, a warm interior. A living room, a TV. Portraits on the walls - your mother, your father. Dead relatives, pictures of your Serign on calendars. And then the people: a wife (or husband) who believes in you, children who give you pride. The rituals of adult life - the visits to the in-laws, the slaughtering of rams at Tobaski. All what is expected of a husband, and a father (or a wife, and a mother). And from all this, somehow, arising a feeling of contentment, greater than the sum of its parts. Going home sometimes in the car driving and listening to the radio you will imagine your wife waiting to eat lunch with you, your kids home from school, watching cartoons on TV before they go to sleep. And though it may only be fleeting still for a moment you will feel yourself and your place in the world, and the Creation and the part God wrote you to play in it - and all will be well. Is that definition true? And if it is, what of location? Does it matter, really, then? Could you not as well build this in Antarctica as in Timbooktoo?

Today was a long day at school. Ramadan and Calculus 3: two things that do not go well together. The old teacher dodders around the class - his voice seems to come from the past, muffled by layers of age, cobwebs and dusty rooms, grandchildren and world wars. He takes his time talking - his breathing measured and slow, the way everything he says begins as an almost tangible thought, slowly turning before our impatient eyes into his words, the mathematical concepts he wishes to convey. He chuckles at his own jokes, and we laugh politely (his jokes are of this kind: even the funniest ones can only be laughed at politely). What does he want from life, I wonder. Is it the same as what he wanted, once upon a time, when he was young and the road of his possibilities still stretched out before him, billboards on every side, advertising everything he could be. The richest man in the world, the cleverest, the one who discovered the cure for cancer, the one who found world peace at last. All the accolades that awaited him, the praise and envy of his peers. Ah you young people and your energy, a friend of mine told me recently. I had just finished excitedly explaining yet another idea that would change everything, and this was not the answer I expected. Yet it was a sobering answer, and the one, I realized later, that I needed to hear. In a way it was the answer that led to this writing.

The malls, I tell another friend of mine, the highways and the cars and the jobs and the money - all these things are a mask, that hide the true form of this land, that disguises from us the final fact: that we are not made for, cannot let down our roots, here. For us hotter climes, for us the "third world" (our home), for us the electric power cuts and the indifferent fire of the Sun, the thunderstorms and the lack of privacy. I say these things and I sound sad, even to myself. Why sad? Why not a rejoicing, in knowing where I aim to be, where I belong? The truth is I say these things and I do not know what they mean. The words are not of my making - they issue through me only, the aftereffects of an emotion which lies heavy in my heart. A strange thing: an aspiration, the beginnings of a hope, and yet at the same tinged with melancholy and not the soaring joy - I would imagine - of the true salvation. Where are the certainty and confidence that is supposed to accompany the epiphanies, the thoughts that burn bright and incandescent, and light the path into our future. My friend is silent, and does not reply, and I trail off in mid-sentence, and sit there helplessly looking at my hands. My thoughts are intense but nascent still, and I cannot quite articulate them to someone else, not just yet.

Once, when I first came to this country, I went to Washington, D.C., to visit a monument. In the morning, after eating a delicious breakfast cooked by a Senegalese man, who we teased half-seriously about opening his own restaurant chain. I do not remember the name of the place exactly - only that it contained a giant statue of Lincoln. And something else: on all the walls were plaques, and on the plaques there were inscriptions. I followed them from wall to wall, reading what they said. And as I read one after the other, it occurred to me that though they all spoke of different events still they were all part of a larger narrative. The story of America, and how great it was, and remains. The story of the heroic men and women who fought every single step of the way for this privilege. And I found myself carried away by it, this narrative, how inspiring it was, how it made you want to be a part of it. And then later thinking about it I saw past the rhetoric, and beneath it I saw just how profoundly powerful this narrative was, how effective, how it had linked men and women across the vast distances of this land and even across time, so though they worked individually and each in their own time and place still their minds were bent to a single purpose. And in my time here this has been the thing I have noticed most: how this narrative, this story - this idea - of the greatness of America is what lies at the heart of the nation. So central is it that every person who wishes to be successful politically - from Obama with his change campaign, to people like Glenn Beck and Palin with their hate-mongering - deploys it to their own advantage. And it all began with a colony determined to shake off the yoke of their colonial masters, the oppressive British - and ended after much hard work with the land of the brave, the home of the free, the greatest nation on earth. This is the story they tell themselves. And though there are dissenting voices, though it does not correlate exactly with history, no matter - it is sufficient for its purposes. The day of the presidential inauguration I watched Obama speak, and heard how he took this narrative and extended it, showing how it could be further refined, toward creating a "more perfect Union". I watched and for the duration of the speech, and many days afterward I thought, what can I not achieve in this country, under this President? The power of story, what it feels like to be part of a grander design, all in harmony, you and everyone else doing their part towards achieving a common goal, a noble goal.

Some - the lucky few - get to create their own narrative. To sit down and in collusion write the story of their nation, a collective dream, a way of being in the World as a people. Not so for us. "Undeveloped", "Third World", "Rampant Corruption", "Despotic Rule", "Tyranny", "Demagogues". Whether you agree with their descriptive veracity or not still you must realize: these are labels others have bestowed on us, and not ones of our own choosing. The personality of a person is an emergent phenomenon, built from the person's dreams, and the narratives the person has created to explain himself and his presence in the World. A country is no different, except in scale: it is built from the consensual narrative created by its citizens. On my last day in Gambia I went around visiting elders, to say goodbye, to have them pray for me. And without exception every single one of them told me the same thing. Torg fa deh! Bull jegeh waat fee yaip. Do not come back, when you have been fortunate enough to escape. They did not speak with bitterness - no one is bitter. We have learnt to joke about NAWEC, and the price of sugar, and how much faster your passport is processed if you buy "attaya" for the officer in charge. We shake our heads wryly, and chuckle at the state of things, and go on with our lives. This is the story of Gambia, we seem to be saying - what can we do but shrug and move on? And if somehow we manage to escape, who would be foolish enough to come back? Would that not be madness?

During the summer I met with people, and started work on a couple of projects. The digitization of government departments, the re-integration of the youth. I spoke with people about my ideas, and everywhere I was met with support and excitement - from the CEOs of tech companies to sunye boy yi sitting drinking attaya, of an evening. I was greatly moved, and filled with a sense of purpose. The first glimmerings of a destiny in waiting - the re-imagination of my country. Out with Gambia the poor, Gambia the corrupt. In with Jollof, richly cultured, filled with a people whose largesse and kindness of heart knew no bounds, who were willing to work hard for the greater good, for a time when our youth would watch the TV, and see on the news how desperate African youth from other countries tried (and died on) the back-way, and say Alhamdulillah, that I am content in my own country. Thank God, that neither I nor any of my friends would give up the comfort of our homes in order to break into our neighbor's houses, where we are greeted with neither friendliness nor welcoming. It will work, I said over and over about my plans. It will work and the youth will be saved, the country will prosper. Repeating this over and over to people I had already convinced, people who would vehemently agree with me. As if I myself needed convincing, and sought it in the faith of others.

In time our narratives come to represent the truth, until the two are indistinguishable. And then how hard it is to change them. The truth, after all, cannot be changed, but only escaped from. And so once our narratives have assumed this air of truth - because, perhaps, we have heard them so many times repeated we have lost all certainty as to their falsehood, we are filled with doubt - we give up on ever changing them. We settle into them, and define ourselves using them. And there lies the great and the sad and the true danger. For it is our narratives which define our actions, and in what ways we will attempt to leave our mark on the world.

I miss my mother, and my family. I miss my boys at T Road, and my Kombo crew, and my Lancaster youth. I miss walking down the street feeling, if not pride, at least a contentment at who I am, and how I am perceived. We like your writing, people tell me, and I smile and I feel rewarded, and I am encouraged to write more. He knows so much about computers, people say, and though this is an exaggeration still it is one I wish to grow into, to fill, and so I learn new technologies, and give lectures at our local youth computer club. Yet all these, on closer inspection, are not enough of a reason to return, when it comes right down to it. The people I miss I could see as many times as I can afford to come on holidays - many Gambians are "based" in Europe, returning every December to all-white parties and with new cars, and perhaps some more progress on the house they are building, to stand empty and as a promise of home, a placeholder for themselves in their absence. And - note that I do not say this in any mean-spirited way, or as a put-down - it is easy to be the best in Gambia at something. We are small, and have had neither the opportunities nor the experience of other nations. And so to excel in a field - whether it be writing or computers or football - one would be served much better living abroad, where good writers - to take one instance - are a dime a dozen, and the people considered emasters are truly dazzling in their virtuosity. Why come home then? I do not know what I would do in Jollof, is a common - and valid - excuse. Where would I work? Where would I live? And then there is the bigger problem, the unnameable one: our political system, and how rotten it is, and how it has somehow managed to infect every arena of our lives. So there is no such thing as staying apolitical - one must swear allegiances, or suffer the consequences. Silence is opposition, and opposition is bad. People are persecuted day and night for their beliefs. At least this is what sites like Freedom Newspaper would have you believe. The situation is irrecoverably bad, their lurid headlines scream at anyone who cares to read them. Yet this constant fear-mongering and doom-saying about our prospects is more a reflection of the minds of the people who write the articles on those websites than of reality which, as usual, is much more nuanced.

