Places Die, Men too

On that noon, I had caught up with my friend Racine. After having commented on the political news marked by the historic result of the Legislative elections, we decided to go and eat at Djembé, which serves the best mafé in the capital.Shock and horror: the restaurant had been levelled. Just like that, without warning the regulars. Rubble had taken its place and perhaps a new building with neutral architecture would emerge from the rubble, as is the fashion in African capitals, where there is so little regard for aesthetics and history. How sad it was to see the Djembé disappear and with it buries the memories of an era; the many conversations, ambitions and projects imagined in this place whose warmth seduced the same people who, by virtue of frequenting the place, had come to recognise and appreciate each other and would timidly say hello to each other in the city’s streets. The Djembé was an observation post of the teeming and changing Dakar, from the street vendors wandering around outside, to the bankers crowded in this place in the heart of the Plateau. The place was not a den of ambitious politicians and schemers whispering Machiavellian plans away from prying ears. They had not imported their bad taste and inconvenient morals to this place.

The Djembe will be no more, and it is a sad thing. I had my habits there as I had my habits at the Jane Café on the rue Saint-Maur in Paris. The coffee was not expensive, the atmosphere was familial, and the décor was sober and warm. One could read and write without fearing the inquisitive looks of the owners: a nice family of Algerian origin. The kind mother, Karima is fiery, and Mehdi is teasing. The café is my morning refuge as well as that of all those who are not morning people, but still try to force themselves to do useful things at dawn when the night removes its protective veil over men. At the Jane Café, the internet was working well and every morning I would get the news of the country and read the newspaper of life delivering the good news of the day.

Last week I was abroad, and I discovered that this place too had closed. It had not withstood the two years of pandemic and had to give in to accounting injunctions and heartless lenders. Capitalism is a huge Darwinian forest where the rule is to kill or be killed. The time that passes and allows for adjustments is no longer relevant. Business is cruel. In this bar, I liked to listen to ordinary people, not spared by life, talking about their unhappy daily lives, dreaming of vacations they won’t take, having plans and ambitions for their children, and finishing their cold drink with a return to the reality of life: work, the sacrifice of health, the distance from loved ones, and death.

Le Comptoir is another of my places. It’s dead too. I went there last time with J. We talked a lot. We rewove the threads of time, imagined scenarios, invented journeys, countries and worlds and fomented positive plots on the altar of human brotherhood. This unbreakable thread that binds people together despite the distance and the time that slips away. J. is no more. She is dead. I don’t know of what. I never ask, out of decency and heritage and education. A tweet. Bad news. A tragedy. Silence. The pandemic was an awful time for friendship and loving tenderness. We have lost loved ones and are still learning to tame the loss and silence the pain. Death is the only truth. According to the Koran, it was before life and will be after it. In between, we try to walk on both legs by inventing and creating possible ways to inhabit the earth. I have a fondness for cafés and their poetry. I write there. I read there. I dream and think about the places I will never visit. They are undoubtedly one of the last places where life fits in and brings its slow rhythm.

We each have a favourite café, a treasured place, a cave where we disappear into to shelter from the world, and reconfigure a universe, reconstitute pieces of the puzzle of life. I think of the Logone across from the Cité Claudel during my student years, and the Sombrero, a curious Mexican restaurant in the heart of the Plateau. Both are relics in my hotel of insomnia. My places are mine; they have names that I jealously guard, smells and emotions, ghosts and hopes. These places are unfortunately not eternal. They are born, they grow and die. Places die. Men too.