Allah is Not Obliged Read Online Free PDF Page A

said that her spirit would be a good spirit, a spirit that would protect the living against troubles and evil spells, a spirit that should be worshipped and commemorated. Now maman is in heaven and she’s not suffering any more, so everyone down here on earth is happy. Except me.
    Maman’s death makes me sad, even now it makes me sad. Because the accusations that the old kaffir men said were just lies, they were barefaced liars. And I had been a horrible, cruel son to her. I hurt maman, and she died with that hurt in her heart. That’s why I’m cursed and the curse goes with me wherever I go.
Gnamokodé!
    *     *     *
    For my mother’s funeral, on the seventh and fortieth days my aunt Mahan came from Liberia. (According to the
Glossary
, the seventh and fortieth days are the days on which ceremonies are held to the memory of the deceased.)
    Mahan is the mother of Mamadou. That’s why Mamadou is my cousin. My aunt Mahan lived in Liberia, deep in the forests, far, far away from any road. She ran away to Liberia with her second husband because her first husband, Mamadou’s father, was a master huntsman. A master huntsman who yelled at her and cursed her and threatened her with knives and guns. He was what they call a bully. Mamadou’s father, the master huntsman, was a big bully. My aunt had made two babies, my cousin Férima and my cousin Mamadou, with the master huntsman. The name of the master huntsman, Mamadou’s father, was Morifing. But Morifing cursed and punched and threatened my aunt so much that one day she left him and ran away.
    Everywhere in the world a woman isn’t supposed to leave her husband’s bed even if that husband curses her and punches her and threatens her. The woman is always wrong. That’s what they call women’s rights.
    It wasn’t independence yet. My aunt was summoned to the office of the
toubab
commissioner in charge of the district. On account of women’s rights, the two children were taken from their mother and given to their father. To make sure that my aunt didn’t steal her children, to make sure she didn’t even see them, their father sent them to Côte d’Ivoire. He sent my cousin Mamadou to his uncle who was an important nurse. The nurse sent Mamadou to the white school in Côte d’Ivoire.
    In those days there weren’t too many schools, so education was still worth something. That’s how Mamadou was able to grow up to be a big somebody, even a doctor.
    Even though she got a divorce from the colonial
toubab
commissioner on account of women’s rights, and even though Morifing got to keep the two children, the evil huntsman was always trying to find my aunt and her second husband. Sometimes, in the night, he’d wake all alone and fire his rifle into the air and scream how he was going to kill them and hunt them down like deer if he ever set eyes on them. So my aunt and her second husband went far away from French colonies like Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire to hide in the forests of Liberia, because it is a colony full of American blacks where they don’t apply the French rules about women’s rights. Because the English they speak there is called pidgin.
Faforo!
    The evil huntsman was not in the village for my mother’s funeral, because every year he left for months and months to go far away to different countries where he was still a bully and still hunted lots of wild animals to sell their meat. That was his work, his job. It was only because he was far away that my aunt came to the village to help us, grandmother, Balla and me, to mourn for my mother.
    Three weeks after my aunt came to the village, there was a big family palaver in grandfather’s hut. (‘Palaver’ means ‘a traditional assembly where outstanding issues are discussed and decisions are made.’) At the palaver there was my grandfather, my grandmother, my aunt and a wholebunch of other aunts and uncles. They decided, according to the laws of Malinké families, that because my mother was