Allah is Not Obliged (6 page)

In Liberia, there were four big important warlords: Doe, Taylor, Johnson and the Hajji Koroma, as well as a bunch of small warlords. The small warlords were doing their best to be big warlords. And everything in the whole country had
been divided up. That’s why they say there was tribal wars in Liberia. And that’s where I was going. And that’s where my aunt lived!
Walahé!
It’s the truth!

In tribal wars and even in Liberia, the child-soldiers, the small-soldiers, don’t get paid. They just kill people and steal everything worth stealing. In tribal wars and even in Liberia, the soldiers don’t get paid. They massacre the people and keep everything worth keeping. So as they have enough to eat and all the other stuff they need, the child-soldiers and the real soldiers sell off everything they steal really cheap.

That’s why in Liberia you can get everything really cheap. You can get cheap gold, cheap diamonds, cheap TVs, cheap four-by-fours, cheap guns and AK-47s or kalashes. Every, every fucking thing is cheap.

And when everything in a country is cheap, dealers flock to that country (according to
Larousse
, ‘flock’ means ‘to arrive in great numbers’). Dealers who want to get rich quick all go to Liberia to buy and exchange things. They go with a fistful of rice, a tiny bit of soap, a bottle of petrol, a couple of dollars or even a few CFA francs, because everybody needs them and nobody’s got them. They sell the stuff they bring or trade it for cheap merchandise and bring the cheap merchandise back to Guinea or Côte d’Ivoire and sell it to the highest bidder. That’s how you make big money.

It’s on account of all the big money that you see hundreds of men and women in N’Zérékoré swarming round the
gbakas
leaving for Liberia. (‘
Gbaka
’ is a Black Nigger African Native word. You can find it in the
Glossary of French Lexical Particularities in Black Africa
, and it means a car or a vehicle.)

And whenever a country is doing tribal wars, everyone travels in convoys. (A convoy is when you’ve got lots of
gbakas
travelling together.) Everyone came to Liberia in convoys. There’s motorbikes up front and at the back of the convoy. On the motorbikes there are men armed to the teeth ready to defend the convoy, because as well as the four big important warlords, there are lots of small important warlords who do road blocks and stick-ups (according to my
Larousse
, a ‘stick-up’ is when you take by force something which is not legally yours).

So we go to Liberia in a convoy and to make sure we don’t get in a stick-up, we have a motorbike riding up front and that’s how we set off.
Faforo!

There he was, this little guy, in pidgin they say a kid (according to my
Harrap’s
, ‘kid’ means ‘a boy or young man’). Anyway there was this little guy standing right slap bang exactly at a turn in the road and the motorbike that was supposed to be protecting us didn’t manage to stop dead when this little kid signals to stop. The two guys on the motorbike thought it was a road-block so they opened fire and there’s this kid, this child-soldier, lying there, fucked. Dead, totally dead.
Walahé! Faforo!

There was a second, a minute, of silence before the storm. And then the whole forest all around us started spitting, the
tat-tat-tat tat-tat-tat tat-tat-tat
of AK-47s. So when the
tattat-tat
of the kalashes started up, the birds in the forest could tell something wasn’t right, so they all took off and flew away towards more peaceful skies. The AK-47
tat-tat-tat
sprays all
over the motorbike and the guys on the motorbike, the driver and the other guy who was all
faro
on the back with his own kalash. (‘
Faro
’ isn’t in the
Petit Robert
, but it’s in the
Glossary
and it means ‘showing off’.) So now the driver and the guy acting all
faro
were both dead. Absolutely, one hundred percent dead. But there’s still AK-47s going
tat-tat-tat
-ing!
tat-tat-tat
ing! And you could already see all the destruction all over the road—the burning motorbike and bodies all AK-47ed and all the blood, lots and lots of blood, the blood just never got tired of flowing.
Faforo!
All this just kept happening and happening, the sinister
tat-tat-tat
music kept going (‘Sinister’ means ‘serious, scary, terrifying’).

Let’s start from the start.