In our heads we are all writing the story of our lives, composing and editing it, imagining ourselves in the way we would like to be imagined by other people. Imagine a para and one of the boys fighting, at a Nawetaan match. The same reality for the both of them: two men struggling with each other, a shirt pulled until it ripped, an increasingly hostile crowd, tear gas, match flames under noses. And yet how differently each writes down the story in the book of himself, in his mind. The Banjul Boy: I am a citizen of Banjul, I have my rights, how dare they bring some uneducated fool from up-country and give him power over me? The Para: These Banjul boys have no discipline, they look down on us, spoilt brats the lot of them; bring one to live with me for a month and see how he fares. And both men feel persecuted, and both men feel great indignation. In the narratives you write of yourself you are always the hero, even your bad actions justified, at increasing levels of sophistication. I saw a news article once that spoke of a society in the American south, which was printing leaflets "proving" that contrary to popular belief the owners of slaves had in fact benefited the men and women under their bondage greatly, causing them to begin to get educations and become a bit more civilized. Our narratives do not start and end with us. They stretch back into the past, running over into the narratives of our ancestors, and all that they did. Or did not do. And at the same time our own role changes, we move into the position of ancestor for a new generation, our actions defining them. Our children, and their children after them, inheriting what we have left behind. Sunye maam yi denye baayorn sehn lohor deh, we say, nunye feheh beh toubab yi nah lehn?

What will be said about us, by the generations yet unborn?

A man is ugly and stupid, and shames himself every time he opens his mouth in public. He thinks, I must dress better, I have too little hair, my hands are too big, if only God had made me more handsome. I must listen to the popular ones speak and parrot them. Yet no matter how long he does this for he cannot ever seem to become happy about himself and his place in the world. He is filled with a resigned envy, at everyone who is more "perfect" than him. He lives out his days like this. Until one day he realizes: it is I who decide whether I am ugly and stupid and uninteresting, and not anyone else. Such a little thing, this discovery. Yet it changes the tenor of his life. It is OK if, sometimes, he says things that people laugh at. He laughs with them, and learns. It is OK if he is not the prettiest person in the room, or the most well dressed. He is himself, and he is imperfect and unfinished, and he realizes this and he works at improving himself. He lives happily after that, knowing no envy and no jealousy. And he notices too, that all that he admired in others he himself possesses, more or less, but that he lacked the most important thing: a confidence in himself, a belief, a narrative of his own making that cast him in the light he wanted to be seen in.

Once I used to be scared of my insomnia. The way it stretched on into the night, a flat and empty road, dull and dreary, filled with despair. Like a metaphor for life -and how heavy the rest of my days would seem, as I lay in bed and stared into the black caverns above me. I would drink sleeping pills, and surrender to merciful dreamless sleep before it was midnight. I studied, I read, I went to class. To what end? I did not ever ask myself this seriously, but only had vague ideas of what I would do. A relaxed daydream of one day opening a tech company in Gambia with Serign. All in the future, all to be approached lazily and at leisure. Sometimes what we lack is a sense of direction, of what we ought to do, now that we are here. There are Gambians abroad who have lived in the exact same apartment for ten years, worked at the same low-level job, slept on the same bed, and never aspired for anything. They may know a peace I do not know. But rather I think it is that they lack a dream, have become stuck in their situation, while time carries them along as they stand still. Living out lives of apathy, an undercurrent of desperation. Sometimes I feel that this is the way Gambia is too. Daf kor nampa, people will say, of behaviors. Might as well say chi kow suuf sim judoe la... We inherit our religion from our parents. And we inherit too their dreams of us, whether these become our guiding light or the thing we struggle against becoming all our lives. And from our country, our homeland, what do we inherit?

Ham sa borpa chi jaamu yaala la borka, our Oustasses say. We as a nation are imperfect and unfinished. How mean that sounds, how jaded. Yet look around you and tell me what nation is perfect and finished. Tell me what nation does not have its problems, qualities that its citizens do not like about it. Everyone who leaves the country to go to Europe or America comes back with the same story. How hard it is there, how difficult life is, unlike anything they were ever trained to expect, by TV, or by the common dream of America. For it goes both ways. People create narratives of us, not as detailed as the one they create for themselves. But still having the power to affect our own self-narratives. Ku nyayp tufli nga torye. If everyone you know believes you are a bad person for long enough, you WILL become one. If your fellow nations see you as poor and corrupt and beyond saving for long enough... And so we admire other nations, and look down upon ourselves.

I do not wish to suggest there is no hope. Far from it. We live in a good time, our country full of more promise than at any previous time. There are more Gambian college graduates - and even PhDs - than ever before. And that is only speaking of the educational side of things. Then there are all the Gambians who have traveled abroad and come back - even if not with new skills - at least with an expanded view of the world. Then there are the skilled and educated within the country, who have never traveled. The only Gambian I know who I would call a genius without reservation went to the University of the Gambia, and could do advanced Math problems which I couldn't solve even with the help of a computer. And then there is our greatest untapped resource: all the fine minds, sharp as whips, that have been labelled part of the illiterate majority, their lack of command of the English language a layer of ice frozen and concealing them and their talents. What if, for a whole year, all these different categories of people came together, and set aside their differences, and subscribed wholly to a new narrative of Jollof, one which traced its lineage back to our proud roots, our empires of old, and from thence made its way into the future, our present. A story of self-belief. A reclaiming of the language used to describe us: "forming" instead of "undeveloped", "sutura" instead of "baadorla", "saaku kaatan" instead of "naywe dorleh"? What if we believed this for more than a year, for five years, for a decade, what if we let this become our national dream, our common vision, convincing the people abroad to come home at last, and the ones here to stay - or leave to acquire what skills and knowledge they could, and then return.

One can spend all night, of course, speaking about dreams and narratives. But daylight throws our reality into sharp relief. We do not have that much money. We are such a tiny part of the world. And this will only work if we all do it together - I'm not going to sacrifice my happiness while others enjoy their lives with their families. All common excuses, all in some way based on "facts". Those outside dread returning, those inside think only of escape. What a way to perceive one's country: as a prison - a prison containing all the people one loves, but a prison nevertheless, the visa issuers at the various embassies the only ones who can release us from it, the all-powerful gatekeepers, elevated to almost mythical status. Sitting behind reinforced glass partitions, deciding our fates. Subjecting us to all manner of humiliations, starting out with the assumption that we are liars and thieves, who will do anything to get into their countries, and be a great burden on their social systems, that they have worked so hard to build, over the years. And though we are a proud people we take all this and more. It is not so much that we hate our country - no Gambian would choose to live anywhere else if what they sought existed back home. But what they seek - a chance at a better life - seems only achievable abroad.

We are a religious people. If I asked any Gambian, can God not make us prosperous, their answer would be swift and not even requiring thought on their part: Of course He can! Yet Yaala yaala bey sa torl, our elders say - and though it may sound trite sometimes it is all we have. To do our best, and to know we have done our best. To leave the rest to God - that which is not in our hands. It is not as if this is a new way of thinking. It has always been our philosophy as a people. Suma haalis b dama kor nyaha!, people say with great (and deserved) pride, fog mu am Barr-keh. This family has Barr-keh, people say. Meaning all in the family worked hard to achieve all they have achieved. The closest word to barr-keh is "blessing". But blessing, the word, does not cover everything barr-keh is. There will be the fruit of our labors: that is prosperity, naataangeh. But barr-keh we do not work for - it arises naturally as the result of our toil. And if we all nyaha for Jollof, how much Barr-keh will that be? For Barr-keh is not just external, something from God. That is only a part of it. A larger part is what is inside us, the ability to look at what we have done and think, we achieved this, and no one else.

There are sacrifices involved, of course. It would be irresponsible to pretend otherwise. The small conveniences - access to wallmart, and movie theaters, and all the other front-facing products of a capitalistic society. And the big ones - better health care, access to better education. These things seem impossible to live without. Yet it turns out that this is not true. There are people who have returned, with their whole families, and they have survived it. We do not live in trees, after all. And though it is a slow process we are always improving. And as with all sacrifice, soon we come to realize that the things we want are not always the things we need.

A nice paragraph at the end, then, to summarize all I have said. If only it were that easy. If only I could write "let us all go home, and work at developing our country", and pretend that because I am thinking along these lines I am a "better" citizen. But though this is tempting, it is not a position that will in the end achieve anything, except perhaps make me feel better about myself, nor is it a valid one. We all have our own lives, and our reasons for what we do, and who among us has the right to decide for another. There are no easy answers. I cannot say, let us do this and it will save the country - no one can. But I want you, wherever you are, to stop for a moment and imagine Gambia, Jollof, our nation that has given us so much and never complained or asked for anything back. And I want you for a moment to think of her, not as ugly, not as a hopeless case,not as others see her. But also do not think of her as what she is not: rich, or powerful. Here is what want you to imagine instead: Once there was a small country west Africa, home to less than two million people. And this country was a young county, and though she did not possess what other, bigger countries possessed, though she lacked resources, still she held her own, and believed in herself, for one reason: her children, spread all over the world, always had her in mind, and would come back to her, and care for her, and change her into everything she was yet to become.

"Africa dream again", Youssou Ndour sings. All we need to start with is a dream. And then who can stop us.

Returning Home #4: Of Banjul

It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.

- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities


His nightly walks. Starting at the Arch and ending at the 22nd July square, the beginning of the market. Something in him that makes him rove, a restlessness, an inability to sit in one place for any length of time. He is coming back from one of these one night when the power cut happens. It catches up with him as goes past Shell - all the streetlights and all the house lights going off, the darkness racing past him as the power cut propagates, he stands there and looks at it, or rather feels it, and it is as if some being whose power was beyond imagining had covered Banjul with black cloth, to isolate it from the world… and though this thought crosses his mind he feels no consternation - quite the opposite: he feels calm and at peace with himself and with the world, as if the darkness carried with it hypnotic power, causing all in its path to forget their world-weariness and their sorrows…

But once he gets home the reality of the waiting world catches up with him: it is hot, and the spiteful mosquitoes seize the chance. He takes mad swipes at them in the dark, always missing, he slaps his ears until they ring, he curses the power company and the temperature.

He has been thinking about writing an essay about Banjul, before he leaves it once again. But it is not as easy as he thought at first. First there is a problem of representation. The more he knows about writing the higher the standards he sets for himself to beat, the greater the length of the road he sees he must travel, on his apprenticeship. Only a year ago he would have written a clever piece, a look-at-how-smart-I-am essay describing the City, with many asides meant to be humorous. Perhaps using the tired trick of inserting himself into the narrative, attempting a feat of recursion, and then waiting in barely muted anticipation for the comments of his friends who read it, keeping score: the ones who liked it, and the ones who liked it very much. So in the end what he wrote would be more about him than about the City, yet another example of the modest vanity he has cultivated so well over the years. Now he has become more wary, has begun to see just how difficult a task it is he has set himself. He is no longer as sure of what he can and cannot do, the hard certainties which made him begin to write turned into brittle doubts.

How, then, exactly to go about distilling the essence of a City, of his City, of Banjul - distilling it and recreating it on paper: of what it feels like to live there, to grow up there and be a waa Banjul, a person on the other side of the bridge.

He thinks, I will write of the great struggle between the Island and the Sea. The Sea always on the verge of destroying the Island, a dream of rushing through its streets and byways in a great flood, in an ecsatic wrath, crushing and destroying all in its path. He thinks he will write about them without anthropomorphizing them. A centuries old struggle, the Sea and the Island old enemies, and like all old enemies with a bond existing between them, that held them together. He writes:

"What did I miss?", the Sea asked, yawning. He had been asleep for 200 years.

The Island shrugged, and did not speak. She was in a bad mood.

He stops there. The lines do not ring quite true to him - a good first line contains the story within itself, curled up and stowed away ready to be unfurled and released. But he cannot think of what to make of these lines, where to go with them.

The next day he is in a van on his way to work. Riding past the christian graveyard, he can see bits of the beach, in between the houses and the trees. The waves lapping at the shore in determination, hundreds of them, thousands of them, coming in and going out, only to come in again. There is a woman at the side of the road, three bags of rice in front of her. The apprentice stops the van and begins to negotiate with the woman, and he watches them and is filled with impatience. He hates waiting, in any form. From where the van has stopped he can see the beach again. Now the waves seem to be stroking the beach, a hand running over hair, a woman in bed next to him… how wrong he got the relationship. It is not an enmity, has never been that. It is a love story, one older than all the humans on the Island. He is excited at the idea, can see where it will go, though he does not have the lines he will write yet. He lets it stew all that day. And in the evening when he gets home and has dispensed with the social actions required of him, he sits down in his room and begins to write.

He knows a little about love. He has fallen into its current a few times himself. So he knows how it changes the blood to ichor, that burns through the veins with such passion that you stop being the center of your own universe, and the person you love becomes it. He knows too that the underside of love is sadness and sorrow, that if circumstances do not separate you from the object of your affection, then death will, sooner or later. But he is only a man. How could the Sea feel these things, how could an Island? And he thinks, perhaps love itself, the emotion, can be abstracted. Perhaps it need not apply only to humans (could a cat love? could a dog?). And with these thoughts in his mind he begins to write:

On Monday he came in slowly behind the tide. He found her with the winds, which excitedly blew about, bringing her news from their travels. He sat in a prim silence, pointedly not laughing at their jokes, not commenting on anything they said. And she continued to speak to them, hoping they would not leave, trying to draw him into the conversation. But finally in the face of his hostility the winds left, skipping off with light laughs, promising to return… She turned wearily to him, waiting… but he sat there still, in a moody silence, and did not speak. And her irritability changed, to a kind of sympathy, despite herself. Who knew what went on in his tortured brain? What is it, she asked him. Is everything well with you? He muttered a gruff reply, and then again was silent. They sat like this until the evening descended, the Sun a perfect orange ball framed at the horizon, in the space between the clouds and him. And she looked at this scene, the way he was laid out with the sun, its fire almost dead, hovered over him, taking its last few breaths, before it was submerged within him forever. And his grumpiness did nothing to spoil it, and she could not help but smile. He looked upon her face at that moment, and she saw the misunderstanding in his eyes. I was not laughing at you, she protested, but it was to his departing back, the foam rising angrily behind him. And all that night she thought guiltily about what had happened.

When he came on Tuesday she had prepared herself. She would let him shout, let him shed all his anger. And then they would speak normally again. She knew him, knew his moods passed as swiftly as they arrived - and then in a show of introspection he would apologize, analyzing his own behavior, promising to not repeat it in the future. But when he arrived he said nothing of the previous day. He was in high spirits - a large schooner had sunk early that morning, taking with it all its crew. He couldn't stop talking about it, and the deaths - how the men had wailed out at each other in the dark, and screamed when they bumped into any moving object. She found the topic rather too gruesome for her liking - how could someone swallow a living, breathing thing with blood in it, and bones. And so she tried to change it. But she met with no success, and after a while she just sat there, lost in her thoughts, muttering the occasional unhu. Finally he left, shouting out a cheerful goodnight.

On Wednesday when he came he was in a strange mood. He would not look her in the eye. After failing with several attempts to start a conversation, she finally asked him, what is it? She asked him, What did I do this time? It is nothing, he said. Only, and he stopped, but she was silent, not helping him, not hindering him. Only these….feelings, he said. What feelings?, she asked him, and her tone was stern, and brooked no nonsense. I am… confused, he said, still not looking at her. About what?, she said, and she was looking straight at him. About us, he blurted out. What is there to be confused about?, she asked, and her tone could have cut ice, would have cut him if he was frozen, We are two friends who spend the evenings in conversation. Oh, he said, never mind - I am not confused anymore - of course that is it. But she would not drop it - she wanted this to end here once and for all. What else could we be?, she asked him, have you seen in me any manner which would incline you to think that we are more than just friends? He looked up at her quickly, a look of confusion on his face - or perhaps it was panic - and then he was looking at the ground again. He shook his head no. Good, she said, then perhaps I can believe that nothing in your actions inclines me to either. Glad to have that settled. Now you must leave - I would like to be alone for a while. Of course, he said, and his voice trembled a little at the end. Then he was gone.

That night he returned, bringing with him a collection of shells, dragging it in with the tide and laying them out on her shores. They are beautiful, she said, smiling and looking at him. And he looked at her for a moment, and he was smiling too. And then he left, just like that, without a word.

After he had left she sat alone.The night deepened. She looked at the Sea, its wide expanse, blanketed in blackness, and where the blackness met the Sea's surface it was a dirty gray. At some point she fell into a dream, in which he came to her, while she sat alone in the night like this. He came with a great roaring, and a fierce fury, and it excited her, and he came to her shores, and he did not stop, and he came ashore, and he did not stop, and she felt alarm, but her heart raced too, at this new boldness of his, how he did not stop, or ask her leave. And he covered her, and she gave herself in to him, in the dream, until she was almost submerged - and then at the last he stopped, and regarded her. And his eyes burnt with a fire she did not recognize, that she had never associated with him, or his kind. And then the night passed, and the Sun rose, and she shrugged off the dream and once more sat regarding the wakeful world.

He made good conversation, when he was not in one of his strange moods. He could be funny - some days he made her laugh so much she would still be chuckling as she remembered his jokes a week later. Yet as a lover how below par he would be. How cold his embrace, lap-lapping at her shores. Fumbling, containing no tenderness. A roughness, in the way he spoke, the way he held himself - excusable in a friend but unacceptable in a lover. And the chill that came off him, especially at night. So far from the warmth of other lands, a warmth she thought she remembered but that she might only have dreamt - she did not know how long she had been an Island, could not remember a moment when she was not. His salt and his spray. How unpredictable he was, how every day you could get either the most interesting friend in the world, or an irritable, lovelorn mood changer - and you never knew what you would get on what day.

And yet there was the way he looked at her, as if she were the greatest City in the world, greater even than the much larger cities the winds described to her in their stories. How increasingly these days she felt herself in a strange mood when he came. Not elated, not exactly, more a soothing calm which descended over her, as if everything in the Universe had a space perfectly matched to it, and she had found hers, and was content in it. She felt needed, she realized when she thought about it, that was it - she felt needed, and it was a feeling that filled her with a tingly sensation. And she thought about how he had said he was confused, how vulnerable he had looked in that moment, and she smiled to herself.

