Allah is Not Obliged (9 page)

And then there were all sorts of spies.

Colonel Papa le Bon deserved to have a fifty-hour day!
Faforo!
A full fifty-hour day.

Of course, Colonel Papa le Bon deserved to spend some of the countless stinking nights in this dog’s life in Zorzor getting drunk. But he never smoked hash. The hash was reserved for the child-soldiers, on account of it made them as strong as real soldiers.
Walahé!

When I first got to the camp, they explained to me who I was. I was a Mandingo, a Muslim, friend of the Yacous and the Gios. In Black American pidgin, Malinké and Mandingo are
kif-kif
, same difference. I was happy that I wasn’t a Guéré or a Krahn. Colonel Papa le Bon didn’t like the Guérés and the Krahns. He put them to death.

Because of Yacouba the grigriman, everyone spoiled me and looked out for me. I was singled out by Colonel Papa le Bon who appointed me captain, to replace poor Kid on account of how I was the grigriman’s boy, his kid, so everyone thought I had the best protection.

The colonel appointed me captain and my duties were to stand in the middle of the road and signal for the trucks and convoys to stop. I was the ambush kid, so I got lots to eat and sometimes I got given hash for free, gratis. The first time I smoked hash, I puked like a sick dog, but after a while I got used to it and soon it made me strong as a grown-up.
Faforo!

I had a friend, a child-soldier called Commander Jean Taï, or Tête Brûlée on account of him being a hot-head. Tête Brûlée had escaped from ULIMO and stole lots of AK-47s. Because he showed up at the camp with lots of guns, Colonel Papa le Bon made him a commander. Back at ULIMO he
pretended to be a Krahn but actually he was pure-blood Yacou. He got a big welcome to the NPFL from Colonel Papa le Bon because he turned up with kalashes he stole from ULIMO and because he wasn’t a Krahn.

Commander Tête Brûlée was a good guy. The best.
Walahé!
He lied more than he breathed. He was a fabulist. (According to my
Larousse
, a ‘fabulist’ is someone who makes up stories that are total lies.) Commander Tête Brûlée was a fabulist. He’d done everything and everything. And seen everything. He’d even met my aunt and talked to her. This made me feel relieved. I had to get to ULIMO as soon as possible.

The little liar told a lot of stories about ULIMO. He said lots of good things about ULIMO and the stories made everyone want to go to ULIMO where everything was cool and everyone had it easy. You could eat like a horse and there was always leftovers. You could sleep all day and every month they gave you a salary. He knew what he was talking about: a salary! At the end of every month they just gave you the salary, sometimes even before the end of the month, on account of how ULIMO had lots of American dollars because they exploited a lot of mines. Some of the mines were gold and some were diamonds and there were other mines of precious metals. The soldiers guarded the miners, the miners worked in the mines, and the soldiers got to eat lots of food and even got American dollars to keep for themselves. The child-soldiers had it even better. They had beds and brand new Para uniforms and new kalashes.
Walahé!

Commander Tête Brûlée was sorry he’d left ULIMO. He came to our camp because he was one hundred percent
Yacou, and back there he had to pretend he was a Krahn. He came to our camp because someone told him his mother and father were hiding in Zorzor, but he didn’t find them because it wasn’t true. Now he was just waiting for a chance to go back to ULIMO. Everything was cool at ULIMO, everyone had it easy.

Colonel Papa le Bon got wind of the things Tête Brûlée was saying. (To ‘get wind of’ means ‘to hear about something from someone else’, according to my
Petit Robert
.) Colonel Papa le Bon got wind of Commander Tête Brûlée’s barefaced lies. He was really angry and he sent for Tête Brûlée and bawled him out like a rotten fish. He threatened him and said that if he kept on saying good things about ULIMO and saying ULIMO was like heaven on earth then he’d throw him in jail.

It didn’t work. Tête Brûlée just kept on brainwashing us all behind Colonel Papa le Bon’s back. (‘Brainwashing’ is a big word. According to my
Larousse
, it means ‘forcible indoctrination into a new set of attitudes and beliefs’.)

Colonel Papa le Bon, in his goodness, built an orphanage for girls. It was for girls who had lost their parents in the tribal wars and it was only for girls younger than seven. Little girls who had nothing to eat and not enough breasts to get a husband or be a child-soldier. It was a great charitable work for girls younger than seven. The orphanage was run by nuns who taught the girls writing, reading and religion.

The nuns wore cornets to fool the outside world (a ‘cornet’ is a starched white headdress, often cone-shaped, worn by
nuns), but actually, like all the other women, they made love—they did it with Colonel Papa le Bon. Because Colonel Papa le Bon was the number-one rooster in the henhouse and because that’s the way things are in real life.