Mostly, things don’t happen like that. Mostly, the bike or the car or whatever stops dead when the kid makes the signal and doesn’t go past him even one inch. When it happens like that, everything goes smoothly, very smoothly.
Faforo!
The kid, the child-soldier, who’s about as tall as an officer’s cane, chats to the guys on the motorbike protecting the convoy. They get to know each other a bit, laughing and joking as if they drank beer together every night. Then the kid whistles, then he whistles again. Then a four-by-four truck comes out of the forest all covered in camouflage leaves. A four-by-four full of kids, child-soldiers, small-soldiers. Kids about this tall … as tall as an officer’s cane. Child-soldiers showing off, their kalashes, their AK-47s, slung over their shoulders, all dressed in Para uniforms. All dressed in parachute gear way too big for them, so the uniforms are falling down round
their knees, and they’re swimming in them. The funniest thing is that there’s girls, genuine girls with real AK-47s showing off. But there aren’t too many girls. Only the cruel ones: only the one’s who’d stick a live bee right in your eye. (When someone is really cruel, Black Nigger African Natives say ‘they’d stick a live bee right in your eye’.) Then you’d see lots more child-soldiers dressed in the same uniforms, with the same guns, but walking out of the forest, or hanging off the cars and chatting to the people in the convoy like they were best friends who did their initiation together. (In the village, doing your initiation together means you’re really good friends.) Then the four-by-four truck drives to the front of the convoy and they all head off together.

Then, you arrive in a camp that belongs to Colonel Papa le Bon. Everyone in the convoy gets out and goes into Colonel Papa le Bon’s hut. They unpack everything, weigh everything, measure everything on account of the taxes and duties are based on how much all the stuff is worth. There’s a lot of palaver and arguing and after a while you reach an agreement. Then you pay and pay and pay. You pay in kind, with rice, manioc, fonio (‘
fonio
’ is a food also called
acha
, or ‘hungry rice’). You can even pay with American dollars, real American dollars. Then Colonel Papa le Bon organises an ecumenical mass. (In my
Larousse
, it says ‘ecumenical’ means a mass where there’s Jesus Christ and Mohammed and Buddha.) So anyway, Colonel Papa le Bon organises an ecumenical mass. There’s lots of blessings and stuff. Then he goes his way and you go your way.

That’s the way it’s supposed to happen. Because Colonel
Papa le Bon is the representative spokesman of the NPFL (which stands for National Patriotic Front of Liberia). The NPFL is the movement of the warlord Taylor, who wreaks havoc all over the region.

But that’s not how things went with us. The guys at the front on the motorbike who were supposed to defend us thought the kid was a road-block and opened fire. And that’s when the shit hit the fan.

All we could hear was the
tat-tat-tat
of AK-47s, just machine-guns
tat-tat-tat
-ing away. Whoever it was just kept shooting and shooting and shooting. When the damage was done, totally done, that’s when it stopped.

While all this was going on, all of us in the convoy were going crazy. Everyone was screaming out to the spirits of their ancestors and to every protective spirit in heaven and on earth. With all the noise, it sounded like thunder. And all this because the guy on the motorcycle had been showing off with his kalash and fired at the child-soldier.

Yacouba had a bad feeling the minute we boarded the truck. He never liked the look of the guy on the back of the motorbike, the one who fired the first shot, the one who thought the kid was just a little thief setting up a road-block. It was the guy on the back of the motorcycle who fired and made all the consequences happen and now we were in the shit.

Then we saw a child-soldier, a small-soldier as tall as an officer’s cane, a child-soldier wearing a baggy Para uniform. It was a girl. She was walking hesitantly. (‘Hesitantly’ is what you say when someone is walking like they’re nervous and
unsure.) And she looked round at all the destruction from the AK-47ing, looked really carefully as if one of the guys might get up when actually everyone was totally dead, even the blood was dead beat, from flowing all over the place. She stopped where she was and whistled loudly and then whistled again. And then child-soldiers started appearing from all over the place, all dressed like her, all waving their AK-47s.

First they surrounded us and started yelling, ‘Out of the trucks, hands on your heads!’ And we all started getting down, hands on our heads.

The child-soldiers were really, really angry; they were red in the face they were so angry. (You don’t really say ‘red in the face’ for blacks. Blacks never go red in the face, they just frown.) Anyway the small-soldiers were frowning; they were crying on account of how angry they were, they were crying for their dead friend.

