I thought I was finished.
Just one more look at this
landscape, I thought. But since this
afternoon I don't know anymore. Boubacar
Traoré. For months I've been listening to his melancholy music, so different from the Zaïrian pop that swamps this continent that I was somewhat surprised he'd found his way onto a British record label.

Yesterday I saw him on stage. A bluesman of about fifty-five in a dark suit, checkered cap on his head. He stood there, alone with his guitar, a microphone at his feet - he used his feet to tap the rhythm.

One song caused a commotion among the Malians in the audience. Mali Twist - some of them jumped up onto the stage to dance. The man next to me clapped his hands, a blissful smile on his face. "This is our youth," he said. For years, all of Mali woke to this song on the radio. It was a call to Malians throughout the world to return home and help build their country. That was just after independence, in 1963. Kar Kar, blouson noir they called him, because he wore a leather jacket like Johnny Halliday and Elvis Presley. Nostalgia rippled through the audience.

After the concert he was standing alone with a bottle of cola in his hand, so I summoned the courage to walk up to him and arrange a meeting. Ali Farka Touré, who had just won a Grammy in America for his record with Ry Cooder, was there too. Later I saw them leave together, Farka carrying the guitar - a sign of respect for an older colleague.

Finding his house wasn't easy. Ask for me at the New Galaxy club, he'd said, but the people there look at me, puzzled. Boubacar Traoré? Never heard of him. Only when I mention his nickname, Kar Kar, does it ring a bell. "Kar Kar, the musician? But he's in France!" The salesman at a perfume shop thinks he lives in the neighborhood. He points towards the hill, behind a factory from which a plume of black smoke is rising into the air. On my way there I pass a junkyard with a tow truck parked out the front. Children shout "Toubab, toubab! Whitey, whitey!" and tag along behind me, so I arrive at his house with a whole delegation. He's lying on a mattress in the courtyard, listening to the radio - a soccer match from the sound of it. He seems pleasantly surprised that I not only said I'd come by, but actually have. The neighbor visiting him greets me politely and disappears.

Except for the checkered cap, there's little resemblance to the man on stage. He's dressed in a pair of worn orange and black striped pants and a shirt. In the shadow of a mango tree stands a blue Peugeot scooter bearing an 'Allah is Great' sticker. The metal door to his room is ajar; he's taped a poster from his concert to the cupboard door. A sheep is standing under the reed awning, and chickens are scratching their way across the yard.

He's willing to tell me how he got the name 'Kar Kar'. In his younger days he was a talented soccer player, and he left school at twelve because he couldn't think about anything else. He was so good at dribbling - kari kari in Bambara - that his supporters encouraged him loudly. When he began singing, they all knew him as Kar Kar.

When evening falls, he goes into his room and lights a candle. Only then do I realize he has no electricity. There's no running water either; the drinking water is kept cool in an earthenware jug. Squatting under the mango tree, he begins his ritual cleansing before prayers. I watch in silence, but he goes on talking. Do I feel the cool breeze blowing through the yard? Down there - he points towards the center of Bamako - the heat remains hanging between the houses. But this hill is full of water, it runs over the rocks all year round, and during the rainy season it rushes downhill with growing force; sometimes the whole neighborhood is flooded.

He rolls out a sheepskin rug and turns to face Mecca. When he bends over I see that he's wearing three leather thongs around his thighs. Gris-gris. I look the other way in embarrassment. In the falling darkness, the noises grow louder. Tom-toms are rolling in the distance. Suddenly a long, drawn-out scream shakes the hillside. "Did you hear that?" he asks when he's finished praying. "Holland is playing against Italy. I think your people just scored."

We walk down the hill together towards the paved road. Did I come by taxi? But the douroudourouni, the 'little five-five', stops right over there! A ride used to cost twenty-five francs. The price has gone up with each new president, but the name has stuck.

He laughs when I click on my flashlight. When he came back from France four years ago, he walked around at night with a flashlight too. "Kar Kar has gone blind in France!" everyone said. He'd been wearing shoes for two years - the soles of his feet were as soft as a baby's.

Before I know it I've asked another careless question. "No, I didn't go to France to play music," he snaps. "My wife, Pierrette, had just died. I had to earn money, so I worked on building sites." Pierrette - his saddest songs are about her. I thought she was French, but it turns out she was a métisse.

I'd like to ask more questions, but he keeps right on talking. In Paris he lived in a foyer - a boarding house - with other African immigrants. The Zaïrians among them categorically refused to buy tickets for the metro, because all the steel used in the French subway cars came from Zaïre - why should they pay?!
People are sitting in front of their houses, listening to the radio; here and there a television is on. Out of the darkness comes the occasional greeting. "Kar Kar, ça va?" "Anitjé! Thanks! Ça va très bien."A boy comes by, pushing a cart full of empty plastic jerry cans. "Hey, I haven't seen you around for days!" Kar Kar calls out. "Have you got a girlfriend across town? I'm out of water!"

At the taxi stand he gets into an argument with a cab driver. Two thousand francs! They quarrel in Bambara. Indignant, he pulls me to the other side of the street. "That man is an idiot!"
"What did he say?"
"That a black brother shouldn't try to get in his way, that white people have more money than they know what to do with."
"What did you tell him?"
"That he's behind the times! There are rich whites and poor whites, just like black people! Anyone who doesn't know that is living in the past. When he tried to lower his price, I told him: I wouldn't let her get in your car if it only cost a hundred francs! What would he think, I asked him, if he had a guest from Holland and a Malian tried to cheat her? He knew what I meant, he realized I was right."

Once I'm in the taxi, I realize that I can't leave yet. Not yet. Just as I was about to move on, I've walked into another story.