✦✦✦
The hut was damp and dark. The threads on the sheet had long lost their softness, but it didn’t matter. Her skin held all the softness in the worlds, rustling with sweat that tasted of sugar cane around her neck.
He had laughed when his friends described love. The oneness of bodies. All the empty poetry of minds too limp to truly flow. But he saw it now: the eye of the storm, where chaos and immortality met.
When he came to, it was night again. The day lost—except it wasn’t… Holy shit! Ibrahima thought, bolting out of bed. I’m late!
“Where do you think you’re going?” Seynabou asked, rolling herself into the blankets.
The band was waiting for him. They had a performance soon. He should have been ready for rehearsal an hour ago.
“The guys are waiting.”
She yawned. “Can’t they wait longer?”
“They sure could,” he said, pulling up his pants. “They could also find another bass player.”
“You’re the only reason they’re any good.” She stretched her arms, the sheet sliding off her shoulders. “And where would they find another bass player anyway?”
“Go ask them that.” He walked towards the door. “I’ll see you later.”
✦✦✦
“Eyo! Ibrahima Ndiaye! There you are!” Mame Fatou exclaimed as he entered their small hut, her orange and green dress wrapped around straight old shoulders, a skip in her step unexpected for a ninety-six-year-old.
“Not for long, grandma!” he answered, reaching for his worn out bass and tiny amplifier.
“Tsk” she said, her tongue slapping against her pallet like a whip on a water buffalo. “One day you’re going to have to do something for yourself. That band won’t last forever.”
Of course it wouldn’t. But who cared? He had as much the right to dream as anybody else.
His parents’ picture hung from a wall in an old frame. His bed was in a corner opposite his grandmother’s, sticks of incense blowing thin strings of coconut into the walls, permeating the hut with a smell that would linger long after they had burned out and he was sent to the market for more.
“Well…” he started.
“Yes, I know,” she interrupted him, rubbing his cheek with her wrinkled hand. “Go ahead and have your fun, but be here before nightfall, you hear? Or you’ll go to bed without super.”
It won’t be the first time, he thought. But he said, “Of course grandma.” And he walked out of the hut.
✦✦✦
Ibrahima twisted in his dreams, his hungry stomach feeling every absent morsel of his grandmother’s promise.
He tried to open his eyes but could not. It wasn’t a dream. It was the beam. Somewhere it bore through the earth, mining out minerals from space, and
whispering to him in a deep ululation. “You’re mine Ibrahima. You have always been mine.” It reverberated sensually, caressing him in his sleep. At times it sounded like his grandmother’s loving admonitions; at other times it sounded like Seynabou’s lustful whispers.
Leave me alone, he tried to say, but he had no lips, no body. He looked down and saw himself standing, an empty shell looking up at the sky, standing in a valley of sand and slowly turning to glass.
“You’re not alone,” the beam answered his unasked question. “You are nothing.” The beam appeared in full focus, crashing down on him, warmer, and warmer, and…
“Ibou!” his grandmother screamed, shaking him awake. “Wake up!”
He looked up to see her eyes filled with tears. “I’m ok, grandma. Sorry I scared you.”
She sighed and sat down beside him on his bed and offered him a plate of cold rice and fish with vegetables and a glass of water. Her eyes were kind as she contemplated him.
“Eat. It will keep the dreams away.”
He ate and drank the glass of water, and then fell back asleep. The hunger pangs left his stomach, but it didn’t keep the dreams away.
✦✦✦
Nabu let go of his hand, running ahead of him into the shade of a baobab. The tree was one of the oldest in the region, with a trunk wide enough to host a family inside, serpentine branches large and thick, near enough to the ground for people to pull themselves up and walk along them.
For as long as he could remember, the tree had been a place to rest in the shade from the heat of monsoon. A landmark for the weary traveler. A place of palaver for the elders. A not so secret rendezvous where lovers met in the quiet of its branches.
He was not old enough to palaver. Neither of them was. But they were old enough for tryst.
“Are you gonna join me or day-dream?” Nabu’s chiming voice called at him. “Can’t be alone without me, can you?”
“No, but I’m just worried the heat will get to you, weak as you are.”
Ibrahima laughed and strolled over to her, her grimace showing how frustrated she was at him.
How long had they known each other? They had been babies together, just a couple of years apart. They had wrestled and played together when he was six and she was four. They had always been inseparable. When had their play changed into something else, into love? He had no idea. Perhaps the love had always been there, only changing its form with the changing seasons of their lives.
He sat and rested his head on her lap. Her dress was dusty from the walk and smelled of churai and the indefinable scent that was her.
He almost fell asleep, but she wouldn’t let him.
“Don’t fall asleep on me, deh!” she snapped, a peevish lilt in her laughter. “Let me guess. You’re having your dreams again?”
He pulled himself up. “Yup.”
“They’re just silly dreams. Really weird dreams, granted; but they’re just dreams. You’re not the only one who is scared of the mining operations, you know. They get at me too, sometimes.”
