Modou had taken a long, fast walk along the canal; he was dressed in layers like a cabbage, undershirt, shirt, wool jumper, jacket. But still he felt cold, and the chill got worse and worse. He couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the Canal, which he saw in a two-fold light in summertime. Especially at night. He saw the boats moving. The lights were reflected in the water, and it looked as if the water itself was moving. People were drinking water to refresh themselves, different sorts of drinks that seemed to give them new vigour, new life, in that setting full of lights, colour and warmth. It was very generous water. This was the Canal when it was alive. But there was another Canal beyond the petrol stations, beyond the traffic light, which was a dead zone. Even the water was dead. You could see and smell the stink of decomposition and of the city’s rundown outskirts. Every once in a while you saw a patrol of carabinieri or police. It was a soulless canal.
For him getting back home was the greatest comfort, because it meant escape from the freezing cold that he didn’t want to see, but couldn’t help feeling. He was a dreamer, Modou, who imagined he could marry Clinton’s daughter. That was how he thought he would be able to fulfil himself.
He went into the house and as soon as felt the warmth he was able to breath. He turned on the t.v. and sat down on the sofa-bed. Still not satisfied, he switched on the recorder button on the radio, turning the volume down to minimum. From the speaker came the notes of “Bamtaare Afrik”, a song by Baa Ba Mal.
The phone rang.
- Hello!
- It’s Belal here.
- Ciao, how are you! – answered Modou
- May you be in peace!
- Peace alone, God be thanked.
- Listen Modou. I have a problem. There’s a guy who’s just arrived from Senegal and I don’t know where to put him up. There are already 10 of us here. Can you give me a hand and take him in with you?
- I’m not supposed to have anyone here, the landlady doesn’t want me to, and when I tried to sublet once, she stuck the contract under my nose, with the clause prohibiting the presence of anyone who isn’t explicitly named in the contract. But I’ll try and make an exception and keep him here for a while. By now the landlady has understood that we’re honest people and we have nothing in common with the drug pushers.
Belal heard the protests of a voice in the background, saying: “I haven’t been able to sleep since you came in. Who are you talking to?”
- I’m talking to Belal..
- Say goodbye to him, and consider yourself lucky, because so far you’ve done nothing but keep me awake.
Modou put down the receiver after saying goodbye to Belal, just as a key turned in the front-door lock. It was Uouzin, who said as he came in:
- Ciao, you guys, I’m dog-tired. Hard work for piddling wages. I need a rest.
- We didn’t come to Italy to rest, we were sent to work – said Modou.
Uouzin, a tall, well.built young man, almost like a model, lived the life of television. For him, the screen was the only truth that existed. Everything he saw on the screen he believed to be completely true.
- How can you say that? – answered Uoizin – the body needs to rest, to live. Today I worked too hard, 10 hours straight. And then, having to listen to what they say in the factory, there’s no joy in it. My colleague Marco offered me a coffee today, and he asked, ‘do you have coffee where you’re from?’ and then, ‘how much does a kilo of bread cost?’ He didn’t even give me time to answer. Because Marco doesn’t care about listening to me, he only wants to talk about himself. He went on to tell me that every weekend he drives around in his new car, a Honda. And then on Sunday afternoons he rides his motorbike. He told me all the nice things he has in his house, and the sacrifices he has to make to pay for them…. But where’s ‘Mbare?
- He’s sleeping – answered Modou.
- It’s time to wake him up, it’s his shift.
‘Mbare, who up to that moment had been under the covers and looked sound asleep, opened his eyes and then, after a good stretch, got up.
- Yeewu nga (you’re awake) – said Modou
‘Mbare went towards the bathroom without saying anything. He washed his face and mouth, then came out, greeted the others and went into the kitchen to make his dinner. He was always getting into rows with his friends because he couldn’t accept the dreams and illusions they lived by.
Uouzin, ’Mbare e Modou had been living for some time in Milan in a flat on the outskirts of the city, small but not run-down - on the contrary, it was fairly modern. They lived on the margins of reality without realizing it.
For them life was bed, kitchen, bathroom, television and, finally, work. The flat they lived in was their world. On the phone they talked about what was said on t.v.; they watched videos that came from their native country. They frequently quarrelled over their differences. But they never used their fists.
