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  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.

  7

  BASHIR BINLADEN

  THE FIRST HALF lasted long-long time in that war. Everybody stayed in position; the attacks were rare. The battle was a tie, without real fair referee. Cause referee still France in that business-there. Paul Djidou, the Paris guy, never stop coming an going between Paris an Djibouti, so much the Boeing 747 all tired out. Paul Djidou he mediation: result zero. But goverment accuse: yes you wanna help the rebels, France too much friend of The Eternal Opponent (Eternal Opponent, he new chief of Scud, sworn enemy of the president, former prime minister, former deputy, former nurse—Eternal Opponent always former). On their side the rebels accuse too: yes, France providing support for the maneuvers (that military language, very correct) of the goverment. Paul Djidou yelled: yes me too I'm sick of this former territory of Wadags and Walals, and hey I'm going back to Nice (Nice, it beautiful part of France). Long-long time later we learn on RFI that Monsieur Paul Djidou, he left to do peace mediation between Hutus and Tutsis, over there in Rwanda, I think. Results: first half of the first war, it lasted. Old as a child of three, an that no joke. Both teams, they thought we gonna find new fair referee. Eternal Opponent went to ask Saleh (no, not the marathonian from Djibouti, that Ahmed Saleh, he so-so good with feet; the other Saleh, he president of Yemen) if he think he can be good fair referee. Saleh said: that political interference. Me too, I got big problems: with Eritrea, with fierce bearded guys (poor Saleh don't know my name been Binladen for six months, that confidential top military secret). Real country of Binladen, it's not Gaudy Arabia, sorry, Saudi Arabia, it's Yemenite mountains. Binladen before he got rich an smart he was living out in the sticks in Yemen. So Saleh of Yemen he end up saying go see UN, OAU, Arab League, you'll find good fair referee. So war will stop by itself. Dialogue between goverment and Eternal Opponent is deaf dialogue, always. Us draftees, we were happy. We had the weapons, the right to do whatever we want. An then, there still wasn't fierce battle. It was status quo (that military language too). Tie. And lots of dead too, specially rebels or civilians who sort of help rebels. But wait, let's be serious, there dead on our side too, specially young draftees with no esperience, not like me or Aïdid, Warya, Ayanleh, Haïssama. Lot of young draftees (why'm I saying young draftees, they all young, right?) pig out on bullets in the belly. That's war, but can't cry too mu
ch like mamas. Man with real hard thing between his legs never cry like little woman and that's that. Dismessed.

  8

  ABDO-JULIEN

  I THINK THE DEAD are not dead but go on with their little lives, only on another planet. When the evening wind comes in with its troubling scythe, someone you love leaves you. Death should not be proud; people do not die, they just become invisible. God, it's so cold alone here in the grave, they whisper. Like that grandmother from ancient times with the face of a great sachem, affectionate and despotic, who died in her eighty-fifth year, well, she's walking along over a dried-out wadi on the Moon with her long, majestic stride, hampered by a double pain in the hip. She could read the future in the flight of birds and would raise her head to search the stars and the Moon at every occasion. Ah, she could see herself on that lunar land inhabited by old people, stunted acacias, a natural world in suspension or in miniature, bony camels, cats with stringy coats, cacti with a fragile constitution. Life is not abundant there, it's a break in the clouds, but peace reigns permanently and men have lost their vanity and their destructive energy. Every man bears witness for humanity. Besides, don't they whisper behind my back that I, Abdo-Julien, am the reincarnation of my grandfather, who was assassinated by a thug in the Foreign Legion? Grandfather often comes to visit me. Over there, in the country where he is, they don't call children “children” but “the ones with small feet”; men are companions of the Sun, the other point of reference, along with the Moon—Earth has been utterly forgotten. Round, white flat stones are found there in great numbers, like on a beach of the alabaster coast between Dieppe and Étretat, where I spent a few days during my last summer vacation in Maman's part of the country. Bristling with volcanic knolls, the earth of the Moon seems plunged in a long eternal sleep just slightly smoothed by the sand winds that surge up out of nowhere. The companions of the Sun have slept peacefully, with a clear conscience, ever since they let the people on Earth be born, die, and be born again wherever they are, do their thing and walk round and round inside the circle of their well-fed sedentariness. They remain at the mercy of a big, violent current that will swallow them up forever. Speaking of the ones on the Moon like Grandpa Awaleh, they fit into their new existence with the ease of an alley cat. They're like flying leaves fluttering in the arms of the wind; their own horizon loses its weight and sways along on its wings without a trace or a final point. They are humble; they are able to love slowness and appreciate the wisdom of former times. They have left our wretched enclosures forever. They're not struggling along any more under the constant threat of earthquake in the country of dead stones.

