Somebody's Heart Is Burning

by Tanya Shaffer

  Within a half-hour of our arrival, Touré was in a shouting match with an elderly woman selling firewood from a shack above the beach. The woman, who couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, stood surrounded by piles of thick, gnarled branches. Hands on her hips, she answered Touré’s bullying shouts with some shrill scolding of her own. Finally Touré threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat, shaking his head.

  “She’s mean,” he said to me. “She doesn’t want to sell the wood at a decent price because she says she can get more from the bigger ships.”

  “Well, if that’s her livelihood . . .”

  The woman spoke to me in Songhaï, shaking her head.

  “She says your husband is mean, but you are nice,” said Touré. “She thinks I’m your husband.”

  I smiled at her, pointing to Touré and making a mean face. Her nose appeared to have been ripped open in some sort of accident. It had healed with heavy scarring, leaving the nostril enlarged and oddly shaped. She was striking all the same, with wide cheekbones that made a “V” to a narrow chin, and vivid, sparkling eyes. She reached out and grasped my hand, pulling me to her side.

  “She says you are just like her daughter, the same age.”

  The woman took me in her arms in a tight hug, stroking my hair. Touré barked a few words at her.

  “I told her if she wants you to be warm,” he said, “she’d better sell us some firewood.”

  That night I strolled along the beach enjoying the cool air. Touré and Yaya walked on either side of me. They weren’t speaking to each other.

  “Tell that man not to push me into the ocean,” said Touré testily.

  “Come on.”

  “Tell him!”

  Four young girls blocked our path. Saucy and flirtatious, they extended plastic plates and buckets filled with small golden cakes, giggling as they pushed each other’s hands out of the way. They wore Western skirts and T-shirts that looked like the donations of American missionaries. One of the T-shirts was hot pink, with the words “No Devil” written in sparkly silver letters. Another advertised a Christian summer camp. The clothes fit tightly, hugging the girls’ budding figures and exposing their taut midriffs.

  “Buy this cake, it is so sweet,” one of them crooned.

  “No! Buy from me. Mine is sweeter!”

  Touré stepped toward the girl in the “No Devil” shirt. He pushed aside her plate, putting his face about two inches from hers. He said something, and she gave a swift, cheeky response. They seemed to be bartering a price.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked Yaya.

  “He wants her to meet him later tonight,” he said.

  “But she’s so young!” I cried. “She can’t be more than fifteen.”

  “Those girls want it,” said Yaya. “Look at her.” The girl was smiling, wrapping a corner of Touré’s turban around her finger.

  “Oh, come on! Some adult probably put them up to it. Either that or they’re desperate for money.”

  Yaya was about to retort, when Touré turned toward me.

  “She is cuter than you,” he said.

  I looked at the girl. To my surprise, I felt a twinge of jealousy. It occurred to me that Touré had made no moves on me, not out of respect or restraint, but because he didn’t find me attractive.

  “To each his own,” I said airily, turning away.

  On our third night in Aka, a member of the local police force invited us to a party to celebrate his recent wedding. He was young—barely out of adolescence—slight and earnest. In his stiff uniform he gave the impression of a boy seriously at play.

  That night Yaya and I walked the winding streets of Aka, clutching a piece of paper on which the young man had drawn a map of the town, marking his house with an “X.” Touré was otherwise engaged. Finding our way around tiny Aka was surprisingly confusing. The dirt paths and one-story mud brick dwellings all looked the same. We were on the brink of giving up, when a middle-aged man noticed our perplexity and offered to accompany us.

  Rows of candles burned in the courtyard, and kerosene lamps hung from wires strung between the trees. Beneath the wide, starry sky, the effect was pure magic. The yard was packed with people, laughing, eating, and drinking. Heads turned as we moved through the party, and I heard a few gasps. Among the shining dark faces, I must have looked like a pale ghost. A toddler standing near the doorway saw me and began to wail in terror, shoving his head into his mother’s crotch. People crowed greetings in Bambara, Songhaï, and French, while Yaya and I moved down a receiving line of elderly men, shaking hands.

