NOTEBOOK 1

THE TALE OF THE ASHES

I HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS FOR YOU FROM NIARELA. BAÏDY SALL’S WIFE HAS given birth to one of God’s-bits-of-wood, and he carries your name. I myself only heard the news on the day of the eighth day ceremony, which was very moving for me. Our neighbors all remembered how close you used to be to Baïdy. And, as always, everybody praised your appetite for hard work and your discretion. You are sorely missed here, Badou.

But you also know how wary we all are of words and their potential destructiveness. Someone said, “You should stop talking like that about Nguirane’s grandson. It will bring bad luck upon Badou Tall, wherever he may be.”

Baïdy Sall has behaved as a true friend in making you godfather to his son. When you were small, you were both very attached to me; I remember it perfectly. That’s why I was so surprised to learn that this is the fourth child Baïdy has had since he got married. How quickly time passes! I give thanks to the Creator for granting me the happiness of seeing the children of my grandchildren with my own eyes.

That also means that the end is not far off. My body sends me that message every single day. On the way home after Baïdy’s naming ceremony, I fainted near the National Lottery kiosk. A neighbor who happened to be passing by took me home in his car. When I came round, I recognized my savior’s face. I could hardly believe my eyes—it was Mr. Soumaré. Elsewhere in Tale of the Ashes, the Notebook you are reading right now, I made savage fun of him and his wife. Maybe I shouldn’t have. The truth is that the very same Mr. Soumaré has been extremely kind to me. He called Dr. Jibril Fall, who prescribed some medicines, and then he immediately went and bought them for me at the pharmacy. These small incidents are quite sufficient to make us realize that, underneath their hard outer shell, people are often much better than we think.

But be that as it may, I knew I had to take things a little bit more easy from then on. And yet, as soon as I felt better, I started skipping from one Notebook to the other again. I still don’t sleep well. I get excruciating migraines from time to time. It feels as though thousands of ants are crawling all over my skull. But I love talking to you. And anyhow, it’s better not to think about our last hour—it always comes too soon, and we never know by which door it will enter the house.

A storyteller lacking in strength of character may find himself drawn to obscure places where all the doors are firmly locked. If the last word of the fable refuses to drown itself in the sea, not a single child with eyes full of wonder will hasten to breathe in its fragrance, hoping to enter Paradise.

The path gives way under my feet and every so often, I feel a bit lost.

But you would be wrong to assume I have forgotten about Yacine Ndiaye.

Her comings and goings in our neighborhood had been continuing for months, without her ever so much as making eye contact with a single one of us. This must have made Yacine Ndiaye think she didn’t exist for us. In reality, however, she never made a move that we didn’t secretly observe, analyze and comment upon.

That’s what we are like here in Niarela. Maybe one shouldn’t spell these things out so clearly nowadays, but it’s the truth nevertheless: being a stranger in our midst is very easy. For us, the outside world starts just beyond the walls of the last houses of the district, and in our eyes, everything repeats itself endlessly, from generation to generation, and has done so since time immemorial. The same families are at each other’s throats over a patch of land or a seat on the town council, the same sanctimonious and stilted old dignitaries—they make us laugh, to be honest—strut around with carefully measured steps, looking grim and suspicious, and the greasy trickle of water that runs from our house to Captain Baye Ndéné’s with all its twigs, plastic bags and household garbage floating in it, is also still the same. And every time a girl and a boy from Niarela embark on a clandestine little love affair, we oldies cannot suppress an affectionate smile about the way nothing ever changes from one century to the next.

I have said it already, haven’t I: Yacine Ndiaye pretends we don’t exist. I am one of the few people she deigns to greet once or twice a day. But she does so in her own, inimitable manner, without ever bothering to look at me or to open her mouth.

In the whole district, your mother, Bigué Samb, is the only person who seems to have managed to get close to her. We have no idea how she did it. Quite by accident, I discovered one day that they had become friends. Initially, I found it hard to believe, but now, I actually feel happy about it. After all, their three children have one and the same father: Assane Tall.

He had one great passion, your father Assane Tall, and that was soccer. As an adolescent, he used to spend hours juggling those multicolored little rubber balls called “Casaflex” that were so popular back then, but which are no longer to be found in the shops nowadays. At night he would quickly wolf down his plate of mbuum before carrying on with his exercise routines under the streetlights on the main road. His mates, who were probably studying for their arithmetic or geography lessons, used to ask him to go and play elsewhere, but he refused and kept his eyes firmly fixed on the little ball, making it roll around on top of his head and passing it from one shoulder to the other. “Hey, Nguirane,” my friends used to tease me, “what kind of potion did you give this boy to drink on the day of his naming ceremony? His obsession with balls is really quite extraordinary!” I sometimes scolded him about it myself, but to no avail; he was determined to do what he wanted. I have to admit that it made me immensely proud to witness his rise to stardom in the Niarela soccer team before he had his brief hour of glory as champion of our Senegalese national team. He was a local celebrity for quite a while before he left for Marseille, which was a sort of climax. No one can deny that it was thanks to him that Niarela was always in the papers. So in the end, I felt that he was right to follow his path rather than listen to my paternal advice. Going to France, to play for a team like the one in Marseille, that was quite an achievement. The greedy ones among us said Assane Tall went there to earn cartloads of money, as the saying goes in this country, and everyone was secretly looking forward to getting their share.

But as you know, the only thing we ever got back from our famous soccer champion was his corpse at the airport.

The morning didn’t end well for Yacine Ndiaye. First, I heard a terrifying scream, and then I saw her. There she was, writhing and thrashing on the ground, with her face horribly contorted and saliva drooling from her mouth. Nearby, Mbissine and Mbissane flinched and huddled up to each other, trying to squeeze into one of the recesses in the wall. Their eyes, which spoke of nothing but emptiness and fear, broke my heart. Surely these two children, who had never done anybody any harm, didn’t deserve this. When I got closer, doing my best to comfort them, they pressed their waiflike little bodies still more tightly against the wall, and the convulsive shaking of their shoulders signaled to me that they didn’t want to be touched. It was as if they wanted the earth to split open and swallow them up once and for all.

When I went back to their mother, she still hadn’t stopped groaning and thrashing around on the floor. Afterward we learned that far beyond Niarela, hundreds of people from the surrounding areas had heard her ear piercing screams.

We were all pleased about what was happening to Yacine Ndiaye and—to be frank—not one of us made any attempt to come to her aid.

In her delirious state, she was talking in several languages at the same time and her words were so muddled that each one of us heard something different. According to some, in between her groans she claimed she was a Toubab. Whether that was actually true is difficult to say. All I know for sure is that she repeated a specific name over and over again, a name so complicated that no one could remember it. Was she crazy enough to believe this would be her new name from now on? Her fiercest enemies just couldn’t let such a perfect opportunity to poke fun at her pass. “What a weird name for a woman from this country!”

“She’d be well advised to go back to the place where people can at least pronounce those barbaric syllables!”

I don’t pretend to be any better than the rest of us, but I felt embarrassed when I realized that my heart was quite simply overflowing with hatred. I was convinced this was our chance to defuse that diabolical contraption before it blew up in our faces one day. The trouble was that every time I wanted to reason with the people of Niarela, the same image came back to me again. Looking straight into my eyes, Yacine Ndiaye lifts up her wrap and opens her legs, pointing her index finger at her vagina. She has the insolence to tell me—me, the father of her late husband!—hey there, old Nguirane, take a good look at my flesh! Who gets to taste it is my decision. Since the day when my eyes had to see that and my ears heard those words, I have been unsure whether my body has closed down for good or whether it is rather in the process of detaching itself from me bit by bit.

If I ever had any feelings of sympathy for this woman, I have definitely lost them now. As far as I am concerned, she can perish like a mangy bitch, she doesn’t deserve any better.

Please forgive me for telling you that story the other day. It wasn’t easy. My hand wanted to pull back, but I hadn’t forgotten my oath. I owe you all the truths, even the harshest ones.

A morning like any other in the life of Yacine Ndiaye in Niarela. She must suddenly have felt the urge to go out for a stroll in the main street, which is where you see us all sitting around in small groups near our workshops or outside our houses, playing checkers or listening to the radio, and where we are, very discreetly of course, constantly on the lookout for the slightest incident in the area, all those juicy little scandals that make a good story and easily lend themselves to a bit of embroidery.

Yacine Ndiaye is wearing her smartest outfit, complete with perfume and makeup. One of the apprentices from Pape Kandji’s garage is walking right behind her, fooling around and copying her every movement. The moment she looks like she’s about to turn round, the boy quickly falls back into the stride of a normal pedestrian. We find his clownery hilarious.

“That’s her,” says somebody.

“You’re right.”

“The foreign lady.”

“Ugly as a she-monkey. Makes me wonder how Assane Tall could have married her.”

“Do you actually believe it? That they were married, I mean?”

“They were living together under the same roof.”

“That means they were living in sin.”

“Yes, the kind of sin God never forgives!” another one adds triumphantly.

“Do you know what Wolof Njaay used to say?”

“A Toubab in a black skin is always a Toubab and a half.”

“I think Wolof Njaay is right, as always!”

