And the night gone by reappears, because if the darkness is deep here it
has the blackness that swallows stars.
I'm sitting in the middle of the red of the sand that divides the road, and
in the middle of the different black of my companions. I have spoken with
you, in the silence of the depths of hearing and of a worn-out wind that
unbalances clothes.
Africa is red and patient, with the smells of all dirts and the expectation
of something undefined that you would call God.
The heat at seven in the morning is not yet ferocious and I take on the
rhythm of this time that asks nothing and expects nothing. I have seen
thousands of bags on the branches, like mistaken flowers, and I have
understood that here every gesture is complicated and lasts, resists all
others, becomes unchanging.
In Africa every thing is long. Every gesture large, measured, difficult.
The sadness with which children set off for school in the early sun of
Dakar, with small braids that pull at their skin and shoes on their feet
for the occasion, speaks of the difficulty each step takes.
I have seen iron shanties and sheets of cut metal on the ground, resembling
a hell on earth, with rust and sand mixed together at the bottom and no
difference between trash and goods for sale (sometimes the same thing), no
separation between the road and nothingness.
Everything gets thrown on the ground, things that have been used, things
that will be used.The road is a continuous time, a home, a prison, a
leftover. No difference, between life and surrender.
The driver always drives along the strip of land next to the road as if he
didn't trust the asphalt and motions to people, orders something to drink
from a small girl who comes out of a hut with a plastic cup, obedient,
without asking anything in return.
Children crowd around the car window to beg for things. Every kilometre we
stop at invisible borders, with soldiers armed to the teeth, the fuse of
the hand grenade so close I could pull it.
The children look at my skin, amazed; I am always "madam", the black youths
that are with me treat me with familiarity. "Give me". "Give me a pen a
chewingum, a jacket, a bottle." I've finished the fags, they went quickly,
a white candy held between outstretched fingers like a holy wafer. I've
taken the pencil out of the twist of my hair; now it will blow about like a
whip on my neck and the necks of people near me, but the little girl who
got the pencil as a gift went away wiggling her hips and waving it about
like a trophy.
My friends from Mauritania touch me lightly with a thousand careless
movements, they do it carefully and gracefully, without offending me. Meyne
tells me he has heard that in Italy the femmes are queens. He has a
brochure of I don't know what and he waves it in front of my face,
concerned because now that we are passing the river, on the border with
Gambia, the heat is really cruel, my defeated and perhaps desperate
appearance must have frightened them. I say that in Italy no one fans me
like this and he answers if that is so they are not kind.
The Senegalese youths who accompany us go through the red tape at office
windows and custom controls. They complain about Gambia and its children,
perhaps more persistent, perhaps beggars. They are convinced that the
problem of this state comes from the fact that they use the language of
their former rulers. "It's an English-speaking country," they explain
scornfully.
The children, flashes of eyes in the dark land, ask for and sell things at
the same time; above all cold water in knotted plastic bags, as in a fun
fair, but it's as though no one had been lucky enough to win the goldfish.
People suck thirstily and then throw the nylon into the heap, together with
everything else, animals and clothing, peels and carcasses, I saw a dead
horse tied to a pole with its legs stiff in the air like paintings of
battle scenes, and donkeys turning into earth, and iron melting under the
sun disintegrate, surrender.
The children are so beautiful, they have torn sleeves, costumes like
contemporary theatre, with one shoulder almost always uncovered, shining
with colour and heat, a sign of insubordination, natural, towards all
clothing and coverings.
Along the edge of the road I can make out obelisks of earth, sculptures in
the form of reddish towers at regular intervals like milestones, I think of
some mysterious rite, the chanting of a prayer that moulds the earth into
the same shape for kilometres, then they tell me that it's the work of
termites, their nests.
Ziguinchor, our destination, is bathed by the river and is fertile, with
mangroves that drink from roots visible in the air, a forest populated by
Christian bandits, waging wars among the different ethnic groups.
Now we understand the reason and the legitimacy of the road blocks, luckily
it's somewhat late to be afraid.
There are markets of jars, used bottles, empty medicine containers.
Everything is for sale, everything that has already been sold, used and
thrown away once before, but the gravel along the road is made up of
shells.
Africa throws its beauty to the wind and conserves refuse, collects it,
holds on to it.
Africa possesses hips that move openly, and meters of seed pearls, the
bimbim that young men with unfathomable magic eyes look for in you with
their fingertips while you dance, and who in their turnings make love
count, make it possible.
Every thing gets touched and is pregnant.
Every thing absorbs the dust and doesn't get enough rain, will never get
the rain that is lacking.
Hands gather the rice in the cooking pots, making circles around the edges,
the same plate, the same fork. I understand the nostalgia for a glass, for
white circles in fingernails. I long for a clean road for my feet, a rest
from the infinite overtures, from the predatory gazes, from the continual
offers that are requests, demands and prayers to mix with them, to become
them for a moment.
What I am or what I would be is far away.
What I am here is a rough sketch of heat, a piece of wood cracked by
drought, a body melting and burning, something like the four-angled cuts in
a mango, something like teeth that sink into it to eat.
Here there is a population used to life as a favour, as concession.
The favour and the mystery of life, by grace received, the necessity of a
godsend, the gift that saves one day, that fills the belly, that slakes the
thirst.
Here is a people that awaits mercy and covers itself with grigrì, amulets
of stitched leather, that covers itself with animated miracles to escape
life's blows.
Here is a people that disturbs impatience and hurriedness, frightens them
and laughs at them. There is an entire world held in the time of others and
its own time, keeping it going indefinitely with its unchanging rules.
Africa is ripe and tired, it gapes wide open and splits on the ground like
a fruit, every thing, every offering and every fall awaits the sun.
Here the days don't pass, the days let you pass, you are held in their
embrace in every part of your body. I am here and I did not stay. If you
come to Africa, she swallows you like a hot mouth and you cannot be
elsewhere, not even in the place where you have always existed.
I shall come back to myself, in future days, and I shall surprise myself by
recovering the gestures, the cleanliness, the rhythm that completely
changes the music of every country, but for now I bounce at every hole in
the broken seat of the car while from the radio, "Africa Unite" Bob Marley
carries on singing.