  “Ça va, ça va, ça va . . .” I murmured, ducking my head, smiling until my cheeks ached. I made my way through platters of smoked fish, tô, rice, thick doughy pancakes wrapped in leaves, and bowls brimming with savory stew. The villagers were dressed in their best clothes, the men in bou-bous of waxy, embroidered fabric, with matching pajama pants peeking out beneath; the women in voluminous, richly colored cloths and head wraps, their ears and throats glinting with gold. I felt woefully underdressed in my blue batik sundress, its pattern already faded from too much scrubbing.

  Laughter and scattered applause came from the other side of the courtyard. There was some kind of game going on, and people were gathered around, watching. Though every chair was filled, people rose at our approach, offering us their seats.

  “No, please sit,” I gestured, but they shook their heads vigorously, and Yaya pushed me to accept.

  “You are a stranger here,” he said. “They will be ashamed if you stand.”

  The young groom came forward to shake my hand. He looked even younger without his uniform, his slender body swimming in layers of heavy brown and gold cloth. He stood before me beaming, offering multiple ça va s.

  “He wants you to be the guest of honor,” said Yaya. “To start the dancing with him.”

  “Really?” I giggled. “How will I know what to do?”

  “Just follow,” said Yaya. The groom gestured with his hand for me to wait, then disappeared into the crowd.

  “Where’s the bride?” I asked Yaya.

  He looked around. “It may be that she is doing some ceremony with her women friends. They must bathe her in the river.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged and offered the familiar response, “That is what is done.”

  Music rattled through a battery-powered boom box. A woman singer’s high, wailing voice slid up and down the scale, slipping in and around the notes with agile fluidity. It reminded me of Arabic music, its multilayered rhythm cyclical and infectious. The crowd formed a circle, clapping and shouting. The groom appeared at the center and gestured for me to join him. Several pairs of hands pushed me forward.

  I love to dance. I gave myself to the hypnotic music, tossing my head, swiveling my hips, and stomping my feet with utter abandon. The groom laughed in surprise; the crowd hooted and cheered. I closed my eyes, and for a few moments I forgot everything.

  When the song ended, the crowd applauded wildly. The groom took my hand and gave a courtly nod. Another song came on, and within minutes the courtyard was alive with shimmying, arm-waving bodies.

  “They didn’t think you could dance like that,” said Yaya. “I didn’t think so either,” he added.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” I said, flashing him a playful grin.

  Buoyed up by the adrenaline of my performance, I stayed on for several hours. Everyone wanted to dance with the white lady. By the end of the night I was giddy with exhaustion, the back of my cotton sundress soaked with sweat.

  The groom presented me with a small plastic bag of pungent peppermint tea, and another tied-up bit of plastic holding sugar.

  “Because you have blessed his wedding with your presence,” Yaya said. “He will remember this always.”

  “As will I,” I said, and bowed my thanks to the young man.

  Although the villagers offered shelter, Yaya and I decided to spread our grass mats on the beach. The night was mild, an
d I couldn’t bear to trade its breezy freshness for the close warmth of a hut.

  We walked through Aka’s deserted alleys toward the river. The moon was waning now, just the other side of full. The houses of the sleeping town looked beatific, bathed in a cool white light. As we walked, Yaya told me about Stacy, the American missionary waiting to meet him in Timbuktu.

  “We pray every day that we will marry,” he said.

  “Why pray to marry? It’s not like it’s out of your control.”

  “We pray that conditions will be right for it to take place.”

  “Do you want it to take place?”

  “Yes . . . I think so.” He paused. “I am not sure,” he blurted. “I love her, but . . . the attraction. I am not sure. That is why we pray.”

  I looked at him in surprise. His attitude was a far cry from Brigitte or Santana’s practical approach to matrimony. Most West Africans I’d encountered considered a match good if the potential spouse came from a decent family and was neither abusive, dishonest, nor excessively ugly. Marriage to an American, with its implicit visa to the land of plenty, would be the answer to their prayers. Perhaps living in Europe had changed Yaya’s perspective.

