The Talibé

Brian Paul Cross

Confrontation, Issue 94/95 (2006)

Sinbacké watched the women as they drew water from the well, lifted the tubs onto their heads, and carried them away. His eyes followed them along the narrow path that crossed the railroad tracks, passed through a high hedge of salaan, and then wound its tortuous way down a shallow incline to the cluster of gray huts in the distance. Other women, relieved of their own burdens, were talking and laughing as they returned along this same path, each with an empty tub bouncing against one leg and a strip of cloth coiled on the head or held carelessly in one hand or strung over a bare black shoulder. The comings and goings of these women, a dozen or more altogether, formed a sort of conveyor belt, disorganized but efficient. In an hour, they would be done, the water barrels and cisterns would be full, and the well would be abandoned to the heat, to the wind, and to the scouring sand. The next morning, after another day’s needs had emptied the barrels and cisterns, the women would start all over again with the sleep still in their eyes.

The rhythm of their work was familiar to Sinbacké. He had absorbed it from his mother, riding on her back with his head lolling about, and then later, when he was older, trailing after her on foot when she tried to leave him behind with his sisters. It was a significant part of the home he remembered. But this was not his home. At least he did not think so.

For Sinbacké, home was no longer a fixed geographic place, but rather a shifting sand dune of memories, steadily changing shape under the eolian force of time, his own imagination, and the shared recollections of his fellow talibés. Parts were relatively solid, resistant to the forces of erosion, but the boundaries were uncertain and sometimes ground that had once felt secure would begin to shift. Memories of his mother had betrayed him like this. At one time, her face had been a clear and unquestioned image in his head, one that could be reliably called upon whenever comfort was needed. But then one day, Sinbacké found himself staring up at the regal woman in yellow on a Maggi billboard. She matched his memory so closely that he began to wonder: Did this woman simply resemble his mother, or had this more recent image taken her place? After that day, he had never again been certain of her face. There were parts of her that he still remembered clearly. He remembered their trips to the well. And he knew that her name was Ami. That word, unlike her face, remained fixed like a kadd tree among the sands. And if he ever began to doubt, he had only to say the name aloud. His lips and his tongue remembered it better than his head. Still, he missed her face.

Sinbacké watched at a safe distance, more than a stone’s throw from the women and the well. Here the tracks rose above the surrounding fields riding the crest of a causeway of broken white stone. Farther down, the fields climbed gradually up to meet the railroad so that the top of the well was on an even plane with the tracks. And where the women stepped gingerly across the rails, each with fifteen gallons of water balanced precariously on the crown of the head, the ground itself was level.

He lay behind the tracks, flat against the slope, one hand resting on the hard rusted metal of the nearest rail. He didn’t worry about trains. In the week or so that he had followed the tracks, few trains had passed by. And if one came now, he would be able to feel it and hear it before it arrived. They usually moved very slowly, so slowly that the men sneaking rides could hop on and off without much fear. If Sinbacké had not been scared of these men, he would have jumped aboard one of the trains himself.

This was his third attempt to run away from the daara where his father had sent him to be taught the Koran. The first time, he had followed the main highway towards Thiès, walking just off the blacktop and trying to keep within the shade of the neem trees that grew on the pebbly red shoulder. The car rapides, sept-places, and taxis all roared past him without paying much attention. Once, he managed to wave down a big white car rapide with purple curtains in the windows and Lamp Fall painted on the back, but this proved pointless. The man who collected the fares, the apprenti, became angry when he realized that Sinbacké did not even know the name of his village. Everyone was in such a rush, with the apprenti shouting at him, and the driver shouting at the apprenti, and the passengers shouting at the driver. Sinbacké became so flustered that he couldn’t even begin to describe his village, and the car rapide tore off and left him choking on the dust and the diesel fumes. They probably would not have known where to take him anyway, he consoled himself. He remembered so little that was useful. Still, he had wanted to try.

Later, he had stopped to sit by the women vendors gathered near a tollbooth. They were waiting there to hawk their wares—little bags of water and beignets and sump fruit—to the passengers crammed inside the stopped vehicles. The women, who ran the gamut from adolescence to old age, were all mostly kind to him. They laughed at his timidity, but they did not chase him away, and they gave him some of what they knew would probably remain unsold that day.

