The African Equation

by Yasmina Khadra

  Pfer suggested we go to the canteen to celebrate. As we left the office, we saw two male nurses running across the yard towards the main gate of the camp. Children were standing outside their tents, pointing at something. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I saw a figure swaying in the distance, a burden on its back. Pfer, who had immediately realised what was happening, sent his secretary to alert the infirmary. We gave up on the canteen and hurried to catch up with the two nurses. The figure didn’t stop on seeing help arrive. It kept on staggering towards the camp. The two nurses tried to relieve it of its burden, but it refused and carried on its way, like an automaton. Bruno was the first to identify the figure: it was the young man with the cart who had been abandoned with his mother in the desert! There he was, before our very eyes, tottering but still upright, his mother on his back. He entered the camp, barely able to stand, empty-eyed, deaf to the words of the male nurses who tried to take the old woman from him. It was as if he wanted to see his exploit through to the end, jealously guarding his trek and rejecting any help he judged premature. The children, who had recognised him, ran towards him, incredulous. They didn’t cry out, didn’t go too close to him, simply escorted him to the infirmary, where a doctor and two of his assistants were waiting. The old woman was immediately laid on a stretcher and taken into the treatment room.

  His lips white and his eyes on the verge of rolling back, the prodigal son collapsed exhausted against the wall, his arms dangling, his calves covered with cuts, his back steaming, half dead but valiant, incredibly valiant, supremely valiant.

  Bruno turned to me and said, proudly and vengefully, ‘That’s Africa, Monsieur Krausmann!’

  2

  That afternoon, Pfer summoned Bruno and me and informed us that representatives of our respective embassies would be arriving the following day. There would probably be journalists in the delegation, and maybe also Sudanese military. He gave an outline of that kind of encounter, which he had witnessed before, and its emotional impact, which could be quite severe. Bruno merely nodded, but once Pfer had finished his briefing, he announced that he had no intention of going back to Bordeaux, but preferred to return to Djibouti. Pfer promised to see what he could do and let us go.

  Bruno took me to see an old man lying in a tent. He wasn’t sick, just too old to stand. His face had collapsed and his gestures were sparing, and all he could do was smile in a dazed kind of way. Bruno told me he was a marabout and warrior, as well as an incomparable diviner able to sense water over a wide radius and locate it without needing a rod or a pendulum. According to Bruno, the old man, who was Ethiopian in origin, was an emblematic figure in the Horn of Africa. His reputation extended from the Yemeni Bedouin to the fabled Masai of Kenya. He had been the instigator and one of the leaders of the armed revolt against the Italian invasion in 1935 – Mussolini was said to have put a fabulous price on his head. After the national liberation at the beginning of the 1940s, he had been much feted by Emperor Haile Selassie. Then the coming of Communism to Ethiopia had turned the traditional structures upside down, and the old man had spent a decade rotting in the Marxist regime’s dungeons, while Mengistu’s henchmen murdered, ‘disappeared’ and forced into exile the most influential members of his tribe. Still hounded, he had ended up joining the swarm of refugees and had wandered from one country to another until age had caught up with him. Taken into the camp, he was waiting to die the way legends die in those lands where memories grow dim with the generations. I wondered why Bruno was telling me all this, then realised that there was no ulterior motive, that he was simply proud of ‘his people’s’ charisma. As he spoke, the old man kept his eyes fixed on me. He must have been over a hundred and reminded me of an Apache chief on his catafalque of feathers. He wore a talismanic necklace and an amber rosary by way of a bracelet. A ring bearing the effigy of some ancient deity looked like a large wart on his finger. Bruno assured me it had belonged to Haile Selassie himself, who had given it to the marabout as a mark of friendship. The old man muttered something; his words emerged from his toothless mouth as if from an abyss, sepulchral and disjointed, and faded in the air like plumes of steam. He reached out his arm to me and placed his open hand on my forehead. A wave of energy went through my brain, and a strange sensation, as if I were levitating, forced me to take a step back. He said something in his dialect, which Bruno translated: ‘Why are you sad? You shouldn’t be. Only the dead are sad because they can’t get up again.’ I quickly took my leave of him and invited Bruno to walk with me to the pilot village.

