Allah is Not Obliged (3 page)

My mother married my father on account of how he was her cousin and the son of the village imam. So Moussokoroni, who was a shaman, and her son, who was also a shaman, got really, really angry. They cast spells on my mother’s right leg, an evil spell called a
koroté
(a venom that acts on the victim from a distance, according to the
Glossary
) and a really powerful
djibo
(which is an evil curse).

After maman was married and was in her confinement on account of being pregnant, a black dot, a tiny black dot, appeared on her right leg. Maman was in pain from the small black spot so they lanced it, they made a small cut to lance the spot and put medicine on the cut. But the cut didn’t heal—it started to gobble up maman’s foot, to gobble up her leg.

Straight away, my father and my grandmother went to see Balla, they consulted grigrimen and marabouts and shamans and everyone said that maman didn’t get better because of the
koroté
, the evil spell that Moussokoroni and her son had cast. They went to the village where Moussokoroni and her son lived but it was too late.

Moussokoroni was already dead, good and dead from old
age and good and buried too. Her son, the hunter, was an evil man; he refused to listen, refused to understand, refused to confess. He was completely evil, a genuine kaffir, an enemy of Allah.

Maman gave birth to my big sister. By the time my sister was walking and talking and going to school the abscess was still eating away at maman’s leg, so she was taken to the district hospital. This was long before independence. At the hospital, there was a white doctor—a
toubab
—with three stripes on his shoulder, a black doctor with no stripes, a male nurse who was a major, a midwife and a bunch of other black people wearing white coats. All the black people in white coats were civil servants who were paid by the colonial government. Back then, if you wanted a civil servant to treat you properly, you had to bring them a chicken. That’s the custom in Africa. Maman gave chickens to five different civil servants and they all treated maman properly and took good care of her, but even with all the bandages and the permanganate, her ulcer still didn’t get better, it just kept bleeding and rotting. The
toubab
doctor said they were going to have to amputate maman’s leg, cut it off at the knee and throw the rotten bit out for the dogs at the rubbish tip. But luckily one of maman’s chickens had gone to the nurse who was also a major and he came in the middle of the night to warn her.

The nurse said that what maman was suffering from was not a
toubab
disease, it was a Black Nigger African Native disease. A disease that the medicine and the science of the white man could not cure. ‘Only the grigris of an African healer can heal your wound. If the captain operates on your
leg, you will die, absolutely die, you will die like a dog,’ said the nurse who was also a major. The nurse was a Muslim and could not tell a lie.

Grandfather hired a donkey driver. In the middle of the night, by moonlight, the donkey driver and Balla the healer went to the hospital and kidnapped maman like a pair of bandits. Before dawn, they took her deep into the forest where they hid her under a tree in a dense thicket. The
toubab
doctor was furious and came to the village in his military uniform and had his guards surround the village. They searched for maman in every single hut but they didn’t find her, because no one in the village knew where in the forest she was hidden.

After the captain and the guards left, Balla the healer and the donkey driver went into the forest and brought maman home where she went back to moving around on her arse in fits and starts.
Faforo!

Now, everyone was convinced that maman had a Black Nigger African native disease that couldn’t be cured by
toubab
doctors, it could only be cured by the native remedies of a shamanic healer. So the villagers collected some cola nuts, and took two chickens—one white and one black—and a cow, to take as sacrificial offerings to Moussokoroni’s son who had helped cast the evil spell, the
koroté
, on my mother’s leg because he was jealous that he couldn’t marry her. They were going to ask the kaffir for mercy, ask him to rescind the
djibo
, the curse. Everything had been prepared.

