Whiteman

by Tony D'Souza

  During the days, Bobi sat on a chair beside his hut in a fine filigreed boubous the tailor had sewn for him, receiving the honors of the village men. I stayed at my hut and occupied myself with trivialities: scraping gourds clean for bowls, knotting wires into loops for agouti spring traps. On the third day, Bobi called for me as I knew he would.

  I kneeled before Bobi where he sat outside his hut. He was a big man, bigger in his flowing robe. I knew him from exchanges we’d had over the years. He’d found it funny that I liked to hunt, often stopped me in the forest to praise the quietness with which I walked, to tell me jokes about agouti and francolin, to say that he respected my resolve in succeeding in the village. Why didn’t I take a wife? he often asked. What was I really doing here?

  “Rise up, Adama,” Bobi said after I’d recited the benedictions, “you’ve saluted your chief well.” He took my hands in his. He said, “Know that you are welcome here, Adama Diomandé. Know that nothing has changed. You were like a son to the old chief. Now you are like a son to me.”

  “I thank you, Father.”

  “Adama, times have changed, have they not? You see how we have lived under the Christians. Now another time has begun. The old chief loved you. Therefore, I will love you. You are welcome here so long as you wish to stay. Do you understand me, Adama whiteman?”

  “I do.”

  Soon after, the young men came to the witch doctor’s hut. They demanded to see the guns, and the witch doctor brought them out, stood on his stoop, and looked up at the stars. There were three guns, AK-47S. The young men pawed them like women’s bodies, pointed them at the sky, shot them, though they were empty. Mamadou and I sat smoking outside my hut, watching this. Mamadou said, “When is it that we shall say our final good-bye? What will the world look like? Will there be a wind? Will it rain? Will we have eaten? Will we have thirst? How will you look in that final moment when you turn your face from me forever?”

  Long into the night, the young men handled the weapons, laughing, passing them around, the firelight coloring their eager faces. All around them in the night, the doors of the village were painted in many and beautiful hues. They didn’t notice this anymore, though they had been the ones who’d painted them.

  PETITE AFRIQUE

  For a time in Africa, I had a dog. My dog was small, amber haired, chestnut eyed, she had a white tip at her tail: She looked like a deer, a doe. I called her Jane.

  Though Jane looked like the other dogs, she wasn’t. She’d been raised by my friend Samantha, a gift to her from someone in her village. When it was Samantha’s time to return to America, I rode on my mobylette the day’s journey north to see her for the last time. I didn’t really know her, had only talked to her now and again on weekends in Séguéla, but we were kin in that we’d gone through Africa together. I was dusty from my ride, and she hugged me at the door of her hut. Her compound was full of her villagers in their finest robes; the men on stools, the women on mats in the dirt. Her boyfriend, the chief’s son, sat in a chair in the Western clothes she’d bought for him in Abidjan, and Samantha passed parcels to him to distribute to the people: her radio; batteries, razors, candles, soap. She gave away all of her clothes. She gave her toothbrush to a small girl who had been special to her.

  Later, in a supermarket in Cleveland on the other side of the world, she would watch the store’s employees tossing barely wilted heads of cabbage into a garbage bin one after the other. She would try to stop them; she would take the cabbage from their hands and try to put them back. Then she would notice her mother, with whom she’d gone shopping, her mother’s frightened eyes, the customers staring, the store’s workers, and she would stop that. At home that evening, she would unwind the long braids her village mother had tressed for her on her last day, which she’d worn for months in America after her return until the plaits were frizzy and unkempt, even beyond what she knew her village mother would have tolerated.

  In her bathroom at her parents’ house, she’d drop the boubous she’d been wearing from her shoulders, untie the hip beads her boyfriend had given her, look at her white body in the mirror a long time, fold all of these things in the silk of her boubous, place them in the bottom drawer of her dresser. She would take a long, hot shower. Even as she soaped herself, she could feel that her muscles were softening. Then she would write me a letter.

