Allah is Not Obliged (10 page)

Faforo!
The bullets went straight through Colonel Papa le Bon, even though he was wearing Yacouba’s grigris. Yacouba explained that it was because Colonel Papa le Bon had violated the proscriptions attached to the grigris. Number one, you’re not allowed to wear the grigris when you are making love. Number two, after making love, you have to wash before you tie on the grigris. But Colonel Papa le Bon made love all the time, every way possible, and didn’t have time to wash himself. And there was another reason. The colonel had never sacrificed the two bulls written in his destiny. If he had sacrificed the two bulls, he would never have wandered into the prison on his own. The sacrifice of the bulls would have prevented the circumstance from happening.
Faforo!

As soon as Colonel Papa le Bon is dead, good and dead, one of the prisoners turns over his body and grabs the keys to the arsenal. Colonel Papa le Bon always kept the keys to the arsenal on him at all times. For the prisoners and the soldiers who wanted to go to ULIMO, this was the
shofar
of freedom, but there were some people who didn’t want to leave, people who were still loyal to the NPFL and to Colonel Papa le Bon. There was a battle between the two groups and in the end the ones who wanted to leave managed to fuck off.

Yacouba and me, we wanted to go to ULIMO because ULIMO was in Niangbo and Niangbo was where my aunt
lived. My aunt had managed to contact Yacouba and tell him that she was there, and Commander Tête Brûlée had even seen my aunt there even if it’s true that Tête Brûlée was a pathological liar and you should never believe a word a pathological liar says.

We followed Tête Brûlée because he was the one who knew how to find the nearest ULIMO post. There were thirty-seven of us, sixteen child-soldiers, twenty grown-up soldiers and Yacouba. We were all loaded up with guns and ammunition and not too much food. Tête Brûlée had us all believing that ULIMO was really close, right round the next bend. But it wasn’t true, the kid was a liar. It took at least two or three days to get to the nearest ULIMO post. And the others were hot on our heels. (To be hot on someone’s heels means to be following them.) Luckily, there were lots of different routes to ULIMO and they didn’t know which route we took. All of us were from different tribes, but we knew that to get into ULIMO you had to be a Krahn or a Guéré. Only Krahns and Guérés were allowed into ULIMO. So everyone took a Krahn name. I didn’t have to change my name, I was Malinké, what like the Black Americans in Liberia call Mandingo. The Malinkés or Mandingos are always welcome wherever we go because we’re out-and-out defectors. We’re always changing sides.

It was a long road and we had too much ammunition and too many guns. We couldn’t carry everything, so we dumped some kalashes and some of the ammunition.

With all the hash, we got hungrier and hungrier. Hash isn’t good when you’re hungry. So we ate all the fruit we
could find and after that we ate roots and after that leaves. And even after all that Yacouba still said Allah in his infinite goodness never leaves empty a mouth he has created.

One of the child-soldiers was a girl soldier, her name was Sarah. Sarah was unique, she was pretty as four girls put together and she smoked enough hash for ten. For a long time back in Zorzor, she had been Tête Brûlée’s secret girlfriend. That’s why she came with us. Ever since we left Zorzor, they (she and Tête Brûlée) hadn’t stopped stopping to kiss each other. And every time we stopped she’d smoke some more hash and munch some more grass. We had hash and grass in abundance. In abundance because we’d cleaned out Colonel Papa le Bon’s stockpile. And she smoked and munched incessantly (‘incessantly’ means ‘without stopping’, according to my
Larousse
). She went completely crazy and started touching her
gnoussou-gnoussou
in front of everyone and asking Tête Brûlée to make love to her in public in front of everyone. But Tête Brûlée said no because we were in a hurry and we were hungry. Sarah wanted to rest. She slumped against a tree trunk to rest. Tête Brûlée really loved Sarah and he didn’t want to just leave her like that but we had people following us and we couldn’t hang about. Tête Brûlée tried to make her to stand up and come with us and she fired a whole clip cartridge at Tête Brûlée. Luckily she was all drugged up and she couldn’t see for shit so the bullets just disappeared into the air. In a rage, Tête Brûlée retaliated. He fired at her legs and disarmed her. She screamed like a suckling calf, like a stuck pig. And Tête Brûlée got all miserable, completely miserable.