  It was the end of classes, and the pupils in their pinafores were rushing to the football ground, their high-pitched voices echoing. We watched a closely fought match, with excellent tackles and strict marking.

  As Elena, Orfane and Lotta were late joining us, Bruno and I had dinner in the canteen. Even though his grievances against me seemed forgotten, Bruno showed signs of anxiety. Torn between the fear of disappointing the envoys from his embassy and the idea of being reunited with his partner and his friends in Djibouti, he didn’t know which way to turn. When he realised he was miming his thoughts, he pulled himself together. He clinked his spoon against the rim of his bowl, stirred his soup, dipped a piece of bread in it and left it there.

  ‘I admit she’s a gorgeous creature,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Elena Juárez.’

  Bruno always surprised me: you never knew what he was going to say next. He gave a wicked little smile. He knew he had taken me aback and my embarrassment boosted his ego.

  ‘I saw you at the football match. You kept jumping every time you thought you’d spotted her in the crowd.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense,’ I stammered in irritation.

  ‘Of course I am …’

  ‘I suppose this is more of that damned African curiosity you were talking about.’

  ‘I saw you looking at her yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that. Your eyes were full of her.’

  ‘Please, Bruno. Now is not the time.’

  ‘Love doesn’t care about time. When it arrives, the world can wait, and everything else pales into insignificance.’

  He plunged his spoon into his soup, fished out the piece of bread and lifted it to his mouth, his eyes already withdrawing far away. We ate in silence, taking no further interest in each other, then parted company. I went back to Orfane’s cabin, took a shower and lay down on the padded bench. I tried to think of nothing, but that was impossible. I was a whirl of thoughts. Jessica’s ghost on one side, Joma’s on the other, and me caught in the crossfire. I switched off the light to make myself invisible. Orfane came back late. I pretended I was asleep, praying that he wouldn’t put the light on. He didn’t. He undressed in the dark, slipped beneath the sheets, and immediately started snoring. I dressed again and went out into the night. The generator was off. The moon cast an anaemic light over the camp. Over by the tents, somebody was still up. I thought I recognised Bruno’s voice, but wasn’t sure. I walked along the fence, my arms crossed over my chest, my head bowed. Two puppies came and sniffed my calves. I crouched down to stroke them. They moaned contentedly and ran off towards the gate, where a night watchman was dozing, a tiny transistor radio against his ear … A cigarette end gleamed intermittently in the darkness. It was Elena. She was sitting on the steps of her cabin, in vest and shorts, smoking and staring down at her feet. As I was about to turn and walk back the way I had come, she noticed me and gave me a little sign with her hand.

  ‘I can’t get to sleep,’ I said by way of excuse.

  ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She shifted on the steps to make room for me. I sat down next to her. The touch of her body unsettled me. I felt the heat of her skin against mine, smelt her subtle perfume. I had the impression she was shaking, or perhaps it was me.

  ‘You should quit smoking,’ I said to fight back the wave of emotion overwhelming me.

  Sh
e smiled and tapped on the cigarette to get rid of the ash. ‘One or two cigarettes a day isn’t so bad.’

  ‘If you aren’t hooked, why not give up altogether?’

  ‘I like one in the evening before going to bed. It relaxes me a little. And it also keeps me company.’

  ‘Do you feel lonely?’

  ‘Sometimes. But I don’t make a fuss about it. I do a lot of thinking, and that does isolate me a bit. So when I’m alone and I light a cigarette, it’s like having someone else between my thoughts and me. Someone who supports me, if you see what I mean.’

  I didn’t press her. She looked at me and I looked at her. The moonlight gently illuminated her. She was very beautiful: I’ll never stop saying that. Her vest clung to her voluptuous torso, her silky arms were long and magnificent, and her eyes were like two rubies wrapped in velvet. Her musky smell intoxicated me.

