Allah is Not Obliged (8 page)

In any case, Taylor is always going everywhere pestering everyone. The warlord has taken the whole country hostage and he’s so powerful that by the time we arrived in 1993, the slogan his supporters chant, ‘No Taylor, No Peace’, is becoming a reality.
Gnamokodé! Walahé!

*     *     *

Colonel Papa le Bon, Taylor’s representative in Zorzor, is weird.

For a start, he never had a father, never knew who his father was. His mother was wandering from bar to bar in the big city of Monrovia when just like that she gave birth to a baby she called Robert’s. When the kid was five, a sailor wanted to marry the woman, but he didn’t want anything to do with the kid, so Robert’s was given to his aunt who also worked in the bars. The aunt used to leave him on his own in the house playing with French letters (‘French letters’ are condoms).

Some children’s rights organisation saw what was happening and took Robert’s away and put him in an orphanage run by nuns.

Robert’s was a brilliant student. He wanted to be a priest, so they sent him to the USA. When he finished studying he went back to Liberia to be ordained. But it was too late, by now it was tribal war in Liberia. There was nothing left, no Church, no organisations, no records. He wanted to go back to the USA and sit back and wait until things got better.

But when he saw all the street kids everywhere, it reminded him of his childhood and he was deeply moved. So he changed his mind and decided to do something about it. In his soutane, he gathered the kids together and set about making sure they had enough to eat. The kids called him Papa le Bon, which means ‘the good father’ on account of how he gave food to the street kids.

His work made international repercussions happen and people all over the world wanted to help him and everyone
was talking about him but some people weren’t happy, especially the dictator Samuel Doe who was still in control in Monrovia. The dictator sent assassins to kill Papa le Bon but he escaped by the skin of his teeth and managed to get to Taylor, who was Doe’s sworn enemy. Taylor made Papa le Bon a colonel and gave him lots of power. He put him in charge of a whole district in Zorzor, where he was responsible for collecting the duties and taxes for Taylor.

There were three districts in Zorzor: the top district up in the mountains was where Colonel Papa le Bon ruled everything, the district where the natives’ straw huts were, and the refugee district. Refugees had it easier than everyone else in the country because everyone was always giving them food, the UNHCR, NGOs, everyone. But they only allowed women, kids younger than five and old people. In other words I wasn’t allowed in.
Gnamokodé!

The top district was sort of a fortified camp, a compound with human skulls on stakes all round the border and battle stations protected with sandbags. Every station was manned by four child-soldiers. The child-soldiers got lots of good stuff to eat, because if they didn’t eat well, they might fuck off and that would be bad for Colonel Papa le Bon. The top district had offices too, and an arsenal, a temple, living quarters and a prison.

The top thing in the top district was the arsenal. The arsenal was sort of a bunker right in the middle of the camp. Colonel Papa le Bon had the keys to the bunker on the belt of his soutane. They were never out of his sight. There were
lots of things that were never out of Colonel Papa le Bon’s sight: the keys to the arsenal, his kalash and all the grigris he wore to protect him from bullets.
Faforo!
He ate and slept and prayed and did sex stuff wearing the kalash, the keys to the armoury and the grigris that protected him from bullets.

The second most important thing in the top district was the prison. The prison wasn’t a real prison. It was a reeducation centre. (In the
Petit Robert
it says ‘re-education’ means the act of re-educating, in other words ‘re-education’.
Walahé!
Even the
Petit Robert
sometimes takes the piss.) In the middle of the prison was the place where Colonel Papa le Bon would cast out the magic from the devourers of souls. It was a centre for exorcism.

There were two separate prisons, one for the men that looked like a real prison with real bars and guards and everything. Protecting the men’s prison, like everything important that had to be protected, was manned by child-soldiers, virgins. (Virgins are boys who have never done sex. Like me.)

In the prison, everyone was mixed in together: prisoners of war, political prisoners and ordinary prisoners. There was even a category for prisoners that didn’t fit into any category at all: these were the husbands of women that Colonel Papa le Bon had decided to love.

The centre for casting out women was a guesthouse. A luxury guesthouse. Except that the women weren’t allowed to come and go whenever they wanted.