Yacine Ndiaye all on her own could be described as a foreign invading army, while Niarela is a small defenseless country. Does she have any idea how much we hate her? It seems unthinkable to me that she doesn’t even have an inkling. Her arrogance toward us, the pompous way she walks, her conceited demeanor and stony facial expression—all that is her own choice.

And yet, this morning, she stops for a little chat with Thierno, the newspaper seller.

“A magazine called Marie Claire?” asks Thierno, scratching his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know that one.”

After a moment’s reflection, he adds, “I’ll ask my friends if they have it, and I will bring it to your house.”

“Thanks, but that’s not necessary,” replies Yacine Ndiaye.

“Marie Claire . . . Marie Claire?” Thierno repeats, suddenly conscious of having been the focal point of the whole of Niarela for the past two or three minutes.

“It’s my favorite magazine,” says Yacine Ndiaye. “I used to read it in France.”

Thierno’s cleverness means he has understood that this is his one and only chance to find out a bit more about the foreign lady and he grabs it: “So does that mean you used to live in France?” he asks, in an admiring tone of voice.

“I still live there,” Yacine Ndiaye corrects him proudly. “I came to Dakar just to sort out a few problems, but soon I’m going to go back home.”

“You’re really going back there?” Thierno asks with fake incredulity.

“I’ve packed all my bags and am ready to go!” Yacine Ndiaye replies.

“They say it’s lovely over there. The day before yesterday, one of my friends told me something about the country of the Toubabs.”

Yacine Ndiaye sounds interested. “What did he say?”

“A tourist offered me a fat banknote after buying several of my newspapers.”

“And then?”

“I was pleased and said to the tourist, ‘I hope God will send you to Paradise!’ After that, my friend started mocking me, saying the Toubab would be bored there.”

“Oh really?” says Yacine Ndiaye, slightly confused.

“Well, it’s because the Toubab has already experienced all the pleasures of Paradise on earth, which means he’s not going to discover anything new up there!”

Yacine Ndiaye smiles and says, “Yes, it’s a wonderful country. You want for nothing in France.”

After a brief pause, and without taking her eyes off Thierno, she adds with a teasing little smile, “I bet you would like to go there too, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would, like everyone else in this country. I dream of flying away with the bird . . .”

Yacine Ndiaye frowns. “Flying away with the bird? Which bird?”

Thierno stretches out his arms, moving them up and down like the wings of a sparrow hawk, and starts spinning round and round while making a loud humming noise.

Yacine Ndiaye realizes he is pretending to be an airplane and bursts out laughing. This is the first time we’ve seen her laugh in public.

Inevitably, following this conversation with the foreign lady, Thierno was inundated with questions for days on end. His reply was always the same: “This woman is mad. I have observed her very carefully, and I swear to you she’s mad.”

He fell silent for a moment, and then he started nodding, with an alarmed look on his face, and said, more to himself than to the rest of the world: “By tomorrow, everyone will know she is stark raving mad. But don’t forget that it was me, Thierno, who said it first in front of everybody, right here in Niarela.”

Seemingly oblivious to the many pairs of eyes that are secretly devouring her without ever focusing on her directly, she is wandering around the stalls piled high with papayas and soursops, but stops now and again to look at a fillet of sea bream or some red mullet, and finally turns into one of the narrow alleyways stacked with bags of rice and millet. You might have said she was a ghost. In the hustle and bustle of the market, a tiny bubble of silence forms in her wake. Everyone is thinking about Thierno’s words a few days earlier.

Not just ugly. Bonkers, as well.

Roughly a week later, I saw your mother, Bigué, leaving Yacine Ndiaye’s apartment. “Since when has Bigué been in the house?” I was wondering. She never crossed my threshold without first coming to greet me, even in my bedroom if need be. It was our long-established ritual to spend a bit of time discussing neighborhood and family news before she would facetiously call me her penniless old husband and get on with her chores. On that particular afternoon, she had chosen to go and visit her new friend right away. In actual fact, it was a jolly little party that was walking toward me. Tamsir Bâ, the man with the bright red eyes and hair, Yacine Ndiaye’s lover, was holding her two children by the hand. Yacine Ndiaye greeted me in passing. Mbissane pulled his hand away from the red-haired man and stuck his tongue out at me, only the way he did it was slightly less insolent this time, it seemed to me.

Bigué Samb detached herself from the group to come and chat with me for a bit.

“I had no idea you were in the house,” I said to her.

I couldn’t hide my sense of irritation from her and, above all, my sadness. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, Bigué Samb told me she had helped Yacine Ndiaye with her shopping.

Again, I wondered to myself, “What an odd friendship this is. What does it mean?” It was absolutely extraordinary to witness the proud Bigué Samb acting like Yacine Ndiaye’s dogsbody. Something must have escaped my notice, but what? I had no idea. I had no choice but to accept things as they were.

As always, it didn’t take long before Bigué Samb started talking about you.

“Grandfather Nguirane, have you had any news from my son?”

“Badou Tall?”

“Yes, Badou. I’m sure on the day when he finally decides to write, his first letter will be addressed to you.”

There was a brief silence. We looked at each other but did not speak. We suddenly both remembered the same incident. It was so many years ago. Bigué Samb and Assane Tall bidding each other farewell in the departure lounge at the airport. Looking back on it now, and considering everything that has happened since, this farewell scene seems even more moving than it must have been at the time. In my memory, it has something surreal about it. Bigué Samb. Assane Tall. I see them both before me, close to tears. When we get back to Niarela, Bigué Samb is still crying and her friends try to comfort her. “Don’t cry Bigué, you know very well, our men always end up going far away. It’s their destiny.”

These are words we have all heard a thousand times. They make exile seem heroic and try to soothe the pain it inflicts.

I said, “Badou is a man. It’s a man’s destiny to go far away, Bigué.”

I immediately realized that I had just reopened an old wound for Bigué Samb. I didn’t do it on purpose. There are times when echoes settle on our lips and then just slip away of their own accord. And forever afterward, they remain as elusive to us as the batting of nocturnal insects’ wings.

One day, there was talk in Niarela that Yacine Ndiaye had decided to return to Marseille. Where did this news come from? None of us had the faintest idea. With this woman, nothing ever happened in a way that could be described as normal. She and I were living in the same house, and she was, after all, my daughter-in-law. And yet, I wasn’t informed about her impending departure until the last moment. This certainly surprised me, but deep down, I was more relieved than upset.

The day before her trip, she and Bigué went to the Sandaga market to buy some everyday necessities. When she came to say good-bye, she seemed slightly feverish but otherwise in good spirits. To my great surprise, she even held out three banknotes of five thousand francs each to me.

I said to her: “That’s a lot of money you are offering me there, Yacine.”

You know very well, Badou, don’t you, that every nation on this earth has its own way of doing things. I was expecting her to reply by saying: “Oh no it’s not, old Nguirane, I just can’t give you any more right now. But as soon as I get to Marseille, I will be in touch.” That, at any rate, is the sort of thing we are supposed to say in a similar situation to put the recipient at ease. She, however, just stood there gaping, and without any idea how to react to my simple words. I also think she felt I was being too sanctimonious and shouldn’t make such a fuss.

Wanting to ease the tension in the atmosphere a bit, I wished her a safe trip and added, “You mustn’t forget to write to my grandchildren once you’re back in France.”

“Which grandchildren?” she asked, gesticulating with both hands.

She didn’t understand that I was talking about her two little ones.

“Mbissine and Mbissane,” I replied in the most serious tone of voice I could muster. “Didn’t you know they are staying in Niarela with me?”

Suddenly, there was an expression of unspeakable horror and indignation on her face. I smiled. Then she realized that I was teasing her, and she smiled back.

The next day, well before the time Yacine Ndiaye was supposed to leave for the airport, I sat down under my mango tree as I always did. I couldn’t help feeling pleased, because her presence in the house had become stifling. Soon, a taxi would arrive and we would be saying our good-byes to each other, with pleasant words and benedictions. Appearances would be kept up, and I would at last regain my peace of mind.

Toward midday, Yacine Ndiaye walked past me with an enormous red suitcase, but, instead of putting it down in the middle of the courtyard and going to fetch the rest, she did something utterly astounding. She sat down on a chair and started emptying the entire suitcase. She was much less relaxed than the day before; she was quite nervous, in actual fact. I watched her picking up every single garment, unfolding it, patting it with a mystified expression, and then dropping it at her feet. After that, she went back to her apartment, muttering to herself, and brought out a second suitcase which she inspected just as scrupulously. Gradually, Yacine Ndiaye got more and more worked up and let slip some rather vulgar swearwords that she repeated over and over while hitting her thighs at the same time.

I felt very intrigued by all this, but since I had promised myself to stay out of her business, I didn’t ask any questions.

A little later, a taxi pulled up outside the house, and I could hear a car door being slammed shut. It was Bigué Samb, who had come to accompany Yacine Ndiaye into town. When she saw the clothes scattered all over the ground, she covered her mouth with her hand in shock and exclaimed, “What’s going on, Yacine?”