Then, early one morning, they were surprised when three old men from Moussokoroni’s village suddenly showed up,
three genuine old kaffir shamans wearing filthy
bubus
—as filthy and disgusting as a hyena’s anus. They had been chewing cola nuts for so long that two of them were, as toothless as a chimpanzee’s arse. The third kaffir was almost toothless as well, except for two green teeth on his bottom jaw for grigris. They had chewed tobacco for so long that their beards were as red as the rat in maman’s hut, not white like the beards of old Muslim men who perform the five daily prayers. They walked slowly, hunched over their sticks like snails. They had brought cola nuts, two chickens—one black and one white—and a cow. They had come to ask for mercy, because Moussokoroni’s son, the evil kaffir hunter, was dead. He had tried to shoot an evil spirit in the form of a buffalo deep in the deep forest. The buffalo had run him through with its horns, lifting his body off the ground and then throwing him down and trampling him completely to death with his intestines and his insides all mashed up in the mud.

The death had been so terrible, so strange, that the villagers consulted grigrimen and marabouts and shamans and everyone said that the evil djinn in the form of a buffalo was an avatar of my mother Bafitini (an ‘avatar’ is the manifestation of a spirit in human or animal form). What they meant was that it was my mother’s spirit that had changed itself into the buffalo. It was maman’s spirit that had killed Moussokoroni and her son by devouring their souls (according to the
Glossary
, a devourer of souls is one who kills by consuming the lifeforce of his victim). It meant they believed that my mother was the most powerful sorceress in the whole country: that her magic was stronger than the magic of Moussokoroni and
her son. She was the leader of the soul-eaters and all the sorcerers in the village and every night she and the other sorcerers would devour souls and she would even devour her own ulcer. That was why the ulcer never healed. No one in the world could ever heal her ulcer because every night my mother devoured souls and devoured her own rotting leg, so it was her own fault that she had to move around on her arse in fits and starts with her right leg permanently stuck up in the air.
Walahé!

When I found out about all this stuff, when I found out that my mother was a devourer of souls and was even devouring her own rotting leg, I was so astonished, so sickened, that I cried. I cried and cried all day and all night for four days. On the morning of the fifth day, I left maman’s hut forever and decided that I was never going to eat with maman ever again. That’s how disgusting I thought she was.

That’s when I became a street kid. A proper street kid that sleeps with the goats, and nicks stuff to eat from fields and concessions.

Balla and grandmother found me living rough and brought me back. They dried my tears and tried to placate me (‘placate’ means they tried to calm my feelings of anger and hurt), they said that maman wasn’t a witch, that she
couldn’t
be a witch, because she was a good Muslim. They said the Bambara kaffirs were barefaced liars.

What Balla and grandmother said didn’t really convince me, it was too late. Once a fart is out of your arse you can’t put it back. I was still a bit suspicious of maman, with misgivings and qualms in my belly, like Africans say, or in my heart,
like French people say. I was scared she’d devour my soul. When someone devours your soul, you can’t keep on living so you die of a disease or an accident. You die some kind of terrible death.
Gnamokodé!

When maman died, Balla said that it wasn’t because her soul had been devoured. He knew because he was a marabout who knew all about sorcery, a
feticheur
with the power to detect soul-eaters. My grandmother explained that maman had been killed by Allah with just the ulcer and all the tears she was always crying. Because Allah up in heaven can do whatever he likes; he doesn’t have to be fair about what he does here on earth.

That was when I realised that I’d hurt my mother, hurt her really badly. Hurt someone who was crippled. She never said anything to me about it but she died with all the hurt in her heart, and now I was cursed and damned and I’d never do any good here on earth. I’d never be worth anything to anyone on this earth.

I might tell about maman’s death some other time. But I don’t have to and you can’t make me.
Faforo!

I haven’t told you anything about my father yet. He was called Mory. I don’t really like talking about my father. It makes me sad in my heart and in my belly. On account of how he died without ever growing a wise old man’s white beard. I don’t talk about him very often because I never really knew him. I never really spent any time with him on account of how he died while I was still crawling around on all fours.
Balla the healer was the person I spent all my time with, he was the person I loved. Fortunately, Balla the
feticheur
knows lots of things. He knows magic and he’s travelled all over the place hunting in Côte d’Ivoire, in Senegal, even in Ghana and Liberia where the black people are Black Americans and where the indigenes speak pidgin. Over there, that’s what they call English.

