Through the eyes of this man. All is never enough. We drink boissons. We watch colored TV. We shower in clean, cloed bathrooms. We eat bread with a full pad of butter, coffee with milk and sugar. We sit on the roof, with a breeze, and look at the few stars. He buys me cigarettes. He takes my bags. He tells me where to sit, where to put my arms and legs. He holds my waterbottles for me when I offer him a drink. He speaks in a honey-thick, gentle, Gambian english. It makes me feel far away.
For me, the room is clean. The house is tiled, various shades of white and grey and cream. It is swept in every crack and crevice, dry in every spot of organic water. And the tiny square courtyard is open to the sky.
The streets are cobbled with large, smooth blocks of stone. Go out and you zig zag through narrow passways like Italy, but maybe even cleaner, neater. Everything is swept. The houses are all cool colors of white, grey, and cream. Go up and you can watch people walking like rats in a maze. A good experiment. Some trees, yellow lamps. People are quiet and peaceful, proud of their resort-like living space.
HLM 5. Experiment of Leopold Senghor. Of course, my grandfather! Low-cost living projects, he first to pay off now has their own nice, if not small living space.
El Hadj Diouf, younger brother of Pa Birame and uncle of Laity, is the grandfather I never found. Odd, sparce, just right colorful and climbing fake flowers by the TV. Lace hanky over his 2 drawer table which holds his sugar, coffee, silverware, and other useful materials. He showers regularly and wears a clean, only slightly worn blue basin kaftan, a white Imam's hat.
He offers us everything: breakfast, lunch and dinner are pressed on us in an anxious and gentle way. He offers me his room, his shower. He mutters constantly to us, to himself.
But when we go to bed, I see: the open window onto the quiet night, with the drapes. And the open doorway, matching. We are safe. It is some primordial memory, of grandfather, of beach homes, of being completely safe in the competent, trustworthy hands of others. How many other times in my life have I found myself in this same place?
I throw myself face down onto the bed. Clean, cool, simple. No bugs. No mosquitoes. No child's piss and grime. The air is almost still, quiet. I am not sweating. I am---in heaven. Its simple now. And, I am perfectly clean. Scrubbed toes without a chance to get dirty. I fall into the most peaceful sleep possible to man.
When I wake up, I know where I am. How could I forget? I've slept with that dream of peace. The sound I hear at first almost ads to the scene-because it is unbelievable-it is white against the deep, yielding black sky. Is it a wolf howling at the moon?
No. This women is pregnant and she is in pain. MnnngnnMNNngmmngnnnnnn. MmmmmnnnnngngMNMN!ngnmmmmm. Then she screams. Matar! MATAR! MATAR??? MATAR! Like crazy. Her husband has left her in the night-he is sleeping, and she is giving birth.
The screams get crazier. More intense. Loose hold of the line with the sanely human. She screams names intermingled with that howling sound, a wolf, a cow, a hyena. Where is it coming from? What is it like in her brain? They get sick, they abuse their bodies for clothes and fake plastic hair at the price of this......life.
I think its someone dying in the night, briefly. And then her screams just go on for hours, vacillating, she's tortured, tortured, in horror, and I cannot sleep. I turn in my cool, comfortable bed.
Finally, a dark, musty voice-a thin man worn from his sleep-this can be a nightly occurance for him-starts hissing into the night "Aicha! Aitcha, waay!" She does not listen. He repeats it for a while and then he starts beating her viciously. Cries turn to terrorized screams. And then, all is quiet.
The next day I see her. She's wearing pink worn clothes and she walks as a crab. Hair dark, short, and curly. Face waxy and dappled with pimples and dust. Eyes vacant, looking up into the patch of morning sky from the courtyard. They forgot to give her her medicine last night so she was having anxiety. Anxiety, thats right.
As I lay in my bed, falling asleep, I think all but normal. Somethings always missing. Never quite home. The safety is broken thinly by this outcropping of a faulty (government?), it traces down to here. There are no health facilities for the mentally ill and more of them due to poor health.
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