Transit (11 page)

28

AWALEH

I, TOO, HAVE RETURNED
from far away and from many dangers. I have traveled the length and breadth of the screes, deserts of sand, ergs and regs, the sides of bald mountains, and the dunes round as a dromedary's hump. I have slaked my thirst with the sap of the tamarins and aloes that grow in the beds of the wadis. A mere scrap would satisfy my hunger. Hidden in the silence of the desert, I moved like a chameleon with the slowness of a glacier. I had in my blood the required economy of breath, the uneasiness of the sentinel, and the gaze that abolishes the horizon. My companions and I—the famous Desert Scorpions that a discreet, jovial Italian friend, Hugo Pratt, had put on a saddle in his picture books, so I've been told—instinctively knew how to detect the pulsations of the earth's crust, sound the very guts of the desert, decode the book of the sands, and sense the coming of a storm. Free ourselves of whatever hampers the step, weighs down the walk, and dampens the forward thrust. The most gifted of us had the power to put the deepest song of the earth into words, wary of the small change of everyday words, a song that wells up from its belly, song of the slow crossing, a song unfolding to
infinity. An opening onto the familiar world visited, lived in, questioned a thousand times. Since the beginning of time, we—that is, me and all my colleagues working in Guistir, the region of the three borders (Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia) that saw me born—haven't needed official documents to accompany that melody, to catch it at its birth, at the time when the cold desert night is separated from the reseda-yellow light of dawn. No member of our army of border guards, called
ANG
,
¹
has an authentic birth certificate; we were all “born circa…” Because nomadic time is not regulated by any calendar or encumbered by any archive, it does not sign the official papers demanded by the goatees of the Third Republic. Everybody was “born circa” in my time, and only the intrusion of the French colonial administration could impose such a delicate intention on us. For our own good, of course. And we accepted it without trying to bargain. That is our strength, our pride, for we were careful not to reveal our raw, intimate thoughts to the Occupier, and as soon as things turned sour, at a sign or the snap of a finger we would take off: the whiteness, the white-hot iron bar of the sun of insubordination, was ours—the only horizon within our reach. Do not trust appearances, those old men who drag their bones to the shade of the palm tree, the ones you meet by the roadside—they keep up an exhausting pace as soon as they set their body into motion. With their nose to the wind, one foot in front of another, in the thickness of the dunes or the rough surface of the ergs—once they have set off, no one can stop them. And all those seasons with their terrifying faces, we would spend them in the nomadic backcountry. From khamsin to monsoon, we came and went between the coast and the hinterland, with some exceptional periods, like the English blockade under Churchill, which plunged the Territory, governed by
the Vichy regime with an iron hand, into the depths of hunger and thirst. During that blockade, the people of this country tasted bitter roots and cat bouillon: the memory of that time is still tattooed on them to this day.

But let us return to our old walkers, whom the administration never succeeded in taming. And how! We walked faster than the beat of their drum, we were tireless; caravan robbers know something about that. Hear this: when we were returning from a surveillance mission around Lake Abbé—“that copper sulfate-colored lake,” as Hugo Pratt wrote in his little spiral notebooks—to the great astonishment of the scientists in the capital, we discovered fossils. We had noticed that after heavy rains, the soil around the lake would soften and reveal animals (small crocodiles, birds, fish, or warthogs) that had been perfectly preserved in the briny mud for eight thousand years. Not a word of thanks from the paleontologists and geologists of the capital. A fossil is an open book, I told myself. What did he tell us exactly, that dear old Hugo, about half-open books? Oh yes, he was talking about Tagore, a man from India he said was as wise as our shepherds who had the faculty of distinguishing living beings and objects under a weak light or even at night: “An open book is a talking brain; closed, a waiting friend; forgotten, a forgiving soul; destroyed, a weeping heart.” Replace “book” with “earth” and you'll have some idea of the magical spells hidden in this land where man was not born of Adam but of little Lucy. These oasis landscapes always throw us into long meditative hours that Charles de Foucauld—the skeleton-thin hermit of the Hoggar, another man Hugo Pratt admired—would have appreciated. The sun of this country is a richly colored doublet; its moon is quicksilver. Its cacti bathe in a light so elegant you'd think they're filled with blue blood. The gentle pastels of its skies at the crack of dawn have in them something that can change any normally constituted person
into a sensory sponge. All these spells stir in the mouths of our storytellers, those barometers of public opinion who fear the silence of the body. They're itching to explain the mysteries hidden in nature and humanity through the language of magic. The wire of a detonator lies unrolled here; you can follow its traces between the rocks. They stroke the muzzle of creation, use only ancient weapons (the stone is also a weapon, the word, the breath, the flint rubbed until it sparks; think for a moment of the bare hands imprinted on the rough cave by our distant great-grandfathers), and put a dying future in perspective by chewing over its past again and again. They suffer under our sun. They die under our moon, knowing the extreme urgency of the creative act. They are from no place. They tell time. They tell destiny.

