And his heart was quiet in the night

This is a lost entry, written long ago, about my first time in Nouakchott. It's wicked long, so sorry....

Let me tell you about Yaqob-Amidou ould Njaay.

It's difficult to know where to begin. It's difficult to know how to tell this story in a way that isn't trite or laundry-list-esque or garbled with melodramatic detail…. but I suppose the best way to begin the story of this bizarre and lovely day I had is to start at the beginning, and that was at the marché Capitale.

The marché Capitale is probably like any number of other frenetic, open-air, third-world markets with its crazy, cozy disorderliness, its dirt, and smothering crowds, and has probably been described, or at least its more famous proxies, by legions of other pretentiously literate Western travelers just like myself. So I'll spare you- just picture those other markets that have been the buzzing backdrop of all those spy movies and adventure novels and remove a bit of the color, cast a pallor over it and you'll have it about right.

I wasn’t looking for it, the market, I was looking for something else, and because I couldn’t find it I was going to leave. And then I was looking for a cab.

Across the street, jammed-up and filled with cars I saw a man and then our eyes met. He was young (my age) and dressed in Western clothes, a white long-sleeved tee with something flashy emblazoned on the chest, a knit skull-cap, an urbanly cool one, trendy jeans and non-plastic sandals. He had a little goatee and a good chin, and his eyes were widely spaced. He smiled and I smiled, I think we both looked twice, and then he crossed to me through the trash and the river of cars. He told me afterward that it was because he knew in that instant that I was all alone in the city, and needed his help, that we had formed a connection that passed beyond words. (He’s like that). But at the moment I didn’t know any of that. I thought he might have just been a nice man from whom I could ask directions, and so that’s what I did.

I’ve had a bit of trouble in Nouakchott, because, unlike my village I can never tell who speaks Hassaniya, and who only "speaks" Hassaniya – it makes me a bit hesitant. I’m pretty confident otherwise about my ability to immediately discard the odd bubble of foreignness that inevitably surrounds me here, by speaking a language no one expects me to know, and by being cheekier than anyone expects me to be. But speaking Hassaniya to Pulaar or Wolof people feels creepy and imperialist, like Mauritanians speaking French to me – ‘I’m not French, you’re not French, so what are we doing?’

Anyway, it turns out that Yaqob is the child of a Pulaar father and a Moor mother, in other words a born bilinguist, so our communication got along just fine. And I was as cheeky as ever.

From the beginning, he took my hand and led me around like a little child, I became his pet in an instant. He must have thought I wanted to buy something that I could not find, he must have thought that I needed a guide. And though I almost immediately realized I had been misunderstood, I allowed him to drag me along through the thick crowds like a dog on a leash because of several reasons, 1) because I am weak willed and want everyone to like me, (even at a cost to me personally) and 2), I want things to always progress smoothly, like a screenplay and 3) because he was handsome (they all are) and 4) because he was tall and elegant and 5) because I was hypnotized.

A little later, when we were wandering through the labrynthine dark booths of identical shops of the marché, where he seemed to know everyone, where he dressed me up in new clothes and sandals, zipping and fastening and unbuckling me, mannequin-like, I though he might be a scam artist. But I didn’t stop because I thought "Oh my god, I’m being scammed, how exciting!" If you think about it, it would have been a pretty good scam- a well-heeled (seeming), cleaned up young man seeks out suckers (tourists), trolls them around to buy overpriced junk and then swings by later to take his cut off the top. The only trouble is that tourists/whities are so rare here that I’m not sure anyone could make a living out of being parasitic in this way, and in any case, it wasn’t true.

Then later, when he invited me back to his house to drink tea, as we strolled, winding through the neighborhood-y streets of cinquieme, people staring at me like the misplaced fragment of a strange dream, hopping from one ancient cab to another, ducking into dark epiceries (« Do you seen anything you like ? » he asked, playing the host, as if I couldn’t have made my way around the boutique blindfolded. I picked out a package of biscrème coconut cookies and a coke,) and when he scored a dime-bag of pot from a chum on the street in one casual, fluid exchange, I thought he might be a prostitute, but I didn’t stop because I thought, "Oh my god, I’m going to get laid!"

And finally, when we were back in his room-after I had greeted his startled old mother- his poor little threadbare, yet meticulously arranged, plywood shack, postered with old Nokia cell-phone adds (cool, urban asians, hip whities with pixie cuts) partitioned by ratty bed-sheets, and furnished with mattelas, where he rolled joints like a practiced pro, spit-wetting the paper with slow licks of his pink tounge and smoked them like he was sucking air, where (the smoldering joint in one hand) he tea-ed me (to tea being a verb here) and layed me down to rest on his tacky, motel-esque comforter, and told me his wishes and cares, I began to realize what he actually was, which was sad and strange and slightly crazy, moody, haunted, childish yet selfless, full of color, full of ego and longing, half finished, tragic and doomed. At the same moment I realized that I should get my little self the hell out.

