Barrow: Rend those borders asunder, O immigration! And let me chastise UDP with a Senegalese or Guinean superfluity! For power and its aphrodisiacs infect deeper than Covid. Meteor-mettled, let this desire, poised along five-hundred meters of “Kabaa” and subsequent to three amulets under three corpses’ as décor, bewitch the hearts of any that issued from a womb. Soothsayer! Soothsayer?

(Soothsayer enters with Dou Sanno, Henry Gomez, and attendants)

Soothsayer: Yes, my liege! What occasions thy call this hour?

Barrow: Pronounce that which soothes troubled senses! And weld for my heart sheaths metallic of eternal venom. Like a puff-adder shall I strike, but with fangs that leave gashes bigger than Excalibur’s! Is my end near?

Henry Gomez: God forbid!

Dou Sanno: I can’t go back to making “kankurangs”! And you Henry, wilt thou yet again assume fresh episodes of labor in the streets of Hamburg?

Henry Gomez: Adieu, those years of generalized pain, toil, and fatigue.

Barrow: The UDP wants those days back! Speak Soothsayer! And be far rhythmic than thespian!

(Soothsayer brandishes his ox-tail and throws some cowries on a flat wooden plate. He gawks at the sky while Barrow and his team hold their breaths)

Soothsayer: I see a phoenix! Not a Pegasus.

Barrow: What?

Soothsayer: I see a phoenix!

(Enter Ebrima Sankareh and Ebrima Sillah)

Dou Sanno: (Together with Henry Gomez): Phoenix???

Henry Gomez: That’s the capital city of Arizona!

Dou Sanno: See? The diaspora wants to destabilize this country and steal the elections!

Henry Gomez: I knew it! Mighty Soothsayer! Live long and tarry far!

Sankareh: Aye! I’ve been to Phoenix! I used to own half of that city!

Soothsayer: I see a phoenix!

(Enter Messenger)

Messenger: Halifa Sallah hath arrived!

(Enter Halifa Sallah)

Soothsayer: I see a phoenix!

Halifa: A phoenix is an ageless bird in Greek mythology that lives for hundreds of years only to burn itself and come back to life for another cycle.

Ebrima Sillah: And a Pegasus?

Halifa: In the same classical genre, a Pegasus is an imaginary winged-horse. But I’ve come for something else, brethren. Why did you alter the age limit in the constitution?

Soothsayer: To make Ousainou the phoenix I keep seeing!

Ebrima Sillah: In symbology, a Pegasus would be closer to NPP.

Soothsayer: I see a phoenix!

Barrow: Where did I go wrong? O worthy Soothsayer? Ousainou shan’t rule!

Soothsayer: You went wrong with Gambia and strong with corruption; but thy strength greater in the latter. With bruised throats and generational poverty, peasants sang thee madrigals in 2016; but thou forgot too quickly as to adorn Macky Sall with golden bracelets, usurped medals, and trinkets rightful of those same Gambians now without crumbs.

Barrow: Say no more!

Soothsayer: Thy daily fish is a lifetime earning for whole villages! Think of what sayeth I while hospitals ration gloves, if any. Thy son swiftly evacuated to foreign luxury, deprived families routinely lose women to labor with neither thy gaze, nor sympathetic consideration.

Barrow: Say no more of what was to pass as musical, only to be this thunderous. 

Soothsayer: Gambia can’t be permitted one bus a day into Senegal while Senegalese trucks, buses, vans, and merchandise flood your highways daily. And if traffic seeks to regulate their lot as has been its legitimate wont, those disdainful Senegalese drivers run over Gambian police. Under thy tuition do Senegalese men at arms pursue and shoot Gambians at home, arrest and kidnap them to Dakar. The same perpetrators scorn your people as to burn their trucks with abandon while their military occupies and harass a section of thy folk. Of late did they mount a fresh assault on a Gambian driver in Westfield area as if  Gibril Ceesay’s case of Sanyang wasn’t gory enough. Gambia’s economy is in ruins with the poor battling extreme hardship just to eat. Thou perform too poorly in all spheres of presidential assessment—the economy, health, business, trade, security, and agriculture. In fact, thy budget for office of the president is much bigger than your entire agriculture budget. And with that, thou feed into Senegal’s trap of killing Gambia’s economy to depend on Dakar for generations to come. Gambia thou wasted in a 125 million constitution that is now jettisoned. And Gambia thou is losing to patriots with a lot against thee. Even the country’s diplomatic passports aren’t spared.

Henry Gomez: Enough! Enough! Just speak of the Pegasus or phoenix!

Barrow: I like not the phoenix!

Soothsayer: I also see a naked picture of one of you in a woman’s cellphone!

Sankareh: Not me!

Ebrima Sillah: Not me!

Henry Gomez: Not me!

Barrow: And not me!

Dou Sanno: What did you say?

Henry Gomez: He said somebody’s ugly black penis is found on a lady’s phone!

(With that, Dou Sanno grabs Henry, punching him wherever he can as Sankareh and Sillah struggle to separate them)

Soothsayer: I see a phoenix, a penis, and nightmares!

“Great leaders of great nations rise to make history; African leaders rise to make money.” Gambiano.