DATE: 
24 APRIL 2023 


TOPICS: 
PROSE, ART, LIFE

I come to in a dream. A little black boy walking the red desert to the horizon. To the left of him is the moon and to the right the sun, squeezing the sky and all its stars into a liminal space. No shoes. Just bare feet to meet the hot sand and the smell of burning soles accompanied by a moisture sucking breeze cling to his ankles. Or maybe mine. At event horizon stands a black girl who is five and in a dress tenfold as old. Her ebony skin stops at her ankles after which her feet become ivory. The little black boy blinks three times and opens his eyes to stand next to her. Her teeth are dazzling white, her tongue as pink as Lake Retba and she smiles,

“your dream has been waiting for you.”

I tip toe to take a closer look at her eyes, feel the halting breath of my lungs as I inch my eyelids closer to hers…until my iris hovers centimeters above her iris and our eyelashes entangle. Suddenly, an endless pit expands from the center of her pupils and to the corners of her sclera. The little black boy falls into the universe of her left eye and the desert grows dark. I come to on top of the plateau of a great pyramid. There is no sun, no moon, no stars, no girl. Just clouds that shift between grey and purple pressing onto an earth filled with countless pyramids stretching into the expanse of the Sahel. Coming to the edge, the little black boy jumps from ten thousand meters onto the sand below. He hears his bones crunching at his ankles. He stands and walks up the stairs to the top of the same pyramid. Then he jumps down again. And again. And again. And again for the passing of an eternity. I wake up to find my legs tingling under the cover of my white bedsheets.

This is the universe. I am reminded of the time my mother took me into the desert to visit a holy man. That night I slept outside with my cousin and uncle and marveled at how I can see every star in existence. The next morning the holy man called on Allah, spat on my forehead three times and gave me a bucket of magic water to bathe in. I emptied the bucket above my head but still didn’t know who or what I needed protection from. I asked my mother why and she baptized me in the depravity of the world. Evil tongues, evil eyes, demons calling your true name at noon, the denizens of midnight, Débo Bismillah who lives at the bottom of the lake and her fingers are blades.

I dream of the women in my family. There she is, sitting on her rug and holding her prayer beads—my father’s sister, Gogo Aissata, who traveled life for so long that the bottom of her feet gave in, rotted and now she no longer moves. When she sees me, she prays safety down my spine and thanks Allah that I can walk. As a child, I rode a wagon pushed by two donkeys to visit her. To celebrate, she had a bull slaughtered and, with a wave of her fan, transmuted into my favorite meal of beans and meat. As the sun set in the courtyard she recited her spells, bathed me in potions and begged for my protection because the death of her three babies imparted the savagery of life onto the soles of her feet. Before we went to sleep I asked my aunt how she was able to fan me the entire night. She said that in the middle of the dark, a demon grabs her wrist so that she never stops.

“Na gha def?” How could the words fall so clumsily out of my mouth? “How are you? How are you? Na gha…def?” Do I know where I am? The little black girl smiles. The red desert laps at her ivory feet. Her teeth, dazzling white, and her tongue as pink as Lake Retba. She lived across the street two houses down from the house facing us but I forgot her when I left and remembered her when I came back. No shoes. Just ashy undersides of her feet on sand and a yellow dress tenfold as old as her. What did she do? What is she doing? What will she do? She was poor and I wrote an essay about her. I did not know her. I saw her playing in the sand with no shoes on, wild and free. The daughter of a wild woman living in a dark house with no electricity or running water. When I was younger my mother got into a fight with her mother and both of them went back to their houses to get knives before meeting again to continue where they left off. The maidservant attending me saw me watching her and ushered me into my grandmother’s house. I know her, now. “Na gha def?” The little black boy tip toes to take a closer look into her eyes.

I come to in a courtyard. I see women working nourishment and spice into magic to defy the demons who call our true names at noon. I am resting on my grandmother’s lap. Her breasts sag inches from my face, swinging up and down in a calming meditation. The young master forgets himself.

The little black boy is walking the red desert, again. The moon to his left, the sun to his right, the sky and its stars squeezed into a liminal space. He reminds me of old stories. Of Shaytan, of spirits who hang children in trees. Lost children who answered when their true names were called at noon. Children who were up past midnight and ran into the demon who lives in the shadow of the kitchen stove. An endless pit spawns from the center of the little black girl’s pupils and expands to the corners of her sclera. The little black boy falls into the universe of her left eye.

“Ouleye!” I woke to speak and my mother scolds me for calling her name. “Respect your elders,” We turn to see my shoe lying upside down. I gasp in horror and my mother breaks her back. As her spine tumbles from the weight of the shoe, my eyes glaze over into a long unconsciousness.

After an eon, I remember Coumba, my second mother who once forgot to bathe me before school so I cried all the way to class. I never saw her again and the last time I heard of her, it was the middle of December in a distant country full of cold rain and my mother told me she was dead. The only thing between us is silence. I blink and arrive sitting at my aunt’s feet. She tells me of Futa, the desert, the lake, her father, my father, the journey of Coumba who was humble and Coumba who was shameless. Of Débo Bismillah. She tells me not to lose myself or…I forget. I forget. I forget. I blink, she is gone and I find myself on the plateau of a great pyramid. I close my eyes and jump down ten thousand meters.

When I open my eyes, I see a paved road atop a grassy hill. It is night and street lamps illuminate points of refuge for young pilgrims. I haven’t been here yet. 11:59. I see the little black girl standing under the lights. I am older and on my way home, naturally I walk past her. 12:00. I turn and the girl is gone. In her place stands Débo Bismillah and her fingers are blades.

