Parallel Worlds

Philip Graham

"Parallel Worlds is that miraculous nonfiction book which reads so compellingly that one goes to bed wondering what will happen next and wakes up glad to find that there are still pages to go. It merges our own parallel lives as professionals who seek out ethnographies from duty and as readers who surrender to an engrossing book with joy."

--Kirin Narayan, reviewing Parallel Worlds: An Anthropologist and a Writer Encounter Africa for Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 20, #1, 1995.

This memoir of Africa, written in alternating first-person narratives, recounts the experiences of the anthropologist Alma Gottlieb and fiction writer Philip Graham as they lived in two remote villages among the Beng people of Cote d'Ivoire. Parallel Worlds chronicles the vibrant daily lives of West African villagers, and the parallel, invisible realm of spirits that surrounds them.

Excerpt from the section titled "Foreign Fictions," from Chapter 6, "Bedazzled, Beleaguered," of Parallel Worlds:

One evening, Yacouba lounged in one of our palm-rib chairs and talked with Alma about the recent lack of rain and the coming hard work of building yam mounds in the fields. During a lull in their conversation, Alma walked over to the desk where I sat typing and scribbling, and she reached for a notebook. I smiled at her, silently thankful once again that her foot had finally healed.

Yacouba expressed curiosity about what I was doing.

"It's a new story he's working on," Alma said, trying to head him off from interrupting me.

"Kouadio," he called to me teasingly, "we tell you our stories, why don't you tell us one of yours?"

Two neighbors, Asaw and Kouassikro, were also lingering in our courtyard, and they murmured their approval of Yacouba's request.

I looked at the page curled in the typewriter roller. I'd finished a first draft of my story, I even knew the title--"Waiting for the Right Moment." But there was still much to work on, much I wasn't sure of. Even if it were done how could I explain its list of dangerous toys--a motorized jumping rope, Home Graffiti, Little Behaviorist, a doll that grew sharpened fingernails? How to explain hibachi restaurants, Super Realism, dental x-rays?

"It's not finished," I said.

"Then tell us another."

I considered the manuscripts I had with me and decided that a short piece titled "Shadows" might work. Half prose poem, half story, it was fresh in my mind because I had recently mailed off a revised version to a small literary magazine in New York that had accepted it many months before.

Still, I knew this would be a difficult enterprise, and not only because Alma and I would have to translate from English to French, and Yacouba would then translate our French into proper Beng. I recalled the anthropologist Laura Bohannan's famous account of her difficulties telling the story of Hamlet to the Tiv people of Nigeria. The Tiv don't believe in ghosts, so Bohannan's audience declared that the "ghost" of Hamlet's father must have been a zombie. Also, the Tiv practice the levirate, which requires a man to marry his widowed sister-in-law, so Claudius' and Gertrude's behavior was considered highly appropriate. To the Tiv, Hamlet was an inexplicably disruptive son.

"My story," I began, looking at the expectant faces lit by our lantern, "is about a man whose shadow left him."

As I listened to Yacouba translate, I realized that the Beng word for shadow--nining--was also the word for soul. But before I could wonder what emphasis Yacouba was giving, I noticed that Kouassikro and Yacouba spoke intently in low tones back and forth. Feeling forgotten, I asked Yacouba what they were discussing, and he said, "Kouassikro wants to know if this was the work of spirits."

"No," I replied in Beng, a bit startled. My small audience remained quiet, not entirely convinced, I suspected. Then I continued, telling Yacouba that the man had stayed in his house for days, struggling with his fluid shadow.

When he translated, Asaw now interrupted, murmuring rapidly with a wicked grin much like her husband's, "If he stayed inside all day, then he must be a witch."

Then Kouassikro spoke with his usual mangled pronunciation, and Yacouba translated: "So the spirits did punish the witch, by taking away his shadow."

I paused and regarded my audience. Here I was in a muddle similar to Bohannan's: simply by being good listeners, the Beng were deconstructing and reconstructing my story, drawing me into their own foreign fiction.

We continued with my story, though the tedious process of translation and interruptions didn't make for compelling storytelling--even simple details such as a rocking chair or double-dating provoked elaborate discussions. I suspected we were all relieved when my story was done.

Still, I was pleased that people spoke to us so freely in public about spirits--it made me feel less like an outsider. By this time Alma and I had discovered there were different types of spirits, each with its own traits and personalities that even the smallest children knew. One evening a month or so earlier, Alma and I had noticed Kofikro, a precocious two-year-old boy, walking along the edge of our compound from behind our house. He was one of our favorite children in the village, and I called out to him.

"Kofikro!"

He stopped and turned to us, his face miserable. Then I noticed he was holding something.

"What's that?" I asked.

He walked towards us sheepishly and held it out: an empty sardine tin. Immediately I felt ashamed. I still had trouble remembering not to throw out certain things that the Beng considered valuable. Sardine tins in particular made excellent toys, as did the keys. The children must have long ago realized that there were goodies to be salvaged in the trash heap behind our house, and this is what Koifikro had been up to.

Mistaking my brief silence for disapproval, Kofikro blurted out, "A spirit gave this to me."

"A spirit?" I said, glad to give weight to his excuse, "what did it look like?"

"It was white, and it had long hair."

Alma reached for her notebook. "What else?" she asked.

"It hissed," Kofikro said, demonstrating dramatically, happy to be taken seriously by adults.

"Does it have a name?"

"Alufyé."

Since then we'd learned more about this type of spirit. Some were men, some were women, and they could be seen by humans when they swooped into villages late at night, their thick, uncombed hair waving in the air. These spirits raided the Beng farms, having a weakness for bananas and yams. And they were white. I recalled how, when we first arrived in Bengland, some children ran from us in terror while the adults chuckled. To those children, we must have been alufyé; to their parents, convenient disciplinary tools.

Included in the Beng spirit pantheon were the tall gagon spirits, who could only be seen in the day, by hunters in the forest. These spirits were dangerous, capable of killing people, but they were afraid of guns and hunting dogs. And then there were spirits called bonzo who couldn't be seen, though their noises were audible. Anyone passing close by a bonzo would suddenly stiffen and go blind momentarily.

They were all creatures of the imagination, but this made them no less real, for they were creatures who affected the lives of our neighbors. Ché Kofi wore copper rings designed to ward off any spirit: ever since he had seen an alufyé when he was young he never went into the forest unprotected. When Yacouba hunted, he always brought along his dog, and if it barked he knew it was warning off nearby spirits. The entire village believed Nakoyan was possessed by a spirit, and even she agreed. For months now I had been filled with these local dramas and beliefs, which fit into a world of such strangeness that I felt I was actually living in a novel written by the Beng. But I was a subsidiary character, however disturbed or bedazzled.

Village of Kosangbé,
where Philip Graham and Alma Gottlieb
lived in 1979-1980