Fisherman's Blues

by Anna Badkhen

  * * *

  On the morning of the winter solstice the sun rises late over low tide. Gilded water, cool northeast wind. Silver breakers six feet tall. Boats roll this way, roll that. Boats anchored and not kedged whorl about the anchorlines, facing to sea, facing to shore. At Mbaar Kanené, Ndongo in a tattered and paint-splotched blue gym suit mends net. He grins at me, winks with a bloodshot eye. The artist is almost done with the big pirogue, he says. We’ll put her in the water after lunch, inshallah. Today, today, yes. Go take a look.

  I approach the Sakhari Soiré on port. The artist Moustapha Faye has been at the graving dock since dawn. He has spelled the boat’s license number in white on the green field of the bow: TI-0725JL. He has painted a blue stripe under her red gunwale. He has—

  Below the blue, close to the stern, where captains ask artists to write Paris Saint-Germaine or Lionel Messi or the name of their favorite wrestler, Moustapha has spelled my name.

  Too late I recognize the one boundary I hold inviolate, unquestionable: the protective shell of a storyteller, my perceived immunity as one who passes through. I discover and identify it the very moment it is erased, dismissed, written over. The breach pierces, humbles, bewilders, triggers the topsy-turvy familiarity of mal de débarquement. I am no longer a storyteller. I am a mascot. When the Sakhari Soiré sets sail she will take me with her everywhere she goes.

  * * *

  On the afternoon of the winter solstice, at perigee high tide, forty-three men and boys put the Sakhari Soiré in the sea.

  Amadou Souaré is the first to the dry dock. In a white boubou with large red polkadots and a pair of large sunglasses he stands facing his new pirogue bowlegged, feet apart. Between his feet in the sand lies a meaty chunk of tuna belly with flesh the same color as the polkadots, a donation from a younger fisherman back from a trip. He stands above the bleeding hunk unmoving in his flowing dress, a seedy Neptune. He waits.

  The Sakhari Soiré rests on two palm logs. Gone are the sandbag and the brace of painted pirogue boards. Gone are the nails and the sawdust: this morning Ndongo and his halfbrothers swept her clean, brushing first from the bow toward center hold, then from the stern toward center hold, because center hold is where the fish and the net will be, God willing. Beside her starboard transom lie a four-fluke anchor the size of a small cow and a rudder eight feet long. The rudder is soldered from black new-looking stock and a rusted, seaworn iron tiller. Which pirogues has it steered through the Atlantic before, over which depths has it beaded bright waters into necklets of wake, on which quests has it ferried the sea’s spellbound disciples?

  I stand on tiptoe on a palm log and push myself up to peek inside the boat. Gora Sall says a few years back there was a gillnetter that caught so many fish she was drawing water overboard. Gora says such a thing will never happen again: not enough fish. Still I try. I see fish in the brand-new holds of the pirogue I helped build. I imagine its smell, the slippery, slapping mess of it all the way up to the pale-blue thwarts. As if such seeing can conjure it up. My arms tire. The pirogue is empty. She reeks of paint thinner.

  Yoro Souaré arrives in a boubou cut from the same polkadot cloth as his brother’s. He worries a string of prayer beads in his left hand and fists a green ball of caulk in his right. He walks around the Sakhari Soiré, inspects her one last time. His intoeing forces him to bend at the waist. To bow to the pirogue. Now and then he stops to smear sealant over exposed nails so salt does not rust them. When Ndongo comes, Yoro fishes out of a pant pocket an amulet wrapped in plastic and tied with twine.

  Here, son. May God help you sail out safely and return in peace.

  Amen.

  Ndongo shucks his flipflops, climbs into the pirogue, hammers a nail in the chain locker, hangs the gris-gris from it. Hops aft on bare feet from thwart to thwart to secure at the transom a gudgeon for the rudder. Then fleets fore again and from the prow summons his friends.

  Psst! Eh! Come, let’s launch this boat!

  Fishermen shuffle over, complaining. The wheelbarrow is much too small to hoist the boat on it. There are not enough palm logs to help roll her to the sea. There is no fish in the sea anyway. Some fishermen are eating rice and beans! Many have been going to the Gambia to catch something, but prices in the Gambia are low. A fisherman says, One of my friends says this prayer before going to sea: “May God separate me from this boat,” because fishing is hard and it would be better to find a different job.

