Fisherman's Blues

by Anna Badkhen

  For the next few days the Souarés have three broken pirogues on their hands, and none to fish in.

  * * *

  The thin mocking smile of a crescent moon rises pink over the thieving sea. A new month begins, Diggi-gàmmu, the second month of the Wolof calendar. Its Arabic name is Safar: hollow, zero, the whistling of the wind. A month of misfortune and calamities, when men leave home.

  They hold a memorial service for Action on the fourth morning of the month. A bodiless funeral in a sandy alley just north of the hospital and Mbaar Sarrené and its pointless flag. I know this alley: I run through it every dawn when I am not at sea. I recognize its drooping bougainvillea and the red iron shutters of the Fouta Torro Shop, which did not close for the funeral, and from which now young boys push past the mourners clutching their breakfast pain au chocolat baguettes.

  The funeral tent is a green and orange tarp. Under it on mats and plastic chairs three dozen or so old men are whispering Koranic verses in unison. The rest of the mourners, about two hundred in all, sit outside in facing rows that run along the crumbling yellow and pink stucco of the alley’s houses. They sit on narrow seablue benches borrowed from one of the parochial elementaries, in metal chairs upholstered in a faded red, on wooden benches fashioned from discarded pirogue planks: pirogues furnish forth all, even funeral pews. They sit in blue and white molded plastic chairs—the same enumerated chairs in which men sat in the harbor during the sacrifice several days before. The community chairs of Joal, some of them my landlord’s, make the rounds of funerals, sacrifices, naming ceremonies, weddings.

  Mostly young men in the chairs this time—Action’s friends, in their flipflops and suave footballer hairdos and secondhand tee shirts with sequins and famous logos and denim jeans or gym pants that ride under their buttocks, show off their boxer shorts. They spread their knees, rest their elbows, clasp their hands, lower their heads, mouth prayers. A young man in a Juventus tee shirt cradles a toddler. I recognize a fisherman with whom I have fished aboard the Mansor Sakho. His name is Ibrahima but they call him Gambia because he is from there. He is twenty-two, his Wolof and English softly stuttered. He has been crying. He prays into his upturned palms, then sits back, leans against the wall, blinks.

  More men arrive. Older men in long boubous, young men in denim and track suits. We scoot over to make room. Sit tighter together. Feel one another’s breath, heartbeat, sweat, life. Matronly women in lace file through the alley, head inside Action’s family compound, on the other side of the tent, where they will mourn away from the men.

  Older men talk.

  Fishermen here don’t respect the idea of wearing life jackets. But a life jacket would have been very useful.

  Yes, even if he’d drowned at least they would have found his body.

  Strong currents down in Djifer. They can carry you away and there’s nothing you can do.

  The current there probably took him to the mangroves.

  If it took him to the mangroves then his body will get tangled in the roots. It will slowly rot, they’ll never find him.

  Did they call the gendarmes?

  What can the gendarmes do? They are on land; the boy is in the water.

  Well, we are praying for him anyway.

  He had a bad back. He had some metal rods in his back even, maybe that’s why he drowned.

  At least they got the pirogue.

  What’s the name of the pirogue?

  Oh, I don’t know it.

  Oh, she has no name.

  But she does of course. The Fatou Ndiaye, named after the grandmother of my landlord, who was a sorceress. She belongs to a fisherman named Pape Yakha, who is out of town today, but the day Action drowned the captain was Pape Sow. There he is, sitting a bit to the side, far from the tent, in a blue boubou. He looks both young and old.

  So what? It could have been any pirogue here.

  Amen.

  * * *

  A breeze.

  The men have finished murmuring suras from the Koran and it is very quiet. Women come out of the compound, hand out plastic baggies of animal crackers and naq, balls of steamed millet flour spiced with cloves, a snack traditional for ceremonies. We stash the repast between our knees, cup our hands, prepare for the prayer for the dead.

