Transit (3 page)

2

ABDO-JULIEN

AS A CHILD
I walked around naked every blessed day. My protruding belly button would catch the eye like a smiling little sun. A sun the color of licorice at night, copper-color in the afternoon. My mom was entirely devoted to me. I was her first sun, her only sun to this very day. Maman kept repeating to whoever would listen that this country was hers too. This is where love made me put down my bags, she would say. It's a five-camel hotel, she'd repeat without really realizing how ridiculous the image sounded. Everything in this land is mine: its volcanic hillocks, its skinny fauna; the tragic, camel-like swaying of its hips; the aquatic flora pictured on postage stamps; the desert islets like the famous Guinni Koma (also called l'île du Diable, Devil's Island by the French). I can feel its salt on my body. I am this pit like a wounded vulva between the hills. You'd think she was reading from a geography textbook. Yes, everything here is mine. The salt lakes, the bald peaks, the whimsical firmament at Lake Assal, the small forest from times long past, the limestone high plateaus, the Grand Bara and Petit Bara, the main summit culminating at almost seven thousand feet. The bitter waters and their extraordinary
salinity. The liquid heart of the gulf, its solitude crenellated with waves. Her world forever inviolable. This is my country stirring the air just like the lyre palm and the traveler tree dragging its exiles over the crust of the earth. My country running breathlessly, endlessly. My country sad and beautiful like the oilcloth of a village café in Brittany on a rainy Sunday morning. My dad and I would burst out laughing. She's stubborn and endearing. And there she goes now, changing the subject and the textbook. From geography to history. My country's history in the annals of the continent? Barely room for a lowly footnote at the bottom of a page. Seventy thousand square miles of hatred and misery, my country of ergs and acacias. She's flying off the handle now, excited as a young goat.

Choice? Do you really think you can choose your destiny in life? Only morons or gullible fools believe such nonsense. It's true that I wanted wind in my sails, light in my eyes, a child in my womb, a black member in the hollow of my belly, and what else? My chest chock-full of air. Chastity, poverty, and obedience are not my most cherished vows. I'm not a chick raised in a poultry factory. But before meeting some spindly students on a college campus in Rennes, how was I supposed to know I would land in Djibouti and forever leave the house with its walls eaten away by the black grape vine? Choice? Don't make me laugh. What on earth made me go there, in the midst of those strange strangers with their Afros and bell-bottom pants? You always like to think of yourself as different; you want to escape the common fate, out of pride perhaps. To speed up the end of adolescence. What am I doing here? I let myself be sucked up by destiny, something stronger than myself, like the current of the tide that carries away the careless swimmer. Why would a young student, a girl from Brittany like me, set out for this crazy place? Fate took over and I dove into it headfirst. Jesus, that feeling of having bought a one-way long-distance ticket!

They seemed lost; so was I but a lot less than they were. They looked gentle, sweet, harmless. So did I, they said, afterwards. I knew nothing about them, about their country, their language, their culture. I had just turned twenty; I was just coming out of the awkward teens. Life was ahead of me; it was possible to change it, as we kept saying at the time, a time that seems today almost as remote as geological eras. And with one snap of the fingers, everything picked up speed; everything became clear. It's not the word “passion” that came to mind when I started to be around them a bit—of course not. It was the word “puzzlement” at first. They were always in groups, as if they were on duty together. They did everything together, in packs almost, like the ants in the documentaries they show on French
TV
late into the night. This compact conglomerate was very strange to me at the beginning. Then I got used to their gregarious ways, their nomadic flesh that would start moving only as a group, with their worries locked inside themselves more often than not. They'd laugh and joke in rhythm; they're sure good at that, bigger jokers you won't find. I was friendly with all of them, laughing with one, laughing with all. Since no one could muster enough courage to pick me up, it took a long time before I could be all alone with your father, discover pleasure with him—the kind you call carnal—and before we could thrill together. He seemed unhappy to leave his gang just to spend an afternoon at the movies with me, but proud as a peacock as I was, I would never allow myself to rein him in. So he would make a date with me and then cancel at the last minute, saying he had forgotten his Interafrican soccer game. It was trendy at the time to form teams by countries and fight on the soccer field. A lot better than the meetings of cabinet ministers in the
OAU
,
¹
as the jolly Dieudonné, the fast center forward from Togo, would
say jokingly. Dieudonné Gnammanckou, what kind of a name is that, a guy from Morocco would grumble—always the same guy, the one with a chip on his shoulder, but he could run faster than Jesse Owens and he was generous with his passes on the field. My God, your father made me watch so many of those damn games! Him and me, we could talk and understand each other in a split second, a split word, a split smile. Making love with him was easy as having a glass of water. And believe me, my foggy Brittany hadn't prepared me for that. With him, I was always stewing in cayenne pepper. When I think about it now I tell myself I was being buoyed up in an ocean of tales without beginning or end. I know what I mean. If going so far away, into such a far-off elsewhere, didn't bother me, it's because nostalgia and its double, melancholia, are quite foreign to my nature.