We started getting out of the trucks. Single file, one after the other. One of the soldiers took the jewellery, ripping off earrings and necklaces and stuffing them in a bag that another guy was carrying. The child-soldiers took our headdresses and clothes and shoes. If they liked your underwear, they took that too. They put all the clothes into piles, lots of piles: one pile for the shoes, one pile for the headdresses, one for pants, one for underpants. All the naked passengers from the trucks uncomfortably tried to cover their
bangala
if it was a man or their
gnoussou-gnoussou
if it was a woman (according to the
Glossary, ‘bangala
’ and ‘
gnoussou-gnoussou
’ are names for your shameful parts), but the child-soldiers didn’t let them. They ordered the embarrassed passengers to fuck off into
the forest. And everyone ran off into the forest with no objections.

When it came to Yacouba’s turn, he wasn’t going to be pushed around. He cried, ‘Me marabout, me grigriman, me grigriman!’

The child-soldiers poked him and forced him to take off his clothes. He kept on shouting, ‘Me shaman, grigriman. Me grigriman …’ Even when he had no clothes on and was trying to cover his
bangala
with his hands, he kept on screaming, ‘Grigriman, shaman.’ And when they told him to go into the jungle, he came back shouting, ‘Grigriman, shaman.’ ‘
Makou!
’ ordered the child-soldiers aiming an AK-47 at his arse. (‘
Makou
’ is in the
Glossary
and it means ‘shut up’.) So he shut up and stood on the side of the road with his hands covering his shameful parts.

Then came my turn. I let them pull me to my feet. I was blubbering like a spoiled brat, ‘Child-soldier, small-soldier, soldier-child, I want to be a child-soldier, I want to go to my aunt’s house in Niangbo.’ They kept taking my clothes off and I kept blubbering and crying, ‘Me small-soldier, me child-soldier, me soldier-child.’ Then they ordered me into the jungle but I wouldn’t go, I just stood there with my
bangala
hanging there. I don’t give a shit about modesty, I’m a street kid. (According to the
Petit Robert
, ‘modesty’ means ‘a respect for moral standards’.) I don’t give a fuck about moral standards, I just kept on crying.

One of the child-soldiers poked a kalash in my arse and shouted, ‘
Makou, makou!
’ So I shut up. I was trembling, trembling like the hindquarters of a nanny-goat waiting for a billy-goat
(‘hindquarters’ means ‘arse, bum’). I felt like I needed to do pee-pee, to do pooh, to do everything.
Walahé!

Next came a woman, a mother. She got down from the truck with her baby in her arms. A stray bullet had put a hole in the poor baby and killed it. The mother wasn’t going to let herself be pushed around: she refused to take off her clothes. They tore off her
pagne
(according to the
Glossary
, a ‘
pagne
’ is an item of traditional female clothing consisting of a piece of cloth without fastenings wrapped around the body). She refused to run into the forest, she stood beside me and Yacouba, on the side of the road, holding her dead baby in her arms. She started crying, ‘My baby, my baby.
Walahé! Walahé!
‘ When I heard her, I started crying like the spoiled brat again, ‘I want to go to Niangbo, I want to be a child-soldier.
Faforo! Walahé! Gnamokodé!
’

The concert got too deafening, too loud, and they finally started to pay attention. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ they ordered, and we went
makou
. ‘Don’t move!’ and we stood to attention by the side of the road, like a bunch of fuckwits.

And then a four-by-four came out of the jungle. It was full of child-soldiers. They didn’t wait for a signal, they just started looting the trucks. They took everything worth taking. They piled all the stuff into the four-by-four. The four-by-four made a couple of trips to the village. After they took all the things in the convoy, they started taking the piles of shoes and clothes and hats. They piled everything into the four-by-four and did another couple of trips. On the last run, the four-by-four brought back Colonel Papa le Bon.

*     *     *

Walahél
Colonel Papa le Bon was shockingly garbed (according to my
Larousse
, ‘garbed’ means ‘dressed strangely’). For a start Colonel Papa le Bon had colonel’s stripes. That was on account of the tribal wars. Colonel Papa le Bon was wearing a white soutane, a white soutane tied at the waist with a leather belt, a belt held up by a pair of black leather braces crossed across his back and his chest. Colonel Papa le Bon was wearing a cardinal’s mitre. Colonel Papa le Bon was leaning on a pope’s staff, a staff with a crucifix at the top. Colonel Papa le Bon was carrying a bible in his left hand. To top it all off, Colonel Papa le Bon was wearing an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. The AK-47 and Colonel Papa le Bon were inseparable, he carried it round with him night and day. That was on account of the tribal wars.