Sweating and frantic, incapable of uttering a single word, Yacine Ndiaye gave your mother a blank stare. Her lips were trembling.

Bigué Samb continued, “Weren’t we supposed to call on Sinkoun Camara before I take you to the airport tonight?”

Sinkoun Tiguidé Camara. There’s a name you’ll do well to remember, Badou. This servant of Cheytan is someone you will soon come across again in my Notebooks.

“I can find neither my passport nor any of my other papers,” Yacine Ndiaye said in an utterly pathetic voice.

“Your passport?”

“I can’t find any of my papers. Neither my passport nor anything else. Nothing.”

In her state of distress, she seemed to be relying entirely on Bigué Samb for help, almost begging her to perform a miracle.

Bigué Samb started checking the suitcases all over again but gave up very quickly.

Yacine Ndiaye, still profoundly dejected, turned ever so slightly in my direction as she declared, “I’m sure my thief is right here in this house.”

Did this mean she suspected me, Nguirane Faye, of having something to do with this? That was so absurd I didn’t waste any time on it.

Bigué Samb sounded warm and affectionate when she said, “That’s my girl. Always ready for a fight, my Yacine!”

“Take a good look at me, Bigué,” Yacine Ndiaye said with despair. She pointed at her left forearm. “Can’t you see that with this black skin and without my papers I cannot prove who I am? I don’t know what to do, Bigué.”

After a brief silence, she burst into sobs.

“Don’t worry,” Bigué Samb said with resolve. “Just follow me.”

Yacine Ndiaye stood up. They climbed into the taxi and I realized then that Bigué Samb hadn’t even seen me. But I knew exactly why I was suddenly so unimportant to her: she was far too busy homing in on her prey.

She was behind the mysterious disappearance of Yacine Ndiaye’s passport. I didn’t have the slightest doubt about that.

It was the moment just before prayers at sunrise.

We could hear the growling of the royal drum in the distance.

Suddenly there was a voice drowning out the call of the muezzin. “I am the Messenger and I have come to wake you up with my words of peace, people of Niarela! Old and young, men and women, your prince commands you to leave your beds and go and wait for him in the Meeting Square! People of Niarela, listen to my words of peace.”

In less than a quarter of an hour, the Meeting Square was packed with people.

The wait had begun.

Initially, the crowd was calm and quiet. The inhabitants of Niarela were still a bit sleepy and asking each other what was going on. Some thought they had heard the prince was coming from the East, and all eyes were turned in that direction. Minutes passed, then hours.

The waiting was becoming more and more tedious and intolerable.

For a while, a few live wires managed to cheer up the anxious ones, but soon a growing, general sense of impatience and irritation began to take hold.

“Where is he?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the one who told us to assemble here. Where is he?”

“You’re right, we have been waiting a long time for him.”

Ousmane Sow, the cart driver, the most vociferous of all, could no longer contain his anger. “We should all be ashamed of ourselves! A man we don’t even know talks to us about some prince, and the next thing you know we’re standing here in the middle of Niarela from sunrise to sunset!”

Ousmane Sow’s words were followed by intense hissing and murmuring that swept from one group to the next, getting louder and louder as time went on. Once again, Ousmane Sow had managed to spell out loud and clear what others didn’t even dare to think.

“Let’s go home and stop this stupid nonsense!” shouted some of the people.

But the very moment when the crowd was about to disperse, a voice boomed across Niarela, so forceful it made not only trees but even brick walls tremble. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, from the sky, from the depths of the earth and from the houses nearby.

“Of course you can leave! Just go! May the wind speed up your steps! But if that’s because you don’t want to hear me anymore, let me tell you it will be in vain. No matter how far away you go, my voice will fill your hearts with shame. Oh inhabitants of Niarela, how could you think of me as a mere mortal? I told you I would be back. And here I am.”

On hearing those words, the whole of Niarela became very worried. With fear in their eyes, people started looking around in all directions.

He was back again.

The syllables of his name were rustling in the silence, and yet, nobody dared to pronounce it.

Ali Kaboye . . .

Ali Kaboye was back in Niarela.

Ali Kaboye, that doesn’t sound like a name from these parts. No one in Niarela knows what it means. It’s true that our three cinemas, the Empire, the Roxy and the Agora, show Westerns all the time and perhaps the man enjoyed them so much that his childhood dream was to be a cowboy, massacring the Sioux and the Cherokees.

He may well be claiming this is his name, but we have no idea where he is from originally. I think I was one of the few who noticed the first sightings in Niarela of a tall stranger dressed in rags, with a massive face of a dull black complexion and a totally bald head. His pestilential smell, his festering sores, and especially his openly exposed private parts, which he was in the habit of scratching frequently and vigorously, made us all think he must be one of those vagrant lunatics of whom there were unfortunately quite a number in town. You will instantly recognize Ali Kaboye by the way he walks—looking up at the clouds, he throws his right foot forward, puts it down on the ground, and then waits for the other foot to follow. This is why he always gives the impression of being in a great hurry to get to a specific place, and at the same time he appears to be in a state of extreme mental agitation. This is rather bewildering for us, and the more cowardly people here in Niarela are so nervous about this, I think, that they stay out of his way if they possibly can. On the other hand, even lunatics can’t all be expected to walk the same way. So there was really no reason to make such a fuss.

One nice morning we woke up to the discovery that he had made himself at home in a shack, and there really is no other way to describe this assemblage of tomato boxes, old newspapers, wooden planks, and milk cartons propped up against a wall under a streetlight. Initially, there were a few, admittedly rather feeble, complaints about his continued presence in the area, but that didn’t go on for long. Very soon, the neighbors left him in peace in the assumption that just as he had suddenly arrived out of nowhere, he would one day quietly vanish into thin air again. The lunatics in this city have always behaved like that. It was impossible to know why they never felt at home anywhere; they had never found it necessary to give any explanations in this regard, and nobody gave a damn, to be honest. He kept bellowing, either at himself or at the demons of his past, which must have been stubborn and difficult, “I, Ali Kaboye!” So that was his name. Ali Kaboye. The more inquisitive souls among us found out that the man had lost his reason during his military service at the Dakar-Bango boot camp. Apparently he was on guard duty in the bush one day, and, in broad daylight, he witnessed a scene humans are not supposed to see—djinns having sex, or something of that sort. We all know that certain hours of the day and the night are reserved for these supernatural beings. Even a sentry armed to the teeth ignores such a taboo at his peril! It’s just not a good idea to strut around anywhere you please, pretending you’re walking down a little street in your native village. The djinns are scared of neither an AK-47 nor a MAS-36. And to make things worse, they are extremely touchy.

Soon after he had “moved” to Niarela—if this is indeed an apt expression—Ali Kaboye started manifesting a tendency for violent behavior. When the children on their way home from Clémenceau Primary School teased him, he regularly pelted them with pebbles and showered them with insults. The language he used was so crude that I cannot possibly repeat it here. He even ended up injuring some of them. One of his favorite tricks was to hide in the recess of a wall near Koussoum beach. From there, he would suddenly leap out in front of solitary walkers holding out his hand to them in a threatening way, without saying a word. People attempted to get away from him, but he had this dreadful knack of cornering you in silence, which was actually far more terrifying than any clamoring or shouting. If a person tried to tiptoe around him, Ali Kaboye would block their passage, always with his hand held out and with that strangely absent look in his eyes. He never uttered a single word, or even a grunt, but his whole demeanor seemed to be sending out a very clear message: “You know I’m mad, don’t you, and all this might end badly, since your life is in my hands right now.” Having made sure no one was watching, the walker would hastily drop a coin into his hand. There really was no other way of extricating oneself from this calamitous situation. Ali Kaboye would then let the imprudent victim pass who made a solemn vow never, ever, to go near this godforsaken place again under any circumstances.

One day, however, Ali Kaboye committed a fatal mistake. It all started with Bolchoï, a dog whose name, it is safe to say, was just as bizarre as Ali Kaboye’s. Bolchoï could not stand Ali Kaboye. Generally, the animal could be described as rather docile, or even slightly timid. And to the best of our knowledge, he had never borne a particular grudge against lunatics in general. Before Ali Kaboye’s arrival, there had been quite a number of them living in Niarela for either a few months or even several years, and, just like the rest of us, Bolchoï had never objected to their presence in the area. But in Ali Kaboye’s case, things were totally different. I am not sure whether it’s appropriate to use the word “hatred” to describe the feelings of a dog, but it definitely seems as if Bolchoï hated Ali Kaboye with every fiber of his being. It was almost like a personal vendetta between the two of them. The moment the animal laid eyes upon the vagrant lunatic, he would start barking and attacking him, trying to bite his calves. If his intention was to terrify Ali Kaboye, he succeeded admirably. We saw him taking to his heels on more than one occasion, with Bolchoï in hot pursuit. At times, the dog even gave the impression he wanted to sink his fangs into his throat. It really was incredibly funny, especially for the children, to watch this colossal figure of a man jumping over hedges and the small puddles in Niarela, calling for his mummy to come to his rescue.

