Transit (9 page)

Protect oneself from stupidity. The savor of being and existing. Tactical retreat and return to the source. Going back to square one, to your mental hinterland—something larger than this colony the size of a postage stamp or a piece of dust-covered confetti. Ah, the great day was approaching. You could feel it in the air. You could feel it because morale on the other side was at a low point. All beginnings are lyrical; what follows, not so much. There was lyricism and carnival in that resistance. You could sense a huge dynamic force capable of propelling destiny forward. This rabble was stealthily bringing the French Republic under Pompidou to the court of universal conscience in the name of Republican values.

21

ABDO-JULIEN

“
IN THE MIDST
of the forests and savannahs and ergs, in the red burning embers of the cities above the wild sea, on the sweet-smelling hills where the butterflies play, there lived a beautiful beast, warm and tawny, which was called happiness.”
Dixit
the Breton storyteller Maria Kermadec, who often concludes her ramblings with a proverb she attributes to a sailor from Cancale: “He who has words in his mouth can never get lost in the world.”

Maman's records, old vinyls buckled by the heat, rarely leave their pink candy jackets these days. If the hippie queens, the hepcat princes, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, Marianne Faithfull, and French singers like Brigitte Fontaine, Georges Moustaki, Barbara (her favorite), remain silent, prisoners stuck in their plastic covers, it's because Maman's sunny disposition has been stymied. As for Papa, his shelf of records is drawn from the rugged paradise of Deep South blues: Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, and Bobby Bland share his favors. To make him reel into nostalgia, no need for khat. Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson remain his youth pills. Maman needs a particular microclimate to open that magic
box. Old friends coming over, a phone call from an old girlfriend from Rennes, a bunch of youthful memories, things like that. Something still simpler: a melody, an old hit heard on the radio during a short trip, and you can be sure Maman's going to dust off the record player and play her twenty-odd LP records and as many 45s one by one. The whole household will be invaded by the brash voices of artists belting out all the music they have in them. In general, it goes in cycles and can easily take three to four days. The music of their youth has a beneficial effect on the morale of the troops: Papa perks up, even tries a few dance steps, imitating a matador with his sharp pin; Maman is jovial at first, then suddenly the tension mounts and swings into hysteria once the needle has landed on a Janis Joplin record. That's who she's imitating now. And all this can end in a terrible noise of broken dishes. No two ways about it, she's howling like a hangman at confession. The neighbors are taken aback for a while, wondering if everything's OK in the family of Harbi Awaleh and Alice, the daughter of the Breton storyteller who used to collect old ten-centime colonial stamps—“Madagascar and Dependencies”—and Abdo-Julien, that's me, stillborn in his seventeenth year, spirit wandering in the great tradition of the dibbuks you can find in
The Golem
, a small child returning periodically like the
abikou*
in the region of the Gulf of Guinea whose umbilical cord is buried next to Ilé-Ifé—an extraordinary fate, in the direct line of the
shafeec*
of our people. I owe everything I know to my parents. Does that surprise you?

22

BASHIR BINLADEN

WAR INTO OVERTIME
on the field now. President brought in a lot-lot draftees to replace all the dead. And then Scud 2, it start talking negotiations. The chiefs went quick-quick into town to get armchairs,
A/C
s an radios. Ran like rabbits to pick up armchairs before their friends. Chiefs of Scud-there, they so-so hungry they'd eat their rebel boots. President so happy, he decorated the wounded, soldiers without arms, soldiers without legs, children without papa an mama. He accepted wounded rebels in big hospital to make buddy-buddy with second-in-command of Eternal Opponent. So it real peace now. Cept Eternal Opponent left for Paris to take refuge, he said war-there not over, said Scud 2 sold out corrupt. Him, watch out he gonna throw Scud 3 onto the field now.

Hey, that true truth cause ambush start again at Randa, Ambado, As-Dara, an all. So us we stay stuck in military positions at Dikhil, Tadjoura, Obock, an in the Mabla. We defensive forwards to save the sovereignty and gains of the united and indivisible nation, that fat rich language like French head of diplomacy talk. So all that-there, not too bad for us, right? Me, that's how I kept my job. All the guys relax; we have fun after
we cried a lot cause of buddies dead on the sideline like Housseini in Adaylou, the one who bought and sold the pink pills. Everybody knows the pills-there come direct from Mogadishu; they love pills there too much so they can keep on with fierce war. Normal, right? But you can't make fun of the other monkey's cunt when your own ass-there naked too, even. Somalians, they in deep shit, but we got our problems too. The whole world saying: Somalians, Africans, all a bunch of savages make civil war all the time. Well, gotta understand us. What you expect when politicians-there they pick up all the pots an chow? When they eat the skin off the nape-a your neck. You pick up rifle, that's all. Us, we don't got comfort, villa, car, pay vacation like French, English, an even Norwegians who're nice cause they give
NGO
money an keep their trap shut. Me I say if a big white guy he wanna take my place, I give it right away an go screw his wife an daughter. That way it democracy between us. I give my place an he take my place here. Then I take his wife. Tie, ball in midfield. Be serious now and stop that crap about rightsaman, rightsawoman, rightsababies. We got a right to the good life too, don't we? Sick of drinking our own sweat. Draftees wanna admire shooting stars too, cept what they see's tracer bullets singing sweet little songs like this: “C'mere my little honey, come this way, been waiting for you for a long long time.” Draftees, they like that old camel the family gonna kill to eat him cause he's too-too old. The old camel, he say to chief of camp: “I worked for you all my life. I marched, marched, and marched to carry your tent and your merchandise. You got all you needed out of my back, now you wanna eat my meat and bones. After that you still get more out of me cause you'll take my skin an you'll make shoes with it, right?” So there you are, us draftees like ole camel-there cept us, we younger. That's all. Gotta stop bringing tears to my eyes. I close parenthesis.

