No Heaven for Good Boys

by Keisha Bush

  “Come sit on your father’s lap,” he instructs his nine-year-old son, who sits on the floor engrossed with the football match on television.

  “But Papa,” he whines, “I’m too old!”

  “You miss your father?”

  His son walks over to Ahmed, and sits down on the edge of the sofa next to his father. Ahmed strokes the boy’s back while he thinks. To support three wives and a growing family he needs to increase the daily quota of his Talibé to four hundred francs. Twenty Talibé is not enough; his children will be educated, not poor farmers or street vagabonds peddling Chinese goods all day long.

  “Go play while I work,” Ahmed says, patting the boy on his back.

  Fifteen more boys would be an additional hundred and eighty thousand francs a month, Ahmed calculates. With that he can give his two other wives a higher allowance, and they will not complain he is frugal, or spend their afternoons with the witch doctor hoping to find a potion to loosen his pockets. The more money his wives have to spend, the higher status he claims within his village. He can bring his eldest son, who is fifteen, to private school in Dakar.

  To his surprise, over the course of the next week several families from his village approach him with their sons. Many take the murder of a Talibé as a direct attack on Islam. Ahmed is also offered two young women but refuses them with the claim that although Allah brings him much wealth, he is but a humble leader and makes peace with just three wives.

  A marabout can acquire hundreds of wives because they are allowed to have more than the four wives of regular Muslim men. But he doesn’t need any more mouths to feed, or any more women demanding sex from him. He rarely touches the other two and plans to keep it that way.

  Rotating two days at each of his wives’ homes throughout the week, he eats, sleeps, and lazes about while each cooks and fusses over him in her own way. Both his second and third wives are younger than Hawa, and he gives them each forty thousand francs to cover their living expenses for the month, though all three women have a way of finagling additional money from him.

  By the end of the week he has five boys committed to return to Dakar with him and receives sixty thousand francs in offerings for prayer and blessings. Realizing the opportunity before him, Ahmed changes his plans and travels south to see how many more boys, and how much more cash, he can accumulate.

  With Marabout away for several days, the boys sleep in late, skipping morning prayer altogether. Ibrahimah watches Scarface rise from the floor, cross the room, and try the doorknob to Marabout’s door, but it is locked. The boy shrugs and goes back to his cardboard mat and lies down. Ibrahimah can’t imagine why anyone would want to go in Marabout’s bedroom, voluntarily. The day is fresh on the horizon. Ibrahimah rolls over and thinks of the last time he and his sisters helped his father harvest the vegetables on their farm.

  “It’s too hot to work,” Binta complained.

  “But not too hot to eat?” their mother teased his sister.

  Ibrahimah ran up to his father. “Papa, I will help you.”

  His father looked down at him and smiled and tapped the rim of Ibrahimah’s straw hat.

  “Okay. You can pick the string beans, only the really green ones though, like this one.” His father held up a long bean.

  Ibrahimah nodded.

  “Okay, well, come close so that I can show you how to properly detach the bean. Pull too hard and you can rip the entire root out, which is bad. Pull too soft and it can break, and then you will stay hungry!”

  Harvesting string beans was serious work, Ibrahimah thought as he watched his father closely. Binta was always hungry, so Ibrahimah had to make sure his sister had enough food to eat. After watching his father, he tried to do it. He placed his fingers at the base of the bean where it was attached to the vine and pulled, but the bean did not want to come loose.

  “You have to pull a little harder,” his father instructed.

  Ibrahimah tried again and the bean detached from the vine. Elated, Ibrahimah jumped up and down.

  “Papa! I did it,” he exclaimed, holding up the sturdy string bean.

  “You are a natural, my son, and there’s an entire row of beans to pick, so let’s get going,” his father said.

  In the musty, overcrowded room filled with Talibé boys, Ibrahimah can feel the warmth of that day in the sun with his father. He filled an entire pail with string beans before he looked up to find his sisters beneath the shade of a tree drinking water and snacking on a baguette with Laughing Cow cheese.

