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  But as time went on, those of us who had settled in little towns along the Djibouti-Addis Ababa railroad line got caught up in the game and first sent a little boy, some little orphan, to their school just out of curiosity. Then the youngest boy of the family, then the middle son, and finally the eldest, the keeper of the flock. But what could the children be doing all day? ventured the most skeptical. Faithful as the evening stars, they went to the same place every day, remaining seated, filling out little spiral notebooks with the district chief's stamp on them, and came back a few years later with a salary, without breaking their backs. Their fathers immediately opened up a store. From then on, they would rent out the donkey they used to lend. Little by little, they cut themselves off from their clan, spoke about their ancestors for no good reason, and were reluctant to give out alms. They shut themselves off from the others and saw only people like themselves, or passing foreigners like the nurse or the stationmaster, French from France or Greeks. And finally the truck driver replaced the camel driver, already threatened by the train.

  17

  ABDO-JULIEN

  IF WE ARE TO BELIEVE Grandfather, the Moon is even rounder in the neighbor's sky, the grass always cooler in the field next door. Be that as it may, you mustn't run the risk of getting your throat cut by the sabers of the madmen who belch out their sayings and skim the city. They have forgotten the injunction the Angel gave the Prophet in a cave on Mount Hira. It said: “Iqrah! Recite!” From this verb comes the word Koran, recitation. At that time, reading, or recitation, was something very different from the present droning of the Word weakened by narrow minds, often bearded. Iqrah, recite and think by yourself, expand your knowledge; seek, in the bottom of your heart, the path that leads to The Unique. According to Muslim tradition, the revelation of the Koran by the archangel Djibril was a long ordeal—they seem to have forgotten that these days—constant, but painful and fragmented, scaled up over more than twenty-three stations with new additions, adjustments, and successive corrections. That long quest, the goal of a whole life, bears its beginnings and endings within it. “Here, Adam remembers the dust of his clay,” says the poet Mahmoud Darwish. Who, better than the poet, can rise to the divine? Certainly not the shouters who claim that monopoly for themselves. “As for poets, they are followed only by those who have lost their way. Seest thou not that they stray distracted in every valley? And that they say what they do not do?” (the Koran).

  18

  BASHIR BINLADEN

  IF I TAKE PINK PILLS, my head too-too light. And if I see something, I want that thing, I take it right away even if it my mother's thing or president's. Us draftees, we fierce like that. And my poor head it flies all by itself like helicopter. In helicopter you're not so scared, you a little far up in the sky. You can piss on enemy's head. So, you're not scared unless the other guy, he has rocket launchers, ground-to-ground an all that. That the way French army turned over our heads. Tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck Gazelle helicopters went all the time to spy on our positions an then, deal intelligence with enemy. You could even see Mirage Fi's flying by right near us, like this: zzzzzzooooooffff. We didn't say much cause us, we don't have AMX tanks an fast furtive patrol boats (that real correct, I know) to mix it up with French military. French military, we call em FFDJ (French Forces stationed in Djibouti) in professional lingo. So, that the way Scud 2 gained ground after they sign peace with their old buddies in Scud 1. We weren't too mad cause battle our job. But the president, he real-real mad. Scud 2 stronger than Scud 1. Scud 2, they strong like Rivaldo, the midfielder who feeds guys a lot of shots at goal in Spanish championship. Scud brave even, cause rebels now they drive Toyota pickups loaded with antimissile batteries and lot of heavy weapons. We call those bizarre tanks-there technicals (that English, I think). It's Somalians invented that technique, Somalians strong for war like Eritreans, like Rwandese of Kagame (Africans, poor but strong for war, right?). So, Scud 2 they got new weapons, easy to show courage with new terriblific weapons.