Now on the field there not only Scud 3 but also
NGO
who wanna help rebels by giving medicine,
OK
with me, but also
LAV
(that mean light armored vehicle) an bazookas. Me, I say no fair.
OK, NGO
can help rebels a little but come on, gotta help us a little too. That way it justice. You give grub to one brother, gotta give grub to other one. Me, I think business-there a little not clear.
NGO
, they say we gonna give grub to population, but behind they making strong allies. We caught an old white woman hiding boxes of Chinese grenades in her white truck with blue flag. So President, he get real mad, bang on his desk, yell: I don't wanna see no more
NGO
humanimajig on the field. You catch one, you kill him right there. I will personally send a bill to the main office of his organization for the bullet he gets between the eyes. From now on, these people will be carrying their coffins on their backs. Now me, that where I say, bravo. Big bravo even. Can see he not kidding around no more, the ole president. That crystal clear like the desert sky.

23

ALICE

AT THE VERY BEGINNING
of the seventies, Abdouwahid Egueh, aka Vic Lebleu, aka Victor or more commonly the Guy from Lille because he almost became the first soccer player of the Territory sent to France, had only played two seasons for the club of the big northern city, which was then in the Second Division. Perseverance was not his strong point, so he came back home in secret. Needless to say, Wahid, the Unique, was not up to the hopes that had been placed on him. However, between Lille and him there was a wild love story, at least at the start. But that wasn't all: his trip to the other world gave him a laid-back attitude that became legendary. Vic Lebleu is a new man now, blathering away on Triton Beach night and day, spending most of his time on Plateau du Héron, neglecting the family house in District 4. A gang leader with no other authority than his good humor, he hangs around with Chiné (the Chinese, a little thug) and his friends, killing time in front of the Clochard (Tramp) Stand, a stone's throw from the Olympia cinema. He brags about his ability to move effortlessly through all social milieus—not just the expatriates he's after all year long—and speaks, in addition to his French peppered with swearwords
and Lille slang, the three languages currently used in this part of the world. Late at night, Vic and Chiné's whole gang meet at the Mic-Mac, a shady spot but very popular in the capital, something between a dance hall, a nightclub, and a hangout for whores. On the dance floor Vic wiggles his hips, with honeyed eyes and catlike steps. With his laughs, ramblings, and easy gab, he's the king of the dance floor, a pasha reigning over his little sultanate, Sinbad sailing between the scent of tobacco and hops. And yet a perceptive eye will probably sense his vulnerability. Very grave things are said about him. He's said to be an agent provocateur in the pay of the secret services. When he got back from Lille he was taken over by very sure hands. If you wanted to take the trouble to look for his umbilical cord, you'd find it around District 4 or Einguela. His almost perfect knowledge of the field is not something to be overlooked in these uncertain times. His encyclopedic cackling about the underworld, marked by what he has skimmed from rumors, can be useful. Ferdinand Valombreuse, Aref's shadowy right-hand man and an expert in dirty work, ran into him a few times in the officers' mess hall on Boulevard de Gaulle and can attest to it. They looked each other up and down for a long time. In the soft languor of a muggy afternoon, they clinked their glasses of Heineken together. Vic's face took on an auriferous glow, and Valombreuse, with a 180-degree smile, left the premises to go about the business he had set for himself that day.

The first mission they gave Vic was child's play. He had to find two or three house painters and whitewash the blood-covered walls of the Teacher Training College after the student revolt mentioned above. Once the work was over, he would leave his usual signature or more exactly his initials (VL for Vic Lebleu) in the corner of one of the walls, the way a Renaissance painter might sign his stained glass windows. More prosaically, this signature is a cabbalistic sign for men in the secret services.

Vic joined their stable at an early age. He admired their crafty style and above all flipped at their risky games and their taste for bling-bling. You can easily follow their route at regular times in the upper city. Omar Bashé and Gourmad Robleh, the excellent sleuths on the vice squad fresh from police school at the École Nationale in Villeurbanne do exactly that, but discreetly. Towards four PM they leave Triton Beach. At five, they have sodas and cans of beer in a dark bar run by an Ethiopian exprostitute. The hand moves around the clock once more and they're taking the air near the industrial port, opposite the Coca-Cola bottling plant. At eight, they're strolling along the coast road, built at the exact spot of the present Route de Venise (a gift from Italian Cooperation) always two by two, three hundred yards apart from each other, stopping to smoke a cigarette, quicken their step or on the contrary slow down. They pass by soldiers in tracksuits trotting along on their way back to the naval base on Heron Island. The draftees, noisier than a kindergarten hive, don't hesitate to provoke them from a distance. All winks, chuckles, and sighs. Vehicles with the insignia of Air Detachment 188 slow down as they reach the swampy zone. Stares coming from all sides, coupled with little nervous laughs. The mares waddle along, let themselves be desired. A new moon shiny as a twenty-franc piece is beginning to glimmer in the coal-black sky. From time to time, the headlights of a civilian car shoot out of the bottleneck of the port; the mares slow down and make themselves very visible on the sidewalk under the halo of the lampposts. Playing at innocent games, they suck a Miko ice cream bar they'd bought previously or lick a cone, their faces turned towards the peaceful sound of the sea.