  On the prow Ndongo sucks his teeth. Shut up. Let’s do it. Let’s launch ’er, for God’s sake.

  They lodge the wheelbarrow under the boat’s keel at the bow and gather at the stern and begin to push fifty-two feet of mahogany toward cold chop the color of steel. They roll her over her two supporting logs and they stop to grab the log she has rolled over and shove it under her keel at the fore again. Then the other log. Then the wheelbarrow. Repeat. They slide bits of sheetmetal and plastic and tarp under the wheels when the wheelbarrow sinks too deeply into sand dry and loose as silt. Pushing, pulling, yelling, sweating, cursing. The pirogue creaks, inches forward, stops, moves again. They call out, Hey, men, strength strength! and they keep count of this call because before the Sakhari Soiré hits water they must repeat it exactly thirty-three times—the eternal age of all dwellers of heaven; the exact number of angels who carry man’s praise to God; the age of Issa on the cross; the symbol of the Seal of Solomon; the sum of beads in each of the three sets of a trisected rosary that, counted together, correspond to the entire ninety-nine names of God of which the thirty-third is al Azim, the Incomparably Great.

  In the bow by the bitt Ndongo stands like a figurehead.

  Take out the log!

  Come over to port!

  Hold up, hold up!

  Like men now, like men!

  Hey, men, strength strength!

  The boat seesaws on the small wheelbarrow. Up and down on pretend waves. Tests that oscillation that will be hers for as long as she lasts in the sea. She barely clears the gap on the shore between a large purse seiner dry-docked for a paint job and two small abachi trapsetters, and Yoro motions for some men to lift these light boats and move them out of the way. Inside the stern of one, between the name of Muhammad spelled in Arabic and the letter waw written seven times, the owner has hung a toddler’s canvas left shoe, the way taxi drivers dangle them from a rear bumper, or horsecart owners nail them to their carts. A gris-gris. When the men lift the pirogue the shoe swings and a used condom sails out of the midships, a glimpse into the secret life of beached pirogues. You hang your laundry between them to dry, you fuck your boyfriend in their holds, you sit in their shade and watch the sea for your husband returning, not returning. In their hereafter they become benches, door fragments, pillars, fences, gates, new boats.

  The procession is almost to the tideline when Ndongo’s halfbrothers hoist the anchor above their heads and hand it to him and he drops it into the chain locker. The pirogue launches without an outboard.

  Hey, men, strength strength!

  Her bow hits the water first. A shattering of diamonds spouts skyward in a brilliant crown. She teeters on the feeble pushcart, which is now stuck in silt and seaweed, slides off it on her beam ends, almost hits the Sakhari Souaré, her little older sister whose six wooden thwarts are festooned with net. Steadies, to cheers from the shore. Ndongo’s nine-year-old son, Ousseynou, the twin whose brother was killed by a hospital nurse, strips and darts into the cold ocean to swim the wheelbarrow ashore. On the prow Ndongo, drenched in surf, grips a hawser in his hands like reins and rides his father’s chariot boat into the Atlantic.

  * * *

  Silver sun, silver sky, sea like molten steel. Fishermen along the wrackline in a line of their own face the ocean. There, Ousmane Souaré and his teenage uncle Saliou are swimming over to the new pirogue, now anchored about a hundred feet offshore. A bobbing white dot in Ousmane’s outstretched hands: a bucket full of milk. An ob
lation.

  Amadou Souaré narrates Ousmane’s passage:

  Many years ago fishermen in Senegal were heathen and did not know proper Muslim prayers to bless pirogues, to protect their homes and safeguard their loved ones. So instead of asking God they asked genii to bless and protect. Because God is merciful he accepted these rituals—not all of them, but some. Those were the rituals they kept after converting. For example, I know a prayer that will protect you from a snake’s venom.

  Even if a lion bites you that prayer will protect you, says Pa Ousmane Sall.