  “I have similar issues with my boyfriend,” I admitted.

  “Yes?” He looked at me eagerly.

  I told him about Michael: my profound love and equally profound confusion. The evening’s entertainment had loosened me up, and the words flowed easily.

  “I feel the same confusion about Stacy,” said Yaya, when I had finished. “But I will marry her anyway,” he added, after a moment’s pause. “The satisfaction I seek can never be found in human love. I get my deepest fulfillment from the love of God.”

  Yaya and I lay side by side on our grass mats. The sky arced above us like a speckled ceramic bowl, so thick with stars that every inch of space seemed crammed with pinpricks of light. The more you stared at a given spot, the more stars you saw, layer upon layer. Since Yaya had only a light blanket, I opened up my sleeping bag and put it over both of us. I rolled onto my side, facing away from him. He turned toward me and began massaging the tight tendons of my neck with brutal precision, working his way downward. I groaned in delicious agony.

  Something familiar was happening. I recognized it immediately and marveled at its universality, even as my heart began to cavort like a crazyball against my ribs. While his hands worked on me, I lay absolutely still, scarcely daring to breathe. Suddenly he was pressed hard against my back, and his hands were around the front, squeezing my breasts with a muscular intensity that caught me by surprise. At once I was wildly, acutely awake, my head pounding, my body pulsing subtly against his. But I couldn’t bring myself to make a definitive move, to turn around and kiss him, to commit.

  My mind raced dizzily, trying to arrange the thoughts. What was wrong? He had a girlfriend, no, he was engaged! And we’d confided in each other, trustingly, as friends. This, on the heels of that, felt sleazy. On the other hand, I wanted him. A lot. My body was responding to his touch with a yearning I suddenly realized had been growing since our first conversation, on the night of the accident. I remembered the deaf man, then, and sorrow shot through me. Suddenly everything about this evening felt false: the attention heaped on me at the wedding, Yaya’s confession about Stacy, my own facile, oft-repeated words. I pushed Yaya away with a throaty sound, and rolled to the other side of the mat.

  “I want to sleep,” I said.

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly.

  I lay there, motionless, for a long time, listening to the sound of Yaya’s breath. Eventually it slowed, grew regular, and quieted. Then I stuffed my face into the fetid T-shirt I’d balled up for a pillow, and cried.

  That night, in my dream, I was wandering through the desert when I spotted the deaf man. He was just a tiny speck in the distance, but I knew it was him. Delighted, I ran toward him. Soon I saw that he was waving his arms. As I drew closer, I saw, too, that he was sinking. The sand was almost to his waist. What I had taken as a gesture of greeting was a gesture of panic. I called out to him to hold on, that I was coming. I tried to run faster, but the sand was too deep. My calves burned with the effort. A wind whipped up; sheets of sand stung my legs and arms. Off to the side I heard music and turned toward the sound. Beneath a giant tent, a dance party was taking place. MC Brown was there, but he had Yaya’s face. He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him in a kind of swing-dance twirl.

  “Won’t Nadhiri mind?” I asked.

  He lifted me in the air, dunked me between his legs, then set me back on my feet again.

  “She thinks you only want me because I’m white,” I told him.

  Yaya/Brown laughed at that, a harsh, cruel sound.

  “Stop it,” I said, and tears came to my eyes. Suddenly I realized I’d forgotten the deaf man. I tugged at Brown’s arm, trying to get him to come with me. I couldn’t seem to convey the urgency. And then it wasn’t Yaya or Brown I was dancing with, but Michael.

  “How can he drown when there’s no water?” he said with utter contempt, as though I was the stupidest person he’d ever met.

  “He’s drowning in sand,” I said.

  “There is no sand.”

  “There’s sand everywhere!” I cried, and woke myself up with the shouting.

  At noon, a new pinasse arrived. As I dragged my packs toward the water, the mother with the disfigured nose ran down to the beach and pressed a plastic bag full of fried rice cakes into my hands. We hugged each other hard, while she gave me what I’m sure was good counsel in Songhaï.