When he returned the next day there was a difference. In the way they spoke to each other. In the way their eyes met. A look, a shared space between them that only the other could see. A newfound gentleness, so at times their words seemed like caresses, almost, vessels of emotion loaded to bursting with desire… A fact each acknowledged only silently. Neither watched what they said - he not trying to be perfect for her, she not trying not to offend him, at something she said, at the way she looked at him. And so they spoke, and every word each spoke was just the right word, in that time and that place. Like two sisters, sharing a room from birth. Completely comfortable in each others' presence. They spoke about random things, inconsequential things, and yet the conversation was not uninteresting, to either of them. He said nothing about feelings now - there was no need for that - and she was glad. And she in her turn let her guard down completely, and spoke to him frankly, and with great intimacy. Was that affection in her voice, he thought, or was he only imagining it. So this is what he is truly like, she thought, how I have wanted and missed this all these years. And her heart softened toward him, and he grew in his boldness. He did not leave until late, until the moon hung over both of them in the night sky, its halo spreading outward in the darkness, but insufficient and barely lifting the darkness off her trees, and his waves. I must be going now, he finally said. Now? Must you?, she asked, and though she tried to make the sadness in her voice sound as if she were only mocking, pretending at sadness, he saw clearly in her expression that she must mean it, or at least a part of it. And for a moment he felt what it must be like, this moment expanded into decades, into centuries - what it must feel to be loved by her, to be looked at in that way every morning, a look that dissipated the night and was the Sun before the Sun rose, filling him with an energy which would take him through the rest of the day. And his heart was filled with such joy at the possibility that he shivered, the waves rising higher behind him. Then her expression was once more its old cast, one friend to another, revealing nothing. Yes, he said, turning, goodnight - I will see you tomorrow.

That night after he had left she did not sleep. One of the winds dropped by, but she was in no mood for conversation, and soon it left, flying off to the North to join its companions, leaving her in a pensive mood. She sat, deep in thought like this all night, an inscrutable expression on her face. The time passed quickly. And then it was dawn, and a pale light on the horizon announced the coming of the Sun. Can Islands cry? Or was it only the spray from the waves, carried to her eyes by the flippant sea breezes?

In the morning he had to stop himself from going to her immediately. But when the Sun was at its midpoint waystation in its journey across the sky, he could bear it no longer. He set out.

As soon as he arrived he noticed how things had changed, how this day would not be the same as the previous one. It was not that any physical thing had changed - it was only that there was a new taste to the air, a tautness between them where before there had been a warm, affectionate space. Her eyes would not meet his. They sat in awkward silence for a while - he could not think what to say. And then she began to speak, softly, her voice like the wind. You know, she told him, I was not always an Island. And he looked at her, and her eyes were sparkling. Oh, he said. Once upon a time, she said, there were Lands all around me. And they kept me warm, and were my friends. We had such good times together. Oh, he said. Lands makes the best lovers, you know, she said, they are so gentle, and so kind. And he saw where she was headed with this, what she wished to say to him, and his heart sank - deep, deep to the Sea floor. And he would have turned then and left and never returned, but for something in him which hardened in that moment, that made him feel a flash of anger. Let her complete it, then, and then he would tell her his mind, and then he would leave. She was looking off into the distance with a wistful look in her eyes, and she saw none of this. I am betroth to one, you know, she said, and there was a strain in her voice, a different timbre, the slightest hint of a tremble, and he loved me deeply. I am sure he roams the world still, searching for me. One day we shall meet… And she stopped. Then he prepared to speak, and he looked into her eyes, and what he saw there shocked him. She remembered nothing, her whole story was a lie, a fabrication. Or perhaps, he thought, more charitably, a dream. Yes, a dream, her eyes seemed to confirm, and he felt the anger in his heart subside. And he said to her, I am sure he is. And he said, I must go now. Very well, she said, and he thought there was a little coldness in her manner, as if they were already proper strangers again. He looked back at her as he left. He will come - I am sure he will, if you only wait. Thank you, she said, and she smiled at him, and in her face was a sadness so deep, so profound, it seemed to originate from a place within her that no one could reach.

They never saw each other again.

He reads over what he has written. He does not like it. It has a few good sentences, but he is not happy with the way it turned out. Or the line about the underside of love being sadness and sorrow - it paints him as too much of a cynic, makes him look cold and unaffectionate. He had not known how it would end, but he had assumed it would be a happy ending, that the fumbling, inept Sea would get the girl (or the City, as it were). And they would be happy together. But man proposes, and the plot disposes, he thinks wryly, and the thought makes him smile.

But he does not give up. The next day he is at it again immediately after work, sitting in his bed, leaning against a pillow propped up behind him, the laptop open in front of him. He thinks, I will write a word-painting of Banjul. Descriptions of sights and sounds and smells, a recreation on paper of my experience. A description in which the City will be the main character, instead of a person:

The chsss of fish being fried on an open charcoal stove, a furr-noe. A blind man walks through the streets, loudly singing prayers and asking for money through a megaphone, the sound announcing him before he ever turns onto a street. The Sun is bright, so bright - there is not a cloud to be seen in the sky. And where the Sun goes life follows: young half-naked boys playing football on the streets, the kids at daara, yelling out the Arabic harraf after a teacher, who reads it from a board in a sing-song voice…

He stops. He does not know how to continue. The sentences are too loose, too disconnected - in all the best writing one sentence leads to another almost as if from natural consequence, brother-sentences and sister-sentences, all lined up, all connected. But this - it does not have the right… feel to it. When he reads it it is merely a collection of words, giving rise to no form, a body made of clay but lacking the breath which is the difference between life and non-life, successful writing and unsuccessful.

That night his walk is different, and not entirely enjoyable. He has abandoned Independence drive, and walked deep into the heart of the City. Streetlights at irregular intervals, half of them flickering on and off, the other half not being even on… The shadows are filled with a heavy menace, feeling somehow more *real* than the objects and people casting them… As if the shadows came first, moulded out of the darkness at the beginning of Time by a Creator who worked without illumination, and then the objects, the people - a tree, a house, a person passing by - came after, a product of the shadows and the way the light fell on them… The heat is stifling - he walks at a fast pace to get home, to his room and his bed, into the tender hands of sleep… He feels flustered, his skin itches. But when he goes home he thinks, this is as well an aspect of the City - its deep, dark, hidden interior. He thinks, Let me try writing about it. And though he is not in the mood he opens his laptop and begins:

But the night has many aspects, and takes many forms. The darkness is an oppressive presence from an adjacent World, seeping into the city through the gutters and the steaming pot-holes, spreading like night through the streets. And where it goes failure follows it, heat and mosquitoes follow it, electric lights go off as if snuffed out, televisions fall silent, their light extinguished, no longer reflected on the faces of the enraptured viewers in the rooms of the city; there is the occasional loud cry of dismay, the rare saaga ndey, but the spread of the darkness is marked principally with a silence, as at a wake, the city itself the corpse, all the men and women and children on it marking its passing, by now used to this; even the streetlights fall under the advance of the darkness - nothing can survive its passage. There is no moon tonight - when he looks up the sky is full of stars, pinpoints of light in the night, and they look old, balls of fire traveling across great distances and bearing the malevolent motive of their creator, part of a grand design which includes him but over which he has no control… an approach toward an abyss, an inability to turn, to even look away, for a moment… The air above him presses down on his shoulders, and it is a weight that has always been there, yet he is only just noticing it… shapes loom out of the darkness and turn out to be little boys… a man throws a shadow the size of a midget… He passes a street where one lone streetlight is on, and under it stands a bent old man, and on his face there is an expression that makes him shudder and walk on, thinking of suicides, the end of emotion… Men stand in consort with each other, waiting to rob and murder him - when he comes up close it is a group of children, who do not even seem to be with each other - lone walkers through the City in the dark - yet who knows what they are capable of? What was age after all - sidestepping what he imagines are holes in the ground he is filled with feelings that cannot quite manage to become sighs, so heavy are they with the knowledge of the futility of all things, a kind of anti-emotion… he sees blood, and how it has been spilt… men have died here, and women too. He thinks of the city, he thinks of a jealous man living amongst his brothers, one day in a fit of rage killing them all, one after the other. Afterward an Island, drifting alone through the waters of the world. Forever marked and cursed: slaves marching through marshy ground, mud on their cracked feet, a rotting smell in the air… furtive dealings in the darkness (which was much older than he had thought at first, so old it could be tasted, with just a little effort). A reaching out… an attempt at empathy: not jealousy, after all, on the brother's part, but only a fierce need to be needed… the beginnings of a faint hope, of the arrival of a savior, a messiah - but too late - the curse uttered: the Island's children wailing, its muezzins with terrible braying voices, cracked with sleep and hunger (or perhaps a tiredness, at faithful who never answered the call anymore, emptying mosques and emptier collection boxes)…. A future of dust, and sand, a great drought; or failing that water, a great drowning; or failing that man falling upon man, a great war… Arguments on the streets turning into fights as easy as night falling - brutish ugly fights involving shattered vimto bottles and exposed jugulars, screwdrivers and slender necks, knives and eyes… All who can have escaped, to Kotu, to Brusubi - for what is left here? Death and ruination, shattered dreams, youth grown old and impotent, and painfully aware of how badly it has failed - yet still holding on to one last hope, one last dream of an old toubab woman, descending from the skies, desiring only love, and in return ready to give the world and everything in it… A heat which burned everything it touched, yet did not consume it…

He stops. He is filled with gloominess - it infects him, it infects his thought and his writing. In the past he has discovered the seeds of essays and short stories in a certain controlled kind of melancholy - but always they have turned out in the end hopeful (or at least beginning to approach that), always they have made him feel better, that things are not so bad after all. But tonight he cannot seem to write anything else - he sees the inevitable doom inherent in all things, he sees it clearly and he can see nothing else. He thinks he will stop writing. He thinks if his pen can write nothing good then better not to write at all.


