“Ibou!” Seynabu’s voice rang in his ear behind him. “You’re on my foot!” He turned and hugged her, weeping on her shoulder.
“Ibou. Ibou calm down. It’s gonna be OK. I’m here Ibou,” she whispered.
But everything wouldn’t be alright. It never would again. He wasn’t crying for the dead. He wasn’t weeping for what may or may not happen in the future. He was weeping in shame.
Amidst all the sadness and chaos, the CEO’s callous, empty comments and barely veiled threats, he longed for the beam.
✦✦✦
“Mame Fatou!” Ibrahima called, walking into the hut.
“Grandma, are you there?” The hut was dark and smelled of burned tallow and incense. Mame
Fatou sat in the corner in a reclining chair by her bed, asleep in a blue dress, her head wrapped,
and a small prayer book at her feet, her arm hanging over the armrest. Her breathing was gentle.
Mame Fatou was a pillar, in spite of her waning frame. She was the one solid and steady thing
in his life.
He picked up the prayer book and placed it on her bed before warming water for tea.
He waited until the water had boiled and poured some into a cup before waking her gently.
“Grandma,” he whispered, shaking her shoulder as the eyelids of her dark blue eyes fluttered open like the wings of a butterfly.
“Ibou?” she asked, her eyes adjusting to the candlelight in the hut. “Is that you?”
“Yes grandma, it’s me,” he answered, proffering the cup. “You fell asleep in your chair again. Here, have some tea.”
“Good boy,” she said, accepting the cup and taking a slow sip. “It’s late. Where have you been?”
“I was at Camara’s restaurant with the rest of the village. Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what? You know I don’t go there anymore.”
It was hard to believe how frail she had become. She had aged so slowly that he never truly noticed. While his parents were human shaped holes in his memory, his grandmother was still a tree. But today he saw that the trunk had withered to a willow which bent to the storm and defied all odds—but a wispy willow, nonetheless.
Looking back now, he realized that it had been months since she made it any further than the market, halfway to Pape’s restaurant and back. Only a couple of times a week, maybe three sometimes. She used to walk to the cliffs to get him when he was a boy, and sometimes she would sit next to him, their legs dangling together over the edge while she told him old Jollof folktales, of the spirits of the Lebou fishermen, and tease him about girls.
How long ago had that been? He couldn’t tell if they were memories or dreams. “It’s all over the news,” he said, rousing from his reflection. “Han Industries found a way to mimic ChinaCorp’s satellite mining technology. They claim it’s a mistake, but…”
She sighed. “You don’t believe them?” she asked, putting the cup down. “That’s not it grandma, it’s…” he hesitated again. He hadn’t been able to tell Seynabu and he definitely would never tell his friends, but she knew him, and he knew that no matter what he told her she would listen, and wouldn’t mock or betray him. He knew that she would find the words he needed to hear, whatever they were.
“…It’s me, grandma. Something in me is…wrong…”
He told her everything. How he felt drawn to the beam in spite of all it was. How he felt the beam even in his sleep if it was close enough – that is half the caliphate away. He told her how the beam split him in half, drawing him out of the shell of his body, making him feel alive, how it felt like something more than himself, more than human, a power he feared but relished all the same. He told her how ashamed he felt, how anxious and anticipating.
“I don’t know grandma,” he concluded. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to want this, but…One day I…I…”
He dropped to his knees beside her.
“My boy,” she said, rubbing his head “My special little boy.”
“What is wrong with me, grandma?”
“Nothing is wrong with you, boy. Nothing at all.” She took another deep breath and finished her tea. She wiped her lips and placed her cup on the small table by her chair. “Nothing is wrong with you. Do you remember what happened to you, about twelve years ago? After your parents left to work in Gao, a few weeks before they died in the bus accident?”
He looked up and shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
She closed her eyes for an instant, breathed in, and opened them again.
“I’m so tired today,” she said, yawning. “I haven’t been this tired in a while… Anyway, you can’t remember that, of course. You were young and considering… Well. Your parents had left you with me. That was a long time ago. You were so small, hanging to my dress all the time, asking where your parents were, when they would come back, and why they hadn’t taken you with them and if they still loved you. They did love you Ibrahima, they just had to go. They thought things would be better…do you mind getting me some water? I’m still parched.”
He got up, dusted his hands and went to the blue plastic bucket in the corner, removed the lid protecting the water from mosquitoes, reached for the ladle floating inside, filled it and poured some of the tepid water into a metal cup and handed it to Mame Fatou, who took a deep swig.
“Ahh. That’s better. Where was I? Yes… it was before the rainy season, and we’d been having lightning showers for weeks. A few cattle had been killed, so nobody let their children out for days, but it was so hard keeping a rein on you. Ha! You were a handful, let me tell you. You were already glued to that girl Seynabu…I think I aged thirty years in the last twelve because of you.”
She took another sip.
“Tried all I could but I couldn’t keep you from running out of this hut. That hasn’t changed much, has it?” She said laughing “You bolted out like a goat on Eid trying to dodge the knife. The lightning fascinated you. You sat there, your eyes glued to the sky, your hand opening and closing, trying to hold the lightning. Well, you did boy. That you did.”