And then, one morning, Ali Kaboye managed to bewitch Bolchoï with some sort of magic formula. Bolchoï came and lay down at his feet, wagging his tail, full of trust, serene and looking positively ecstatic. This was to be the poor creature’s final gesture of friendship. Ali Kaboye, an old army hand, as I’ve mentioned to you before, decapitated him with one clean blow of his dagger. But that wasn’t the end of it. Clearly intoxicated by all the blood, he walked around Niarela brandishing Bolchoï’s head and uttering long, incomprehensible war cries.

Now, the owner of this dog was none other than Captain Baye Ndéné. This officer and seasoned alcoholic was an important personality in Niarela, and we were actually quite proud of him, since he was one of Daour Diagne’s army commanders. At the time when all this happened—and I am talking about the shocking slaughter of Bolchoï—the president had just put him in charge of the entire military detachment at his palace. If we want to give credence to the intimate revelations of his drinking companions, this mustachioed giant with his huge beer belly—a daredevil at heart—was bored to death in that position. Captain Baye Ndéné preferred the brothels in the seediest parts of town to the presidency with its elegant drawing rooms. He liked the kind of places where, instead of bowing and scraping, people assault each other with obscenities and broken beer bottles. As a soldier, he was of the pugilist variety, and he detested the chiefs-of-staff with their maps, their cautious, painstaking maneuvering of enemy positions, and their endless strategic planning. In a nutshell, he detested anything that delays total onslaught. And yet, Captain Baye Ndéné undoubtedly had a sense of honor. He loved an honest battle, a good punch-up, as it were. His only problem was his readiness to use just about any pretext to provoke this kind of altercation. One evening, after overdosing on the old bunukabu, he even went so far as to fire shots into the air, wreaking havoc in a bar that belonged to his old buddy Mapenda. There was definitely cause for serious concern at that point, but no one did anything about it in the end.

When he received the news that Bolchoï had been murdered, Captain Baye Ndéné was slumped in his own vomit and excrement after a monumental boozing session. It barely seemed to affect him. Despite the fact that he was basically comatose, a few bystanders who witnessed this scene were surprised by his reaction, since everybody knew how attached Baye Ndéné was to his little dog.

But a few days later, he staged a meticulously planned ambush aimed at Ali Kaboye.

It was late that evening, and I was passing the colonnaded office block that houses the Crédit Foncier, when I heard screams.

As I got closer, I saw Captain Baye Ndéné teaching Ali Kaboye a lesson that he wouldn’t easily forget. Not even remotely thinking of defending himself, the poor devil implored Baye Ndéné to spare his life and swore he would never kill Bolchoï again. Captain Baye Ndéné, who had just smashed a bottle of Heineken, took one of the shards and planted it on Ali Kaboye’s naked skull with a single-mindedness that can only be described as cold and sinister. Ali Kaboye’s face was all bloodied up, and his groans were gradually turning into whimpers. I was quite convinced that that would be the end of him. Who exactly had alerted the police I don’t know, but they arrived and seemed to find it extremely difficult to establish the actual sequence of events. Who was the madman who had been described to them? Judging by the appalling spectacle they were witnessing, it could have been either one of the two men.

Immediately after this incident, Ali Kaboye disappeared from Niarela, and we thought we had gotten rid of him forever. All of a sudden, the district seemed less filthy and the air cleaner. Everyone was relieved. Baye Ndéné did the right thing, everyone said approvingly. Having an army officer living in our midst certainly had its uses. People were full of contempt for Ali Kaboye’s cowardice and his screams of terror would certainly be remembered for a long time to come. Being mad is not a good enough reason to provoke Captain Baye Ndéné! Yes, yes, our Baye Ndéné was far too powerful for that faceless man with no past who had suddenly appeared one day out of thin air. For an ex-squaddie from the Dakar-Bango bootcamp to brazenly challenge one of the most brilliant officers in our national army, that’s pure folly indeed!

Several months later, Ali Kaboye returned to Niarela. Barely anything had changed, but it was immediately obvious that he wasn’t quite the same man as before. Eager to escape our attention, he rushed straight back to his shack with large strides. There he fell into a deep sleep, snoring loudly for four days and four nights.

By sunrise on the fifth day, he was gone.

Two years passed.

Then, one evening in July, the town was hit by a thunderstorm. Unusually, for a time like this, the power had not been cut, and everyone was at home, drinking tea and watching television.

Just before midnight, as I was getting ready for bed, voices could be heard in the street. Someone seemed to be calling for help. “Thugs, no doubt, who still haven’t stopped beating each other up in the rain,” I said to myself. Getting mixed up in their rows could be dangerous, so we always did our best to stay away from them.

Just like all the other inhabitants of Niarela, I found out later on that this racket had in fact been caused by one and the same individual. But his singing was so out of tune that no one was able to identify his voice.

Would it have occurred to any of us, after that fatal night during the rainy season, to think of Ali Kaboye? I doubt it, since the man hadn’t started terrorizing us yet in the way that I will describe to you later on. One might even say, at the risk of shocking certain sensitive individuals with a highly developed sense of morality, that to us, Ali Kaboye was not actually a true human being. In our eyes, he was a lunatic just like the rest of them, an ordinary lunatic, an individual who was just “normally mad,” as it were. Three days after his disappearance, we had forgotten all about him. Maybe we even thought he was no longer of this world. I presume you will find what I am about to tell you harsh and cynical, but it’s a fact: we thought he was dead, since people like Ali Kaboye usually die at an early age. Everyone knows that these vagrant lunatics are not entitled to medical treatment when they get sick—which they often do—and that, since they scavenge for their daily rations on public rubbish dumps, they literally stuff themselves with dangerous bacteria. If they are lucky enough to survive all the microbes, they unfortunately have every chance of being wiped out by one of those reckless drivers who don’t even find it necessary to stop. And heavens, if people out for a Sunday walk stumble across one of their mangled bodies by the side of the road, it hardly feels like the end of the world. You understand what I’m trying to say, don’t you. If Ali Kaboye gets run over by a train or a taxi tomorrow, nobody is in danger of losing any sleep over the salvation of his soul, and it’s highly unlikely that anyone will make a heartrending, melodramatic scene claiming that something essentially Human or whatever has just died in him. Well, we obviously all agree that Ali Kaboye is not an animal, but that still doesn’t make him much more than a rough draft of a human being. A creature suspended in the void. Floating, as it were. And yet, that doesn’t necessarily mean his death would leave us totally indifferent. In fact, those whose task it is to uphold law and order would probably be extremely upset by it, and no doubt they’d immediately treat us to a very moving demonstration of their patriotism. What matters most to these people is the hygiene of our beloved nation. They object to dead bodies obstructing our roads and, they grumble, it just doesn’t make sense, those vagrant lunatics who do nothing but wander around, they’re making honest citizens live in fear, they spread loads of germs, microbes and viruses, and that’s putting it politely because what we’re actually talking about is shit—shit that not only stinks, but is also extremely contagious. What, if anything, are our authorities doing about it? And with this very searching question in mind, everyone goes home and then it’s business as usual again. Why get all worked up about it, why go to the trouble of taking the decomposing body to the morgue and bother the undertakers? Surely the municipality will deal with it sooner or later. The poor wretch has neither a family nor an address, so he won’t object if we throw him into the communal ditch.

This, just between you and me, is the short version of what could have happened to Ali Kaboye.

Alas, we quickly realized we’d got the wrong end of the stick entirely and that the Ali Kaboye saga was not over yet. The man who had been singing so out of tune in the rain was none other than him.

During that night, after two or three hours of silence, he came back and his shrill, inimitable voice brutally roused us from our sleep. “People of Niarela, I am back. I am here to ask you a very simple question: why, with the exception of good old Nguirane Faye, did nobody come to my aid when Baye Ndéné was trying to kill me? Please don’t tell me you can’t remember, abominable bunch of hypocrites! Now listen to what I, Ali Kaboye, want to tell you. I returned to Ndimboye, my native village. Oh my goodness, I can see the astonished looks on your faces, while you’re tucked up in your nice cozy beds. Are you amazed to learn that I, too, was born somewhere, and that just like you, I have a father and mother? My relatives have sent me back to Niarela with the words: ‘Ali, you must never hurt anybody again.’ So there will be no more attacks on your children as they walk to Clémenceau Primary School, and I promise never to rip off your wives’ and daughters’ loincloths again on their way home from the market. Furthermore, I solemnly pledge to leave the solitary walkers in peace from now on. I am a man of peace now. But be aware that you will always hear my voice; every single day I will talk to you, from sunrise till sunset. And, people of Niarela, expect to be woken up by Ali Kaboye’s voice in the middle of the night!” The inhabitants of Niarela had been holding their breath listening to him, and when he was finished, there was a general sigh of relief. There was no serious cause for concern—it was all just a lot of hot air, one might say. The worst threat Ali Kaboye could make was to announce he would turn into a peaceful lunatic, which is what you would normally call an idiot. All right then, you can be our village idiot. Why not? That might even be quite amusing.

As it turned out, it certainly wasn’t amusing for everybody.