He hadn’t told her of the pull he felt whenever he saw the beam. He hadn’t told her of the desire. He hadn’t told her that his dreams occurred only when ChinaCorp conducted operations. She would think he was crazy. She already thought so, but in the excusing way of lovers she still thought of him as a daredevil young boy. He didn’t want to nail his own coffin by appearing to step across the thin line to raving lunacy. He simply said, “Do they?” and looked into the maze of branches. “Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who cares.”
“You’re not the only one, Ibou. The others just don’t want to admit it. Life isn’t easy for anybody, and sometimes it’s easier to ignore what you can’t control and deal with what you can.”
“We can’t control anything Nabu. I’m not sure we ever could. I mean look at us: our rivers are polluted, our coasts are covered in junk from both the Empire and the Republic. We scrap what we can and survive on it.”
She chuckled. “You mean junk like that bass of yours?” He glanced at her sideways.
“Yeah, exactly. It’s like we’re children, Nabu. We play with the toys we make out of scrap, light our homes and cook our food with them. We treat the leftovers as if they were gifts, but they’re not. They’re trash, and they’re not even ours. And what does the Caliphate do? Give up even more, allow them to tear our wealth out of the ground. And what do we get in return? Empty promises and more junk. Have you seen what is left behind when the beam is done mining the soil?”
She nodded. They all had seen it. Entire swathes of the continent seared and bleeding with lava, like open arteries on a suicidal forearm. Soil ripped of every mineral and plant, cracked and fissured and void of life, leaking fluids like burned flesh. Earthquakes and death lingering long after the mining satellites had had their fill. Floods of displaced people fleeing the operations into the already overcrowded areas and cities.
“We will find a way,” she said, rubbing his thigh. “We always have.”
“That’ll be new. We’re no more than a playground for Han Industries and ChinaCorp to fuel their war machines. You saw what the Empire did to the Azawa
d Reaches? Sucked all the water out of the ground until the Imazighen were all gone, and the uranium became theirs. What do you think will happen next?”
“Han Industries doesn’t have the technology ChinaCorp has, Ibou.”
“For how long? How long until they bribe someone and duplicate it? What then? More one -sided contracts? We should have stood our ground, not as the Massina Sokoto Caliphate. Not as the Yoruba Heartland. Not as the Congolese Brotherhood or the South African Confederacy. As Africa.”
She sighed. “You and your moods…Tell me more about your dreams. Maybe that will help you find sleep sometimes.”
He nodded.
“Maybe it will, but… I don’t know what else to say. I’ve told you everything. It’s like I can see the beam, and it is talking to me, looking for me. I know it’s crazy, but it’s always the same dream. The beam drops from the sky and warns me that my days are numbered, that somehow it will find me. It’s silly really…”
“You think you’re special,” she said, shoving him gently. “Are you always alone? Do you ever see your parents in those dreams? I heard that orphans often find meaning in other things to help them with the loss.”
He shook his head.
“No. I never dream of them. I can’t really remember them. They are the people in the picture over Mame Fatou’s bed, but they’re not real to me anymore. Sometimes I do wish I had a family like yours, but I don’t dream of it, or of them. I don’t think it’s one of those.”
“Then what is it?”
“A tug. Something pulling at the very core of me, Nabu. Something trying to rip me apart, to tear me from me, if that makes any sense.”
She laughed again. “It makes no sense at all.”
It was his turn to laugh. She was right: it made no sense. He was overthinking things, letting his creative mind run wild with the elements. And maybe he did think he was special—who wouldn’t want to be, faced with the prospect of no prospects at all?
She was right about one thing. It did feel good to talk, even if he couldn’t tell her everything.
She landed a kiss on his cheek and it felt like the very first time she had put her lips to his face. He remembered that day clearly. They had been playing in the sand and an older boy had come and shoved her to the ground. He punched him in the jaw and broke his tooth and earned a small scar between his knuckles. He held his hand out to lift her up. She kissed his cheek and ran away.
She got up and held out her hand. He caught it and pulled himself up. “It’s getting late,” she said, “Let’s go home.”
✦✦✦
Ibou’s fingers slapped on the chords like gum-rubber mallets on a balafon.
The old instrument had been his first love; hitting the keys with the delusion of grandeur of the apprentice, he hoped to recreate his favorite hits from the radio on the handmade device of wood and calabashes.
That was until he had seen a music video of a musician from the Congolese Brotherhood. He couldn’t remember her name or even the tune; all he remembered was the impression of the bass on him, the roundness of the sound, its sheer groove.
His father had found a broken old thing for him, more hull than instrument. But he had worked on it, acquired strings, learned to tune it himself, and purchased a modest amplifier. He was getting good, but still he chased that sound he’d heard years ago on the radio.
“Abdou! How many times do we have to do this? You’re off key! Again!” Ibrahima stopped playing and watched Mansour berate Abdou for the fifth time that day. Abdou was not a singer by any stretch of the imagination, but he was improving with every rehearsal, and that was something to respect.
“Easy Mansour,” Ibrahima said. ‘Don’t think you could hit those notes either. None of us can. Let’s just change the key and drop a few tones. It might even sound better.”
Mansour rolled his eyes and put down his guitar.
“Look,” he said. “You wrote the song, so you can do whatever you want with it, but we can’t keep adjusting to Abdou. It’s not professional.”
