The Sorcerer's Burden

The Ethnographic Saga of a Global Family

Paul Stoller

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9783319318042
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319318059
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Social Sciences

This book emerges from the author's 35 years of research and thought about the Songhay people of Niger. This ethnographic novel follows the life of Omar Dia, the oldest son of a West African sorcerer. When his father falls ill and dies, the great sorcerer vomits a small metal chain onto his chest. Following the path of his ancestors, Omar swallows the chain, becoming his father's successor, which means that he takes on the sorcerer's burden. The book also describes how custodians of traditional knowledge are creatively adapting to the forces of globalization—all in a highly accessible narrative text.  

Part I
Paris, 2000

© The Author(s) 2016

Paul StollerThe Sorcerer's Burden Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology10.1007/978-3-319-31805-9_2

Begin Abstract

Chapter 1

Paul Stoller¹

(1)

West Chester, USA

End Abstract

Omar’s carefully manicured life in Paris seemed perfect—a prestigious University Chair, a successful and beautiful wife, two lovely children, and a terrific apartment in a trendy Parisian neighborhood. What could be better? Then one day in November of 2000, he began to doubt himself. As he strolled into a hushed lecture hall to teach his class, he had the sudden and unexpected inclination to pinch his forearm. For some reason, he wanted to make sure this lecture event was more than a dream. His left eye began to twitch. A deeply repressed thought surfaced. How could Omar Dia, the oldest son of a millet farmer from Niger, have become an esteemed professor of comparative literature at the Sorbonne? Standing there before hundreds of people, another repressed realization swept into his consciousness: like most people in the world, he used external appearances to camouflage internal doubts. In public, he covered his body, which is as tall and thin as the desert trees that grow in his parched homeland, with the latest Parisian fashions. He liked suits of muted black and dark gray fabrics. Protected by these elegant clothes, he carried himself with grace, moving with calculated deliberation and speaking with quiet eloquence.

People said Omar was a handsome man. His face had smooth black skin, high cheekbones, and a strong square chin—all offset by black eyes. His wife liked to say that Omar’s eyes suggested openness as well as vulnerability. People said he was cool and cosmopolitan. He used to believe what people said of him. How things can change—even in one day! Why would people want to sit and listen to him talk about literature and contemporary culture? His left eye continued to flutter, a tick that had plagued him during his childhood in Niger. How many years had he experienced the embarrassment of his eye flutter? Why was it twitching now?

Thinking these uncharacteristically uncomfortable thoughts, he steadied himself behind the lectern and took out his notes. As he looked up at the full house audience, his eye stopped fluttering. Omar took a deep breath.

That year the university had given him an enviably light schedule: one lecture a week from October to the end of June. His theme in 2000–2001 was “The African Intellectual,” which was then a very hot topic in Paris.

The students liked Omar. After his lectures, they hovered around, asking many questions. Some days he’d invite one or two of the lingerers for coffee. His female students knew he was married. Even so, they sometimes flirted with him. If a female student crossed the boundary of respectability, Omar would always try to gently re-establish it.

Despite the light schedule, his academic duties took up too much of his time. He wanted to be a better father to Lilly and Adam. When he could, he took time from his schedule to watch Lilly dance, both at her classes and at her performances. She had the potential to become a graceful ballerina, but complained about having to practice too much. Adam loved to swim and joined a team at the neighborhood pool near the Bastille. During swim meets, Omar would shout encouragement to him and his teammates. Like any father, Omar tried to help his kids with their homework. Even so, Omar felt only a partial connection to his children. Would they ever learn about the African side of Omar Dia?

Omar could have bought an apartment in another part of Paris, but preferred to live near the Bastille. Many West Africans lived near his home. Mosques and Muslim butchers could be found on his street, the rue de Charonne. These elements gave Omar an indirect and mostly anonymous connection to his African roots. That’s the way he wanted to live in Paris—comfortably close to his roots, but not entangled by them.

During his student days, Omar would return to Niger during summer breaks. As time passed, he found it increasingly difficult to visit home. The difficult conditions in Niger didn’t bother him that much. Omar loved the Nigerien countryside—especially the glitter of the Niger River in late afternoon sunlight and especially The Place Where Stories are Told. None of these bucolic pleasures reduced the bitter animosity that his presence triggered in the family compound. His younger brothers, the sons of his father’s second wife, called him a white man with black skin. They accused him of abandoning time-honored family traditions. Weary of this venomous rancor, he soon decided to spend his time in Paris. When he got married and had children, his visits to Niger stopped altogether. Even when his beloved mother died, he remained in France. In his mind he had become a French intellectual, an authority on the French philosophers no less, who was comfortable in his skin.

Or was he?

