Whiteman

by Tony D'Souza

  “I’m going to salute Bukari.”

  “Bukari? The Peul?” he said, and shook his head. “The only time we salute the Peul is when there is a business of milk or meat. Do you want to eat meat, Adama? I will tell my father to send some yams to them and we will eat meat tomorrow.”

  “I want both milk and meat, Mamadou,” I said in a low voice.

  “We will send for them.”

  “You can’t buy this milk and meat with yams.”

  “Milk and meat that you can’t buy with yams? Adama, why are you talking in riddles? The moon is not full. Why are you behaving mysteriously?”

  “Every night I listen to you, little brother. Has it ever occurred to you that I might have a few dreams of my own?”

  “Dreams, Adama?”

  “Desires. I’m going to see Djamilla.”

  Mamadou lifted his eyebrows, then grinned and rubbed his knees. “I thought you were sick, whiteman. But you are not sick. You are a goat. Many men turn into goats when they see Djamilla. Go and try your luck. Soon enough, you will be my friend again.”

  Bukari wasn’t in his hammock as I expected an old man such as he was to be, but cross-legged on his mat, sipping mint tea under the stars. He had a long Arabic beard streaked through with gray, and his flowing blue robe made him seem as foreign as he was. The fire burned low in the circle of stones beyond him, and nobody else was around. He had a second glass waiting on the small steel tray as though he’d known I was coming. “Oh, Adama, come and sit,” he said in his Fulani lilt, patting the mat beside him. “Too long it has been that you have not saluted me. Let us drink tea. I want to know all about life in America.”

  I sat with Bukari a long time as the crescent moon carved its way across the sky. I talked about Chicago, about snow; he wanted to know how cattle were raised there. From the dark hut behind us, I heard giggles now and again. Once I heard a slap, and a child’s voice cried out in protest. Then it was quiet again.

  “What is this ‘cowboy’?” Bukari asked me. I explained as best I could. Bukari reclined back on his elbow, said, “But what does one need with a horse? To know cattle, one must walk with them. Your Peul do not seem very strong to me, Adama. We drive our cattle by foot from Bamako to San Pedro. We sleep in the grass, move them slowly so they do not thin. It takes many months, and we are alone in the bush with our herds and Allah. This is how we are Peul.”

  “I’d like to know cattle as I know planting,” I told him. “If you invite me, I’ll come and visit your herds.”

  “Oh, Adama, this is good. But what about your Worodougou people? Will they not be jealous to see their whiteman drinking tea with a Peul?”

  “I’ve had enough of the Worodougou. Too many genies. Too much digging in the soil like moles.”

  “Ah, Adama, this is good. Tomorrow, come before the sun and we will take the cattle to graze.”

  Bukari offered me his hand good night, and I shook it and bowed low in their way. I felt distant Mali calling me—the land of cattle and true Islam, of the Sahel and stars as embodied in that calm old man—and for a last thing as I stepped off into the dark, loud peals of girls’ laughter emptied from the hut where they’d been gathering all through my visit.

  It began first thing in the morning. As I walked across the village through the morning mist that would soon burn off, women set their long pestles on their shoulders, hitched their wraps higher on their hips, and called to me in laughter, “Anisogoma Fla ché, oh! I be i muso chulla?” ‘Good morning, Mr. Peul! Are you off to salute your wife?’

  At Bukari’s compound, Djamilla pounded corn for flour while her younger sisters tended the fire. She blushed when she saw me, dropped her pestle to the dirt, hurried into the hut, and shut the door. Her sisters sat on their stools and hid their faces in their hands. Their shoulders trembled as they fought their laughter, they snorted and choked, the coins in their hair rang like chimes. Bukari was on his mat, praying. The Peul were real Muslims, while the Worodougou guessed at it. The language of Bukari’s prayer was Arabic.

  When he finished, he sat a moment looking at the morning sky as if meditating, then rose, smiled, and took my hands in his. He had a clear and open face beyond his beard, was as tall as I was, though thinner. He said, “Adama, so early you have come. Like a son. This is how sons come to their fathers in Mali.”

