Sept 22

My voice quivers. "Fary,...maangi dem." Fary knows me from when I was an innocent American, now sees me as this strange frame of a young virgin.

Fary is sitting amongst plastic pop bottles, emptied and filled with medicined water, various sized stainless steel platters covered with finger swept powders, paprika reds, sage greens. A small man sits cross legged in blue, scratching briskly in black ink on a white piece of paper.

I know that he's full of shit when Fary asks me, cryptically, as I am about to run "Fatou, lew xew ci dekk bi?" I am peering at her, in a sparkling green Arab skirt, through a tattered white gauze hanging from her flimsy wooden doorframe, fragments of the turquois mosquito netting flapping down.

"Ki, Njouk, doom u Aliou Koumba moo doon gagnu."

" Allah Akbar!" Fary enunciates in disbelief. "Allah Akbar!"

"If it were me, " said Pa bi "I could have saved her. Gis nga, sama benn rokk..."

"Allah Akbar. O, Njouk."

"My one sister, if it weren't for me she would have died. I saved her."

I told Fary, I was going.

Njouk. I have this one picture of her, I remember - my camera focused on her out of the crowd. A slight a blur of golden yellow and black - her features delicate, small, perfectly done like airbrush.

We sat on the bench outside. I was in a pissy mood because Marie, in her usual way, manipulated me into coming and then ignored me. I snapped a lot of pictures of Njouk that day - she was my model for aperture sizes or some other, although she didn't know why I was photoing her so much. She submitted graciously - she would have done anything that day to please the huffy toubab - she just wanted to talk to me but I was wrapped in self pity (and loathing) - and was consciously aware of yakking a friendship with a really kind, gentle, thoughtful, calm, well mannered, "sedd" person. She even asked me to buy something for her that day, as we sat there for over 6 hours, because she was hungry, she hadn't eaten all day. And even though I had the money, I refused her, because I thought she was begging.

She never had the same look in her eyes after that time. And even though I tried to kindle the friendship when I was in a better mood, she had seen what type of person I really was.

Njouk I guess was pregnant twice. I saw her a couple of times after that at Aliou's house with NiNi and Roxkaya. You would have never known her former beauty with her face puffed out and covered with red welts. She looked like she had gained 15 pounds, at first approach you would assume her an awkward teenager, on account of the remaining simple gaze of her eyes, the smallness of her frame. But having seen her before I thought she was pregnant. I'd never seen a pregnancy that gave you pimples or bloated out your pale, orange-ish skin.

Fary said she had one baby and lost it. She was pregnant again and this baby made her fall. Mbayane saw her the other day sitting outside and said she was fine.

I knelt in the road, a thing that would otherwise go unnoticed. (Unless I wrote it right now.) In the road between Fary's house and ours. I looked up at the stars, and either way down the path. One way was the warmth and light of the village. The other way was the road to the woods, the hyenas, the ghosts, the owners of the well and the night. The unknown. I could feel time move out of whatever dimension we've stuck it in and rush at me at faster speeds - bringing with it things I could not escape. Leave the night to its boroomams, I stood up and came home.

A car has just pulled up I think, quietly, I don't know where in the space outside this sweltering room. The women start howling, a truly animal like sound, and it mixes with the howling of the dogs chiming in. The mosquitoes that are now back buzzing in my ears have stopped - or is it just that loud I can't hear them? Their sounds sign that they're not biting.

A bead of sweat drips down the bridge of my nose. I am bloated from not fasting and have a sore throat from cheating on water. Cockroaches and mice run on the floor, one sized me up and then jumped from the bureau to my lap. I jumped up and screamed but it didn't wake up the kids.

I just scratched Nogoye's feet to sleep, she sat up saying "Ya?" and started to cry. When is Ya coming home? Its too hot in this room to die.

The village is quiet now.