Uld Mohamadi Bah Birds of Nabaa

A Mauritanian Tale
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-913043-44-5
Verlag: Banipal Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

Birds of Nabaa is a tale of physical and spiritual journeys, from the narrator's beginnings in Nabaa, a remote Mauritanian village, whose herds lead the community according to their own inscrutable instincts, to life in Madrid, the Gulf states and Guinea, where his work as an embassy accountant takes him, and back to Nabaa and Nouakchott. Inspired by the Sahara of his childhood and devoted from an early age to the vagabond life of the pre-Islamic poets, the narrator's constant life on the move in search of the inner stillness known only to desert dwellers leads him back always to the music, song and poetry so much a part of Mauritanian life and the spiritual universe of Sufism. The narrator's travels take him to the village of Kanz al-Asrar near a tributary of the Senegal River, an area so fertile it is like a lush paradise. However, two and more years without any rain create drought, wells dry out, livelihoods shatter, and dreams turn to disturbing and nightmarish premonitions of disaster. The burning fire of the sun is winning its eternal struggle with the hidden water that the clouds plant in the depths of the sand. As desertification takes hold, that paradise of southern Mauritania and of Nabaa gradually declines and the waves of migration, always a feature of life in the Sahara, intensify.

Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah is a writer, novelist and journalist from Nabaghiya in southern Mauritania. His journalistic career began in the mid-1980s with al-Sha'b newspaper. He became the West Africa correspondent for the daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, and later for the MBC TV channel, and for Aljazeera in Africa. As well as Birds of Nabaa (Tuyur Nabaa) his works include Timbuktu wa Akhawatuha (Timbuktu and her Sisters) and Yawmiyat Sahafi fe Ifreeqiya (Diary of a Journalist in Africa). He is currently CEO of Sahara Media Group in north and west Africa.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Uld Mohamadi Bah, Abdallah

Weitere Mitwirkende

Cohen, Raphael

Leseproben

In the Shade of Teresa

My Saharan days go by, slow and dull. There is nothing to revitalise my spirits apart from reading poetry, which shatters stagnant time, and drifting along in my memories. It looks like I still miss the Madrid I left: the morning coffee with bread and butter and the sight of the trim Colombian waitress as she outdid the others to serve me my fresh orange juice with one ice cube and a smile as wide and bright as the sky.

I had worked as an accountant in Madrid, but I had never had absolute authority over the figures. I would just check the expenses and make sure they conformed to regulations, sort and bundle up the invoices, and forward them to the Ministry via the diplomatic bag.

Work at the Embassy was routine, and if I am honest my only task was to tally up His Excellency the Ambassador’s interminable and inexhaustible expenses. The man knew that the Foreign Ministry was generous with him, so whenever he needed more, he added another line item to the budget, which the comptroller-general at the Foreign Ministry would sign off. The money, of course, came regularly and on time, never late. At the end of every month, however, we would find that half the allocated budget had not been spent. Then we would meet up to devise ways to spend what remained. His Excellency the Ambassador would take the lion’s share; I would watch him pick up the bundles of notes without so much as batting an eyelid. I did regret this turn of events, and something in me did die, although I benefitted enough from it to help me counteract the tedium of my Madrid apartment.

On Sundays I would invite round those neighbours and fellow Mauritanians with whom I was friendly. We amused ourselves playing cards and in witty repartee until the afternoon, when a roast Andalucian lamb would be set on the table, straight out of the local baker’s oven, pristine and untouched. The delicious aroma of roast meat filled our nostrils and we lost interest in playing cards. My neighbour, Teresa, whom I had taught the art of roasting and mixing the spices in our Saharan way, would burst into a gypsy song about blood, betrayal, abandonment and other things unknown to me, as she hovered around us like a butterfly drawn to a flame. From time to time we stared at her with eyes of wonder, desirous of the fire smouldering in her songs, while, moving as lightly between us as a fresh breeze, she laid her delicious dishes on the table.

At first, Teresa found these gatherings an unpardonable extravagance. Once when I was getting ready to host my friends on a Friday evening, she approached me in a state of semi-undress, wearing only a thin white shirt, which covered her breasts but barely reached her smooth, rosy navel, and shorts that revealed the fullness of her thighs. When she moved, the shorts slipped down a little but never as far as her ivory knees. Teresa tossed her head like a nervous filly due to go out to breed, and her long, perfumed hair filled the room with the scent of orange blossom. I was wowed by her, and almost yielded to her seduction in that rundown apartment at the heart of amorous Madrid.

One morning Teresa heard me talking to the Spanish butcher of Moroccan origin. I was asking him to get us a fat lamb and roast it in the oven. She interrupted me, and said firmly: “What, for God’s sake, are you going to do with all that meat? You must be some species of carnivorous rodent.”

“Yes, indeed, my good lady,” I responded. “And we compete with the wolves for stray sheep.”

She laughed and said: “Try to eat more fruit and vegetables.”