On the day he began to doubt himself, Omar realized that his indirect and anonymous connections to things African were insufficient. Somehow, someway Omar needed something to fill the gaps, to be more fully connected to his wife and kids, to complete himself as a human being. Little did he know how that autumn day would forever change his life!

“Good afternoon,” he said in a voice, which, since adolescence had been deep and resonant. He always taught late in the afternoon, spending most mornings at his apartment or at his café, which was on the corner of the rue de Charonne and the Boulevard Voltaire. Sometimes Omar would meet his colleagues there.

“My topic today,” he announced, “is La Sape, which, as you may know, stands for Society of Revelers and Elegant People. Looking at the way I’m dressed, you could say that I myself am a potential sapeur.” He paused for effect. “Given my very conscious presentation of self, some people might take me for a sapeur, a young African immigrant living in Paris, who spends most of his money on the latest fashions.”

“Today I’d like to talk about the cultural aspects of ‘la sape.’ Imagine yourself as a young African man or women in a Bacongo neighborhood of Brazzaville, Congo. It is the early 1960s, the era of independence. Life has limitless possibility. You’ve come to the city, you’ve learned French. You go to the cinema. Your young life is full of dreams. And yet, your lot is hard. You are poor. You come from a country of limited opportunity. What can you expect?”

Omar walked to the left of the lectern and continued. “You expect to join your comrades in the cafes. You go with them to the cinema. You dress like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus or Simone de Beauvoir. In more recent times you might take on the persona of Roland Barthes or, better yet, Michel Foucault. You become one of the ‘intellectuals,’ and you try to make your club the place where people wear the most elegant clothes. Dressed as intellectuals, you debate Being and Nothingness, or The Stranger, or The Order of Things, and you enter a space that knows no boundaries. In your club, you are ‘condemned to be free,’ to borrow from Sartre, but you don’t care, because you breathe deeply the air of expectation and promise.” Omar paused for dramatic effect and scanned the audience to measure the effectiveness of the lecture.

“But like life, fashion is fleeting,” he continued. “Just as existentialism or structuralism as an intellectual fashion faded in France, so the existentialist clubs disappeared in Brazzaville. Independence swept the whole region into the tide of political intrigue and social violence. The young “existentialists” threatened the State. And so to protect themselves, they drifted into the surrounding bush. The State did not put out the fire of their youth, however. Several years later, Bacongo youths, single, unemployed, and alienated by state politics, triggered a new round of prestige dressing. Like the existentialists, they formed new clubs in which they displayed their sartorial flair. By dressing in the latest French designer clothes, these young people competed to become “The Great Man.” In this way, La sape was born.”

Enjoying his connection to the audience, Omar went on to describe how la sape was no longer confined to Brazzaville, but had taken on global dimensions. He discussed how it had become a rite of passage for young Congolese men who would leave Brazzaville with little or no money and travel to Paris. They would arrive at Roissy Airport and take trains to the Place de la République. There they would meet other Congolese young people and find lodging and work. Therein would begin a yearlong adventure in which they would work and save money to buy the latest fashions, which they would show off at African dance clubs. At the end of their year, they would return to Brazzaville, the latest fashions stuffed into their suitcases, and would proudly attend a ball at which judges would select the best-dressed young man who would become the “King of the Sapeurs.”

A student raised her hand. “Mr. Professor,” she said, “is the sapeur phenomenon an exercise in masculine vitality?”

Omar appreciated this question. “Indeed it is,” he responded. “These young men are alienated from their ethnic traditions, which are disappearing with the deaths of elders. They are also alienated from mainstream European culture. They are, after all, young, black, and relatively poor. This modern rite of passage enables them to feel strong here in Paris and re-integrates them into their own emerging societies. By dressing in the latest fashions, they are saying: Look at me. I’m cosmopolitan.”

Omar, of course, could say the same thing about himself. Feeling the alienation of the sapeurs, he too dressed to say: “Look at me. I’m cosmopolitan.” In a flash, he wondered: Who am I? What am I doing with my life?

That day, there were many more questions: some good, some confused. They provided the impetus for a vigorous give-and-take of ideas. Omar attempted to discuss the questions that provoked them to think and perhaps to ask additional questions. In such circumstances, time usually moves on in a flash. And so, the class session came to an end.

Students hovered around the lectern and asked more questions. Usually he welcomed further discussion, but on that day, fully experiencing the sour taste of discomfort, he didn’t want to linger and didn’t want to have coffee. For a moment, he no longer wanted to be “The Professor.” He simply wanted to gather his things, rush to the Metro, and go home.