  At the corral, Bukari leaped over the barring pole in his robe, and then I did. The long-horned and humped Brahmins stamped and lowed like prehistoric creatures, larger in the mist than they really were. It was warm among them; there were flies and dung piles everywhere. I waved flies from my face while Bukari separated calves from their dams with his staff. The calves cried and the cows lowed, but none of the beasts made a move at him. He tied the dozen calves to the piled brush that made the fence, and while they strained at the ropes like dogs on leashes, Bukari milked the cows into a great calabash one by one. He nickered at them to calm them in an ancient language of man and kine, and though they could have easily thrown a hoof or horn, he petted their shanks and they didn’t. It was a fine art, gentle. Bukari lifted the gourd over the gate pole to the head of one of his young girls who had come, and she bowed beneath its weight, found her legs, straightened, and set off into the mist for the village. Then Bukari raised the pole, and the cattle filed out in a long and dusty train toward the brush, their hips shifting like women’s.

  We followed the cattle for miles to where the forest opened into thick savanna, sitting and chatting now and again in the grass as the herd grazed, sometimes sleeping, only to awaken with the hundred head lowing calmly in the distance like wild buffalo at ease in the world. Bukari talked to me about Allah, about how every blessing of his life—his cattle, his daughters—came to him from God, and I asked him to tell me Peul words, which I recorded phonetically in Roman letters in the notebook I’d brought. For lunch, I climbed a wild guava and he made a basket with his robe to catch the fruit I tossed down to him, and then Bukari bent water-lily leaves from a pond into wide cups, milked the cows into them, and we drank the hot liquid, thick as cream, like princes. When the cattle crossed a stream, we waded across with them. When they came to a Worodougou rice field, Bukari ran ahead, warding them away from the golden crop with whistles and clicks. Not once did he hit or curse them in any way. They were his children and he knew each one’s name. It was a long and tiring day, pleasant in the walking, and when the sun began to sink, the cattle turned around as though on instinct. By the settling of evening, the forest was a dark wall before us again on the plain, and I was whistling and clicking at them, too, patting their high haunches like old friends. My notebook was full of Peul words: sun and moon and grass and water and stars. The cattle entered the corral, lowing as though glad to be home, and when Bukari untied the calves, they rushed to their mothers, found their teats, and began to suckle vigorously.

  “Now we pray to Allah, Adama,” Bukari said, and cleared a patch in the corral with his staff as if wiping a trowel across wet cement. He took my hand and led me down to my knees. “Like this, Adama. Follow,” he said, and genuflected his face toward the earth, touched his forehead to it. He said the Arabic words, and I knew them, too, from hearing the Worodougou say them every day But with the Worodougou, the words were rounded, slurred. Bukari knew the words as they were meant to be pronounced.

  “Now you, Adama,” Bukari said, and he sat on his heels and smiled at me. I lowered my forehead to the dirt, and the coolness, the softness of it calmed me. Arabic was like singing. I felt happy when I rose again.

  Bukari held my hand on the way back to his compound, and I felt close to him. The women had dinner waiting—corn toh and peanut sauce—and Djamilla sat on a nearby stool and smiled off into the night. Something was happening now. Bukari squeezed my hand and said, “All day together. Like a son.”

  Mamadou came and found me outside my hut that night. We sat on stools and smoked cigarettes and enjoyed the stars, the last sliver of the moon. He said, “Eh, Adama? How was your day with t
he Peul?”

  “My day was fine.”

  “Ah, that is good. And did you make progress with Djamilla?”

  “Maybe,” I said, and shrugged.

  He was quiet awhile, considering. It was a cool evening, and at the witch doctor’s hearth, his sons huddled over the fire against the chill, the fire standing up between their shapes. Then, as if giving up, Mamadou said, “So you are a Fla ché now. That is as it will be. It is as the ancestors say, ‘When food is plentiful, the dog will wander. When he feels the pinch of hunger, he will crawl to the fire with his tail low.’”

  “You’re jealous of the Peul.”

  “Jealous? No, Adama. It is only a proverb. It is good to tell proverbs. It is good to talk and make our hearts known. Adama, what has been troubling you these past days?”