So, one morning, one of the girls was found raped and murdered on the edge of the track that led to the river. A little seven-year-old girl raped and murdered. It was such an agonising thing that Colonel Papa le Bon cried his heart out. You should have seen it—Colonel Papa le Bon, a complete
ouya-ouya
, crying his heart out (according to the
Glossary, ‘ouya-ouya
’ means ‘a bum, a good-for-nothing’). It was worth seeing.

There was a funeral vigil and Colonel Papa le Bon officiated himself with his soutane, his colonel’s stripes, his grigris under his clothes, his kalash and the papal staff. Colonel Papa le Bon danced a lot and drank a little. On account of alcohol isn’t very good for Colonel Papa le Bon. After the dancing, he turned around three times, studied the sky four times, then walked forward to the soldier directly in front of him. He took the soldier’s hand, the soldier stood up and Colonel Papa le Bon led him into the centre of the circle. The soldier’s name was Zemoko. Zemoko was not innocent: either he was guilty of the death of the little girl or he knew who was responsible for her death. Colonel Papa le Bon repeated the ritual, walked forward and pointed to another soldier. The soldier’s name was Wourouda. Wourouda was guilty of the death of the little girl or he knew who was responsible for her death. Colonel Papa le Bon did the trick a third time, walked forward and led Commander Tête Brûlée into the
middle of the circle. Tête Brûlée was guilty of the death of the little girl or he knew who was responsible for her death. Tête Brûlée and the two soldiers were mixed up in the girl’s death. They were immediately arrested, even though they protested their innocence. (‘To protest one’s innocence’ means to ‘avow formally or solemnly that one is innocent’, according to my
Larousse
.)

The next day, the court was in session to judge the murderers of the little girl.

Colonel Papa le Bon was there wearing his soutane and all his medals, with his Bible and his Qur’an on hand. The spectators sat in the nave like they do for a mass. An ecumenical mass. Even though this wasn’t a mass, the judgement started with a prayer. Then, Colonel Papa le Bon asked the defendants to swear on the holy books three times. The defendants swore.

‘Zemoko, did you kill Fati?’ asked Colonel Papa le Bon.

‘I swear on the Bible that it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.’

‘Wourouda, did you kill Fati?’

Wourouda said it wasn’t him.

Colonel Papa le Bon put the same question to Tête Brûlée and got the same answer.

Next came the ordeal. A knife was put into a fire of glowing coals until the blade was white-hot, then each defendant opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Colonel Papa le Bon took the white-hot blade and ran it over Zemoko’s tongue. Zemoko didn’t flinch; he closed his mouth and went back to his seat in the nave. The audience clapped. Then it was Wourouda’s turn. The audience clapped when Wourouda
closed his mouth without flinching. But when Colonel Papa le Bon’s blade came towards Tête Brûlée, Commander Tête Brûlée jumped back and ran out of the church. A roar of surprise erupted from the crowd. Commander Tête Brûlée was quickly caught and overpowered.

He was guilty; he had killed poor Fati. Tête Brûlée made a clean breast and admitted everything, he said the devil had entered him and guided his actions.

He was sentenced to submit himself to the rituals of exorcism for two whole rainy seasons. If the devil within him was too powerful, if the rituals did not succeed in casting out the devil in his body, he would be executed. Publicly executed. With an AK-47. If the exorcism worked, he would be pardoned by Colonel Papa le Bon, because Colonel Papa le Bon, with his papal staff, is righteousness itself. But … But he could not be a child-soldier any more, because a child-soldier who has raped and murdered isn’t a virgin and when you’re not a virgin you can’t be one of Colonel Papa le Bon’s child-soldiers. That’s the way it is; there’s no arguing. You have to be a soldier. A proper soldier, a grown-up soldier.

Grown-up soldiers are not given any food or anywhere to sleep and they don’t get any salary at all. Being a child-soldier had its advantages.
Walahé!
We were privileged. If Tête Brûlée escaped being executed, he couldn’t be a child-soldier any more because he wasn’t a virgin.
Gnamokodé!

Faforo!
Right now we were miles from Zorzor, miles and miles from Colonel Papa le Bon’s camp. The sun had hopped up like a cricket and
doni-doni
it was starting to rise (according
to the
Glossary
, ‘
doni-doni
’ means ‘little by little’). We had to be careful and take small steps. We were only a few metres from the forest. We had to elude the NPFL soldiers (‘elude’ means ‘to cunningly avoid’). The soldiers might follow us. We made the most of the moonlight to go far, to go fast, to make ourselves scarce.