My eyes open and the illusion shatters. The little black boy plummets feet first from ten thousand meters—the air screaming against his eardrums, the wind wrenching his eyelids agape to lock a vision into his psyche. Pyramids crumble into sand and clouds, heavy with rain, rumble from purple to grey as a torrent of pink descends to wash away the debris of ruin. In the span of a second the desert drains away into a pink lake and as he crashes into its surface, he melts into the water, his body reforms as salt and he sleeps suspended in the depths. She is there sitting at the bottom and her fingers are blades. She exhales bubbles up at him and they quietly pop upon reaching the bridge of his nose.


After 786 years, I woke as a false immortal and bled jihad against my god. We fought for 786 prayers and in the end I fell defeated back into the pink lake. I met Iblis in Jahannam and took his realm for myself, I fathered all evil and…but wait. Is this the right story? I open my eyes and she is still sitting there. Bladed fingers sifting through silt. As the 786th bubble burst on the bridge of my nose I knew hubris and fell back asleep.

The prayer call of the mosque wakes me before sunrise. I am back in the courtyard and my grandmother stands in the center. To her left stand the sisters of my mother and to her right stand the brothers. “Bismillahi Rahmani Rahim” she says as I extend my right hand to the first of my uncles. He takes my left and bids me farewell. The right is for temporary departures. He is Kaw Amadou who shares my name. He, like many men in my family, left Senegal to find himself and now lives somewhere isolated where he keeps the window blinds closed from sunlight. Sixteen years later, when his second wife dies to a snake, I wander the forested mountains of a foreign country, drink myself into a stupor and swim in a lake for two hours while accompanied by the pitter patter of a light drizzle. “Give your father my regards.”

The little black boy is suspended in Lake Retba. His knees are up to his chest, his arms hug his shins. He breathes out bubbles of oxygen, miracles, every nightmare, every poison. To sustain himself, he chews on a piece of string tied to his toe. He recites 114 surahs to grow thickened feet. Sometimes, he gasps for air only to suck water into his lungs until a bubble from below bursts on the bridge of his nose.

When I come to I am a child again, walking ten steps behind my father. I take a drag of my cigarette, nicotine hits my brain, I go dark and my father buys me the figurine of Freeza that I want at Walgreens. He called me a week after he found out that I drank and asked me how I functioned. Do I know to look both ways when I cross the street? I laugh, burp, how could he be so foolish? Irish whiskey runs down my throat, I almost vomit. Who is foolish?

“There adheres to the tenderness and most intimate of our love relations a portion of hostility which can excite an unconscious death wish.”

There adheres to the tenderness and most intimate of our love relations a portion of hostility which can excite a conscious death wish. I’ve dreamt his funeral countless times. Counted the number of years left until he quit. 30, 26, 20 years. Thought of poisoning his tea. Felt shame, felt evil, felt catharsis.

He never told me his mother died when he was eight. By twelve he was an orphan and his brother succumbed to illness. He became the man of the house, earning money for his three older sisters. When I found out, I didn’t care, I slept for years without dreams. Now, I dream him everywhere and I wish to hide. Does he feel unloved? Who does he think taught me to be a desert?

I blink. There’s the little black boy curled up in Lake Retba and there is Débo Bismillah blowing bubbles up his nose. He metamorphose before her eyes. His right arm twists back behind his neck, breaks, reforms, then dissolves again as salt. Gasping, bubbles funnel out his nostrils as he bends his head into his spine until he splits into two at the midriff. His left leg ruptures at his pelvis and splinter into ten thousand shards, melting into the lake. He still sleeps. He is silent. In the quiet of adrenaline, his eyelids flutter.

I wake up in a daze—the words of a summoning blazoned across my psyche, compelling me to recite my incantation.

“I can bite his jagged nails out of his cuticles. Jam the shards into the length of my fingers. Lick and suck the blood up and down my pinkie. I can swallow…then grow callus..es. Grow quiet, grow into a man.”

As these last words evaporate from the tip of my tongue, my jaw dislocates and welcomes a bladed finger from the pit of my throat into the ether. Then another emerges and another and another until five sway in the moonlit gloom of my room. The hand grabs hold of my chin and pulls back inside of myself. Compressed ichor rains out, racing down onto white bedsheets to settle into rich red sand. As it pulls searing down, the silhouette of my body shears and ablates into a red dessert against a backlight of ochre timber. A dry breeze plays tug of war with the desiccated remains of my tear ducts. The transformation is complete: I am salt and my fingers are blades.

That night I sat at the threshold of sleeping and got high. I thought of Gogo Aissata and Coumba who was humble and Coumba who was shameless. They were sisters or cousins or neighbors or whoever. They wanted to find something and each set out on a journey looking for it. In a forest or a savannah or a somewhere, they each came to a lake where Débo Bismillah emerged, water slipping down her bladed fingers. Coumba who was humble was humble and found what she wanted. Coumba who was shameless was shameless and maybe died.

I think back to when I visited my family in Senegal for the summer. When my mother took me to see the holy man in the desert. When my grandmother gave me money to buy food when my aunts would cook mbaahal for dinner. When I saw Gogo Aissata's feet and promised to get her shoes with sturdy support. I think of myself in other times and existences. I had my first and third kiss when I was four, memorized my first slaughter at five, became a liar at seven, mastered violence by eight, lost my virginity before ten, became mortal at fifteen, spent months drinking morphine at sixteen, and embraced nihilism at twenty-one.

I laid there for the passing of eons, faking innocence and hiding. When I passed the threshold into sleeping, I dreamed of nothing and me in a pink lake standing next to Débo Bismillah. As we sharpened our fingers against each other’s, a slow screech of scraping metal built up into a crescendo that pierced through my eardrums, jolting me out of my sleepy stupor.