It was impossible to approach the camp without being seen, since it stood in the middle of a naked plain and was dominated by four observation towers where sentries were stationed day and night. Behind the double fence of barbed wire, and in front of the only gate, native auxiliary troops stood guard. They had all been brought here from Central Africa, and none of them spoke any of the three languages of the Sudan: Bambara, Peul, or Sonrhaï.
There were three buildings at the center of the enclosure: the quarters of the ‘commandant’, the barracks for the guards, and the common-law prison. Nothing much was ever seen in the camp of the inhabitants of this building. They left in the early morning, surrounded by militiamen, to work on the roads, and they did not return until after nightfall. Sometimes there would be one who did not return at all.
Slightly apart from this central group, and also surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, was a square, flat-roofed building on which stood a kind of sentry box built of mud and branches. Here, too, one of the auxiliaries was always on guard.
It was to this building that Fa Keïta had been brought. His hands were untied just before the sheet-iron door was opened, and then he had been pushed inside to a darkness as black as if he had fallen into a pit. The first thing that struck him had been the odor – a sickly sweet smell, mingled with an acrid reek of ammonia that burned at his nostrils.
He tried to move forward a step and collided with a metal container of some sort, which overturned noisily. He sprawled on the ground in the midst of a spreading liquid, and when he groped his way to his feet he realized that his tunic was soaked.
‘What is that liquid that smells so bad?’ he asked gently.
‘What’s the matter, man, can’t you see?’ a voice answered from somewhere in the darkness.
‘God is my witness that I can see nothing at all, though I am not blind.’
‘You’ve turned over the crap bucket,’ another voice said. ‘The flies’ dining room. Do you have a stone in place of a nose?’
Fa Keïta was so overcome with shame that he was incapable of speech. In the days of his retreat, before he was arrested, he had purified not only his soul but his body; he had felt himself clean and fresh as a newborn child, and now he was soiled and polluted. Hastily he began to recite a prayer.
‘Lai illaha illaïaou!’
He was interrupted by a kind of bleating sound. ‘L-I-listen to this t-t-true believer who drops on us from h-h-heaven and walks on our f-f-feet!’
‘If I have stepped on you, I ask you to forgive me,’ Fa Keïta said.
He understood now that there were several men in the room, and since their eyes were accustomed to the darkness, which was pierced only by the needles of light from two tiny loopholes in the walls, they could see him fairly clearly while he could still not even make out their figures.
‘Is there any place to sit down?’ he asked.
‘Only by the dung you just turned over, man. You had better stay where you are.’
He felt himself brushed by a human form and heard the sound made by a stream of liquid striking against metal. His feet were spattered with urine, and then the man who relieved himself farted loudly.
‘At least,’ the stammering voice began, ‘if we d-d-don’t eat, we can still fart and the toubabs won’t know it. But where I come from, it’s more p-p-polite to belch.’
Fa Keïta was indignant. He had seen and heard a great many things in his long life, but never before had he come across such vulgarity and lack of respect in the presence of an old man.
‘These are men of low birth,’ he thought. ‘Oh God, hold out your hand to me, I implore you! Lend me your protection and your grace! What have I done to deserve such a punishment?’
Tears rolled down his cheeks. He tried again to move, and this time he collided with a man’s leg.
‘Man, we told you once to stay where you were. If you step on us again, you’ll see what will happen!’
Fa Keïta summoned up all of his courage. ‘I am Fa Keïta, who is called the Old One,’ he said. ‘I’m from the “smoke of the savanna”, and we are all on strike there. I do not know why the toubabs came and took me away during the days of my retreat, but I am here and I am very tired.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us that at once?’ one of the voices said.
Now he was surrounded by shadowy figures, and hands reached out to touch his, in token of friendship and respect.
‘All of us here are strikers,’ a voice said, ‘and all from the Sudan.’
‘I knew that from your accent,’ Fa Keïta said.
‘And I am from Ny-Ny-…’
‘He is from Nyamina. Tell us, Old One, is it true that they have gone back to work?’
‘Men, no one has gone back to the shops.’
‘Do they ever speak of us?’
‘I have heard nothing, except that some of the strikers were in prison and that they were badly treated.’
‘Do you hear that? They know outside how we are being treated. I told you so – Bakayoko knows everything that happens. That man is a real Bambara!’
‘And what about the toubabs? What are they doing?’
‘Nothing that I know of. We never speak of them.’
‘Has Bakayoko come back to Bamako yet?’
‘No, he is still in the countries to the west. Perhaps he has gone to see the chiefs of the “smoke of the savanna”.’
