by Keisha Bush
“You were fooling around, watching football instead of working?”
Everyone waits for someone else to speak first.
“Answer me!”
“No. W-W-We work,” Caca whimpers.
Ibrahimah stands close by Étienne’s side. He looks over at Marabout’s wooden cane and wishes he could take it and throw it into the ocean. Forever lost. But he wouldn’t dare. The thought of Marabout’s wrath at finding it missing, the mere thought of being caught as the perpetrator, leaves him frozen in fear. The urge to pee is strong and his leg shakes as he tries to hold his bladder.
“You’re responsible for each other. Where is he? There is no way not one of you saw where he went!”
“I don’t know. We waited for him, but he never showed up.”
“You know where he is! I am sure of it. You’re lying! You hide something from me!”
Ahmed’s face contorts in anger. His dark-brown lips press together into a tight, thin line. In one swift move, before anyone can react, he grabs his cane, steps forward, and begins swinging it down onto the group of malnourished bodies before him. It takes a beat before the initial shock of what is happening sets in, but when it does, the group flees in all directions, abandoning their lines.
Ibrahimah is shoved in the scurry and falls to the ground. Beneath the trample of feet, he loses the battle with his bladder. After several minutes of terror, the fatigued potbellied man orders the boys to get out. The mangle of bodies contorting in pain looks up at him with confusion.
“Get out!” Ahmed shouts, spit flying across the hot, stuffy room.
“You sleep outside until Abdoulaye returns, and you make up for his daily payment. If not, you will be beat. Now get out!” he yells, composing himself as if recovering from a fugue state.
Ahmed points the cane toward the front door, then goes to his room without another word and slams his door shut. Outside, they scatter across the tiny front yard in search of an inconspicuous place to lie down. Too sleepy to care, Ibrahimah lowers himself down on the bare earth, next to the front door, and goes to sleep. Mosquitoes and gnats attack throughout the night.
The next week is hard. Abdoulaye is nowhere to be found. Étienne calculates that each of them has to raise an extra fifty francs. Against the protest of the other boys Étienne and Ibrahimah continue to split off from the group during the day, but after Ibrahimah and Étienne return to the parking lot several evenings in a row with enough money to cover Abdoulaye’s quota alone, Fatik and the others stop complaining.
Every night Ahmed demands the whereabouts of Abdoulaye from each of them and every night the answer is the same: indifferent rumbles of “I don’t know.”
“The longer you continue this charade, the longer you will suffer,” Ahmed growls on the ninth night.
Bruised and bloodied with tears staining their cheeks the boys leave the house to sleep outside, the endless questions of Abdoulaye’s whereabouts circling about the group in frustration.
“Where is Abdoulaye?”
“Why do we pay for him to run away?”
“I hear he went back to the village and his family says he can stay.”
“Étienne, what do you think?”
“No Talibé can go back to the village before his marabout says he can return; it’s a disgrace for his family. They can’t keep him if he is not fifteen. If Abdoulaye has gone to the village, he’ll be back soon; he’s only nine,” Étienne says.
“I don’t know where Abdoulaye is, but it would be nice if he came back,” Fatik says dejectedly.
Étienne and Ibrahimah grab their cardboard mats, which they’ve started bringing outside with them, and lie down at the farthest corner of the yard. Étienne produces a ripped piece of cloth Aria gave them to protect their faces against the biting bugs when they told her about Abdoulaye going missing and Marabout’s punishment. Ibrahimah has gotten used to sleeping outside. There is more of a breeze to cool him off as opposed to the stuffy room inside, overrun with bodies. Also, he doesn’t have to worry about Marabout beating him in his sleep or making him stay in his room at night. Ibrahimah hangs his head and pouts when he walks out of the house at night, and it’s only after he lays his mat out under the stars and covers his face and arms with the cloth from Aria that he allows himself to smile.