  The old Pa Souleimane Sarr speaks:

  Salaam aleikum. I am speaking because the family’s elders asked me to speak to you. I thank you for coming and may God accept our prayers and accept Mansour’s soul in paradise. The Prophet said we must praise the dead. Mansour was educated, polite, respectful, and hardworking. He didn’t have good health, but he never asked others to work for him. God is able to help all the people in the world. May God help him and give him mercy.

  Amen.

  God gave Mansour to us and He took him again. May God help us so we can live without another such tragedy at sea again for many years.

  Amen.

  I look at Gambia, at all the other boys across the alley. Sassy, muscled, handsome, young. Eventually their friend’s remains will wash up on some shore where boys like them will bury him in an unmarked grave in the sand. Aren’t all graves unmarked? Can a name, a date, mark the absence and sorrow the dead leave in their wake?

  The sun balls its heat in my palms.

  * * *

  A friend, a sometime tour guide in Joal, tells me about a woman he knows whose son died fishing:

  She said—I know it’s funny—“I will never eat fish again.”

  Why is it funny, El Hadji?

  I don’t know. Life continues. If you don’t eat fish, what do you eat?

  Action’s mother is Marie Badiane. Her husband, Action’s father, lives with his second wife in some other town and sometimes sends money back to Joal, but not regularly. This is common; life is so. Marie is a fishwife at the port—one of those women who wade up to their armpits in harbor swill to bargain with fishermen back from the sea. Everywoman. On the day of the funeral, after dark, I stand in her doorway.

  Marie is dressed in burgundy. Her cinderblock house, a single rectangular room, is burgundy and purple inside. Faux silk and velvet curtains and bedspread. Severe furniture. An incense stick smolders on the floor; smoke curls in dim mirrors. The only light comes from a flashlight that stands upright on one of the dressers. Next to it an expensive-looking shiny sound system gleams, Action’s.

  She sits on the edge of that purple bed and talks fast:

  I remember you! You were on that purse seiner with your notebook writing something and I called out to you, “How are you?” and you said, “I am well!” Remember? I thought it was funny to see a woman on a pirogue. And now you’re here, in my house! Thank you for coming. Thank you, thank you—here, let me show you his photo. Where is his photo? Eh! Where is his photo?

  Women swarm into this cube of grief, look for the photo, it was just here—are you sitting on it?—no, it is in someone else’s room—here it is. Here. Look! This is my boy. A laminated enlarged printout of him standing with his girlfriend, who now will be raising alone their six-month-old child. She is statuesque in beige brocade. He is in a black tee shirt emblazoned with a gangster logo in silver gothic letters, copper protection bangles, a Chicago Bulls cap, red Converse lace-ups. Swag. Out of the scented purple dark Marie smiles at me. He’s handsome, isn’t he.

  I return to my room to make a call to Ohio, to my own son, who is two years younger than Action and very far from the sea. A day’s allocation of sand has seeped out of the wall onto my sleeping mat and upon it waits a pale butterfly.

  * * *

  The next day a flotilla of two sails out of Joal: a purse seiner crewed mostly by strong young men who cast and haul the heavy net, and her catch boat: a typically lightly manned receptacle to carry the fish to harbor. The catch boat’s crew are Bathie Diakayaté, a twenty-three-year-old orphan who has never gone to sea before, and his cousin Oumar Kane, the
tenth and youngest son of a fisherman. Oumar is twelve. The pirogue, the Khady Sarr—forty-two feet, forty-horsepower motor—bears his mother’s name.

  The tandem hauls anchor early, aiming to be back by dinnertime. Fifteen miles offshore, in international waters, the catch boat’s motor malfunctions. The net boat’s captain tells the cousins to drop anchor and wait for his return while he catches some sardines. A few hours, max. He takes their coordinates. The sustained wind of the dry season shatters the Atlantic into spangled eddies of black jewels. The Khady Sarr bobs on the sparkling sea, rocks the cousins to sleep.

  But the captain’s GPS records incorrectly the Khady Sarr’s coordinates. When the net boat returns for the boys in the afternoon, they are not there.

