Allah is Not Obliged (16 page)

In spite of what everyone says about Allah never leaving empty a mouth he has created, everyone was speechless and everyone said Marie-Béatrice was a genuine saint for having fed so many people for four months. We don’t need to get into an argument, we’ll just call her what everyone else called her: Saint Marie-Béatrice. A genuine saint. A saint with a cornet and an AK-47!
Gnamokodé!

At the beginning of civil war in tribal war Liberia, there were only two factions, Taylor’s and Samuel Doe’s. The two factions hated each other to death and fought on every front. Prince
Johnson’s faction didn’t exist back then. Back then, Prince Johnson was part of Taylor’s group; he was the most efficient, the most veteran, the most influential general that Taylor had. Right up until the day when the Prince had a revelation. The revelation that he had a mission. A mission to save Liberia. To save Liberia by demanding that power could not be wielded by any warlord who, gun in hand, had fought to liberate Liberia.

That was the day he broke with Taylor, on account of Taylor wanted to be president. Prince Johnson deserted, taking Taylor’s best officers and declared himself Taylor’s sworn enemy, his bitter opponent. Samuel Doe, the dictator, heard his tirades against Taylor. (A ‘tirade’ is a long, angry speech, usually of a censorious nature.) And Samuel Doe believed the speeches and thought that in Prince Johnson he had found a natural ally, a friend with whom he could negotiate. Everyone knows what happened, what it cost him. Some officer made a tasty kebab out of Samuel Doe’s heart and the royal vulture made a tasty lunch of his eyes one afternoon under the perpetually hazy skies of Monrovia.

After the rift with Taylor, Prince Johnson had to find subsistence for everyone who had followed him, everyone who had put their trust in him, and there was a whole battalion of them. Every man with his people and his family. And, even though Allah never leaves empty a mouth he has created, things were tough. Really tough!
Faforo!

He started out by attacking one of the NPFL frontier posts so that he could get some duties and taxes for himself, some of the customs duties of independent Liberia. Prince Johnson
used maximum force; he sent in several waves of fighters, grenade attacks, mortars, shells. The attack lasted so many days that there was even time to alert the ECOMOG peacekeeping forces, there was even time for them to get there. They arrived with even more maximum forces. The peacekeeping forces didn’t keep the peace, they didn’t take any unnecessary risks. (I’ll explain the word ‘risk’ for Black Nigger African Natives: it means ‘the possibility of suffering harm or loss’.) They weren’t bothered about details, they just fired at random, they fired shells at the people doing the attacking and at the people being attacked. They bombed right into the crowd, into the chaos. In a single day they produced loads of innocent victims, more victims than a whole week of the rival factions just fighting with each other. When the uproar died down, the peacekeeping force picked up the wounded. The wounded were evacuated to field hospitals run by ECOMOG. They drew up a report about the area. That was their role, their mission. They ascertained that it was Johnson’s territory. He had the upper hand. Therefore Johnson got to take advantage of the customs post. Under their surveillance.

Now that was sorted, Prince Johnson could take care of the dead. We dug a mass grave for our dead, and there were lots of dead. Among the dead were three child-soldiers. Three of the Good Lord’s children, according to the saint. They weren’t friends of mine. Their names were Mamadou the Mad, John the Proud and Boukary the Damned. They died because that’s how Allah wanted things. And Allah is not obliged to be fair about everything he does. And I’m not obliged to say a funeral oration for these three child-soldiers.

The funeral prayers were led by Prince Johnson in person. After the prayers, we stood round the mass grave and raised our guns and fired the parting salvo. (‘Salvo’, according to the
Petit Robert
, means ‘a simultaneous discharge of firearms’.)

But news of the battle for the customs post had got about pretty much everywhere. There’d been so many dead, so much blood and chaos that all the foreign companies started avoiding the customs post.

We (we meaning the members of Johnson’s faction) thought it was temporary. For long weeks we waited but nobody showed up at the customs post. There was nothing to loot, so we didn’t get paid and we didn’t have much to eat. People started complaining. Then the soldiers started deserting. Johnson knew what he was up against, he abandoned the border post. He abandoned the post and all the graves of all those who died in order to capture it.
Faforo!