  I wanted to say nothing, to go on as we had all been, as though nothing had happened. But something had, and I was tired of carrying it around. “I don’t like what happened to Bébé’s wife.”

  “No one liked that here.”

  “Why couldn’t the village just let her go home to her mother?”

  Mamadou looked at his hands. He said, “Khadija killed her child. What precious thing do we have if not children? Her life ended when the baby disappeared. Even her own mother would have poisoned her. Adama, can I tell a story? Two stories.”

  Mamadou had told me a hundred stories over the past year, proverbs by the dozen.

  “One dry season when my father’s father was a young man, three boys went into the forest and found a beehive in a stump. For a moment, they thought to come back to the village and tell the honey collector, but instead they decided to poke sticks down into the hive. The first two boys ran forward, put their sticks into the stump, then dashed back onto the path. Then it was the third boy’s turn. The sound of the bees caused him to lose his courage, but the other two teased him. So he ran forth with his stick, put it into the hive, and the bees rose out in a black and angry swarm.

  “They ran through the forest. If they’d been wearing sandals, they lost them. They ran so fast that perhaps even their clothes fell off. Behind them came the bees, the sound of them angry. When they reached the clearing before the village, the boys began to shout, ‘Bees are coming! Angry bees are coming behind us!’

  “Everything ran for shelter; the goats and ducks for the tall grass, the old women for their huts. The boys dashed into their mothers’ huts, shut the doors. All through the village, the angry bees circled like smoke. At one hearth, a mother had stayed home from field work to rest, her small children with her. Back and forth she ran, picking up her children, taking as many as she could inside the hut. Then the bees arrived. There was nothing she could do but shut the door. She watched through a crack as the bees descended and stung her infant daughter to death. Do you see, Adama?”

  Then Mamadou told me this story: His uncle, Mustafa, had a bitch dog that was a good tracker. She was such a fine dog that Mamadou’s uncle fed her meat from time to time. The dog loved the uncle, and if anyone would approach the old man, the dog would lift up off her haunches and growl.

  ‘“Why don’t you kill that mean bitch before she bites someone?’ the people would come to his hut and argue.

  “But the old man would say, ‘She is a fine hunter. The best in the village. I’ll tend to her odd ways.’

  “The old man fell sick and was bedridden. His dog began to wander in his absence, became pregnant. All around, people watched the old man’s hut for signs of recovery. He had been a hard worker in his life; with his cotton profits he had managed to purchase things people desired: a portable radio, a Dutch wax boubous, a number of well-formed calabashes that could be used for many purposes. When he died, the dog guarded the door to his hut with such a fury that no one could get past her to claim his possessions in the night. Then his son came from a neighboring village, Somina, gathered up what was his, and buried his father.

  “The hut was empty and no one bothered to feed the dog. If anyone dared approach the hut, she would rise up and growl. A wave of rage swept through the village dogs, and she caught it, too. When the witch doctor went through the village killing the dogs with his machete, he found that the old man’s bitch had given birth to a litter of six. Somehow, she had managed to wean them. Many people of the village, out of curiosity, followed the witch doctor about as he chopped the sick dogs to pieces. They followed him to the old man’s hut, and the bitch dog came out from her place in the bushes, growling, foaming at the mouth. With a quick blow to her neck, the witch doctor killed her. The puppies hid themselves in the bushes and he went home.

  “After a few days, the puppies came out again. They growled and barked like grown dogs, their fur bristling. They also had the rage. The witch doctor went to kill them, but all the people said, ‘No. What can they do? They are small.’

  “For a week, people would go to the old man’s hut and the rabid puppies would come out of the bushes on their short legs, growling and foaming at the mouth like angry, full-grown dogs. Imagine, such small creatures acting as though they were greater than they were? No one had seen such small angry dogs. Everyone laughed about it. Then the puppies thinned and died on their own.

  “Do you see, Adama?” Mamadou asked me as he finished his story. He stood and brushed off his boubous as though the storytelling had taken something out of him. “I am not jealous of the Peul. I know that your life here is difficult. But know that ours is difficult as well. Wander now. But do not circle about like bees if you don’t intend to sting. Do not foam at the mouth if you don’t have the teeth to bite. Good night, Adama. Sleep and dream of Djamilla. Make progress. I will be pleased when you come back.”