  I learned all that from Grandpa, who would tell it to me during his unexpected visits. Experience is a lantern on your back, he would teach me when I asked him a tough question; it only lights up the path behind you. It's weird, these days his face is round and soft, with no hard cheekbones or tense muscles. A face like the Moon.

  9

  BASHIR BINLADEN

  SO I GOT TOO-TOO MAD. Let's get real here. You think people walk with their ass on the ground? We hear the rebels almost in Djibouti and us, we stuck here, in mountain. They gonna waste everybody over there. When they gonna give the order to attack Scud positions? They say president he don't give a damn about anything, homeland, fatherland, population. He too-too old. So he left for vacation in Parisian hospital after rest in private villa-chateau cause now it's haga* (that Djibouti summer, sun it hot lead melting on your skull, even the asphalt on the road yell mama mama I'm too-too melted). Haga, too fierce. All the leaders (that use to be English before, now not so sure) they left to rest up in Paris, Switzerland, Washimton (for the big somebodies), Addis, Cairo, Yemen (for the small fry—that cook language, Ayanleh who was student cook for the Whites before mobilization told me that). And us, we famished an languished on bald mountain there. We bite our nails cause of nothing to do. Gotta attack Scud making too many corner kicks, an beat it up a little, I say. Gotta hit Scud in Achilles' heel. But that little chief of us, he don't agree. You need green light from chiefa staff even, he answer. Man! We ain't out of this yet. Little chief of us with walkie-talkie an old VHF radio (cause big chief need Motorola cell, of course) he don't agree at all. You think we having fun here? We maintaining the blockade so the rebels are cut off from urban centers. Bullshit. For long time now, Scud been getting supplies from the sea with fast little patrol boats getting ammunition and 9mm in Yemen, that not even confidential top military secret. Even some wounded rebels, they get treated in Peltier Hospital in Djibouti cause they got cousins in goverment too. Me I say all that business shady-shady. He who has ears, let him hear, cept maybe the phony deaf. The country's future's dot-dot-dot suspension points so you gotta think real hard. When war's over, I look for nice chic job. Yes, I know profession like that, it real job front of American Embassy or Mitterrand Consulate, yes. But hey, that my secret.

  10

  ABDO-JULIEN

  THERE! We're all together again now, by the grace of the Most Lofty. Let's chat for a few moments. I'll go back to what I was telling you yesterday, my boy. So, where was I? Oh yes, did you know that the nomads are late converts, that Islam is an urban religion, born among merchants from Mecca? It is true that Mohammed, may his soul rest in peace, succeeded in conquering the nomads, regimenting them in his troops and sending them forth to conquer the world. And do you know that our beloved religion never really took to the sea, which is why Muslim societies have lagged behind in the development of capitalism? Islam has always viewed sailors as people on the fringe of society, outcasts, or rebels. Now, you little rascal, you're going to ask me how I can explain the power of Oman, if only in our region, and the advent of Swahili civilization from the Red Sea to the Mozambique Channel. It's due to prehistoric maritime cultures. The Omanese and a few Turkified populations on the banks of the Black Sea were able to preserve this knowledge of the sea, and so those remarkable sailors and fishermen gave birth to a veritable maritime power in the Indian Ocean. You didn't know that either, did you? Beware of appearances: an imposture may even lie between the pages of a history book made in Paris. Now listen to me. No, it's not hard to reach out to people. On the contrary, people are dying to find an attentive ear willing to listen to them and a mind inclined to stir up the mulch of their understanding. From time immemorial, Grandfather gave every conversation a certain depth, a duly calculated slowness that had absolutely nothing to do with laziness. There was in his gestures, and especially in his voice, an economy that captivated and galvanized me by its gentleness, its rhythm, and by the way he would stretch out a vowel like o or u, depending on his argumentation. And every one of his actions was marked by the same relaxed intensity. He did not hesitate to ask my grandmother Timiro for his thermos of tea three times in a row without raising or lowering his voice. And in the same courteous, firm tone, he could also insist that Grandmother make the tea over again if he didn't like the way it was brewed. All this not for the pleasure of indisposing others and showing his authority like the old quibblers of his age, nor to bother anyone, just to make sure that his interlocutors fully understood all his rights, even in the state of physical helplessness he was in before he passed from life to death. For him, life was a constant flow of exchanges in words or deeds, and because of this, he took all the time he needed to pose his voice, give his opinions, and move his old bones. Without haste, he tasted the sap of every minute: life is a banquet to be savored together, no need to lap it up in two strokes of a spoon. Not everyone shared his point of view. Timiro, gripped by the feeling of his precariousness, often let a few tears escape: they flowed down the ridge of her nose and flooded the hills of her cheekbones.