  Ibrahimah looks over at Étienne, who is stretched out on his back with his eyes closed. Midmorning hunger soon motivates them to venture out into the city for the day.

  “Where do we go today?” he asks as they step out into the daylight.

  “We could go to the airport,” Étienne says, though he doesn’t sound enthused.

  They rarely spend any time in the northern part of the city. With thousands of Talibé in the city, they stick to certain neighborhoods. They do not know how other Talibé will respond to new boys in their territory, but they are sure it would not go well. There are more and more Talibé showing up in Dakar all the time.

  “I don’t like the airport,” Ibrahimah says. The one other time they went up to the airport to work, a Talibé he did not know knocked his front tooth out and he is still waiting for the tooth fairy to come.

  “Yoff Beach? Today is Monday.”

  “Okay.”

  Ibrahimah loves the ocean and yet they almost never go up to Yoff Beach because it is a two-hour walk. But the beach is home to the women’s fish market, the best one in Dakar. The fishermen go out to sea while everyone in the city is asleep and by five or six in the morning, they return with what they’ve caught, and the women are there waiting. They sell the fresh-caught fish on card tables, or on vinyl mats set out on the sand.

  Ibrahimah knows about the women’s fish market because he hears all about it through the thin wall between Marabout’s house and Diatu’s family’s house.

  Ibrahimah opens his sweaty palm; he has two large coins but only the dark-looking ones, not the shiny silver ones that are worth more money. The walk to the beach is long, and a mango would give him the energy he needs to make it. He looks over at Étienne, who seems unfazed by his morning hunger.

  “Étienne, how much is this?” Ibrahimah asks, sticking his palm out.

  Étienne looks at the coins and does the math silently.

  “Fifty.”

  “What can I buy? I’m hungry,” Ibrahimah says. Marabout is gone, so he is willing to spend his money on food.

  “Peanuts.”

  Ibrahimah does not want peanuts. He wants a mango, or a plate of his favorite dish, mafé, or thieboudienne, or even yassa poulet. The more he thinks about food, the hungrier he gets. The cars along the road halt for a moment and he flings his body into the street.

  “Food, please,” he says, his hand sticking out.

  The man rolls his window up. Ibrahimah sucks his teeth and runs up to the next car.

  “I’m hungry,” he announces to the man who pretends not to hear him. “I don’t want money for my marabout. Do you have food? I’m hungry,” Ibrahimah tries again.

  The man looks at him.

  “I don’t have any food with me, Talibé,” the man says.

  Ibrahimah’s shoulders drop and he walks away.

  “Here,” the man says, shoving a silver coin at him.

  Ibrahimah takes the coin and thanks the man. He runs up to the next car and tries the same line again, and it works. He gets two brown coins. The traffic begins to move and he gets out of the way and hops back onto the sidewalk.

  “Look.” He shows Étienne, who is busy counting his money.

  “Wow, you work really fast,” Étienne says, impressed.

  “Yeah, I told them I don’t want money, I want fo
od because I’m hungry. And then they give me money!”

  Perhaps he has been doing this begging thing wrong the entire time. So far, what he has asked for he does not receive. So, maybe he should ask for what he does not want and he’ll get what he wants. Ask for food and people will give him money; ask for life in Dakar with Marabout and perhaps he will get to return to his village and be with his family. When the traffic stalls again, he tries this new technique and again finds himself more successful than usual, the bottom of his red tin tomato can covered in coins clanging against each other, like the way the boys push up against one another over a small bowl of rice.

  Two hours later, Ibrahimah’s small belly protrudes over the top of his pants, overfull with greasy rice and the small pieces of lamb that swam within the heavy peanut-and-tomato sauce. He is ready to take on the rest of the day. By the time they reach Yoff Beach it is bustling with the energy of the locals and foreigners alike, all of whom seek the freshest seafood in the city.