  The Worodougou did not make it easy on me. Everywhere I went over the coming days, it was, “Good morning, Mr. Peul,” and, “How is your lovely Peul wife?” I went to Bukari’s and we grazed the cattle. Djamilla seemed to inch her stool closer to us every night.

  I can’t say that Djamilla entered my dreams the way true love should, but she was beautiful and I enjoyed the tension. I also enjoyed being with the Peul. The food they ate, the soft lilt of their language, even praying to Allah with Bukari in the corral was like escaping the Worodougou world I lived in.

  Every night as she sat closer to us, Djamilla seemed more at ease. Would I really marry her, stay in Africa with her as my wife? Would I take her home to America, return to the village in a long car with her and our children, bearing gifts for everyone? Wrestling the calves and following the herd was hard work, as demanding as any. I begged off one morning, told Bukari that I needed a rest loudly enough for Djamilla to hear where she stood pounding corn. I hoped that she hadn’t closed her ears to me as she had once promised she would.

  I sat on my stool outside my hut in the empty village, waiting for Djamilla. Soon, she came. If I had thought she would rush into my arms behind her father’s back, I was wrong. She stood across the courtyard the way she had before, the wide calabash on her head, her hands on her hips. I rolled a mandarin to her and she picked it up. She peeled it, ate it, spit out the seeds. Then she said, “Why are you always at my hut, whiteman?”

  “The moon and stars,” I said in Peul. She blushed despite herself. For an instant, her kohl-lined eyes looked less like a raptor’s than a doe’s.

  “My mother lives in Mankono, you know. We are only here while there is grass for the cattle.”

  “Are there moon and stars where your mother lives?”

  “Adama, enough. Don’t you understand? With us, it is the mother one must speak to after one has spoken to the father.”

  “Mankono is far. I don’t even know where Mankono is.”

  “Eh? Then why have you done all of this? Forget it, whiteman. I must sell my milk.”

  I let her start to walk away, and then I called after her, “Moon and stars, I will even go to Bamako, if that is where your mother lives.” I rolled another mandarin to her feet. She looked at it, at me, narrowed her eyes.

  “Why do you t
ease me?”

  “Dja-mil-la,” I said.

  “Why do you say my name like that?”

  “Dja-mil-la.”

  “Stop! It makes my ears itch.”

  “Djamilla, come here. I want to show you something. A picture of my mother. If I must go to see yours, then you must come and look at mine.” I went into the dark of my hut, waited, and my heart began to pound. Soon again, she came, the mandarin in her hand. She lowered the calabash from her head to the ground, and I could see flies sucking moisture from the cheesecloth covering the milk like black jewels. She peered under the thatch of my doorway, said, “Show me here.”

  “Not there,” I said from the shadows of my hut, “here. These are only for you to see. I want to show you here.”

  She glanced about the deserted courtyard, bit her lip, ducked her head under the thatch, came in. I offered her a stool, and she sat on it. Her feet were powdered with dust, and she seemed smaller somehow now close to me. She glanced all about without turning her face, and I saw my hut through her eyes: a worn raffia mat, a mosquito net hanging over it from the thatching, my trunk where I kept my few Western things: T-shirts and jeans, vials of malaria pills, notebooks; then my machete and short-handled hoe, my field clothes, my ceramic cistern of water, my shotgun and shells, my bathing bucket. If she had hoped to see something in there to reveal my soul to her, she was disappointed. I had less than most of the Worodougou did. I rummaged through the metal trunk, came to her with a short stack of photos. She looked at me warily, and I kneeled and offered her the photos.

  She took the first one up carefully, as though she was afraid of damaging it. It was my mother and sister in Hawaii, where they’d gone together after my father had died. They were trying to smile, though the sun was in their eyes. They were on a deck somewhere, piña coladas in their hands, pink cocktail umbrellas in the drinks. My mother had a yellow flower behind her ear. My sister looked pale and tired.