Uouzin immediately took advantage of the fact that no one in the house was sleeping to turn up the volume on the t.v. The news program was on. The news-reader was reading the headlines: The owner of a café-tobacco shop had been killed; from the accent, it seemed it was a foreigner, maybe an Albanian; more boat people had come to shore at Lampedusa; unemployment in the United States was at a historical low, only 4%, based on data of the last three months; the stock market index had fallen dramatically to below 3%; the mayor of ... had walked down the catwalk in an underwear fashion show, dressed only in underpants …
- Did you hear what these Albanians and North Africans are up to? They soil the skin of foreigners. They have to be stopped. They shouldn’t even come to Italy – said Uouzin.
- No, Uouzin, they’re using it against us, don’t you see how they’re winding people up? Who says that the man who killed the tobacconist is an Albanian! That’s what they want people to think – answered Modou
- That’s what the television said, it always tells things the way they are. – responded Uouzin.
- You put too much faith in the television. In fact, the news they give is made on purpose to create a climate of suspicion -
- Are you out of your mind? Just look around you. Look at what the Albanians are doing. They’re everywhere, stealing and making a nuisance of themselves. And then, the Moroccans, the pushers. Any public garden you go into, you see nothing except North Africans selling drugs. That’s the way it is! And it’s us who lose out, honest foreigners who are trying to earn our daily bread by honest work.
- Who says all the North Africans are drug dealers? We all have our good and bad sides. In every people there are those who live honestly and those was break the law. And it’s just not true that all the North Africans in the public gardens are pushing. There are some who are, but there are a lot of them who are only there to enjoy the shade and peace under the trees – added Modou. – One bad potato can spoil a bag of potatoes, like a rotten peanut spoils a bag of peanuts. You’re an immigrant who has a home to come back to after work, you’re lucky and it’s easy for you to be the ‘good one’. But don’t you remember six years ago, when we’d just arrived? We slept in the car, and we had to hide when the traffic cops arrived. You said they were mean because they wouldn’t let us work. And the papers! How did they treat us? Badly. Then we thanked whoever helped us, gave us information, gave us a lift up. Today we’ve become the good ones, because we have a home, because we are here legally. We exist because we work.
- Sure, but even when we had to sleep in the car and could hardly afford to buy a fistful of rice, it never entered our minds to become pushers – Uouzin replied.
- I’ll say it again, only a minority are pushers. And then, who are you to judge the situation of others? Who can say whether if you hadn’t had anything to eat for days and days you might not have thrown yourself into the arms of the people who exploit foreigners to make money on drugs? – insisted Modou - Use your head, of course no one agrees with people who sell drugs, but we have to do whatever we can to prevent that from happening. This winter is a hard one for all of us. We have to unite our forces, gain consciousness, we have to get organized.
The downstairs buzzer sounded insistently. Uouzin said, excitedly:
- I’m sure it’s one of our friends.
- It must be Belal, he called before – added Modou
- Who is it?
- It’s Belal – could be heard clearly through the intercom receiver.
- Come on up – Modou invited him.
A few minutes later Belal was at the door, which meanwhile had been thrown open in a gesture of welcome. He was with his cousin, who had just arrived Senegal. The newcomer shook everyone’s hand.
Ablaye was young, not very tall but sturdy, with strong features and a shaved head. He was thoroughly chilled, and his hands were like ice. He could feel the cold and he liked it, because for him it was almost a sign of the hospitality of the country he had come to. But Ablaye looked very shy, maybe because of the cold, but mainly because of the impact of finding himself in a new environment. He clearly was feeling at the same time fear and respect for this new world he was meeting.
From the window of the house where Modou and the other two friends lived they could see the grey weather, the sun covered by fog and smog.
Seeing the newcomer’s embarrassment, Uouzin asked him, ironically:
- Hot out, huh?
The boy answered with a grunt and a brilliant smile.
Uouzin continued:
Did you ever think it could be this cold?
At first the boy was hardly able to get out a ‘no’, but then he began to relax and respond to everyone’s curiosity. He’d been able to obtain a vista last December, and he’d undertaken the adventure of the voyage. First he’d been in Paris, the city he’d received the vista for. Then he managed to get to Milan by train.
