Transit (4 page)

4

ABDO-JULIEN

ALL BLOOD IS MIXED
and all identities are nomadic, Maman would have said, talking about me, Papa, herself, or the whole wide world. This business of mixed blood is a very old story, she would add, raising her voice—so old that the first traces of African migration in the Italian peninsula, to give just one example, date from the conquest and fall of Carthage. Much later, there are records of nobles with black slaves: the famous
mori neri
in the paintings of Veronese or Giambattista Tiepolo. All that is typical Maman—a Frenchwoman born in Rennes and attracted by the mixture of races. She came to Djibouti well before I came into the world close to two decades ago. I owe my existence to those student parties that are so popular on campuses. For a few hours, foreign students can forget loneliness, the lack of familiar landmarks, their depression and feeling of dislocation. For a few hours, native students can find cheap thrills, exoticism, the feeling of being transported far away in the sway of the music blaring as loud as possible, and the giddiness caused by the mixture of perfumes and sweat. The Zairian rumba was in full swing then. James Brown, Manu Dibango, and Miriam Makeba heated up their bodies. Later, “Rock
Around the Clock” woke up the ones with a head stewing in hops. The Platters' “Only You” welded the desiring machines together again. Toward dawn, the toughest would stagger back to their rooms with a blood level of alcohol that would make Rasputin turn pale. “It's not because we went there to have a drink or do some dancing that we screwed our balls off,” said a friend of my parents who boasts of calling a spade a spade.

 

My mother, with her hair twisted together like those sentences of Monsieur Proust that no one can unravel, fears neither the sunburns that knock off foreigners with delicate skin nor the narrow little streets covered with dust. As a child I was fed on the milk of love, and reading. The big words of adults went right through my mind (picaresque, epic, tachycardia, scenography, crazy twists and turns of plot…), but the stories stayed with me for a very long time. Some day I'll tell you the story of that adventurer from Brittany, born with a fishing rod in his hand, said the novel: he hunted whales in the Bering Straits, sold real Bordeaux wine in the tropics, and took on the boldest pirates with the help of his adorable companion Louison, a royal tigress he had freed from the jaws of a Malaysian crocodile. I still remember every episode. Would you like another one? I'm hesitating between Alexandre Dumas, Eugène Sue, Jules Verne, Scheherazade, or the snow-white beard of Charles Dickens. Are you ready to hunt the rhinoceros in the Serengeti in the company of Ernest Hemingway, become a maharaja in the country of long-haired princes, wind between the seven pillars of wisdom behind Lawrence of Arabia, follow in the footsteps of Peter Pan, or acquire bouquets of wisdom under the guidance of the venerable Tierno Bokar between Dogon cosmogony and Peul poetry? Some other day I'll tell you the life of Monsieur Henri de Monfreid in great detail: Maman loved him at the beginning of her stay in her new country. You're
looking at me wide-eyed as if I were a monster, as if I were hiding some shameful infirmity in my frail silhouette. I'm just a little clever for my age, and ahead by a few books. Apparently that happens sometimes: a statistician cites the figure of 1/127, without bothering to prove anything at all. One child out of 127 is supposed to be gifted with superior intelligence—where did he get that stuff? This being said, that little figure might have the advantage of reassuring the most rational minds.