It was here, as he was squatting with these women and chewing on a rubbery beignet, that someone had recognized him. It wasn’t someone from his village, but someone from the neighborhood around the daara. This man had taken him back to his serigne, and his serigne had beaten him with a switch pulled from a neem tree. And then, as Sinbacké was leaning against the back wall of the daara, rubbing his eyes and trying to stop the tears, trying to be less frightened and more angry, the old man had brought out the hobbles.

The morning wore on. The sun had long since crested the thick limbs of the baobabs in the distance, and the number of women using the well had dropped to three or four. It was getting warmer, and Sinbacké began to perspire beneath the soiled fabric of his Tshirt. The sweat and the grime made him itch, and he scratched his chest through the ragged holes.

When no one had been to the well in a while and the path to the village was empty, he prepared to make his move. He stood up and scanned the surrounding fields. In the distance, a man was working amidst the tall dugub stalks with their withered leaves drooping to the ground and their erect cobs taking aim at all corners of the sun bleached sky. The man moved methodically, pulling each cob down and then using a small rounded blade to sever its stem. As he worked, his face was obscured by the shadow of his conical tengaadee hat.

With one eye on this man, Sinbacké crept up onto the nearest rail and made his way stealthily towards the well. He balanced expertly on the hard metal and avoided the space in between the two rails where sharp-edged rocks made the ground uneven and difficult to manage.

As he had hoped, he found the well deserted. It stood in the middle of a flat, sandy area that was bordered on one side by several neem trees. The lip of the well rose out of a circular concrete slab to a height of almost one meter, like a stone mouth reaching up to beg moisture from the indifferent sky. Water was drawn up from below by means of a rope and pulley. The pulley hung from an aluminum ring more than a man’s height above the ground, and the ring was supported by four aluminum bars planted at regular intervals along the outer circumference of the slab. The whole apparatus looked like the husk of some spindly legged insect, one that had straddled the well to take a drink and then promptly died with its feet buried in the ground. Near one of the legs, a patch of rapidly drying sand marked where water had been spilled as the women were lifting the plastic tubs onto their heads.

Because Sinbacké was too short to reach the rope, he was forced to shed his flip-flops and climb up onto the lip of the well. He balanced precariously over the blackness below and began to haul on the rope, lowering one empty bucket while at the same time raising another half full of water. Perched up there on the well, he began to feel anxious. The pulley jiggled and squeaked as he dragged on the rope with one hand and then the other, and he was afraid the noise would attract attention. Sinbacké did not want to be seen by the villagers, to be forced to answer their questions. Even more unnerving still was the big drop beneath his feet. Gravity seemed to pull his eyes downward through the cool dark tunnel to the water and the rocks waiting below. He had to fight against a rising tide of panic in his breast. He had the overwhelming sense of hovering on the boundary of an alien world. He felt that he could easily fall and in falling cross over to a realm where all of his bearings would be lost. But even with all of his fear and anxiety, he did not get down. He could not reach the rope any other way, and he needed the water.

“Ehh, looy def fe?”

Sinbacké looked up at the sound of the shrill female voice. He let go of the rope and, losing his balance, flailed about and grabbed one of the aluminum support bars. The pulley wheel spun, and the half-full bucket plummeted downward into the blackness. He heard the bucket hit bottom far below as he hung half suspended above the well. For a few terrifying moments, his heart thumped against his breastbone, and then a strong hand seized his arm and pulled him off into the sand.

“Danga dof. You’re crazy. You’re going to fall.”

He pulled away reflexively. He slid out of the woman’s grip and onto the ground. Once free of her grasp, he sat there meekly and looked up at her. Sand was stuck to the sweat on his legs.

“Do you want to die?” she demanded.

Sinbacké stared at her as though he had not heard the question. He could not or would not respond. He wasn’t sure which. Sometimes, there didn’t seem to be a difference.

The woman standing over him was approaching middle age. She was old enough to have had several children (one was strapped to her back with a piece of white cloth) and to have replaced the elaborate hairstyles of youth with the convenience of a cloth headwrap, but she was not so old as to have rounded out into the laughing female Buddha of later years. The sun was bright in her face and she squinted at him, showing her blue-gray gums and her large prominent teeth. Her words were aggressive and the squinting made her look annoyed, but there was a maternal air to both her tone and her expression that kept him in front of her. He could neither speak nor flee.

