No heaven for good boys A novel

Keisha Bush

Book - 2020

"Marabout Ahmed, is a highly regarded Koranic teacher who runs a religious school for young boys in the capital city where Ibrahimah is sent to join his cousin Etienne to study for a year--the local custom for many families. Six-year-old Ibrahimah loves swiping pastries from his mother's kitchen, harvesting green beans with his father, and racing down to the beach after the mosque in search of sea glass with his sisters. But when he is approached in his rural village one day by a seemingly kind stranger, the tides of his life turn forever. Unbeknownst to Ibrahimah's parents, rather than teaching the boys, Marabout sends them out to beg in the streets in order to line his pockets. To make it back home alive, Etienne and Ibrahi...mah must help one another survive both the dangers posed by Marabout, and the myriad threats of the city: black market organ traders, rival packs of boys from other daaras, and mounting student protest on the streets. Transporting us between rural and urban Senegal, No Heaven for Good Boys shows the strength that can emerge when one has no other choice but to survive. Drawn from real incidents in metropolitan Senegal, No Heaven for Good Boys is provocative, finely rendered, and hauntingly urgent--an extraordinary debut novel that locates the universal through the story of two boys caught in the terrible sweep of history."--

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Subjects
Published
New York : Random House [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Keisha Bush (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
318 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780399591969
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Six-year-old Ibrahimah spends most of his days begging for money and food on the streets of Dakar. He and his cousin Étienne are Talibé, students of Islam under the guidance of Marabout Ahmed. Ibrahimah's parents resisted sending their son far away from their seaside village of Saloulou, but social ressure made them acquiesce. In one year, they are promised, Ibrahimah will return an enlightened child, and his parents will have met their religious obligations. The problem is that Marabout Ahmed is an extremely abusive guardian, insisting that the Talibé panhandle to meet daily earning quotas. Severe whippings rain on children who fail. In heart-wrenching prose, debut author Bush cycles the story back and forth between Ibrahimah and his difficult life in Dakar and his mother, Maimouna, and her heartbreak over being separated from her son. Although the relentlessly bleak story doesn't sustain a full narrative arc, Bush portrays a vibrant Dakar, including a wrenching street view from the eyes of the children. A tearjerker with touches of magical realism, however monochromatic, Bush's tale is darkly revelatory.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bush's vivid and heart-wrenching debut paints a jarring portrait of Dakar, Senegal, inspired by the author's encounters with the talibés, boys forced by their teachers to beg on the street. The novel follows Ibrahimah, age six, as he fights for survival under the abusive hands of Marabout Ahmed, a duplicitous stranger who has tricked Ibrahimah's parents into sending their child to join his older cousin Etienne to beg in Dakar under the guise of studying the Quran. Ibrahimah sustains himself with memories of his village and the family he left behind, in order to cope with the physical, verbal, and sexual abuse they endure from his and Etienne's teacher, while Etienne determines to rescue them both. Snippets from the perspective of Ibrahimah's family deepen the kaleidoscopic portrait of a family whose faith blinds them against hearsay about the talibés' treatment. Ibrahimah is portrayed with realistic childlike innocence, which informs his occasional magical encounters with animals, such as a red bird that lands on his knee like a "ball of fire." Etienne, in contrast, has an all-knowing edge from the trauma he's suffered. This tale of survival and familial love will move readers. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

When six-year-old Ibrahimah leaves the countryside for Dakar to study the Qur'an with esteemed teacher Marabout Ahmed, he and cousin Etienne are instead forced to beg. Survival is tough; inspired by stories debut novelist Bush heard from beggar children when she lived in Dakar.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