  The cold wakes the child. It is night now, the wind blows raw. Bathie, too, shivers awake. In the dark the ocean bleeds black into endless black sky. The boys see a pirogue’s green prow light, hear an approaching motor. They have a flashlight; they blink it at the light, beckoning. The pirogue passes, the sound of her motor dies, and now it is only the two of them atop the vast and terrible womb of everything.

  The pirogues’ owner, Coura Kane, a distant relative of Oumar, organizes a search party, but it is brief, because he is too poor to foot the fuel bill, and unsuccessful. Khady Sarr, Oumar’s mother, crazed by fear, grovels on the tideline, trying to stare her son and nephew out of the horizon. I run into Coura at Mbaar Kanené, the one he helped build, on the morning of the third day, his eyes bloodshot from vigil and weeping, a sheaf of papers in his hands. He and Daouda Sarr and Malal Diallo have been petitioning one government office in town after another to organize a proper search. Bureaucrats keep asking for more papers. The fishermen sit in a kind of stupor, worry the prayer beads of their grievances and sorrows.

  The coastguard comes here to do surveillance for traffickers or if there are drugs—but they will not lift their finger for lost fishermen, wallahi.

  They are just eating our money.

  In Senegal the government only tells fishermen to pay. It’s not helping us at all.

  They tax our boats and give our fisheries to foreign trawlers and they tell us we can’t fish near the shore. If this continues there will not be any fishing left in Joal.

  If there isn’t fish again next year there won’t be any money.

  If we’re even here next year.

  A couple years ago we tried to put a GPS chip in the boat but it didn’t work.

  After Ramadan there was a boat with seven men and a new motor that went for a weeklong trip. We never saw them again.

  That’s why I never go on long trips, says Coura. Once I was very far from shore, we were fifty fathoms deep. This was off Freetown. And suddenly there was something in the water, man. Someone said it was a ship, and someone said an island, and we sailed toward it and it just disappeared.

  He is staring into nothing now, far away, young and scared shitless again on that long-ago pirogue.

  Man, once you survive such a thing you never want to do it again. It was gone. When we sailed up to it, it was gone. I was so scared I said, we’re turning back, man, to keep going is suicide.

  I’ll only go on a long trip for octopus. It’s not far and it’s not that long.

  When you fish shark you can go days without seeing another boat. I’m a fisherman, but I know the sea is very dangerous. Once a friend was taking a pirogue to Spain and he offered me four spots. I said, No, thank you. It’s true that it’s up to God to decide when we die but we should take care of ourselves, too.

  * * *

  At the harbor a clerk at the regional branch of the ministry of fishing sends Coura away three times to fetch documents and copies of documents. On Coura’s fourth visit he approves the paperwork but refuses to telephone the coastguard in Dakar for help finding the lost boys. Surveillance is very expensive. Besides, in Senegal children shouldn’t work, so Oumar Kane is breaking the law. Anyway, the cousins went fishing at night before the night-fishing season opens so they must be simply looking for a place to move their illegal catch. To my insistence he responds: You are a woman and a mother, of course you think with your heart.

  At last the officer who handles surveillance for the marine refuge receives Coura and Malal in his corner office. There is air-conditioning. There is a massive desk with a large swivel chair, an army cot in the corner, dog-eared marine charts tacked to a drafting table, a life jacket resting on a dresser. We sit in metal chairs before the desk, watch the officer thumb through the papers Coura has brought. The title for the net boat and the catch boat. Registration for both. Tax forms. A copy of Coura’s identity card. The officer lays them out on the desk. Shuffles them again into a pile. Leans back, studies us. Coura and Malal sit with their hands in their laps, skinny, ashy, small.

  The officer links his fingers at his navel.

  So. No life jackets on board. You have to wear life jackets. You have to make an effort! A cheap life jacket isn’t that expensive. You fishermen, you only care about having some money and something to eat. But you must prepare. When you go to sea and you have twenty crew, you need to bring food for thirty. If you are going for a day, bring water for three days. If you think you’ll need three hundred liters of gas, bring four hundred.