“Mën nga wax? Can’t you speak?” she asked him, softening her tone. “What do you want? You’re thirsty?” Her questions elicited nothing but more silence.

“Talibé nga?” she asked in exasperation, hoping for at least a nod. Sinbacké tensed instinctively and said nothing, every muscle poised to bolt. When he still did not respond, she took a tentative step towards him. It was little more than a shuffle, but her advance was like a stone thrown at a hungry, beaten dog. It was enough to tip the balance of forces attracting and repelling him in favor of the latter. He flew towards the tracks, leaving his flip-flops behind in his haste.

“Ehh, foi dem? Where are you going?” she yelled after him.

When he reached the rails, the hot metal hurt his bare feet, and the shock of it caused him to slip off. He cut his heel on a jagged rock, but quickly regained his balance and kept running. His new wound left a trail of bloody heel prints on the hot metal. He was vaguely aware of his own pain. He was also aware of the woman at the well and the man in the field watching him go. But he kept his head down and focused on the rail until the bleeding had stopped and their eyes had lost him in the shimmering heat rising off the hot earth.

He hid out in a culvert that passed under the railroad tracks a kilometer or more from the well. He lay there panting on the gravel and sand that had collected in the bottom and tried to calm down. He wondered if he had overreacted. Maybe he should have spoken to the woman. Maybe she would have helped. It was so difficult to know whom to trust. He tore a strip of cloth from his shirt and used it to bandage the wound on his heel. It would probably be difficult to walk for a while, he thought with annoyance.

He resolved to wait until nighttime to try again at the well, but a few long hours later he was already aching for water and his movements were sluggish. It was as though he were immersed in a thick, viscous fluid that resisted his every exertion. Nothing but the need to drink seemed important to him, and his thirst drove him back out a couple of hours before sunset.

Back at the well, under the abundant shade of a healthy neem tree, he was surprised to find his flip-flops laid out neatly for him. Beside them, a purple water cup was wedged between two of the tree’s exposed roots. Black and white droppings marked one side of the exterior of the cup, a clear sign that the weaverbirds had already drawn their share. But there was still plenty left for Sinbacké. He drank down the tepid liquid with just enough awareness to choose the clean side. He drank so deeply that he lost his breath, and then, still gasping, he used the last of the water to wash the sand out of the wound on his heel.

With relief, he sat on one of the roots and leaned back against the dark, fissured bark of the tree. His head still ached, but the desperation he had felt only a few moments before was gone. His fingers traced a round, flat scar on his knee, a shinier patch on the dull ebony of his leg. He could not say how or where he had received this old wound, but he did remember being carried by his mother to see the facckat. The man had had a white beard and one milky eye that fluttered when he looked at you. His mother had rubbed his back and tried to soothe him. “Massa, massa, Sinbé, massa, massa.” But he had cried anyway as the frightening man stooped over him to feel the wound. The facckat had squeezed and pressed the swollen flesh, muttering prayers and incantations all the while. And then he had tied a piece of thread around Sinbacké’s ankle. There the memory ended. Although he must have gotten better, Sinbacké could recall nothing more. Memory is focused by pain and dissipated by relief.

When it was cooler, he left the shade of the neem tree and managed to locate some fruit beneath the spiked tangle of a nearby sump tree. He peeled off the yellow skins and sucked the thin layer of bitter pulp off of each large seed. After that very unsatisfying meal, he spent nearly an hour lofting a stick up through the massive gray branches of a baobab, trying to pick off a piece of fruit. Each time the stick cracked against the hard shell of the fruit, his heart leapt in anticipation, and each time the fruit did not come loose, his heart fell back to earth with the stick. It was no easy task, but his hunger kept him motivated. And then finally, with a surprising suddenness the struggle was over, and he was scurrying to pick up the fruit, feeling the green felt in his hands, and cracking the hard shell against the trunk of the baobab. He pulled the dry white flesh free of the fibrous threads and popped chunks of it into his mouth. Tart and sweet, the baobab fruit tasted better than the sump fruit, but it did not fill his belly any better. He spit out the hard brown seeds and took his hunger back to the tracks to wait for morning.

