I Will Go

“J’irai à Kolda, écouter la Kora”, “I will go to Kora, to listen to the Kora” Even more unlikely! The Casamance region my be the country’s granary, its inhabitants are considered too rough, too strict, not crooked enough or way too below the national average. A few notes from the harp from Sahel would have eased my tensions. My back is strung like a bow. My empty stomach is tired of churning.

But I am far away from the Mandingo virtuosos. I am floating away and the train is getting closer to its destination. I have missed the last occasion to hop off. The last villages drift by. Young children are waving at us. I let my eyes linger on a donkey, a few huts, fodder piled up in a corner of a field. I hang onto these fleeting and colorful images. And what if I really had opened Pandora’s box? Weren’t all these ghosts better off locked up in the trunk of oblivion?

Fourth phone call. After a brief exchange, Omar remained silent for a long time. I wanted to meet him. I wanted to meet my progenitor. I could hear his breath, short and irregular, which betrayed the thousands of questions that he must have been asking himself. A few sighs, quickly suppressed. I understood he was giving in by his only question:

“How will you recognize me?”

I felt jubilant, but also a little stupid. If this man on whom I had focused so much of my attention in these past months ever passed me in the street, I wouldn’t even recognize him. I was running after a wild dream and he was counting on this to get rid of me. Another long silence at the end of the line, only on my side this time.

Confronted by my silence, he answered himself:

“If you are my daughter, I mean if you truly are my daughter, I will know it.”

The low shock of the engine against the bumper startles me out of my torpor. The passengers seem to be as much in a hurry to get off as they were to get on. Disheveled racing, elbow shoves, headbutts. I am the last one to get off. Slowly. Almost backwards. When the platform is already almost deserted. At least I will not have to try to recognize my features in every middle-aged man I pass. Athletic? Chubby? Graying? Pleasant? In my head, I give him all the possible attributes.

I pace up and down for a short moment, then walk up to the end of the platform where the tracks leave again in the opposite direction: Gandiol, Louga, Kébémer, Tivaoune, Thiès, Rufisque, Dakar. I cannot take my eyes off the dirty roadbed glazed with urine. I resent walking on it. It is hopeless, but I stay there, not knowing where to go. It is like standing on a cliff with a long drop under my feet. I am hungry, I am hot and I have a dry lump in my throat preventing me from swallowing. What if he doesn’t show up? “J’irai à Saint Louis…” Can’t find a rhyme for that one either. None of those variations sound right. My eyes suddenly blur. If this had been a true abyss, at this very moment I would have found it difficult to resist its call.

I suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder. A large and warm hand. I do not dare turning around yet, but I know he is here. I know he has come.

“J’irai à Saint Louis, remonter ma vie”, “I will go to Saint Louis, to put back together my life…”

*This story was originally published in ‘Nouvelles du Sénégal’ by Magellan Editors in Paris

Translated by Sébastien Doubinsky and Casey Harding.

Nafissatou Dia Diouf is a Senegalese author whose fiction, poetry, children’s literature, and philosophical essays, portray diverse topics as they relate to her country such as education, marriage, polygamy, maternity/paternity, the influence of the West, the roles of business and government, and the power of the media. Diouf provides her reader with a comprehensive yet critical view of Senegal and shows how her homeland is affected by and reacts to the changes it currently faces.

Sebastien Doubinsky is a bilingual French writer, born in Paris in 1963. An established writer in France, Sébastien Doubinsky has published a series of novels, covering different genres, from classical literature to crime fiction, as well as a few poetry collections. His novels, The Babylonian Trilogy (Goodbye Babylon in the US), The Song of Synth and Absinth have been published in the UK and the US. Three of his poetry collections, Mothballs, Spontaneous Combustions, and Zen And The Art of Poetry Maintenance have been published in the UK. He currently lives in Aarhus, Denmark, with his wife and his two children, where he teaches French literature, culture and history.

Casey Harding is a Managing Editor for The Missing Slate.