Somebody's Heart Is Burning (33 page)

“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!”

“I can read! I can read!” roared Touré.

“Then read for us. Read for us if you are so smart.” Yaya reached into his robe and extracted a small black-bound volume. “Here is a book of Mali law. Read for us where it says that you may throw an old man in the river.” He tossed the book at Touré’s feet.

Touré looked down at the book, then slowly back up at Yaya.

“I do not have to read for you,” he said. His voice was low and ferocious, simmering with fury. “I do not have to prove anything to you. You traitor! I will throw you off the boat!”

Touré advanced on Yaya. Yaya raised his arms to defend himself, and their hands locked in the air like the antlers of two stags. Touré had easily fifty pounds on Yaya, and in no time he was propelling him backward toward the edge of the boat, while the other passengers shuffled desperately out of the way.

“Stop it!” I screamed, moving toward them.

“You stay out of this, tubabu!” Touré flung the words in my direction. “This is not your place.” It was the first time Touré had called me a white lady.

From the center of the boat, an enormous woman dressed in bright red cloth rose slowly to her feet.

“Stoooooooop iiiiiiiiiiit!” she bellowed, her voice deep and penetrating as a foghorn. “
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
You are behaving like two small boys in the village who run around with no pants on.” Scattered laughter and cheers came from the crowd. “You, sir,” she shouted, pointing a thick, authoritative finger at Touré. “You leave that old man alone. You are talking that way to him because you do not respect your father!” A rumble of assent from the population of the boat.

“You go right ahead,” she continued. “You go right ahead and open his bag, but if you do not find your shoes, it is you we will beat and throw in the water.”

For an astonishing moment, there was complete silence. Then Touré smacked the bamboo pole beside him, hard, with the flat of his hand.

“Savages, all of you!” He turned his back on the boat and faced the water. “Me, I don’t like savages.”

Touré moved his satchel to the roof and stayed there all day. I peeked my head up and called to him a couple of times, but he ignored me. Yaya and I sat in silence as well, each of us brooding on our own thoughts. The countryside around us was flat and sandy, with patchy grass, thorny shrubs, and flat-topped, spiky acacia trees. Once in a while a runty palm. We were well into the Sahel now, the area where savanna and desert come together. Just a short hop to the Sahara itself.

In the late afternoon, the boat pulled up to the shore of a fishing village with a lively riverside market.

“This is Diré,” Yaya told me. “Touré will descend here.”

I accosted Touré on the rocky shore, pushing my way through a crush of young girls who plied me with bags of cakes and sticks of charred meat. I was determined to have a proper goodbye.

“Savages, all of them, idiots!” he spat, when I asked him how he was feeling.

“Oh Touré,” I sighed, suppressing a smile. I put a hand on his arm. “Thank you for taking such good care of me. I’m sorry things had to end so—”

“You and me,” he interrupted, leaning forward conspiratorially, “we are alike, Tanya.
Toi et moi.
” He grinned, then, and it was as though a spell had broken and he was once again his blustery self. He continued, “Someday I will come to America and find you.”

“And then?” I said cautiously.

“And then? And then, Tanya, you will come to my house, and we will laugh, and say, ‘Oh, you remember that boat ride, in Mali? It was so crazy, my friend, but it was sweet.’ ”