He spent that night in the culvert on his bed of sand and gravel. He slept poorly. The dogs and other animals would come sniffing around his den and wake him from his dozing. He kept a few small stones clutched in his hand to use whenever he heard the rustling or saw a shadow move past one of the openings. He would mutter a prayer, peg a stone at the sound or the shape, and then hold his breath until he sensed that the animal had retreated from his abode.

They might have bothered him less if he had slept outside; he knew they were drawn to his little den. But he slept even more poorly outside. If he looked up for too long at the vastness of the starry skies, his senses began to reel. It always felt as though he were gazing not up, but down into a whirlpool of stars, as though he were about to fall off the face of the earth. At home, sleeping next to his mother, or at the daara packed onto the mats with his fellow talibés, the terrible beauty of it was bearable, but only because others were there to bring him out of the trance, to invert his perceptions with a touch or a word. “Bideo, bare na,” his mother would say. “Waaw, bare na.” There are many stars.

A few hours after dawn, he crawled out of his hole and made his way back to the well. At the foot of the same neem tree as before, he found a clear plastic bottle filled with water and a small lidded bowl of ceebudien. From the look of it, the food was probably left over from the day before, but it was still good. He ate hungrily, squeezing the rice into balls, the red oil running down his dirty hand to his wrist and then dripping onto his shorts. He did not stop until he had shoved two-thirds of the bowl down his throat and chased it with half of the water. The remainder he carried off for his evening meal.

This was good. Fruit was not enough, and it would have given him diarrhea after a while. He would have eventually been forced to approach the village and beg for food that was more substantial. Sinbacké had no qualms about begging; that was what talibés did. But out here, away from the city, everyone wanted to know where he had come from and where he was going. And there was always the chance that they would figure it out and try to send him back. If they knew where you came from, they always sent you back no matter what. Bad home, bad father, bad daara, bad serigne—the answer would always be the same. Adults shook their heads in sympathy, but it meant nothing. To not send him back would be to interfere, and they did not like to interfere. Sinbacké knew that he did not matter, not really. If he had mattered, he would still be with Ami and his sisters.

He had not fully realized this until the second time he ran away. That time, he had followed the railroad tracks instead of the highway. At first, he had been elated to be free of the daara once again. But then, walking past the kadd and the baobab trees hour after hour, he had begun to feel very small and very hungry. On the second day, he had stopped at a village and wandered into a compound to ask for food. They took him in for the night and fed him, and they showed him more kindness than he had known since leaving home. It was immensely soothing to be with a family at a time when he was feeling the vastness of the world so acutely. He huddled around a large bowl of cere mbuum along with the other men and boys and scooped up little handfuls of the green couscous and sauce. The sauce was so hot that it hurt his hand if he did not mix it thoroughly with the couscous, but he didn’t really mind. Later, he lay out on the plastic mats with the family as they lazily discussed the events of the day. He could not have wished for better luck, and he did not want the evening to end. He fought against sleep for a while, but the rustling of the neem and the gentleness of the breeze had their effect. He was soon asleep.

The next day, Sinbacké had been unsure of what to do. He did not want to leave, but then he had not been told he could stay. For most of the morning, he lurked about the compound trying not to attract too much attention. But then two boys from the family started a soccer game in front of the compound. They set up a field with sticks marking off the goalposts, and started chasing around a little flattened red ball in the sand. They were soon joined by more than a dozen boys, and the group of them proved too much for Sinbacké. Eventually, he joined in as well.

Before the game was over, the head of the family came out and pulled him aside. Sinbacké could feel all of the other boys looking at him as the tall man with watery eyes asked about his village and his family. “Mbokki fan?” the man asked, but Sinbacké could only shrug his shoulders. He did not know the name of his village. “You’re a talibé, right? Well then, where is your serigne? Where is your daara?” Sinbacké told him everything that he knew; he did not want to make him angry. The man had been so kind.

Sinbacké did not know his mistake until two days later when they went into town on market day. The tall man hitched up his cart and told him to climb aboard. Sinbacké was ignorant of their real destination until they were a few blocks from the school and the man started asking people for directions. It had been a hard way to learn this lesson, to learn not to trust so much. His serigne had not been happy with his desertion.

