Read Anatomy of Restlessness for Free Online Page A

longer before their pages are passed on to the market. They are used for wrapping little packages of dye, chile pepper, snuff, chewing tobacco, the crushed leaves of the baobab tree used as an abortive, or charms to counteract djinns . Never throw stones at dogs in Timbuctoo. The lean hounds that skulk in the thorn bushes by day may be the djinns that will haunt you by night. A djinn starts as a small black spot in the comer of your room and ends up as big as the house. If you believe in djinns and the ability of holy men to fly of their own volition, the miracles of the jet age are amateur bungling. ‘How long would it take me to fly from here to Mecca?’ an old man asked. He might do it in under a day, I told him. He was unimpressed. Local saints regularly take off on a Friday morning and are back the same afternoon. He also knew of a people called the Mericans who claim to have flown to the Moon. ‘That is impossible,’ he said. ‘They are blasphemers.’ The inhabitants of Timbuctoo are Arabs, Berbers, Songhoi, Mossi Toucouleur, Bambara, Bela, Malinke, Fulani, Moors and Touaregs. Later came the English, French, Germans, the Russians and then the Chinese. Many others will come and go, and Timbuctoo will remain the same.
    Â 
    1970

II
    STORIES

MILK
    The young American put his head down to the milk-bowl and the milk darkened, from white to grey, as his head blocked out the light. The bowl was a half calabash. He held it in his palms and felt the warmth coming through. There were black hairs floating on the surface and a faint smell of pitch. He tilted the bowl till the froth brushed against his moustache. ‘Shall I?’ He paused before his lips touched the milk. Then he tilted it again and gulped.
    He drank quickly and with concentration, watching the level sink down the wall of the calabash. The globs of milk cleared his dry, dust-clotted throat. It was stronger than milk in America and left a bitter taste on the tongue.
    â€˜Be careful what you eat, Jeb.’ The voice was sharp and pleading. ‘And don’t, whatever you do, touch the milk. The milk’s tainted in them countries.’
    In his mind Jeb Andrews saw the careful white clapboard house and the drawn face of his mother.
    â€˜I know you’ll be all right, Jeb. But that shan’t keep me from worryin’. If you was goin’ to Europe, I shouldn’t be worryin’, but Africa, Jeb, and them blacks.’
    He drained the bowl and turned it over. White drops splashed on his rawhide boots, now red with dust. The outside of the calabash was a warm golden colour and the surface scratched with drawings of animals and plants. It had broken in two places, but the woman had sewn it up with tarred twine. That was what gave off the pitchy smell. Jeb Andrews thought the calabash a lovely thing.
    It was mid-day and the sky was hazy and white hot. Sweat streamed inside his shirtfront and down the small of his back. The blood ran into his feet and they felt as if they’d burst his boots.
    The women were Peuls. They sold milk to bus travellers under the speckled shade of an acacia. It was the one shade tree for miles. They were lean and angular, as nomad women are. They wore shifts of indigo cotton and the blue rubbed off on their glistening brown skin. Big brass rings weighted their earlobes down.
    â€˜Another,’ Jeb said to the woman.
    He felt for a coin in his damp pocket. The woman set the bowl in the dust and ladled it full. A baby sucked at her nipple, its pink fingers clawing at her breast. Jeb watched a dribble of milk run from the comer of the baby’s mouth.
    The woman grabbed the coin and tied it in a knot of cotton. She flashed her teeth and then hid them. Her companions looked on, amused and disdainful, gaping at the thin boy in the dusty whites, his golden hair spilling round the half sphere of the calabash.
    â€˜Like it’s feeding time at the zoo,’ Jeb thought. ‘Like I’m