  ‘I haven’t seen you all day.’

  ‘I was with the old woman,’ she said, referring to the mother of the young man with the cart.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’ll recover.’ She flicked her cigarette away and turned to face me. ‘Are you religious, Dr Krausmann?’

  ‘Kurt.’

  ‘Are you religious, Kurt?’

  ‘My mother was religious enough for the whole family. She took everything on herself … Why?’

  ‘I was thinking of the old woman. We left her for dead, didn’t we? We all thought she was dying. The only reason we gave in to her son’s demands was because we thought he wanted to be left alone to bury her. I can’t believe she’s still alive. I’ve been in Africa for six years now. I was in the Congo and Rwanda before this. And there are things I’ve seen that go beyond human understanding. There are phenomena in these countries that I can’t grasp or explain. It’s extraordinary.’

  ‘What’s extraordinary?’

  ‘The miracles,’ she said, looking in my eyes in search of something. ‘I’ve witnessed quite a few supernatural events. I’ve seen people come through terrible ordeals, sick and dying people get up out of their beds, and things so unlikely I can’t talk about them without sounding ridiculous.’

  Her hand grasped mine, a gesture she had whenever she felt she was losing her way. It was much more a question of clinging to something than a considered move.

  ‘This continent is a holy land, Kurt. I don’t know how to say it. The people are … I can’t find the words.’

  ‘Strange?’

  ‘Not in the conventional sense of the word. They carry a kind of allegory inside them, or rather a truth that’s beyond me. And it comes home to me with such strength that it makes me shiver. There’s a biblical inspiration in these people. Something that strengthens my faith, even though I don’t exactly know what it is.’

  ‘Maybe because you give too much of yourself.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with that. In the Red Cross, we don’t have any respite. There are so many priorities that everything becomes urgent. But this is another dimension, don’t you see? When the old woman opened her eyes this morning, I saw a kind of revelation in them that bowled me over. As if a dead person had come back to life. I … I’m still in a state of shock.’

  Holy land, I thought. My whole culture being incompatible with what I considered some kind of surreal folklore, that kind of statement disturbed me. Ever since the misunderstanding that had almost compromised my friendship with Bruno, any reference to an idealised Africa had made me uncomfortable. I hated to argue about subjects that led nowhere. I’d even say that I endured them with a patience I disliked. My embarrassment wasn’t lost on Elena, who frowned and asked me if she was tiring me.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I have the impression I’m boring you with my ramblings …’

  ‘No, no, I’m listening. I don’t know much about Africa. I come from a continent where miracles are simply remarkable coincidences.’

  She turned up her nose in mild annoyance and sighed. ‘You’re right. I suppose it’s very difficult to connect with that kind of story when you don’t have faith … Can I get you a beer?’

  I gladly accepted. She went into her cabin, leaving the door open so that I could follow her inside. I hesitated, and she came back to fetch me. She apologised for the mess. Her cabin was an exact copy of Orfane’s, with the same padded benches, fitted wardrobe and tiled bathroom. I sat down on a chair next to the desk and crossed my legs. Elena brought me a can and a glass.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked, pointing to a signed photograph pinned to the wall showing a black woman surrounded by a happy gang of kids.

  ‘Marguerite Barankitse.’

  ‘An African singer?’

  ‘An icon in the aid field.’

  ‘She’s beautiful.’

  ‘In her heart and mind, too. She’s an exceptional lady and a great fighter. She rescued tens of thousands of orphans and child soldiers and built a hospital, a school, and farms to help the widows and their offspring. I’d give anything to do in Darfur what she managed to do in Burundi.’

  ‘You’ve already done a lot.’

  ‘We can do better. We don’t have enough medical staff.’

  She sat down cross-legged on one of the padded benches. Polite as I was, I couldn’t help admiring the curves of her legs, barely covered by her shorts.

  ‘I don’t see any other photos,’ I observed.

