“I don’t understand why everyone looks at me so strangely. It’s not my fault I was born with long hands. My God, it’s a real curse. Look at that girl. Her hands are so long it’s like she isn’t human. I forbid you to speak to me like that! No, no, put me down, I’m sorry.
Next time, you’ll think twice. Her name is Foussa. And yes, as you can see, she has very long hands. Hands that, when she lets her concentration slip, slowly slide down her legs, past her knees, brush her ankles, and touch the ground without her needing to bend over.
Hands that can stretch even farther if she wants, like two living vines obeying her will. Hands that, at the slightest contact with an object she is not protecting with her thoughts, reduce it to a fine gray powder, light ash like a sigh. Foussa is 22 years old.
She lives in Bancomo, a village that looks like many others. Concrete houses mixed with clay huts, a noisy market on Saturday mornings, a church on one side, a mosque on the other, and people who talk about everyone except themselves. And in this village, everyone talks about Foussa. Not because of her almond-shaped eyes, nor because of her voice, soft like the rain in March.
They talk about her because of her hands, always because of her hands. That morning, like every morning, Foussa had gotten up before sunrise. She put on her long blue dress, wrapped her hands in thick cloth, a habit, a precaution, and went out to fetch water from the communal well before the village truly woke up.
