Somebody's Heart Is Burning

by Tanya Shaffer

  “You’ve got to be more careful of your things,” he berated me. “You should have kept them next to you when you slept. Your friend should have advised you.”

  “Oh come on, Touré. Who wants my soggy backpacks? No one’s gonna steal after this kind of tragedy.”

  “Oh, please!”

  Ignoring him, I opened my pack. I spread my belongings across the grass, shaking out clothes and fanning pages, opening pill bottles to see what had crumbled and what was intact. A picture of Michael was stuck face-to-face with one of my father. When I separated them, some color from my father’s clothes had stained Michael’s face. Freud would have had a field day.

  A few dunes away, a hubbub arose. The sound of shouting and slaps broke the morning calm. Touré and I hurried over to see what was happening. We navigated the low dunes awkwardly, our sandals catching in the tangled shrubbery and sinking into the sand.

  When we arrived on the scene, the whole population of the boat was there. Yaya stood at the edge of the group, shouting for order.

  “What happened?” I asked him.

  “They say that man stole clothing from people’s luggage. They want to beat him.”

  At the center of the group stood a skinny old man in a threadbare bou-bou. Several women were holding his arms, shoving him roughly back and forth. They were wiry women in their thirties and forties with weathered, careworn faces. They shouted in piercing tones, shaking his shoulders with their stringy, muscular arms.

  “I told them they must let me speak to the man first,” Yaya continued, “to find out why he did it.”

  He tried again to speak to the women, but his voice got lost in the din.

  “What makes them think he did it?” I shouted.

  “The women noticed things were missing. They started opening bags to search. They found the missing items in his bag.”

  “Then they are right!” yelled Touré. “He is a thief. We must beat him and throw him in the water.” He shoved his way toward the center of the group, shouting and waving his arms.

  “No!” Yaya pushed through the crowd. Standing at the center, he gained the group’s attention with a piercing whistle, then dropped his voice and began to speak.

  Touré interjected angrily. Some people cheered their support for Touré, but others shouted them down. When the noise subsided, Yaya continued. His dignified demeanor seemed to command respect.

  The old man stood a bit to one side, his blue-gray turban half-unraveled and hanging down his back. As the argument continued, he stared at the ground. His face showed neither hope nor dread, but a kind of dull resignation, as though he were waiting in a soundproof chamber while a jury decided his fate.

  Eventually Yaya prevailed. Holding the crowd at bay with sharp words and an outstretched hand, he led the old man over the crest of the dune and out of sight.

  The two men were gone over an hour. At first people waited angrily, shouting and gesticulating with barely contained violence. One man grabbed another by the shoulders and shook him. I was convinced a fight would erupt, until they burst out laughing and fell into an embrace. After a while, people began to drift away. The women went first, returning to check on the children and prepare rice for the afternoon meal. Soon the men followed, wandering away in twos and threes, deep in conversation. By the time Yaya and the old man reappeared at the tufty crown of the dune, Touré and I were all that remained.

  “Well?” said Touré, leaping to his feet.

  “It will not happen again,” said Yaya. Touré was about to object, but Yaya continued rapidly, raising his hand as though fending off a blow. “The women have their clothing back,” he hissed. “Isn’t that enough? Or will you beat him now, by yourself ?”

  They stared at each other for a moment, locked in a standoff. Then Touré turned abruptly toward the old man, who took a quick step backward in fear. Touré turned back to Yaya with disgust.

  “I will be watching him closely,” he said. “And you too.” He poked a finger at Yaya’s face. “I think I have seen you somewhere before.” He stomped off across the dunes, giving the other passengers a wide berth. The old man slunk away, too, throwing Yaya a small, grateful smile.

  “Would they really have beaten him?” I asked Yaya, as we watched Touré’s retreating back.

  “People get very carried away when someone has been stealing,” he said slowly. “Often if a thief is caught in the market, he will be beaten to death before the police can even arrive. People work so hard for these things, for nothing. And they will give them to you. But for you to come and take them . . . No.”

  I remembered a scene I’d witnessed at the market in Ségou, in which a group of about thirty women had surrounded a woman accused of stealing. They’d pulled off the outer layer of her garments, her body spinning helplessly as the cloth unwound. Then they’d taken off their rubber flip-flops and slapped her with them, the shoes blurring the air like a swarm of flapping wings until the police came and dragged the woman away. I shuddered.

  “So why did he do it?” I asked.

  “He said he could not help it. God made him do it. I told him God would never do such a thing; it must have been the devil. But he said no—it was God. God whispered in his ear and told him so.”

  The day was hot and dry, the pale sun so relentless that even the marsh grass seemed to wilt beneath its gaze. Since there was no bush high enough to offer any real shade, Yaya and I made a tent of a blanket and four sticks and sat under it for several hours, talking. I drank thirstily from my water bottle, which I’d filled the night before with boiled river water. At this point it scarcely seemed worth the effort of purifying it, since I’d downed several glasses of lukewarm coffee which had probably never reached a boil. Still, I persisted. Yaya filled his cup directly from the river like the other passengers.

  “I have drunk this water my whole life,” he said, chuckling. “If the creatures in my stomach have not killed me yet, it is unlikely they will do so now.”