The first time he had been taken back, Sinbacké had worn the hobbles for only a few days. This time, they stayed on much longer, stayed on until his ankles were rubbed raw by the metal and he was constantly swatting at the flies that picked at his wounds. After a while, after what seemed like forever, after he had ceased trying to count the days, he was made to wear them only at night. In the daytime, his shackles were removed and his ankles bandaged so that he could resume his routine of begging for alms unfettered. The white bandages on his ankles turned gray with the grime of the street. He thought many times about running away again, but always one of the older boys was watching, and they all knew they would be beaten if they returned without him. And besides, if they let him go today, then they wouldn’t be able to steal his coins tomorrow. He had to wait a long time for another opportunity to slip away.

The next few days near the well, he fell into a comfortable routine. In the morning, he would emerge from his culvert to watch the women from his usual spot and then sneak up and retrieve his food when they had withdrawn. Each time, he looked for the one woman. He often convinced himself that one or the other of them was she, but he was always too far away to be really sure. During the day, he mostly kept out of sight, hiding in his culvert or walking along the tracks where the salaam hedge provided sufficient cover. This made fore some extremely tedious days, but Sinbacké did not want to risk attracting the attention of any farmers who might be working in the fields nearby. A few days passed in this manner—perhaps five or six, perhaps seven or eight. His grip on time had never been firm. He began to feel restless and thought about continuing his journey. But then he did not want to leave these surroundings. And where was he going anyway? He could be moving farther away from his village for all he knew.

One day it rained. It was late afternoon, and the air was cool and damp. The sun disappeared, and the clouds moved in and gathered into a confusing mass of black and white. One dark, roiling bank rumbled in from the south, while a lower mass of white clouds pushed stealthily across its path from the east, mixing with the crowns of the kadd and the baobab. The ghostly slow motion of the white mist so close to eye level was uncanny, as though some vaporous creature were sneaking slowly past the darker menacing presence above.

The deluge was sudden and immediate. There was no gradual ramping up from drizzle to sprinkle to steady rain to torrential downpour. Sinbacké was drenched in seconds and could barely see the trees a few yards away. Moving more by memory than by sight, he quickly fled into his culvert. But of course, this was the worst place he could have gone. The water came faster than the ground could absorb it, and soon there were puddles in the fields, and the puddles gathered together to form ponds, and the ponds overflowed. The water rushed downhill and sought the culverts. Soon Sinbacké was fleeing back out into the rain. He crawled into the salaam hedge, squeezing himself in among its branches for the meager shelter they provided. Salaan was one of the few plants around that did not have thorns; instead, it protected itself with a sticky white sap that oozed out wherever the fragile gray-green bark was cracked. Soaked to the bone and covered in this sap, Sinbacké huddled down and hugged his legs against his chest. He could not say how long the rain lasted.

This was the end of nawet. It did not rain often. The farmers had planted their crops some time ago. The first of the dugub and sorgho was being harvested, and the little yellow flowers had long since faded from the stunted peanut plants. Sinbacké soon dried out and forgot about the miserable night he had spent wet and alone and cold. Two days later, the only reminders of it were the rapidly shrinking ponds and the sticky smears of sap on his clothes.

One day, soon after the rain, when Sinbacké was feeling full in the belly and too restless to endure the long hours of boredom ahead, he went off in search of more baobab fruit. He shuffled along the sandy paths and through the cultivated fields and the fallows, making his way from one grove of thick-boled trees to the next. In one, the trees seemed to be arranged in rows, although he doubted that anyone farmed baobab. In any case, these trees were too small to bear fruit, and he soon moved on. In another grove, one baobab had fallen over with its roots sticking up in the air. Its trunk had hollowed out to form a tunnel that began at the axis of the roots and continued up to a giant crack in the side of the tree. In the same grove, at the foot of another tree, there was a cluster of bowls and black stumps, all surrounded by a fence. Sinbacké did not touch any of this and hurried on his way.

In a third grove, Sinbacké found what he was looking for. This particular grove lay close to the halfway point of a path connecting two large villages. Within this grove, there was one tree that the traveler’s eye sought unconsciously in passing. It wasn’t the tree’s size or age that attracted attention. While it was by no means small, this tree was certainly not among the largest and most venerable baobabs. Instead, what drew the eye was the tree’s unusual shape. It appeared as though the whole tree were covered in an invisible bell jar that blocked the limbs from extending past a certain point. All of the main branches grew out to a certain length before dividing and flattening out. The effect was a bizarre and beautiful piece of baobab art.

