NOTEBOOK 5

BRIEF ESCAPADES

THESE DAYS, BADOU, THE WALLS OF BUILDINGS ALL OVER THE CITY ARE plastered with huge posters of our two top wrestling champions of the moment. In the evenings, in front of the television, or sitting around sipping our customary three cups of tea, at street junctions, in taxis, or on the radio, there’s only one topic of conversation, and that is the upcoming contest next Sunday. It’s an exaggeration of course, but some people like to refer to it as the “Fight of the Century.” Basically, the entire country is holding its breath, and according to the newspapers, the sixty thousand seats of the Léopold Sédar Senghor stadium are already sold out. I know how fond you were of this sport and that’s why I am talking to you about it here in this Notebook. You must be dearly missing the wrestling matches at the Iba Mar Diop stadium, right next to the Medina. You started going there as a small boy, and when you turned eight, you announced you wanted to become a champion as famous as Mbaye Guèye, Toubabou Dior or Manga II. How you used to pester me with your endless questions about Abdourahmane Ndiaye Falang, Mbaye Dia Diop, Fodé Doussouba, Pathé Diop and Landing Diamé! But I enjoyed talking to you about those famous names, because it took me back to my own childhood. And even now, they are still very fresh in my mind, since, quite apart from their sheer physical strength and courage, those wrestlers were also true poets.

Each one of them conjures up certain tunes in my memory, each one brings back a gesture, a voice, a harmony, both perfect and unique in the world. I can’t even begin to describe so much beauty to you. By contrast, and I hope you don’t mind my saying so, I cannot really get excited about our monsters of today who do nothing except bash the hell out of their opponents. If, like everybody else, I am planning to watch the fight on TV next Sunday, I guess it’s only so that I can report back to you. I already know in advance that the bàkk are going to be a letdown and that, once the show is over, people will only be interested in the millions these wrestlers are pocketing, and not in their talent. You can call me churlish and accuse me of being too quick in cutting the gods of our stadiums down to size, but that’s what tends to happen with people my age. When you get close to the end, you always think everything was better in the past. Is that a trick which helps us convince ourselves that we can leave this earth without regret? Quite possibly.

But I hope you won’t be disappointed when you read these lines one day. I know they made you dream, these champions of ours. Draped in their brightly colored loincloths, they made the arena come alive with their singing and dancing. I will never forget how it fascinated and amused you to watch them pouring bowls of sour milk over their naked torsos, cracking eggs, or watching their opponent through a hole in their sandal before hundreds of white pigeons were released into the air above the arena of the Iba Mar Diop stadium. Then, just before sunset, Khar Mbaye Madiaga’s voice could be heard, drowning out everyone else. Her songs made a mockery of those burly fellows with their big muscles who seemed so scared of each other:

 

Wrestling is strictly for real men!

You look terrified!

Shame on you . . .

Even your sisters and your wives

Would show more courage in the contest

Than you!

 

All this is highly charged with emotion, Badou. Nobody remains indifferent to it, neither you nor any other son of our nation. If, one day, you remember this in the foreign country where you are now, you will probably think: “Soccer is definitely very popular where I come from, but wrestling, in the old style as well as the new, is the most apt reflection of the soul of our people. We have practiced it since time immemorial and it is to our nation what sumo is to the Japanese.” In the same breath, you will say to yourself that it’s quite normal for journalists from all corners of the world to come and take pictures of these fights only to announce later, on their television channels back home, “What you are about to see here is called Senegalese wrestling. These champions’ ancestors invented it over three thousand years ago, and today it’s their national sport.”

Well, I’m going to have to disappoint you for the second time, Badou, because this is simply not true. We owe Senegalese wrestling as we know it today to a French adventurer by the name of Maurice Jacquin.

Let me tell you how it came about.

Having tried his hand at all sorts of odd jobs, this Toubab decided to open a carpentry workshop near where he was living, on Sandiniéry Street. When the other Toubabs in Dakar started ordering their furniture from him, he became a bit more successful. But he wasn’t the most peace-loving individual, our Maurice Jacquin, nor was he particularly interested in spending countless hours behind the counter, dropping the pennies he had earned into the till, and doing that day after day for the rest of his life. He was a warrior at heart, in actual fact, a man with a hankering for adventure who despised people prepared to put up with the poor hand destiny had dealt them, office workers with an inflated ego, for example, or potbellied bureaucrats content with their dull, humdrum daily grind.

