by Keisha Bush
“When the warrior climbs the mountain with the elephants.”
“Okay. There was once a great African warrior by the name of Hannibal, and he was feared by many. He promised to conquer Rome, and to do that he climbed the Alp Mountains with many elephants and soldiers, because that is what no one would expect him to do.”
Ibrahimah walks into the house and starts to yawn, but he spots a group of fifteen boys sitting on the floor. His yawn is disrupted and lost in the most dissatisfying way.
“Who are you?” Fatik blurts.
Quiet eyes peer up at the group of dirty, barefoot boys standing before them. The boys at the back of the group who have yet to see the strangers are still talking but are hushed quickly by those in front.
“Where did you all come from?” Caca asks.
“Who are you talking to? Shut up and come here with my money!” Ahmed growls from his bedroom door.
The boys fall quiet; laughter ceases, smiles fade. Ibrahimah’s heart begins to race and he forgets to breathe.
“You! Come here.”
Ibrahimah looks behind him and then back at Marabout, who looks very strange with bloodstained scabs and welts crisscrossing his face. Marabout Scarface.
“I’m talking to you, you ungrateful, wicked boy. Ibrahimah,” he snaps, “come to me now.”
Ibrahimah’s eyes drop to the floor; he should have stayed at the back of the group. He’ll never walk into the house first again. Dragging his feet across the tiled floors his sandals make a scraping sound that causes Ahmed to scowl at him.
“Your mother”—spit flies from his mouth onto Ibrahimah’s head—“is dead. Your parents are dead. You’ll never see them again, and if you do, you won’t be breathing. You belong to me. Do you hear?”
Ibrahimah is frozen. His parents are dead?
“Mama and Papa are dead, like Abdoulaye?”
Someone puts their hand on his shoulder and he turns around. Étienne looks him in the face with sad eyes.
“Yes. They’re dead because you’ve been wicked. You’re disobedient and think you are better than the others with your shoes and Western clothes. Did you think I would send you back home after a year? This is your home. Give me my money and get out of my face. The sight of you makes me sick. I should beat you.” Ahmed pulls a dirty white plastic chair from the corner of the room and sits down, palm facing up.
Ibrahimah begins to cry. Étienne grabs the three hundred francs out of Ibrahimah’s red tin can and hands the money along with his own over to Ahmed. He takes Ibrahimah’s hand and pulls him toward the far side of the room. The other boys line up and begin the epic procession to turn their money in; weeks before, when he first left, they discussed saving three hundred francs specifically for the day Marabout returned. Even if they were short other days, the day Marabout did return would offer nothing less than a horrible fate if any of them did not have the correct amount of money.
“Mama’s dead?” Ibrahimah whispers to himself, struggling to fully comprehend the news as they stand against the wall waiting for the others to finish. The new boys steal glances at him, afraid for themselves.
“Shut up about your whore of a mother!”
Étienne hugs Ibrahimah and wipes his face with the bottom of his shirt. Ibrahimah does not know what to do or say. How did his parents die? Where were his sisters? Were they okay? To whom would he go home to? Fatou? As the last boy hands in his three hundred francs, Ahmed offers a rare smile and looks out across the quiet room.
“You all have my money. This is good, because it confirms you can easily collect more. You will bring me four hundred francs starting tomorrow. Do you know how much that is?”
Thirty-five sets of eyes stare at Ahmed unblinking, the new boys stare in sheer fright, the veterans are stoic.
“Four of these,” Ahmed says, holding up four one-hundred-franc coins, “eight of these, sixteen of these, and lots of these. If you’re not sure you have enough, ask one of your older brothers who knows how to count. If you do not bring back four hundred francs, you will be beat and sent to sleep outside. It is expensive to take care of you. You each have to hold up your end of the agreement or I will not hold up mine.”
One of the new boys begins to cry.
“Stop sniveling like a girl before I beat you with this stick. You are a Talibé. A man! Men do not cry for their mothers!”
Ahmed waves his cane at the boy, who quickly inhales his snot and stifles his sobs.
“These are your new Talibé brothers,” Ahmed says to the veteran twenty boys, waving his cane at the group of newcomers.
“I’m tired. The journey has been long. Make any noise to wake me and you will answer to my wrath. Now go to bed!”
Ahmed goes to his room, slamming the door behind him. The boys sit, quiet. The sound of Ahmed climbing into bed fills the space and then a deeper silence follows. When they are sure he is asleep they begin to whisper.
“Four hundred francs is too much,” Caca says.
“How are we to do that?” Fatik asks.
“Too much money.”
“Marabout is greedy. All he wants is money, money, money. Now he brings more boys and wants more money!” Fatik growls.
In small groups they fetch their cardboard mats and lay them down, weaving through the new boys as if they were just one more obstacle. The fifteen newcomers watch them and then two get up to grab a mat and find a place to lay them down. The others move too slow.
“There are only three mats left,” a tall boy complains.
“Shhhhh!”
The others don’t offer help to the newcomers, but they put their mats closer together to make space. Étienne sucks on his teeth.
“How these boys leave the village to come to Dakar and live this life? They’re crazy.”
