The thing I hate most in life is not being in control of my own life. Where does this come from? I remember the drawing I made when I was little of the girl with the determined face, pushing up towards the rainbowed sky, broken shackled on her arms and legs. I see myself as a fearsome child, throwing my hair in fits and squirming and reeling until I broke free of any touch. Most likely, this is just my nature. But could it come from being raised in a dictatorship? Sitting behind the bars of my window watching perfectly normal children play in the grass and the street. Wronged all the time, punished for months for some small crime. No one will ever cage me again. I roll away from it almost to an excess.
And here it is bordering on infuriating -it is infuriating when I have to try twice in the morning just to go outside -so people can come sit on my bed and talk about how hungry they are hinting at me for bread. Children obnoxiously screaming in fits of selfishness -the ugliest of human nature -for lack of mental stimulation and parental nurturing. And annoying men who just want to come and take a piece of the local toubab. Who don't see me for one second, but, Matt Gates, who am I? Maybe I can say what I'm not. I am that faith that I throw at the end of reason into the unfathomable. It is there that god makes his mark, and so I cannot know it. It just comes.
But yesterday here it is. The day before I am sitting in a group of women when they start asking if I want to find a husband here. Yes, of course. But how am I ever to explain what I'm looking for? Khady Ndao says she'll maay me her guest, her brother, he's 27. He's nice, he's good-looking, he has work. We sit for hours and he doesn't come.
Where's your guest? I finally ask when conversation has died down -us picking every tree and leaf and seed and whittling it down to its very fibers -until it doesn't exist anymore. (Brain thinks words (already a process -brain feels, brain organizes, brain translates into english) which sends words to muscles, which translates into written english, hand and arm pulling into "h"'s and "i"'s, the paper -a ground to reach and stand on, helps. Watch the ball-point move up and down horizontally, these are my thoughts! And its so automatic! Writing is an incredible thing.) [Editors note: I was not stoned. This is an insight into the weight of time]
Anyway she goes to get her guest. He is one of those types who imitates the media, his movements mocking the gangly, spastic comedians of theatre, his clothes a mixture of rapper/skate boarder. He's "pretty" with a tiny knitted black cap and iridescent sunglasses, one earphone hanging from his ear. I decide to take control of the situation. I'm bored of falling into my traditional rut of relinquishing all my rights as an individual, and my rights as a woman, however imagined and created they may be. I'm going to make them respond, see if they come up with anything new and creative. I start bold. He's my husband. When are you going to bring my dad cola nuts? I want a tye-dye boubu with matching shoes and purse and earrings. Lets have the marriage in Nguekokh, its prettier and cleaner than Djilor. Ok, I'll see you tomorrow. You're going to come visit me? I refuse to give him my phone number, after he sees my cell phone, I think he catches on.
They annoyingly walk me to the edge of Djilor, something unnormal, and trapping me to their path in the sand, he has my bike -I cannot stop in the store and buy mangoes, I cannot jump on my bike and run. He is trapping me in his playful talk, I cannot make a polite, mildly humorous parting comment and leave in peace. He seems to be telling me -if I want to leave, if I am not interested, I have to be blunt and rude in front of Saku, and soil my relationship with her. [Editors note: She was my counterpart for ActionAid]
I am, and I finally get on my bike -pushing off the pedal in one long glide -my tires rudding against the pale red sand and mixed hardened ash white clay -I am free.
Only until tomorrow morning. Where he shows up under the juvenile mango tree outside the school yard, wearing the same thing. His mouth has a weird way of twitching -the corners pulling up in forced comfortability, his lips flattening and pursing to look attractive, as ease, in control, superior. His cheeks twitch and his eyes roll back into his head in annoyance, he's trying to suppress me, belittle me -get back on top of me. His position does not humble him, does not make him insecure -at least not in a way recognizable to him. No, if anything his primary response is infuriation -he laughs at me and tries to make me ashamed of myself. I feel a fire from the pit of my soul spread through my whole body -I will NOT be ashamed of me -however pimply, sweaty, and generally awkward I look./ And it doesn't matter if he's robbing me of the only nutrition I'm going to have that day -I finally understand gud naam, and I put my spoon down. He should be ashamed.