That’s when he came up with the idea of organizing wrestling matches with a difference, as you will see a little later in this Notebook.

Grand Makhou, as we called him, one of our senior mates in Niarela, was among his very first apprentices. He was an unrepentant rabble rouser in his own right, who liked to introduce himself as Makhou-the-Lion, hitting his chest with pride.

One day—I remember it as if it were yesterday—he took me by the hand and said, “Come on little Nguirane, let’s go and pay that crook Maurice Jacquin a visit.”

I can’t have been much older than six or seven, but the way he said this told me that Grand Makhou wasn’t just planning a simple courtesy visit. The steely look in his eyes and his clenched jaws were unmistakable signs that he was planning to beat someone up.

And as for Maurice Jacquin, I can still see his angular, haggard face, his hooked nose and the covetous expression in his devious eyes. He was tall, but his shoulders were bent, and I even seem to remember—although I am not completely sure on this point—that he was slightly hunchbacked. His khaki pants were a bit too short for his spindly legs and on that day, oddly enough, he had a yellow pencil stuck behind each ear. As the only Toubab in the entire workshop, he was also the boss. When we arrived, he was moving from one group of workers to the next, barking his orders in a few curt, brusque sentences.

I soon understood why Grand Makhou had looked so distressed when he asked me to accompany him to Maurice Jacquin’s workshop. The Toubab owed him money and he wanted to be paid right there and then.

I was one of the Niarela street kids back then, and Grand Makhou was a living legend to us. Whenever a grown-up had given us a thrashing, we went straight to Grand Makhou and complained, whereupon he immediately beat up the perpetrator. He invariably obliged without asking questions, as a matter of principle as it were. Principle number one of Grand Makhou the Avenger was that children are sacrosanct: you never hit a child. He was a tough guy who was not in the habit of bowing to authority or of putting up with anything he considered unjust. Even if I don’t really know how to explain it to you, it’s a fact: although Grand Makhou hated any kind of histrionics, he ended up hitting and punching from morning to night, usually to protect the underdog. I guess that’s what tends to happen when you decide to stick up for other people.

Instead of telling Maurice Jacquin straight what the purpose of his visit was, Grand Makhou embarked on a long litany of salutations, which he repeated incessantly. He did this because he wanted to avoid humiliating his debtor in public.

Maurice Jacquin, who was busy sawing a piece of wood, had the brazenness to say to him: “Listen, Makhou, don’t pester me with your salamalecs, OK? As you can see, we’re working!”

Well, well, well! Nobody talks like that to Makhou the Lion! This puny runt of a Toubab must be mad, I said to myself.

Grand Makhou couldn’t believe his ears. “D’you really think you can get away with talking to me like this, Mister White Guy? You know what? I’ll fuck your mother right here till she keels over in front of everybody!”

He lost no time and started walking up to Maurice Jacquin, perfectly in step with the menacing clicking sounds of his thumb and middle finger. “I want my cash and I want it fast! So hurry up or I’ll—”

Suddenly, there was total silence in the workshop. For a few moments, Grand Makhou and Maurice Jacquin were facing each other like two rams about to lock horns. The workers all pretended to be busy, but I could tell they were on tenterhooks.

Now it was Maurice Jacquin’s turn to yell. “You’re threatening me, eh? You must have some nerve! Me, Maurice Jacquin! Go on, get out of my space! Fuck off before I kick your arse!”

I have told you already, Badou, Grand Makhou was one of those fellows who wasn’t afraid of nothing. And he most definitely didn’t allow anyone to be rude to him in public. He took two or three steps backward, pulled something out of his belt and started walking toward the Toubab again. Maurice Jacquin saw a blade flashing in Grand Makhou’s right hand and started to retreat a bit. But Grand Makhou kept advancing, twirling his mini-dagger between his fingers, clearly determined to make use of it.

One of Maurice Jacquin’s workers—he struck me as the most senior—said to Grand Makhou, without taking his eyes off his work, “Makhou, are you aware of what you’re doing?”

“I couldn’t care less what happens to me,” Grand Makhou growled, shaking with rage. “Either this Toubab hands over my money, or I’ll make mincemeat out of his bloody guts.”