  The boys run down to the shore and jump into the waist-deep water. They bring their red tin cans so that no one steals their money. Large waves shove Ibrahimah’s body around and he enjoys having to work to keep his balance. He wades back to shore to sit down on the sand next to Étienne, who stretches his legs out. The sun will dry his khaki pants and green polo shirt quick enough, and now they will be clean again. Senegalese boys and girls walk along the shore or laze about on the beach, enjoying themselves beneath the late-morning sun.

  Ibrahimah lies down on his back and looks up at the sky. No planes or red birds in sight. The calm of the ocean’s gentle roar mixed with fresh sea breeze and the warmth of the West African sun lulls him into a trance of relaxation. He is ready to drift off into a place of love and laughter when something blocks his light and kicks a tuft of sand into his face. He sputters and sits up to find a man looming above him with two boys who look a bit older than Étienne. Ibrahimah jostles Étienne awake.

  “Talibé,” the man starts, “you want to make money for your marabout?”

  “What do you want?” Étienne asks. His voice is groggy and he has to shade his eyes to get a better look at the man.

  The tall man looks down at Ibrahimah with an easy grin. Ibrahimah looks over at the two boys standing beside the stranger.

  “Are you a Talibé?” Ibrahimah asks.

  “I used to be,” the taller boy says.

  “What are your names?” the man asks.

  “Étienne.”

  “Ibrahimah.”

  Étienne stands up and Ibrahimah follows his lead, making a bit of space between himself and the three strangers.

  “I ran away from my marabout the other day,” the shorter boy confesses.

  “Are you all runaways?” the man asks Étienne and Ibrahimah.

  “No,” Étienne says.

  “It’s better if you run away,” the tall boy says. “No one to beat you or force you to work for them. You keep your own money.”

  “I’m going home to my family soon. My marabout said after a year, I can go home,” Ibrahimah announces.

  The man laughs as if Ibrahimah told a joke. The taller boy joins him.

  “Talibé, you are young. The world is a wicked place, if your marabout agrees to send you home, I will personally escort you back to your village myself. In the meantime, I have work I need help with back at my house. I will pay you each the daily quota your marabout demands and I will feed you dinner.”

  “What do you need help with?” Étienne asks, now considering it more seriously.

  “The ceiling in one of the rooms in my house has collapsed and I need help moving the debris. Men would cost too much, but Talibé will do it for a day’s income and food. It’s a win-win for us both. I think four boys will do. I just met these two.”

  “I’m Demba,” says the short boy.

  “Lamine,” says the taller boy with the long arms.

  “Call me Pape,” the man says.

  Étienne looks at Ibrahimah to gauge how his cousin feels about the prospect. Ibrahimah does not feel they need to spend the day working. They already had a meal, and although they do not have Marabout’s quota in full, they are not without money and with his new technique he may be able to raise enough for both of them by the day’s end. Also, Marabout is not even in town, so if they come up short tonight, they will be okay.

  “What Talibé thinks twice about making enough money for his marabout?” the man asks, laughing at them.

  No Talibé who is smart, Ibrahimah thinks to himself.

  “Okay, we come,” Ibrahimah replies, and the two boys follow the group of three out to the main road.

  Pape waves down a Car Rapide, and when it slows down the group of five jump in and he pays the fare for all of them. Stop after stop the large passenger van empties itself of customers. The bustle of inner-city Dakar is left behind and the more rural parts of the country, villages separated by long stretches of empty flatlands sprinkled with baobab trees, paint the landscape.

  “Where is your house?” Étienne asks.

  “Pikine,” Pape says, looking up from his whispered conversation with Lamine.

  Ibrahimah looks over at Demba, who sits staring out of the window.

  “How long you been with your marabout?”

  “A long time,” Demba says, looking at Ibrahimah.

  “Other boys at your daara run away?”

  “A few.”

  Demba has open wounds on the top of his head, the side of his face, and all over his arms.

  “What happened to you?” Ibrahimah asks, motioning to the boy’s arms and face.

  “My marabout beats me with a rubber whip.”