The front page of Le Quotidien features a small seedy picture of a shoeless foot with a police officer standing nearby. Beneath the picture is a short blurb.
The decomposing corpse of a male child was found two weeks ago with knife wounds to the torso. The police are investigating the situation. No further details are available. If anyone has any information, please contact the authorities.
All across Dakar people are talking about it. It was someone’s uncle, father, brother who stumbled across the body and informed the police.
“It was a grotesque scene.”
“It was not a child but a man.”
“It was two children.”
“No, I heard it wasn’t two children but an entire family that was found dead.”
Every conversation around the matter draws new imagined details. That afternoon an associate of Ahmed’s suggests he go to the police to report his Talibé missing.
“Why didn’t you report the disappearance of your Talibé before today?” the officer asks.
“I supposed the boy had run off and would return once he got hungry,” Ahmed replies.
“Where did the other Talibé last see him?”
“At the stadium, late in the day,” Ahmed says. “There was a football match that day.”
“Would you recognize the boy and be able to identify him?”
“Yes.”
Two hours later Ahmed is staring at a picture of nine-year-old Abdoulaye. Face bloated, skin ashen and gray; empty eyes stare out past him. Ahmed turns around and looks behind him, afraid of what may be lying in wait for him, but nothing is there. He breathes a sigh of relief. Ahmed gives the officer Abdoulaye’s full name, age, village, and parents’ names. It is assumed the boy was kidnapped. His liver, kidneys, and heart were cut from his body. Once the criminals took what they wanted, they discarded his body in a field behind some bushes. Ahmed wipes his sweaty face with his hands. There is no air circulating in the room.
“Is the body buried already?”
“No, the International Police of West Africa insisted on conducting an autopsy as part of the investigation.”
“I can return the body to the boy’s village immediately, if possible.”
“The child’s parents are alive?”
“Yes. Can I claim the body?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the investigator says, getting up to talk with another officer.
Ahmed walks out of the station and hails a taxi. That evening he breaks the news to the boys.
“Abdoulaye is not with us anymore. He is with Allah, where he will receive the blessings of seventy-two virgins,” Ahmed says.
Ahmed paces across the room in front of them. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Ibrahimah frowns.
“Abdoulaye is going to starve with all those girls eating his food,” he whispers to Étienne.
“Boy, hush!” Ahmed growls. “Let this be a lesson to you all. Dakar is the real world! There are wicked men and women that do not live by Allah’s word. They attack me for being a man of Allah. What better way than to kill a Talibé, my very life support! This is war! There has always been a war against the righteous, and it has not gone to sleep. No, the war has not subsided! It is more grotesque than ever before!”
Ahmed’s eyes are unable to focus on anything, darting all over the room and across the twenty heads sitting quietly on the floor. Sweat beads line his brow. Every now and again one builds up beyond its capacity, then runs down his nose, where it hangs for a moment before making its descent down to his thin brown l
ips.
“I leave tomorrow. Everyone is to sleep inside at night. Be mindful of the wicked. They are all around us! Let us pray.”
He leads the boys in prayer, then retires to his room, mumbling to himself. The room is quiet and somber as the boys lay out their mats. Étienne and Ibrahimah lie down on the floor facing each other.
“Let’s sleep outside,” Ibrahimah says.
“No, let’s stay in tonight. I don’t want to make Marabout angry.”
Ibrahimah is quiet a moment. “Abdoulaye is in the sky?”
“Yeah.”
Ibrahimah looks over to the small window; there is no moon out tonight.
“He doesn’t come back, like Aisatu?” Ibrahimah asks.
“No. Who’s Aisatu?” Étienne asks.
“My sister. How’d Abdoulaye die?”
“Someone killed him with a knife.”
“Did it hurt?”
He assumes a knife would hurt the same or perhaps worse than Marabout’s stick.
“Yes.”
“Is he still in pain?”
“No, because he’s dead now.”