The Toubab he was talking about was a pitiful sight to see.

And Grand Makhou added, vehemently, “Yes, that’s what I’m going to do, I, Makhou-the-Lion, and then I will go and spend the night in prison.”

In the same quiet, sincere voice as before, the old carpenter said, “There’s no need to lose your temper, Makhou. If you play it more coolly, you can take your money and go home without a fuss. These people are not to be trusted, Makhou, they won’t allow an African to stand up to them. How much does he owe you?”

“I found nine wrestlers for him last month. He knows how much that comes to.”

Maurice Jacquin was a tough cookie himself, but he knew that Grand Makhou was a hothead, and he certainly didn’t feel like being eviscerated by him. He regained his composure and pretended he had just been joking: “Makhou he lova money too much! Me pay money!”

Grand Makhou still looked tense and edgy while Maurice Jacquin paid him what he owed him, and we left the workshop having won the battle, in full view of the baffled employees.

Back in Niarela, he handed me a few coins and said: “Young lad, do you know Tina Delgado, my Cape Verdean girlfriend? Go and give her this hundred-franc note and tell her I want a kacuupa from Hell tonight. I’ll bring the beer and the gin. We’re eating at her place tonight, my gang of ceddo and I!”

Grand Makhou, you old devil!

As soon as I come across him in some remote corner of my memory, I instantly get very emotional. He was a real man, that fellow. He was neither rich nor famous, but he knew how to command respect, and he got it. Looking back on it now at my age, Badou, I realize we had a lot of people like that here, people just as proud as Grand Makhou. Cheikh Anta Diop. Amilcar Cabral. Mongo Beti. Samory Touré. Thomas Sankara. Lumumba. You know all those names. Each one of them was a Man of Defiance in his own right, and for that reason and for that reason alone, the white colonizer killed them or at least reduced them to silence. But I still can’t understand why, everywhere on this continent, but also outside it, Grand Makhou has always ended up being beaten, and why, despite his bravery, he was always eventually brought to his knees. We were able to say no, but that clearly wasn’t enough. There was something else that we lacked. I still don’t know exactly what that is. Don’t be shocked if I mention those giants of our history in the same breath as a man as ordinary as Grand Makhou. That was just a little aside I wanted to add so I could share my concerns with you.

I have given you a description of the fight between Maurice Jacquin and Grand Makhou. The Toubab behaved badly on that occasion, there’s no doubt. But deep down, he was quite a decent fellow. To us, he had nothing in common with the rest of the Toubabs at that time; he didn’t hide himself away in a posh villa in the Plateau district, and we always saw him as one of us, right from the start. His passion was sport of any kind, and he quickly became fascinated by the mbapat, which he never missed.

I’m sure he had been hatching this idea for a while, when one sunny morning we found out that Maurice Jacquin had opened his own wrestling arena in Niayes-Thioker, not far from where we lived. The news caused a stir in Niarela, and we listened to our leading local personalities openly expressing their amazement: “A wrestling arena, did I hear you correctly my dear fellow?”

“Yes, absolutely. It’s basically like a large room where wrestling matches are held.”

“Since when have wrestling matches taken place indoors?”

“I know it’s odd, but that’s how it is—”

“I’ll have to go and see that for myself!”

“I want to come too! Let’s go! An egg bouncing from one rock to the other! Wolof Njaay always said that was impossible!”

“All right then, let’s all go and see how such a marvel can become reality!”

Maurice Jacquin’s hall was just behind the El Malick cinema. When the inhabitants of Niarela arrived there, a huge, fierce-looking fellow was blocking the entrance. They looked at each other incredulously. What a great start. Did that mean one now had to pay to be able to watch a wrestling match?

They asked the doorkeeper, “So it’s no longer just a simple game? Is that what you’re saying, my friend?”

“Yes, it is,” replied the doorkeeper, “but it’s different from our kind of wrestling.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here, the wrestlers also throw punches at each other.”

“What do you mean, throw punches?”

“They punch each other real hard,” said the doorkeeper who suddenly looked a lot less intimidating.

It was obvious he enjoyed talking to the new arrivals about a subject he had probably never had the courage to discuss before.

Shaking his head with a mixture of repugnance and bewilderment he added, “These fights are extremely brutal. I have to clean the floor after each encounter, and there’s blood everywhere, I assure you.”