Fa Keïta felt a little reassured, and now he was even beginning to be able to distinguish among the figures of his companions. He told them everything of what little he knew, including the story of Diara and of the trial. The reactions to this were violent.
‘The son of a bitch! To do a thing like that while some of us are here, dying of hunger and thirst, buried alive! Tiémoko should have had him stoned in the market place!’
One of the prisoners came over and took the old man by the hand. ‘Come over here,’ he said. ‘It’s a little cleaner. You can sit down here and rest against the wall.’
Toward the middle of the day, the guards brought their daily ration of food: an old tub that had been cut in two, containing some sort of blackish, pasty substance and a tin can of water.
Several days passed with no change in this routine. Fa Keïta seldom mingled in the conversations of the other prisoners, which invariably hinged on the same subjects – the strike, food and lice. He had begun a period of meditation again and had even tried to carry out the ritual prayers, but the man from San said, ‘Old One, it is too filthy here for you to put your forehead to the earth. God will wait until you are in a more fitting place.’
‘How long have I been here?’ Fa Keïta asked, almost as if he were talking to himself.
‘Each time the guards come with the tub, you can mark one day. For you, it is ten now – for the rest of us, much longer.’
And then there was silence again, troubled only by the hoarse breathing of sleepers and the constant sound of scratching.
*
One morning the door was thrown wide open, allowing a brutal sunlight to flood the room and releasing a wave of nauseous air which made the guards recoil. It was the periodic ‘promenade’ organized by the ‘commandant’, an ex-sergeant major in the colonial forces named Bernadini. Since he had long since been retired from the army he was no longer subject to military authority, but only to that of the colonial police administration; and the men under his orders as ‘commandant’ of this camp were auxiliaries and not regular troops. He was a hold-over from a time that was gone and a breed that had almost disappeared, but he had been kept on, in the thought that he might some day be needed … A Corsican, and the product of a series of foundling schools, he hated all macacos, as he called the Negroes.
He stood in the sun in the center of the enclosure, his head protected by an old-fashioned conical helmet, tapping the naked thigh beneath his army shorts with the tip of a riding crop, waiting for the prisoners to file out.
They were lined up in ranks in front of him by the guards, seeming, with their jerky steps, their hairless legs and fleshless bodies, more like an assembly of locusts than of humans. The sun burned at their eyes, and when they closed their lids a round, black spot pulsed violently at the center of a red cloud.
The man from San leaned towards Fa Keïta and whispered, ‘That one is the worst of all the bilakoros, of all the unclean infidels.’
‘Macou!’ the chief of the auxiliaries shouted.
‘Silence!’ Bernadini repeated. ‘Now who was talking? No one, of course! I am accustomed to that. But let me tell you that I was in the camp at Fodor, in Mauretania, and I swear to you that no one who was with me there is likely to forget it!’
He went over to the stammerer, who seemed to be muttering something to himself, and lashed at his face with the riding crop. ‘That’s just in case it was you who was talking! If you open your mouth again, I’ll plant my foot here!’ He flicked at the man’s groin with the butt of the whip. ‘That should make you come, macaco! All right, chief, on with the promenade!’
There were about forty of the prisoners, Fa Keïta discovered as they began circling around the enclosure, walking in single file, one behind the other. On each turn they left behind them in the sand a faint, circular track, like the tracks of circus horses around a ring. And as they walked, the heat of the sun aroused their lice, and the itching in every portion of their bodies drove them to such frenzy that they scratched until the skin was raw.
In the center of the circle they marked out, there was a shallow pit about the size of a man’s body, marked at its corners by four pegs about six inches high. Resting on the pegs was a sheet of steel pierced with holes.
Bernadini had walked off with two of the guards, and, when he saw this, Salifou, the man of San, turned his head slightly towards Fa Keïta.
‘If you want to talk, Old One, keep your teeth together and don’t move your lips, and then they won’t see you.’
‘Man, what is that pit?’
‘It’s for the ones who are tired and can’t walk any longer – that’s the way he describes it, a place to rest! And I was the one who had to dig it! When I finished, he put me in it. When they took me out, I was pissing blood!’
‘Thié!’ Fa Keïta exclaimed.
‘Man!’ Salifou repeated. ‘You are right – but that is the way that bilakoro is. Today he is pleased with himself, though – it seems he has a new prisoner.’
‘Do you know who it is?’
‘Macou!’ One of the guards came running toward them, his whip brandished threateningly above his head.
They said no more, and the silent circling in the burning sand went on.