  “They don’t get it here, Jack,” her words said to me by lamplight in my hut as children drummed and sang outside in the night. “If you want it to mean something, don’t ever come back.”

  But the day she left, she had a gift for me: her dog. She called the dog “Denny,” ‘Child,’ a joke against all the teasing she’d endured as a grown and childless woman. “Where are your children?” the village women would stop and ask her. She’d whistle to her dog, say, “Voilà, here is my Denny.”

  “She won’t know how to survive without me,” Samantha had said, and handed me the rope leash. “I should have gotten papers to bring her home. But there was so much else to do. I think she’ll be happier here anyway. She’s yours now, Jack. I hope you’ll care for her as I have.” The dog sat on my lap on the ride south. She whimpered, cast long glances behind us on the yellow road as if looking for Samantha, and I petted her ears to hush her. In Tégéso, I called her Jane, after a girl I’d had a crush on in high school, and she slept that first night beside me on my mat. I wondered how Samantha’s boyfriend felt that night alone on his mat; how she herself did on the plane later and watching as the forests of Ivory Coast dwindled into a long and even green, covered then by clouds.

  I liked Jane, enjoyed her company. It took a few weeks of hand-feeding her rice to make her belong to me, and when she did, she’d dash out like a yellow ribbon from the village as I’d come home from the fields, would tumble in the dust as her speed carried her past me, her tongue hanging out over her teeth as if she were smiling. Her body was lithe and young, and she’d nip my heels as though she couldn’t contain her love.

  Samantha had treated her like an American dog: She’d fed her boiled eggs and bits of meat, bathed her now and again, petted her constantly, and let her sleep in her hut. I wanted Jane to be able to hold her own in the village once I’d left. She ate the cold handfuls of cassava toh I’d place on the ground for her after Mamadou and I had eaten all we could; at night, she slept outside. The other dogs tormented her at first: She toughened, learned to snarl back; soon enough I saw her running among them now and again, hunting bush rats in an excited pack, being social apart from me. I didn’t pet her because Africans would not touch anything so filthy as a dog. Sometimes I’d even hit her to remind her to be wary of people. But my violence impressed her about as much as it had the children at the school when I’d taught there. Jane would whimper outside my door for hours to be let in. As I lay listening in the dark, I told myself that I loved her, that I was doing this to prepare her for when I would have to leave.

  I could have made plans to bring her home with me. But I believed that Africa belonged to the Africans, worried often that my presence among the Worodougou eroded their traditions, and in my heart I knew that Jane should never have to learn a leash, a cage, neutering, vaccinations, sedation, a transadantic flight; the cold of Chicago, the confined spaces she would live in there. It was better to leave her to run in the forest with the young boys, to the rain and stars and hearth fires and drumming for the whole of her life as I imagined I wished I could with mine.

  Still, she was an American dog. Samantha had caressed her so she’d lost her fear of people; she’d taken her for walks through the village on a rope leash and tugged her away from the road when logging trucks would rumble past.

  I went away from the village for three days. Maybe I was teaching AIDS somewhere with Mamadou. Maybe I was hunting bush pig with the witch doctor. When I came back to the village, some of the small boys were waiting for me, smiling. They were naked, dirt-streaked from wrestling in the dust. They took my hands and led me home. They said, “Adama, where is your dog? Yo
u know she is very bad. She never listens. A very bad dog.”

  “She’s terrible, isn’t she? The worst dog in the world.”

  “You know that she likes to lie in the road, Adama. We threw stones at her, but she chased us away.”

  They smiled widely, looked up at me. “She was in the road, Adama. Everyone yelled at her, but she wouldn’t listen. A truck hit her. She is dead. The chief had her body thrown in the grass so that you wouldn’t see. We went to look at her for you, Adama. Her body swelled. Then the birds and marching ants came and ate her. Do you want to see her bones?”