If Sinbacké had been from the area, he would have felt some comfort and some little rush of pride upon catching sight of this landmark. But he wasn’t, and he looked at the tree with a wholly practical eye. He noticed its shape but did not dwell upon it. Instead, it was the fruit that attracted his attention. His eyes easily picked out the oblong green shapes near the top. Other kids had already stripped away the lowest and most accessible fruit, no doubt bundling it up to sell to local shopkeepers for a few francs. But the highest branches still bore a dozen or more long-stemmed fruit.

Picking up a small but solid stick, he set his feet apart, took aim through squinting eyes, and sent the stick spinning up into the tree. The stick sailed upwards thrillingly for a few seconds before smacking into the trunk and clattering back down through the branches. He picked up the stick, tapped it against his leg twice, and tried again. He kept at it for several minutes, sending the stick sailing upwards and watching it tumble back to earth, trying to bring down the fruit just as he had a few days before. But it soon became clear that his efforts were futile. All of the fruit was too high and too well guarded by several inconveniently placed branches.

He let himself drop down on the ground in frustration and stared at the uncooperative giant in front of him. He considered looking for another tree, but then, it was getting unbearably hot, and he didn’t feel like walking any farther. Several minutes passed in quiet brooding.

Absentmindedly, his eyes traced a ridge that encircled the trunk two-thirds of the way to the lowest branches. Below that line, vertical grooves separated the trunk into big bulging pillars; above that line, the bulges disappeared and the bark was smooth and flat.

Slowly, a new strategy began to take shape in Sinbacké’s mind. If he could somehow shimmy up to the ridge, he would be able to reach the lowest branches of the tree. After that, it would be a simple matter to climb up to the fruit in the tree’s crown. He did not take to heights easily, but if he avoided looking down, maybe he would not be too frightened. He brushed himself off, shed his flip-flops, and set to work.

The first step was easier than he had anticipated. Bracing his hands and his bare feet in the grooves between the bulges, he was able to scramble up the tree almost as easily as if he were climbing a ladder. Before he had even begun to pant, he found himself perched atop the lowest and thickest branch of the tree.

Ignoring the little bud of fear in his stomach and the incessant urge to look down past his perch to the ground below, he continued his climb up towards the fruit. But if the first stage of his climb had proved to be easier than expected, this next stage was somewhat harder. From the ground, the branches had seemed perfect for climbing, but as he moved up, the challenges became more apparent. The limbs were much farther apart than he had thought, and the smooth bark offered few handholds. And even when he could easily reach the next branch, it was often so thick that he had trouble getting a hand or even an arm around it.

In spite of the challenges, he struggled on with a fixed determination. Sinbacké had never allowed himself to give up. Even when he felt most despondent, his feet always kept moving. Most talibés had been cowed by their serigne but not Sinbacké. He had never stopped looking for a way out, a way around, a way over. And while some might have questioned his sanity, no one would have had any doubts about his tenacity.

Reaching up to the point where three massive branches split off from the central trunk, his fingers sought the grooves and folds in the wooden saddle formed there. He took hold with the tips of his fingers and attempted to walk up the bole of the tree. It hurt both his fingers and his toes, but he could see no other way. His face contorted into a grimace, and the sweat beaded up on his forehead in spite of the shade.

And then he started to lose his grip.

The small bud of fear that he had been resolutely ignoring burst open into a full blossom of panic, and this opening sent tremors reverberating through his failing limbs. He could clearly see and feel everything that was happening. He knew that he was slipping away, that his fingers were sliding across the bark, that he was going to fall. In all of his days and weeks and months of abandonment, he had never felt so alone. He clung to the tree in his desperation and his panic and his utter solitude. He let slip a small whimper.

And then he fell.

He tumbled backwards and collided with the branch on which he had most recently stood. All went black.

❋ ❋ ❋

In his dreams, Ami was holding him. And Ami’s face was forever changing. Sometimes, it was the face of the woman who sold peanuts near the daara. Other times, it was the face of the woman from the billboards, wearing her yellow head wrap and smiling with dark purple lips and white teeth. Often, it was the face of the woman at the well. Whatever face she wore, Ami’s presence soothed him.