A short time later, Bernadini came back to the center of the circle, with the two guards pushing another man between them. It was Konaté, the secretary of the union local at Bamako. His hands were tied tightly behind his back.
‘Well,’ Bernadini said gleefully, ‘what do you think of your charges now, secretary of my ass? They are pretty, aren’t they? And I am here just to satisfy all of their demands – even the ones they haven’t made! I even give payments on account. Here, would you like one?’
His fist crashed against Konaté’s nose.
‘Try to organize a meeting here, and you’ll see what I give you to discuss! You think you’re a big man, but you’re just as much of a fool as the rest of them. And as for your Bakayoko, we’ll catch him, too, and he’ll be brought right here to complete my little collection of monkeys!’
Konaté was not listening to Bernadini. He had been watching the men circling around him, and when he saw Fa Keïta his heart seemed suddenly wrapped in iron bands.
‘Well then, secretary, what about this strike? You can see for yourself that the men have everything they need – fresh air for their promenade – good food, instead of the cockroaches and vultures they eat at home …’
‘You have no right …’ Konaté began, but he was never able to finish. The riding crop slashed brutally across his face.
‘How dare you interrupt a white man, you stinking pig! The right here belongs to me, and don’t you forget it! You do nothing but obey, macaco!’
Konaté hurled himself at the man, but the guards moved more quickly than he and dragged him back.
‘Chief!’ Bernadini shouted. ‘Throw him in the pit!’
Konaté struggled violently, but the guards stripped off his clothes, bound his legs with heavy cord, and rolled his naked body into the pit.
Bernadini walked over and grinned down at him. The sun’s rays struck Konaté’s body only in the spots where holes had been pierced in the steel, patterning it with rows of little yellowish disks.
‘So you wanted to show off before your friends, eh, secretary? But you see who is master now, don’t you? I’ve screwed tougher ones than you, you know.’
He leaned over and touched a finger to the steel plate, but withdrew it hastily. The metal was burning. ‘All right, chief,’ he said. ‘Let’s give him a little water.’
Very slowly the guard began pouring water from a gourd. On contact with the metal, it made a little hissing sound, a faint white vapor steamed up, and the scalding water rolled across the surface of the steel plate and began to fall, drop by drop, through the holes. With implacable regularity it burned and bit into the skin of the man beneath.
‘You’ve got guts, my little secretary,’ Bernadini said. ‘You’re doing better than most of them – we’ll see how long you can hold out. Chief, a little more water.’
Grimly, desperately, Konaté struggled not to cry out, but no matter how tightly he clenched his teeth he could not prevent a moan from escaping as the drops continued to fall. The other prisoners were still circling around him. Fa Keïta was not even watching the scene at the pit. His eyes were lifted toward the east, above the thorned wire of the fences, beyond the reach of the savanna and the great trees shouldering the sky, far off to the line of the horizon. His eyes were lifted toward a meeting with the only thing truly worthy of any form of suffering – a faith in God. The debasement of which human beings were capable was a thing he could neither conceive nor bear. He had never shared the feelings which had brought the men around him to where they were now, but he was beginning to wonder if his wisdom had been only ignorance.
Two times more he made the seemingly endless round, and then he took the decision he had been reflecting on all this time. Since he could not pray in the filth and stench of the prison, he would profit from the chance that had been offered him now. With slow, deliberate steps, he left the file of prisoners and began walking towards the fence that surrounded the camp. At a little distance from the circle, he paused, gathered up a handful of sand for his ablutions, and stood up again, girding up the cloth around his waist. Facing towards the Kaaba, his palms turned outwards, he began to pray.
‘Allahou Ackabarou …’
‘What!’ Bernadini roared. ‘What’s going on here? …’ The guards had already raced over and seized the old man. ‘No, let him alone,’ he ordered. Then he turned to Fa Keïta. ‘Go ahead …’
The old man stumbled a few paces toward the fence.
‘Well,’ Bernadini said, ‘are you going to pray, or am I …?’
And as Fa Keïta began to kneel, the ‘commandant’s’ boot caught him in the kidney and hurled him head first into the strands of barbed wire. Little drops of blood flecked the skin of the old man’s shoulders and back and sides.
The prisoners had stopped, as if their feet had suddenly been trapped in the sand.
‘Get them moving!’ Bernadini shouted to the guards. Then he turned back to watch Fa Keïta, who was trying as best he could to free himself from the barbs. His hands were bloody, and scarlet threads ran down from the dozens of points where his flesh was torn.
‘Well, are you going to pray some more?’ Bernadini asked.