Of Brittany, I miss nothing. Not the sugared crepes or the crepes flambé in
chouchen
cider, nor the liquid skies and the rain-wind of Mont-Saint-Michel, nor the vacations at Saint-Pierre-de-Quiberon (they were from the land on my father's side, from the sea on my mother's, and that's why schooners, longshoremen and their strikes, deep-sea fishing, foggy docks, caravels, puffins, pelicans, chebecs and clippers, trawlers, seaweed and seafarers, frigates, the navy, overcast skies, the Azorean anticyclone, the waters of the Gulf of Gascony, Ouessant, and Roscoff, Aix and Oleron, the beaches of Finistère and even far-off Cape Horn were all part of family conversation), the noisy folklore in Lorient or Morlaix in the summertime, with its sprightly carousels of boozers and bagpipe blowers. I have no need for memory, that cumbersome totem. No Proustian remembrance of things lost for me, no madeleines, no little patch of yellow wall. And I might as well tell you right now: Celtic music really gets on my nerves. I can't retrieve that memory unless I'm under hypnosis. It's epidermal, it's contagious, that's all. End of story.

Sometime before her tragic death, she confided to me that when she was a teenager, her nose was a little too hooked. One of those little defects nature bestows on you for life. As you might guess, that made her self-conscious, and her family never failed to remind her of it. They had decided that she should have her nose fixed. She was shaking with fear, fear of dying, fear of not waking up, fear of sinking into the arms of her anesthesiologist for good. Her legs, soft as cotton, couldn't carry her any longer. An appointment had been scheduled shortly before summer. The date was nearing. They kept coddling her, reassuring her as best they could. But her fear only intensified. And yet, a miracle happened. It came from the clinic of Doctor Lucien Roussel, the most famous plastic surgeon in Brittany. He's the one who put an end to that panic fear. Three days before she was due for surgery, he committed suicide.

 

In the history books, articles, and newspaper clippings Maman used for her research, bringing them back from the National Archives of Overseas Territories in Aix-en-Provence, you find numerous terms and insulting denominations, the wild theories of anthropologists or preposterous tribologists that should be stowed away deep inside the warehouse where historical anathemas are stored and forgotten. Not to mention, Papa would say, that school of tropical geography that never got out of the claws of the colonial lobby. They're a real pain in the neck (let me tell you, I'd just as soon get smacked in the kisser by a shepherd's stick, Maman would say if she heard me talk like a little professor) with their poor little men oppressed by their climate, their volatile acacias married to the desert winds, technically deprived, threatened by pandemics, bedimmed by sleeping sickness, reduced to living naked, and overwhelmed by a soaring birthrate. They keep talking about those minds filled with wonder and innocence, fed by the milk of France,
their savior and benefactor. In the editorials of the time, we were always subjected to the risks of mutilating choices: convert or exploit them, educate or emasculate them, develop or crush them. “Exterminate all the brutes!” vociferated Conrad's counterpart, someone who knew how to speak the language of truth. As a young thirty-two-year-old sailor, he had commanded a steamer that went up the Congo River in 1890.
Heart of Darkness
is simply the fictitious version of his logbook, and Kurtz is only applying the techniques then in use to exploit gold, ivory, and wood on the property of good old king Leopold of Belgium.

I have ungrudgingly revealed to you my intuitions and the kind of books I read. It's up to you to finish the job, if you feel like it. I'll even help with the bibliography if need be. And if I were you, I wouldn't stop here.

 

Maman's eyes are blue, Papa's are black, mine are brown. Maman, she's grace itself and Papa—forget it! My eyes? Brown, and light, she often adds. Moumina (Memona, that's how my funny half-Breton mom pronounces it), the girl who works for us, has gray eyes like a cat, which has oblong pupils, as you well know. She also has two high round breasts, what am I saying, she has two ogival arches thrusting upwards into the sky, an aquiline nose close to my heart, and two long thighs the color of honey. Ah! There she goes, she's starting to size me up with her sexy look; it's because she has readjusted her lips to put her smile back on, a necessary prop in a seducer's paradise. Moumina has for me the face of all the feminine rotundities to grind or knead. Moumina is the human clay on which I dream of planting my particle of life. She's the one who feeds me in the kitchen whenever I feel like eating something. I don't want Maman to know this right away. We feast on the leftovers. Anyway, Moumina's the boss in the kitchen. Let me tell you, I much
prefer it this way. Telling you she knows how to be in charge isn't giving away a secret: Moumina grew up in the orphanage managed by the former president's wife. He loved to care for a plentiful, distant brood. Since they were childless, the presidential couple was bled white by their close family, a demanding and expensive one. What more gratifying, then, than a tribe of orphans humming their gratitude, laurel palms in hand, eloquence on their lips, ready to cheer them enthusiastically every single weekend.

