Diop

Three times he asked me to finish him off, three times I refused. This was before, before I allowed myself to think anything I want. If I had been then what I’ve become today, I would have killed him the first time he asked, his head turned toward me, his left hand in my right.

God’s truth, if I’d already become then what I am now, I would have slaughtered him like a sacrificial sheep, out of friendship. But I thought of my old father, of my mother, of the inner voice that commands us all, and I couldn’t cut the barbed wire of his suffering. I was not humane with Mademba, my more-than-brother, my childhood friend. I let duty make my choice. I offered him only mistaken thoughts, thoughts commanded by duty, thoughts condoned by a respect for human law, and I was not human.

I let you plead with me for reasons that were corrupt, because of thoughts that arrived fully formed, too well dressed to be honest.

Like no one would ever know that Mademba had begged me three times to finish him, that I had remained deaf to his three supplications, that I had been inhuman by obeying duty’s voice. But I was now free to listen no longer, to no longer obey the voices that command us not to be human when we must.

Yes, I understood, God’s truth, that on the battlefield they wanted only fleeting madness. Madmen of rage, madmen of pain, furious madmen, but temporary ones. No continuous madmen. As soon as the fighting ends, we’re to file away our rage, our pain, and our fury. Pain is tolerated, we can bring our pain home on the condition that we keep it to ourselves. But rage and fury cannot be brought back to the trench. Before returning home, we must denude ourselves of rage and fury, we must strip ourselves of it, and if we don’t we are no longer playing the game of war. Madness, after the captain blows the whistle to retreat, is taboo.

I know, I understand that I should not have pushed him with my words to demonstrate a kind of courage I knew he already possessed. I know, I understand that it was because Mademba envied me and loved me at the same time that he went out first, as soon as Captain Armand blew the attack whistle on the day of his death. It was to show me that you don’t need beautiful teeth, you don’t need beautiful shoulders and a broad torso and very, very strong arms and thighs to be truly brave. So in the end I think it wasn’t just my words that killed Mademba. It wasn’t just my words about the Diops’ totem, as hurtful as those grains of metal that fell on us from the sky of war, that killed him. I know, I understand that all of my beauty and all of my strength also killed Mademba, my more-than-brother, who loved me and envied me at the same time. It was the beauty and strength of my body that killed him, it was the way all the women looked at me, at the middle of my body, that killed him. It was the way their eyes caressed my shoulders, my chest, my arms, and my legs, the way they lingered on my well-aligned teeth and my proud, hooked nose that killed him.

Fary was very, very moving. Her voice was soft, like the lapping of the river against fishermen’s canoes on quiet mornings. Fary’s smile was the dawn, her ass round as dunes in the Lompoul desert. Fary had eyes that were both doe and lioness. At times an earth-shattering tornado, at others an ocean of tranquility. God’s truth, I would have lost Mademba’s friendship to win Fary’s love. Luckily, Fary chose me over Mademba. Luckily, my morethan-brother deferred to me. It was because Fary chose me in front of everyone that Mademba stepped aside.

In the words of a Fula proverb: ‘Until a man is dead, he is not yet done being created.

She agreed to marry him out of respect for keeping one’s word, out of respect for Yoro Ba. Penndo had come to love my father because he was her exact opposite. He was as old as an immutable landscape, she was young like the changing sky. He was immobile as a baobab tree, she was the daughter of the wind. Sometimes opposites fascinate each other because of the differences between them. Penndo had come to love my father, the old man, because he contained all of the wisdom of the earth and of the recurring seasons. My father, the old man, idolized Penndo because she was what he was not: movement, joyous instability, novelty.

She held me in her arms and she said nothing more. Like my father, as soon as she left I began to wait for her.

Even if the new isn’t really new, it’s always new for those who, ceaselessly, wash up on the world’s shores, generation after generation, wave after wave. So, in order to find yourself in life, to not lose yourself on the path, you must listen to the voice of duty. To think too much about yourself is to falter. Whoever understands this secret has the potential to live in peace. But it’s easier said than done.

To translate is never simple. To translate is to betray at the borders, it’s to cheat, it’s to trade one sentence for another. To translate is one of the only human activities in which one is required to lie about the details to convey the truth at large. To translate is to risk understanding better than others that the truth about a word is not single, but double, even triple, quadruple, or quintuple. To translate is to distance oneself from God’s truth, which, as everyone knows or believes, is single.

When it’s understood by those for whom it is intended, the story hidden beneath the well-known story can change the course of their lives, can push them to transform a diffuse desire into a concrete act. It can heal them from the sickness of hesitation, no matter the expectations of an ill-intentioned storyteller.