‘How far will God lead me?’ Fa Keïta thought. Again he lifted his palms and began to bow down, and again the ‘commandant’s’ boot flung him into the steely-pointed wires. More slowly this time, he freed himself, but no sound at all came from his lips. With his arms stretched out before him, he knelt again, his forehead resting on the sand.
Bernadini put his foot on the old man’s neck, like a hunter posing for a photograph. ‘Just look at how well he prays,’ he said. ‘He’s a real saint, this one.’
Suddenly, then, he seemed to lose interest in the man kneeling beneath him, in the men still shuffling around their circle, and in the man in the pit, who was screaming now with every drop of water that seared his skin.
‘I’ve seen enough of their dirty faces,’ he said to the chief of the guards. ‘Take them back where they belong.’ He thrust the riding crop under his arms, as he had once seen English officers do, and strode off toward his quarters.
In the time they had been in the sun the prisoners had lost the habit of darkness, and they had difficulty finding their old places when they were herded back to the stinking room. Fa Keïta let his body slip down beside the wall. Salifou, the man of San, had managed to pick up Konaté’s caftan as he went by the pit, and he said, ‘They’ll be bringing Konaté in – we have to make a place for him.’
Fa Keïta’s breath came out in a sigh. ‘God knows I was not for this strike, for I do not like violence in any form, but if God is just, how can He let men be treated so? In all my life, and in the lives of my parents, we have done no wrong to anyone – why then should we be treated so? I do not know if the strike should go on, I do not know what must be done, but I know that something must be done so that we are treated with respect, as men …’
‘We’ll see what Konaté has to say,’ Salifou said. ‘Perhaps he will know something.’
*
At almost the same moment when the prisoners were being returned to their dungeon, the union building in Bamako was the scene of an animation it had not known in a long time. Tiémoko was holding a telegram and wondering what to say to the excited group of men that surrounded him.
‘Well,’ one of them demanded, ‘are you going to read it to us? Or do you want to keep the news to yourself? They say the strike is over. Is it true?’
‘I think it’s over, but let me go to Bakayoko’s first. He’s back at home, and he’ll have to explain it – I don’t understand some of the things that are written here. Don’t say anything about it until I get back.’
He ran all the way to Bakayoko’s house and found him in the central room, with Ad’jibid’ji seated beside him. Tiémoko handed him the telegram.
‘Here, read this. I don’t understand everything it says.’
Bakayoko read aloud:
‘Conditions accepted. Strike terminated. Return to work tomorrow. Direct train Bamako-Thiès. Put conductor disposition Thiès committee. Lahbib.’
There was a moment’s silence, and Bakayoko said, ‘The strike is over.’
‘Yes, but what does it mean by “direct train” and “put conductor disposition”?’
‘That means that tomorrow you will take a train to Thiès, and you’ll receive instructions about what to do after that from the committee there. I’ll go to Koulikoro myself. But now let’s get back to the union office. Ad’jibid’ji, tell your mother where I have gone. You can come over later.’
It had been two days now since Bakayoko returned from Dakar, and during these forty-eight hours he had remained at home with his wife and his adopted daughter. On the evening of the first day he had said to his wife, ‘Assitan, would you like to learn the language of the toubabs?’
In her astonishment she had answered simply, ‘If you wish me to.’
This wall that had always been between them was difficult to tear down. It had been built a long time ago, on the first day of the union that custom had forced on them. Months had gone by then before Bakayoko could bring himself to the accomplishment of his conjugal duties. But Assitan had been brought up according to all the ancient rules and customs. She lived on the margin of her husband’s existence: a life of work, of silence, and of patience. It would have been hard to know whether Bakayoko ever felt remorse for his infidelities to her, for this man’s thoughts were secrets from the world. But it was possible that the moral and material distress he had seen on every hand in the days of the strike had affected him more than he knew – had altered and matured him.
This very morning, rising early, he had seen Assitan take up his big traveling pack and start toward the river to wash it.
‘Woman,’ he had said, ‘you have eaten nothing; you are too weak for such work. Wait until the strike is over, and there is food, and you are strong again.’
Assitan had said nothing. She had seated herself in the courtyard and set to work restitching the heavy material which formed the straps of the pack, but in her heart she had felt a warmth, a joy she had never known before.
When Tiémoko and Bakayoko left the house now, they found that the news had already leaked out, and crowds were gathering in the square in front of the station, as well as at the union building. They had difficulty forcing their way through the clusters of men and women, laughing, shouting, embracing, but at last they reached the meeting hall, and Bakayoko climbed up to the stage.