But by then I was trapped, sort of, and wasn’t going anywhere. I was stymied, again, by (courtesy, but also) this weird kind of curiosity, a for-the-wrong-reasons sense of fearlessness that comes from putting less stock in safety than in avoiding dull-ness, which afflicts me here. At home in the US, my sense of curiosity was always deadened by routine, by a rationalism and a crippling self-consciousness. Here, it’s not restrained by anything, and more and more this makes me believe what they say about the cat.

Yaqob-Amidou brushes the dust from his sandals (and mine) with a little broom before he lays them to rest on a low, uneven table of scrap-wood. Yaqob-Amidou wraps everything in crinkly plastic bags, like my old shirts –after he dressed me in new ones – and cell phones. Yaqob-Amidou dabs me with cheap cologne and lends me his jeans and fixes the way my shirt falls.

Over the hiss and bubble of the boiling tea, Yaqob-Amidou told me about how we were brothers, he and I, about how his mother was now my mother as well. I couldn’t help but think she might not have agreed. He showed me the amulets on his arms and ankles, and told me how they protected him from all people who wished to harm him, and that if someone tried to strike him they would fail. One was carved from wood and beautiful, and one was a single braceleted bead and one was a piece of frayed black yarn around his ankle.

He told me about how he liked toubabs, though I couldn’t understand his reasons why, and that now he was a toubab because we were one and the same, and brothers. « My mother is your mother » he repeated, « my home is your home, » but by now his eyes were heavy and marujauna glazed and as he draped his long arm over my shoulder it was hard to tell where he ended and where the smoldering weed began. He breathed smoke in my face and showed me clips of softcore porn he had stored on his cell-phone. « Black and white, » he said, gesturing to the black man and the Latino-ish woman on the screen. It was hard to see what they were doing, it was small and fuzzy, but it was clear enough that this was something not in the possession of the average Mauritanian. Yaqob-Amidou was nothing if not an irregular Mauritanian. I thought he might try to kiss me then, but he didn’t.

After tea, we went to the baths, which though it might sound like something luxurious, one should remember where we are, and that it was the cold season (ish_shte). It was frigid. Sixieme, where Yaqob lives, is pretty much a classic shanty-town, with corrugated tin and plywood shacks flung down in disarray over a few square kilometers, with no plumbing (obviously), and in a central part of the neighborhood there is a cement building with stalls and drains where you were given a bucket, a scrap of plastic sack to scrub with and a sliver of soap for 100 ougiyas.

When he mentioned the baths, I was thinking steam and/or at least warm water (why was I thinking that?) I thought we might have taken one together – the logistics of this and their improbability didn’t worry me much at the time. But a no go on the joint bathing. Strike # 2.

I wanted to go back to my hotel room. I was angry that I had just used my time doing something I had to do in my village every day, when I had a hot shower just waiting to be used by me for the first time in six months. Still, I didn’t go. It was like I was drowning, but without the danger of death – just the wonder of the water and the wasted time.

Then we went out again, after he had styled me up in new and borrowed clothes, (my orange, assymetrical sweater, his high-fashion jeans) fussing with my shirt for an absurd lenghth of time, with a cigarette hanging from his lip, and fixed in expressionless concentration.

There’s a word in Hassaniya, "yisseder" which means "to walk around" and because there is almost always nothing else to do in Mauritania, it’s also a legitimate pass-time. On the street outside his family’s shed, we caught a little green and yellow (cab) heading up further into 6ieme. I think. To be honest, I was hopelessly, yet unimportantly, lost. "Yissedering" in Nouakchott can and does involve the periodic jumping in of cabs, which are so plentiful and cheap and easy and perfect here that they become a seamlessly melded part of the beautiful game.

After less than a minute we hopped out, and broke my clumsy 1000 ougiya bill (these are dead weight) at an epicerie to pay the driver, who waited patiently, black-howlied and cigarette-ed listening to his cassettes of Mauritanian wailing in the darkness of the smoky interior.

Then we ducked into the black alley and wove through back-streets, and emerged again near a ‘restaurant’ on a quiet path. (please forget all images that this word conjures for you) It was, if I may be so bold, a working-class restaurant, much unlike the western ersatz and patrony establishments I had been frequently recently before. No mod-chic plates, or waiters ( please), just a small closet of a room with a grimy fan blowing, two small tables with plastic chairs pushed together and a couple of howlied figures hunched over their grub bowls. Ironically, a few days before I would have felt more comfortable here than in the former, from all my time in the no-frills village, but a few days in Nouakchott had begun to draw out my buried Western self.

Plus there was the orange sweater.

Yaqob anchored me down in one dirty plastic patio chair and breezed out the curtained door. For the next 15 minutes it was his headquarters of sorts, he popped in and out frequently as he made the circuit of the surrounding shops, a wannabe tailor's, a friend's music stall, just big enough to be stuffed with two enormous, blaring speakers, etc.