The journey had been pretty ……
- But is the war in Casamance over? - Modou interrupted, and without waiting for the answer, went on – We Africans are really crazy. We fight among ourselves over a piece of land rich in natural resources, and so we destroy our wealth without profiting from it. We don’t realize we are the enemies of our own continent, to satisfy friends we don’t even know.
- Have you seen how beautiful the girls are? – Uouzin asked Ableye - They show their legs all the way up.
But the boy was almost too shy to answer.
‘Mbare, with the paper in his hand, exclaimed:
- It’s going to rain tomorrow, the weather will be bad.
- But when it rains it’s beautiful. It hasn’t rained in our country for ages. Water is a blessing. In Senegal the children go out into the road to play without worrying about getting all muddy. For them, the rain is something that wakes the body up, that purifies it. And when it stops raining they can let their creativity loose, build houses in the sand. There’s no doubt, it’s the best time of all. – Ableye responded.
- Well, here in Italy the weather is nice only when it’s sunny. Then everyone is happy. It’s as though everyone keeps guard on their tongue, they stop swearing – said Modou – but we all have something to complain about all the time. In one place people complain because the sun is shining, in the other because it’s raining. Complaining is innate in mankind. I’d even go so far as to say that man can’t exist without complaining.
Meanwhile the television was showing an advertisement for the release of a new Michael Jackson CD.
- That’s great! - said Belal.
But he’d hardly finished giving vent to his enthusiasm when the television began broadcasting another news program. Once again, while the announcer read the news the image of Lampedusa came onto the screen, and what she was reporting took on importance because it was that more illegal immigrants had arrived on the island. There followed the news of new crimes committed in Milan, the strengthening of the police forces to control the territory, and the mayor’s trip to the United States to learn about zero tolerance -
- You’ve come at a very difficult moment – said Modou to Ableye.
Ableye seemed a bit frightened. But his friend broke in to explain that the fear was deliberately fomented by those who wanted to make people nervous. And he was convinced that it was television itself that was chiefly responsible for this feeling, this imaginary, unreal attitude.
Uouzin said, aggressively:
- You’re talking a lot of rubbish, television is a powerful, certain means of communication, it teaches and informs people. Thanks to television we can be in any and every part of the world, our lives are longer, we can prolong our lives from a few bare meters to thousands of kilometres – Uouzin was almost attacking.
- But Modou replied: Do you remember that game we used to play when we were kids? We created a moving picture by hanging up a thin white cloth, and behind it we put lighted candles and cardboard figures that we moved. The audience saw the shadows and laughed. It seemed like reality to them, not make-believe, and that’s why they believed in it. Our game worked because there was light and shadow, and we kids were happy to make those images, which were real for us, too.
The games children play are a mirror of today’s reality, and tomorrow’s as well. They are the great teachers who need an audience to listen to them. And television is just like our movie theatre. Where someone manipulates reality, and makes people believe it’s the truth.
What is worse is that television is a dangerous game, and doesn’t admit that truth is relative. Truth is subjective.
- You’re putting the blame on television – Uouzin replied.
- It’s an instrument manipulated by men – Modou repeated.- Can we ask them to be objective and go into things in depth and give us time to listen and understand?
- Now the television screen was showing images of Kosovo and announcing NATO’s ultimatum against Serbia.
- Fantastic! - shouted Belal – now you’ll see how America will fix it all, like in Iraq, and I’m getting ready to go to America to visit my girlfriend, over there they don’t have any intelligent missiles.
- Television is a vampire that sucks people’s blood, it sucks out all objectivity and depth and turns everything into banality – Modou repeated – Today they’re talking about Kosovo, so probably they’ll talk less about immigrants and whatever else is going on.
Tomorrow there’ll be something new going on to capture our attention and take the place of everything else, whether Kosovo or some other war. The great thing is that television can’t survive without something new happening.
Saidou Moussa Ba was born in Dakar in 1964 and has been in Italy since 1988. Alessandro Micheletti, born in 1951 in Milan, has worked as a publishing consultant and now works as a librarian. The collaboration between the two of them began in the early nineties and continued for years, leading to the publication of two texts, La promessa di Hamadi and La memoria di A.
Saidou Moussa Ba continues his cultural activities through involvement in various initiatives aimed at fostering intercultural understanding in schools and elsewhere.