  Yaya told me that the devil had appeared to him as a teenager on the very day that a white man in Timbuktu had handed him a Bible. As he carried the Bible home through the desert, a man jumped out from behind an acacia bush and blocked his path. The man had red eyes, as if from drinking, and an enormous penis, far bigger than any human’s could possibly be. At first Yaya thought the man had attached something to it, to scare people. Yaya pulled out his curved Tuareg knife, to show the man he wasn’t afraid, but the man just laughed, and the penis darted toward Yaya, like a snake. Then, by some intuition that seemed to come from outside himself, Yaya held up the Bible and said, “Jesus Christ, bless and save me.” Hearing this, the man flew straight up and disappeared, leaving a trail of fire. From that day forward, Yaya was a Christian.

  My digestive system was quick to protest the river water. I was squatting in the bush for the third time that day when a small child approached me.

  “Ça va? Ça va?” she murmured.

  “Ça va,” I sighed, putting my head in my hands. I could never get used to African children’s complete nonchalance about bodily functions.

  I thought the child would leave now, having cheerfully humiliated me, but instead she tugged at my sleeve, pointing toward the shore. She drew a shape in the air with her hands.

  “What?” I said with some irritation. “Another boat?”

  Our hopes had been raised and dashed several times that day, as overcrowded pinasses passed us, heading back toward Mopti. I’d briefly considered boarding one of them, heading straight back to Mopti and the comfort of a phone line to the U.S., but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt allied with the community of the boat. The thought of carrying this experience back to Mopti alone felt unbearably lonely. Besides, I still wanted to see the fabled city, no matter what shape it was in, and to feel the Sahara’s hot sand between my toes.

  The girl continued to tug at my sleeve. Sighing, I yanked up my underwear, let down my skirt, and accompanied her back to the shore.

  Three piro
gues had arrived from a nearby fisher camp, offering to transport us to their camp for the night, then onward tomorrow to the village of Aka, where we could catch a new pinasse. Word had been sent back to Mopti to send us a replacement boat, but no one knew how long it would take to arrive. The men argued strenuously over what to do. As usual, Yaya and Touré were on opposing sides.

  “These men would divide the group,” Yaya explained when he saw me approach. “They say that those who can afford passage on a new pinasse should go forward in the pirogues, while the rest stay behind and wait for the replacement. I tell them it is not right that some of us should go forward leaving others here alone to suffer. We must remain united. A small group, alone in this place, will be vulnerable to bandits.”

  “And I tell him,” blustered Touré, “that it is not right that you, Tanya, must get sick from the river water and burn your skin waiting many long days in the sun!”

  “Oh no, please don’t make this about me,” I said quickly.

  “You be quiet!” snapped Touré.

  Touré’s group won out. As the sun set, I sheepishly loaded my bags into one of two long, narrow pirogues, along with sixteen of the boat’s more prosperous passengers. The river glowed rosy orange in the failing light. Several young men from the Bozo fisher camp waited on the shore, jousting amiably with the long poles they used to propel the pirogues.

  Touré pointed at a couple of stout, middle-aged men. “Those two are afraid to go in these pirogues,” he chortled. “They’ve never ridden in such small boats, without motors. It is because of them we must take two boats. We could have paid less and all gone in one.”

  I was surprised to see the old man who’d been accused of stealing among those who could afford to leave. No one commented on his presence, but I noticed that he made sure not to ride in the same boat as Touré.

  Touré climbed into the front of one of the canoes, and I squeezed in behind him. I saw no possible way that all the passengers could have fit into a single pirogue.

  Yaya and I had shared an emotional goodbye, with prolonged hugs and promises to write. I was therefore startled to see him dragging his duffel over the dunes toward the water, just as we were about to push off. As he approached the boat he slipped and fell, covering his hands and knees with mud.

  “What’s this?” shouted Touré when he saw him. “You will leave the very poor to suffer alone?”

  “I will go forward to Aka and send word to their villages, so that their families will not worry,” said Yaya primly, attempting to brush off his pants with his muddy hands.

  “Oh, please,” groaned Touré.

  Yaya pushed his way onto the seat behind me. The two stout men, who were sitting in the back, grumbled uneasily at the rocking of the boat.

  We poled along in silence as the sky slid smoothly toward darkness. My feet sat in freezing water. I slapped them against each other, wiggling my toes to keep them from going numb.

  The other pirogue glided a few feet ahead of us, its silhouette graceful as a newborn moon. The actual moon hovered pale and plump on the horizon, coating the black water with a silver sheen. Each time I looked up, there were more stars. Touré sat in front of me. Tentatively, I touched his arm.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The stars.”

  “Don’t you see them over there, in your place?”

  “Not so much in the city,” I told him, “with all the lights.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “I heard there aren’t many trees there, either.”

  Hours later, I saw eight makeshift shelters glowing pale in the moonlight.

  “Tanya,” said Yaya, tapping me from behind. “This is the Bozo fisher camp.”