“And that’s what you call wrestling? The same as our kind of wrestling?”

The doorkeeper pulled a long face. He looked doubtful. “All I know is that Monsieur Jacquin calls them wrestling matches . . .”

The doorkeeper seemed just as unsure about the whole thing as the spectators, who ended up paying for their tickets and then took their seats around the arena. Most of the wrestlers were beefy young domestic servants, usually in the employ of the Toubabs in the Plateau district.

That was the day Maurice Jacquin and Grand Makhou met for the first time. The latter caused a sensation, I have to say. It was beyond Grand Makhou’s power of self-control to just sit back and watch while there was a fight going on. One of the wrestlers was literally wiping out his opponents, one after the other, with a few well-placed uppercuts.

When Grand Makhou stepped into the arena, he knocked over his ndënd with one single, ruthless kick. His fight with the champion of Niayes-Thioker was long and grueling. After an hour, their faces were bloodied and they were close to collapse from exhaustion. They staggered around the arena, punching the air with their fists. To the surprise of those who didn’t know him, Grand Makhou won his very first victory. Maurice Jacquin grabbed his hand and lifted it up triumphantly, then he draped him in the blue-white-and-red flag and handed him a small sum of money.

When he got back to Niarela, the reception he received turned into a riotous spectacle. Grand Makhou, who by then already saw himself as the greatest champion of all times, improvised a number of unforgettable bàkk. One thing is clear, Badou, Grand Makhou was invincible, he was our demigod, but his singing was terrible! His voice was about as harmonious as a barrel of oil that’s being poured out over a pile of rubble.

This was the beginning of the most glorious chapter in Grand Makhou’s life. For eight years, his back didn’t touch the ground once, and that made him a national hero. When he ran out of suitable opponents, he decided to become Maurice Jacquin’s right-hand man. They started traveling to all the mbapat together during the rainy season, recruiting the most talented wrestlers and inviting them to participate in combats. The winners were not well paid, but that didn’t stop the rumor from spreading in the popular districts that if you were young and strong, you could earn a bit of money by hitting the living daylights out of another young fellow in a hall in Niayes-Thioker.

So this, Badou, was the strange idea that began to take root in everybody’s mind. Soon you could see all the ruffians in town queueing up outside Maurice Jacquin’s wrestling arena. And why should anybody be surprised by this? These strapping lads were beating each other up all the time anyway, just for fun. So now, at least, they had a good reason to do it: money.

This is how our so-called national sport was born in 1930, in the Niayes-Thioker district.

Maurice Jacquin was so stupendously successful that the wrestlers from the countryside started to converge on Dakar en masse. Crushing an opponent’s jaw, gouging out one of his eyes or biting off his ear became a pastime and a profession. Maurice Jacquin eventually gave up carpentry and hired some touts. At this point of my story I must admit that certain revelations I have to make to you are causing me quite a bit of embarrassment. I think it’s best to reserve the juiciest details for my Book of Secrets. For the moment, let it suffice if I tell you that I know of at least three of the great Niarela families who acquired their millions through the despicable business of touting. Today their descendants are sitting on that immense fortune, looking down on the rest of the world with disdain. But we, who know the whole story, secretly joke about it. They grew rich because their fathers were cretins who used to spend their days loitering around Dakar harbor. When they spotted a fellow with an athletic build, especially among the dockers, they accosted him: “Hey my boy, do you know there’s money waiting for you somewhere?”

“What do you mean, money?”

“Well, my friend, you’ve obviously never heard of Maurice Jacquin, the Toubab of Niayes-Thioker. He’s opened up a wrestling hall over there.”

“A wrestling hall?”

“Yes. And he pays well, he is a generous man.”

“But I’ve never done any wrestling in my life!”

“That doesn’t matter! With the kind of biceps you’ve got, you will be able to floor just about any opponent with a single punch of your fist!”

They carried on talking like this and finally a deal was struck. “OK. I’ll be there on Sunday.”

Maurice Jacquin’s touts also went to Casamance, to Salum, to Futa, to Kedugu, and to the Cayor. They suggested to their young recruits that they should follow them to Dakar. If they showed any hesitation they were cruelly mocked. “Are you trying to tell me you actually enjoy your miserable life here, in the middle of nowhere? This backbreaking drudgery under the scorching sun, scraping the ground with your pathetic little hoe, is that the sort of life you want? You could earn a lot of money and have a lovely time in Dakar! Do you hear me? A really lovely time! Dakar is a great city, it has everything you could possibly wish for, and all the beautiful girls will be at your feet! How can one be so young and at the same time so reluctant to live life?”

