In desperation, I placed my feet against his chest and tried to roll him over. I was making no headway at all, until my foot slipped loose and kicked him in the face. He sat up sharply.
“Eh!” he shouted.
“Touré! You’ve got to give me just a little space to lie down.”
“A little space,” he repeated groggily.
“A little space,” I pleaded.
He lay back down, grumbling, shifting his body a teensy bit to the side. I nudged him again, afraid he’d drift back to sleep. He moved a little more, but still not enough. The water-bailer spoke to him sharply in Bambara. He sat up.
“Aahh,” I groaned, spreading out.
He stayed sitting the rest of the night. I didn’t care.
“You beat me up last night. You tried to kill me!” Touré shouted at me the next morning.
“You said you didn’t sleep,” I countered defensively. “You said you wouldn’t sleep here.”
“And so you attack me?”
“I didn’t attack you,” I grumbled. “I was just trying to move you.”
“Is this how you treat your boyfriend in your bed?”
I paused for a moment. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“No wonder!”
It was 6 A.M. The day had dawned clear and breezy, with a pale yellow sky moving gradually toward blue. All around me people were chatting good-naturedly, leaning over the side of the boat to wash their hands and faces in the river. The sound of their laughter and the splashing of the water mingled with the chirping and warbling of countless birds.
Everyone on the boat chipped in a handful of rice, and the captain’s daughter prepared a rice-water breakfast. Dinner the night before had worked the same way, with everyone chipping in rice and the girl cooking it up with a mixture of shea oil, onion, tomato, and a bit of okra, which gave it a slimy texture that made me gag. It had a slight fish flavor as well, though no actual pieces of fish. Touré explained to me that they cooked the rice with the fish, then took the fish out, removed the bones, and crushed the rest to a pulp to flavor the whole dish.
I hadn’t been prepared to contribute rice, and the boat’s owner seemed unaware that I’d purchased a ticket with meals included, so I gave him some extra money for food. Instead of using the coal port, the girl lit a log fire in a large iron bowl in the sunken kitchen area, right in the middle of the pinasse. The smoke stung my eyes. To make matters worse, she’d positioned herself right next to me while chopping the onions.
Mornings are not my best time of day. I’ve never been sure whether my work in the theatre is a cause of this or vice versa. On this particular morning, my body ached from the cold night on the lumpy sacks, and Touré’s incessant energy was grating on my nerves. Was I stuck with him for the entire trip because of language? Then I remembered the man I’d met the night before, the one with the smooth voice and delicate hands.
“Hey, Touré,” I said. “Did you know there’s another guy on this boat who’s fluent in French?”
“Yes,” Touré said huffily. “I have seen him. He does not do the prayer. You should stay away from him, a man who betrays his own religion.” He leaned in closer. “I’ve heard he is meeting Christian missionaries in Timbuktu.”
Over the course of the morning, we saw an astounding array of birds. They dove and waded, hovered and floated. I recognized a few of them: heron, sandpiper, pelican, starling. Others were completely unfamiliar. Some had colorful plumage and large curving bills; others’ heads were adorned with feathery sprays. Some balanced near the shore on long, spindly legs, while others darted along the bank so quickly their short legs blurred to invisibility. Still others circled overhead, brightly garbed in yellow or red or black, each trilling its particular song.
Midday found us pulled up on the bank of the river. One of the steering cords had broken and was being repaired. The population of the boat made a mass exodus to the shore, teetering down a shaky plank, bare feet clamped to the slippery wood. Despite my best efforts at balance, I ended up ankle-deep in squishy mud. It was worth it, though, to relieve myself in the relative comfort of the great outdoors. We were passing through a series of lakes, and the shores of the river were marshy, filled with high grasses and reeds in brilliant shades of green.
Two hours later, we were back on the water.
“Why are you going to Timbuktu?” I asked Touré, after we’d finally gotten underway.
“Timbuktu? I am not going all the way to that place. Too much sand. I’m getting off in my hometown of Diré. I am going to see the marabout. Someone has cursed me.”
The marabout was a Moslem holy man believed to have supernatural powers, the Malian equivalent of the fetish priest.
“Look.” He pushed up his sleeve and showed me the inside of his arm. One patch was noticeably paler than the rest. The skin appeared to be peeling off in fine, uneven layers, like shale.
“Everything else in my body is fine,” he said. “I went to the hospital and did all kinds of tests, but they could not find anything.” He paused. “Shall I tell you how I know it’s a curse?” He leaned in confidentially, glancing around. “My flip-flops disappeared. Twice in a row. I left them outside my door at night, and the next morning they were gone. Then in the evening, they were back.”
I looked at him curiously.
“That’s how they do it!” he insisted. “They take a part of you to give to the spirits so they know how to find you.”
“Why would they give them back?” I asked.
“They got what they wanted! They aren’t thieves.”
Five times a day the call to prayer sounded, and the majority of passengers rose like a wave and faced Mecca. The sight of them in their blue, white, and lavender robes and turbans, rising and falling in near unison against the backdrop of the river, was graceful and unexpectedly moving. They knelt on their prayer mats, prostrating themselves, their mumbling forming a hypnotic chorus. I envied them this ritual, at once private and shared. My Moroccan friend Abdelati once said to me, “I look forward to the hour of prayer with eager anticipation.” It must be a great comfort, I thought, to know that wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, five times a day you—and everyone around you—will drop everything and speak deeply with God . . . or even just with yourself.