  I shook my hands free of them. In my hut, I lay on my mat. The boys were shadows in the doorway.

  “Are you sad, Adama?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to cry?”

  “No.”

  “Do you miss Jane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come and see her bones.”

  After a while, the boys grew bored of watching me, drifted away. Between mouthfuls of toh in the evening as we crouched in the dark over the serving bowl, Mamadou finally said, “I’m sorry about your dog.”

  I nodded, balled toh with my fingers for another bite. Jane was finished like that.

  The war began like this: The radio station went out in the early morning, and because this made everyone nervous, Bobi the new chief had the old chief’s television fired up from the car battery they kept charged for that. Yes, the television station was out, too. This had happened regularly over the past three years. Still, nobody went to the fields. Every hour or so through the day, Bobi turned on the TV to check, and finally in the evening an image came through: five young men in combat fatigues and holding AK-47s flanking another who was seated at the news studio desk and reading a statement. The government had fallen. They were the new government. Everyone should remain calm. Then that image went out, too. The stars had come out over all of us in the meantime, and we blinked up at them. Who were those men? What would they tell us to do? A rumor had spread in the past week that a troop of forty commandos had marched on the highway toward Séguéla. That meant something, too. People began to argue, voices grew heated, fists were waved at the night, and then the witch doctor came and shouted at us to go to bed.

  The television was out all the next day, and we occupied ourselves with simple tasks: the women cracking palm kernels for soap, the men weaving mats, sharpening hoes and machetes. Everyone stayed close to the village. In the evening, Laurent Gbagbo, the latest president, was on the TV in a stiff suit and reading a prepared statement from his desk. He stuttered, seemed aged and nervous; he didn’t bother looking up at the camera. General Guei had staged another coup. But this time he had been defeated. The country was secure. Guei was dead. His whole family: His wife, his kids, all of his bodyguards and servants were now dead. Even the cook. The government had won the battle and Ivory Coast would now be safe and prosperous. The president thanked God, said good night, the anthem played, and the studio faded into an image of the waving Ivorian tricolor. Then that went dead, too.

  In the morning, men on bicycles came out from the path through the forest from Séguéla: messengers. They were harried and winded. Bobi and the old men gathered to hear them. They straddled their bicycles as they poured out their news. Korhogo had fallen. Tengréla had fallen. The Muslim quarters of Abidjan had fallen. Great and Christian Man had fallen! Berebi had fallen. San Pedro. Kong. Even Bouake was now split in two. A great Muslim army had risen up to throw off the Christian shackles. The young men let up a cheer. The old men were somber. “And Séguéla?” the old men asked. “What of our capital?”

  “Séguéla has not fallen yet. All around here there is fighting. There have been massacres. People are moving on the roads. If you have Christians here, kill them, or send them home. This land is the frontier. The rebels will come for Mankono, and then they will assault Séguéla. The military is all over the roads, in the woods around Séguéla. They are going to fight. But the rebels are coming. They will fight and winy and then we will be free!” The young men cheered. The old men held their chins in their hands and murmured to each other.

  And for me? My instincts told me to stay put, that I would be safest among these people I knew. But I also had orders. The organization had drilled contingency plans into us for this: Don’t move until commanded, and once commanded, I had better do so if I wanted anyone to try to help me.

  I went into my hut and tuned my shortwave to the BBC. Mamadou sat beside me on the floor at the radio, his legs crossed like a boy. After recapping the Japanese and European markets at the top of the hour, the female announcer said, “Fighting has broken out in the major cities and surrounding countrysides of Ivory Coast. Massacres have been rumored. It is too early to report on casualties. Two hundred Western children are caught in the crossfire at a missionary school in the country’s second most populous city, Bouake. Paris and Washington have convened emergency discussions. The BBC will update coverage of Ivory Coast as the situation becomes more clear. Also, the relief agency Potable Water International has convened a training mission immediately in Abidjan.”