The women had to undergo rituals for casting out magic. Colonel Papa le Bon did the casting-out rituals himself, one on one, for hours and hours. Some people said during the
rituals, Colonel Papa le Bon took off his clothes and so did the women.
Walahé!

The third most important thing in the top district was the temple. The temple was for every religion. Every Sunday, everyone in the district had to take part in the papal mass, that’s what Colonel Papa le Bon called it. A papal mass because he used the pope’s staff. After the mass everyone would listen to Colonel Papa le Bon’s sermon.

The sermon was about witchcraft and the evils of witchcraft, about the treachery and the crimes of the other warlords: Johnson, Koroma, Robert Sikié, Samuel Doe, about the martyrdom of the Liberian people at the hands of ULIMO (the United Liberation Movement for Democracy in Liberia), the LPC (the Liberian Peace Council) and NPFL-Koroma.

The temple was also the place where people passing through went to the ecumenical mass. After the ecumenical mass, there was a sermon. It was the same sermon as the one after the papal mass.

Lastly, the fourth most important thing, there were some huts made of straw and corrugated iron, about ten of them. Five of the huts were reserved for Colonel Papa le Bon. No one ever knew where Colonel Papa le Bon spent the night on account of how Colonel Papa le Bon was an important somebody in the tribal wars and nobody ever knows where an important somebody sleeps during tribal wars. That’s the rules of tribal wars.

The other five were the barracks where the child-soldiers slept.

Barracks for the child-soldiers,
faforo!
We slept on grass
mats right on the floor. And we ate whatever we could, wherever we could.

The village of the natives of Zorzor indigenes was about a kilometre from the entrenched camp. It was made up of huts and houses made of
torchis
, or daub. The people who lived there were Yacous and Gios. Yacou and Gio are the names of the Black Nigger African tribes in this part of the country. The Yacous and the Gios are the sworn enemies of the Guérés and the Krahns. Guéré and Krahn are the names of different Black Nigger African tribes from a different part of fucked-up Liberia. If a Krahn or a Guéré arrived in Zorzor, he had to be tortured and killed because that’s the rules of tribal warfare. In tribal warfare, you don’t want people around who are from a different tribe from your tribe.

Colonel Papa le Bon had the power of life and death over everyone who lived in Zorzor. He was chief of the town and of the district and above all he was cock of the walk.
Faforo! Walahé!

As soon as the funeral of the child-soldier Captain Kid was over, we became part of Colonel Papa le Bon’s racket.

I was sent to the child-soldier barracks where I got a uniform from an old grown-up Para. It was far too big for me, I was swimming in it. After that, in a solemn ritual, Colonel Papa le Bon himself presented me with a kalash and made me a lieutenant.

They gave child-soldiers ranks so we would be proud. You could be a captain, a commander, a colonel; the lowest rank was lieutenant. My gun was an old AK-47. The colonel taught
me how to use it himself. It was dead easy, you just pressed the trigger and it went
tat-tat-tat
and kept killing and killing and all the people would be dropping like flies.

The mother of the dead baby was sent to the guesthouse where the women were exorcised. (To be exorcised, the women had to be locked up naked one on one with Colonel Papa le Bon. That was the rules of tribal wars.)

Colonel Papa le Bon was really happy to have Yacouba, very happy to have a grigriman, a top-notch Muslim grigriman.

‘What sort of grigris do you make?’ Colonel Papa le Bon asked him.

‘All sorts,’ Yacouba told him.

‘Can you make grigris that protect against bullets?’

‘I’m really good at bullet-proofing. That’s why I came to Liberia where there’s tribal wars and bullets flying all over the place killing people without warning.’

‘Excellent! Excellent!’ roared Colonel Papa le Bon.

He kissed Yacouba on the mouth and put him in one of the huts reserved for important somebodies. Yacouba was blessed. He had everything and most of all he ate enough for four people.

Yacouba got to work straight away and made three grigris—one, two, three—for Colonel Papa le Bon. Top-notch grigris. The first one was for the morning, the second for the afternoon and the third for the night-time. Colonel Papa le Bon attached them to the belt of his soutane. And paid cash. Yacouba whispered in his ear—for his ears only—the interdictions attached to each grigri (an ‘interdiction’ is a law that
forbids you from doing something). Yacouba set himself up as a shaman. He made prophecies, tracing lines in the sand that revealed Colonel Papa le Bon’s future. He told the colonel he had to sacrifice two oxen. Two big bulls.