We had left the camp the night before, foot to the road, out of Zorzor. At about eleven o’clock, Colonel Papa le Bon had been assassinated, gunned down, he was dead. Even with all his grigris, he gave up the ghost. To tell the truth, when I saw Colonel Papa le Bon dead it made me feel sick because I thought he was immortal, because Colonel Papa le Bon had been good to me. To everyone. And he was a phenomenon of nature (‘phenomenon’ means ‘an unusual or unaccountable fact or event, a remarkable or outstanding person’).

Colonel Papa le Bon’s death was the signal, the
shofar
of freedom for the prisoners. (A ‘
shofar
’ is a trumpet made of a ram’s horn.) The prisoners who were there to be cast out, the prisoners who were there for love. It was the signal for everyone who wanted to escape to leave, even the soldiers and the child-soldiers. Lots of the child-soldiers hadn’t found their parents at NPFL and thought they might find them at ULIMO. And anyway, over at ULIMO they had lots of food. Over at ULIMO you got to eat
riz gras
with
sauce graine. At
ULIMO everyone got a salary and it arrived smack bang on time, like mangoes in April.
Faforo!

It wasn’t easy to escape from the camp. We had to fight the
ouya-ouyas
who were still loyal to the NPFL. All the arseholes who still thought things were better with Colonel Papa
le Bon. But in the end, we won. So then we pillaged everything, smashed everything, torched everything. And right after that we set off. Like a flash, at the double.

We were all carrying the spoils of our pillaging. Some people had two or even three kalashes. The AK-47s would make good corroboration for ULIMO (‘corroboration’ means ‘proof’). It would prove to ULIMO that we left the NPFL on bad, really bad, terms and prove how much we really wanted to join ULIMO. We looted everything and then we torched the place.

As soon as Colonel Papa le Bon had been gunned down, soldiers cried out in the night, ‘Colonel Papa le Bon is dead … Papa le Bon is dead. The colonel has been murdered … murdered!’ It made a hell of a ruckus (a disturbance or a commotion). It was the soldiers that started the looting. They looted all the money; they looted the soutanes; they looted the grain; they mainly looted the store of hash … They had looted all and everything before the loyal soldiers started shooting.

Walahé!
Let’s start at the start.

One day when he was searching the luggage from a convoy, Colonel Papa le Bon found lots of bottles of whisky, Johnny Walker Red Label, good shit. And, instead of making the guy pay lots of duties and taxes, Colonel Papa le Bon took three bottles for himself. Alcohol wasn’t good for Colonel Papa le Bon. He knew that, so he only allowed himself alcohol on hardly any nights and only when he was really, really tired and his head was all muddled. He drank when he went to bed and the next morning he would wake up a bit late, a bit
sick. But it wasn’t too bad, because the colonel never smoked hash: he kept all the hash for the child-soldiers because it was good for them and made them as strong as real soldiers. That night (the night he got the bottles of whisky), Colonel Papa le Bon was sincerely tired and he didn’t even wait until he went to bed to drink his whisky, too much whisky. Alcohol made Colonel Papa le Bon fucked up in the head.

Inebriated with alcohol, Colonel Papa le Bon headed off to the prison (‘inebriated’ means ‘under the influence’). Inebriated, Colonel Papa le Bon headed off on his own—all on his own—to the prison, somewhere he never went even in the daytime unless he had two child-soldiers armed to the teeth to protect him.

In the prison, alone in the night, he laughed with the prisoners, chatted with the prisoners, and joked with Tête Brûlée.

At some point, things turned sour (‘turn sour’ means ‘take a turn for the worse’). Colonel Papa le Bon started roaring like a wild beast the way he sometimes did. Colonel Papa le Bon staggered around like a madman and shouted ‘I’m going to kill the lot of you. I’m going to kill the lot of you …’ and then he cackled like a hyena in the darkness. ‘That’s how it goes … that’s how it goes … I’m going to kill you all.’ He unbuckled his kalash from under his soutane and fired into the air twice. At first the prisoners ran away and hid in the corners. Still standing, still staggering, he fired two more times and then he went quiet for a minute, he was sleepy. In the half-light, one of the prisoners cautiously crawled up behind Colonel Papa le Bon and threw himself at the colonel’s feet knocking him down. The kalash slipped out of his hands
and skidded far, far away in front of him. Tête Brûlée grabbed the gun and fired at Colonel Papa le Bon who was lying right on the ground. He emptied the magazine into him on account of Tête Brûlée is fucked up in the head.