We had to leave her there all alone, we had to abandon her to her sad fate, but Tête Brûlée couldn’t bring himself to do it. Sarah screamed her maman’s name and God’s name and everything and Tête Brûlée went over to her and kissed her and he started crying. We left them there kissing, with arms round each other and crying and off we went, foot to the road. We hadn’t got very far when Tête Brûlée showed up on his own, still crying. He had left Sarah alone beside the tree, alone with all her blood and all her wounds. The bitch (‘bitch’ means a cruel, wicked girl) couldn’t walk any more. The army ants and the vultures would make a real feast of her.

According to my
Larousse
, a funeral oration is a speech in honour of a famous celebrity who’s dead. Child-soldiers are the most famous celebrities of the late twentieth century, so whenever a child-soldier dies, we have to say a funeral oration. That means we have to recount how in this great big fucked-up world they came to be a child-soldier. I do it when I feel like it, but I don’t have to. I’m doing it for Sarah because I want to, I’ve got the time, and anyway it’s interesting.

Sarah’s father was called Bouaké; he was a sailor. He travelled and travelled, he did nothing but travel so much that you wonder how he found time to make Sarah in her mother’s belly. Her mother sold rotten fish in the big market in Monrovia and sometimes she looked after her daughter. When Sarah was five, her mother was knocked down by a drunk driver and killed. Her father didn’t know what you’re
supposed to do with girls, so he gave her to his cousin in a remote village, who gave her to Madame Kokui. Madame Kokui had a shop and she had five children. She put Sarah to work cleaning and selling bananas in the street. Every morning, after she finished washing the dishes and washing the clothes, she walked the streets of Monrovia selling bananas and came home at six on the dot to put the stockpot on the fire and bath the baby. Madame Kokui was very pernickety about the accounts and very strict about what time Sarah got home. (‘Pernickety’ and ‘strict’ both mean ‘hard to please’.)

One morning, a little boy, a street kid, stole a bunch of bananas and made a run for it. Sarah ran after the little boy, but she didn’t catch him. When she got back to the house, she explained what had happened, but Madame Kokui wasn’t happy, not one bit. She screamed at Sarah and accused her of selling the bananas and buying sweets with all the money. Sarah told her it was the little boy who took them, but it was no use. Madame Kokui was still angry and wouldn’t listen to her. She whipped Sarah and locked her in her room with no supper and she said, ‘Next time, I’ll whip you a lot harder and I’ll lock you up for a whole day with no food.’

Next time was the next day. Like every morning, Sarah went out with her load of bananas. The same little boy showed up with a gang of friends, snatched a bunch of bananas and ran off. Sarah ran after him. That’s what his friends were waiting for on account of they were just as much brats as him. When Sarah ran after him, they swiped the rest of the bananas (‘swipe’ means ‘to steal, to make off with’, according to my
Larousse
).

Sarah was in tears. She cried all day long, but when the sun started setting and she knew it would soon be time to go home and bath the baby, she decided to beg. To beg to get the money to pay back Madame Kokui. But sadly the drivers she begged from weren’t very generous and she didn’t have enough to pay back Madame Kokui, so that night she slept in the doorway of a shop called Farah among all the packages.

The next day she went begging again, but it wasn’t until the day after that that she finally got enough money to pay back Madame Kokui and by then it was too late. She couldn’t go back to the house now on account of how she’d already spent two nights sleeping rough. If she went back, Madame Kokui would kill her, kill her stone dead. So Sarah kept on begging and after a while she got used to the circumstances, and figured out she was better off begging than she had been with Madame Kokui. She found somewhere to wash, and another place where she could hide her savings and she went on sleeping in the doorway of Farah among the packages and the boxes.

She had been spotted there by a man, and one day he came and found her in the doorway of Farah. He introduced himself, he was kind and sympathetic. (‘Sympathetic’ means he pretended like he cared about Sarah’s problems.) He offered Sarah sweets and other stuff so Sarah trusted him and followed him to a covered market far away from the houses. That’s where he told her that he was going to make love to her gently and not hurt her. Sarah was scared and she started running and screaming, but the man was a lot faster and a
lot stronger and he caught up with Sarah and knocked her down and forced her on to the ground and raped her. He was so vicious that he left Sarah for dead.