One man kept drawing my eye. He was tiny—maybe five foot two—with small bones and delicate features. He wore the usual pale cotton bou-bou, but instead of a turban he wore a little wool cap, even in the heat of day. When he performed the prayer, bliss seemed to radiate outward from his entire body. His eyes turned upward in an expression of devotion more complete than any I had ever seen. He positively glowed with joy, from the tips of his fingers to the soles of his bare feet. I was transfixed.
On the second afternoon, after finishing the prayer, he turned suddenly and came toward me, pointing emphatically. His face was animated, eyes lit by an urgent question. He pointed at me and then pointed up. He tilted his head back, peering skyward. Then he looked at me, hands spread wide, eyebrows raised.
Confused, I looked around for help.
“He wants to know why you don’t do the prayer,” said Touré. He tapped the man on the shoulder, pointed at me, then made the sign of the cross. “I told him you are a Christian,” he said.
“But I’m not a Christian,” I protested. “I’m an agnostic-leaning-toward-atheist Jew.”
“What?”
“Just tell him I’m not a believer.”
Touré looked at the man. He pointed at me, crossed himself again, then shook his head sadly and moved his hands across each other in a negating gesture, like an umpire calling “out.” He then prostrated himself on the ground in the manner of the Moslem prayer, got up, and repeated the negating gesture. Then, in a final dramatic action, he pointed toward the sky, sweeping his arm as if to include anything that could possibly be up there. He shook his head again, vigorously, and once again moved his hands in the “out” symbol, as if to say, “Nothing there.”
>
The man looked at me in disbelief. He made a gesture as though gathering up a fistful of grain and throwing it over his head, then looked up again to heaven. His face wore the purest delight.
Touré shrugged at me. “He says you must believe. God is there.”
The man nodded at me, beaming. It was the same conversation I’d had a hundred times since arriving in Africa, but this man’s passion made it fresh.
I shook my head at him. “I’m sorry,” I said gently. “I wish I could believe, but I don’t.” I shrugged helplessly. “I can’t.”
The man simply nodded at me, beaming.
“He says you will,” said Touré.
The landscape settled into a kind of monotony, as we floated past broad stretches of grassy savanna dotted with low bushes and spiny trees. Here and there a baobab stood, squat and defiant, its prickly branches thrusting combatively into the air. Occasionally we passed villages—clusters of rectangular, flatroofed huts the same color as the earth. Some of these grew crops, their brilliant green, carefully tended plots like flashes of neon amid the surrounding drabness. From time to time we’d see sheep or goats grazing on the sparse savanna grass. Near the villages, men fished on the river in pirogues or pinasses, some with billowy sails, and women stood along the bank, smoking fish, bathing, or washing clothes.
At the center of each village was a mosque. These mosques were exquisite, wildly fanciful creations, like something out of Dr. Seuss. They, too, were built of mud, with turrets and towers of varying heights, and short pieces of wood sticking out all over at odd angles. Mud can be a shifty substance: I later learned that the wood was there at least in part to allow people to climb up and apply a fresh layer if a spot cracked or wore thin.
On the third morning of the trip, we were passing a village when the little man approached me again. Excited, he pointed to me, then to himself, then to the village. He repeated the sequence a couple of times.
“He wants you to visit him in his village,” said Touré.
“Is that it?” I asked, confused, pointing to the passing hamlet.
“No, no. In the desert. He will bring you there from Timbuktu.”
“Really? That would be fantastic.”
The man put his fingers to either side of his head like little horns, then made a lusty biting gesture at his arm, as though tearing away the flesh with his teeth.
“He says he will kill a goat for you,” said Touré.
“But I’m a vegetarian,” I said. A fish-etarian who sometimes eats chicken, actually, but I didn’t want to confuse things. Touré made the biting gesture, with less gusto, and shook his head sadly.
The man repeated the fierce gesture, and nodded.
“He says meat is good,” said Touré.
The man pointed then to a little boy standing on the shore. He nodded, smiling, and rubbed his belly.
“He says that boy would be very good to eat. He says you could get a lot of money for the head.”
I gaped in disbelief.
Touré burst out laughing. “He is joking with you! He has heard what the white people think of Africa.” He shook his head. “He is an interesting person, isn’t he?”
I laughed, and so did the little man, silently, beaming and rubbing his flat belly. He then launched rapid-fire into a new sequence of gestures.
“He says there is plenty of rice in his village for you to eat,” Touré translated. “This village is only a small camp, some distance into the desert. A car goes there twice a week from Timbuktu. Or you can take a camel.”
“What does he do there?”
The man moved his hands vigorously from side to side. I looked at Touré in bewilderment.
“Isn’t it obvious? He makes charcoal!”
“Obviously.” Charcoal, I’d been told, was made by burning wood in a deep underground pit, then applying pressure to compact it. How the gesture illustrated this wasn’t entirely clear to me, but I didn’t ask.