“Hey!” Abdou said.
Ibrahima laughed.
“You know how many times I had to adjust to you Mansour? Anyway, the only steady member of this band is Balla, and everyone knows how to beat a djembe.” He winked at Balla.
“True!” Balla said. “But two djembes at once? Not that many.”
Every rehearsal went the same way. They would play, they would argue, and sometimes they would fight; but they kept coming together. The truth was that none of them had anything else. However, Ibou liked to think there was something more to the band, and he liked to think the others thought the same too.
They would probably never record anything meaningful, but he was content playing with his friends, way into their middle age and beyond, performing locally, reminding people that behind the poverty and the pain they still had a soul, a culture, something ineffably and irrevocably theirs.
“Alright!” Ibrahima said. “Let’s take it from the top. One, two, three…” Hair rose on the back of his neck. He almost dropped the bass.
“Guys!” Saliou, one of the younger boys, barged in screaming.
“What!” Mansour said, holding his guitar like a baseball bat aimed at the kid’s head. “This better be important…”
Saliou lifted a hand, panting, and bent over at the waist. “It is…super important… please…you gotta come see this…It’s the Han Industries…”
Ibrahima put down his bass, quickly followed by his band mates and they followed the kid outside.
Ibrahima ran into a stream of villagers moving diligently towards Pape Camara’s restaurant and the communal television. He had never herded; that was something the Fula still did, sticking to the old ways. Standing outside the divide, not playing a part in either the Empire or the Republic’s sick games. Maybe they were suicidal and wanted to be the next to go. Unattached meant being vulnerable. Maybe they were too proud. Allah knew they always had been. Whatever their reason, Ibrahima was sure the Fulani dreamed of such orderly cattle.
What is happening?
It was rare to see so many villagers gathered together. A funeral maybe. A wedding or a baptism. The small things that keep humanity from exploding, but otherwise…
Ibrahima approached Pape’s restaurant, shoving his way through the silent crowd. He couldn’t quite see the screen yet, but the silence of his community and the buzzing from the television spoke louder than thunder.
He pushed the last person in front of him out of the way.
What you are seeing should be a mistake. It should only be a mistake. Mistakes happen. We are all only humans after all; but this isn’t a mistake. This is Ouagadougou. This is real…
He dismissed the carefully manicured mandarin voice of the AfriTV host. Ouagadougou, a city of three million. Peaceful and kind the people of Burkinabese had always been. Now thousands were no more. Parts of the city of bicycles and small buildings slowly evaporated into a red halo. People and houses were indistinguishable from each other: limbs stretched into thin threads until they disappeared, buildings seemed to crumble upwards, melting faces blended into each other, and voices were lost in the ravenous ululation of the beam.
This is murder pure and simple, ChinaCorp CEO Malika Fahrani-Yakudo said, her face appearing in a small box in the corner of the screen. This is Han Industries’ work. This is what we all who stand for reason are up against: this cruel and inhuman savagery on behalf of the Western Chinese Empire. They have perverted our satellite mining technology. We warned our African partners and begged them to head our advice. But what are warnings in the face of such barbarity? From Dublin to Dubai, to Beijing and Sydney, the Eastern Chinese Republic mourns the dead in Ouagadougou.
Ibrahima trembled. I knew it. He thought. I knew it.
Is there something the ECR will do about this, CEO? The AfriTV investigator asked.
The CEO looked at her and shook his head. What will you have us do? Whi
le this despicable, nigh genocidal act by Han Industries is clearly aimed at ChinaCorp, the Republic was not the target. This is for our African partners to consult and determine for themselves. If you’ll please excuse me, our managing board will be meeting soon to discuss the significance of this event for our citizens. May the souls of Ouagadougou find peace in the afterlife.
That is all from ChinaCorp, the investigator said. While we don’t know how this has happ…We now have Han Industries CEO Ednilson Aardhal on the line from their headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. CEO, how do you justify this?
Justify? Ibrahima thought, his veins popping on his forearms.
This is an accident, the Hans CEO said. This is a horrible and tragic mistake. The Western Chinese Empire had never wanted this and begs the forgiveness of our African brothers and sisters. ChinaCorp’s accusations are baseless. Their contracts and rural mining operations are no different from this. How many people have they killed over the past decade? Our satellite misfired, but we are prepared to compensate the people of the Massina Sokoto Caliphate in any way we can. We know that nothing will make up for the loss incurred. We are human just as you. But we will work together. We will send our best and brightest to draw up plans, and free labor to rebuild. We are in a position to offer better contracts than ChinaCorp. We will…
Do you mean that you will now both be competing over mining rights on the continent?
Haven’t we always?
What if we refuse? You had no contracts signed. You should never have been here. Refuse? Please, do not be hasty in your conclusions. This is an accident. A horrible mistake, yes, but nonetheless. There have been oil spills in the past, mining accidents are inevitable. Africa still has a lot to gain in this partnership we…
Ibrahima backed into the crowd. The beam ripped through the air and into the city, playing on a loop on the screen while the voices of the press and commercial greed drowned the voices of the departed.
Dominion Page 24