And what’s your story, Maurice Jacquin? They say you ended up here by accident. Apparently you were en route to America when your boat cast anchor in Dakar harbor, and you just stayed on. Our girls were just so incredibly hot. Rumor has it, by the way, that you left lots of little bastards in your wake. But that’s another story. You didn’t have two pennies to rub together, so the other Toubabs helped you out. Out of generosity? Perhaps, but I personally believe they didn’t want the blacks to witness the embarrassing spectacle of a white guy fallen on hard times. That would have made quite a lot of theories go up in smoke.

So here you are, Badou, now you know why freestyle wrestling only exists in Dakar. You won’t find it anywhere else in the world, not even elsewhere in Senegal. So if we continue thinking of it as our ancestral sport, that turns us all into descendants of Maurice Jacquin. Then there is nothing strange about the fact that our wrestlers now drape themselves in the American flag instead of the sumptuous loincloths they used to wear in the past, and that our good old bàkk have been replaced by dances from nowhere, which absolutely nobody can understand, least of all the dancers themselves. And you will also find that the wrestlers no longer have names like Dame Soughère or Boy Bambara, but call themselves whatever they fancy.

I am perfectly aware, Badou, that turning one’s back on the outside world is tantamount to the kiss of death. It’s bound to be a good thing if a nation lets the winds that are blowing from all corners of the globe expand its chest, but not unless we do what we can to preserve the crucible destined to receive its breath when they are blowing. Life, after all, is not born out of the void.

At sunset yesterday, a lone traveler came to town. He thought he had managed to blend in with the crowd, but we noticed straight away he was a stranger. He kept stopping to read the signs on the shop fronts or to check house numbers, and, since he didn’t know which way to go, he repeatedly turned round and walked back the way he came. It was the end of the day, the traders of Niarela were starting to lower their blinds, and the streets were nearly empty. The stranger found himself in a public square, where he put his bag down on the ground and settled down under a lamppost.

Vigilant citizens were watching him from the houses nearby. A few of us went outside and walked around him in circles, pretending to be preoccupied with our everyday chores. The man seemed completely oblivious to our clandestine maneuvers. He took a grapefruit and a penknife out of his satchel, cut the fruit down the middle in one go and started sucking each half with obvious relish, like someone who has all the time in the world. When he had finished, he wiped his hands with paper tissues and soon he was fast asleep.

It’s possible that while he slept, a lot of people came and crowded around him. This part of town is becoming more and more dangerous, and one can never be too careful. It wasn’t long before the police started taking an interest in the stranger as well. But I know nothing about all that. What I can say, and what is beyond doubt, because we all witnessed it with amazement, is that when he woke up the next morning, he walked to the public fountain of Niarela and washed his face. Then he tossed his Kleenex and his grapefruit peels into a dustbin, and with supple, careful and measured steps, he started walking toward the outskirts of the town. That was the last we saw of him, and he was never mentioned again. Later, we heard that he apparently stopped for breakfast at Diéwo Bâ’s tangana near the bus station, but nobody was prepared to confirm this with absolute certainty. The question whether or not the man ordered a café au lait and Diéwo Bâ’s famously delicious pain-beurre-chocolat at the tangana aroused such heated arguments that on at least one occasion this very nearly ended in a fist fight. All this happened for no reason whatsoever. A person—anybody, in fact—ought to be entitled to sleep under a lamppost in an unfamiliar place without giving an excuse or an explanation.

It also occurred to me that during that particular night, the wind—or the singing of the birds or whatever else, even a barking dog for that matter—might have relayed to this stranger the most powerful message he had ever heard in his life. Who knows? Maybe the otherworldly sound of a voice, familiar, yet distant, was ringing in his ears as he slept. It’s possible—yet again, how are we to know?—that his brief sojourn in our town changed his life forever.

After all, mine was never the same again after the day I witnessed, completely by accident, one of Cheikh Anta Diop’s rallies in Niarela.