Ali Kaboye’s initial forays were reserved for Baye Ndéné, his deadliest enemy. The surprise effect made them all the more vicious and brutal. Every time the proud captain was on his way home from the presidential palace, Ali Kaboye was there, pretending it was a coincidence. Then he started crooning a song about a Warrior who had trouble with his gut because it was bloated and dilated by the sheer weight of his own shit. The Warrior, Ali said with a snicker, let off very noisy farts, and it stank across a radius of several kilometers, but nobody dared to hold their nose because the Warrior was also a drunkard who was known to get violent and aggressive. So, Ali Kaboye went on singing, for fear of having their skulls lacerated with broken bottles, people pretended that the gas that had escaped from the Warrior’s gigantic anus smelled very good, really so exceptionally good and that their nostrils had never inhaled a more subtle and delicate scent.

Initially, Baye Ndéné chose to ignore Ali Kaboye. He had, in the meantime, got married to the daughter of Gora Mbaye, a rather stern and uptight dignitary from Niarela, and so it wasn’t really proper for him anymore to get embroiled in fisticuffs in broad daylight with such a nonentity. He was nevertheless convinced he would be able to bring Ali Kaboye to book one day. He was biding his time, and there he was, strutting up and down the little lanes of Niarela, trying to look the part as supreme commander of the presidential guard. But we knew Baye Ndéné well enough to be able to tell from his churlish expression that he felt deeply humiliated by Ali Kaboye’s assaults. We were secretly pleased, of course, to see our arrogant military leader so helplessly exposed to the taunts of a vagrant lunatic. After a while, the boldest among us started to mock the officer in public. If Ali Kaboye imitated the sound of thunder in a subtle allusion to the Warrior’s bloated gut, the young people pretended to be completely enraptured. “Oh la-la! What a divine whiff of incense! It really smells too delicious around here!” We all know that children love absolutely any opportunity to start a quarrel. The moment they spotted Baye Ndéné’s gleaming silver Simca 606, they would run and call Ali Kaboye. Like clockwork, he was there with his party piece, the kids singing the refrain and clapping their hands. Baye Ndéné was so exasperated by this that from then on, he started driving home very late at night, but that didn’t help: without fail, Ali Kaboye would pop up at some street corner, and make the unfortunate Captain’s intestines give off the most breathtaking sounds.

Baye Ndéné’s exasperation was painful to watch. This officer with the rough chin, who was normally so self-confident and cocksure, was but a shadow of his former self. At one point, we heard it being said that he and his new wife were leaving Niarela and moving to the Paul-Morel Barracks, the official quarters reserved for high-ranking army officers.

But that was just a rumor.

Ali Kaboye, a madman? He may well have been. But there was method in his madness—his actions always came across as premeditated and carefully planned. Having won us all over to his side against Captain Baye Ndéné, he started sowing discord among us.

This is how he did it.

He would stand in the center of Niarela, staring at the palm of his right hand. He had a booming, powerful voice, and the words he used were as follows: “Here is my mirror. I can see them all in the mirror, every single one of them.”

His whole demeanor indicated he had some rather harsh revelations in store for us, but hesitated to spell them out. The reason for this was that he felt he didn’t have the right to expose the individuals concerned to the wrath of their neighbors, despicable though they were. In places like Niarela family feuds often go on smoldering for generations. So it was quite natural that some of us could hardly wait for the moment when Ali Kaboye would finally make up his mind to malign our arch-enemies. We didn’t exactly form a circle around Ali Kaboye in order to listen to him, no, but when he was playing those little games with his fake mirror we were never very far away, under the pretense that we just happened to be in the area, totally by chance. We tried to prick up our ears, but Ali Kaboye seemed to have enormous fun testing our patience. Standing at Niarela’s busiest intersections, and with a mischievous glint in his eye, he always bellowed the same mysterious phrases with great verve: “Here is my mirror. I can see them all in the mirror, every single one of them.”

When was he going to speak out at last? He seemed to change his mind at the last moment every single time, just when we thought we could already see the words we were waiting for so desperately, fluttering around his mouth.

But one day he flew into a rage, and it didn’t take long before the whole of Niarela was crowding around him.

“Poor little girl . . . One night, you went to bed, pure and innocent. When you woke up, your vagina had been ripped to shreds, your vagina was covered in blood. Since that day, you have not been able to hold your head up straight. You know your mother knows. You both live in fear. Shame on those who ruin a childhood like a pack of baboons ruin a crop of cassava! Here is the mirror. I, Ali Kaboye, see everything.”

There was a leaden silence. Every single face had the same bewildered expression and seemed to say: I told you so . . . That same evening, people dropped a few gentle hints about a number of incidents that everybody thought had been forgotten for a long time. Over the next few days, people kept repeating Ali Kaboye’s words over and over again. They even started mentioning names, including those of certain prominent personalities whose reputation was seemingly beyond reproach.

Before long, living in Niarela had become quite risky. Gone were the days when you could cheat on your wife or your husband without being in danger of becoming the target of Ali Kaboye’s vitriolic remarks. One of us had been put in charge of the money we had painstakingly collected to build a new mosque. He used it to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. This made Ali Kaboye so furious that he composed a song about impostors and religious hypocrites. We were able to identify the culprit without any trouble, and I think I can say that Ali Kaboye genuinely hated this person.

As one might expect, people were soon whispering that Ali Kaboye was one of those supernatural creatures, one of those beings inhabited by the Divine. Our children were forbidden to tease him and it soon became customary to solicit his advice if someone was planning to get married or to emigrate—secretly, of course—to Lampedusa or Barcelona. His answer to these enquiries was always the same: there is no mirror in the world that can show us these events before they have happened. “Marry anybody you like, get in your boat and go to Spain or wherever else, I wish you luck, but my mirror has nothing to say about that,” he added, visibly irritated to have to make such an obvious statement.

I don’t know why, but I was the only person in Niarela for whom Ali Kaboye showed even a modicum of respect. More than once, he refrained from spouting obscenities in my presence. When I think back on all that, I am pretty sure Ali Kaboye was perfectly sane and making fun of us.

But at the same time, I see the other Ali Kaboye in my mind’s eye, the one who used to go completely berserk every now and again and left us in no doubt whatsoever that he was stark raving mad. I remember the week for example, when, like a teacher in front of his students, he delivered a learned lecture about the origins of the kiss in Senegal, or rather about the fact that one fine day we started kissing each other on the mouth the way lovers do at the cinema or on the platform of a train station. Yes, that was quite something, wasn’t it! Based on the idea that it must be possible to trace this back to its beginnings by examining the course of our national history, Ali Kaboye said angrily he was sure he could identify the man and the woman who were the first after the arrival of the Toubabs to mingle their tongues and their lips, their saliva and all the rest.

This made us laugh, of course, but he didn’t mind. He treated us like dimwits, neither worthy of his rage nor of his superior scholarship, contenting himself with the observation that this was a lot more important than we might think.

Thanks to Ali Kaboye we also got used to the following: he told the same stories for several days in a row, with identical words and gestures, like an actor on stage plays the same part night after night. Soon the whole of Niarela knew his tirades by heart. The younger ones among us took great pleasure in copying Ali Kaboye’s intonation and his unmistakable way of gazing at his mirror.

If, just before all this was happening—and this includes the even more serious events that were to follow—somebody had told us that one day a madman would come and camp right under our noses, we would simply have laughed it off. But at the same time nobody could explain why Ali Kaboye, the man whose body was covered in festering sores, who used to roam around the streets of Niarela stark naked, and who was continually being harassed by swarms of flies, had captivated not only our minds but also our innermost thoughts to the point where we had literally become obsessed with him.

Not surprisingly, our politicians were the first to grasp how Ali Kaboye’s notoriety might be exploited. His growing influence on public opinion turned him into a direct but disloyal competitor for them, if one can put it like that.

And those whose memory hasn’t let them down will surely remember the year when nine people, including a six-year-old child, lost their lives during the mayoral election campaign in Niarela. The father had been foolhardy enough to bring him along to one of the rallies at a critical time, when the battle was unusually harsh and both parties used their dirty tricks wherever possible. Each camp had hired tried and tested slanderers, and never before had Niarela seen such a display of gall and venom on the occasion of an ordinary local election. Its outcome, it must be added, was completely unpredictable.

It went like this.

A few nights before the election, at an hour when the whole of Niarela was fast asleep, you could see furtive shadows sneaking through the deserted, silent lanes of the district.

Ali Kaboye was a light sleeper. He sat up, listening to the noises outside his shack. A voice he had never heard before greeted him, and his reply proved that he was in a foul temper: “What do you want from me? Go back where you came from. I don’t want to know who you are and I don’t want to talk to you.”

The visitors, who had probably anticipated this rude reception, didn’t take it personally. The one who seemed to be their boss said calmly, “You wouldn’t talk like this if you knew what we have got for you, Ali.”

“What is it?” Ali Kaboye asked.

“Money,” said the voice.

“Money?”

“That’s it, Ali, bags and bags of money.”

“Well, in that case, I’m interested,” said Ali, smiling to himself.

“It’s a gift for you,” said the person in the same unflustered tone of voice.

“A gift . . .” said Ali Kaboye. “A gift in exchange for what?”

