by Maryse Conde
“What is the purpose of this war?” I yelled in anger. “What’s the point of it? When will it end? How many men have to be killed before it ends?”
Hassan eyed me scornfully and said curtly, “Fortunately, you’re not a soldier, otherwise I would have been obliged to have you arrested on the spot.”
“Tell me, tell me what’s the point of it?” I yelled even louder. “Brothers fighting brothers!”
Maboula stared at me in disapproval, which made me even angrier as well as ashamed that I was losing my calm and making a spectacle of myself.
“You are asking the reason for this war?” Hassan said ironically, hammering out his words. “You must be blind. Ever since the independence negotiated by the French with their protégés from the South, we Northerners have been treated like second-class citizens in our own country. Have you counted how many of us have been in government? Matters are going from bad to worse. An unfair amendment to the constitution makes us foreigners. I have been humiliated for no reason. And you ask why we have taken up arms?”
“It’s a holy war!” Maboula added sanctimoniously.
Her intervention made my blood boil. I pointed at the portraits of his paternal and maternal ancestors, hung conspicuously on the walls.
“Don’t compare yourself to them!”
“You’re so naive! You really think our worst enemies are outsiders? Our real enemies are our so-called brothers.”
I was at a loss for an answer. Suddenly he walked over to me.
“Get out!” he ordered. “Immediately!”
And since I didn’t obey quick enough for his liking, he opened the door and flung me out. I found myself sprawling on all fours in the corridor looking ridiculous.
This burlesque scene sounded the death knell for our relations. From that moment on, Hassan avoided me. I would catch glimpses of him from afar in the canteen, in the street eateries, or crossing the courtyard at the headquarters. Each time I was tempted to run over and shake him by the shoulders saying, “Come on now, we’re not going to quarrel like kids because of what were perhaps a few tactless words on my part.” But I dreaded his uncompromising nature. The fear of being snubbed held me back.
One Friday I met him while he was coming back from the mosque. He was accompanied by a crowd of courtiers. On seeing me he whispered a few words to his companions and everyone burst out laughing. I got the impression that their gaze was not merely mocking but loaded with hostility. From that day on I felt I was stamped with a mysterious seal of ostracism. I noticed that my colleagues no longer invited me out to the street eateries. Nobody any longer nicknamed me “Scarface.” I had become a “cellophane man” like in the famous American musical. I had become invisible. It was then I made up my mind to leave Danembe and return to Eburnéa, where life couldn’t be any worse. Neither here nor there did I have friends, a mistress, or parents. Nobody cared about me. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling that I was a deserter. However hard I tried to persuade myself I had been dragged into this war without understanding a thing, without belonging to either side, simply in order to obey Hassan’s wishes, it was not enough. I spent hours writing a letter to Hassan in which I bade him farewell and explained as best I could my reasons for leaving. What could you expect? I was not a man of ideals. In my opinion, no belief, no religion, no ideology was worth dying for. However mediocre life may be, it’s still a better deal. Perhaps I deserved to be pitied for thinking this way. Anyhow, I had made up my mind to return to my life without ideals. I was the worthy son of Thécla.
One night, I got rid of my uniform, which was like a poisoned tunic, slipped on my civilian clothes, and left forever the headquarters of the Resistance Forces of the North where I had spent the last seven months. At this late hour, the barracks were shrouded in silence and the girls were either asleep after having made love or had gone home. I had not reckoned on a full moon, and everything was as bright as day. My huge silhouette stood out against the walls of the main courtyard filled with jeeps and military vehicles. My heart was beating wildly but no sentinel could be seen at the gate. I made a detour by the town center in order to slip my farewell message into Hassan’s mailbox. There was still a light in the windows on the third floor where he lived. What fate was in store for this man I thought my brother? It was rumored around camp that his father’s soothsayers had predicted he would become president. A star had fallen from the sky by way of an omen.
I continued on to the bus station, the sound of my steps reverberating through the deserted streets. I was relatively lucky; for a small fortune, Alhaji, a truck driver who carted kola nuts to Béky, the second largest city in the country, agreed to take me on board. No questions asked. Once he had carefully counted the bank notes I had given him, he gave me his apprentice’s seat. We soon set off. While driving with a steady hand, Alhaji never stopped complaining and remonstrating.
“This war has done so much harm to everyone, both Northerners and Southerners. Tens of thousands of expatriates have had to leave the country. To the French I say good riddance, I never thought much of them. But my heart goes out to the others, all the others; the country’s dying for lack of a workforce on the plantations, lack of investments for industry, and commerce has been reduced to nothing.”
I fell asleep while he was extolling the merits of the late president, his hero, despite his having been from the South. From time to time I was awakened by the jolts of the vehicle and I could hear him ranting on alone. We were crossing the forest and passing villages crouched in the shadows one after the other. Suddenly lights burned my eyelids and torches were aimed at us by soldiers wearing the uniform of the Resistance Forces from the North, who ordered us to get out of the vehicle.
“Checking ID!” they barked.
I began to panic. Who knew if the alarm hadn’t been given and it was me, the deserter, they were looking for. I could see myself being dragged off to jail and after a summary sentence condemned for life or even executed.