As is my habit on such occasions, I stood at the very back of the audience. I didn’t like them, those politicians who kept pitching up in Niarela, telling us the same old twaddle, so I always made sure I was in a spot that allowed me to leave discreetly the moment I had enough. I have never managed to listen to a single one of them right to the very end.

From where I was, I could see a tall man with an emaciated face addressing the crowd. He wore a gray, unlined jacket with short sleeves, and behind the thick glasses, his eyes looked alert and anxious at the same time. He looked tired and must have had a difficult day. That’s maybe why it suddenly struck me that the parlous state our country was in must be making him really miserable, causing him great pain, and that he wasn’t just in Niarela to win our votes. Every election was rigged in those days, and he knew perfectly well he had no chance of winning this one. While he was addressing the crowd, I did more than just listen to him, I watched him, without being able to detect the slightest trace of dishonesty or insincerity in him, you know what I mean, don’t you; that specific way our politicians have of revealing their duplicity through their facial expression, it’s like a secretive little wink, meaning “Yes, yes, I’m talking, I’m talking all day long, but you know perfectly well I’m just bullshitting, I am an old hand at this and it’s OK to vote for me because you and I are the same, sly and devious!” It isn’t often that you feel you can trust someone instantly, the first time you meet him. Of course I expected to hear him promise to build us schools and hospitals, and I think he did in fact mention it briefly, like everybody else, but it was obvious his true aim was to change people’s attitude, to profoundly reshape our way of looking at the world. To put it in a nutshell for you, Badou, for once I had the feeling that here was a human being who didn’t just want to use my problems to further his pathetic little career. He was talking to me about my personal destiny and about what I was doing here on earth. I actually had the impression we were looking straight into each other’s eyes and that he was talking to me alone, from man to man, as it were. I was enthralled by the magic of that moment. Cheikh Anta Diop seemed so fragile to me that, strangely enough, I felt more desperate to protect and to shield him than to be saved by him myself.

Normally, these are not the things you are supposed to think of when you have a man in front of you whose job it is, technically speaking, to convince you that he can improve your life. But I am convinced, Badou, that we can gain access to the true essence of another being in the most unexpected ways. The mere possibility of a purely human relationship with Cheikh Anta Diop meant I was sold on his vision of Africa from the moment of our first encounter that day.

Later on, I have tried to understand more fully what it was that made this man stand literally head and shoulders above the rest. I quickly realized that my instinct hadn’t deceived me. If in a poor country a political leader is genuinely disinterested in money and prestige, that counts for more than any of his ideas. Anybody can have ideas, or pretend to have them. Think for example of our very own Daour Diagne. Forget about all his jabbering for a second and observe him carefully. What do you see? A vain, avaricious and petty old man on whom one would rather not waste one’s time.

Cheikh Anta Diop, on the other hand, has always walked a path that was completely straight. His supporters found it hard at times to live with that degree of moral rectitude, and that’s when he used to say to them, “There is never a valid reason to lie to those who have put their trust in us. The truth may hurt them, or even plunge them into despair, but at the end of the day it makes us all stronger.”

More often than not he had to forge ahead completely alone, but that didn’t mean he ever allowed anybody to stand in his way. Basically, everything he has done, said and written in the course of his life can be summed up as follows: the time that elapses between a man’s birth and his death is as brief as a flash of lightning in the sky, and it is usually entirely devoid of truly important events. Therefore, if one doesn’t even have time to live, one ought not to spend it telling lies, neither to oneself nor to anybody else.

Let the example this man has set inspire you, Badou. If you do, none of God’s creatures will ever be able to influence you against your will.

Cheikh Anta Diop was laid to rest in Thieytou in his sixty-third year. He died quite young, considering the prodigious body of work he left behind for us to ponder about.

On every single God-given day, I include him in my prayers.

I am sitting in front of my house.

Two men are walking past. They are not from Niarela. I have never seen them before.

I catch a shred of their conversation: “Well, my friend, what’s the news in the country?”

“Heavens! The country . . . We’re in big trouble, you and I. Move over and make way for the young, as they say!”

I imagine a mischievous smile lighting up his companion’s face as he replies, “I know you, old fellow. Whenever you talk like that, you’re trying to hide something from me.”

“Oh, it’s nothing serious,” says the other one, “it’s just that your younger sister is giving me a bit of trouble.”

“Who do you mean? Kiné?”

“Yes of course, who else?”

