Journal Excerpt: 1/14/09

Wednesday night.

The men are at my house with Agri. We are talking inventory, about the magasin, about animal count, and carts and who still hasn’t paid when Fati calls something over the fence to Oumarou. I am surprised she would interrupt us. I cannot catch what she says. With it, the air changes. Everyone looks behind us, out to the bush, and the men are on their feet, flashlights click on, and they are all running into the bush, except Agri. “Ifo?” I ask him, “Ifo?” What? I don’t understand the Zarma so he says, “pleurer. Crier. Boro crier.” And then I hear it: the wey wey wey of mourning. It’s more than one woman; voices together crying out into plain darkness. The moon hasn’t even risen. You can see dots of light coming through the grass from all directions following the cries.

We are on our feet now, walking to the pump where Fati is. We are searching into the night for some hint of who? what? Agri wants Tata’s number. “Tata?” I ask. “Alhassan,” he says. Before now I don’t know his nickname. Tata answers, but no news yet; they do not know yet. Agri asks Fati for a mat. “Ay ma jingar,” he says, I should pray. I remember the speakers in town went off while we were meeting. We didn’t stop for the seven o’clock prayer. Haouate is there now, her eyes somewhere else. I think, “I hope her ganji doesn’t come out tonight.” Everyone is leaving. “Ay go ga ma jirbi,” she tells me with a stern voice. I don’t understand. “Tired? Or you’re cold?” I ask because she’s shaking, and there is wind tonight. “No,” she says, “scared.” And next to me her teeth chatter and her body vibrates. Is she joking, I wonder? Haoua is always joking. But her eyes say, don’t wonder that. I want to put my arm around her, for her, for me; but I think, they don’t do that, they don’t hug. So I lean into her. I show her I am standing straight and strong and know her well enough for our arms to touch. I want to ask, what’s happening? I don’t understand what’s happening. We stay a few minutes like that: her body, wrapped in a zara, shaking into me; and then she moves away. While we listen to the wails, and the dogs’ bark coming across the grass, I feel like all the leaves that touch my ankles are snakes, and every fly a spider on my face or neck.

Oumarou calls while Agri prays in my concession with an update I can’t understand. People the whole time asking, “Was someone sick over there?” People answering, “Always.” Mari’s children come bringing food for me and the men. Maybe Mari hasn’t heard? She must have heard. I tell them to leave it on the bench beneath the Garbai tree. Abdul Karim, tied with a pagne to Hadiza’s back, has been crying. Maybe it’s just the cold, or tiredness. We cannot cry. I cannot ask questions. I want to say, just speak in English, please, speak English!

After he prays, Agri sees the tassas of food, but says he must go home. “Without eating?” Fati says, “You should eat.” He nods down, excuses himself, mumbles he must go. I offer my light to get him to his poporo, but he declines and finds the bike in the dark. We hear him kick the engine to life and ride off following his one dim headlight.

At the pump we stand waiting. Our bodies are stiff, bracing ourselves. We wait until we see the lights of the men jogging back. “You see,” says Haoua pointing, “I go ka.” They are coming. But when they arrive there are a few muttered words, and nothing. Fati says we should bring the food back to Mari’s. We will all eat there. I pick up a tassa and carry it to the men’s spot before joining the women. Voices are hushed so the children can’t hear and now I am a child. We eat millet with sauce; spoons reach into the bowl angry. Now and again I hear, “Agri didn’t eat?” “He should have eaten.” “Did he go home without eating?” And through the cracks I hear, “whose child?” and “his mother’s brother, or was it sister?” The men finish and carry food to town for the elders, for their mothers, to hear what people in town are saying. When the conversation changes to every night dinner talk, I feel my breathing resume normally. I put my spoon down having not eaten much. “I’m tired,” I say, “I’m going to bed.”

Now at my desk, writing by lamp, I think there is really wind tonight. I hear cries again, followed by dogs barking everywhere. Did it start again? Is it grieving? Maybe just the usual circus of animals speaking through the night. Tonight an edge to everything. The tall grass, the torn millet stalks, they are whispering. I cannot decipher the hum. The chairs still in the sand where the men sat, ghosts, pushed back at odd angles.