Mahamadou Ndiaye thought he was going to die.
Lying in bed at his West 141th Street apartment, he writhed in agony. Pain shot through his left leg; blood soaked through the bandages wrapped around his thigh and oozed down his calf. Images of his family – his father, brother, wife and infant son, refugees in Mali, raced through his mind. If he should die, he thought, who would take care of them?
Three days earlier, on Aug. 23, Ndiaye, a Mauritian refugee who arrived in Harlem in September 2006, tackled an armed robber at DD Fashion Store in the Bronx. The assailant fled without the goods, but left Ndiaye with three bullet holes and some modest media fanfare.
Now recovering, visiting a physical therapist and taking ESL classes, he’s about to learn his future. Last Wednesday, Ndiaye, 22, appeared before a judge for a master calendar immigration hearing to prove he has legal representation, the first step in the arbitration of his refugee status. Ndiaye will reappear in court in April.
Ndiaye has been nervous about this process for months. If his refugee claim is eventually denied, he’ll be deported. Brian I. Kaplan, Ndiaye’s lawyer, declined to comment on case specifics.
On the afternoon of the attempted robbery, however, Ndiaye had little doubt of the outcome. “I was going to win,” he said. “I had to.”
The harrowing fight – captured on a store surveillance tape – erupted after a customer pulled a gun as Ndiaye was ringing up his purchases. Handing the customer a bag of clothing, Ndiaye noticed the gun in the man’s shaking right hand. In a flurry, Ndiaye jumped to his right; the man, startled, fired the gun, and Ndiaye leaped on his back, grabbing his wrists and trying to wrestle the gun from his hand. After crashing into a display case, Ndiaye managed to pin the assailant to the ground – but two shots pierced the inside of Ndiaye’s left thigh. In a final fit of strength, he ripped the gun out of the man’s hand, and took a third shot to his thigh. The shooter escaped as Ndiaye lay face down on the floor, his pants wet with blood.
His actions were primal. Aside from childhood horseplay he had never been in a fight. “I was scared,” Ndiaye said. “I was just trying to protect myself.” The next 18 hours were a blur. Bystanders outside the store rushed in and called an ambulance. They doused water over his shaved head; Ndiaye, a Muslim, was observing the Ramadan daily fast and wouldn’t consume even a sip. He was taken to Lincoln Hospital where he refused to call his family, not wanting to worry them.
The ensuing news coverage painted Ndiaye as a hero, a title he has yet to grow comfortable with. “If they call me a hero, I accept it,” he said. “But I thank God, the police, the people at the hospital; I thank everybody.” Ndiaye, who had lost his job at a Queens Dunkin’ Donuts when it closed, was only filling in at the Bronx store for his vacationing cousin.
“I feel so bad,” said his cousin, back from vacation and standing next to a quadruple-screen security monitor. He declined to give his name because the robber was still at large. “I should have been here.”
Despite the tumult Ndiaye has experienced in recent months, it doesn’t compare to his bleak and precarious former life in Mauritania, an existence marred by enslavement.
Ndiaye was born into a nomadic tribe historically oppressed by Mauritania’s “white Moor” ruling class, the Bedan. Although recent anti-slavery legislation in Mauritania attempted to eradicate such subjugation, it mostly amounted to a public relations move, said Bakary Tandia, a Mauritanian case manager and policy advocate at the African Services Committee in Harlem. Tandia estimated 40 to 45 percent of the nation’s population consists of enslaved or formerly enslaved people, commonly identified as Harateens, literally meaning “freed slaves.”
Mauritania has been rocked by political strife in recent years, including military coups in 2005 and 2008. Despite efforts to stabilize the government, said Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, an international human rights organization, “human rights are still being suppressed.”