The first speaker says in a voice that sounds affectionate and slightly sad at the same time, “Kiné and you . . . don’t you think it’s time you came to an understanding once and for all or break up?”

Now they’ve disappeared around the corner, and the street is quiet again. But it won’t be long before two different, anonymous voices fill the void. Their sentences will hover in the air until the wind sweeps them up, high into the sky, maybe even all the way to the word cemetery. And immediately afterward it is as though those words had never been heard anywhere on earth.

Last night I thought of my father again. I’m not sure whether I can claim to have known him any better than the ancestor Mame Ngor.

A childhood memory, nevertheless.

He must have found out that I had done something very, very naughty. And now I see Father again, his whip at the ready. I bend over, my hands clasped on top of my head, waiting for the lashes.

Nothing happens.

When I lift my head a little to look at him, Father is standing right in front of me. Never before have I seen so much contempt emanating from the countenance of a human being.

He drops his rod and walks away without a word.

It was after the prayer of tàkkusaan and I was out on my daily walk when I noticed a group of people crowded together in the middle of the street. I approached them. Two taxi drivers were embroiled in a violent argument. The younger one, practically still a boy, was threatening to strike the other one with a wrench, while both hurled insults at each other and the crowd had a hard time trying to separate them. To my great surprise, their bosses—the owners of the taxis in question—instead of joining in the fight, as often happens in these cases, were not fanning the fire but did what they could to calm their apprentices down by telling them there was no point in causing bloodshed for the sake of a few passengers.

Right next to me, a cola nut seller solemnly declared: “When it comes to clients, God either gives them to a taxi or he doesn’t, just as it pleases Him! Beating each other up does not make the slightest difference!”

There were loud murmurs of approval from the crowd, and a few minutes later all was quiet again. It won’t be very long before the next quarrel, of course. That time, it might be between a young woman and those gangs of pickpockets that operate in and around the Niarela market. Although several of them have been badly beaten up over the past few months, their number is growing and they are getting more reckless all the time.

After that, I managed with difficulty to clear a path for myself between the stalls, the small artisans’ workshops and the garages of the mechanics. The hardest part was trying to get out of the way fast enough to avoid being splashed by water from the puddles that hit the curb every time a car drove through them. And as if that hadn’t been enough, it was impossible to take even a dozen steps without being pounced on by hordes of little talibés or stumbling over heaps of scrap metal and garbage.

You get the picture: it was anything but a relaxing little afternoon stroll.

With its decrepit old shacks and that heady mix of smells originating from beer, urine and cannabis, Niarela certainly doesn’t strike you as the greatest place on earth. The moment it rains, all the drains are blocked, and we can barely leave our houses because they are under water. Niarela sometimes reminds me of those alcoholics who’ve been wrecked by drink but whose impeccable attire is a pathetic attempt to hide their state of internal decay.

Almost every time I get swallowed up in that chaos I suddenly ask myself what has become of the old Niarela as it used to be. Vague memories of its past glory are all we have left of it today. The fact is that in the days of the Toubabs, Niarela was the residential district for Africans. Many of our greatest artists and most famous sportsmen, like your father Assane Tall, for example, were born here. That means that within the century and a half of its existence, our district—one of the oldest in Dakar—has gone sadly downhill.

I still remember the time when the forest with its little bit of wildlife—a few snakes, jackals and squirrels—started just beyond the outskirts of Niarela.

Maybe the reason why we have always led the way, not only in the capital city, but also in the entire country—my apologies to those who resent this!—is that nothing has ever entered Senegal without passing through Niarela first.

Is there anybody in this city who doesn’t remember Fara Mbodj, the first Senegalese who owned a car? Well, he came from here!

To be sitting behind the steering wheel of his very own “Versailles” during the thirties was simply a feat of grandiose proportions for a son of this country. This is why Fara Mbodj decided to organize a feast fit to match that exceptional event. How much his beautiful black “Versailles” had cost him? That we didn’t know, but we were pretty certain that he must have spent almost the same again on the naming ceremony of his beloved toy. Marabouts came and sprinkled holy water on the “Versailles,” Fara Mbodj’s female cousins served hundreds of calabashes of laax and the griots stood to attention, evoking the heroic exploits of Fara Mbodj’s forebears—that they were all gloriously successful goes without saying. The celebrated warriors rode around the battlefields of the Waalo on their fiery steeds, and so it was only to be expected that one day the neighing of their descendant’s magnificent “Versailles” would be heard echoing up and down the streets of Dakar. Fara Mbodj tossed bundles of banknotes at the praise singers, while the witchdoctors, who were supposed to protect his car against the evil eye and vipers’ tongues, received their remuneration afterward, in private.