For some reason - perhaps the quality of the night, its restorative abilities - he feels much better in the morning. He is in a playful mood. In the shower he gets an idea - what if for the final attempt he subverted the language of a tourist information brochure, used it for his needs. He would set up the outward facing side of Banjul, and in a running commentary show the actual reality, a sort of side by side comparison. After his shower he goes to his room and gets his laptop, too excited to go eat some breakfast first:

Known as the smiling coast of Africa, The Gambia is one of the most peaceful developing countries on the continent. [A smile, to start with - evoking warmth, and happiness. Choose 'developing' over 'developed', the former continuous and active, the latter a stagnant state, self-satisfied, unmoving - and speak also about peace, our greatest strength. Note to self: revisit theme of peace later on. He debates whether to keep using the official-but-absolutely-detestable "The Gambia", or what Gambians actually call it: "Gambia". Finally he decides to let the "The" stay - he does not want to confuse tourists.]. Its people are warm and genuinely kind, and its cuisine one of the best in the World: from our famous mbahal bu tilim (with diwtirr added), to our delectable Domoda Yaapa (with diwtirr added). [Perhaps there was too much diwtirr here - perhaps it wasn't necessary to mention, a superfluous piece of information. But no - how could mbahal or domoda be complete without diwtirr, and adding it to the foods gives them a certain exoticness, he imagined, to a foreigner who could not speak Wolof, and did not know what "diwtirr" really meant.]

And at the heart of the smiling coast lies the most beautiful city in the world: Banjul, formerly known as Bathurst, formerly known as Banjulo. [He likes the idea of using all three names linked together - it seems sort of a condensed history of the Island, and he thinks it sounds rather poetic.] A lively but quaint [quaint presenting our old, in-need-of-reconstruction buildings as simply a beauty that has aged, and aged well too - tourists *love* that kind of thing… lively to show that age did not necessarily mean boring - to assure them that if they were the partying kind they would have plenty of places to go] Island located on the Atlantic Ocean [was it the Atlantic Ocean? He had to check] Banjul was originally known as Bathurst, and started out as a British guardpoint to intercept slaveships attempting to enter the ocean. So you could say it had humble but honorable beginnings. ["humble but honorable'. He liked that. But would "honorable but humble" have worked better? No, no, didn't sound as good]. As the main focal point for the fight against slavery, Banjul played a very important part in the eventual abolition of the practise. [OK enough about the slave trade - he might start sounding like he is on the attack, and if there is one things toubabs hate it is being reminded about a past in which they were not humane and did not act in a noble fashion - best to start a new paragraph, leave all the bad business behind us, where it belongs]

Home to a population of about 60,000 people [ people ends too quickly and ends the rhythm of that part - it needs an adjective in front of it to adjust the sound. He tries "beaming locals", but it sounds vaguely insulting (evidence of idiocy even). Finally he leaves people in, and makes a note to think of something later] Banjul is right next to the Atlantic Ocean, and as a result is much cooler than many other African cities [not an untruth exactly - he is sure there are at least *some* African countries is less hot than]. The Gambia is known for its hospitality - the inhabitants of Banjul are extremely hospitable and friendly. We defy you to see a frowning face. [? As in, excuse me are you trying to make this whole thing entirely unbelievable? Ah - doesn't hurt to exaggerate here and there - it is to be expected, after all].

At the center of Banjul there is a large, bustling market called "Marche Banjul", where you can everything from dried bonga fish (a great local delicacy - we urge you to try it) to new sandals (locally known as "nyamba" and very useful for playing football on the beach). [ Good, good - everything interlinked, one thing leading to another - let's see if we can maintain this tone…]

Because of the size of Banjul - neither so large that your neighbors are strangers, nor so small that everyone knows everyone else by first name - people often walk to places. The Sun does get a little warm sometimes though, so we advise you to stack up on suntan lotion [is it 'sun lotion' or 'suntan lotion'? He'll have to look that up] and umbrellas [the thought of a toubab walking around with an umbrella under the hot sun, peering shortsightedly at all these locals who look exactly alike makes him smile.] If you are in a rush you can grab one of the taxis that patrol the streets, painted in a bright yellow and green. There is a fixed rate for traveling to anywhere within Banjul [should he mention town trips? Would that be too much detail?]. In addition you get to share your ride with three bona fide Banjulians, exchanging smells and words as you travel to your destination. [Attempt at a joke - would it work? Is it too crude, too unsubtle? But then again toubabs would laugh at anything.]

Other cities have open-air fruit markets, in one destination you have to go to no matter how far away you live. In Banjul we have Peul (one of the local tribes, known for their hunting and cattle-rearing prowess, now the Invisible Hands of the Gambian Commerce) [casting the Peul as mythic - toubabs love mythic] who wander the streets with wheelbarrows, hawking whatever is in season. In the mood for a quick apple? Grab one from a passing Peul at a very reasonable price. (Super Traveler Hint: Never buy a thing at the price stipulated. Haggle over everything, even if it is free to start with). [OK - much better than the first joke, even made him smile. But enough jokes now - we want these people to take us seriously and start buying tickets and booking hotels.]

In addition Banjul has a beach which is one of most beautiful in Africa. Its glistening sands are soft and warm to the touch, as you walk there in the evening, looking out at the Sea and the Sun which has lost its fire, and floats there helpless and hopeless, looking out at a World about to be engulfed in darkness… [Alright, alright - enough of the corn. Too much darkness. Must remove that particular sequence when I edit - but leave it in for now.] The beach is at most a 15-minute walk from anywhere in Banjul, and affords a peaceful location to just chill, or play football with the locals. [He still has a problem with the word "locals" for some reason - maybe it's because in Wolof "local" meant a hillbilly?] Be sure to bring back a pair of shorts. [Should he say something about bikinis? He has never seen anyone in a bikini at the Banjul beach - does this mean it's a great taboo?]

He stops writing. He does not like it. It attempts to be too clever, it has deviated from his original goal of setting it up as a portrait of the difference between outward-facing Banjul (the heart of the smiling coast, the bush taxis and tourist market, the rides in coasters high than any other car on the road, viewing platforms and sunglasses, beaming smiles and digital cameras flashing…) and inner Banjul (the houses with corrugated fences which leant further and further to the ground every year, the houses that flooded during the time of heavy rains, the forgotten youth, finding solace in gaanja and Baye Faal, the women in their worn T-shirts and much-used malaans, selling ice on the street, everyone together on a vessel which travelled with them inside it through time, and they all held hands and lived and fought and loved and hoped that one day in the not-so-desperate future the vessel at last would land at its location, and they would all unboard, and then what? No one knows - that is what hope is). He gives a heavy sigh, and looks at his laptop screen. He cannot write about the City yet - he is not ready. He thinks it the best City in the world, deep inside him he has no doubts. But he cannot show this yet to another person, he does not yet possess the words for it, or even if he does he does not know how to wield them, bring them together in the correct configuration. He is not yet that good a writer. With time this will change. One day he will wake up in the morning and hear the calls of "Serekunda! Serekunda!" from the nearby road, he will go out onto the street dressed in shorts and an undershirt, completely un-self-conscious, he will say "Asalamu Aleikum" to the merr passing, on their way to the market and they will ask after his mother, he will see the kids from Gambia High buying Mburoe Pompiterr and Mburoe Omelette, joking and teasing each other, he will see the fitters in their garage, one beneath a car while the others pass him tools, he will see the Serers next door at their washtubs, washing clothes for the whole street. He will stop for a moment and breathe in the air of Banjul, Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide, Gutters and Rotten Fish, Fried Fish and Chicken, Thuyi Diwliin, Thuyi Diwtirr, Netetu, Gehja, the fragrances the women put on in their houses before they leave in the morning, this and a hundred other smells. And he will know he is ready, and he will go back inside and show Banjul to the world, as he and all the other people who live here see it.

Returning Home #3: Of Mothers

You have had dealings with other women. You have held them, and they have held you, and they have whispered in your ear how much they love you. And you look at this woman, your mother, and though she has never said those three words to you, you see quite clearly: no woman in the world will ever love you like her again. Though you were to meet all the women in the world, though you were to seduce (or be seduced by) all of them.

The other men you know, your friends, all swear by their mothers. When they are angry, when they fight, it is each others' mothers they curse. It has always seemed a bit like posturing to you, when they speak about all they will do for their mothers, once they have the money. And so you have tried, when you are alone, to understand your own feelings for yours. Their roots deep within you, the first person you ever felt anything for. Yet not quite emotions, not exactly. Seeming to exist in a previous state. It occurs to you that what we start with, what exists before emotion, has no name. Only: it is strong, and it is wild, and we barely have any control over it. And it is out of this uncontrollable product of our hearts, this raw material, that we forge what we call emotions, shapes we can recognize, feelings we can begin to describe. The connection between you and her exists in this pre-emotional state. You will go out into the world, and you will come back home, and always it will be waiting, while she yet has breath in her (and you cannot even begin to think about the alternative, coming home to not find her there, you are not yet, perhaps never will be, equipped for such grief…). So when the other men speak of their mothers, you are silent. There are things we hide within us, jealously guarding them, never sharing them with anyone. When you are feeling scientific you attempt to explain it to yourself. The bond between mother and child, how you grew up inside her for three-fourths of a year. But most days you are happy without an explanation, happy only to sit next to her, and talk. To listen to her speak, your mother, how she laughs when you crack a joke. Leaning over you, putting her hand on your shoulder. Moving with a lightness through the world that you have seldom seen in the men of the country, the proud rulers of their homes, full of faida. And you think, even as you grow into a Gambian man, how you would like to be more like her. But you think this in the same way a Gamo-kat speaks about being more like the holy Prophet. An attempt - nothing more - to reach heights you know you will never be able to, levels of goodness-of-heart you cannot even begin to comprehend how to achieve…