I. Ibrahimah slumps against the trunk of an ancient baobab tree and sets his red tin can between his feet. The tree's gnarled, flowerless branches twist and bend over a wide, empty road with only a single white line running down its middle. It is late morning and the road is quiet, free of people, traffic, houses, or businesses. Just dry, parched earth stretching as far as the eye can see, with a scattering of baobab trees. Above, the sky is overcast and gray, but the air is warm. While his cousin Étienne and the other boys from the daara debate how to spend the afternoon, Ibrahimah's eyelids hang heavy and his thoughts drift to his mother. The warmth of her touch, the sound of her voice, and the scent of her skin exist now only in memory. Just as his daydream is about to take full possession of his consciousness, a ball of fire streaks toward him, landing on his knee. His slack muscles spring tight and his almond eyes stretch wide as teacups--­the apparition is a tiny red bird cocking its head, as if to get a good look at him. Not knowing whether to shoo the bird away or call for his cousin to witness the spectacle before him, he watches quietly and hopes that it is some kind of fairy, like the one his sisters told him would come for a tooth beneath his pillow. "Fairy godmother?" Ibrahimah squeaks in Wolof. The creature shakes its small head. "You can understand me?" The bird moves its head up and down. Ibrahimah's mouth forms a circle and his eyebrows arch. "Are you here to help me?" The bird tilts its head back and sings a melody that the boy has heard before. He sees his village, Salloulou, and his mother flipping small pieces of lamb on the grill. His sisters chase one another, pulling the pigtails they can catch, and his father carries a box of vegetables from their farm. The image of home gives way to the small red bird's fleeing tail feathers. Ibrahimah's eyes linger on his knee, where the bird had landed, then he turns toward his cousin, who stands beneath another tree several feet away, out of earshot. "Étienne! Did you see?" Ibrahimah yells, jumping to his feet. Étienne turns away from the conversation he is having with Abdoulaye and Fatik, two other boys from their house. "See what?" Étienne shouts back. "The bird! On my knee! He could understand when I talked." Ibrahimah races over to explain. "So do you want to go or not?" Abdoulaye asks. "Go where?" Ibrahimah asks, his mind still focused on the bird. "The zoo!" Abdoulaye says, scratching at a patch of eczema on his bald scalp. "You should have seen the bird on my leg! It talked to me!" A silver Mercedes Benz passes by, its tires sticky against the newly paved road. Ibrahimah turns his head, but the car is going too fast for him to ever have a chance at begging from its occupants. "Cousin, the day is passing, and once people get out of school and work, they may not let us in," Étienne says, impatience lurking at the corners of his mouth. Ibrahimah's eyes drift back toward the empty sky. "You missed it," he mumbles, following behind the three older boys. Ibrahimah stands below the chipped blue arch that poses as the entrance to the Parc Zoologique in Hann Mariste, on the eastern rim of Dakar. The zoo is a little over an hour away by foot from Marabout Ahmed's house in Ouakam, but the boys rarely abandon their normal route unless they hear of a good opportunity like free food, or a chance to make money. Excursions like this take too much time, and as the Americans like to say, time is money. But with Marabout gone, the hours from sunrise to sunset belong to the boys, and not even Étienne has been to the zoo before in the five years he has lived in Dakar. Ibrahimah's cousin walks up to the window now and strains his neck to speak to the woman sitting on the stool inside the booth. "Niate for four boys?" The young woman looks down at Étienne. "Six cent." Étienne begins to count out six hundred francs from the coins in his palm, but the young woman slaps her hand on the counter to get his attention. "No, just go in," she says, pointing to the black gate that spontaneously clicks open. Étienne looks up at her in surprise. She replies with a wink of her eye. "Give them a tour. The rush won't arrive until later, when school is out," she calls over to a man standing on the other side of the gate, wearing a dark-­green park uniform. The man pulls the gate further open. Excited, Ibrahimah pushes past Abdoulaye and Fatik and bumps into the slim, dark-­skinned park ranger. Lush tall trees sit behind the man, and a dirt path. It doesn't look like anything exists inside. Ibrahimah is curious to see what lies within. "Are you ready?" the man asks. "Yes!" Ibrahimah squeaks in excitement. "Have you seen lions before?" Ibrahimah shakes his head no. The others mimic him. "Pumas?" "No." "Gorillas?" The boys look at one another. "Hyenas?" Silence again. The man chuckles and motions for the boys to follow him. "What do I smell?" Ibrahimah asks, scrunching up his nose after taking a few steps. "The chimpanzees," the guide tells him, as they come upon a large metal cage to their right. A large chimp gazes at the boys in boredom. "Wow, it's a monkey!" Ibrahimah says, moving closer to the cage to stare at the animal. He has seen small monkeys climbing in the trees back home, but he did not know they grew to be so tall and fat. "Dance, dance," the man instructs the animal, clapping his hands. The chimp stands up and flaps its arms, then flips over backward and swings itself toward them, sticking his arm through the fence. The man hands Fatik, the boy standing closest to him, a piece of banana from the bucket near Tiki's cage. Fatik pops the banana into his mouth and chews without a second thought. The chimp screams at them, jumps up, and bangs its hands against the fence. "No, no!" the man says, stepping forward to hand the chimp a chunk of banana. "You're supposed to give Tiki the banana after he dances. He dances for the food." Fatik's eyes open wide with embarrassment as Ibrahimah, Étienne, and Abdoulaye fall into a fit of laughter. "Dance, dance," Ibrahimah instructs Fatik. "Shut up." Fatik pouts. The man digs out an additional four bruised bananas from the bucket and hands them to the boys. "These are for you to eat." Ibrahimah sets his banana in his red tin can for later. "Dance, dance," Ibrahimah shouts to Tiki. The chimpanzee stands up, flaps his arms, does a half flip, and then swings his body over to the gate and shoves his arm out, palm facing up. Ibrahimah accepts a chunk of banana from the guide and passes it to the animal. Tiki's palm feels cold and rough, and he meets Tiki's eyes for a second before the monkey swings away again. The guide ushers the group along, with Ibrahimah bringing up the rear of the pack. He whispers the word "chimpanzee" to himself as the guide winds them down a narrow dirt path hugged by trees and plush grasses. The low growl of a beast rises up from behind a small group of park rangers and Ibrahimah's heart beats faster in anticipation. Within another cage, this one smaller than the chimpanzee's home, is a large four-­legged golden-­brown animal. Its skin is smooth and taut, its square jawline similar to Fatik's face. "This is a lion. He is Lion King. King of the jungle," the guide says to the astonished faces of his group. "Oh!" Étienne says. The lion paces back and forth about ten feet, the length of its mosaic-­tiled home, in a hurried manner. "Why does he do that?" Étienne asks. "He is restless," the guide says. "Calmez-­vous, Lion King. Calmez-­vous." The lion growls, then releases a deep sigh of resignation and plops his large muscled body onto the floor. "He is sad," Ibrahimah whispers. "Why?" Étienne asks. "This is not his home, just like Dakar is not our home," Ibrahimah says, and walks away leaving the group and the beast behind. Excerpted from No Heaven for Good Boys: A Novel by Keisha Bush All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.