Ibrahimah does not care about the new boys. His parents are dead and maybe even his sisters. He will never survive living with Marabout the rest of his life; begging for money, getting beat on a whim, being forced to stay in the room with him. Now Marabout wants an extra big coin, the coin that he would use for a Coca. He sits up, folding his arms across his tiny chest.
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story?” Étienne doesn’t know what else to offer his cousin.
“No. I hate Marabout!”
“Shhhh! No noise. You’ll wake him.”
“I don’t care! I want to leave this place.”
“Cousin, go to sleep. We talk tomorrow. Think of your mama and papa in heaven with Allah.”
Ibrahimah lies down. He had planned to tell Marabout about the two men and the dead boy, but now all he wants is his mother. She would hold him and make things okay. She would know what to do and make Marabout stop being so mean and wicked. A waterfall filled with grief and sorrow forms an ocean beneath his head. The next morning Ahmed doesn’t come out of his room. He sleeps late into the afternoon and when he wakes, the house is empty.
It has been three weeks and the swelling of her eye has yet to subside, a small black ring sits below the puffiness. Idrissa worries about her; she has no strength. In the evenings she doesn’t join him and the girls for dinner. It started with severe headaches and malaise. Idrissa thought perhaps Maimouna was pregnant. She eventually stopped giving an excuse for staying in bed.
“Wife, what can I get for you?” Idrissa asks, leaning against the entryway of their room.
“Nothing.” Maimouna rolls over and sets her back to him.
“Why don’t you join me in the living room for tea?”
“I’m not well. I prefer to stay here and rest.”
“But my love, I have news I want to share with you. A friend of my father stopped by Marabout Ahmed’s house in Dakar. He said both Ibrahimah and Étienne are healthy and well.”
The scene of her lunging at Ahmed replays over and over in her head. She should have broug
ht her cooking knife.
“Did you hear me, Maimouna? Our son is doing well.”
“Which friend was it of your father that went by, do I know him?”
Idrissa falls silent.
“You’re a terrible liar,” she says, closing her eyes. Nothing short of Ibrahimah standing by her bedside will soothe her. She closes her eyes and goes to sleep.
The next morning Fatou walks into the room and pulls the curtains aside, allowing the harsh light inside.
“Close the curtains!” Maimouna covers her eyes.
“But Papa said—”
“I don’t care what your father says. You are my daughter and will do as I say. Shut the curtains now.”
Fatou pulls the curtains shut and sits down on the edge of the bed.
“People in the village say you’ve gone crazy. I tell them you are ill with fever. Fever makes people do things they don’t want. My friends say you attacked a marabout. Madame N’Diaye says she should have called the police and had you arrested.”
Fatou pauses for a moment.
“On Friday, the imam talked about the weakness of the mind and how following the teachings of Allah can save a man. He also talked about when a man’s wife commits a wrong it is up to the husband to be a good Muslim and practice his faith diligently to ensure she makes it to heaven.”
Maimouna listens to Fatou with disgust but cannot help her curiosity. When her neighbor next door doused her sleeping husband in acid for marrying a second wife, the imam gave the same talk in the weeks following the incident. Rumor is, the woman’s family whisked her off to Côte d’Ivoire before the police could get their hands on her. She remembers waking up out of her nap that Sunday afternoon to the sounds of desperate screams as his body burned, layer after layer, the acid tearing through his skin, muscle, and bone. The wife also poured acid in a large puddle around his bed, making it impossible to get to him without taking precautions. He died on that bed before anyone could save him. Everyone talked about it for weeks, not because of the weapon she used, but because she used it to kill her husband and not the second wife.
“Do you want me to go on?” Fatou says.
Silence.
“Uncle says Papa should divorce you and take us girls away. He and Papa have been arguing about it every Sunday. Papa says you need time and that it’s not your fault because Marabout lied to him. He says Marabout should be in jail for keeping Ibrahimah. Uncle gets upset when Papa says that.”
Fatou takes a deep breath.
“I brought you some tea from Auntie. She says it will help.”
Maimouna sits up and sips the pungent drink from the cup. She gags on it and pushes the cup back to Fatou and drops her head heavy against the pillow. It tastes like metal.
“What else?”
“Nothing much else. Many people don’t speak to us anymore. Others scowl at us down at the well. Madame Diop’s daughter claimed I shouldn’t be able to fetch water like everyone else because you’re a disgrace to our village. But Madame Touré told her to stop and I was able to fetch the water after all.”
When Maimouna hears what the village is saying, it feeds her disgust.
“Oh, and Papa says we should go to Guinea to be with Maam until things settle down.”
“I’m not going anywhere until Ibrahimah is back here with me.”
She had suggested leaving in the beginning. Not giving Ibrahimah to that wicked liar of a man. Idrissa said no. Now he wants to suggest leaving. She will die before she leaves this country without her son. That wretched woman Madame N’Diaye should be cast out of this village for her stupidity, revering such a vile man and bringing him into their village.
“Madame Diop is a fool, and so is her daughter. Ignore her. She is beneath you. She gives her body up to any boy who gives her attention. She will never marry. Fetching water for her mother is what the rest of her life holds for her.”