  Real creators are stateless wanderers, like the nomads of the desert, and have only one function—at least in this world be low. They are our guides (Grandfather is convinced of this) who show us the trails to follow as we travel through life. They also tell us, with an abundance of details, the story of their emotional carousel. With their memo
ry zinzoling here and there, their imagination working in geometric shapes—rectangles, triangles, trapezoids—they spare us muddy streams, the foaming slime of remorse, putrid waters like the waters of Lake Abbé, even the raging sea. The sea with its gums of an ogre so frightening to mankind. With these guides, you feel like pouncing on that Reaper, taking a dive into that hell which attracts men so much. Chroniclers of the ephemeral, they shell their sayings like oysters; they have such airborne words that they set off levitation above senses and sentiments. Silence and pandemonium bumping into each other, negating each other. The sudden blooming of new knowledge. They offer us pearls of rain from countries where it never rains, as Jacques Brel says in his song, major chords that connect man to humanity. As long as they can speak to us, their voices are made flesh, connecting us to others. They are herders of cows or dromedaries, crossers of limits, peddlers of mirages dragging behind them the latest news of the evening. They own nothing solid, or so little. Bitter almonds and sounds of bones, for many. For others, just a sheepskin for prayer and gymnastics for the believer. And when night has burned out the oil of its last lamps, one must make haste: it is the autumn of life. Poets approaching death commonly become prophets.

  11

  BASHIR BINLADEN

  THE FIRST HALF not over and already part of Scud and the president began negotiations. It's simple: three Scud chiefs left for the capital. They say contact was still prime minister, the one who gets off his horse just to pee. Bégé (that's his name for short like RPP—that the name of the one an only party—an like RFI, PSG,1 etc.), he from same region as three chiefs, their name still top military secret. But OK, I can give you a hint, one's called Kif-Kif something, all the same. That don't mean a thing to you, don't matter too-too much. The man not well-known like me Binladen that's all. The three chiefs, they gonna hug the old president. And him, he gonna give armchair, residence, vehicle, official position an all that. Business-there, it Scud number 1, you got it. TV, radio, Peace Day everywhere. Dances (funny to have war dances to celebrate peace, no?), khat, and speeches. Even Madame President she was dancing in front of crowd full of bodyguards. Nobody thought about us, out there on the mountain facing enemy. Luckily everybody has their Kalashnikov. But wait, there's old Kalash an modern Kalash, see. Old Kalash is AK-47, modern is AK-58, tricky cause it sprays quick-quick. If it falls down, it fires by itself. AK-47 it can fall, it can trample an all but it stay calm cause of safety lock. AK-58 safety lock so-so small, tiny, way it is, it's danger of death. There's also machine-gun, rocket launchers, mortars, ground-to-ground (all that too-too heavy to carry). Better not walk behind buddy with rocket launcher, danger of death too. OK, rebels always attack when they very-very hungry. They come out of the brush, hide next to tar road, wait for vehicles. Unity Road (that the main Djibouti-Tadjoura road also called Fahd bin Abdulaziz Road, that the name of Saudi prince who gifted the road) that max danger cause rebels they not only looking for food, they want khat too, that way they be brave to make ambush again. Us we wait for official order to clean up all that. Well, we gonna wait long-long time cause Scud 1 an President lovey-dovey now. They smooch like women or Soviet chiefs I saw on Samireh the shopkeeper's TV. Ah, politics too-too ugly. Shameful, for real. What the three Scud 1 chiefs like Kif-Kif (Kif-Kif, Habachi, that Ethiopian name or what?) gonna tell their bambinos (that correct Italian, right)? They gonna say hey we happy, we signed negotiations in Abaro, we made peace. The kids, they gonna say whew with their hands on their mouths. Big, big shame. Aïdid, he say politics too-too dumb even. I agree, politicians useless losers who don't know how to do anything, don't know how to be mechanic, cook, teacher, doctor. Don't even know how to stand guard. Hey, I hear a lot of metal noises. Time to eat. Hunger hasn't fled my body even if sleep left my eyes since I tasted the pink pills Aïdid has in his pocket. I wanna gobble something cause my belly's going grrr grrr.