The Mystic

Peter Forberg

An Open Palm

The streets of Dakar have been stripped away, and in their place is an unwound ball of yarn. Tangled threads criss-cross over rolling sand dune and glance past rocky bluff, trapping small palm trees in the space between asphalt and fence, routing traffic down endless roads that disappear into the horizon where the sea meets the dust, and creating small mazes embedded within labyrinths where cornerstore boutiques duplicate themselves like a prison of mirrors that obscures your way home. At dusk, the city becomes a puzzle, the neon signs of pharmacies and wine shops flickering on, hot pinks and morning greens combatting the orange hue of a setting sun that will soon cast citizens deep into an unforgiving, starless night. Baobab trees, the untouchable symbol of the nation protected from axe and chainsaw, spring from parks, interrupt intersections, and grow into the sides of apartment buildings. Under the cover of their branches, city dwellers walk home from work, quick to bolt the doors behind themselves.

In this crowd of commuters, a tourist finds himself wandering the haphazard streets, pulled along by the swarm of those who know better than him Dakar’s aimless paths. But he is a sore thumb. From out of the sea emerges a figure who extends his hand and offers a common greeting, “Salam aleykoum.” Peace be upon you.

On another street, at another time, on another path walked through the maze, a student is commiserating with the folks she meets, her eager desire to experience the city from the eyes of its inhabitants guiding her words, an endless stream of “How are you?” and “Nice to meet you.” He sees her, too. He extends his hand with an open palm and soon peace is upon her.

The tourist is being led down a series of sharp turns, propelled forward by the mystic’s words of warning, his insistence that the tourist must follow him, an unwavering belief that the two know each other and must help each other. Fed lie after lie, the tourist doesn’t know what to believe, and finds himself brought into boutiques and stores and storage centers, unsure of how he could initiate an exit should things go south. They’ve already gone south, and soon he finds himself in front of an ATM.

The student is clutching her necklace, a family heirloom, and pulling it off of her neck, gingerly placing it into the open palm of the man before her. “More,” he suggests, and her feet abide. The two are walking back to her home where she lives with a Senegalese family, and now they are ascending the staircase, passing by maid and mother wordlessly into the rooftop terrace where she’s hidden her treasures from home.

The tourist struggles to remember this part. Why didn’t I leave? Why didn’t I catch him in his lies? Why would I agree to do this? How could I be so stupid? Here’s the ATM, his card in hand, and here he is dispensing bills, more money than he’s willing to admit. Gone. Dispensed into the waiting palms of a family friend, perhaps a neighbor, or perhaps a demon in disguise.

Jewelry, money, technology–it’s all given over to the mystic. He asks and she complies. She unloads her valuables into his arms and he is pleased. When asked, she’ll describe the haze, the fogginess, the feeling that she wasn’t in control of her own body. She’ll try to give details, but the particulars escape her.

In both cases, the police will understand. The families will look on in horror. Their Senegalese contacts–employers, teachers, relatives–they’ll all ask the same question: Before all of this happened, before he took everything away from you, did he shake your hand? They’ll gasp. They’ll scream. They’ll bow their heads in sympathy. The Mystic, they’ll proclaim.

With an open palm, he’ll extend an invitation for him to rest in your brain. If you accept, he will take your body away from you. But he won’t stop there. Tourists, students, unsuspecting children–he preys on those too polite or naive to decline a greeting from a stranger. And then things will get stranger.

A Truth That Unites

During our first few days in Dakar, we were briefed on some stark cultural differences that may manifest in our interactions with the Senegalese people who we meet, and so were informed to be wary of offense. For example, greetings are a large part of Senegalese culture, so it’s rude to enter a home without formally greeting the people living there, even if you are counted among them. A few key mantras were roughly translated to us from Wolof, and I will do my best to recap them here:

• You are not controlled by time; you control time.
• It is better to be fearful than feared.
• Love can be tough, sometimes physically. (To be fair, this was eloquently put in Wolof, something about a mother animal having to hit their child to demonstrate poor behavior.)
• Without your fellow man, you are defenseless. You must accept your position then in a community of protectors.
• The more a mother suffers, the more a child will succeed.
• A lie that unites is better than a truth that divides.

The last mantra suggests the power of a relative truth, something which exceeds what we call “white lies.” These are powerful, lasting lies that can alter one’s knowledge of the world. Having run this phrase by my host sister, she agreed that it is best to be dishonest if it protects another person’s feelings. The man who told us of this mantra gave us the example of an affair: if his friend was cheating on his wife, he would not tell the wife; instead, he would tell his friend to stop cheating or be honest himself. Of course, while this rule of “ignorant bliss” is what the Senegalese consider best practice, it’s certainly not routinely applied. For an American example, see: treat others the way you want to be treated.

Regardless, it’s how I want to approach the story of the mystic, which was recently invoked by one of our professors due to the experience of a student at our research center. Talking to this student, he immediately admitted that the events that unfolded were likely his own fault, and that he was just put in a difficult social situation that he wasn’t sure how to get out of. Similar to my experience at Sandaga Market, his status as a tourist, his desire to be kind, and his sense of adventure landed him in a place where there was no easy way out. However, after telling the story to the police, our handlers, and his family, they all immediately asked if he had shaken hands with the man. When he said yes, they relaxed. This wasn’t the case of a naive tourist, this was the case of a hypnotized victim manipulated by ancient magic.

Because I tend not to believe in the preternatural, it seems logical that the mystic became an easy way to explain one’s way out of a stupid mistake: drawing on the immensely religious Sufi spirit of Senegal, one could point to longheld myths about magical men and unexplained mysteries to recontextualize what were really just skillful muggings. It makes victims blameless, and it reaffirms any tourist’s conception of the strange, “other” continent as filled with magic and myth. An enterprising victim might play into this lie in order to look less stupid, and the police might play into this lie in order to make the victim feel less stupid. Either way, it is a fiction that makes the entire situation much more manageable. Rather than confronting head-on the troubles of Senegalese crime or the naivite of tourists, one can push human psychology into the realm of unexplainable magic.

A Way to Say Hello

While standing in the living room talking to my host father and a few other various people, a young girl who I had never seen before walked up to me and extended a hand. I didn’t really notice her and continued talking until my host father looked at me seriously and said, “Shake.” Suddenly, the room went quiet as I shook her hand. Wordlessly, she walked to every person in the room, shook their hands, and then walked out. Everyone resumed talking. Papa turned to me and said, “You must shake.” Then he jumped back into conversation like nothing had happened.

When I told Nick the story of the mystic, it was late at night and we were going to the terrace. I left him to get his laundry from the clothesline, and when I came back he screamed. The mystic. I wonder how he slept that night.