‘But there are no bulls in Zorzor,’ answered Colonel Papa le Bon.

‘You must do this; it is a necessary sacrifice. It is written in your future. But it’s not really, really urgent,’ said Yacouba.

Yacouba made grigris for all the child-soldiers and all the grown-up soldiers. He sold the grigris for lots of money. I got the most powerful grigris and Yacouba gave me mine free! All the grigris had to be renewed, so Yacouba was never short of work. Never! Yacouba was as rich as Moro-naba. Moro-naba was the name of the rich chief of the Mossis of Burkina-Faso. Yacouba sent money back to his village, to Togobala, to his parents, to the
griots
and the
almami
(a ‘
griot
’ is a traditional historian, a praise singer, and an ‘
almami
’ is a religious leader, according to the
Glossary
) on account of how he had so much money to spare.

Daytime only lasts about twelve hours. It was a shame, a terrible shame, twelve hours just weren’t enough for Colonel Papa le Bon. There was always work left over for tomorrow. Allah should have been merciful and made fifty-hour days for Colonel Papa le Bon. Fifty whole hours.
Walahé!

Every morning Colonel Papa le Bon woke up at cockcrow—except on the mornings after he’d drunk too much good palm wine before going to bed. But I can tell you that he never smoked hash. Never, ever. Every morning he changed
his grigris, put on his white soutane and his kalash. Then he took the papal staff with the crucifix on top, a crucifix decorated with a rosary and started by inspecting the battle stations. The watchtowers inside the camp manned by child-soldiers and the watchtowers outside manned by real soldiers.

Every morning he went into the temple and officiated. (‘Officiate’ is a big word that means ‘to conduct a religious ceremony’, that’s what it says in my
Larousse
.) He officiated with altar boys who were child-soldiers. Afterwards he had breakfast, but no alcohol. Alcohol wasn’t good for Colonel Papa le Bon early in the morning. It fucked up his whole day.

Afterwards, still wearing his soutane, Colonel Papa le Bon would hand out the day’s ration of grain to the soldiers’ wives. He had a set of mechanical scales. He’d talk to each soldier’s wife, and sometimes he’d burst out laughing and if she was really pretty he’d give her a slap on the arse. That was Colonel Papa le Bon’s fixed schedule, the schedule of things he had to do no matter what, even if he was laid up with malaria, even if he’d been drinking good palm wine. Only after he had distributed the grain to the soldiers’ wives and the child-soldiers’ cooks could he do other stuff depending on what day it was.

If he had to give a ruling or if there was a trial, he would stay in the temple until noon. The temple was also the courthouse on account of how the accused had to swear by God and by the grigris. It was trial by ordeal, which means ‘a barbarous, medieval method of justice’. Justice took place once a week, usually on Saturdays.

If Colonel Papa le Bon had no ruling to make, then right
after he had distributed the grain, he went straight to the infirmary. After their medicine, the doctor brought all the sick and the lame and the other fucked-up patients into one room where Colonel Papa le Bon preached to them, and he preached hard. It wasn’t unusual to see a sick person throw away his crutches and shout ‘I’m cured!’ and start walking around just like a normal person.
Walahé!
Colonel Papa le Bon was a seriously good and expert preacher.

After the infirmary Colonel Papa le Bon supervised the military training of the child-soldiers and the real soldiers. Military training was a bit like religious training or civic training and all of them were pretty much the same as the sermon. If you truly loved the Lord God and Jesus Christ, bullets wouldn’t hit you; they’d kill other people instead, because it is God alone who kills the bad guys, the arseholes, the sinners and the damned.

All this work for just one man—Colonel Papa le Bon did all this work by himself.
Walahé!
It was too much.

And then there were the convoys we ambushed from time to time. Sometimes Colonel Papa le Bon personally weighed the luggage and haggled with the passengers and collected the duties and taxes and put them in the pockets of his soutane.

And then there were the exorcisms. And the meetings … and the … and the mountain of paperwork that Colonel Papa le Bon had to sign as supreme commander of the NPFL for the eastern section of the Republic of Liberia.