  We can’t afford that, says Coura.

  Pah! A small problem onboard can cost your lives. Look here. See this? You know what this is? A mirror, made in America. You fishermen will say, we are not women, we don’t need mirrors. But!

  He raises an admonishing forefinger.

  It’s not for your vanity. It’s for your safety! You use it as a reflector, to draw attention to the boat. You put it on a string—like this, see?—and you put the string around your neck so that you always have it with you. And on the other end of the same string there is a whistle. Like this.

  He puts the whistle to his mouth, pretends to blow. A grounded flight attendant performing a safety demonstration.

  Now. See this? This is a dye. If your anchor line snaps and you are afloat you put this in the water so that people can track your movement. See this? A flare—

  Coura sinks into his chair. Malal stares away. The lecture curls inward upon itself like a shoaling wave.

  And you must memorize the pirogue’s license number because everyone’s boat is named after the same damned caliph. Do you know how many Khady Sarrs are there in Senegal? Even here in Joal—

  Coura has had it. He leaps up, stomps over to the dresser, jabs his right forefinger into the orange life vest.

  Give me this life jacket.

  No.

  Give it to me.

  No, it’s mine!

  Give it!

  No! Okay, I will call the coastguard for you now.

  He digs for his cellphone, dials a number. Dictates the Khady Sarr’s registration number and length, the make of her motor, the names of the missing crew. The coastguard won’t go looking for the pirogue but it will radio all the ships in the vicinity that have a radio onboard. Maybe this will help. Outside his window tall filao trees conceal the only lighthouse in Joal, a squat tower of rebar and concrete, obscure the sea view of the flashing beacon. Behind the lighthouse and the trees the ocean turns green then ocher then gray then black. Somewhere on it is the lost pirogue.

  * * *

  That evening, gillnet captain Paul Maurice Diouf accidentally runs across the Khady Sarr on his way to port. Three days and two nights after they were abandoned at sea, the boys, scared, hungry, alive, are towed to shore. A few weeks after their rescue, the cousins will be fishing again. What else is there? Their crewmates continue to sail, their boats continue to haul net, empty or full.

  * * *

  Steady northeast wind. Harmattan cloaks the shore. An ophthalmologist at the town hospital painfully turns my right eyelid inside out to shake out beach sand that has lodged there. At sea before sunup the moon is a cold fish in the
sky. The ocean is bluegreen and choppy and the Mansor Sakho vibrates as she heads southwest. She did not fish yesterday and when the crew shake out her net, dust and fish scales fly. The sea turns emerald, then turquoise.

  The day at sea is jerky, stop and go, shellacked in wind-water.

  Eleven-fifteen. The Mansor Sakho is at anchor twenty nautical miles offshore, in high seas: mare liberum, free sea. She has been lying safe for over an hour. The stiff wind keeps the fish at the bottom; to look for schools in this weather is to waste fuel. Around us, other anchored boats on a surface brilliantly rippled. All the pirogues still like trout, waiting. Wind carries the chatter of fishermen, the reggae on someone’s cellphone.

  The wind’s dying down.

  Yes, it always does this time of day.

  When it stops we’ll see fish.

  Hôpital is asleep facedown on the net as usual, arms raised above his head. On his left wrist a golden Dolce & Gabbana watch with a cracked crystal, its bezel trimmed with rhinestones that flash at the sea. The sea flashes back. The watch does not work. As far as Hôpital knows it never did. He picked it up at the house where he is renting a room and wears it because it makes his wrist look pretty.

  Eh, Hôpital!

  He stirs awake.

  What’s the time?

  He sleeps again. Facedown, arms raised, knees akimbo: I draw him in my sketchbook. The crew demand to see the sketch, pass it around, take photographs of it with their cellphones. That’s him, that’s our Hôpital, that big head, always sleeping! They kick Hôpital to wake him, show him the picture. He is upset.