Ibrahima raised an eyebrow.
“The wind picked up something fierce. I called out the window, but you didn’t move, so I started walking out and then a thunderclap sounded so loud the ground shook, and almost at the same time, a single bolt of lightning like Allah’s spear came down on you, hitting you on the head…”
“What?!” Ibrahima exclaimed, jumping up.
“Right on the head. I froze and closed my eyes and starting praying. You didn’t make a sound. I thought you were dead. I thought if I stopped praying and opened my eyes I would find you lying there, a small burned body that I had failed. But instead you glowed. The shine of the bolt, moving down from the crown of your bald little head down your neck and shoulders and your back, into your waist, your little legs and tiny feet, and into the ground.”
“I can’t…remember…” Ibrahima started.
“Of course you cannot,” she said. “It must have done something to your brain. But I swear that I saw something surrounding you. Can’t tell what. It had the shape of you in a halo of light, but much larger. It tried to pull itself out of you, but it snapped back and you came to, giggling as if nothing had happened.”
She took some more water.
“I ran to pick you up, but I couldn’t get closer than a few feet. So much heat was blowing away from you, and I could feel the electricity pricking my skin. I prayed. I prayed and thanked Allah so hard. You just sat there giggling. You said: ‘Grandma! Grandma! I am flying! I can see you! I can see me! I can see everything!’ I asked you what everything meant. You just kept saying: ‘everything! Everything grandma! Everything!’ You were so excited. I had always thought you were a special boy, but what grandmother doesn’t? But then I knew. There was something truly special in you. ‘Everything! Everything grandma! The world! The sky! The stars! Everything! They are mine grandma! All of it! Everything! The
y are mine!’ I’ll never forget that day for as long as I breathe. When the heat finally stopped billowing from you, I picked you up and kissed you all over. I told you, I told you…Yes, I said: ‘Yes, they are, little boy, all of them; one day, they will all be yours’…”
She paused and yawned.
“So you see? There’s nothing wrong with you. You are one with the universe, my boy. You always have been. That’s all. I feel really tired now. I think I’ll sleep in the chair. Leave me alone.” She finished with a smile and fell asleep.
Ibrahima pried the cup gently from her hand and finished it, unconsciously feeling the top of his skull for a scar.
He stepped out into the night sky and looked up at the clouds hoping for lightning to strike twice. But maybe it already had. He could have been alone, but instead he had two amazing women in his life, one that loved him unconditionally, and the other whom he would strive to love forever. He had friends and a community. He was different but not alone. Blessed by lightning. Blessed by life.
He walked back into the hut, feeling lighter and calmer than he had ever been. He pulled his grandmother’s sheets off her bed and wrapped her shoulders in them, tucking the sides in between her arms and the chair. Then he went to grab his own wrapper, and rolled himself on the floor by her feet and slept soundlessly.
He woke up the following morning and looked up at Mame Fatou. She was dead.
✦✦✦
“Ibou!” Seynabu’s voice rang from the window of the hut, followed by the wailing of their son, shrill but demanding and full of strength.
He turned off his plasma cutter and lifted his welding helmet and wiped his forehead. Things had changed in the three years since Mame Fatou passed away.
Her body had been buried in the cemetery they shared with the neighboring villages, by the empty tombs that had been dug symbolically for his parents. The men who carried her bier were followed by almost all the residents of the community.
She had been his grandmother, but in many ways, she was also the grandmother of the community. Everyone had known her in some way or another, had been raised by her in some way or another. She was Mame, an elder, and with her it wasn’t just a person who passed but the memories of the village, harkening back to a time before the Caliphate took over the entire region from Chad to Senegal. She knew the Sahelian War and survived it. She had been a little girl too, hard as it was to believe; she was once a beautiful young woman in love, was a strict but caring parent, and she was to him most of all a mother, a father, a sister, a friend.
She was a hole in his heart and mind. Now that she was gone, some things would forever be lost to him. It was true with every generation: history is in the mouth of the elders. It is not perfect; time and experience and pain and healing color things in different shades. It is not perfect, but it is human, and in the end, when all else fails, when the power cuts, when the circuits fall silent, it’s all that’s left. It’s the storyteller that binds the people together, that tells you where the truth lies, regardless of what is written.
“I’ll be right there!” he hollered back. “You hear that, Demba?!” And to his son he said, “Daddy’s right there for you!”
As usual the crying stopped at the sound of his voice.
He would finish building the door tomorrow. There was no point in rushing things; he’d discovered himself a new skill, one that never outran its usefulness. The small hut he’d shared with Mame Fatou and now share with his own family barely looked the same anymore. The roof was laced with a layer of protective metal under the straw. He’d smashed down half the wall to enlarge it and build a small room for his son when he’d be old enough to want his own, which seemed closer every day. One layer of rock, one layer of metal and another layer of rock. It was the sturdiest hut in the village. It was expensive work, and as he was no carpenter, the furniture came at an extra cost, but his welding jobs paid for it easily.
