The grief came like rain. Predictably, intensely, then
slowly fading out, only to surge back again. One woman said a prayer. Another,
the mother [perhaps], repeated “oh my baby”. No crying. The men made sad faces, and
spoke less. Two or three started talking about how to maintain one’s health,
the symptoms of malaria, and the lack of medical support that is available out
in the village. Better to raise a child in the city.
We passed through the checkpoint without bribing the
gendarme because the driver put on the hazard lights and told him there was a
body, the body of a child, in the car.
Your name was likely Ibrahima. Born perhaps 20 or 30 months
ago, to Aissatou and Thierno Boubacar. When you died no one was expecting it.
They knew you were sick, probably with malaria. I didn't know you were sick; I
didn't even register your unique presence in the car. You were another child
sitting on another woman's lap, one of five or six. You weren't the one that
cried and screamed until we started moving, nor the one that spit up on his
jacketfront because of motion sickness. But halfway to Labe the woman holding
you said something and the driver stopped abruptly and we all got out and laid
you on the ground and you were dead.
