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By Root 908 0

horse and rode into town where he was working at a traveler’s inn. A month earlier he had lost his favorite eldest brother to water. All of this came back to me. His brother had papers, plane ticket and passport for passage to the States and drove all the way from Bamako to say goodbye. He left again by the same bridge I later crossed by horse. The high waters caught him in a current and the car slid off and sank. Issa saw it all from shore, his hand still lifted in a gesture of goodbye. He saw everything go down, his love and his life as he knew it. In that moment he took on six siblings, his aging parents, all the extended relatives, and a dark fear of Faro, Goddess of the water.

“I am lost.”

My mother was sitting on the roof, wrapped in her blue desert cloth, her face bronzed by the setting sun. Her sister had been guardian of her childhood home, the last connection to her homeland.

“I’m coming back with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Without a word to Issa I found myself with my mother booking earlier flights back to Canada, and another one for her to Europe for the funeral. We had nine days. She didn’t want to stay in Issa’s house any longer. She wanted to see the land.

We rented two motorbikes, packed the tents and food and set off, Issa and I, his brother and my mother, into Dogon country. As we climbed up to Nando and the most beautiful clay mosque that had fallen from the sky we picked koronifin under the trees, small red berries that tasted of chocolate. We ate rat in one village with a sauce of disi, a pale yellow stringy root like potato. Everywhere we were offered calabashes of dagena, a milk-like drink from fonio, the sacred grain of the Dogon. In another village they gave my mother bark of the balazon, thorn tree, for a lung infection she had developed from the dust. They call it the ‘devil tree’ because it withers in the rainy season and thrives in the winter. I could see she was in shock, and because I worried I did not notice my own. I gave him my decision.

“Talk to me, Issa.”

“Why are you leaving?”

“I’m taking my mother home.”

“What about me?”

With my arms around his waist and my eyes watering we rode through bush fires and smoke, through village pools. Maybe the beauty of his bronzes would carry him. But it was too late. He was losing the art of fire, and there was too much water under the bridge.

We rode a donkey cart from Tuni. The man let me drive as he walked alongside, muttering and cursing at the donkey, shoving him, threatening him. He finally gave me the rope and the stick. I used them as a rhythm, with my hands out on either side high in the air, the rope in one, the stick in the other, waving a consistent motion that led me into a trance, with the ‘shhh’ of the tires in the sand, the trundling of the cart, the clicking of my tongue. It felt right. I was driving. I lay my hand on the donkey and closed my eyes. He was working with me. I understood then what it was to direct one’s life and be in touch with the soul.

Two days after our return from Hombori my mother and I were waiting for our bus to take us home through Dogon country and on to the Burkina border. It was cold. My shawl lay wet on my back. I had dried my hair with it at dawn when Issa came to ask me for money, just enough to get his business going, just enough. He sat beside me at the breakfast stand and ordered an egg. We ate in silence. I was worrying about the bus, wondering if it would ever come. I was looking at the row of Barika soap sachets hanging behind the coffee man’s head, thinking how I had to wash this tangled strand of my life, sever it. I was thinking about my aunt and how messages from the other side had led me through a door. It wasn’t that I chose my mother over Issa. I chose myself.

“Zon.” Issa muttered. Thief.

He was watching the commotion behind us. Two merchant women had lost their money and stood there with all of their baggage and nowhere to go.

The bus never came. A man ran up from the bus company.

“Le bus n’est pas bon!” The bus is no good.

He gave us back our money. My mother stared at me.