  “Not a stick?”

  “No.”

  Ibrahimah cannot say whether a stick or a whip is better or worse, but Demba’s wounds look painful.

  “You’re better off running away,” Ibrahimah says.

  Demba looks back outside the small window of the Car Rapide.

  “Don’t worry,” Pape says to Demba. “The Quotidien says that there are over fifty thousand Talibé walking the streets of Dakar begging for hundreds of different marabouts. No one will miss you.”

  Ibrahimah looks up at Pape. Something in the man’s voice bothers him, but he cannot articulate what he feels. He assumes that since there are four Talibé and only one man they will be fine. They are the last passengers in the Car Rapide when it arrives in Pikine thirty minutes later. They spill out onto the sandy ground; Ibrahimah’s feet sink into the road. With the sun at their backs they walk down a side street and pass several small buildings. Short wooden fences and short cement walls surround the cheap houses. Ibrahimah can tell that the city of Pikine is not as wealthy as Dakar; wealthy people have high cement fences with metal doors.

  Ibrahimah knows the house they are going to before Pape opens the front gate. The dilapidated wooden fence is taller than him but barely reaches Pape’s chest. A mangy white cat walks along the top of it and looks down at the intruders entering its domain.

  “Where is the work?” Demba asks, looking up at the house.

  The mustard-yellow paint on the front door is peeling; the screen door is rusted and hanging off the hinge. Ibrahimah and Étienne exchange glances. Ibrahimah cannot read his cousin’s face but his doubts are mounting. They trudge up the stairs and the man shoves the front door open. He hangs behind the group and once everyone is in, he fastens a padlock on the inside.

  “What is that for?” Étienne asks, his eyes darting around.

  “Only to keep the dogs out, they roam everywhere and will come right inside.”

  “No one wants to get attacked by a mad dog,” Lamine says.

  The house looks abandoned, covered in thick layers of dust and sand. Houses in Dakar need to be cleaned daily as the sand easily makes its way indoors.

  “Ov
er here, boys,” Pape says, standing in front of the doorway of a room off to the right of the house.

  Étienne and Ibrahimah enter the room first, with Demba on their heels; Lamine and Pape follow. The room is dark, as there is no electricity to be seen, but the room is illuminated with the day’s natural light. The room is empty of furniture. Off in the far corner is a bundle of what Ibrahimah first makes out as clothes, until he gets closer and sees the legs of what looks like a boy. Flies buzz about and Ibrahimah slams into a wall of stench he has never experienced before. It is foul and rancid, worse than old spoiled meat. He attempts to walk over to the boy, but the foulness is too great for him. The boy is dead. Ibrahimah sees a chain connecting the dead boy’s arms to a pipe that reaches from the floor to the ceiling.

  Ibrahimah spins around and sees Demba make a dash for the door, but Pape catches him by the arm and they struggle. Pape drags him over to a radiator, where another chain lies in wait. Étienne starts for the door but Lamine grabs him.

  “Ibrahimah! Run!” Étienne shouts as he fights with the boy, who is a bit taller than him but not that much heavier.

  Ibrahimah wants to help Étienne. He cannot leave his cousin.

  “Run!” Étienne shouts again.

  With a burst of energy that comes from the pit of his stomach Ibrahimah runs for the door. This is not about protecting his money. These are not boys who want to take his food. This man wants everything. His body goes for the front door only to remember that it’s bolted shut. His eyes drop and he notices a panel in the door hanging loose. He drops down to his knees and shoves his red tin can through the hole before he squeezes his body through and tumbles onto the front porch. He looks through the window of the room he was just trapped inside. Pape is chaining Demba to the wall and turns to help Lamine with Étienne, who has the strong boy in a headlock. Ibrahimah starts screaming his cousin’s name.

  “Étienne!”

  Ibrahimah scans the messy porch full of debris, grabs a rock, and throws it through the window. Pape leaves the room and Ibrahimah runs into the yard, finds another rock, and pitches it through another window, all the while screaming.