Zadie Smith - Swing Time

“Which bank did you say you work for?” asked Fern.

“Oh, I got a lot going on, man. Development, development. Land here, land there. Building. But I work for the bank here, yes, trading, trading. You know how it is, brother! Government makes life hard sometimes. But show me the money, right? You like Rihanna? You know her? She got her money! Illuminati, right? Living the dream, baby.”

“We must go now to the ferry,” whispered Lamin.

“Yeah, I guess I got a lot of trades these days — complicated business, man — gotta make those moves, moves, moves.” He demonstrated by moving his fingers over his three devices as if primed to use any one of them at any moment for something terrifically urgent. I noticed the screen on the laptop was black and cracked in several places. “See, some people gotta get to that farm life every day, shell those groundnuts, right? But I gotta make my moves. This is the new work‒life balance right here. You know about that? Yes, man! That’s the latest thing! But in this country we have our old-world mindset, right? A lot of people around here are behind the damn times. It takes these people a little while, OK? To get it into their minds.” With his fingers he drew a rectangle in the air: “The Future. Gotta get it into your mind. But listen: for you? Any time! I like your face, man, it’s beautiful, so clear and light. And I could come to London, we could talk business for real! Oh, you’re not in business? Charity? NGO? Missionary? I like the missionaries, man! I had a good friend, he was from South Bend, Indiana — Mikey. We spent a lot of time together. Mikey was cool, man, he was really cool, he was a Seventh-Day Adventist, but we’re all God’s children for sure, for sure…”

“They are here doing some educational work, with our girls,” said Lamin, turning his back on us, trying to get the waitress’s attention.

“Oh, sure, I hear about the changes up there. Big times, big times. Good for the village, right? Development.”

“We hope so,” said Fern.

“But little brother: are you getting a piece of that? Did you guys know little brother here is too good for money? He’s all about the next life. Me, no: I want this life! HA HA HA HA. Money, money, rolling. Ain’t that the truth. Oh man, oh man…”

Lamin stood up: “Good-bye, Bachir.”

“So serious, this one. But he loves me. You would love me, too. My oh my, you’re gonna be thirty-three, girl! We should talk! Time flies. Gotta live your life, right? Next time, in London, girl, in Babylon — let’s talk!”

Walking back to the car, I heard Fern chuckling to himself, cheered by the episode.

“This is what people call ‘a character,’” he said, and when we reached our waiting taxi and turned to get in we found Bachir the character standing in the doorway, still with his earpiece on, holding all his various technologies and waving at us. Seen standing up, his suit looked especially peculiar, the trousers too short at the ankles, like a mashala in pinstripes.

“Bachir lost his job three months ago,” said Lamin quietly, as we got back into the car. “He is in that café every day.”

Yes, everything about that trip felt wrong from the start. Instead of my previous glorious competency, I couldn’t rid myself of a nagging sense of error, of having misread everything, beginning with Hawa, who opened the door of her compound wearing a new scarf, black, that covered her head and stopped halfway down her torso, and a long, shapeless shirt, the kind she had always ridiculed when we saw them in the market. She hugged me as firmly as ever, would only nod at Fern, and seemed annoyed by his presence. We all stood in the yard for a while, Hawa making polite, grating small talk — none of it addressed to Fern — and me hoping for some mention of dinner, which, I soon understood, would not come until Fern left. Finally he got the message: he was tired and would head back to the pink house. And as soon as the door closed behind him the old Hawa returned, grabbed my hand, kissed my face and cried: “Oh, sister — good news — I’m getting married!” I hugged her but felt the familiar smile fasten itself on my face, the same one I wore in London and New York in the face of similar news, and I experienced the same acute sense of betrayal. I was ashamed to feel that way but couldn’t help it, a piece of my heart closed against her. She took my hand and led me into the house.

So much to tell. His name was Bakary, he was a Tablighi, a friend of Musa’s, and she would not lie and say he was handsome, because in fact he was quite the opposite, she wanted me to understand that right away, pulling out her phone as evidence.

“See? He looks like a bullfrog! Honestly I wish he would not wear the black stuff on his eyes or use henna that way, in the beard… and sometimes he even wears the lungi! My grandmothers think he looks like a woman in make-up! But they must be wrong because the Prophet himself wore kohl, it is good for eye infections, and there’s really so much I don’t know that I have to learn. Oh, my grandmothers are weeping day and night, night and day! But Bakary is kind and patient. He says nobody cries for ever — and don’t you think that’s true?”

Hawa’s twin nieces brought in our dinner: rice for Hawa, oven fries for me. I listened in a kind of daze as Hawa told me funny stories about her recent masturat to Mauritania, the furthest she had ever traveled, where she had often fallen asleep in the lecture sessions (“The man who is talking, you can’t see him, because he is not allowed to look at us, so he speaks from behind a curtain, and all us women are sitting on the floor and the lecture is very long, so sometimes we just want to sleep”) and had thought to sew a pocket into the inside of her waistcoat so as to hide her phone and surreptitiously text her Bakary during the duller recitations. But she always concluded these stories with some pious-sounding phrase: “The important thing is the love I bear for my new sisters.” “It is not for me to ask.” “It is in the hands of God.”

“In the end,” she said, as two more young girls brought us our tin mugs of Lipton’s, heavily sweetened, “all that matters is praising God and leaving dunya things behind. I tell you in this compound dunya business is all you ever hear. Who went to market, who has a new watch, who is going ‘back way,’ who has money, who has not, I want this, I want that! But when you are traveling, bringing people the truth of the Prophet, there is no time for any of these dunya things at all.”

I wondered why she was still in the compound if life here now annoyed her so much.

“Well, Bakary is good but he is very poor. As soon as we can we will marry and move, but for now he sleeps in the markaz , close to God, while I am here, close to the chickens and the goats. But we will save a lot of money because my wedding will be very, very small, like the wedding of a mouse, and only Musa and his wife will be there and there will no music or dancing or feasts and I will not even need to get a new dress,” she said with practiced brightness, and I felt so sad suddenly, for if I knew anything at all about Hawa it was how much she loved weddings and wedding dresses and wedding feasts and wedding parties.

“So, you see, a lot of money will be saved there, for sure,” she said, and folded her hands in her lap to formally mark the end of this thought, and I did not contest her. But I could see she wanted to talk, that her pat phrases were like lids dancing on top of bubbling cooking pots, and all I had to do was sit patiently and wait for her to boil over. Without me asking another question she began to speak, first tentatively and then with increasing energy, of her fiancé. What seemed to impress her most about this Bakary was his sensitivity. He was boring and ugly but he was sensitive.