There was still the problem of secure and steady profits, and it had to be solved. Even grigrimen like Yacouba were starting to complain; they hadn’t got enough to eat and they weren’t being paid for the grigris they made. This time, Johnson attacked a gold- and diamond-mining town controlled by ULIMO, who were supporters of Samuel Doe. In his usual way—a dog never gives up his shameless habits—Prince Johnson used maximum force. Grenades and mortars and wave after wave of soldiers. The attackers resisted heroically. There was lots of blood and lots of people dead. The battle lasted several days. The attack lasted so many days that there was even time to alert the ECOMOG peacekeeping forces, there was even time for them to get there. The peacekeeping
forces didn’t keep the peace, they didn’t take any unnecessary risks. They weren’t bothered about details, they just fired shells at random, they fired shells at the people doing the attacking and at the people being attacked. They bombed every part of the town, the natives’ quarter, full of Black Nigger African Natives, and the miners’ quarter. When everything was demolished, when no one was moving any more, not the attackers or the attacked, the peacekeeping forces stopped massacring. They picked up the wounded. The wounded were evacuated to their field hospitals. They drew up a report about the status of forces on the ground. That was their role, their mission, their duty. They ascertained that it was Johnson’s territory. Therefore Johnson was awarded control of the town and took over running the mines.

The dead were taken away. Lots of dead. In spite of all the Christian grigris and all the Muslim grigris, four child-soldiers had been blown to bits. They were more than dead, twice as dead. Their remains were dumped in a mass grave with the rest of the dead. As the grave was being filled in, Prince Johnson cried. It was strange seeing a warlord, a warlord like Johnson, crying his heart out because he was so, so angry at ECOMOG. He was wearing his monk’s habit for the occasion, and he prayed and made speeches. Like Saint Marie-Béatrice, he said that the child-soldiers were the Good Lord’s children. God had given them, God had taken them away. God doesn’t always have to be fair. Thanks be to God. It was as good as a funeral oration and that means I don’t have to give a funeral oration that I don’t want to give. Thanks be to God.

But capturing the gold- and diamond-mining town had caused so much blood, caused so much death, that everyone in the area had run off. Nobody wanted to come back; the bossman partners didn’t want to come back. No bossman partners, no mining; no mining, no taxes; no taxes, no American dollars. Johnson found himself back at square one where he was before he seized the town. And time was getting on, and the soldiers and their families and all the child-soldiers and the men in the battalion were starting to grumble. They had made too many worthless sacrifices; they were impatient. Prince Johnson had to do something, he had to find something
gnona-gnona
.

Johnson went back to Monrovia. Everything in Monrovia had been looted, destroyed; the only thing left, the only building left standing, was Saint Marie-Béatrice’s convent. Saint Marie-Béatrice was proud; she was provocative, she incited people and defied them.

And there were rumours … there were thousands of rumours about all the stuff inside the convent. Masses of food, loads of gold and fat wads of American dollars. All stuffed in huge catacombs that spread out and out and went on and on.

Prince Johnson wanted to find out for himself if the rumours people were spreading were true. He decided to seize the convent. He started by sending an ultimatum to the mother superior, Saint Marie-Béatrice. (An ‘ultimatum’ is a proposal that is not open to discussion.) This ultimatum demanded
that the mother superior officially declare her allegiance to the only legitimate faction in Liberia, meaning Johnson’s faction. The mother superior responded that the only thing in the convent was children, women, nuns and a few pitiful wretches. (A ‘wretch’ is a poor, miserable, unfortunate or unhappy person.) All she asked of any Liberian worthy of the name was a little alms, a little mercy. She didn’t have to take sides.

This wasn’t an answer, it was a rejection. It was bullshit, it was an affront, an insult. Prince Johnson got angry and, in retaliation, he ruled that the convent school had to pay taxes in the amount of three hundred American dollars to his government as a contribution to the war effort. Immediately.

It wasn’t fair; it was ‘might is right’, just like in the La Fontaine fable ‘The Wolf and the Lamb’ we learned at school. Now it was the saint’s turn to get angry. She screamed, threw her cornet on the ground, and sent the messengers packing (‘send packing’ means ‘dismiss someone abruptly’).

‘You can tell Johnson that I don’t have three hundred dollars. And tell him to leave me alone, leave me in peace to find food for the children, the women and the old. That’s all I ask.’

