Dakar, Senegal, West Africa
1963
That which I feared most has come upon me! Mbeng Fall thought. He stood at the edge of a precipice that looked straight down and out toward the ocean until land and water embraced and splashed headlong into Black Africa, at that very point.
Mbeng Fall was nearly late for school every day. It was the lure of the endless horizon that made the young eighteen year old ponder on a great many things with great speculation about what lived on the other side.
Of course he knew it was America, but he knew there was something he had to do there. “It is driving me crazy!” Mbeng thought out loud and suddenly grabbed the sides of his head as if under some severe torture. In fact he was simply trying to make the dream go away right in the daytime. It had started as a dream, certainly a nightmare. Then, the hideous vision crawled its way into Mbeng Fall’s waking hours.
His eyes seemed adhesively focused on the horizon that spread out before him, there on the coast of Dakar, Senegal. He grabbed his head again and felt the damn thing crawling through his brain like a worm destroying all his voluntary thoughts.
When Mbeng Fall had clasped his face in his hands, he had had the most petrifying look of fear and trembling all over him. He covered his face in his hands and bent down low as if in great agony. When he released his hands from over his face, he rose up and looked at the horizon again and smiled broadly. He knew he just had to go there with her.
He could picture the place in his head and he had never seen any photos or TV shows like the image permanently engraved in his brain. His thoughts seemed to appear in high definition and it had happened for the past three days. He was changing.
It was now like he had seen it all before, like a rerun of a movie he had seen ten times but would love to make it eleven. He had seen it all, somewhere. It all had to be dreams in vivid color and she was always there.
“Sheik Amadou Bamba knows that is one beautiful young white thing.” Mbeng Fall knew he was going mad. “Cela me rend fou!” Mbeng Fall said out loud in French. “Préparez juste pour l’avoir comme La mienne!” he said more loudly telling the world that she was his to take.
Yet, even this mental video inside his head seemed to pale away only to hear the same putrid voice that cries and wailing. It always sounded so … so lethal.
Mbeng could swear it was in the wind, and not just in his head. Lately, like a worm had burrowed through the meat of his brain switching off all circuits that could interfere with what he was being forced to think and see before his eyes.
“Yallah Yallah, I despise that voice. Allah Wakbar!, Allah Wakbar!...” As the scene afresh unfolded, Mbeng never ceased to call out the greatness of his god. It didn’t help him at all. Mbeng’s every thought had woven any notion right back to the very thing roaring through his mind, at that very second. He played them in his head.
“Yallah! Yallah! Get your retched backs into it!” a hideous wallop of a whip and voice as evil as he had ever heard rang out the dark, ancient place and Mbeng turned instantly to see where the voice had come from, this time.
“Yallah Yallah!” a boy who was standing behind Mbeng shouted. It scared Mbeng so much he almost peed his pants.
Mbeng screamed in fear. “Aliou! I gonna kill you! Why aren’t you in school?”
Mbeng’s friend, Aliou railed on Mbeng in the native Wolof.
“Because of you! You late again and they gonna throw you out, Mbeng. Come on, let’s go!”
“One second, wey! Things … things are happening to me and I … I like it, but I know … but I shouldn’t.”
“You sound like … Things …what kind of things? You got visions of killing people and leaving them for the vultures?”
“Well, not all the time, but more and more.”
“Mbeng, bien sur, you right! You got a problem, for sure!”
They both looked at each other and burst into laughter, and the two of them took off across the open field. Mbeng continued looking back over his shoulder at the distant horizon. His brain and his loins wanted to see her again, and today would be the last time.
“Aliou, see there, la bas?” Aliou looked out straight ahead like Mbeng was already doing.
“Aliou, you sure do act like a Toobob!” Mbeng noted with his hand over his eyebrows and continuing to stare out at the horizon. He pulled his arm up to his eyes and looked at the black and hairless skin that was as purely and as richly and beautifully black as snow is richly white.
“I guess it’s only a color, nothing more. Why you live with Toobobs? You make yourself small if you live with them. Now you act like Toobobs too. Want me to buy you a big bottle of beach so you can look like them too, huh?”
Aliou stopped his march toward the class. They only had ten more minutes to get there on time. Aliou turned toward Mbeng Fall. Mbeng grabbed the sides of his own head and tried to shake himself lose from the extreme compulsion to rip Aliou’s head right off his shoulders. Then, Mbeng doubled over with a sharp pain in his abdomen and then it disappeared. It wasn’t the first time either. It had started as a dull ache, like gas. Then, it began to feel like needles. This time, it felt like a sword.
Aliou approached Mbeng and looked at him intently. “Brother, Mbeg Fall, ca va? Mbeng I am talking to you, are you OK? Aliou looked intently into his friend’s eyes. It almost shook the boy as he saw something very … wicked in Mbeng’s eyes. Aliou kept his eyes on Mbeng and spoke to him.
“My brother, I know where my life come from. These people are good to me. They love me, and … and they love you too. They tell me all the time that you have a calling, Mbeng. You know what; last week they told me you would change the world.” Mbeng did not give an inch of attention to the words, but he silently played then through his mind. Mbeng again felt a sudden jab in his side, but from the inside out. Then, it was gone …
Aliou looked at Mbeng and waved his hands around in every direction. “Just look our country? We have nothing! Why you angry those who give us something? Look at me, Mbeng. They want to meet you and have already been making contact with you, but you aren’t listening.”
I am like mbok mu nul, like black water, pure and clean, so clean they washed out all the white!” Mbeng said and watched Aliou and burst out laughing. “You say I crazy? Mon frère, Mbeng, you ain’t even right!”
They both stopped walking again and stopped laughing and their faces grew, somber. “Mbeng, I know there is a mark on you.”
Mbeng glanced immediately upward, but his face rose slowly, as though sensing danger. “Aliou, it is clear to me, and it has made me sure that I am a door, for some reason.” Mbeng almost lamented.
"I see it in you … who you are … what you shall be.” Aliou agreed. “Be it holy or impure, be it evil and diabolique, I will be at your side!”
Mbeng took in the words and seemed to taste them before responding to them. He looked into Aliou’s face and Mbeng Fall smiled and picked up his backpack.
“Aliou, Nous y allons; get ourselves going, or they’ll have our black asses.” They pounded fists and hustled the rest of the way. Mbeng only looked back over the ocean one more time.
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There is nothing greater than writing & creating something from nothing. It's the closest thing to the divine! I have lived in many cultures and it has given me a love for the differences amongst us. I am a student of American culture and write about the changes in our society. Take a look at my Novels and find some stories that might just read YOU!
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