  The shelters were lean-tos, with wooden poles spaced unevenly along the sides, grass mats spread between them, and straw thatch across the top. In the moonlight they looked terribly fragile, as though they’d topple like dominoes if you leaned on one of the poles. In front of each shelter was a circular mud structure with a grate on the top.

  “For smoking fish,” said Yaya.

  The Bozos had built a bonfire in anticipation of our arrival. After we dragged our pirogues from the freezing water, the chief came down to the shore to greet us. He was a middle-aged man, tall and thin, with a deeply lined face and gentle eyes. There was something regal in his presence, an effortless stillness that commanded respect. We stood before him in a ragged, shivering clump, while he spoke a few words of the Bozo language in a formal tone and presented us with an armload of blackened fish. One of the portly men stepped forward, thanked him on behalf of our group, and accepted the fish in the folds of his bou-bou. The chief smiled then, looking in my direction.

  “Bonjour,” he said. He asked me, in careful, precise French, where I came from and what I was doing there. Then he turned to Touré and spoke a few quick words of Bambara.

  “He says you must eat plenty of fish, because you are a stranger here,” said Touré, “and you do not look well.”

  We huddled around the fire, eating delicious fish: crackling outside, succulent within. Touré took enormous bites, shoving almost an entire fish into his mouth at a time. Yaya and I raised our eyebrows at each other.

  “Savage,” whispered Yaya, and we giggled conspiratorially.

  As we ate, an animated conversation took place between the men. The women and children had bedded down early, a slight distance away. I thought briefly, regretfully, of how disconnected I was from these women. Language limitations and mutual shyness locked me into the company of men. Turning toward the fire, I asked Yaya what the men were talking about.

  “He says it is because of God that we are suffering like this,” Yaya translated for me, indicating the plump man who’d accepted the fish for us. “And he says no,” he indicated an older gentleman in a deep purple turban. “God gave us the world and free will; we bring about our own suffering.”

  In the pale yellow dawn, a very fat, very black woman stood over me, hands on her hips, shouting repeated greetings in the Bozo language.

  “Ils sont les vrais Bozos,” Touré said, “the real Bozos.”

  “Les vrais Bozos,” the woman repeated proudly, a broad smile on her face.

  I sat up. In the watery morning light, I looked more closely at the small cluster of huts. Most of them had only three walls. Looking through the open fourth wall, I saw that they contained nothing at all, just grass mats and a few pots piled in the corner. I was used to the essential nature of African homes, but it seemed to me there was usually something— a table, a stool, a few clothes on a peg.

  “They are nomads, like the Tuaregs,” said Yaya. “Wherever the fish go, that is where they live.”

  In spite of myself, a small thrill went through me. This was exactly the sort of thing I’d hoped to see.

  The men and older children had taken out the pirogues and nets for the day. Women were smoking fish on the round grates. They arranged the fish, then placed reed mats over them until the skin was black and crisp. An adolescent girl was repairing one of the ovens, slapping a layer of wet mud over a layer of dried mud mixed with sawdust, then smoothing it down with her hands. Younger children stood near the shore, fishing. Their homemade poles consisted of sticks with strings and hooks attached.

  “I know fishing!” Touré boasted. He approached a toddler and grabbed her stick. “Just watch!” he said to me.

  The little girl looked at Touré and then at me. She started giggling, hiding her face in her hands. Touré danced the hook along the surface of the water, repeating, “I know fishing!”

  Within moments he had a bite.

  “See!” he cried. “I told you I knew fishing!” He yanked the fish from the water.

  Touré threw the fish to the little girl. She pulled the hook from its mouth mechanically, never taking her eyes off Touré as the bloody gills popped out. She tossed the fish into a basket where it flopped slowly to its death.

  Before we set off again, Touré and Yaya each p
ulled me aside.

  “You know that man you’ve been talking to?” said Touré, dragging me behind one of the shelters. “That Ya-ya? I knew his face looked familiar, but I could not place it. Then when he said he lived in Bamako, I realized. My cousin works for the Bamako police. He showed me a picture of a man who lures tourists to his home by acting friendly, then steals their luggage and disappears. It was him! I know it was him.”

  “Oh, come on, Touré.”

  “Come on, what?”

  “That is just too paranoid.”

  “Was I paranoid about the thieves on the boat? Was I paranoid?”

  “You know, Tanya, many Moslems pray to the devil,” Yaya whispered to me as we carried our belongings down the narrow rocky beach to the pirogues. “They know God is stronger, but the devil can help them out with small things. Your friend over there, Touré, you see those beads he always carries? He uses those beads to pray to the devil. He told me that when he was in prison, it was the devil who saved him. He said it is because of those beads that he got out.”

  “You cannot trust that man. He will steal from you!” said Touré.

  “You must be careful of a man who will make a friend of darkness,” said Yaya.

  It was the fifth day of our three-day trip.

  Late that afternoon we arrived in the village of Aka. White sand beaches gleamed; sun-bleached mud walls hid a maze of narrow streets and houses that seemed to grow seamlessly out of the earth. The town was bookended by two fantastic mosques. Silhouetted against the bright sky, they looked like elaborate sand castles, with their fantastic jumble of coneheaded towers and their wooden pegs sticking out in every direction like the sculpted hairstyles of the women in Accra.