The visitors looked at each other, slightly lost for words. One of them cleared his throat and said, “It’s got to do with the election, Ali. There’s a very bad man who wants to become our mayor.”

“No need to mention his name,” Ali Kaboye said drily, “I know who you’re talking about.”

“Well, there you are. That man is a liar and a thief, he’ll never build any hospitals or schools for our children.”

“Are you trying to say he is one of those blasted demagogues? Son of a bitch and enemy of the people? What do you want from me?”

“The man is a liability for Niarela. He must not be allowed to become our mayor.”

“I see what you want,” said Ali Kaboye, gravely nodding his head. “You’re looking for somebody who’ll publicly slander him for you.”

“That’s about it.”

“Then you’re going to have to shell out lots of money,” said Ali Kaboye.

They showed him the bags again: “This is only the first installment. Above all, don’t forget to tell the public everything this impostor is hiding, Ali. The people deserve to know the truth!”

Ali Kaboye took his time counting the banknotes, and then he said: “It’s a deal. Dish me all the dirt you’ve got about the man. Make sure you don’t leave anything out—the devil is in the detail, as they so rightly say. Make up a few malicious stories if you like, but watch out and don’t exaggerate, my friends, for if you want to be good liars, you should always stick very closely to the truth.”

At the end of this encounter, Ali Kaboye showed his visitors how he was planning to ridicule their enemy by pulling all sorts of funny faces. They found this very amusing and as they left, they congratulated him on his good citizenship and his talents as a comedian.

The next day, more shadows were silently sneaking along the narrow streets of Niarela. They were the opponents of the visitors from the night before. They were looking for Ali Kaboye. He said to them, “I was expecting you.”

They looked at each other in surprise and asked him all sorts of questions. This was his simple answer: “I am Ali Kaboye. Here is the mirror. I can see you all in the mirror. I can see every one of you.”

After a pause, he added, “No need to name names.”

They showed him bags full of money.

“We don’t want to buy you, we know you’re not open to bribery, Ali.”

“You’re quite right,” he sniggered, “in this country, only the fools are honest.”

“That’s it, Ali, we have brought you a gift.”

For the first time in years, Ali Kaboye wanted to burst out laughing. These guys were really quite incredible.

“What do I have to do in return for this gift?” he asked.

They nodded and looked at each other as if to say, He’s not such a fool after all, our Ali,. he understands perfectly what’s going on. Ali thought these people were more fanatical and more dangerous than the previous lot. One of them described the leader of their rival party as a hyena with stinking breath and its supporters as a bunch of rabid jackals. Then they told him what they wanted from him.

“I got it, you want me to insult him in public?”

“Exactly. You are the only person in Niarela whose voice really counts, Ali.”

“All right, I’m listening. Dish me all the dirt that you know about him.”

He gave them his little lesson about the art of lying, which is so much harder than it looks, and they slandered the other camp with great gusto. They, too, said good-bye to Ali Kaboye with joy in their hearts.

I’m sure you are wondering, Badou, how I found out about those two clandestine meetings. Nothing could be simpler: everything we know about them, we owe to a certain Ali Kaboye from our glorious past! Elsewhere in the city people had television and radio. We were lucky enough to have Ali Kaboye as well. With his infallible memory and natural talent for narration worthy of our greatest storytellers, he amazed us when he started disclosing all the details of his nightly meetings with high-ranking politicians in Niarela. The facts he presented to us were true and difficult to believe at the same time. One thing I found particularly amazing was the fact that Ali Kaboye’s description was a great deal more elegant and sophisticated than one would expect under the circumstances. I really do not quite know how to express the feelings I experienced then. It was a sensation of elusive beauty all the more difficult to describe since it was born out of such a hideous story, a truly disgraceful story that left no room for anything except hatred and destruction. Was that because, for reasons best known to himself, Ali had chosen to tell us the story in images? He said, for instance, that his nightly visitors came to see him under a veil of secrecy, adding, “The silence was so profound that you could hear every single dewdrop falling on the sand.” I found that very evocative.

As far as our two mayoral candidates were concerned, they appreciated those stylistic niceties a lot less, since Ali Kaboye was cheerfully setting about to ruin them. “I, Ali Kaboye, never break a promise,” he shouted. “I promised them to talk, and that is what I will do. They came to see me in the middle of the night, and they said, ‘We want to buy a bit of your venom, here are bags and bags of money!’ People of Niarela, who was it who told them that I, Ali Kaboye, son of my father and my mother in Ndimboye, am a viper or a green mamba? Who told them that?”

After giving us time to revel in his words, he announced, in a voice tinged with equal amounts of irony and rage, “I know everything and I will tell everything. I promise you, I am not going to be shy, hehe!”

The truth is that he was so forthright that Niarela came within an inch of sinking into chaos. Violent fights erupted, and Molotov cocktails and tear gas grenades exploded above our heads while the police had a hard time trying to reestablish order in the district.

From time to time, Ali Kaboye barricaded himself in his shack for days on end. His silence troubled us. Life continued as before, but we were on tenterhooks. Our hearts didn’t beat as briskly, the faces were anxious, and the sky seemed to hang lower than before. It was as if a void had opened up somewhere in Niarela.

But that’s how it is: even the most beautiful fables come to an end, and the end of Ali Kaboye, alas, was not a happy one.

In a nutshell, he had overplayed his hand and that led to his downfall. I’m sure you know the story about the madman who is congratulated by his friends for having managed to point out the moon in the sky and who proudly shouts, “And here you can see the second moon, just slightly to the left!” I think the same thing happened to Ali Kaboye. He had so much power over us that it went to his head and caused him to lose any sense of proportion. That was undoubtedly the reason why he committed his second big mistake after murdering Bolchoï, Captain Ndéné’s dog.

One day, we heard him shooting his poisoned arrows at those he liked to call the “men without color.” What did he mean by that? It was the first time he had used this expression and each one of us came up with a possible answer to this riddle. After a while, it became clear that this was Ali Kaboye’s name for the Toubabs, who, according to him, were running our country from so far away that it was impossible to see them with the naked eye. He alone, of course, was able to clearly distinguish each one of these “men without color” in his famous mirror. That was new. And dangerous. Very dangerous. It had nothing to do with our petty local quarrels. Ali Kaboye’s invectives against those unspecified invisible creatures alarmed our authorities greatly, since their number one priority was to stay on good terms with President Daour Diagne.

The notables of Niarela held a secret meeting and said, “Now Ali Kaboye has really crossed the line.”

This was tantamount to a death sentence.

Soon afterward, it was executed.

Only those in Niarela who were naive or cynical didn’t know who had razed Ali Kaboye’s shack to the ground and why we neither saw nor heard from him anymore.

But, as always, the truth was bound to come to light.

And the truth was as follows: Just off the beach of Koussoum, some men in balaclavas had slit Ali Kaboye’s throat and thrown his body to the sharks. Who were those villains? People were whispering certain names, but nobody dared to spell them out loud and clear.

Ali Kaboye’s assassination plunged us into sorrow and anguish. He assumed the aura of a martyr for freedom and a man of great spirituality with a pure and noble heart.

His posthumous glory was such that we ended up having false Ali Kaboyes just like there are false prophets. But the man was definitely unique, and the swindlers were all exposed and in some cases severely punished. An adventurer appeared in Niarela who wanted to be addressed as the Commander of Dreams and who told the crowd that had come to listen to him, “In actual fact, let me tell you that the man named Ali Kaboye never existed! You have all dreamed him up in broad daylight, since in this day and age, where vice has gained the upper hand, entire nations can lose their sense of reality!”

He also said we were lucky, since if he hadn’t come to wake us up, Niarela would have been swallowed up by the sea of Koussoum.

Some youngsters shouted abuse at him, telling him to go and spout his nonsense somewhere else, and so he dropped his false beard, his walking stick, and all the other paraphernalia impostors tend to have on the spot and fled.

Ali Kaboye’s life had not been in vain; it became a source of inspiration for our younger generations.

He resurfaced in our memory as an utterly free spirit of luminous serenity. It became customary in Niarela to quote his lucid and inspirational sayings all the time. The fact is that even from his grave, Ali Kaboye remained alive, unlike those of us who are slumped in front of the television night and day.

Badou Tall, everything I know about life, I owe to two men: Cheikh Anta Diop and Ali Kaboye. You would do well to follow in their footsteps yourself.

The emerald is buried under the seas, and the skin of the sky is tight as a drum. A single blow of his ax makes the sky spew the glittering light of myriad stars. The path will be arduous. Blood is dripping from hands lacerated by thorns and Death, like a famished beast, is forever prowling around the Just.

That was how Ali Kaboye used to talk not long before he died. We didn’t know that this was his way of bidding us farewell.

Shadow or ghost? The way he walked wasn’t the same as before. Completely out of the blue, he would appear at street corners in Niarela. He looked as if he were walking on water; there was no tinkling from the little bells he wore around his neck and if he wanted to speak, his vocal cords made no sound.

When he started rebuilding his shack, his hammer-blows on wood, or even on iron, were inaudible. His eyes didn’t see us, and we wondered whether the light reaching his eyes came from faraway celestial bodies.