© The Author(s) 2016

Paul StollerThe Sorcerer's Burden Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology10.1007/978-3-319-31805-9_3

Begin Abstract

Chapter 2

Paul Stoller¹

(1)

West Chester, USA

End Abstract

Freed from the public responsibilities of being “The Professor,” Omar hastily made his way to the rue des Écoles. The street glistened with the remains of a passing shower. Thick gray clouds gave the sky an ominous sheen. A cold northwest wind ripped down the street. Chilled to the bone, Omar reached the Boulevard St. Michel–wide, busy and full of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Turning right he made his way toward the Seine and descended into the Paris Metro’s warm embrace. He entered a packed car and stood among a motley assortment of passengers: tall, short, fat, thin, clean, dirty, white, brown, yellow, and black. Some of the passengers wore business clothes-suits, which, like Omar’s outfit, had been crafted from muted black and gray fabrics; others sported jeans and tee shirts, which, from their sheen and odor, hadn’t been laundered in a very long time. Omar noticed a young African man, who, like him, stood tall in the car. Like Omar, he had put on a charcoal gray sport coat. When their gazes locked, Omar nodded, silently signifying a bond between them—two sapeurs acknowledging their camaraderie.

In the Metro car no one knew Omar, which gave him a feeling of reassurance. Although most people in the crowded Metro car were, “dazed and confused,” to borrow from a popular American film title, Omar wondered about the total strangers cohabiting his space. Who were these people? What were their life stories? Were they happy, sad, upbeat, or suicidal? And if, by chance, they looked at him, what judgments would they make? A few of them might make racist judgments. They might see him as another black man, trying to “dress up” like a sophisticated European. Was he a thief or a potential terrorist or simply a mysterious exotic figure who had fabulous stories to tell? What judgments would his African comrade make? He knew one thing: no one in the Metro car would think that Omar held the Chair in Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne.

After one change of Metro lines, the train came to Omar’s exit, the Bastille, liberating him from the discomforts of strangers. The cold wind made him shiver. He walked past the shops on the rue de Rivoli, making his way toward the rue de Charonne. Turning left onto his street, he followed the curve of the road as it snaked upward toward his building. He walked briskly, looking downward to avoid any kind of eye contact with what seemed at that moment a cold, damp, and alien world. Suddenly, an African woman tugged his arm and spoke to Omar in Songhay, the language of his ancestors. “Help me, Sir. Help me.”

Tall and stout, the woman wore an open raincoat over her print cloth outfit—a top and wrap-around skirt made from what appeared to be thin cotton dyed light blue. A soft white headscarf framed a square face. Years of exposure to sun and dust had clouded the whites of her eyes. “What can I do for you?” Omar asked in Songhay.

“You can help me. I know you can.”

“How could I help you?” Omar had no idea who this woman might be.

“My husband is dead. A sorcerer has cursed us,” she said breathlessly. “My daughter is wasting away. She eats, but can’t keep her food down. I have nightmares. I can’t sleep.” In desperation, she grabbed Omar’s sleeve and pulled it.

Omar looked at the woman’s hand on his sleeve and tried to remain calm. “We’re in Paris,” he said. “These things don’t happen here.”

“They do!” she insisted, loudly. “They’re happening to my family.”

“But what can I do about it, Madame?”

“You’re Omar Dia.”

Surprise stiffened his body. “How do you know my name?”

“You’re the son of Issaka Dia.”

For years, Omar had avoided the burden of being Issaka Dia’s oldest son and potential successor. Omar’s father was a great sorcerer who had learned his science from his father who had learned it from his father and so on. Members of Omar’s family had been practicing sorcery since the end of the fifteenth century. Omar felt much love for his father, a big, tall man who gathered attention wherever he appeared. From an early age, however, he wanted no part in the family practice. If you lived close to Issaka Dia, how could you avoid the specter of sorcery? People continuously came to the Dia’s dunetop compound in search of health and well being. Barren women sought fertility. Men without wives sought a powder that would make them irresistible to a particular woman. When spirits made people sick with possession, the possessed sought relief. Yes, the desperation of this poor woman on the rue de Charonne had a familiar ring. It viscerally reminded Omar of why he had studied so diligently, why he had felt so relieved to attend the lycée in Niger’s capital city, why he had breathed deeply the air of liberation when he began his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. Indeed, his years in Paris had shielded him from his father’s legacy.

The flutter returned to his left eye. Would this woman disrupt his carefully contoured life in Paris? “I am the son of Issaka Dia,” he said, finally. “But I know nothing about sorcery.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, continuing to tug on his sleeve. “You have his power in your blood.” she continued. “Blood is obligation. You must help us.”

The phrase “blood is obligation” struck him as if he had been shot with an arrow. From ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• Prologue
• 1. Paris, 2000
• 2. Tillaberi, Niger 2000–2001
• 3. Niger/Paris 2001
• Backmatter