5

BASHIR BINLADEN

WAR'S GOOD FOR LIVING
, I mean for making a clean, simple living. How many dead? Why all that? Never again? Forget that debate there, too-too empty. On the front, morale of troops not so good. First of all our chiefs are real morons right out of the Sheraton casino, the greedy Hindi's place. Chiefsthere,
OK
they pros at restoration, but in battle I give them a flat zero. They bungle it in front of goalposts, right away the enemy screws us in the penalty kick zone an we
KO
standing up. Worst, every Thursday, they offside. They say yah, we go to the capital, get orders. They give us that to make alibi but they live it up out there at the Sheraton or Tonnelles dance hall inside the thighs of the girls an all. Fridays, they come back tired out like ole boiled chewngum, they stay on the sideline. They don't talk, they fall into big sleep. After that, the Scud, they understood that an fast, cause they had spies in town watching chiefs' little game. Scud, crazy mad for generations. So they attack, bite into the ball like starving hyena. They move down to our side of the field, an us we retreat all the time. So, battle, real simple, like soccer. You retreat, enemy attacks through center and wings. You take a wicked beating. That the story of first half
in that civil war-there. Scud scored points. Us, we stuck inside the towns. We play defense in Tadjoura, Obock, Yoboki. When we made little timid attack, bang they sound big alarm. Look, look, they holding population hostage, representatives of the Scud they shout from Yemen and Paris. Open parenthesis. Go fuck self. You got balls, come back to Djibouti. We gonna bomb your Wadag neighborhood of Ambaba. You lousy immigrant bum! Close parenthesis, thanks.

So, us, we defended by kicking the ball out of bounds. We put barbwire an anti-personnel mines all around towns. Daytime, we were the chiefs. Nighttime, they were the
boss.
(That English, I think, right?) It went on like that for the whole first half. Real joke was when president an big politicians in Djibouti they said the Scud not native. They Ethiopian an Eritrean adventurers. On the ground we crack up, we saying in silence: hey president, you ain't ashamed of yaself? Yah yah yah, shut you big mouth! We just say that in silence. Him, the ole president, he had mouth full of bullshit. He came up with big-big words: adventurers, revanchists, illusionists. We listened on Aïdid's radio to Radio France Internationale. (
RFI
they boast too-too much, they call themselves world radio but who they ask if it true, huh?) Staff sergeant Houmed say in his Tarzan voice: turn that radio off, willya, an fast. The staff sergeant, he was perplex, on one hand he head a battalion of the national army, on the other he was Wadag and supported the rebellion a little, sort of. But he was good chief, honest an all. But wait, things are more complexed than that, Wadags not all rebels. Aïdid for example, his mother Wadag even if he don't understand a thing she say. Haïssima, his father's the Wadag; Haïssima (now that true Wadag name even) he kind of know how to talk patois, that can help in battle. Long story short, let's be serious, half the goverment Wadag. The prime minister of the old president an the
new president, the one who been riding horse for a long-long time, Wadag too. He from around Yoboki, I had my first battles there. That where I also did my three months' basic training with real instruction officer, not like the other moron. Where I learned how to march, crawl under barbwire, use weapons, how to prepare ambush, how to pick up secret messages on complicated frequencies (that's how I know secrets, you got that), how to get away before you get wicked red card, etc.

To get back on subject. Oh yah I was saying: Wadags or not Wadags, not the problem. All that's politics, I'm telling you. In a lot of neighborhoods of the capital, in Einguela, Ambouli, Districts 1, 2, 4, Plateau, etc. Wadags, Walals, an Arabs, we all mixed, with plenty Hindis an even some Whites married to our girls, or just weirdos. And then, in the Dikhil district, between Wadags an the others it's
fifty-fifty
(that English, I speak it a little-little. Learned it when I worked in front of the American Embassy, I'll tell you about that later. I know how to talk English an that's that,
OK
?). So, I was saying: Wadags, tribes an all that, not a problem. Problem is dirty tricks, corruption an politics. You know, Restoration! When I was in the belly of my departed mama, they say: yah yah Wadags too-too mean. Ali Aref, the chief of goverment cabinet right under white chief (High Commissioner of the Republic, that's how they called him. Me, I thought Republic was only the name of boulevard in Djibouti), he was Wadag and used to kill all the Walals who worked for independence. All the young guys supposed to be activists, they pigged out on a bullet in the belly nice an quick. Next morning they find the bodies naked in the mangrove swamp, near the supermarket. The old politicians under thumb of the colonialists they went yum-yum in the Chamber of Deputies. So Ali Aref and his clique they civil goverment and the Walal chiefs (hey, not all!) they the rebels. Me I say, don't
throw oil on the fire. Gotta stop that talk-there. All that, just ole folks stuff. Us, we don't care. Anyways, we weren't alive yet, we were in Mama's belly wriggling around all the time waiting our turn to come outside mama. You remember what was going on when you were inside your mama? So there!