  President with very-very mad face, he went to France, he went to Soodi Arabia, he went to Switzerland, he went to China, all that to ask for money for top modern weapon an equipment. President, he too-too nervous, gonna die of heart attack cept if God change his heart. On the ground you can feel his big anger cause chiefs don't stop yelling on our back. After that he brought much more draftees into army, even children too young, they children an soldier both, see. These kids they so-so scared cause their chiefs they make em suffer very-very much to obliterate easy life of before. When they go into battle first time, they say: you, kid, go kill off wounded rebel-there, and they give him a pistol to go tockatockatocka. After, they give good hard wash to kid's face with blood of rebel wounded or dead. When little soldier he learns courage and gets fierce, then he can fire bazooka easily at mama papa uncle cousin muezzin an all, believe me faithfully. Little soldier, he too-too dangerous all the time cause he mix up game and battle. He mix life an death with big smile on his face. OK, even with small-small soldiers there, Scud 2 still gaining ground. The goverment they say if Scud 2 winning many battles it's cause French spies gave away plan with lot of information. French spies told em positions, weapons, numbers an all. A goverment like that, debacle they say in military language. Too terrible, even.

  19

  ABDO-JULIEN

  ONE, TWO, THREE, WOWWWWW! We're the Mau-Mau, a group of young musicians in love with whirling, turbulent music from the depths of the desert. Blues, guux,* gabay,* and geeraar.* Wowwwwwwwww! We left the city to collect all the sonorities, the overflowing saps, sounds, singularities, songs, noises, tempests, and myths of the country. We went still farther. Alternative rock, reggae, rai, rap, ragamuffin, ska, and sega music hold no secrets for our muddy, moody, and even booted feet. We're the generation who sucked Jamaican music with the milk of our bottle; our birth coincides with the death of the long-haired prince who made the island of the Rastas world-famous. We seek the hypnosis of rhythm, language, song. The art of jubilation. You either are a revolutionary or you'll never be one, said old Victor Hugo. Our greatest reward is when we succeed in making old bodies of forty reel, like our parents, by playing them a piece of salsa, yesterday's pachanga, or a wild rumba, reminding them of the time when they were students abroad. Their tired eyes stare at the corner of a street, a sea horizon, and the unknown that lies at the end of it, a slice of life between Saint-Germain and Montparnasse. Thus we mix generations together—no small deal in this country of ours. We delve far, far down into the mysteries of the past; we bring up yesterday's ashes, delaying tactics and adjournments again and again. We often play stuff from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, old Cuban hits, the Haitians Coupé Cloué, Francis Bebey, or the latest Nat King Cole.

  Only yesterday, we met a young Frenchman doing his military service by working abroad in the Coopération, a Corsican from Porto-Vecchio he had us know, who intends to introduce us to the marvels of jazz. With jazz, through the intermediary of a beautiful Steinway piano, he claims we're achieving the democratic ideal so lacking in this country. That jazz ideal is quite simply the emergence of a full, whole individual voice in the heart of a collective voice. We applauded him loudly; we're giving ourselves a few more years to taste and restore the marvels the maestros of jazz have accumulated.

  In this cloistered country, we know how, yes! we know how to listen to the melodies of the sea, drink the light, open wide our hearts and eardrums. The goal of all that is to wash the intrigues, rumors, and other nauseating machinations from our fans’ ears. We know how to play the kind of music that dives double-quick into heady bass notes, slips into the meanders of our lead singer's voice, ricochets off the volcanic hills, crosses the Formica seas, dances on the edge of the horizon accompanied by an Affar flute, runs through all of this crushed land, sobs sometimes, alternates onomatopoeias and meaningful lines—putting off till tomorrow the dialectic between business and art—pleases the ear, blurs the eye, and transforms faces to reaffirm spiritual joy through song. One day so
on we will succeed in fulfilling our dream: to develop a musical preface to this country in gestation, to herald the time when brand-new knowledge will suddenly burst into bloom. Somehow build a community rooted in the back country of our birth, something like a Rasta retreat camp, an anarchist phalanstery of the kind that existed in 1936 Spain, a pioneer kibbutz, a camp of Zapatistas, a Sufi hermitage, a bivouac under the stars, a Robinson Crusoe island, a cybercafe for immigrants connected to the old country, an Abyssinian monastery like the one near Lalibela, a kraal of Zulu warriors. In short, something unimaginable in the country of our fathers. We will live as rebels, not far from the muffled sound of arms because of this state of neither war nor peace, neither crime nor punishment, neither head nor tail. Perhaps you think we're going off the deep end and abandoning our roots. You are quite mistaken: we're the first band—and the only one to this day—to sing in every language of this place at the same time, and even in the same song, the same breath. We are condemned to bring together all the daughters and sons of Adam, to shed the water of our own sweat to taste the sweat of others, to trade our tears, our saliva, and our rising sap. To unstrap the packsaddle of ignorance that hobbles our fellow countrymen. Believe it or not, we're on the right path, even if it is full of stones. In every village, from north to south and east to west, we're at home everywhere, welcomed warmly everywhere, at ease everywhere, like those iguanas taking the morning sun. As it was in the first days of independence. Our emblem is the tortoise with its repulsive face and age-old wisdom, in contrast to the indolence and emptiness of man. We take over old tunes from history books and make them ours and new again, brilliant and shiny like a four-wheel drive Pajero loaded with options imported from Saudi Arabia. We sample pieces from colonial memory, like this poem from a bard who's both French and Uruguayan:

  In Djibouti it's so hot,

  Metallic, bitter, brutal,

  They grow palm trees of metal

  The others die on the spot.

  You sit beneath the scrap iron

  While, grinding in the desert breeze

  They pile up to your very knees,

  the iron filings.

  But under palms that sound like trains

  Luckily, inside your brain

  You're free to fantasize

  A trip worldwide.

  To think we nearly called ourselves Hadji Dideh, from the name of the man who signed the agreement with the French when they wanted to settle on this coast! Mau-Mau, that name down from Mount Kilimanjaro, was ideal. Two birds with one stone. First of all we can take it easy, no one's going to say we're pro-Walal, pro-Wadag, or who knows what kind of crap they can come up with. Second, it's a fighter's name, inspired by the spirits of the Kenyan forest. An anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, Third Worldist warrior, and Pan-African to boot. It's revolutionary. Basta. No pasaran. It's Rasta, see. We can sing with the great I Jah Man “I Man a Warrior.” Go, youth! Avanti la musica.

  The Théâtre des Salines, which was born well before I was, has the feel of an amphitheater with its stage almost square and its terraced rows of seats looking out on the port. They used to show the films of Laurel and Hardy, the adventures of Charlie Chaplin (and so a whole bunch of neighborhood kids were nicknamed Charlie either because of their duck walk or their dreamy look, and I do know a few), and films about the exploits of Pelé (the same goes for the nickname of guys who were really good with a soccer ball). Children of the poor who'd been ignored by the Republic also got their education there, and they found nothing better to do than jump the wall and infuriate the three or four policemen sent after them from the barracks. Down below are the famous salt fields that gave the theater its name, but alas alas the salt miners of the Territory who used to break their backs for a slave's salary disappeared after the parent company, Les Salins du Midi, decided to consolidate in the south of France. A neighborhood with clean housing, Einguela, was built toward the turn of the seventies over a large part of the once muddy terrain abandoned by the company from Marseilles. The capital grew considerably larger during those years, and all the empty spaces, all the oasis-like hollows, all the places in cemeteries where dusty ancestors were still lying, all the crossroads where caravans were used to kneeling got covered with cement and lampposts. Now the eyes of the city are like moving seaweed. The Théâtre des Salines is where we play for the working people of the neighborhoods.

  20

  ALICE

  WHEN I MET YOUR FATHER, I wasn't looking for some mythical Africa; I wasn't looking for the love of my life, the way others run after a great novelist. To tell you the truth, I wasn't looking for anything at all; I was just dragging myself around, bored and daydreaming away on the banks of the Vilaine River. Africa would come to me all by herself, like a big girl. Alas, my little cactus, it was not the rebellious continent, just the Africa of news reports as they're filtered through the clear conscience of the West. Then it became the Africa of dictators with Swiss bank accounts, the Africa of rickety children and bony old men, the Africa of famine and the shameless looting of its resources, the Africa of squalid huts and gleaming white teeth, the Africa of landless people, the Africa of guerrillas and desperados. The so-called experts who speak about Africa do not think it necessary to know its languages. Can you imagine a Sinologist who can't say hello-goodbye in the language of his studies? But I'm getting off my topic.