‘The news has been confirmed,’ he announced. ‘The strike is over. Tiémoko will go to Thiès tomorrow. We must make up the train tonight.’
‘But that’s a twenty-hour trip!’ Tiémoko said.
‘So? You have done it before, haven’t you? I won’t go with you, though. It isn’t worth changing my plans just to hit back at that toubab who slapped my face. If Lahbib had needed me, he would have said so. But, for the moment, all we are going to do is wait for the release of the prisoners, because if they are not released there will be no return to work.’
*
But the prisoners were released before the afternoon was over. Their return confirmed the end of the strike better than any news could have done, and they were welcomed by joyful crowds. Fa Keïta returned directly to his home, while the others were taken to the union building, where a celebration had been organized in their honor. The old man said nothing to his wives of what had happened in the camp, but ordered them to put aside their mourning and then closed himself in his room to accomplish a long and careful ceremonial of self-cleansing. When this had been completed, he put on his finest tunic, returned to the central room, and seated himself cross-legged on the ground, his prayer beads in his right hand. The women and children took their places behind him, their faces seeming oddly distorted in the glow of the single oil lamp that lit the room.
One by one the men came in. Fa Keïta had asked them all to call on him at dusk, before they returned to their own homes. Several of the prisoners were there, including the man of San, the stammerer, and Konaté, whose body was swathed in bandages. Tiémoko was there, too, feeling awkward and embarrassed when he remembered his conflict with the old man in the first days of the strike. Bakayoko had put his pipe in his pocket, so that he would not forget himself and light it. He never smoked in the presence of the Old One.
When the men had seated themselves, Fa Keïta said, ‘I am honored by your visit to my home. I have no kola to offer you, but I shall consider myself your debtor.’
‘We have not come for that,’ Salifou said. ‘We know how things are today, and we shall regard the debt as a thing for better days.’
‘You are truly a man of San; you know the laws of hospitality. But, as you say, it is not for that I asked you to come here before returning to your families and your work. It was because I had something I wanted to say to you. Just before we parted a little while ago I heard some words that did not seem good to me. If I am mistaken, you may interrupt me …’
The old man paused for a minute and fingered his prayer beads thoughtfully. ‘To kill someone is a thing that any of us can do. When I was in the camp, I, too, wished for the death of the “commandant”, but something far worse than that also happened to me. I questioned the existence of God, and when these thoughts took possession of me, I wept with shame. I have been told, Bakayoko, that you were struck by a white man, and certainly the man who committed the act was guilty of a grievous affront. I do not know what you did when you were in the countries to the west, but I do know that it has contributed today to the happiness of a great number of families. In the streets outside, people are laughing and shouting with pleasure again. And yet you are not content.’
Bakayoko looked down at Ad’jibid’ji, who was curled on a strip of matting, seemingly asleep. He smiled to himself, because he knew that the child was listening to every word the old man said.
‘A little while ago,’ Fa Keïta went on, ‘I heard Konaté and Tiémoko talking about killing the “commandant”. But if you were to kill him, you should also kill the blacks who obey him, and the whites whom he obeys, and where would that lead? If a man like that is killed, there is always another to take his place. That is not the important thing. But to act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are asking for the right to live, to act so that all of this will end, both here and elsewhere: that is what should be in your thoughts. That is what you must explain to others, so that you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also so that no one shall be forced to bow down before you. It was to tell you this that I asked you to come, because hatred must not dwell with you.’
The men got to their feet slowly, with heads bowed, like a group of conspirators whose plans have just been forged. Suddenly they all heard the clear voice of Ad’jibid’ji, who had sat up on her mat.
‘Grandfather, I know now what it is that washes the water. It is the spirit. The water is clear and pure, but the spirit is purer still.’
‘You have heard our soungoutou,’ the old man said. Then he took up his prayer beads again. ‘You may go now. As for me, I owe too much to my God; there is not enough time left to me to thank Him. Men, pass the night in peace.’
‘And you – pass the night in peace,’ they said and filed out of the room.
Bakayoko walked with them to the porch, but his thoughts were far away. He had already heard a phrase very much like that – ‘hatred must not dwell with you’ – it was Lahbib who had said it. But how could a man take arms against injustice without hating the unjust? To fight well, it was necessary to hate.
He turned around suddenly and called, ‘Ad’jibid’ji!’
‘Owo, “petit père”. I am here.’
‘Where is your mother? Go and find her. There will be a great bara tonight in the square, and I want to take you – both of you.’