6

ABDO-JULIEN

I'M CURIOUS
about everything. As soon as the door opens a crack, I slip like a little mouse into Papa's library, where the caramel smell of his Amsterdamer is floating in the air, and search through the jumble of papers and newspaper cuttings. Old copies of the
Réveil
, recent issues of
La Nation
, the governmental weekly, communiqués of the Scud that reach him through secret channels,
l'Ensemble
of the Fearless Opponent and the brand new regional bimonthly
Nouvelles du Pount
that friends brought from Paris are all piled up on the floor. It's a shambles. Oh, and there's an old adage—I don't remember who wrote it: tell me what's in your library and I'll tell you who you are. But enough of that. I unfold a newspaper and I go through it for hours on end. It puts a stop to teenage games and laughter with my neighborhood buddies, the family of Papa's colleague Guelleh Hersi included. I really don't care. I hardly register fifteen on the speedometer and I'm not done telling you my crazy stories. Once I've finished reading the papers I stay there dreaming for a while. These are the times when my mind rises and frees itself from all its bonds. It whirls around so deliriously I grow faint. It's an aircraft carrier where only
fertile mirages take off, a cloud-bird huge as a whole world. Through the twisting, mysterious paths of my imagination, I often succeed in linking some of the names repeated in the newspapers to street names I manage to decode on the few commemorative plaques that are still legible, or to the names I catch in the course of an argument between adults. No way I'll interpret an anecdote or the fragment of a story I intercept here and there as a single piece of music, a score established once and for all. I now know (but who can ever be sure with me—you're so singular and evanescent, Papa would say) that Aboubaker Aref and Houmed Dini are among the first important people who went to sign agreements with the Emperor Napoleon over a hundred and fifty years ago. I also know that Grandpa used to play just one record—but what a record! Oum Kalsoum giving a masterly interpretation of
Anta Oumri:
sixty minutes of pure bliss. I noted that the Bank of Suez on Place Menelik, where my parents go so often—my father, once again, would say that some adults draw the water of their own well-being from the success of their clan—has something to do with a story that fascinated me for weeks on end: the odyssey of the Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps opening the canal of the same name through his pugnacity, trickery, and flexible spine. But did I know that the fiery lawyer who just yesterday publicly challenged the authorities in Djibouti is also a descendant of the pasha that Napoleon invited over for tea? The name Napoleon sounds like an animated cartoon character lost in a fabulous land like Tarzan's savannah, Aladdin's magic lamp, or the enchantments of
The Jungle Book.
My two special heroes are Peter Pan and Don Quixote; Grandpa admired Saad Zaghloul, the Egyptian who headed the revolt against the English in 1919, I think, led his country to liberation and truly deserved his great equestrian statue in the middle of Alexandria.

I navigate easily between different languages, historical references, cultures, rumors from yesterday still warm today, and the oldest memories. Totally natural, I'm the product of love without borders; I'm a hyphen between two worlds. But wait, I'm not just a contemplative mind; I'm interested in others, in my family first of course, but also in everybody. Thus my repeated insistent winks to Moumina—ah, I'd love to say
“Ya habibi”*
to her some day, like in the sweet songs of Oum Kalsoum. And ride her mane. She would be Eve (or Hawa) and I would be Adam (or Aden). Together we would Adamandeve around a brand new world where life would be generous to everyone, where every moment would be a ceremony. Not to mention the discreet helping hand I give to my neighbors and buddies Kahen and Koschin with their homework. And when there are too many clouds in the blueing sky, the first words of a song Maman often listens to come back to me right away. It begins with Serge Gainsbourg's
Dieu est un fumeur de havanes
(“God smokes a Havana cigar”) and then gets lost in the mist, of course. I can't help thinking how much she probably misses the wind-rain of her Brittany but I keep quiet. Maman's irrepressible laughter when she pretends to be Janis Joplin comes back to me right away.