1
. Organization of African Unity.—
Author's note

3

BASHIR BINLADEN

CALLING YOURSELF
Binladen, the most
wanted
man on the planet, it's too-too much, right? Binladen, the biggest richkiller. His big head with fine-fine beard, most expensive in the world. Worth fifty million dollar. Our new president, old camel pee compared to that. Bush the cowboy president of the Americas want Binladen dead or alive. Also the rich fat-cat Saudis, and his real family, blood of his blood same father same mother, disown Binladen cause they afraid of catching big American revenge. So, Binladen terriblific. But me, I'm mini-Binladen, see, like Madonna dolls, Michael Jackson dolls, the other things there in small-small size. I don't got fine beard and big head of Binladen but watch out, I'm wicked and pitiless. I suicided men, enemy Wadags and other men not enemies. I trashed houses, I drilled girls, I pirated shopkeepers. I pooped in the mosque, but don't shout that from rooftops cause I was very pickled. I done it all. Easy to do things-there when you sleep, you dream, you eat with a Kalashnikov or even an
Uzi
.
Uzi
is attack rifle, it's Israeli I'm telling you, believe my word. Israelis too-too strong for war. African heads of state like so-so much Israeli bodyguards cause Israeli bodyguards they protect from military coup like rubber
protect from AIDS you get me? At the front, I was the man who shot faster than his shadow, Marlboro in my mouth like that, bazoom bazoom.
Sniper
the Americans say, I saw that in movie at Youssouf's: Youssouf, he show movies at his house.
Snipers against Bosnians
, that the name of the movie. They say all the time Bosnians Muslim, but me I don't believe it cause those guys have white face an all that.

So, kill, destroy the other side, eat enemies' hearts,
OK
. By who? Why? That none of my business. I get my orders, chief say kill that fat rebel sonofabitch, I kill without fear or fault cause you gotta obey chief. Way the army is. Our chief got chief he gotta obey too. Chief of all chiefs on the northern front, his name Mad Mullah. He drink whiskey in daytime, drink whiskey at night. When he not drinking whiskey he opening bottles of beer with the barrel of his
AK
-47 an yelling orders quick-quick. I thought about it but I never found out why Mad Mullah his name. Maybe you know his name-there, his rank, uniform, his little darlin's perfume an all that. Me I shut my trap about that cause this business not real clear. Maybe we learn about that before long.

On the front, lot of us didn't have no uniform. Draftees cruited quick-quick like me. How old are ya, kid? Eighteen, I lied for real. Where you from? District 6, Djibouti. You're a kid from the
magalla,*
get over there. Into the courtyard, fall in! Tomorrow you leave for Yoboki.
OK
, dismessed. I didn't even know what to do. I stood planted there front of cruiting officer. You deaf, or what? Move it! That I know all right. Hour later, I was in military truck with my new buddies, Ayanleh, Warya, Aïdid, Haïssama, an all that. Aïdid, that not real name. Aïdid, he the Somalian general who screwed the American soldiers. Aïdid, champion in battle, Platini
¹
of war. Americans,
they making a real movie to show how Aïdid there, he too-too wicked. Aïdid, he got an expensive head, too. Ten million dollars. Our new president flat like old chewed-chewed piece of gum compare to that. No, I say big bravo Aïdid and also he friend with our president not with rebels. Long story short, he no moron like our chief instructor or asshole general now residing in Gabode prison. Yuck.

OK
, I gotta confirm this story right away: yes, in the army everyone's not native, plenty cousins from Somalia there. Some come from Mengistu's army, specially with the rebels. There's real foreigners even, I mean
Gaallos*
—you know, Whites. Poles, Lebanese or Albanese, Czechoslowhatians an all that. All those guys, they mercenaries like they say in fancy French. But that
top military secret.
I know a real general who helped our president for cheap in great battle of Obock. His name Saxardid, I'm telling the true truth, believe me faithfully, he was second chief of Somalian army with Siyad Barre. Real bloodthirsty one, that guy. Holy shit! Siyad, he was worser than our president who stopped the war. He gobbled little kids not to die old-old. Haile Selassie, he was bigger kid-eater than Siyad Barre with his wife-there, Queen Menem. She liked flesh and fresh blood of children too-too much. So, because of ceasefire, me, I'm demobilized. Not cool, right? Without Kalashnikov you can't pick up rich stuff everywhere no more. That not charity. That civilian life there, it's real shame, you don't scare no one no more. The pretty girls, they boycott you for real. The ugly girls they turn their heads away when you walk in front of their face. The always-unemployed they say out loud hey there's a new unemployed, when before you used to go: bang! boot in the gut here you bastard take that in the belly. Even little mouse laugh at you. City say war no good, no good, like that Congolese singer. But I don't agree. I say war too-too good for sure.

1
. Great French soccer player of the 1980s.—
Translators' note