“Do you want anything to eat?”
“No, bring me some water.”
Maimouna closes her eyes and drifts back off to sleep, only to awaken a few hours later by the shaking of her bed. The wind whips and howls outside and forces its way through the cracks around the windowsill. The house whines and creaks beneath the force of nature. She gets up and goes to check on the girls; the house is too quiet. A quick survey convinces her the girls must be outside. She goes out back to find the laundry threatening to take flight the moment a clothespin fails to hold on to a sheet.
Where are the girls? she asks herself as she runs across the yard and takes the clothes down before they can fly away, draping them over her shoulder.
Back inside she sets the laundry down and heads out to the front of the house. The girls are not there either. Perhaps, her mind is playing tricks on her. She goes to check the calendar, but she is correct, it is still July and school is, in fact, still on summer recess. She has not left the house since the incident with Marabout Ahmed three weeks ago, but something tugs within the pit of her stomach. She grabs her scarf, slips a pair of sandals on, and ventures out the front door.
She checks the well, but the girls are not there. She goes down to the shore, but her children are nowhere in sight. Maimouna, not interested in speaking to any of her neighbors, treks back up the hill, ignoring the stares and whispers that swirl around her, poking at her, antagonizing her. She does not hold on to them and instead allows them to wash over and away from her as she enters her father-in-law’s house. There, in his living room, she finds her three daughters sitting on the floor at the feet of their grandfather as he weaves stories of himself and their grandmother. Idrissa’s mother died before they were married and so all they have are the remnants of memory to hold on to.
“Papa Yoro, tell us how beautiful Grandmama was?” Aisha asks.
“She was as beautiful as a thousand suns, shining down on mankind. Her heart was made of gold, her smile could calm the most frantic child in the village, her voice lulled all the children in the village to sleep in the evenings as she sang the songs of our ancestors. All of the women in the village came to her for advice and guidance, as her wisdom transcended the ages.”
Papa Yoro points to the chair across from him and Maimouna sits down. She does not know why she did not assume the girls were with their grandfather or uncle.
“I want to be like her when I grow up,” Binta says.
“A woman has a lot of responsibility. Life is not easy. Many of the women today think it is, but they soon find out that it is not. Isn’t that right, my daughter?” Papa Yoro asks, directing his question to Maimouna.
She searches for the words to express her anger, her feeling of betrayal at not only Marabout Ahmed, but everything. How could a man of the old tradition even begin to understand?
“You think you are alone but you are not. Grandmama lost three of her sons all before Senegal gained its independence from the French. Colonialism left us in extreme poverty, our crops were not for us, but for exports. And do not think we were paid fairly. We were not.”
“How did you survive? What they did was wrong. How can you accept something that is being done to you unfairly by someone else?” Fatou says.
“That is a question that we will all have to ask at some point in our life. Mankind is not very good at its humanity. It is as if the word itself was created for humans to strive towards, because they so often fail. For centuries, man has raped, pillaged, and bullied one another.”
“So, it’s better to be bad?” Binta asks.
“Only if you believe that this life is all that there is, and if you do, then you will waste your lifetime trying to take from others what does not belong to you, for fleeting moments of victory, only to find yourself losing, again and again.”
“So, it’s not better?” Binta says, her head cocked to the side in an effort to make sense of Papa Yoro’s puzzle of an answer.
�
�Only if you find joy in being the last to realize you are the fool,” he says.
Maimouna lets go of her thoughts and allows Papa Yoro’s voice to soothe her as he reminds her that she is not at war with everyone. Her family loves her, and God willing, Ibrahimah will return home, safe and very much alive.
Today is the first day of Ramadan. Children who haven’t reached puberty are allowed to eat, but Marabout says as Talibé they have to set an example and fast like the adults. They can break their fast at sundown. Just the thought of not being able to eat during the day causes panic to rise up into Ibrahimah’s throat. Étienne says they can eat whenever they find food.
“Marabout sits in the house all day, he has no idea what we do; he just wants his money,” Étienne says.
Ibrahimah feels doubtful.
“Don’t worry,” Étienne says, patting Ibrahimah on the back. “You’ll get food and money without even trying. We just need to find a place to hide the extra.”
That seems like a good idea. Étienne always has a good plan. Ibrahimah pulls a packet of cashews from his pocket and starts to eat them. The nuts taste so good, he stuffs several in his mouth at once.
“Where did you get the nuts?”
Ibrahimah looks up at his cousin, his big almond eyes full of guilt.
“I took it.”
“From the old lady down the road?”
Ibrahimah purses his lips in defiance.
“Ibrahimah! You don’t steal from women. She works hard to earn money for her family. Next time, ask!”
“But I’m so hungry!”
“So am I, but we’ll find food. We don’t steal!”
Ibrahimah scowls at Étienne. His cousin doesn’t understand. What is the point in being good when he is forced to live with Marabout and his parents are dead? There is nothing to look forward to. There is no Paradise for being good boys, so why bother?
“I feed myself!”
“Yeah, but Allah doesn’t like a thief. Are you a thief? If you get caught, they will cut off your hand!”
“Other Talibé steal all the time. No one cuts off their hand.”