  Yes, I know both kinds of protection prayer. And Fatou, my first wife, she has a special connection with the genii. The kind of sacrifice a genie asks for is usually milk. So when we have a new boat she prepares milk, and we pour this milk inside the pirogue from the stern to the bow on the starboard side, then from the bow to the stern on the port side, then from the stern to the bow along the middle. What Ousmane and Saliou are doing now.

  Except they are stupid, says Captain Malick Seye. Look! They just put the blessing in the pirogue and now they are bailing it out. Eh! Psst! Stop bailing!

  Stop bailing, stop bailing, eh! shouts Yoro Souaré. He squints at the boat bobbing in the sea that shines mercilessly, a pulsating glint that cuts the eye. Look how high she rides, he says. They’ll have to put ten bags of sand in the stern so that the motor touches water.

  A fisherman walks by with a broom of Sodom’s apple in a plastic bag—to shield from the dark magic some other pirogue, or a house, or a newborn baby. He stops, shakes hands with the fishermen, utters a blessing for the Sakhari Soiré. A fishwife on her way to harbor says, May the new boat be strong. The steep seas heave the moored pirogues, toss them about their anchorage, clank one against another. The whole shoreline rattles, groans as wood slams and rubs against wood. Past the yo-yoing boats Ndongo swims from the Sakhari Soiré to the shore in his ripped blue gym suit, straightens up waist-deep in loud surf, comes ashore dripping, beaming.

  Boats should use both a kedge and an anchor in such waves, Malick says.

  Yes, these waves are too strong, Gora says.

  People always should have a kedge anchor or two aboard, in case they lose the main anchor in the wind.

  Yes—did you see that boat from Mbour? She only had one anchor. Such a shame, they had only just rebuilt her.

  Less than a year earlier, fishermen poured milk in the bilges of the newly refurbished Serigne Mansor, a sixty-three-foot purse seiner flagged to Mbour. They painted the inside of her hull turquoise to ward off evil spirits. Inside her bow they wrote, in white, the letter waw. Her tall young captain, Ousou Boye, had a successful run hauling herring and mackerel.

  Every full-moon week a gale rises off the coast of Joal and sends forth a quick succession of uncommonly high waves. Last night such moonchurned waves ripped the anchor line of the Serigne Mansor, flipped her onto the beach half a mile south of the Sakhari Soiré, then stirred her broken carapace round and round until her stern, transom pointing inland, lay two dozen paces away from the bow; until sand and brown seaweed buried most of the black and green nylon mile of her pursenet, and the splintered midship that had borne the first part of her name, Serigne, had washed away into the Atlantic. Like what happened to my boat, says Vieux Sene. Maybe there is consolation in that. From this day on for months her port bow will lie parallel to the tideline so that the turquoise ceiling gapes at Joal, sinking deeper into the sand with each tide.

  The Sakhari Soiré has only one anchor. Ndongo disregards the implied criticism. Maybe it is a superstitious obligation, a collective way to protect against ruinous envy a precious and expensive vessel that bears the stamp of a famous master shipwright, belongs to a respected elder, and will be piloted by an esteemed fisherman. Or maybe it is, in fact, envy, best left without response. Or maybe water has clogged Ndongo’s ears and he is at the moment a little bit deaf. One way or another, he does not react to the kedge talk. In his quiet captain voice he says:

  One small leak. It’s a nail. I’ll fix it tomorrow. I’m happy. Very happy. Great boat. Let’s go eat.

  We walk to the mbaar and squat and sit and stand around a huge tin platter of ceremonial food Fatou Diop Diagne and Ndongo’s eldest wife, Alassane, prepared for the launch: lakh drowned in sweet yogurt. Amadou sits heavily on a bench made from a mahogany boat keel, removes his sunglasses, folds them into the chest pocket of his boubou.

  First, he says, we shall pray. The fishermen and boys around the platter dutifully bow their heads, turn their palms toward heaven. Little Ousseynou, who has been dashing in and out of the sea, is caught by the invitation to prayer with his too-small bluejeans full of sand and halfway down his wet legs. His face becomes solemn and he tries to wiggle into the tight pants while holding up his hands in prayer. It does not work. He shoots his grandfather a panicked look. Amadou beats his male progeny liberally and often, all of them, even Ndongo. Sometimes the women end up calling the gendarmes. But Amadou has his eyes closed and is talking to God, asking to help his new pirogue to journey in peace, to catch lots of fish, to carry her crew to sea and back safely. He does not see his grandson’s predicament. Ousseynou gives up on the pants and prays bare-assed.