1
. Autonomous Nomadic Groups.—
Author's note

29

BASHIR BINLADEN

GAME REALLY OVER
this time. President he said
OK
, civil war, over. Scud 1, Scud 2, an Scud 3 said hey put it there! even if a little skinny group (Scud 4) stayed in Goda mountains with a spokeman hidden in Paris. All over for us too. War sweet as sugarcane, finished. Period. Binladen given you his word. The chiefs said: leave everything; get out right way. Clowns think it easy, like taking bus to see karate movie at the Odeon.
OK
, we didn't try to be wiseguys. We left quick-quick. Game ended 0–0. Tie game,
OK
, but hey, that business-there not zero killed. Lot of guys killed even, but that not really my problem. We took our gear, plus a few souvenirs we lifted here-an-there. We got on military truck to Camp As-Eyla then into other police truck to Ali-Sabieh, an there we got onto the roof of the old train to Djibouti. That way we travel free. To give our hands something to do, we took khat from people by force an we sung “I'm Bad” (that, American song cause Michael Jackson, he sing like he chewing big fat chewngum). We horsed around a lot, but
OK
, big problems come later mostly. At the station everybody said bye then they left.

In city-there, I got no more house, see, no more family. The others, they went home: Haïssama went back to Einguela, Warya to District 5, Ayanleh to Balbala an all. An so, all the other guys left but hey, no problem. They said: we gonna get together in front of headquarters tomorrow, ask for demobilization money,
OK
? Aïdid an me, we were too mad after that. Without thinking we just went to Siesta beach, where there's French faggots—military looking for little kids.
OK
, first of all, us, we not kids; an then, we don't look like faggots; an then watch out, we got weapons. We told old war stories for fun. We smoked a lot too; we thought about cool nice job to make money. We thought too much. We flipped out. Aïdid, he wanted to be smuggler in Loyada (that, border with Somaliland. Somaliland, maybe you don't know it yet, that
OK
, it not known like me Binladen, is all). Then, I said stop to Aïdid, we not gonna put demobilize money into this business-there, that too dumb. Me, I said we gonna go party well-well, then we gonna look for vitaminized job without paying a franc. Aïdid he
OK
-
OK
with that but hey, he don't know my secret yet, right? He said, how we gonna find vitaminized job? So I played boss. I yelled real-real loud: let's smoke first; after that, I give you solution. I was assawayed, scuse me, I'm out of it a little. Haha-haha, Assoweh I almost said like an ass, Assoweh that my old name cause now my name Binladen, the terriblific boss. Wait, don't make strategic mistake (that true military language) right away even if Aïdid a brother, right? So I said like that, gotta use survival technique, tomorrow or day after we see bout finding vitaminized job. Aïdid, he didn't have mistrust. An me, I didn't play my last card. Not so dumb, Binladen, right?

