Allah is Not Obliged (12 page)

They sent us to the headquarters of General Baclay—Onika Baclay Doe. Baclay was a woman. (You’d think it would be the feminine
Générale
but according to my
Larousse, Générale
is only used for a general’s wife and never for a general who is a woman herself.) Anyway, they introduced us to General Onika Baclay Doe. General Baclay was happy to see Yacouba. She already had an animist grigriman but she didn’t have a Muslim grigriman. Because of certain things that happened, she was starting to have doubts about the knowledge and the skill of her animist grigriman. With Yacouba, she had two grigrimen and that was so much the better.

I was sent off to the child-soldiers. They showed me my kalash. There were five of us to a gun and the one they showed me was newer than the one I had at the NPFL.

Child-soldiers were well looked after at ULIMO. You got lots to eat and you could even make money—dollars even—working as a bodyguard for the gold panners. I wanted to save some of my money, I didn’t want to piss away everything I earned on drugs, like the other child-soldiers. With my savings, I bought gold and I kept the gold in one of the grigris that I wore. I wanted something to give my aunt when I finally got to meet her.
Faforo!

General Baclay was weird, but she was a good woman and in her own way she was very fair: she shot men and women just the same, she shot thieves and it didn’t matter if they stole a needle or a cow. A thief is a thief, and she shot every one of them. She was impartial.

General Baclay’s capital, Sanniquellie, was a den of thieves. It was like every single thief in the Republic of Liberia had turned up at Sanniquellie. The child-soldiers knew all about it, because sometimes they got really stoned and crashed out and when they’d wake up they’d be naked, completely naked. The thieves took everything, even their underwear. They’d wake up lying naked next to their kalashes.

Any thieves that were caught red-handed during the week are arrested and chained up in prison. (‘Red-handed’ means they committed the crime right before the very eyes of the people who saw them committing it.) They might be hungry because of the laws of nature, but it was just too bad because in Baclay’s jail the prisoners didn’t get any food.

On Saturday mornings at about nine o’clock all the defendants are taken to the marketplace in chains and the whole population turns out. The trial takes place right there in front
of everyone. The way it works is the defendant is asked if he is a thief, yes or no? If he says yes, he’s condemned to death. If he says no, he is confounded by witnesses and then condemned to death anyway (‘confound’ means to silence someone by proving they committed the crime). So it’s
kif-kif
, same difference. The accused are always condemned to death. And the guilty are taken to the place of execution straight away.

They’re brought steaming rice with palm butter sauce and big hunks of meat and they pounce on it like wild beasts because they’re so hungry, and it’s so completely totally delicious that it makes some of the people watching wish they could swap places with the convicts. The convicts eat and eat for a long time. They eat till they’re full, till they’re stuffed. Then they say goodbye to their friends. It doesn’t matter if the condemned man is Catholic or not, the chaplain goes round and gives everyone the last rites. Then they’re tied to wooden stakes and they’re blindfolded. Some of them cry like spoiled brats, but not too many of them cry. Most of them, the majority, lick their lips and burst out laughing. They laugh really loud on account of how they’re so happy because of all the good food. Then they’re shot dead, to the applause of the lively, cheerful crowd.

And in spite of everything, yes in spite of everything, some of the people watching are surprised to discover that, while they were clapping, thieves relieved them of their wallets because there are so many thieves in Sanniquellie that executing a bunch of them won’t serve as a lesson to the rest.
Faforo!

*     *     *

Onika was Samuel Doe’s twin sister from an origin and kinship point of view. At the time of the indigenous military coup against the Afro-Americans she was a working girl. (For a girl, if you’re working, it means you’re a prostitute.) Back then she was called Onika Dokui. But as soon as her brother’s military coup succeeded, he made her a sergeant in the Liberian army and she changed her name and started calling herself Baclay. Baclay because it sounded more Black Nigger Afro-American and, whatever people say, being Afro-American in Liberia gives you a certain amount of prestige. It’s a lot better than being an indigene, being a Black Nigger African Native.

