I listen to the words that create around me a new atmosphere in which I move, a stranger and tormented.

Again, I think: heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, ridiculous weapons against the divine will. He mimes the massaging of the heart that was undertaken, as well as the futile effort at mouth-to- mouth resuscitation. Mawdo recounts how he arrived too late with the ambulance. The secretary had the presence of mind to call me. I can hear Mawdo, his doctor friend, explaining to me: a heart attack came on suddenly in his office while he was dictating a letter. This face, set in pain and surprise, is indeed his, the bald forehead, the half-open mouth are indeed his. His hairy chest, at rest forever, is visible through his crumpled blue shirt with thin stripes. A trembling hand moves forward and slowly uncovers the body. On the bed, Modou stretched out, cut off from the world of the living by a white sheet in which he is completely enveloped. A long corridor, which seems to stretch out endlessly. The hospital-distorted faces, a train of tearful people, known and unknown, witnesses to this awful tragedy. At last, the hospital: the mixed smell of suppurations and ether. I endured the telephone call which disrupted my life.Ī taxi quickly hailed! Fast! Fast! Faster still! My throat is dry. But more often than not, it unsettles, crosses you. When it moves in the direction of your desires, it brings you plenitude. Fate grasps whom it wants, when it wants. How am I to tell you? One does not fix appointments with fate. We walked the same paths from adolescence to maturity, where the past begets the present. Ebb and tide of images: drops of sweat beading your mother's ochre-coloured face as she emerges from the kitchen, the procession of young wet girls chattering on their way back from the springs. Ebb and tide of feeling: heat and dazzlement, the woodfires, the sharp green mango, bitten into in turns, a delicacy in our greedy mouths. The past is reborn, along with its procession of emotions. If over the years, and passing through the realities of life, dreams die, I still keep intact my memories, the salt of remembrance. As for us, we wore out wrappers and sandals on the same stony road to the koranic school we buried our milk teeth in the same holes and begged our fairy godmothers to restore them to us, more splendid than before. Our mothers used to argue over who would look after our uncles and aunts. Our grandmothers in their compounds were separated by a fence and would exchange messages daily. Your presence in my life is by no means fortuitous. Our long association has taught me that confiding in others allays pain. By way of reply, I am beginning this diary, my prop in my distress. To Annette d'Erneville of the warm heart and level head. To Abibatou Niang, pure and constant, lucid and thorough, who shares my feelings.

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