  The owner of the new pinasse, a short, irritable, fast-talking man, was unhappy about taking on more passengers. His boat, he said, was full.

  “Get in the boat,” Touré barked at me. “Get in the boat now, and we’ll deal with him later.”

  I paid a boy in a pirogue to ferry Touré, Yaya, and me out to the waiting boat. We heaved our luggage over the side and climbed in.

  “Pardon, pardon.”

  We tiptoed through a dense garden of bodies. As with the other pinasse, the floor was piled high with sacks of grain, and we had to bend low as we moved beneath the bamboo-framed raffia roof. We finally found a small clearing in front of some soldiers and wedged ourselves in, sliding down into the crevices between the sacks of grain. One of the soldiers’ long guns, laid carelessly across his knapsack, was pointing straight at me. I gingerly pushed its muzzle aside.

  “Maybe the owner was right,” I said to Yaya and Touré. “This boat is too full. It’s not safe.”

  “It’s safe, it’s safe,” said Touré. “He’s just trying to get more money out of us.”

  “How can you say it’s safe?” my voice rose in pitch. “Look around you! There’s no way out. If there was an accident we’d all drown.”

  Yaya spoke soothingly. “They will all be full like this,” he said. “The other boat was the exception.”

  “Well then . . . then . . .” My voice wobbled and tears rose swiftly to my eyes.

  “Oh, not again!” exclaimed Touré. He got up with a loud sigh and started shouting at the other passengers.

  Within five minutes we had a spot by the side of the boat. I felt both sheepish and relieved. It became a running gag between Touré, Yaya, and me that every time the boat slowed down, or brushed against a sandbar or a piece of floating wood, I faced the water, put my arms over my head in a diving pose, and said “I’m ready to swim.” Touré and Yaya were even joking with each other. Touré said they were cousins, Kulubaly and Tangara, but Tangara was the slave of Kulubaly, so Yaya ought to treat him with respect. Yaya said he couldn’t respect a Kulubaly: they ate too many beans. We were all growing giddy from so much laughter.

  Touré was looking through his bag for a photograph he wanted to show me, when suddenly he let out a shout.

  “Hey! Where are the shoes?”

  “What?” I asked stupidly.

  “The ladies’ shoes! I was bringing them to Diré to sell. I had
three pairs; now there are only two.”

  “I think you sold a pair,” Yaya said. Then, to me, “I thought he sold a pair.”

  Suddenly Touré was on his feet. He swung himself over the kitchen with surprising agility, picking his way through the mass of bodies at an extraordinary speed. When he got to his destination, he reached down and grabbed someone’s bou-bou at the throat. It took me a moment to recognize the old man who’d gotten himself into trouble on the first boat.

  “This man is a thief!” shouted Touré. “He stole on the last boat and because of this . . . posing imbecile . . .” indicating Yaya, “we let him go free to steal again. And now he has stolen my shoes!” He yanked the old man to his feet. “I should have beaten you last time. This time you’re going to pay. This time I’m going to open your bag, and if I find those shoes, I’m going to throw you off the boat.”

  “No!” shouted Yaya. He stumbled through the crowd, drawing shouts and curses as he stepped on people’s limbs. “You cannot do this!” he insisted.

  Touré spun around. “You stay out of this! I am tired of you telling me what to do,” he snarled. “You who have left the faith and taken another.”

  “You see?” Yaya shouted, looking around frantically for support. “He oppresses me because of my faith! He oppresses me because I work for justice, like Jesus Christ himself was oppressed.”

  “You stand up for criminals because you do not know them,” yelled Touré. Yaya had reached him now, and Touré let go of the old man and grabbed the top of Yaya’s bou-bou instead. “You are a weak, soft man. You have never had to pay your own way. Stand back, weak man! Life is for the strong.” Touré shoved Yaya, who stumbled and fell backward onto the legs of a child. The child began to scream.

  “And you,” cried Yaya, lurching to his feet, “you feel you are fit to judge. You who are a criminal yourself, who have not been to school past the second form. Who can scarcely read!”