Back from Lomé after the CDEAO heads of state summit, Samuel Doe made Sergeant Baclay a lieutenant and posted her to his security staff. After the Gio military coup, Samuel Doe made her commander of the Presidential Guard. After Samuel Doe’s death, after Samuel Doe was hacked to pieces, Baclay promoted herself to general and chief of Sanniquellie. So you can see that the general was a cunning woman who didn’t let the sauce at the bottom of the
kanari
be licked up by
ouya-ouya
men.
Walahé!

General Onika was a small woman, lively as a nanny-goat whose kid has been taken from her. With her general’s stripes and her AK-47, she ran the whole show. She went everywhere in her four-by-four crammed with bodyguards armed to the teeth. The whole administration was a Baclay family thing. She left the day-to-day running of things to her son. Her son’s name was Johnny Baclay Doe. He was a colonel and he commanded the most experienced regiment. The son
had married three wives and all three wives were commanders in charge of the three most important subdivisions: finance, prisons and child-soldiers.

The wife in charge of the finances was called Sita. She was a Malinké, or a Mandingo in Afro-American pidgin. She collected the fees the gold panners had to pay every three months. She was Muslim, but she wasn’t humanitarian at all. She thought that the gold panners who worked without permits were robbing the ground and every Saturday morning they were condemned to death. And then shot dead. And she’d stand there laughing.

Monita was the name of the commander in charge of the prisons. She was a Protestant and a humanitarian with a heart of gold. She gave food to the prisoners, even though they weren’t allowed to eat. To prisoners who had only a couple of hours to live, she gave all the food they wanted. Allah is aware of acts like this and he rewards them in paradise.

The wife responsible for the child-soldiers was called Rita Baclay. Rita Baclay loved me like it’s not allowed. She called me Yacouba’s boy and the grigriman’s son had everything he wanted and could do whatever he liked. Sometimes, mainly when Colonel Baclay was away, she’d bring me to her hut, and coddle me with little meals (‘coddle’ is when you love someone and look after them). I’d eat my fill and while I was eating she’d be saying stuff like ‘Little Birahima, you’re so handsome, so beautiful. Do you know you’re beautiful? Do you know you’re handsome?’ And after I finished eating, she always asked me to take off my clothes. And I would.
She would stroke my
bangala
gently, gently, and I’d get a hard-on like a donkey.

‘If Colonel Baclay saw us, he wouldn’t be happy.’

‘Don’t be afraid, he’s not here.’

She would kiss my
bangala
over and over and then she’d swallow it, like a snake swallowing a rat. She used my
bangala
like a little toothpick.

I left her house whistling, proud and happy.
Gnamokodé!

Sanniquellie was a huge border town where they mined gold and diamonds. Even with all the tribal wars, foreign traders would venture as far as Sanniquellie lured by the cheap gold. Everyone in Sanniquellie was under General Baclay’s orders. General Baclay had the power of life and death over everyone in Sanniquellie and she used it. And abused it.

Sanniquellie was made up of four districts. There was the native district and the district where the foreigners lived and between the two districts was the market. The market was only open on Saturdays after they executed thieves. At the other end of Sanniquellie, at the foot of a hill, was the refugee district and, on top of the hill, the military base where we lived. The military base had human skulls on stakes all round the boundary. In tribal wars that’s really important. Far away, past the hills, out on the savannah were the river and the mines. The military base was guarded by child-soldiers. The mines and the river where the ore was washed were an unholy mess. I’m not going to describe them because I’m a street kid and I can do what I like, I don’t give a fuck about anyone. But I will tell you about the bossman
partners, who were really in charge of the money and all and everything.

The bossman partners are real chiefs and true masters. They live where they work and their living quarters are like fortresses guarded by child-soldiers armed to the teeth and permanently drugged up. Full of drugs from head to toe. Wherever there’s child-soldiers, there’s skulls on stakes. The bossman partners are rich. All the gold panners are accountable to one of the bossman partners.

When a gold panner starts out, he’s usually got nothing except his underpants. The bossman is the one who pays for everything, for the hoes and the basket and the food. The bossman even pays the monthly charge, half an American dollar, for exploiting the land.