  At that time, especially at that age, I was constantly fuming with rage, living on a volcano of passions. I wrapped up my studies of history with a college degree, and, disgusted by what they were teaching me about Africa and the French Empire, I registered for the entry examination to the School of Journalism in Paris. I felt ready to land on the burning banks of the Red Sea and examine the Africa I had begun to imagine, a many-layered, historical pastry with unique sedimentation. Your father joined me there, abandoning his band of friends with a heavy heart. He seemed to have grown up: in a few weeks, he had climbed the steps of age it usually takes many years to ascend. The perspective of finding his country still under colonial rule had given him wings, even if he dreaded the ordinary racism on both sides of the fence and what people might say once we were settled there. He lived through the last months of his life in Paris like a passerby, light-heartedly wearing the first wrinkles on his brow and a little paunch in his midsection. He couldn't care less about it, because in Djibouti, when you're married and past thirty, people talk to you like you're a responsible man, the head of a family, an almost-old man. Then, very quickly, came the whirlwind of the return. For the first few months, you don't really know who you are. You go from one house to another, one family to another, one friend to another with the assurance of a tightrope walker. You listen to advice; you collect various views and contradictory opinions with the same ears, without asking yourself too many questions. You don't really know who you are, or who they are. Everything is intoxicating: visiting the country, combing the city. Real life, right? But that feeling won't last. Soon, they put you in a ready-made box: you're the mixed couple people look at suspiciously. On lonely evenings (or their corollary, boring ones), you'll catch yourself sobbing at the prospect of once again having to face the gaping sadness that comes after dusk. You tell yourself that for him, you're ready to accept pain, humiliation, and even the sorrow to come, when things become normal, when his family wants to take back their man. We'll be caught in the midst of the storm, but alive and strong. In that situation of insidious adversity, you can only get tougher. A little inner voice would whisper to me on difficult days: “What made you come here to this land of echoes and dust, this antechamber of the desert where they bury the dead quickly to prevent the flies from gathering and performing their diabolical ballet? You're breathing an air made of boredom, routine, and triumphant poverty. Here, no one's going to ask much of you. Where will you put your tombstone if anything happened to you? Let this man and people like him soliloquize till the end of time.”

  A month after our arrival, both of us found work. The authorities must have
wanted to polish up their image: a domino couple with college degrees just off the plane, isn't exactly run-of-the-mill here, even if the president of the territorial council, M. Ali Aref, dug up a Frenchwoman from Nîmes—a naive lady, they say—with the help of Jacques Foccart, the man who distributes destinies in French-speaking countries allied with France. In September 1973, I was starting my first year of teaching at the Boulaos junior high school and your father joined the little scientific institute mainly devoted to geology, which had just opened its doors on the road to the airport. I really couldn't bring myself to be a journalist under the “leadership” of the high commissioner of the Republic, and aside from reporting on sports scores, I don't see what I could have shared with this milieu. I remained walled up in my silence with my colleagues; almost all of them were French, spurred on by the prospect of buying their rented apartment in a few months. Open my heart to them—are you kidding? They would have thought I was crazy, a terrorist almost, a half-wit who should be sent back on the first ship bound for France. I could read hypocrisy, spinelessness, and cowardice in their eyes. I kept my distance, never letting them think their meaningful glances or invitations had any effect on me.

  Stay on your own side of the river, and above all never throw oil on the fire, never arouse the right-wing crowds of the colony and pet the muzzle of Lucifer. At first, we managed to avoid the cold kiss of killing steel by keeping ourselves at a respectful distance from the authorities. But as one might expect—and perhaps we nourished some illusions in this respect—your father received a cool welcome from his family, and even from some of his friends who had recently returned to the fold. The time was not ripe for mixed-race love or mixed flavors in this erratic country, this womb so fertile it cannot keep its children unless it uses a straitjacket and holds them in neurotic silence.