When it was my turn to show my papers, I didn’t want to reveal my Malian passport so I made up a ludicrous story about how they had disappeared when my house had gone up in flames and I hadn’t had time to redo them. Seeing a wink from Alhaji I realized what the ruffians wanted. Money. Just that and no smooth talking. I took off one of my shoes where I had hidden part of what I possessed and handed it to them. They seemed satisfied.
“You know,” they explained, slightly shamefully, “we haven’t been paid for months. And we’ve got wives and children to look after. O Allah! When will this war be over?”
We parted the best of friends, cursing the powerful who decide on everything.
I arrived in Eburnéa three or four days later without further incident. I followed Alhaji’s advice and made the last few kilometers on foot along a series of winding, roundabout paths in the hope of avoiding the numbers of soldiers stationed around the city. In fact, the Northern soldiers were camping around Eburnéa, which they had captured after a fierce struggle, while the Southerners were endeavoring to flush them out. To add to the confusion, following a recent resolution by the United Nations, Eburnéa had been declared a “peace zone” and UN peacekeepers were protecting the town.
As I said, nobody was waiting for me in town. I no longer had a lodging or work. Walking further into the suburbs I was crushed by a feeling of grief and solitude. When I came to my senses and looked around, I no longer recognized this once opulent and prosperous capital which I had so loved. It was like New Orleans after its destruction by Hurricane Katrina. Its deserted streets, patrolled by stray dogs ferociously baring their sharp teeth, were filthy and full of potholes, their sidewalks littered with garbage. The Grand Hotel d’Afrique, once the jewel and pride of the town, was now a ghost hotel. Nobody at reception, nobody in the luxury stores, and nobody in the spaces usually devoted to exhibitions of paintings and tapestries. In its Olympic-size swimming pool, a horde of naked children were spl
ashing and yelling for joy. Where did they come from?
I lay down on a deck chair to try and establish a plan of action. But there was nothing doing and after a few hours of utter despair I set off for where I used to live. My former residential neighborhood was unrecognizable. Its once proud and reputable private school, symbolically called “The Narrow Gate,” had been burned to the ground; its nuns, even those over eighty, raped and massacred. The fence that once surrounded it was reduced to ashes. The neighboring luxury villas were squatted by the destitute who had emerged out of the shanty towns. The smell of grilled chicken floated in the air. Women with babies on their backs were fanning wood fires in gardens overrun with weeds. I noticed that a family had occupied my former lodging and that it would be wiser not to disturb them. I therefore went to spend the night at the Hotel du Rif, which had miraculously remained open and still rented rooms. The owner recognized me and stared at me in amazement.
“You? They said you had joined the Resistance Forces from the North.”
“Of course not,” I lied. “I went back home to Segu in Mali. How are things here?” I added cautiously.
He appeared optimistic. “Ever since Eburnéa has been declared a peace zone, the specter of partition has been averted. Life is slowly getting back to normal.”
I closed doors and windows and spent the night tossing and turning in my bed endeavoring to come up with a plan of action. I berated myself. All it needed was a bit of guts and willpower, for God’s sake! So the next morning I bravely entered one of the few estate agents that had remained open. After an hour I walked out swinging a bunch of keys. I had unearthed a villa in the neighborhood where I used to live. I then walked into the Saab car dealer, for I had long dreamed of driving a Saab instead of the old rattletraps I was used to. I then drove to my new home, which was a short distance away from my old home. But nothing was the same. The villa opposite mine was occupied by a Committee of Patriots. To my right lived a family of squatters: a man and his three wives and ten children. As soon as the French family they had served loyally for years had left, they had abandoned their shack in Attopokbrè and settled into the comfortable ten-room house that had been left vacant. Proof that one man’s loss is another man’s gain. The occupiers to my left were more worrisome. A group of adolescent skinheads who formed a militia composed of factions from Liberia and Sierra Leone, long hardened by years of cruel civil war and allocated to “special operations.” Every morning they would jump into their jeeps, as lugubrious as hearses, and set off on mysterious expeditions, returning only at night.
However hard I tried to live frugally, my meager savings began to dry up and I had to make up my mind to look for a job.
I had an idea. When I used to work at Dr. Soumaoro’s clinic, my office was located next to Dr. Louis Zourou’s, a jovial, good-humored man. More importantly, he was married to a woman from French Guyana who was familiar with my mother’s native island. Whenever she came to be examined at the clinic, for she was constantly pregnant, she would give me Creole lessons. She was very shocked that my mother had never bothered to teach me Creole.
“Can you imagine! She never spoke to you in Creole?” she would repeat, outraged. “It’s our mother tongue.”
She had once invited me for lunch at the restaurant in the Grand Hotel d’Afrique and taught me a lot about the problems of France’s overseas territories.
I was sure Dr. Zourou hadn’t left town, since he was a Southerner and belonged to the same ethnic group as Dioclétien.
He was amazed when he saw me. “You! I thought you were in the North with your rebel friends. Everyone said you had joined the Resistance Forces.”
Just as Peter had betrayed Jesus in the Garden of Olives, so I betrayed Hassan and our defunct friendship.