When the gold panner makes a find (that means if he’s lucky enough to find a nugget of gold), he pays the bossman everything he owes. It doesn’t happen too often because usually by the time the gold panner finds something valuable he’s already up to his neck in debt to the bossman. That means he’s always and permanently at the disposal of the bossman partner. A lot of the bossmen partners are Lebanese and it’s easy to see why people are always murdering them. It’s a good thing that lots of them get horribly murdered, because they’re vampires. (‘Vampire’ means ‘a person, such as an extortionist, who preys upon others’, according to the
Petit Robert
.)

You should see what happens when a gold panner finds a nugget. It’s worth the trip. There’s this big hullabaloo, and the gold panner shouts for the child-soldiers to come and protect him, and the child-soldiers who are fucked up on
drugs come running and surround the gold panner and take him to his bossman partner. Then the bossman partner calculates how much the gold panner owes, pays the taxes, pays the child-soldiers doing the protecting, and whatever is left over—if there’s anything left over—goes to the gold panner. Now the gold panner is depressed on account of now he has to have a bodyguard until he’s spent all his money, and obviously the bodyguard is one of the drugged-up child-soldiers.
Walahé!
A child-soldier needs drugs and hash doesn’t grow on trees, it’s expensive.

One night bandits armed to the teeth arrived in Sanniquellie. They used the darkness to sneak between the huts like thieves. They went to the sector where the bossman partners lived. They laid siege to two of the bossman partners’ huts. It was easy, the child-soldiers were fucked up on drugs and so were the grown-up soldiers. The thieves took the bossman partners by surprise while they were sleeping. At machine-gun point they demanded that the bossman partners hand over the keys to their safes. The bossman partners handed over the keys. The thieves helped themselves, generously helped themselves. Just as they were leaving, they tried to kidnap the bossman partners but one of the bossman partners resisted and that’s when all hell broke loose. One of the child-soldiers woke up and started shooting. That’s all child-soldiers do, they just shoot and shoot. And that set off the riot. There was lots of furious gunfire and consequences: bodies, lots of dead bodies.
Walahé!
Five child-soldiers and three real soldiers got massacred. The safes were empty, empty from top to
bottom, and the thieves fled with two of the bossman partners as hostages. You should have seen it! It was a terrible sight. There were corpses everywhere, soldiers and child-soldiers dead, safes empty and two bossmen missing. The dead child-soldiers weren’t my friends, I didn’t even know them, that’s why I’m not doing a funeral oration for them. I’m not obliged to.
Gnamokodé!

Onika Baclay arrived at the crime scene where everything happened. She couldn’t hold back her tears. You should have seen it. It was worth the trip. A bitch like Onika crying over dead people. Crocodile tears! She wasn’t crying over the corpses, she was crying over everything she had to lose.

You see, Onika was responsible for keeping the bossmen safe. No bossmen, no gold panners; no gold panners, no gold; and no gold meant no dollars. Onika guaranteed she could keep the bossmen safe—she was always boasting about it—and now two of the bossmen had been kidnapped, snatched in the middle of the night from their huts slap bang in the middle of Sanniquellie. All the other bossman partners wanted to leave, to shut up shop. Onika’s whole system was falling apart.

Onika was like a madwoman. You should have seen it. This dumpy little woman, with everything she had to put up with, was shouting, ‘Stay! Stay! I’ll find them, I’ll bring them back. They’re in Niangbo. I know they are! They’re in Niangbo! In Niangbo!’

This was the first time I’d heard her mention Niangbo; Niangbo was where my aunt lived. The thieves had come from Niangbo.

Two days after the kidnap, the ransom demand arrived. The kidnappers demanded ten thousand American dollars, and not one dollar less, for each of the bossman partners.

‘It’s too much, too much! Ten thousand dollars! Where am I going to find that kind of money? Where am I going to get my hands on that?’ screamed General Onika.

Negotiations began without delay. Baclay offered two thousand dollars for each bossman. The bandits were sympathetic and asked for eight thousand dollars, but not a dollar less, and if they didn’t get it they would slit the bossmen’s throats.

Negotiations were long and difficult seeing as how Niangbo was a two-day walk from Sanniquellie.

Niangbo was a liberated town, a free town that didn’t belong to any warlord factions. It had to remain neutral. It couldn’t sanction kidnapping. But it did. It was a mistake and the inhabitants of Niangbo would pay. General Onika muttered constantly they would pay dearly.