He was scheming, trying to figure out a way to get 30,000 ougiyas (like a 120 bucks) by tomorrow – some sort of debt he owed, or so I had gathered. Earlier he had told me :

"I have a problem to the tune of 30,000 ougiyas at the marché"
"Okay," I said, then after a moment offered, "I’m sorry." I knew where this was heading and tried to change the subject. He then reminded me that we were brothers, (I had almost forgotten), that he had welcomed me into his home and helped me when I had (apparently) needed it (absolutely, he had). And that what goes around comes around. That wasn’t quite how he put it, but it came out smooth, floating on his smoky breath as he crouched in front of me, looking down.

I said what I say to everyone else who asks me for money (which is everyone) –that I don’t have a lot of it. I didn’t bring any money from America, I don’t have any money in America and Peace Corps only pays me enough to live on. It never seems to penetrate very deeply.

"Oh, no, no." he said, looking hurt. "I didn’t ask you to give me the money, I only want you to give me some money." I wasn’t sure I knew what the difference was but soon enough we stopped talking about it when he grew more interested in performing his strange and somewhat pitiful dance routine to his tape Sénégalese music.

But honestly, though it’s true I don’t get payed very much , just enough to get by, and though that 30,000 represents two thirds of my monthly stipend, I still could have probably given him half that, or even the whole thing with out suffering too great a loss. Nothing would be at stake for me, (unless you count the cushion of money which allows me to periodically leave my village, and thus remain sane). I will always get more. I have no fear of that. That is the difference between us. So the issue becomes I could, but why should I ? With Yaqob-Amidou that question was easily answered. It’s not so easily answered with everyone else who asks. Especially when they live in your village and when they give you tea and biscuits and when you care about them.

How do you say ? "I can’t give you money because I think you’re going to waste it" or "I’m trying to help you help yourself," or "I want to break the cycle of paternalism." I don’t know the Hassaniyan words for those things, and even if I did, sometimes it feels like the only one people want to hear is the one spelled C-A-S-H.

At the restaurant where Yaqob had installed me, I stuck out like an overdressed sore thumb in my new digs, amongst the tired, frumpy workers who had no one to cook for them at home (the only reason any self-respecting traditional Mauritanian would eat at a restaurant ). I wanted to leave the poor men in peace so I wandered over to the little music shack to see Yaqob. He was perched on a small, broken bench, leaning against the wall of the music stall, fiddling with his phone, trying to fix the ringer. He looked glum.

He showed me the phone. "When someone calls, it doesn’t ring. Only the lights light up." He made me call him to demonstrate, "See ?" he said, pointing to the flashing LEDs, "the lights light up." I nodded, and watched him for a minute. "What’s wrong with you ?" I asked. This is literally the most common phrase in Hassaniya. "Nothing," he said, frowning, "I am very happy."

Then suddenly as if roused he said he wanted me to tell him a story, in English, so that he could practice listening. "When I listen I understand almost everything." Right. He got up and started walking, me trailing behind, and after a moment he glanced over at me and said, "Speak, you !" (in English)

Then I told him the story of the 3 little pigs (I know), because it was the only thing I could think of on the spot. He kept nodding his head sagely, like he understood, (he didn’t, not a word) and I tried to use hand motions to make it interesting, but really, what I’ll always remember, is how impossible it was to predict, this event, me walking a dark, humming street in the very ethnic heart of Nouakchott, telling a children’s story to a moody and slightly crazy African in a language nobody understood but me. It’s like talking to ghosts, or maybe being one.

He wanted me to come have tea with a friend. I had already secured my escape route for later, saying I had to get back to my hotel because I was leaving for Sénégal early in the moring. (A half-truth, though a necessary one) He had a plan – we would spend the night at his place catch an early taxi in the morning and we would all go to Sénégal together. Just him, me and my, as yet, unknown American friends. But, I knew what he was doing- he was planning an escape. He wanted asylum in this world which he thought existed and which partly did, of people he hadn’t met, of freedoms he couldn’t experience, of some measure of sex(uality) and alcohol, and carelessness, and easy, taken-for-granted powers, and simple, forgotten-about rights, and all other manner of things one can only find here in small pieces, like the broken up parts of an asteroid that fell to earth.

Still, for me, this is where his character takes on a complicated sort of sadness – because I could sympathize with him, he is something that his country isn’t ready for, he doesn’t really fit here, in a country run by a displaced (and racist) bedouin culture, and that his naive yearning for something fulfilling, because it is stifled, takes on the stunted forms of this superficiality of clothes and manner, and this chemical habit.

Though that hardly makes him any kind of martyr, or even unique, because who can’t these things be said about ? I guess my point is that it’s all the sadder for being common, and that what he wanted to escape was not persecution or violence but the dissatisfaction of his life. God. That’s the oldest and most unsolvable riddle in the book kiddos, and makes me suspect that if he was able to manage flight, all he would find would be a change of scenery.

Still, I can never resist tea, so we hissed down the next cab we saw and were off in a flash of green and yellow………

--To be continued--