“He wants to know what you are doing on this boat.”
“Me? I’m just . . . traveling.” I walked the fingers of one hand across the back of the other. Now it was the little man’s turn to look bewildered. He spread out his hands and cocked his head inquisitively.
“Why?” I looked at Touré, who nodded. “Why,” I repeated aloud. I looked at the man. As usual, his wool cap covered his skull. It was impossible to gauge his age, though I guessed somewhere in his mid to late forties. The skin was stretched tight across the bones of his face. Deep smile lines had carved themselves beside his mouth. His eyes were so kind, his expression at once so innocent and penetrating, that I felt tears rise in my own eyes. I tried to imagine his life: sweltering days spent digging holes in the desert and pressing the charcoal into them, walking for miles in search of water, eating meals of rice and sauce with his family, sleeping curled up between siblings and cousins in a tent, then dragging his heavy sack on a bumpy camel ride to Timbuktu, where he would catch a pinasse and travel along the river, hawking the hard black lumps that were his livelihood to the people in the villages he passed—people who had known him all his life—always delivering a smile with his goods. How could I explain my strange life to him? How could I tell yet another person here that with everything that had been given to me, I was still restless and unsatisfied? That I felt driven to wander the earth in search of some elusive key that would unlock the chamber of my own happiness? How could I explain that I chose physical hardship: dysentery, heat rash, dizzying rides in crowded vehicles down bumpy, potholed roads—hardship he had no choice but to endure—that I chose all of this, because it was the only thing that made me feel truly alive?
“To see things . . . I guess,” I offered lamely.
The man pointed to my red spiral notebook, which was perched on the sack of grain beside me. He put his head down and hunched his shoulders, making a scribbling gesture on his hand. He looked up at me with an inquiring expression.
“How can I see when I’m always writing?” I shrugged. “Good question. Sometimes I feel that when I’m writing is the only time I can see.”
He looked at me in perplexity, and again I was at a loss. Maybe it’s because my parents are academics, I wanted to say, but I feel that no matter how big a mess I make of my life, if I write it all down carefully, it’ll come out all right.
“Why don’t you write at home, in your own country?” asked Touré.
I shrugged, turning to him. “I guess I was just born restless. Wherever I am, I always want to be somewhere else.”
Touré gestured, translating my response. The little man shook his head sadly, looking at me with downturned mouth and mournful eyes.
“He says you are a very bad girl,” said Touré. “Your mother and father are so worried about you—they want you home. His mother too, she will be glad to see you, for his sister has gone far away, to work in Bamako.”
“Did he really say all that?”
“Of course!” said Touré, mock offended.
I laughed. “Well, I can’t wait to meet his mother. When do we go?”
“Aren’t you afraid, to go so far into the desert?” Touré looked at me curiously.
“With him? How can I be afraid with him?” I looked at the generously lined face, the warm, twinkling eyes. “What’s his name?” I asked.
The man gestured helplessly, spreading his hands wide, palms up. Straining his neck, he let out a high chirping sound.
“He cannot tell you,” said Touré. “He does not have letters.”
The man was deaf! All this time I’d thought he was gesturing because of the language barrier. I’d imagined he spoke a regional dialect so different from Touré’s that even they had to talk to each other in a kind of universal sign.
Suddenly the man pointed at my feet. He began stroking his own pale soles with a doleful expression.
“He wants you to give him your shoes,” said Touré.
What? Here I am thinking this guy is some kind of guru, and it turns out he’s just after my
shoes? My enthusiasm evaporated like a teardrop in the Sahara.
“I need them,” I said, my lips tight.
He wagged a finger at me. Smiling craftily, he pointed to my backpack. With infinite care, he built a boot in the air around his foot.
He knew the sandals were not my only shoes. He’d spotted a pair of boots in my backpack, practically new. He touched his heart, then repeated a gesture I’d seen him make before, flinging an invisible handful of grain into the air.
“He says when you give, you are in the heart of God,” said Touré.
“Is he still trying to convert me, or does he just want the shoes?” I snapped.
Touré considered this. “I will ask him,” he said.
“No . . . Don’t.”
What the hell was wrong with me? The man’s feet were dry and cracked, covered with yellowing calluses. When had I become so hard?
But what good would it do anyway, one pair of shoes to one person, in a year they’d wear out and—
Stop it. Look at this man.
I looked. The woolen skullcap, the slight body swathed in its cotton robe, the crinkled face and glowing eyes, the hopeful smile, the bare feet. I stood there for a long moment, suspended in indecision.
Just take the sandals off and give them to him.
I didn’t.
Afternoon found me on the roof of the pinasse, basking in the sunshine, the wind tousling my hair. It was a perfect day, the sun warm but not oppressive, the breeze delicious on my skin. The Niger spread brown and languid before me. The sky was a pure, deep blue, the marsh grass to the left a vibrant green. To the right, spectacular red rock formations rose above the equally red earth.
Whenever we passed a village, children materialized out of nowhere and tore down the shore, pointing and shouting, waving wildly at the strange white creature perched on the boat. I waved back at them, feeling like the homecoming queen on her float.
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