Issa is my uncle, that’s what your father’s brother is called. After my father died, my mother belonged to Issa, and he was supposed to marry her. That’s the tradition of the Malinké tribe.

But no one in the village wanted to hand my mother over to Issa because he never came to see maman in her hut and never looked after me, and he was always saying cruel things about my father and my grandmother and even my grandfather. Everybody thought that the tradition didn’t count. And anyway Issa didn’t want a wife who walked around on her arse with her rotting leg stuck up in the air.

According to the laws of the Qur’an and of religion, maman was not allowed to stay unmarried for more than a year of twelve moons, she had to be properly married with a proper dowry of cola nuts. (According to the
Glossary
a cola nut is the seed of the cola tree eaten for its stimulating properties. Cola nuts are ritual gifts in traditional societies.) Maman had to say something, she had to decide, she had to choose.

Maman told grandmother that Balla was the only person who came to her hut day and night, and she wanted to have a marriage with a proper cola nut dowry with her healer and
feticheur
Balla. When everyone heard, they howled and they
yapped like a pack of mad dogs, they were all dead set against the marriage because Balla was a Bambara kaffir who didn’t perform the five daily prayers and didn’t fast during Ramadan, so he couldn’t be allowed to marry a devout Muslim like my mother who performed her five daily prayers religiously every day.

There were speeches, and readings from the Qur’an, but in the end maman and Balla went to see the imam—that’s what you call the old man with the white beard who stands up in front of everyone on Fridays and holy days and prays and sometimes even does it five times a day. The imam told Balla to repeat ‘
Allahu Akbar
and
bismillah
’ over and over. Balla only said ‘
Allahu Akbar
and
bismillah
’ once and after that everyone was happy for maman to have her marriage with the proper cola nut dowry with Balla.

That’s how Balla got to be my stepfather. That’s what your mother’s second husband is called. Balla and maman had a
mariage en blanc
.

Even if the man and woman getting married are black, and they both wear black clothes, if they never do sex together then it’s a white marriage—a
mariage en blanc
in French. It had to be a
mariage en blanc
for two reasons. First because Balla had all his grigris round his neck and down his arms and round his belt and he refused to undress in front of a woman. And second, because even if he took off all his grigris, he would never have been able to make babies with maman. On account of he didn’t know my father’s technique. My father hadn’t had time to teach Balla the proper gymnastic way to wrap himself around maman so he could insert the
babies, seeing as how maman walked on her arse with one leg stuck up in the air on account of her ulcer.

My dad, he made three babies with my mother. My sister Mariam, my sister Fatouma, and me. My father was an important farmer and a devout believer who always made sure that maman had enough to eat. Grandmother said my father died in spite of all the good deeds he did on earth, because no one can know the will of Allah and because the Almighty up in heaven doesn’t give a shit and does whatever he wants, and he doesn’t have to be fair about everything he decides to do here on earth.

My maman died because Allah wanted her back. The imam said that a devout Muslim isn’t allowed to criticise Allah or say anything bad about him. Then he said that my mother didn’t die of magic, she died of her ulcer. Her leg just kept on eating away at her because after Moussokoroni and her son died there was no one left who could heal it on account of it wasn’t a disease that could be cured in a
toubab
hospital. And because the time Allah had accorded her on earth was up.

Then the imam said that what the filthy old kaffirs had said was not true. He said it wasn’t true that maman used to magically eat away at her rotting ulcer at night. But it didn’t placate me and I started crying for my mum all over again. Then the imam said that I had not been kind to maman. In the village, the imam is the marabout with the big white beard who stands up on Fridays at one o’clock and leads the big prayer. So now I was really starting to feel sorry for what I’d done.

Even now, it hurts, it burns my heart every time I think about maman’s death because I think maybe maman really
wasn’t a witch who devoured souls and that makes me remember the night she died.