And as if that were not enough, Niarela was also the first place in Senegal where you could see a proper razor in action. I’m sure this will make you smile, Badou. I won’t be surprised, in fact, if you are wondering whether Grandpa Nguirane Faye just talks a lot of nonsense in this Notebook. A razor in action? Yes, Badou, a razor. Nowadays we have thousands of barbers in the country hailing from Sao Vincente, from Sal, from Praïa, or another one of the Cape Verde islands. There was a time when these immigrants were really needed here. They were the ones who introduced us to razors, and I can tell you, too, that it all started with a man by the name of Toy Delgado. And where do you think this innovator decided to set up shop? You’re spot on: in Niarela. Let me also just mention in passing that in my Brief Escapades—the very book you are reading right now—Grand Makhou asks his girlfriend, a certain Tina Delgado, to cook him a kacuupa from Hell. Tina was Toy Delgado’s granddaughter, you see. Let’s not be ashamed to admit it, but until Toy, who famously pioneered the safety razor, arrived in our town, we were shaving our heads with bits of broken glass. The inhabitants of Niarela were so baffled by this novelty that their daily gossip soon turned Toy’s razor, which seemed to move all by itself, into a contraption dreamed up by the indefatigable Cheytan. The most inquisitive among them were so awestruck by the subtle and mysterious workings of Toy Delgado’s razor on the skulls of his clients, they say, that they ended up hanging around in his hairdressing “salon,” all day, and this “salon” wasn’t much more than a sheet of canvas, of course. Every time a tuft of hair fell to the ground, dozens of young lads pounced on it, jostling, scrambling and shouting at the top of their voices. It was pandemonium, and what they did with all the hair they collected remains a mystery.

The Toubabs were already in control of our lives by then. You know the sort of people they are, don’t you: prepared to do anything to keep the gentle sea breeze to themselves. And since they wanted to build their villas, offices and factories in the Plateau district, they started pushing us out toward the south of Dakar.

However, they couldn’t drive us too far away, since they still needed us to cook and clean for them and see to all the menial tasks in their offices and factories. For lack of a better way to put it, I feel Niarela was basically the backyard of the Plateau district. One way or another, we were all at the beck and call of the Toubabs. The maids and the boys lived in close vicinity to the foreigners, and that meant they got involved in all sorts of wheeling and dealing. Due to their proximity with the whites, they often became—can you believe it?—pretty influential and respected personalities.

You should have seen us on our way into the city center after the prayer of tisbaar. I am talking about a time, Badou, when the horse-drawn carriage was a means of transport reserved for the privileged few. Picture them looking down on us from their seats up there, like royalty, while we, the riffraff, were trailing along behind or next to the horses, forming a kind of guard-of-honor for those fake whites, without even being aware of it. I still see them in my mind’s eye, my évolués: shipping clerks, bookkeepers, the black elite, if you like. They used to go to their offices in jacket and tie, wearing pith helmets. Some of them were reciting verses by Lamartine or Victor Hugo from their lofty position, while those too shy and reserved for that simply kept their faces buried in Paris-Dakar, the only daily paper available to us in those days.

As for me, I was a worker at Air Liquide, the gas factory near Kayes-Findiw. I’m sure I became a militant member of the Parti Africain de l’Indépendance out of contempt for those conceited idiots who were so proud of being slaves. I remember how we kept asking ourselves the same, admittedly rather odd, question over and over again: are we too communist or not communist enough?

If I became a card carrying party member, I certainly didn’t expect that to help me find answers to riddles like this one. I was clearly a bit misguided to begin with, but I firmly believe we did what we could to help bring about the liberation of our country. It wasn’t easy, believe me. Our fellow citizens thought we were cynical and pretentious, and at Gouye-Mariama, a police superintendent by the name of André Castorel used to torture our comrades with abject cruelty.

And today, the country is in the hands of Daour Diagne. I believe that can only mean one thing: we have failed. Still, I have no regrets.