“But only animals eat plants,” I said, adding: “After your advice, perhaps you might be able to help us get things ready for Sunday’s party.”

“Yes, I might,” she said politely. “To work then.”

Teresa burst into my life without prior warning. Coincidence prompted the relationship, which seemed a mixture of affection, concealed infatuation and sibling love. All those feelings combined, just as in some Spanish cities the sun shone, rain showered and snow fell, all on the same day.

* * *

When I first arrived in Madrid, I lived at a small hotel not far from the Embassy. Spain was under the rule of General Franco, and the wounds of the Civil War had yet to heal. Nonetheless, life in Madrid embraced anything new. The city breathed alternately hot and cold from one mouth: it remembered the agonies of the war, whose fires still burned within perplexed hearts. But those fires were soon tempered during the residents’ late nights out in search of pleasure and oblivion. It seemed evasion was the path to salvation.

An old married couple ran the hotel. They seemed destined soon to descend from the tiring train of life, but resisted by snatching sporadic moments of pleasure in the time that remained to them. Their young and wild daughter helped them, drifting here and there without purpose.

When I arrived, the old lady, with a pale smile that soon became one of encouragement, handed me the key to a room on the first floor. The room was airy and overlooked a well-lit narrow alley whose ancient-looking walls were adorned with hanging baskets of flowers. On the whole they were very kind to me.

On Sundays, I was their guest for a meal of paella (whose name derives from the Arabic ba’aya – leftovers) which it is said was created by our ancestors, the Arabs. Andalucian paella is a mixture of fish, seafood, chicken, rice and vegetables all seasoned with saffron, other spices and olive oil. They set up the dining table in the hallway outside their room, whose doors and windows were wide open to the sunlight. Another small table with a mosaic top would usually be set in the middle for glasses of cold water and fresh juice from the oranges the old lady brought from a farm not far from Madrid.

We ate the delicious food, skilfully made by the old lady in copious quantities. This was the couple’s way of spending the profits of their work at the hotel. They were generous with themselves, and with me as well, every Sunday. I was content to share their happiness with a look of gratitude and some words of thanks that made them happy and refreshed the hearts of the kind old couple, along with their daughter.

They placed my seat next to their rebellious, quarrelsome daughter who had a shiny forehead and untidy curly hair. She was usually calmer in the morning, but by the evening, once the sun had set and darkness spread its wings over the corners of the hotel, she would be seized by bouts of hysterical laughter, perhaps because of all the alcohol she drank, secluded in her room, or of being under the influence of the drugs she took in secret.

Having completed my first year at the Santa Mañana Hotel, I knew it had become part of me. It lived inside me just as I lived within it, as if I were the warder and it was a prisoner hard to set free. All the same, one autumn day the time came to bid farewell to the owners. I had started to speak rudimentary Spanish, but whatever I was unable to convey verbally, I tried to communicate using sign language.

I spoke to the old couple with the utmost politeness, but my voice was unable to conceal my awkwardness and embarrassment. “This marks the end of happy days. It’s time for me to move on…”

The day I left the hotel was one to remember. As they said goodbye, I could sense the real affection they had for me. The old lady cried hot tears while her daughter observed stoically from a distance, as if she had shed an existential burden and would now rest easy knowing that the man who could tell tales on her was gone. I departed, leaving her there to her indifference and juvenile fantasies.

The elderly couple accompanied me to the front door. A taxi was waiting for me outside. I had packed my few possessions and personal papers in a leather Samsonite bag, which I had bought from a luxury department store and now placed in the boot of the taxi. As we took off for my new apartment in the centre of Madrid, I turned to wave to the elderly couple and imprint a final image of the farewell in memory. I saw the couple hugging their daughter, who was distraught and in tears. I had never expected that and found it hard to believe. I was amazed by how attached she had become to her Saharan next-door neighbour who paid her very little attention. But there was nothing I could do, and as I waved goodbye I felt emptiness swell inside me. “Farewell then,” I thought. “Sorry for such a big misunderstanding, my little one.”

Thanks to a rental agency, I found my new apartment on the Gran Vía. Gran Vía was known as the Broadway of Madrid, after New York’s famous artistic and theatre district, but unlike Broadway, Gran Vía had been built in the nineteenth century, but had not taken on its final form until the 1920s. Even its name kept changing in line with the changes in Spanish politics. The most provocative of those names came from the Left during the Civil War, when it was called Soviet Union Street. Then it reverted to its old name after Franco’s victory. Gran Vía remains one of Madrid’s most important and liveliest thoroughfares. With its high-class shops, nightclubs, restaurants and bars, it is renowned as the only place in Madrid that never sleeps.

What made me anxious during my first night in the apartment was the nightclub right beneath my window. While it might sometimes be blaring out nice music, it was annoying in summer when the pavement in front was turned into an open-air dance floor and, like it or not, I was drawn into the noise.

After being there a couple of months, a single woman moved into the neighbouring apartment. She turned up at the building early one morning just as I was getting ready to go out to work. She wished me...