“Nonsense,” I protested. “I went back home to Mali. Now that things are getting better, I’ve come back.”
“Getting better? We’ll have to see about that!”
Thereupon, he ranted about the Northerners, who despite their idealistic ravings wanted nothing more than to gain power and control the riches of the South. Then he ended up inviting me to dinner at his place.
On the appointed evening I drove my Saab out of the garage. The Patriots were standing outside their local and followed the car with threatening looks. I’ve always been fond of the darkness over the lagoon. As soon as the sun goes down to join its secret dwelling, the dark sets in, first adorned with furbelows streaked in purple, then in India ink. A smell wafts up from the murky water like that from a vagina. The breeze then gets up and the smell of iodine purifies the ambient mustiness. The Saab rapidly swallowed up the kilometers which separated my house from the doctor’s. I was surprised how calm the neighborhood was. Women were quietly selling fried plantain on the sidewalk; children were playing contentedly with docile dogs as if they were cuddly toys; and men were playing harmoniously on their balafons, surrounded by a circle of onlookers of all ages. Not a sign of a Kalashnikov or a machete. It was as if the war had never existed.
Louis Zourou was a little man with a reddish complexion, his face oddly pitted with beauty spots. He hugged me effusively, but I felt that this embrace was for form’s sake. He was not optimistic: “The Northerners have realized that we will never surrender to them. They’ll withdraw and, once they’re gone, life goes back to normal. In the meantime, what a mess!”
He extolled the merits of Dioclétien, who he claimed to be his first cousin. “The son of my mother’s younger sister—same father, same mother.”
He was much grieved that Dioclétien, the humanist, a fervent Catholic and amateur poet, had been denigrated by the international press, who had portrayed him as a somber brute.
“They never understand us, us Africans,” he lamented. “The French adored the late president and called him a sage because he did exactly what they wanted. Now they hate the one in power because he’s a people’s president.”
He told me he had opened a clinic that was working well.
“Thank goodness, war or no war, women still give birth, whatever the circumstances.”
While he was laughing at his own joke, I took advantage of the moment to inquire about his family.
He shrugged philosophically. “My wife left me. She left me with eight children, eight boys. You see,” he explained, “all those slogans on the walls—‘French get out’ and ‘French fuck off’—upset her. She’s Guyanese. Together with the Guadeloupeans and Martinicans they’re more French than the French. But tell me about yourself.”
“Me? That’s easy: I’ve no work and soon my savings will be just a memory.”
Dr. Zourou looked me straight in the eye. “You’ve got a bad reputation. They say you were close friends with that half-crazy Hassan who has only one obsession: become president of our country and place his cronies in command.”
I swore it wasn’t true and once again betrayed him. “We were students together in Montreal, that’s all.”
Louis Zourou frowned then made me an offer. He proposed I work at a Social Rehabilitation Center created to house female victims of the war. There were already two institutions of this kind in the capital.
“Not enough importance is given to these humanitarian achievements,” he sounded off indignantly.
He boasted he could get me the job since the minister was his first cousin. “He can’t refuse me anything.”
I gratefully accepted.
It was then she made her entrance. Not one of those ostentatious entrances of a star, but discreet and unobtrusive. Slipping in on a pair of worn-out Nikes and surrounded by Zourou’s boys who were all taller than she was, she was wearing a traditional wrapper ensemble with a commonplace leafy pattern. She set a sweet-smelling dish on the table and said softly, “Dinner’s served, my brother!”
I must confess she escaped my attention until Dr. Zourou introduced us. It was then our eyes met, hers slanting and sh
ining. Due to the reflection of the light it was impossible to know what color they were: Blue? Mauve? Gray? My heart missed a beat and at that very moment was held captive.
“Azélia, my little sister, the youngest of the clan,” Zourou explained. “We are twenty-five children. My father had six wives and I don’t know how many concubines.”
As I have already told you, throughout my life I have never really paid attention to women. The only woman I loved was my mother. Was it the effect of Azélia’s eyes, which I likened to those of that woman I never stopped crying for? They transformed this young stranger into a familiar face. My blood was boiling inside me in a fit of fever. In this living room furnished in poor taste except for a painting by Alfred Tigbeti, the artist from the South whom everyone was crazy about, I found again my beloved Thécla.
“Sit down and have dinner with us!” Zourou ordered her, while the children settled down noisily and voraciously filled their plates.
She sat down opposite me. Louis Zourou, who was never at a loss for words, told me she had begun an arts degree but unfortunately the university had closed when the war started. Since she didn’t have the means to go and study abroad as so many others did, she was waiting for the borders to open again. In the meantime, she maintained the house to perfection and worked wonders looking after his numerous children.
“Without her, I don’t know what I would do. She organizes everything. She supervises everything. Even my wife couldn’t hold a candle to her.”
I must confess I paid scant attention to his verbosity, absorbed as I was in my contemplation.
Knowing how things turned out in the end, it is hard for me to think back to that first flash of excitement, to describe that first encounter during which I felt so exalted and so happy. Christopher Columbus, at the prow of his caravel Santa Maria, could not have had greater expectations.