  * * *

  Ndongo skips through the evening harbor. He slaps the bottoms of young fishwives. He steals watermelon slices out of their hands. His wet gym suit still drips seawater. He is on top of the world. He owns the world. Malick and Gora and Vieux walk two steps behind their friend. They are headed to the marina where the pirogues unload their catch because one of their friends’ boats just came in from a two-week trip to the Gambia and they are going to ask her crew for some free fish.

  After the sun sets the pale-green horizon fades to yellowish blue then to purple. Seabirds rush to their mangrove nests before the longest night of the year swallows the West African coast. The long sedges curve and draw out over the Sakhari Soiré and the dwarved Sakhari Souaré next to her and the broken Serigne Mansor and the blue Mansor Sakho and all the other boats. When the birds are gone it is dark and the full moon is right overhead and the beach seems cast of mercury.

  That night the Sakhari Soiré does not come off her mooring nor does she bilge on her anchor in the waves. The sea holds her up. The sea holds up nothing except itself, holds up everything.

  * * *

  In the waking mangroves by the red road from Fadiouth a murmuration of weavers spools out of the sole acacia tree where they chitter each dawn in the leafless thicket. Long scarves of them billow and contract and billow and contract and stretch, pull in different directions and divide into peripatetic mushroom clouds that flow one into another again, condensing and expanding, pulling, shapeshifting, glorious over a millet-threshing field in the early morning. The loudness of them on the wing over the withered stalks is like an echo of the ocean, upon whose brightening morning chop somewhere now bounces the Sakhari Soiré. Her maiden voyage is taking her south to the Gambia and farther on, to Casamance, where fishermen say there are some fish now. Where she will stay for longer than a month. Where, Amadou Souaré has decreed, I am not welcome to come.

  Why? He does not say. Maybe he is being protective of his new boat. The Sakhari Soiré has her Senegalese papers but she has no permit to fish in Gambian waters. My white skin would attract the attention of the Gambian coastguard. Fishing without a permit would cost the Souarés the motor, the pirogue, maybe even time in Gambian prison.

  Or maybe the old man is protective of me. Maybe he is not convinced that the new pirogue is sturdy enough, though she took two months to build and was launched on the shortest day of the year and blessed at a full-moon tide. The sea is quite cold now, too cold to float to shore alive, the voyage is long.

  Yet he is putting aboard every able-bodied man in his bloodline, everyone except for his eldest grandson, Ousmane, whose mother Alassane refuses to let him go on a long trip because she wants the boy to bring home money daily so she c
an play the lottery. Besides, Ousmane’s ailment now has spread from his ulcerous lip to his right eyelid, which has puffed up to the shape and color of an eggplant. A doctor at the town hospital diagnosed it as an allergy and prescribed that Ousmane stop eating sardinella. The diet makes no difference. It is sardinella season; Ousmane handles the fish daily on the pursenetter of Captain Lamine Coura, where he is now an oupa. The new captain nags the boy as much as Ndongo did. The badgering, Ousmane says, makes him tired.

  Maybe Amadou does not want me aboard because I am a woman. Everyone knows that women aboard are ill-omened. Some fishermen say even crossing paths with a woman before a trip means they will catch no fish. Such men wait for their wives and daughters and mothers and sisters and aunts and female cousins and servant girls to be asleep or at the market or in their rooms before they sneak out to go to sea. They also say a fisherman will have no fish if he has a pregnant wife. Or if he washes with soap.

  But I have sailed aboard Amadou’s small pirogue many times already. Besides, Amadou says I can come aboard when the Sakhari Soiré sails near Joal—when there are fish here, whenever that may be. So this is not an all-out ban from coming aboard. Perhaps there exists an equation, a time-luck continuum, which permits a woman aboard for eighteen hours but not for several weeks. I cannot know. I have stared at the sea enough to assume that I understand nothing, that I will know only enough to ask: Sailing on which tide?