Sarah was taken to hospital and when she woke up the nurse asked her who her parents were. She told the nurse about her father, but not about Madame Kokui. The hospital people tried to find her father but they didn’t find him. He was travelling; he was always travelling. They sent Sarah to the nuns at the orphanage in the suburbs west of Monrovia and that’s where she was living when the tribal wars got started. Five of the nuns in the orphanage were massacred; the others got the fuck out on the double, no questions asked. Sarah and four of her friends had been prostitutes before they joined the child-soldiers, so as not to starve to death.

That’s Sarah, who we left to the army ants and the vultures. (According to the
Glossary
, army ants are black ants that are really, really voracious.) They were going to make a delicious feast of her.
Gnamokodé!

All the villages along the way were deserted, one hundred percent deserted. That’s the way it goes in tribal wars: everyone abandons the villages where humans live and go and live in the forests where the wild beasts live. Wild beasts have a better life than people.
Faforo!

As we came in to one of the deserted villages, we spotted two guys who took off, made a run for it like they were robbers. We chased after them, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in tribal wars. When you see someone and they run away, that means they’re trying to hurt you so you
have to catch them first. The two guys had vanished into the forest. We fired lots and lots of bullets. It made an awful ruckus; it sounded like the Samorian wars all over again. (Samory was a Malinké chief who resisted the French invasions and whose
sofas
—soldiers—did lots of shooting.)
Walahé!

One of the child-soldiers was a captain who was unique and everyone called him ‘Captain Kik the Cunning’. Captain Kik the Cunning was weird. While we were just standing there by the roadside, Kik the Cunning ran right into the forest and headed left to try and cut off the fugitives’ path back to the village. It was cunning. But then, suddenly, we heard an explosion, and then Kik was screaming. We all rushed to him. Kik had stepped on a mine. It was a terrible sight. Kik was screaming like a suckling calf, like a stuck pig. He was screaming for his mum, for his dad, for all and everyone. His leg was in bloody shreds and hanging by a thread. It was a sorry sight. He was sweating huge drops of sweat and bawling, ‘I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die like a fly!’ A kid like that, giving up the ghost like that, it’s not a pretty sight. We made a makeshift stretcher.

Kik was carried back to the village on the makeshift stretcher. One of the soldiers had once been a nurse. The nurse thought Kik should be amputated immediately, at once. Back in the village, we laid Kik on the floor of one of the huts. It took three guys to hold him down. He screamed, he struggled, he called for his maman, but the nurse cut off his leg anyway, right at the knee. Right at the knee. He threw the leg to a passing dog. We propped Kik up against the wall of the hut.

Then we started searching all the huts. One by one. Thoroughly. The villagers had run away as soon as they heard the machine-gun bullets we were firing. We were hungry and we needed something to eat. We found chickens. We chased them and caught them and wrung their necks and then we roasted them. There were kid goats wandering around too. We slaughtered them and roasted them too. We took anything worth eating. Allah never leaves empty a mouth he has created.

We searched every nook and cranny. We thought there was nobody there, absolutely nobody, so we were surprised to find two cute kids whose mother hadn’t been able to take them with her in her frantic escape (‘frantic’ means ‘violent and desperate’, according to my
Larousse
). She just abandoned them, and the two kids had hidden under some branches in a pen.

Among the child-soldiers there was a girl named Fati. Like all the girl soldiers, Fati was really cruel. Like all the girl soldiers, Fati smoked too much hash and was always fucked up. Fati dragged the two kids out of their hidey-hole under the branches and ordered them to show us where the villagers hid their food. The kids didn’t understand a word, not one word. They were too little. It was twins and they were only about six years old. They were scared. They didn’t understand what was going on. Fati decided to scare them, decided to fire her machine-gun into the air but, on account of she was totally fucked up on hash, she completely machine-gunned the kids with her AK-47, leaving one of them dead and the other one wounded. The bullets had ripped his whole arm off. Fati broke down and cried because you’re not
supposed to hurt twins, especially little twins. The
gnamas
of twins, especially when they’re still kids, are terrifying. (‘
Gnamas
’ are the shadows, the avenging spirits of the dead.)
Gnamas
like that never forgive. It was sad, really sad. Fati would be forever hunted by
gnamas
, the
gnamas
of little twins, and all because of the fucked-up tribal wars in Liberia. She was finished; she was going to die a terrible death.