He refuses to talk to me for the rest of the day. If I'm not a girlfriend I'm not a person. I went from being an object of utmost value to something not even worth noticing. Why? I hurt his pride. I am nothing. I am trash. His jittering face turned to a sneer -(just like Mamadou)- he continues to laugh at me -though now it is beyond belittling me. Failing to respond to his maneuvers, he has done all that is left to his 7th grade mind. He has removed me from the circle of humanity, he has removed me from the realm of womanhood. The ultimate insult. But that's where I originated anyway. His brief efforts are the only thing that, outside my control or willingness, temporarily lifted me out.
He asked me immediately, when we finally entered my room -his eyes darting all over my body and mouth and face -his muscles firing -if I have a boyfriend. Yes. (What would I do if I didn't, which, in real terms of my heart I don't.) But don't I miss him, he pushes, with a flick of the eyelashes at my chest. Has it been a long time? Yes and no, and I will see him soon, thank you. How to I tell him, and others, Fary. Seynabu, Nabu Ndiaye (Salane says "Don't you know, its the law now that men can't hit their wives) all say, the women was going out and coming home late every day from work, her husband told her to stop, but she didn't listen, so he hit her. And she brought him to the police. No one should do that. No one should bring their husband to the police. He is their master, kilifa. He gives you a house and everything you need, of course you have to listen to him. How am I trapped in this conversation? I am wrong. I am forced to defend myself, like a spoiled selfish brat. How do I tell them that its his eyes, that don't see me as a person -that I refuse. I see myself, and in the future, whether he knows himself or not, or cares to know me, I know things that will come up, my ideals, my way of life, the things I refuse, the things I surrender to, that will make him despise me. That he will not be able to see or appreciate or love what will make it worth sticking around. This I have to prove to a 40 year old just married woman who's husband visits her 2 days a week to sleep in her chair and fills his belly (2 days in Passi, 2 days in Djilor, with his other wives) and they're already fighting. Again-get me out of here -but I am trapped by these stupid Senegalese rules. The only option left to me is to turn and twist my head and avert my gaze.
Though he refuses to talk to me and even tries to break me, I am forced to 'take care' of him. Lay out the basin (do I know the word for it?) and the bowl, and the spoons, get him water, buy him attaya -sit next to him. I want to scream and throw up and scratch his eyes out but I am tied here by these Senegalese rules or risk rupturing relationships in the village and never living down the talk. Tiring myself out defending or apologizing my actions until I die. What a horrible society! Get me out of here! Of course, it is worse for me in this way, because, being language deficient I do not benefit from the positives of communal think.
I hope in that moment -where I changed from ultimate object of desire to object of despise -there was a lag in which he felt the weight of my humanity. I think, or like to imagine, I might have seen it, a slacking of his eyelids. A scramble, a momentary loss of control immediately scooped up by falsities. But for a moment he fumbled. For a moment he was scared. He saw a human, but his pride made him forget it.
In that moment, what did he see? He saw his foolishness at the easiness with which he could catch a toubab. Hr realized the breadth between where I am and where he is. He asked me about my education. Did I graduate high school? Did I go to university? How many years?
Did he see anything about who I am? Was he even interested? I don't think so. There were plenty of opportunities to try to know -to get a key to see god from another radius. Instead he chose to tell me that my shirt was sexy and I shouldn't wear it. It was bad. And why did I have so many pimples on my chest? I never felt so full of pride to put a spoonful of lightly tomoatoed oily crunchy rice in my mouth -feel it go into my stomach. Eat it up. I'm gross. This is me. But control your mouth and your eyes. What you are doing is bad. But I can wear and do and say anything I want. I am human looking for another human.
So very few of us can understand.
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