“Abdoulaye never has to work again. He’ll never get beat again and he is not in pain anymore. He’s better off dead.”
Ibrahimah’s sleep is deep that night as he dreams of dying and leaving the life of a Talibé in an airplane. The next evening Ahmed’s associate Imam Farad from the nearby mosque pays little attention to the boys as he collects their three hundred francs. He doesn’t wake them for prayer and he does not care to beat them for being short. A feeling of ease washes across Ibrahimah. Freedom tastes sweet.
Islamic tradition insists that a corpse is buried within seventy-two hours of death. In the best-case scenario, the body is buried within hours of the death. It’s not like a Talibé has never died under the care of a marabout, but everyone is talking about him and watching his every move, and word has already traveled down to the family. Ahmed would prefer to bury Abdoulaye’s body in Dakar, limiting his costs, but expectations are high.
Ahmed arrives in the wee hours of morning and the boy’s body is prepared and laid to rest later that afternoon. There is no tradition of open caskets and wakes. Abdoulaye’s mutilated body is washed and wrapped in white muslin cloth. His father, uncles, and Ahmed go to the mosque to pray before the burial. Villagers pour into the family’s small house throughout the day to pay their respects, bringing offerings of food and money. Abdoulaye’s mother sits in the middle of the living room, overcome by a fit of uncontrollable sobbing. A woman ushers her into a back bedroom with smelling salts to calm her down. Ahmed eats a plate of fish and rice, glad that his impatient eyes are hidden behind his dark sunglasses. He’d like to be done with all this hoopla and leave the family to their own accord, but if he left too soon, word would move faster than a herd of bulls in flight. So, he sits, dozing off into a dream of boredom. He welcomes night and is given the best bed in the house to sleep in.
The next morning, without taking breakfast, he bids Abdoulaye’s family adieu and travels the short hour journey to his own nearby village. Streetlamps and large flowerless trees grace the paved roads, adding to the sense that the tight rows of houses are impenetrable. The inhabitants of the large blood-red, burnt orange, and taupe homes prefer to stay inside, away from the heat that scorches the earth.
“Husband! I need money for the children’s school fees and food,” his first wife, Hawa, says as she opens the door.
“Greedy woman, is that how you greet me?” he says with reproach, and reaches into his robe pockets to pull out a wad of money. He counts out her monthly allowance of eighty thousand francs.
“Mhhh.” She cuts her eyes at him, waddling away, money in hand, allowing him entry.
Hawa is less than a month away from delivering his fourth child. Something she is proud of, given that his second and third wives have yet to bear him any children. His oldest son brings his bags inside and hoists them upstairs without a word. Ahmed walks into the living room; the paisley overstuffed sofa is plush in comparison to his sparse living quarters in Dakar of just a bed and dirty plastic chair in his room, but one must make sacrifices to ensure his name and family line continue. Hawa brings him a heaping platter of thieboudienne, his favorite dish. She turns the television on and places the remote next to Ahmed, and he sits and eats the dry tomato-flavored rice and fish in silence. The maid shuffles around the house cleaning and dusting. The ceiling fan spins quietly up above.
“Papa!” his daughter shouts as she runs into the room, a large smile exposing her missing front teeth. She fixes her green T-shirt, which sits over her brown-and-gold ankle-length wrap skirt.
“Have you been good for your mother?” Ahmed says, not looking up from his food.
“Yes!” She seems like she’s about to offer more, but then holds back.
She stands there, close but not touching him. Unsure of what to do with herself, she sits on the floor and gazes up into his face. His second son, more reserved than his seven-year-old sister, follows his sister into the room but lingers by the doorway.
“Eat,” Ahmed instructs the nine-year-old boy.
The child takes two timid steps forward and grabs a handful of rice from the plate. The local news blares through the television speakers. Hawa returns with a large cup of bouye for him.
“Your mother is upstairs. She complains you do not come home enough,” she says.
