by Gaël Faye
In the darkness of the cabaret, I feel as if I’m journeying backward. The customers indulge in the same conversations, the same hopes, the same ramblings as before. They talk about the forthcoming elections, about the peace agreements, about fears of a new civil war, about their disappointments in love, about the rising price of sugar and gasoline. The only thing that’s new: occasionally I hear a mobile phone ringing to remind me that the times really have changed. Armand removes the cap from a fourth bottle. We laugh beneath the rust-colored moon as we recall our childhood follies, our happy days. And I rediscover a small part of that eternal Burundi I thought had disappeared forever. I am pleasantly comforted by the sensation of homecoming. In the dark, bathed in the rustling whispers of the other drinkers, I am trying to make out a strange reedy voice, in the distance, it’s like a sound memory echoing inside me. Is it the effect of the alcohol? I focus. Whatever that voice evoked has gone now. We crack open a new round of beers. Armand asks me why I’ve returned. I tell him about the telephone call I received several months earlier, on my birthday, informing me of the death of Madame Economopoulos. She breathed her last during her siesta, one autumn afternoon, facing the Aegean Sea, with a novel on her lap. Was she dreaming of her orchids?
“I came to collect the trunks of books she left for me, here in Bujumbura.”
“So you came back for a pile of books?” Armand bursts out laughing. And so do I, as the absurdity of this project dawns on me. We keep talking. He tells me about the coup that followed my departure, about the economic sanctions endured by the country, the long years of war, the influx of new money, the local mafias, the independent media, the NGOs that employ half the city, the evangelical churches flourishing everywhere, the ethnic conflict that has gradually disappeared from the political arena. That voice murmurs again inside my ear. I grab Armand’s arm. “Can you hear it?” I gasp. I bite my lip. I tremble. Armand puts his hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t know how to tell you, Gaby. I wanted you to find out for yourself. She’s been coming here every evening, for years…” That voice, a voice from beyond the grave, cuts me to the quick. It mutters something about stains on the floor that won’t go. I jostle the shadows, stumble against a bottle rack, grope in the dark until I reach the back of the shack. Curled up on the floor, over in the corner, she is sucking home-brewed alcohol through a straw. Here she is, after twenty years that have taken the toll of fifty on her unrecognizable body. I lean toward the old lady. I have the feeling she recognizes me, from the way she is staring at me in the glow of the lighter I hold up to her face. With untold tenderness, Maman puts her hand delicately on my cheek: “Is that you, Christian?”
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with my life. For the time being, I plan on staying here, looking after Maman, waiting for her to feel better.
Day breaks and I want to write. I don’t know how this story will end. But I do remember how it all began.
About the Author
Gaël Faye was born in 1982 in Burundi to a French father and Rwandan mother. In 1995, after the outbreak of the civil war and the Rwandan genocide, the family moved to France. An author, a songwriter, and a hip-hop artist, he released his first solo album, Pili Pili sur un croissant au beurre, in 2013. Small Country is his first novel. A bestseller in France, it has been awarded numerous literary prizes, among them the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, and is being published in thirty territories worldwide.
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