Sitting on your bed, she asks you a question, something about your life away. An illness you had suffered from in your absence, and how you battled it. And then she said, but it's over? And you said yes, and she nodded, and then she looked down at the clothes she was folding. Just like that - a nod, a look between you, that lasted only a second.
But in that second you knew. You saw it clearly written on her face, and you did not know how you had missed it, all these years. For what you saw in her face was a special specie of kindness, self-sacrificing, wholly given without expecting reciprocation - no more and no less than that. Later you would expand the act, break it apart into its constituent elements, add degrees to it. But in that moment you did not need to - it was as if the whole of human nature was written in that look, and if this were true you saw how there was hope for humanity after all. In their sermons Imams spoke about the wrath of God, and the wide expanse of its devastation. They spoke of how in the night God looked on the Earth, and saw the evil in men's hearts, and raised His mighty hand to destroy it, destroy all of creation that brought Him such displeasure, once and for all. But then, in His omniscience, God saw a Waaliyu, a holy man, a saint, standing atop a prayer mat, prepared to spend the whole night worshipping his God. And God saw this, and because of this man He delayed the coming of His wrath upon the world, and all of creation was saved once more. You always liked this story, this idea of God taking pity on Man, because of one man's actions. The earth's savior, unknown and unthanked, alone in his room bowing down before God, not knowing what power he held, to alter fate, to waylay destiny. But you think they got one part wrong. You think it wasn't a man praying that God saw. It was a Gambian mother, in bed, tired from a day's work, tired from buying firewood and tending the fire, from cooking and cleaning and washing the clothes and taking them out to dry and the million other things it takes to run a home, and still having time to raise the children. To love them as they ought to be loved. In your version of the story, this is what God saw, and what stayed His hand.

It has always puzzled you, the gender debate that has sprung up around the issue of women in Gambian society, and their position in relation to men. Women are weak, men are superior to them, almost everyone you talk to tells you, man and woman alike. And you think, this must be a very peculiar form of inferiority, for a moment you think, perhaps I do not understand what the word means after all. For in all the years you have lived in this country you have never seen a single woman complain about the work she does in the house, for her husband and her children. You still find this hard to believe, when you think about it. You can imagine yourself, for one day, taking on the duties of the house. You would sweep the floors of all the rooms, and later wash them. You would get into the kitchen, and on your knees on the dirt floor, eyes stinging, light a fire to cook lunch on. You would go to the market, and buy what little you could afford on the small depaas you had been given. And, because this was only for one day, you would do all this without a word. When your husband came home, and complained about how much salt was in the food, you would take it with grace and silence (though looking closely someone would be able to see just how brittle your smile had become, just how close to breaking). One day, you would repeat to yourself, it is only for one day. But you cannot, even in your most charitable moments, imagine doing this all your life, as the days turned into months, the months into years... Every single day, come rainy season or dry, come a chill breeze or the dusty harmattan. You think about what depths of unselfishness it must take, what mastery over one's ego. Doing everything one did, without expecting praise or payment - and for what? You do not understand - what's in it for them, you think over and over, and you can never come up with an answer. And before you ever ask her, this woman, your mother, you realize just how foolish the question is, how foolish and ridiculous, like asking 'when is the moon coming to dinner?'. It is a question that will make no sense to her. And you think about your own self, and how selfish you are. How you want every good action you do to be recognized, to be praised. How even when you claim to people you are modest, and do not want their praise, still in a secret part of yourself you hope they will not stop, they will continue to confirm what you have always believed about yourself and your own talent. What inferiority then, you ask yourself. Certainly not that of character - and what else should a man (or woman) be judged by?

Nights of insomnia, days of grouchiness and an over-bright Sun. You lie in bed in the dark and think, I have never shown her how much all she does means to me. You think, all these years I have taken her for granted, and never thanked her for anything. The best things in our lives we seldom notice, until it is too late, until they are gone… And then what heartache we feel, what regret. Once you saw a mother pleading with two paras. Her son in a knife fight, someone called them. They came to pick him up. She was one of the most quarrelsome women on your street, known for her razor-sharp tongue and her raunchy wit - all the men of the street fearing her. Yet there she stood before the para - who looked younger than her own son - and about her waist her headwrap was tied, and her hands were clasped, and she was almost on her knees. My son, she said, you know I would not do this, it is only youth. Please forgive him - please do not take him away. And the para, resolutely refusing her pleas, and the look of increasing desperation in her eyes. The way she tried to catch their eyes with hers, and the way they continually looked away, so she would not succeed. And you knew why: what you saw in her eyes made you want to forgive every crime her son had ever committed, on her word alone. And for a moment you felt what it must be like. A part of yourself, grown within you. A creature completely dependent on you, helpless, unable to feed itself, or walk, or do anything on its own. The only child in all of creation, the first and the last, the most beautiful thing in the world. Nights filled with its screaming, as red-eyed you sang to it to calm it down. All your days centered around it, sleeping only when it slept, eating only after it had been fed. Its cry getting you on your feet and running to where it was before it ever reached your brain, perhaps even before you had quite heard it… All the sacrifices you had to make, for its welfare - and yet every single one of them worth it, when holding it in your arms it looked at you and grinned - pink gums, eyes crinkled up, face so tiny… Growing up so fast - the first days at school, the scabbed knees and dirty shorts, beginning to discover a world outside of the one you had constructed for it so meticulously, beginning to explore its possibilities. Able at last to stand on its own, yet not ready, never ready, to leave - the world filled with shadows, and dangers, and a cruelty which would crush it - your fears, your worries, wishing you could live its life for it, absorb all the pain alloted to it, all the sorrow that awaited it in the future, and you would suffer it all gladly so it could live, so it could be happy, and nothing would ever mar that happiness…

Lately you have begun to think about writing an essay about your mother, and your relationship with her. How could you write about returning home, after all, without including the person without whom home would not exist, the heart of home, its pulse felt through your life no matter how far you went; and its skin, spread out so it could hold everything and everyone together, no matter what. The best person you have known in your life. But every time you try to get started, every time you sit before your laptop and open a fresh page, you come up with nothing, words fail you. Perhaps, you think, I am not a writer of sufficient skill - perhaps a better writer could do it without even thinking. But the last time you try, looking at the icons on your computer screen, you think, that is not true. For there are things that cannot be written down, that cannot be explained. For sometimes words are not enough, fall just short of the uses to which we would like to put them. And so you close your computer, and you walk away from it. You go into your mother's room, and you sit down on the floor, and lean against a wall. She is sitting on the bed, listening to the BBC world service, the radio held up close to her ear, a look of concentration on her face as she attempts to decipher the words over the static. She turns to you where you sit. Come, she tells you, patting the bed next to her and smiling, get off the floor and come sit next to me.

Returning Home Part 2: Of Age & Time

He walks beside the old woman, down the street - her escort. She walks slowly, laboriously, each footstep seeming to take forever by his reckoning. Because he is young, and life for him is speed, the never-ending rush to somewhere, anywhere, the perpetual next moment. He forces himself to slow down with her, and he does as long as he is thinking about it. But sometimes his thoughts wonder, and he walks ahead. Only to suddenly miss her by his side, only to turn and find her a distance behind him. Her back bent, her gaze on the ground as she measures each part of the road before ever she puts her foot down on it.

They sit on benches side by side - the old woman and the old man they have come to visit - and talk. He sits between them, closer to the old man. She talks about trips to Tunis, riding in boats and the backs of cows, nights in Mecca lying on prayer mats with no pillows, getting zam-zam from a well. The cruelty of the Arabs. How 500 dalasis could take you and bring you back, and still leave you with change to spare, to go shopping with. He fills in the pauses in her story with interjections. Allahu Akbar. Laa Illaha Illalah. Hm! Chey! And he sits there and their words fall all about him, and into him and through him, and in the distance there is the call to prayer being broadcast over a mosque's PA system, and he feels age - not old, not advanced in years like these people he sits between - no, he feels age itself, like the aether, and it is all around him, and it is a slight heaviness in the air and it is in the slow ponderous way they speak, and it is in the way their voices are distorted by their fallen mouths, how their words are measured, how they speak a wolof without slang, untainted by terms from other languages. He has never been in the presence of age like this, has never noticed the way it creeps after him and follows him everywhere he goes, like death, like time. It fills him with a feeling of awe - he has felt like this before only in mosques and at religious gatherings, or in the presence of great art. One day, he thinks, I will be like this. And it occurs to him that these two will be dead, long before then, transformed and no longer themselves.

Again they are out on the street. She asks him to walk her to the hospital. Now the rhythm of his footsteps has become aligned with hers, his heartbeat slowed. One step…. then another… the distance before them seeming never-ending. All urgency gone, a world slowed down. Or rather, the passage through it, the world itself a still thing, a thing of permanence. And in this slower rhythm he discovers a new understanding of time. It captures his imagination. Right at the end, how it is stretched out, how it is no longer a river, flowing, but honey dripping from a spoon. A little left on the tip, and then there will be nothing more, hanging in space. Subject to the vagaries of gravity.