“When are you going to get to my room?” Nabu asked as he walked in. “Here, hold the boy for a moment, I’m starting to tire.”
He took their child from her hands, lifting him up in the air to a giggle, as Nabu turned to their small cooking unit. The smell of rice, chicken and peanut sauce drifted out of the hut through the ventilating unit he’d built for her.
“Soon enough, shape of my heart,” he said. “Are you getting tired of being so close to me?”
She turned her head from the stove and smiled at him. “Sometimes,” she said. “But who doesn’t? We all need a piece of our own. Let’s have dinner and talk, ok?”
He nodded. “Of course, but let me put Demba to bed first.”
He carried his son to bed and put him in the cradle by their bed.
Demba favored his grandfather’s weight judging by the picture of his grandfather but he had Ibrahima’s mother’s eyes and Seynabu’s mother’s face, as she loved to point out. He would be a beautiful boy, tall and strong, taking after Nabu’s Bambara roots; yet, dark and handsome, he would remain a Wolof from the Senegalese province of the caliphate.
Looking at Demba asleep, Ibrahima remembered his childhood and felt the child awaken within him, free of the burdens that made him who he was; he felt a lightness in his bones that he had left behind without a thought, eager to grow, to live, to love and to learn. Now he had so much to unlearn.
He sat on the floor just as Seynabu put down the bowl of mafé.
“Are your hands clean?” she asked.
He looked at his dusty fingers, licked one clean and grinned at her.
She shook her head.
“You take after your son more and more every day,” she said, “Go clean those rusty fingers before you poison us all.”
He laughed. “My fingers are poison and magic wrapped in one.”
She smiled but said nothing. That had been their reality of late. The youthful lustfulness was still there but where it had then been an end in itself, it didn’t now suffice to hold them together anymore. He knew what she would say, but she listened for it all the same.
He sat across from her, legs crossed on the floor. With her fingers she cut the chicken sitting in the middle of the rice in the bowl and dropped some pieces of white breast on his side.
“Thank you,” he said, anticipating her reply.
“Let’s leave, Ibrahima.”
It felt like the hundredth time she’d said this. It was probably the thousandth time, but each time the longing in her voice was the same, an ounce of hunger sprinkled with fear and passion. That had always been her, always on the verge of something and ready to do it regardless of what may come.
“I thought you wanted me to finish your room.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive,” she said, shrugging and putting a handful of rice, sauce and chicken into her mouth. “I mean it Ibou. Maybe not now…” While Demba is young, he heard himself saying in his mind.
“…while Demba is young, but we can’t stay here forever. You’ve got to want better for him than we had.”
“He already has. He has both of us.”
She smiled at him and grabbed his clean hand in hers, rubbing it gently. “I know, and we will never fail him, but the two of us are not enough. He needs to go to school and to find himself a job working for the caliphate. He is a bright child; you would know if you didn’t spend so much time working.”
This was a first.
“You think I’m a bad father?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re a great father. You love that kid more than you love your own self, but we owe him more.”
“It wasn’t so long we were stealing kisses from each other by the baobab. It seemed enough at the time.”
“A lot of things were enough back then. We were young; we still are, but it’s no longer all about us, Ibou. There’s nothing here, not even for you. But if we left, I could find a teaching job.”
He looked at his bass and small amplifier, discarded in a corner of the room. He ha
dn’t played since his son was born. It was no fault of the child, but things just happened that way. Balla had left without a word or trace. Abdou had moved to St. Louis, claiming the ocean air would make him immortal. The others were around, but somehow, they kept pushing back rehearsals and shows. Tomorrow. Next week. Next month. It was going on that way for two years now.
It had taken a thousand and one times but perhaps Nabu was right. Their child needed more. Nabu deserved more. He had to stop daydreaming. It was time to move on.
He held her hand tightly in his grip. The taste of her food carried a little of the sweat she had put into making it.
“We’re getting out of here, love. I promise.” And with that Demba started crying.
✦✦✦
He had become better at hiding his dreams from her.
It was easier now that in the wake of Ouagadougou the Republic and the Empire had discontinued all their mining operations, and were instead scrambling to rebuild trust and contracts with the African states. He didn’t feel the tugging—his soul continuously pulled apart and reconstructed, his self-thinning to bare atoms—but in many ways it was worse.
Now there was a hole, an abyss into which he stared every night, keeping him on the fringes of consciousness that opened before his falling asleep. He would feel Nabu’s warmth and breath, hear his son’s light breathing in the cradle by their bed; and yet he was alone, looking down into a crater stretching through strata of rock to the world’s heart, and there he would see eyes, eerily like his own, staring back at him before exploding in magma. The ultra-heated rock climbed up the hole as he struggled to move, the heat slowly turning his flesh to tallow, the ashes of his body covering his home and family in a dusty grey. He found himself in the bottom of the hole, and heard them choke to death, looking up into a world he had just destroyed.
✦✦✦
Ibrahima held Demba’s hand as he stood on a mailbox, the tide of passersby and demonstrators flowing through the streets of downtown IKapa, the white buildings bright with sunlight and glowing with a life that had amazed him at first but now seemed mundane.
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