This was the answer Prince Johnson had been hoping for. He decided to attack.

I, Birahima, street kid turned child-soldier, was part of the first unit that led the attack on Saint Marie-Béatrice’s convent. There were about ten of us child-soldiers. We were fucked up on drugs, but not too much, because we had to move
quietly without attracting the attention of the peacekeeping forces. If we’d been too fucked up, we would have made too much noise and we would have made mistakes. We were strong because we had faith in our grigris. We launched an attack on the convent at three in the morning by moonlight. But there was no element of surprise; the saint had been in the know. We were met by strong resistance. Three of our fighters were massacred and the rest of us had to hit the dirt and retreat on account of the machine-gun fire coming from the convent was very, very heavy. It was the mother superior herself, the saint herself, up there with the machine-gun.

Johnson had his dead picked up
doni-doni
(‘
doni-doni
’ means ‘easy does it’) and retreated. He had been tricked, he thought the attack would be a piece of cake for the child-soldiers. But no. He had to be better prepared, mount another attack with more maximum forces and especially more logic and intelligence.

Three child-soldiers had been massacred in spite of the Muslim grigris and the Christian grigris.
Walahé!
We buried them at dawn, in secret. Prince Johnson wore his soutane and he cried and he prayed. The saint said the child-soldiers were God’s children. Three of the Good Lord’s children had died. I should say their funeral oration, that’s the rules. I hadn’t been bunking with them very long so I don’t really know them well. From what I do know, they were more like the devil’s children than the Good Lord’s. All three of them were bastards, druggies, criminals, liars. They were cursed. I don’t want to say a funeral oration for the damned. And I’m not obliged to. So I’m not going to.
Gnamokodé!

*     *     *

For two afternoons Prince Johnson pondered the situation. (To ‘ponder’ is to reflect or consider with thoroughness and care.) Every afternoon he pondered Saint Marie-Béatrice’s convent, pondered Saint Marie-Béatrice kneeling on the stones, her knees black and blue from the stones. And that’s when he came up with the solution.

On the third evening, Prince Johnson went back on the attack, still in secret so as not to attract the attention of the ECOMOG peacekeeping forces. Instead of attacking from the front, about twenty soldiers attacked the convent from behind. And by surprise. But no. There was no element of surprise. There she was again, the mother superior in person, the saint, brandishing an AK-47. She machine-gunned hard and long and relentlessly and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers. The second assault, like the first, ended in failure. There was a third night-time secret assault which, like the second, was a fiasco. (‘Fiasco’, according to my
Larousse
, means ‘a complete failure’.)

Well, then the Prince got really mad, he girded himself. (To ‘gird yourself’ is a Black Nigger African expression. According to the
Glossary
, it means to take something seriously, to take the bull by the horns.) In the middle of the day, at noon precisely, he brought out the big guns. The cannons fired and blew the bell tower off the church and destroyed the three-storey building in the middle of the convent. Well, at that point, the saint had to surrender. She came out of the smouldering convent waving a white flag. She was followed by two lines of nuns with cornets, rosaries, the whole works, and they were followed by a horde of miserable wretches.

*     *     *

The ECOMOG forces were surprised by this brutal unforeseen attack. They thought it was a battle royal between the rival factions (a ‘battle royal’ means ‘an intense altercation, a fight to the finish’). ECOMOG sounded the alarm, confined all troops to barracks, and held a meeting of all their top generals that lasted a whole afternoon. When the meeting was over, to their surprise, Monrovia the terrible was dead calm. ECOMOG dispatched a heavily armed patrol to go and see what was happening. The patrol arrived and found Prince Johnson and Saint Marie-Béatrice holding hands and chatting away like old friends who had done their initiation together.

Prince Johnson allowed the saint and her followers to advance until they were within ten metres of him and then he noticed—what a shock!—that the mother superior looked exactly like him, Johnson, just like another him. He had them halt and studied her from head to foot for a long time. There was nothing he could say: they were identical as two drops of water. He had one of his men rip her cornet off and the resemblance was even more disturbing. They were both plump, they had the same nose, the same forehead, the same shape of the skull. For a minute Prince Johnson stood
makou
, flabbergasted. (I’ll explain
makou
again: it means ‘struck with admiration, astonishment, stupor’, according to my
Glossary
.)