And then there is the other kind of time, the kind between people, existing in the space between them. Again and again she asks him: how long have you been away? And when he tells her she holds her mouth. That long! It seemed only yesterday, when we took you to the airport! And he feels the same way about his time there too - it has seemed to pass in a flash, condensed by a trick of memory into a short series of instances, a place here, a person there, an experience, a thing he has touched, a food he has eaten, an embarrassment he has endured. These are all the artifacts of the three years he has spent abroad, a summary of time. A shortening. What is long, what seems to have taken forever, is the time that exists between them, in a hidden place neither of them are able to observe or scrutinize, except cursorily. This time-between will not be condensed or summarized: it is all the experiences he has missed, all the things that have happened at home in his absence. In conversation people will sometimes tell him of one of these things. Did you hear about such and such happening? Were you aware that so and so died - ndeysaan! So and so got married, so and so's house was sold, and he was evicted. But these are mere drops of water from the ocean he knows he cannot ever submerge himself in again, because it exists only in the memories of those who were here and not away, those who were present for its enactment. This curious (and sometimes merciful, and sometimes maddeningly frustrating) quality of life: that once we have passed a point we can no longer go back to it, that we can never visit a place as it was at a time in the past.

And he thinks, too, about death. (All these thoughts about time have put him in a melancholy mood). He looks at her walking, how old she is, he looks at her sitting, stooped over, her face weathered and worn with the years, her dentures clicking as she laughs. And he thinks, who will be here on my return. Who will be here, and who will be gone. And he thinks, there are people I am seeing now that I will never see again. And he resolves to take each experience he has in this place, to crystallize it and hold it in his head, store it in the deepest caves of his memory where they will forever be preserved. So in the future he will have them to console him. And he knows he will fail at this, he thinks of all the time memory has failed him in the past, how walking past people now they greet him and he does not remember their names, and has to mumble something in reply. His memory will fail, and all that will remain in its place will be grief, and he does not know how he will be able to handle it when the time comes, how other people have lived through it, people who have lost their family, and their friends. He thinks perhaps it would be easier to be the lost one, that the grief would belong to others, that the weight would be theirs to bear.


Crossing the street she is timid, the process of looking left, then right, then walking across the road - something he does every day without thought - slowed down to almost painful meter. Rude taxi drivers honk their horns as they pass. A lone streetlight looks down on the scene, and under it sit the cherreh sellers and the sellers of oranges, their wheelbarrows before them. She greets everyone they pass sitting down. Jaamangenam. Is there peace with you? Perhaps a greeting adapted from the salaam of Islam. Or perhaps - as he prefers to think - one dating back to pre-Islamic times, rooted deep in the past of the culture, this seeking after peace. Jaamangam. Jaama Rek. Mbaa Jaama Nga Fanaanor? Aaga Jamm. Jaama Jamm. It occurs to him that there exists a national pre-occupation with peace, in the same way other nations seek after success, or happiness. We have nothing, but we have peace - how many times has he heard this said. And how many times has he dismissed it as the last refuge of a desperate people, unable to claim anything else as their own. Yet now walking down this road with the old woman, he begins to get an inkling of what it means. The first glimmer of understanding, the beginnings of an epiphany. For Jaama is more than just a state - as peace is - it is a quality, possessed by the lucky, which allows one to move with lightness through the world. Jaama with the neighbors, jaama with friends, jaama with family. Jaama with strangers on the street. And the ones who practise it - for like kindness it is not only possessed, it also must be acted upon - best, at their funerals people will say: Kee ku baah la worn - amorn jaama ak ñep. He wonders if this will ever be said of him. He feels suddenly, inexplicably as if this epitaph is the most important thing he can achieve while he is still alive. That in the end nothing else will, could ever, matter.


When he takes her home she fumbles with the key at her door, before finally getting it open. She takes an age to climb the step, and he stands waiting, and he does not feel a shred of impatience. He follows her into the living room, watches as she takes off her kaala and drapes it over the couch, takes a deep drink from the water cooler she filled before they left. She wipes her mouth, and sighs, and looks at him. She remarks on the rejuvenating qualities of water. And then he takes his leave. Goodnight, she replies, using the English word. Let me lock my door - there are so many mad people in Banjul. He leaves her laughing at her own joke, and as he walks down the street he thinks he can still hear it, and it arouses in him a feeling he cannot quite describe, though it is fierce, and it is passionate, and it seems to have no source nor any goal. A kind of melancholy, a kind of happiness.

My Life as a Kabaa Eater (tentative title. Other tentative titles: "How I learnt to Stop Worrying and Eat Some Kabaa.", "In America they call it candy

My preferred way of eating kabaa is with my fingers, while pacing frenetically in the backyard and thinking random thoughts (such as the ones that I'm writing now). The kabaa - along with the solom-solom, the gurun-soup, the flocks, the mborkha-bu-laka, etc. - are our version of candy/the American snack ("our version of" here not used in the sense of having a derivative product, since kabaa definitely is not a copied and changed version of candy, but rather used in the sense of two products used in the same fashion in different cultures, neither of which take precedence or claim originality over the other). Sucking on a kabaa seed it struck me how different our "candy" is from the ones in the West (and again we see the factory-ization that is a theme I have been visiting again and again lately): over there candy (and by candy here I mean all dispensed products, from bottles of coke to Pringles to those little groundnut bags) is created in factories, where programmed mechanical arms put them in bags and label them with, among other things, their caloric content and what ingredients went into their making. These are then sealed into boxes and transported in their thousands to giant warehouses, from whence they move to supermarkets and vending machines. In contrast, our "candy" grows on trees and is harvested and bought by old women, who sit outside school gates and at street junctions haggling over their price with customers. There are no laws (health of otherwise) which the producers of this "candy" have to follow (and here again I take a detour to talk about the issue of consumer trust: all over the Gambia there are men and women selling all kinds of food - from the narr selling yaapa-bu-laka ("forokh chaaya" to some of you) to the peul selling taapa-laapa - though there is a health department that is in charge of regulating all these food-selling places, it rarely does anything, except in the most egregious cases - instead we have an implicit trust in all these people to stay healthy and not, for example, cut open our bread right after they finish wiping their noses. Despite the occasional horror story about razors being found in taapa-laapa, e.g., the system works surprisingly well - there is rarely a case of food poisoning (whether because we have developed stronger immune systems a more qualified person will have to tell us) and everything goes along relatively smoothly). And while over there the end of the line is a food dispenser, programmed to work without human intervention (and, the melodramatic novelist in me wants to add: cold, distant, austere), here it is the aforementioned old woman, experimentally cutting open your kabaa for you to see if it is bad, or turning your mborkha on the charcoal fire to prevent it getting burnt (interesting-but-useless-fact-about-the-author: I actually prefer some of my mborkha to be burnt in this way - there is to me something satisfying about scraping off this black burnt crisp and chewing on it - this makes me understand at an instinctual level why people suffer from pica, eating ash, or chalk, or clay).

The kabaa's preparation is as important as its consumption. Novice (or just lazy) kabaa buyers will leave the details of the mixing (aside to the uninitiated: kabaa in its virgin form is usually a sour, almost-juiceless fruit - a mixture of sugar, salt, etc. are needed to flavor the kabaa and bring out its juices, and allow one to eat it without the mouth-tightening which is the visible result of sourness) to the kabaa seller (who usually has a mixture of sugar, pepper and salt in a plastic container ready for just such events), who adds a smidgen of this mixture to the kabaa with his knife and stabs again and again into the kabaa, introducing along with the stabs a swirling motion meant to imitate the motion of a mixing finger (one of the disadvantages of having the kabaa seller do it for you: a knife just can't reach into the inner recesses of the kabaa like a well-aimed finger can. Plus you can't lick and suck on a sugar-covered knife). And so the better way to do it is to take the kabaa home, and cut it open, and carry out the mixing ritual, yourself. The downside to this of course is that if the kabaa is a bad one (in my experience about one in every forty or so kabaas turns out irrecoverably bad (recoverably bad is when the badness is limited to just the top of the kabaa, so you can cut it out with a knife and enjoy the rest; irrecoverably bad is when the badness has spread throughout the kabaa like a disease, so all you can do is throw it away)) you have to either take it back to the kabaa seller to have it replaced, or, if they're located too far away, throw it in the bin and curse the waste of money (speaking of which, the price of kabaa has gone up quite a bit in the last two years - whereas two years ago it cost a dalasi for a small one, and five dalasis for a big one, now the starting price of big ones is ten dee and the smaller ones cost pound (hip nongo slang for currency: pound = five dalasi; sugu-fem = twenty-five; arch = hundred (geddit? arch as in the Arch which adorns the hundred dalasi note. Don't ask me what sugu-fem means)). Anyways so once the kabaa is opened (with a knife - as in when cutting open an orange you must make the lower part larger, and the upper part smaller, giving a cover and a main part - this is just one of those things everyone does automatically, which just seems to be the right thing, and does not need rationalizing), one then has a selection of condiments to add. Sugar is the most common, with a dash of salt on the side to add a hint of, well, saltiness. It is by no means the only possible combination however: I have seen people who prefer just salt; or just sugar; or sugar and salt and pepper; or salt and pepper; or any of the above but with jumbo added as well (I myself am not a big fan of jumbo in kabaa, which is funny because I liberally apply maggi sauce to every rice dish I eat, yet adding even a little jumbo to my kabaa leaves me feeling faintly nauseous). Instead of working within the confines of the kabaa shell there are some who prefer instead to offload the whole thing to a cup (including the skin, of which more later), which gives them more space to maneuver but abstracts a little from the mother-naturey feel of the whole exercise - these are also the people who will, after they have finished mixing the kabaa this way, put it in the fridge to have it chill a bit before they eat it, a practice frowned upon by kabaa purists but which I have been guilty of on occasion. (I have heard as well that doing this, and freezing the kabaa, is the only way to get it past US customs, as the whole kabaa - pod and all - seems to pose too much of a threat to national health security (not surprising, given that the kabaa - much as I love it - is not exactly the most good-looking of fruits (that award would probably go to the vain apple, or the frivolous banana). I haven't had occasion to test this yet, though I fear I will soon).

