VIII. CHER MANSOUR
Senegal, 1970
98. I DIDN’T KNOW what you remembered … Mama begins the first sentence of her letter, but stops, gets up, leaves the ink and paper on her desk. She ventures out to the marketplace on foot. It is the same marketplace where she’d once left him, willed him not to love her, but had, in the end, turned back. The marketplace seems incredibly small now, too narrow and dense, the tables of wares low to the ground, but the smells of fondé, grilled corn, gedje, and yéet are enlivening.
All of the women working in the market look to be around her age, and Mama moves fast, not quite ready to see a familiar face. Though everything has been shifted around, the bench where she’d told Mansour to wait for her is still where it was back then, albeit blackened with time.
She buys tamarind, peanuts, water by the bag. She’s moved into the first floor of a duplex: a pink house not far from Corniche, where she can watch the foreigners march up and down the block of embassies and quell her yearnings for Switzerland. From far away, the life she left in Europe seems richer than it felt while she was living it. However strange, however painful it had been, in reflection, it had excited her, had been a lot of what she’d hoped for.
While Mama Eva sits alone in the top row of the Thiès movie theater one Saturday, the correct way to open the letter comes to her. She jots it down on her palm by the light of the big screen:
I did not know that we could talk about her. I did not know that you remembered her. I did not know that we were both grieving all these years.
Her thoughts are interrupted by the projectionist moaning from the creaky wooden balcony. His brown teeth rip the lamb from the bone as he devours the meal she’d swapped with him for a private screening of Doosri Aurat, the latest Hindi film to come to Senegal.
Later, back home, she continues.
Bonnie told me that you dream of her death, all of the time.
Bonnie told me that you think she meant to die.
Do you think—
Mama springs up from the table with hot hands and a sore throat. She circumambulates the room’s center, watching the pen and paper from a safe distance. She watches it like a pot that’s boiling over, like a pot where some oil has dripped down the sides and a grease fire has sparked. The letter only has five lines since she’s begun, and that is still more than she can take.
She’s pulling the bedsheet around her shoulders, though the room is smoldering. Then she goes out to the courtyard and starts another little fire with charcoal. The rag dipped in kerosene is slow to ignite the coals. She feeds in her letter to excite the flame. And waits.
Under the moon, she sits on the tiles, still warm from the daytime, watching the fire crackle, the embers darting loud and bright across the open space. Killed herself? What could he know? He had only been two years old.
Killed herself. Kiné killed herself. She tries the sentence in her head.
First it means nothing. A line like the ones in French children’s books, where the African child is not yet being taught the meaning of French words, only the way that they relate to each other in a sentence.
But then, against her will, without prompting, vivid memories flood in as if on a chain that is being yanked. Her mind is finding clues, finding evidence, long-buried information that suggests it’s true: the wandering off; her frightening quiet.
And then Mama doesn’t know what to do with her body. Her arms seem useless, but her legs need to move. She puts out the fire and starts to walk. She hadn’t consciously decided to go to the beach, but she realizes, too late, that that’s where her body is taking her.
No one goes to the beach at night, so no one is on the road, but a stray cow—a white body with high white horns—moves past her in a peaceful stride that calls her to slow down.
She senses the ocean, that calm it sends through the air, and the sand changes, from the reddish brown of the Sahara to the beige sparkle of the beach. When she arrives, the sign blocking it off, erected after Kiné’s disappearance, is long gone. And when she enters, she sees that the tide, after twenty-one years, is still moving. After twenty-one years, it never stopped, not even for a few seconds. An ebb and flow, blind to the death that transformed her life and Mansour’s forever. And the sound: How could it be that this sound, after what it took from her, is still so calming? It confounds her, the way of life.
She gathers the sand in her hands. Pushes off her headwrap, the wind thickening her hair. She is not afraid of the water and goes in until it is up to her neck. She buoys. Just her and the moon. Of course, the water is mild and warm today. She goes under. She cannot see anything, only feels that the water gets cooler the deeper she goes. And when she brings up her head, gasping for breath, tasting the sweet night air and the strength of the ocean’s brine, she knows, finally, where to begin. Not from death, but from life.
Mansour, your mother, Kiné, was tall. She sang well. She was everything good. We shared one life for as long as we could. I’m sending you my only photograph of her. Keep it close.
Now, every morning, she sucks on tamarind like a lollipop, the shiny black seeds rolling around her bedroom floor like black dice. The shells and skins of sand-roasted peanuts can be seen in the corners. One day soon, she will clean it up. But in starting over and returning home, she feels seventeen again and has no desire to clean her room.
Her neighbor is a herdsman. Peule guys and their prettiness never did much for her, but the aroma of his slow-roasting beef, goat, and lamb at the corner of her block eventually draws her to him and his wares. The first night, without much more than a hello, she buys her meat and goes, but by the fourth night, she is sitting outside with him, learning about the Fouta he came from at the end of 1969 and talking about her kitchen in Europe. He too feels like a foreigner in the city. This and their devotion to good food makes talking to him natural and easy. They both want to know why people would ever eat things they don’t like, why people would drink a bad brew, when there were things in the world that tasted so good.
Mama doesn’t like the boutiques, all of their canned, imported produce. She is accustomed to owning her own farm, tilling her own garden, used to freshness and harvesting. Her upstairs neighbor laughs from her balcony when she sees Mama in the courtyard trying to turn over soil and plant things in the city.
Mansour, when will you and your family come to see me? I don’t live far from the beach. It was your mother’s favorite place.
By her third month in town, Mama gets into a rhythm. Market shopping, the Peule neighbor, then sometimes the two cousins in Pikine who don’t ask for any money, just her company. Maybe, one day, she thinks she might take a trip home to Tivaouane.
Mansour, thank you for your letter. I am glad that you’ve reached Germany and are preparing for your tour—and that Bonnie is an Ndoye now. Alhamdulilah. We must have a wedding here. I am preparing for this year. Yes, this year! You are a big artist who goes to many countries throughout the year, so put Senegal—your home—on the list. It will not be hard. If you do not, your marriage will not be blessed.
I am happy to hear also that the baby is doing well, that she has adapted to life so easily. Mansour—I know I did things when you were a child that were difficult to understand. My sister’s shadow was ever-present. But now, in your little one, there is new light.
Also, do not irritate Bonnie, she called me the other day, frustrated with you. She is kind, but has a hot head like all Ndoye women. So be balanced for her. Good wives need peace and quiet. And you by nature are not peaceful, so try sometimes to be quiet.
Sincerely,Tanti