Ahmed shoves the last of the food into his mouth before rising from the couch. He walks solemnly up the tiled stairs and down the darkened hall, past the second living room and the shared bedrooms of his children. Perhaps, in a few years Cheikh will be old enough to manage the boys in Dakar so that he can enjoy more time here at home, in comfort.
Inside his mother’s room the lights are out and the curtains pulled tight to protect her cataract eyes. At eighty-five years old she is still strong, and gets around on her own with relative ease, but needs her midday naps. He leaves the door open behind him, allowing passive light to enter.
“Mama.”
“Ahmed? Is that you, my son? Alhamdulillah!”
He walks over to the edge of her bed and kisses the loose, wrinkled skin on her cheek.
“Help me sit up.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Ahmed lifts her back up and stuffs several pillows behind her, then lights the candle on the dresser.
“Sit, my child,” she says, tapping the space beside her. “My son, man of God. Tell me of your travels.”
She clasps her hands in front of her as she speaks. Ahmed remembers the days she would sit hunched over the fire cooking rice and frying onions for yassa poulet, his father’s favorite dish. She would sneak him a taste test of the tangy lime-onion sauce when no one was looking.
“Dakar is good, Mama. The Quran and the words of Prophet Mohammed are my guidance.”
“Oh, my baby,” she swoons, “if your father were alive to see you now. He did love you. He would be proud. How you’ve changed. Such a devout man of God. Disciplined, and admired by all.”
Ahmed clucks his tongue and frowns down at the floor; he’d rather forget the memories of his father. He fingers the edge of the long, hidden scar that runs from his wrist all the way up his arm.
“How is my wife behaving? I hear you’ve had problems breathing?”
“No, no, I’m fine. The cleaning products were too strong and I choked a bit but I am fine. Hawa is a good wife.”
She taps the top of Ahmed’s hand. He misses his mother’s tenderness more than he would like to admit. A man doesn’t go chasing after his mother; his father would bark at him. His parents would argue over how best to raise him. His father would hit her and lock her in their bedroom for hours on end.
“Where is your mosquito net? I told that woman to put it up!”
He st
arts to rise from the bed, shouting for the maid.
“No, no, I tell her to take it down. I feel too closed in with it. Leave it. If it gets too bad, I’ll have her put it up. Sit down, Ahmed. Keep your poor old mother company.”
“I can’t, Mama. I have business to tend to, but will come sit with you later. Do you want me to fix the pillows so you can lie down?”
“No, I’m fine,” she says, never breaking her gaze, staring off into the shadows of the dark room as if some shiny magical thing lies right beyond her reach. He can’t remember the last time she actually looked him in the eyes.
In the bathroom, he takes his sunglasses off to splash water onto his face. He looks into the mirror above the sink and scowls at his reflection.
“My monthly allowance is not enough; your fourth child will be here soon,” Hawa says upon Ahmed’s return to the living room. The two youngest children sit on the floor at her feet.
Ahmed stares at his nine-year-old from behind the dark sunglasses.
“Children, go play and leave your father be, he’s tired from his travels.”
“They’re fine here with me. I never see them.”
Hawa cuts her eyes away from her son and stares at Ahmed.
“Everything is too expensive. Rice, eggs, bread, your children eat more and more every day and the maid is too greedy. And the midwife, I will have to pay her too.”
“Woman, shut up and leave me be. I know the cost of everything. Be satisfied with what you have, or perhaps I give you nothing.”
Rolling her eyes, Hawa hoists herself up from the couch and walks out of the room.
“These women take, take, take and give nothing back,” he says, to no one in particular.
The visual of Abdoulaye’s naked body appears, and he imagines himself with the boy when he was alive; heat rushes up his thighs. His daughter hops up onto his lap, grabs his sunglasses, and plops them onto her small face. He snatches them back and pushes her off him. Unable to catch herself in time, she falls to the floor. She looks up, shock painted bright across her face, and runs out of the room, crying.