Swallowing kabaa seeds does wonders in the, ahem, fibre department, strengthening (and here I ask the more sensitive readers to skip a line or two - or in fact the rest of this paragraph - before they continue reading) what would perhaps be rather watery in nature, or, at best smearful (as in leaving smears during its passage), leading to some very satisfying, ahem, sessions in the bathroom (there is a palpable sense of relief that follows these sessions - after a particularly good one, one finds oneself feeling lighter, as if divested of a great load (which, in fact, is the case) - this relief is built up over the course of the session in increments, each release of matter increasing one's level of satisfaction, until one is finally done. The solidity of the matter being released is directly proportional to the general feeling of satisfaction and relief one feels - which is where the kabaa comes in: the swallowed seeds mix in with whatever is already in there, adding a firmness and a certain well-roundedness which contributes greatly to the final feeling result).

After one has eaten the seeds there is the skin of the kabaa (skin here having faintly cannibalistic connotations (at least to my, admittedly quite dark, imagination), but don't think of human skin, think of the skin of, say, a banana). The kabaa has a hard casing in which the seeds are contained - coating the inside of this hard coating is an edible skin, which can be scraped off and eaten, either with a spoon, or with the edges of the teeth. This is where the sugar/salt/pepper/jumbo mixture proves it second use, in addition to un-souring the kabaa seeds: by the time all the seeds are gone all is left is the kabaa juice created at the beginning of the exercise. This adds a measure of sweetness/saltiness/jumbo-iness to the skin - while one sucked on then spat out/swallowed the seed, the skin is made for chewing on. There is a certain sourness around its edges, which along with the sugar make for an interesting combination, and one which I would urge you to try if you have not already.

Home is not just a place - it is useful instead to think of it as a construction, a collection of things we have experienced enough times that they become a part of our core identity, and we yearn for them every time we are absent from them. One of these things for me in my construction of Gambia as a home is the house-shaking thunderstorms, which send thrills (thunder! lightning!) through you one moment and then gently send you to sleep the next (the gentle waft of a breeze through an open window, as voices drowned by the rain sounds attempt a conversation in the next room…). Another is the kabaa, and the experience that is eating it - silly as it seems this is one of the things I missed most about home, and is one of the reasons I can't wait to come back for good.

The Mosquitoes

There are our old friends, the mosquitoes. From the first evening, outside on the verandah praying, they make their presence felt. They descend from the skies in ones and twos, and settle daintily, almost fondly onto the bare patches of skin that wait, like fields buried beneath which lie globules of blood, waiting to be harvested. There are two main reactions to the mosquito. First there are the swipers, who cannot sit still for a moment in a mosquito's presence, because even hearing the whine of the insect in the air (or imagining they hear it) sets their skin to crawling. And so they swipe their hands through the air, and clap them together.

These are the two generally agreed-upon and most effective ways to kill a mosquito, apparently: the swipe (a swinging of the forearm through the air to a decided-upon point in the sky, at which point the hand is suddenly clasped closed, the idea being to fool the mosquitoes ("oh look - there - an empty palm facing upward and moving down toward me - I'll just continue flying in its general direction - how could it hurt me"), and then at the crucial moment intercepting their flight path and squashing them flat (or as flat as a mosquito can be, given that it is already so tiny).

The swipe casts a wider net, though its disadvantage is that it leaves you with a palm full of blood and is not as satisfactory as the clap, which is like a sudden sharp shock in the life of the mosquito bringing it to an end (we don't just want our enemies to die, we want them to die painfully, with thunder rolling down from the skies and lightning illuminating the scene and everyone witnessing it). The clap begins as two palms facing each other in the sky (as at the beginning of a clapping motion, hence the name) - the mosquito flies between them like - well like a mosquito really

There is a tale of a pharaoh who, fooled by the excess of his earthly wealth and power, dared challenge the name of God himself. And God, ever patient, said nothing, only watched as he boasted and pounded his chest* and pointed out to his people how God was doing nothing, because he was so great. That night while he slept God sent a mosquito, the tiniest of creatures - it flew and flew, whining all the while, until it reached the sleeping pharaoh. It did not bite** him, oh no, it did something infinitely more cruel: it flew into his ear. The pharaoh (we imagine) awoke with a start, to the whining which seemed to be coming from his very brain. And so the mosquito stayed, driving the pharaoh to madness and eventually death. (At this point in the story the Oustass who was narrating it would point out just how powerful God is, and how He can use even the tiniest creatures (imagine! - a mosquito) to his advantage. There is also in the story a metaphor, in which we replace the pharaoh and the mosquito stands in place for the thousands (millions? are they really that much? the thing about counting mosquitoes is that because they zoom around so fast and are so small there always seem to be an infinitely greater number of them than there are in real life) of mosquitoes that bite us every day.

The mosquitoes in my memory are much larger, their stomachs bloated, basically jars of blood with wings attached, leaving stains on your sheet where you wiped off your hands after killing them. The ones in my room now seem to be much smaller, barely-there mosquitoes, driven this way and that erratically through the air when I put the fan on. When this happens they will fly to a curtain and hang on for dear life, waiting… Why have the mosquitoes shrunk (or, alternatively: why has the mosquito in my memory become enlarged to inhuman (in-mosquito?) proportions).***

The war against the mosquitoes is an ongoing one, fought in backrooms and front rooms and parlors and bedrooms all over the land. In the morning the mosquitoes rest in their stagnant pools of water, so light on its surface they barely cause any ripples, sleeping, gathering energy. At dusk they set out.

[ Or rather the female mosquitoes set out. The males drink nectar, and do not have a thirst for anything else. It is the females who need blood, in order to reproduce. There is something tragic about this: the female mosquito, ready to reproduce, going out in search of an animal to supply it with the only thing left, the missing ingredient: its blood. A dangerous mission, especially if the animal in question is human, a suicidal mission in order to ensure the species continues. The tenacity of mothers everywhere in nature, to bring their offspring into the world and raise them at any cost. After the female mosquito has fed it retires for few days, until it has developed and laid its eggs. And then off it goes again to search for another animal to bite, repeating the cycle. There is something poetic (of the gruesome school of poetry) and moving about this. ]

And in the houses the ritual killing of mosquitoes begins. The first line of defense is the insecticide (Bop, Baygon, Spritex - every house has its favored brand). All the rooms of the house are sprayed, causing noxious fumes which force everyone to go outside for a bit…

…where the mosquitoes are waiting. It is there, sitting outside, that the first battles are fought - the swiping and the clapping, the dodging through the air, the itchy skin, the whining. The spilling of blood. And it lasts all night, or at least until the humans are asleep, lost in their dreams and unable to react. Then the lucky ones, who have survived the onslaught on them - they feed in peace, with sighs of relief (or whatever the mosquito equivalent of a sigh of relief is - perhaps a different pitch to the whining, as their wings slow down and they settle).

Why we hate them of course is the malaria (and also the yellow fever, and the dengue fever, and the exotically-named Chikungunya), something they can never understand. But in Gambia the malaria especially: the weakening of the joints, the fire that threatens to consume you from within. 700 million people infected every year, 2 million dying from it. All from an insect so tiny you can only see its features if you lean in real close and squint.

We dream of exterminating the mosquito, of annihilating it from the face of the earth. The mass extinction of a species that not many people will complain about, or miss. And the mosquitoes? As they lie in their swamps what do they dream? Who knows - but perhaps this: a man, middle-aged and healthy. During the day, while the mosquitoes sleep he goes about his business. He eats good food, and exercises. He goes about his life as normal (while the mosquitoes dream). And then in the night he retires - he goes back into his house. In his room he takes off all his clothes, and lies on his bed naked, and closes his eyes. He stays perfectly still, does not move a finger. And in a minute the mosquitoes, who have been waiting, will descend. In their hundreds, the young and the old, from the closet and the corners of the room where they have been biding their time. And softly, softly, so as not to wake the man from his trance-like state, the only sound the their gentle whining, so softly, they will land on his body. There will be no fighting amongst them, for there will be enough for everyone. And they will feed, they will satiate their thirst, not wasting a drop, not taking a drop more than they will need, their covenant with the man. There will be no swiping, and no clapping. After fifteen minutes they will rise as softly as they descended and in a dark cloud they will leave the room, leave the man where he lies sleeping, a small smile on his face. Perhaps this is what the mosquitoes dream.

* Needless-but-cool-(I think) Aside: The Wolof phrase for pounding one's chest is "foga dayna", which is completely unrelated to mosquitoes but has a certain lyricism and poetry to it - say the phrase to yourself, softly and for a moment you will see a puffed-out chest and a hand pounding on it, and hear the sound it makes.

** the dictionary says mosquitoes bite, but there seems to me an association between bite and teeth within a mouth that mosquitoes do not possess, and so I hesitated at using it here. Sting, perhaps, would work better, though it too has its shortcomings. Perhaps suck. Or, if we're feeling adventurous, feast ("the mosquitoes descended on the man, and feasted upon him as he slept").


*** the cats, too - though the cats have always been different animals: the cats in America are fat and spoilt, protected by law and loving owners. In contrast to our cats, which are lean and look underfed, always kept on the edge by the stone thrown by a bored kid, and the increasingly empty waste bins. Two communities, each hated by the other: "there is a place", the older Gambian cats will tell the younger ones, "where the cats do not believe in God and live decadent lives of over-nourishment. If you do not behave we will send you there" (and in America the opposite story).