  She burst out laughing, with that spontaneous singsong laughter of hers that was like the chirping of birds. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, if that’s what you’re trying to find out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  She raised a sceptical eyebrow and let me sip my beer. ‘I married when I was twenty,’ she said. ‘A handsome Andalusian, intelligent, generous. But he was possessive, and I was independent. He wanted me for himself alone and forgot that he was only my husband. We’d loved each other since high school. We continued to love each other at university and got married as soon as he graduated. Two years after our honeymoon in Cape Town, we broke up.’

  ‘These things happen,’ I stupidly stammered.

  ‘I love my work, Dr Krausmann,’ she went on, brushing her hair back.

  ‘Kurt.’

  ‘I’m sorry … When I was a teenager, I had two idols. Robert Redford for my girlish fantasies. And Mother Teresa. My husband took the place of the first and tried to overshadow the second. We can’t have everything we want in life, can we, Kurt?’

  ‘That depends on what we want.’

  ‘I wanted to help people. Ever since I was very young, that’s all I’ve dreamed about. In my fairy stories, I didn’t see myself as a princess or Cinderella, but as a nurse devoted to the destitute. I imagined myself tending to the wounded on the battlefield. And when I saw what Mother Teresa was doing among the “untouchables” and the lepers, I was certain. It was exactly what suited me. It was quite natural for me to choose the Red Cross … What hospital do you work at in Frankfurt?’

  ‘I’m in private practice.’

  ‘What about your wife?’

  My breathing accelerated when I told her that my wife was dead. I expected her to apologise profusely, as people usually do when they’ve been indiscreet, but she didn’t. She looked at me with sympathy and said nothing. I assumed that her long experience of death had hardened her and that she approached this kind of situation philosophically. Her eyes searched mine, shifted to my lips, then, in an almost mystic movement, she took my hand in hers and held it for a long time.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said reluctantly.

  Lotta came to fetch me early the next morning. Three military vehicles bearing the insignia of the African Union were parked outside the camp’s administrative block. Soldiers rigged out like draught horses, their rifles at rest, were sitting in the back seats, stiff and silent. A light-skinned young officer in a multicoloured parka stood to one side, conversing with Pfer, who merely nodded his head, his hands behind his back. Bruno was already there, in his disguise as a Muslim dignitary, co
oling his heels outside Pfer’s office.

  The officer saluted me, then held out his hand. ‘Captain Wadi,’ he said. ‘I command the Omega detachment, stationed thirty kilometres to the south of here. I have orders to ensure your safety and that of the delegation which will be arriving by plane in two hours’ time.’

  ‘Dr Kurt Krausmann, pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I’m glad to know that you’re safe and sound, Dr Krausmann. The director has told me about your misadventure.’

  ‘Misadventure? Is that what you call it?’

  He took no notice of my reservations about his definition and invited me to follow him into the office. Bruno sat down on the sofa, looking morose. Not once did he look up at the captain. He seemed to have an aversion to soldiers, and the proximity of this young officer made him ill at ease. I took a seat while Pfer went behind his desk. The captain preferred to remain standing, to feel in control, I suppose. He was somewhat sickly-looking with a thin, clean-shaven face, crew-cut hair and glittering green eyes that were in marked contrast to his bronzed complexion. He could well have been an Arab or a Berber.

  ‘According to the captain, the plane has taken off from Khartoum,’ Pfer said to relax the atmosphere, given that an inexplicable sense of embarrassment had fallen over the room.

  Bruno shrugged. He addressed Pfer in order to avoid speaking to the captain. ‘In that case, why summon us now?’

  ‘I need some information,’ the captain said.

  ‘What information?’ Bruno grunted, still looking at Pfer. ‘We don’t owe anybody anything. Representatives of our embassies will be here soon, and as far as my friend and I are concerned, they are the only people we should speak to.’

  ‘Sir—’ the captain began.

  ‘Monsieur Pfer,’ Bruno interrupted, standing up, ‘we ask permission to leave immediately. We aren’t criminals or illegal immigrants. And we have nothing to say to strangers. Kurt and I will return to our quarters until our officials arrive.’