  That was my cue: the secret message ordering me to evacuate the village to my regional capital. My regional capital was Séguéla. I looked at Mamadou and he knew.

  “You’ll be safe here, Adama,” he said, and squeezed my hand. “You know that we’ll protect you.”

  “The others need me with them now.”

  I made a small and inconspicuous bag: a change of clothes, my passport, my talismans—feathers and bones that the witch doctor had given me in a gazelle-skin pouch to guard my health—and nothing else. In my heart, I readied myself. I embraced Mamadou, went outside with him with my arm around his waist. I embraced Bobi as I would have the old chief. I embraced everyone. They walked me to the path that led to Séguéla; the secret way. The witch doctor came to me with my gun from my hut, but I shook my head at it. Around us, it was a hot and sunny day.

  “We’ll guard your things for your return, Adama,” the witch doctor told me.

  “I know, Father.”

  “Allah ee kissee,” Bobi said for all of them. ‘Go with God.’

  I looked at their faces for a last time. It was like looking at the gathered faces of my beloved family. Then I hurried into the forest, and when I let myself glance back, it had closed around them.

  I reached Somina in the late afternoon, the last village before Séguéla. Somina’s courtyards were crowded, old women were sitting on the ground wailing. I had passed many people on the path in the forest. I had been jumpy, they had been jumpy; some of them bolted off into the trees at the sight of me. Here now, an old woman gripped my hand from where she sat and said in Worodougou, “Everything is lost now! Adama, everything is lost, Allah!”

  The chief of Somina did not offer me food. Already, they were hoarding it. I passed out my cigarettes to men who asked for them until they were gone. The dossos of Somina met in groups outside their huts, were dressed in their magic Korhogo cloth shirts and pointed caps, shotguns and black-powder guns on their shoulders. Men sped through on bicycles. Families packed up rice and mats and headed out to hide in the forest.

  “Why didn’t you stay with your village, Adama?” the old Somina chief asked me as I sat in the circle of men at his compound, everyone debating what to do. “All night we heard guns. All morning.”

  “I have to go into the city, Father. My brothers and sisters are waiting for me there.”

  “Can’t you see all these people? Can’t you see that Séguéla is no place to go?”

  “My white chief has ordered me. I have no choice.”

  “I won’t let you go. We’ll bind you and carry you back to Tégéso by force.”

  “Father, each man must walk his own path, isn’t this true? I wish it was otherwise, but the path to Séguéla is mine.”

  A man on a bicycle came with news. He said, “The soldiers are hiding in the trees. I was the last to get out. Now they circle the city like a python.
Nothing can pass.”

  I slept on the ground that night, didn’t really sleep. People were lying on the ground everywhere, some moaning, many whispering, old people coughing, men arguing. Babies cried long and uncomfortably as their mothers tried to succor them in this strange place. Small children lay together in piles for warmth. Séguéla was not far away, and now and again we could hear gunfire. Everyone quieted to listen. Then the night would fall silent again and the arguing would start anew. What could I do but look at the stars?

  For hours the next morning, I hid in the elephant grass at the edge of the western road to Séguéla. Two men were with me: a rural teacher—a Christian—and an old Peul who’d been selling glass beads in the villages. Both men were trying to reach their families in the city. Flies found and worried us as soon as the sun hit the grass, and the Christian alternated prayers in his language with crying out every one of his worries. He kept gripping my arm and asking, “What should we do? You are Christian as I am. How can we tell the soldiers not to shoot us?”

  I shook his hands off me, wouldn’t look at him. His nervousness made things so much worse. The old Peul was as calm as wood. I said to him, “Father, what do you think we should do?”

  He stroked his long beard awhile. Then he said, “We have to make a choice. Either we step out onto the road, or we do not. If we step onto the road, either we may be shot, or we may not. If we stay here, we wait to make this same decision later. I think it better to go now in the light than to be found in darkness. Also, you are white. Perhaps they are afraid to shoot whites.”