30

ABDO-JULIEN

FALL
1892. They were exhibiting Ka'lina Amerindians from French Guyana completely naked in a Parisian park at the same time as our grandfathers in traditional dress, gathered in a flimsy hut indicating their generic name—Somalis—in the Zoological Garden of Acclimation. Take the Chemins de fer de l'Ouest, the Western Railroad, and get off at Porte Maillot station, said the poster announcing the attraction in all the French newspapers. All that memory is available with one little click. Thanks, Internet. To think that Grandpa served as a soldier whose assignment was to watch the borders for the Republic that had put his grandfather in a cage of a zoo open to the winds. And what do I have to with all this? Now that I think about it, I'm closely connected to that past, that colonial memory not always the color of the pink panther. That's why I sometimes reject that shared memory, and at the same time reject myself, reject my maternal side and my skin, which in fact isn't all that light. Repress my whole being, express myself loudly too, and shout from the rooftops: “Do not call me a mulatto, a
métis.
Metis was the first wife of Zeus, king of the Olympian gods. She died horribly.” But people here don't know that, either. So? So, don't breathe a word of it.

31

ALICE

IF YOUR BODY
germinates and swells, if your heart pounds like the surf, what could be more normal? I push the rumpled sheet away with my hand; I crush the doubt that assails me under my heel. I seek in vain the heat of his body. I can sense his smell floating through the room; I still have the taste of his sweat in my mouth. I resonate with him with every fiber in my body; my skin spontaneously catches fire at his contact. I curl up with love inside his arms. Hold your breath; repeat without opening your mouth “I'm so happy!” Suddenly I can see the world with the eyes of the heart. Every second is an eternity; I flame with a joy I cannot hide. My head is resting on his lower belly, which goes up and down with the rhythm of his peaceful breathing. The two tips of my breasts are delightfully compressed by his shins. With one hand, I stroke the light moss of his ebony hairs, watching the dark honey of his eyes from the corner of mine. With the other hand, I stroke my sex wet and hot as burning spices. I hold my breath to prolong the exquisite moment.

A metallic sound attracts my attention. It's coming from the outside, from the street perhaps. Really, I have a hard time
believing that right now he may be at police headquarters in a tiny room reeking of the urine from a whole gang of delinquents, the vomit of drunks, and the blood of the poor crucified people relegated to the basement. And all that because of a goddamn petition asking for peace and the official recognition of the martyr Mahmoud Harbi. I spend my time running after his absence. I am going stark-raving mad, it couldn't be clearer. In the darkness of my memory, nothing comes knocking. I stroke the cold bed. No, he's right in front of me. He's coming out of the bathroom; he's modest, as usual. He lowers the shade of his eyes. His underpants are tight on him; I look at it insistently, detect an erection. My senses are fooling me; I'm imagining things. No, he is here, in front of me, his eyes fogged over by modesty. He's still astonished by my relaxed immodesty after all these years. Why is he hiding his virility with his right forearm? He slips in at my side; his hairless calf bumps my hip. I breathe in; I want his sex; I want it to find its way back into my humus, and roughly. I read somewhere that the female hyena has an erectile penis and even false testicles. As she's bigger than her mate and dominates him, it seems natural for her to possess the genital attributes of the so-called stronger sex, don't you think? Wait, I just found a hair finer than an eyelash in the bed, and it's black. It must be his; it's the only thing that connects me to him at this moment. I am hot and cold at the same time. I would like to be somewhere else—far away from here, in any case. To live through a night of love with him. The last one?

I can see myself back on a beach in Brittany; I'm fourteen. It's in Saint-Lunaire, to be exact. I am part of a group of adolescent girls in bathing suits. Young girls in bloom with their budding breasts, a spot of sweat under each armpit. All the grace of human clay. Men's eyes are concupiscent, and we drown our fear under an avalanche of giggles. It must be three or four in the afternoon. A sea breeze, an angry word or a ray of the sun, and a
shiver runs through our skin, freezes us. Our bathing suits and bras shield from indiscreet glances the ripe fruit, ready to be weighed with a trembling hand. Danger is approaching; it's the silhouette of two men in the prime of life. A slight sensation of dizziness. They draw closer still, talking all the while. Suddenly we get up and run over to our parents, who have remained on the beach.