On his way home after a working day at the palace, Captain Baye Ndéné stopped outside the shack. He spent a short time observing the scene, murmuring words that must have been an expression of wounded pride and hatred. He was at a loss to understand this world where you could choose to refuse death just because it’s better to be alive. Of course it is better to be alive than dead. But if that was the case, then why had he spent the best years of his life as a soldier, learning how to slaughter his fellow men?

He wasn’t going to stand around and do nothing.

As soon as I heard the screaming—even before I was sure it was Ali Kaboye’s voice—I thought of him.

My blankets were warm and cozy, and I had no desire to get out of them. And although this is harder to admit, there may have been another reason why I hesitated. When a man calls for help in the middle of the night, there is always that little goblin whispering in our ear: Stay out of it, just pretend you haven’t heard anything; saving people’s lives is a worthy thing to do, but there’s no need to play the hero, why be the only one to risk your life?

I didn’t hear it, that little voice, because once I had emerged from my state of semiconsciousness, I realized that Ali Kaboye’s screams were addressed to me, Nguirane Faye, and to me alone. His killers had him in their clutches and he must have known that this time, Captain Baye Ndéné wouldn’t give him another chance.

I got dressed in a hurry and left the house with a pounding heart. What could I possibly do, all by myself, against Ali Kaboye’s attackers?

The screams seemed to be coming from several directions at once, and after wandering around aimlessly for half an hour, I still hadn’t come across a single living soul in Niarela. Not far from Diédhiou’s house, in a place known as Hawkers’ Corner, I stopped, trying to decide which way to go. As I was about to turn into a narrow, sandy lane, a stone came flying and knocked my fez off my head. I didn’t have time to hit back, but I recognized the massive silhouette of Captain Baye Ndéné.

For a few seconds I stood there, and then, not knowing what to do and probably also afraid of suffering the same fate as Ali Kaboye, I decided to go back home. As I was passing the workshop of Demba Thiam, the goldsmith, right next to the Empire cinema, I changed my mind. This spot, dark and well concealed, was an ideal vantage point. I positioned myself there in order to see what would happen next.

Tumaini, Ousmane Sow’s horse, neighed twice, and a dog responded from far away. Otherwise, the district was perfectly quiet. All I could hear was the gentle rustling of the leaves in the wind. I was sure Captain Baye Ndéné and his henchmen must have dealt with Ali Kaboye and finished him off.

After waiting in vain for a long time, I returned home and went to bed.

At sunrise, on the way to the mosque, somebody asked, “Did you hear what I heard at about two o’clock in the morning?”

“You mean the man calling for help?”

“Yes . . .”

“He was a scoundrel. Our youngsters taught him a nice lesson.”

“So there is someone we’re not going to see again for a while in Niarela!”

I kept my mouth shut. There was no point in adding to their falsehoods. They knew. They knew everything. The prayers I said for Ali Kaboye that morning came from the bottom of my heart.

One day, when he saw us sitting near Ali Kaboye’s shack, Captain Baye Ndéné grimaced in disgust and said, “Don’t you think it’s time we finally got rid of that?”

He meant to sound lighthearted and chummy, but this was an order, so much was obvious. Since Ali Kaboye’s second death, Baye Ndéné had started behaving like an army commander just back from a victorious campaign. You could tell from certain little gestures so typical of people who wield a lot of power that he was becoming increasingly intoxicated with his own importance. We no longer saw him getting drunk in public, and, instead of chatting to us as a neighbor or childhood friend about the mundane happenings in our district, Captain Baye Ndéné was now displaying the mannerisms of the so-called benevolent politician who condescends to listen to the grievances, petty problems, and anxieties of the man-in-the-street. With his arms crossed and a thoughtful look on his face, he allowed each one of us just a glimmer of hope that, thanks to his inordinate kindness, he would put a word in on our behalf with President Daour Diagne “at our daily briefing,” a turn of phrase he never neglected to slip casually into the conversation at an opportune moment.

He was so powerful now that it was impossible to refuse this man anything he asked for. That’s why nobody made the slightest objection when his right forefinger pointed at Ali Kaboye’s shack with disdain. I hasten to add that slowly but surely the shack of the late Ali Kaboye had collapsed and was not much more than a pile of rubble with an oily, blackish liquid oozing out of it. The roof had been partly blown off by the wind, and its sheer presence in this spot made the landscape seem a bit eerie.

One of us drove the point home with particular relish: “The Captain is right, two or three days ago, I saw a huge rat coming out of there.”

Mada Diop, who was tasked with the demolition of the remnants of the shack, was a young man with a sturdy body and a simple mind. For a few coins, he was prepared to take on the most unpalatable jobs: unclogging latrines, filling up ponds with water, or fixing a roof.

At that point, the whole situation took an unexpected turn. No sooner had Mada Diop administered the first hammer-blow than we heard a piercing scream. He was bent double and shaking his hands in pain—they were in flames . . .

After the poor wretch was buried, the notables of Niarela reproached themselves once more for having underestimated Ali Kaboye.

Now Talla Ndiaye, the carpenter, was called in. Talla may have been a little less muscular than Mada Diop, but like so many taciturn individuals, he had the reputation of being able to tame the forces of darkness. Unfortunately for him, he could not even get to Ali Kaboye’s shack. About twenty meters away from there, he suffered an attack of vertigo, sat down under a lemon tree, started vomiting blood and, without so much as a whimper, gave up the ghost a few minutes later.

Talla Ndiaye had been a modest man, honest and with a big heart. His death affected me very badly. It was a sign that the hour of truth had arrived for Niarela. There we were, standing in a semicircle around Talla Ndiaye’s body, gazing at each other anxiously. We were all thinking the same thing: “Ali Kaboye is inside this shack, he can hear us and he can see us this very moment.”

When something extremely serious happens, the resulting fear doesn’t necessarily provoke screams and general panic. On that particular day, a number of Niarela’s inhabitants reacted with hypocrisy. Since they valued their peace and quiet above all else, they uttered vociferous complaints about Captain Baye Ndéné without ever pronouncing his name. Why treat one of God’s innocent creatures with so much brute force? That’s what they wanted to know. After all, Ali Kaboye had never done anybody any harm in Niarela! Regarding Ali Kaboye’s second death, they were sure the deed was premeditated, and that the assassin would soon be apprehended, since What’s the point in hiding to gulp down one bottle of whiskey after another; the day will come when we will see you staggering across the town square, blind drunk, and then your secret is out in the open!

Veritable salvoes of Wolof proverbs were flitting through the air. There was the one about the camel’s fart, which, as we all know, is positioned as high up as the anus from which it escaped, while the noise it makes is not very discreet and will eventually be heard by absolutely everybody. And then there is the one about the murderer who should not be too surprised that his hands are stained red from the blood of his victims. If, in Ali Kaboye’s case, the killers thought they could escape justice, everyone else knew they were very naive.

You can steal my drum my friend, but that’s not enough—you also need to be able to play it without my finding out about it, and I’m not deaf, ha-ha!

“That’s what happens when you judge a man by his outward appearance,” observed Ousmane Sow, the cart driver. We should mention at this point that he had become one of Ali Kaboye’s most fervent partisans.

“God punishes the proud,” someone else said approvingly.

From that day onward, nobody dared to go near Ali Kaboye’s shack anymore.

The man was of medium height, but the tengaade on his head made him look slightly taller. Quite apart from affording him protection against the sun, it actually seemed to be an integral part of him. He probably never took it off except in bed. His walking stick and his long white beard indicated that he must be very old. In fact he was like one of those storybook characters who, we are told, are a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old, but for the narrator this is just a figure of speech, of course. Despite his great age, an air of vitality emanated from his entire being. He came across as so distinguished and self-assured that we instantly took him for a Master of the Initiates.

He modestly introduced himself to us as a beggar, reciting a few verses from the Book in return for a bowl of rice, some biscuits or a handful of dates. Everybody who approached him to give alms was struck by the intensity of his gaze, which somehow did not seem to fit with the rest of his face.

People were whispering that he was a fake beggar and a true saint. When this rumor reached the ears of Gora Mbaye, Captain Baye Ndéné’s father-in-law, he called one of his servants: “Go and tell this old beggar the whole world is talking about that I, Gora Mbaye, Captain Baye Ndéné’s father-in-law, am ordering him to come and see me this instant! Make it very clear to him that Gora Mbaye, one of the dignitaries of Niarela, doesn’t like to be kept waiting!”

It didn’t take the domestic servant long to track down the beggar. With the typical haughtiness of an underling who is proud to be serving his powerful master, he went up to him and said, “Gora Mbaye, my master, commands you to follow me without delay. He wishes me to inform you that he hates being kept waiting by miserable paupers like you!”

Even before the old man had opened his mouth, his piercing eyes filled the servant with terror. “Tell that man to come and kneel in front of me before I step across the boundary of Niarela. If he doesn’t, I suggest that his relatives go quickly and buy seven meters of percale!”

He paused, then he took a handful of sand, blew on it and said calmly, “Just as it is true that these grains of sand have dispersed toward the south, the destruction of the man named Gora Mbaye is assured.”