This peace was assaulted by the faces of those who came for him. There was the face of the apprenti, the face of hurry and exasperation, yelling at him for being a waste of time. And there were the faces of the older talibés, the bullies, the ones who pushed him to the ground and took his coins. There was the face of the man who had taken him back when he had first run away from the daara, the fleshy, remorselessly placid face of a man who did not discuss anything with children. And there was the face of his serigne, the face of cruelty, a white hardness in the eyes making Sinbacké cringe, as though they had the power to pin him down and drag him away. Something dangling from his serigne’s hand, something metal, was jingling and brushing the sand at his feet.

But each time one of these faces disturbed his peace, Ami’s voice surrounded him— “massa, massa, Sinbé, massa, massa”—and none of them could touch him. She would not release him, would not make him go back. Not this time.

❋ ❋ ❋

Sinbacké lay on a foam mattress, looking up at the roof of a hut. The walls around him were sacket, and numerous little slivers of light peeked in through the gaps. Light also came in through a doorway hung with a thin curtain. As the wind pushed at the curtain, it billowed out and brushed the edge of the bed. The light was clear and soft, the light of morning.

“Sinbé, Sinbé,” a voice called out to him, and he looked over at the doorway. The woman from the well pushed aside the curtain and stuck her head inside. “Yàngi nelaw? You’re sleeping?” Her expression was tolerant and amused. He nodded back at her.

“Sa nelaw yi bare na. You sleep too much.” She smiled down at him broadly.

He nodded at her again, happiness beginning to tug gently at the corners of his mouth.

“Well, I’ve got the cure for that,” she said, holding her fingers out in front of her. He broke out in a foolish grin as she descended upon him. He curled up into a ball and laughed hysterically as her fingers sought every weakness in his defenses.

“Bàyyi ma waay. Bàyyi ma,” he protested happily. His eyes were closed.

The tickling ceased.

“Kaay, Sinbé. Màngii rooti. Come along. I’m going to the well,” she said. He felt her presence lift abruptly from the bed, and he opened his eyes. The hut was empty.

Tentatively, he slid off the bed and emerged from the hut into the sandy courtyard of an oddly familiar compound. There were the two neem trees with a clothesline strung in between. One of these was filled with the chaotic bustle of the yellow-bodied, black-hooded weaverbirds moving about among their little round nests. There were the rusted barrel and cracked cistern. There was the cookfire being tended by a young woman with a baby strapped to her back. There was the rickety wooden bench. There were the toys and plastic bottles lying on the ground.

“Kaay, Sinbé, Kaay. Màngii rooti.” He looked over to see the woman standing next to the gate. She was looking back over her shoulder. “Kaay,” she repeated, gesturing with one hand. Her other hand held a blue plastic tub with a crack on one side.

On catching sight of her, he moved quickly to follow, but she did not wait for him. By the time he had reached the doorway, she had already turned the corner. And by the time he had turned the corner, she was already far along the sandy path to the well.

When he reached the well, there were a number of women gathered around, but he did not see the woman he had followed. He stood there and stared at them. One woman noticed him and turned to look. The others quickly followed suit until they were all staring at him.

“Who are you looking for?” one asked. But he did not say anything.

She was not there.

❋ ❋ ❋

When Sinbacké came to, he was being jostled by the steady progress of a horse cart. He opened his eyes to the sight of brightly-lit red and white squares. It took him a groggy moment to realize that his face was covered by a scrap of fabric. Another scrap was wadded up under his head to keep it from bouncing on the hard, bare planks of the cart. He tried to raise his left hand to remove the cloth, but he found that it would not move at all. He must have hurt it. He had fallen, he remembered.

He tried with his right hand, and the sky opened above him. The blue of the sky was untouched by any white.

An old man in a tengaadee drove the cart from a side perch near the front. Dugub cobs were piled up in the middle of the cart bed, each spear encrusted with thousands of tiny gray-green seeds. Sinbacké had been laid at the back, a vertical wooden plank preventing him from tumbling off of the slightly tilted bed onto the ground. The old man was hunched over, and he held the reins loosely. In one hand was a neem branch stripped of its leaves. He clucked at the horse and then whipped its haunches with the branch when it showed signs of slacking off. The man did not yet know that Sinbacké had awoken.

He thought about trying to attract the man’s attention and ask where he was being taken. But then he thought better of it.

He knew where he was going. He would get there eventually.