Most evenings now they meet without calling. Two coffees land on their table the way sunset lands on the tiled street—inevitable.

Buba turns the white paper with his thumb, not to read but to feel the weight of it. He looks at Alias, then past him, as if seeing a different city.

“Where I come from,” he says, “chance is not a casino. It’s a habit. A rhythm.”

Alias waits.

“In Senegal,” Buba goes on, “my aunties sit in a circle every month. A tontine. Everyone puts money. Each time, one person takes the pot. School fees, a fridge, a bus ticket—whatever life is asking for. The rule is simple: everyone will get their turn. That promise is stronger than a contract because the circle watches you. You miss a payment, shame walks home with you.”

He taps the white paper again. “Hope isn’t just a wish there. It’s scheduled.”

Alias’s mouth softens. “And the banks?”

Buba snorts. “Bank is a big door and a small welcome. Paperwork, time, money to keep the account alive. People don’t wait. They move money with people—cousins, cousins of cousins—or through the shops with glass counters. You hand over euros; they hand you a receipt and a promise; a sister in Dakar picks up francs on the other end. Fees slice it every step. No one likes it. Everyone uses it.”

He takes a sip, sets the cup down carefully. “Phones changed things. You load credit, you send small amounts, the kiosk has a plastic sign and a stubborn printer. But it’s still trust in faces, not in rules. When the printer dies, your balance becomes a story.”

Alias is quiet, picturing a kiosk with a tired sign, a queue that is really a set of relationships.

Buba’s voice lowers. “We also have our raffles. Church fairs, neighborhood fundraisers; someone wins a sack of rice or a goat. And we have cheats. A raffle where the winner is the organizer’s brother. People learn where not to play. But they never stop playing. Because that one lucky day—the idea of it—is food.”

He leans forward. “So when you tell me this—” he taps the cover, “—redistributing money by draw, no hand in the drum—I think: they would understand that where I’m from. If it is fair. If the rule is stronger than the mouth that speaks it.”

Alias nods, but keeps his questions small. “How would you say it to your aunt?”

Buba smiles without humor. “I’d say: ‘You know how we take turns with the tontine? This is like taking turns with luck. The pot is the same money everyone knows; the rule of who receives is a draw that no one can touch. No prefect, no banker. If you are in, you have the same chance as everyone else.’”

“And if she asks where to keep it?” Alias asks.

“In her phone,” Buba says. “Or a code on a paper she scratches and shows to a niece. Small amounts. Nothing that makes a thief listen. Day one, it must feel like topping up airtime. You don’t teach theory to a woman who is holding a bag of rice.”

He gestures toward the bar, toward the voices. “And language matters. French for the prefect. Wolof for the market. Short words. No English acronyms. If you say ‘stablecoin,’ she will hear ‘trick.’ If you say ‘the money stays the same each day,’ she will nod.”

Alias moves his cup, as if making space between them for the picture Buba is painting. “Scams?”

Buba’s nod is immediate. “Many. Diaspora men come back with schemes. They collect, they vanish. People remember those names for years. If this—” another tap on the paper “—fails once, it dies twice. It dies at home and it dies in the stories we tell about home.”

A woman passes selling packets of peanuts; Buba buys one, tears it open, leaves the pile between them like a small offering.

“There is something else,” he says. “Order without a boss. That part they know. A bus station works without a clock because the drivers read each other. A market works because everyone has eyes. A tontine works because shame is quicker than lawyers. If your drum truly has no hand—if the rule is public and cannot be bent—it will feel familiar. Not European. Ours.”

Alias lets the word sit between them. Ours.

“How would you start?” he asks.

Buba shrugs, then answers anyway. “Small. Quiet. A church group. A set of tailors. A football team’s parents. People who already trust one another. They enter, they see that the pot is not a trick. A few wins happen; the winners are visible people, not ghosts. Word travels. Not banners. Not noise. Mouths. And every draw—every single one—must be clean. If a cousin seems lucky too often, it dies.”

He looks at Alias and there is a steadiness in his eyes that wasn’t there weeks ago. “You see why I keep reading. I am not looking for poetry. I am looking for whether this can sit next to our ways without breaking them.”

Alias folds his hands. “And?”

“And I can begin to see it,” Buba says. “The shape of it. If the money truly keeps its value, if the rule truly cannot be touched, then the rest is language and patience.”

Someone laughs too loudly and then apologizes to no one. Buba pushes the peanuts toward Alias as if to seal a point.

“One more thing,” he says. “Respect. If you bring this to us like a savior, it will rot. If you bring it like a tool, we will test it. And if it holds, we will carry it. That is the only way things live where I come from.”

Alias inclines his head, something like gratitude crossing his face and leaving it unchanged. “Then we will talk about words,” he says. “Short ones.”

Buba laughs softly. “Short ones,” he agrees.

They sit a while longer, not speaking, watching the terrace turn over, as if they are already imagining a different circle forming somewhere far from this table—one that doesn’t need them to stand over it.

When they finally rise, it’s with the quiet of men who have moved a step without anyone around them knowing. The street outside is warm and ordinary. Inside both of them, something has shifted its weight.