Gora Mbaye was so overbearing and arrogant that everybody in Niarela expected him to react with indignation. We were looking forward to playing the supporting role in a battle of giants between the proud Gora Mbaye and this unusual beggar.

The battle never took place, Badou.

On the contrary, it ended up being the craziest day in Gora Mbaye’s life! His servant must have been pretty convincing, because our man was absolutely terrified and instantly set off to search for the old beggar. With bare feet and a frantic look on his face, he went randomly from street to street, harassing everybody he came across with questions about a beggar wearing a tengaade. Without waiting for an answer, he would then go rushing down yet another street. It was incredibly funny to see Gora Mbaye in such a state, but he scoffed at our laughter. He just didn’t want to die, that’s all.

He eventually found the beggar who was not nearly as harsh as anticipated when he told him, “So here you are at last, Gora Mbaye. It’s better like that for you.”

Still shocked at the thought that he had cheated death by a hair’s breadth, Goya Mbaye was lost for words.

The old beggar, who seemed to find him quite pathetic, even showed a certain compassion and sympathy for him and genuinely tried to help: “Listen to me carefully, Gora Mbaye. For a long time now, Niarela has been trying in vain to demolish Ali Kaboye’s shack. Here is what you need to know if you want to find a solution to this problem; there is only one man who can get rid of it for you, and his name is Isma Ndoye.”

He was quiet for a moment and then started again, clutching the handle of his walking stick with both hands, in a pose that must have been typical of him, “Nobody else will be able to do it. Isma Ndoye is the only person in the world who can get the job done.”

Gora Mbaye was still sweating and hadn’t quite recovered from his fright. With a confused look on his face, he mumbled, “Who is this man?”

“He comes from the village of Mbao.”

“Do I have to go and find him?”

“No. He will come to Niarela by himself. But you need to understand something else, Gora Mbaye: nobody can prevent Ali Kaboye from coming back.”

“Ali Kaboye is coming back to Niarela?” exclaimed Gora Mbaye.

“Yes,” the beggar said simply.

“Can’t you help us?”

The old man gently shook his head. “There are many of us in the Seven Heavens, and yet, so far, we have failed to bring Ali Kaboye to his knees. He’s invincible, that man, because he knows how to shift the signs. We don’t know what to do about it. We have never come across such strength of purpose in one solitary Son of the Earth. Does what I am saying make sense to you, Gora?”

“No, all this sounds like gobbledygook to me,” said Gora Mbaye, totally beside himself. “I haven’t understood a single thing.”

“But it’s really very simple.”

Gora Mbaye was completely and utterly fed up with celestial metaphysics and signs that certain people assume the right to disturb, just like that, without any reason. Rather than listening to the beggar’s explanations, he clung to the idea he was obsessed with. “Is there nothing you can do for us? We don’t want Ali Kaboye to come back to Niarela. Believe me, old man, nobody wants him here!”

Gora Mbaye found it unfair that Ali Kaboye was, in a way, the only creature on earth who couldn’t be killed off once and for all.

This made the beggar smile for the first time—he found Gora Mbaye’s dismay almost touching. “What is it you want, Gora Mbaye? Captain Baye Ndéné and you have killed Ali Kaboye and let his body, weighed down by a big rock, sink to the bottom of the sea. What more can you possibly want? Do you think I can transform his remains into sea shells? Do you want shells to decorate your living room, is that what you would like?”

Gora Mbaye, who had just, more or less in public, been accused of having murdered Ali Kaboye, looked around with a worried expression. But he still had enough presence of mind to ask the old man, “Does that mean Ali Kaboye is definitely coming back . . . ?”

“That’s right,” the beggar interrupted.

“If that’s the case, why should we pay Isma Ndoye to demolish his shack?”

“What you are saying makes sense, Gora, but you are saying it out of ignorance.”

“Oh really?” said Gora Mbaye.

“Without Isma Ndoye’s help, Ali Kaboye will torment you until the end of time.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Gora Mbaye, although he hadn’t understood anything. “How much do I owe you right now?”

“Nothing,” the beggar replied tersely, visibly irritated. “Save your money for Isma Ndoye. He charges a lot, believe me. Good-bye, Gora Mbaye.”

And just as loud and clear as the camel’s fart that is very high up and destined, in the long run, to be heard by absolutely everybody, all sorts of far-fetched rumors started to circulate about Ali Kaboye. People out on a nocturnal stroll claimed they had seen a ball of flames emerging from the sea of Koussoum that was floating upwards and setting the sky on fire. The next day, on the coast near Melilla, a group of emigrants with excellent eyesight were scanning the sky and spotted one of our compatriots perched on the clouds, daydreaming. Having observed him carefully through their telescope, they noticed that he looked infinitely sad, with his eyes fixed on a particular area in our city that, according to very complex and learned calculations of probability, had to be Niarela. This forced even the greatest skeptics to admit that Ali Kaboye would never let his killers sleep in peace. Claims were also made that he had a habit of transforming himself into a mosquito at night. Under that guise he started buzzing vengeful words, accompanied by lots of giggling, into the ears of certain people who kept tapping their temples in vain, trying to chase away the nasty little beast. All this was reported with gentle irony.

Several months passed.

One day, a big, strong fellow appeared in Niarela saying his name was Isma Ndoye.

“Where are you from?” people asked.

“From Mbao,” he replied tersely.

Right from the start, this young man struck us as an aggressive, irascible individual who was also exceptionally rude. But we needed him. Niarela had been waiting for him for months without having the courage to admit it, and now he was here. Within a few minutes, the entire district had crowded around him.

“I, Isma Ndoye, can liberate you from Ali Kaboye,” he said as he took off his anango.

“Is it the old beggar who sent you here?”

This question may have been somewhat superfluous, but it certainly wasn’t offensive. And yet, it made Isma Ndoye absolutely furious and to distract him, Gora Mbaye asked, “How much are you asking to be paid, stranger? We have heard your fees are very high.”

Isma Ndoye bent down to Gora Mbaye’s ear and whispered an amount. Gora Mbaye’s face immediately clouded over. Looking at him in dismay he exclaimed, “What you are asking is more money than has flowed into Niarela since the day it was founded!”

Afraid that he might have offended him—and probably also in order to avoid getting embroiled in the whole business of the Seven Skies, he added, in a more conciliatory tone, “We are prepared to pay, but you have to be reasonable.”

Isma Ndoye—he certainly was a nasty piece of work, that guy—was still so angry that he didn’t even deem us worthy of a reply and picked up his anango. When we saw he was getting dressed again, we begged him, “Are you really going to abandon us, your brothers in faith, into the clutches of Cheytan just like that?”

He let his eyes wander over the crowd and said with contempt, “What faith are you talking about, bunch of hypocrites! At the moment you snuffed out the life of that Son of the Earth, you should have paid heed to the eagle that was gliding in the air above the waves of Koussoum! He saw everything. He saw every single one of you. Do you want to hear the tale of Ali Kaboye’s second death?”

No one dared to say a word.

Captain Baye Ndéné, who had only just arrived, forced his way through the crowd and said, as he was walking toward Isma Ndoye, “Who do you think you are, stranger, to demand more money from us than this whole country has ever seen? I, Captain Baye Ndéné, don’t like that kind of mockery, is that clear?”

Baye Ndéné was coming straight from the brothel, reeking strongly of bunukabu. I forgot to tell you that due to Ali Kaboye’s stubbornness and refusal to die once and for all, the man was down in the dumps again and had started drinking like never before.

Gora Mbaye tried to save the situation: “We are grateful to you for coming all this way to assist us,” he said to Isma Ndoye. “The problem is that we don’t have enough money to pay you.”

“All right then, that means I’m going back to Mbao,” Isma Ndao replied coldly.

Just then, as the crowd started to disperse, I sensed that someone was looking at me. I turned round, and there was Captain Baye Ndéné with bloodshot eyes from all the alcohol, barely able to stand up straight. Nevertheless, when he spoke to me, his voice sounded almost normal. With that peculiar lucidity of the drunkard that can be so terrifying at times, he said, “What’s the matter with you today, Nguirane?”

I immediately got the gist of his question but pretended I hadn’t understood what he meant. “Why are you asking me that?”

“You didn’t open your mouth while we were talking to that stranger. And by the way, you seem more and more withdrawn these days, Nguirane . . . What’s the matter with you?”

Keeping my cool, I said: “What is the matter with me is called fear, Baye Ndéné.”

He frowned: “Fear . . . ?”

About a dozen people had gathered around us and some others had even come back again. Everybody was staring at me.

I started again: “Did you really listen to that man who claims to be from Mbao? While he was talking, I closed my eyes, and I heard Ali Kaboye’s voice.”

“Which one? Do you mean our Ali Kaboye?”

“Yes, our Ali Kaboye.”

There was a great hullabaloo.

Suddenly, everybody looked apprehensive. One of our most respected dignitaries—forgive me for not divulging his name—was so badly let down by his intestines that his caaya nearly dropped to the ground.

We felt that we had no choice but to put renewed pressure on the authorities to get rid of Ali Kaboye’s shack. But our petition just made them laugh. Didn’t we realize the government had more important things to do, for goodness’ sake?