Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

‘Joma isn’t easy to get on with,’ he said suddenly. ‘It’s best not to tease him. He goes crazy sometimes for no reason.’

Unsure where he was trying to lead me, I refrained from reacting. Seeing him there with his sabre, while Hans and I were defenceless, didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

‘Are you really German?’

I didn’t reply.

My silence offended him. His jaws clenched. He was barely containing his temper. He adjusted his lensless glasses, examined his nails, sniffed and muttered, ‘Do I look like a spy?’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Do I look like a spy?’

‘I never said you were.’

‘Then why don’t you answer me? I’m not trying to grill you.’

Again, I said nothing. I was afraid that a clumsy remark on my part might upset him. The look in his eyes, the way he fiddled with his glasses and worried about his fingers, his various facial expressions, sometimes vague, sometimes more defined, suggested how deeply unstable he was.

‘Joma says you’re either mercenaries or spies.’

I didn’t reply.

‘Of course, the others don’t believe him. Joma reads too many books; he sees the bad in everyone. Plus, he’s allergic to white people.’

‘If the others don’t agree with him, why don’t they let us go?’ Hans asked, still lying curled up, without turning.

‘They’re not in charge. Joma isn’t either. It’s Chief Moussa who gives the orders.’

‘Where is Chief Moussa?’ I said.

‘Don’t know.’

‘When will he be back?’

‘When he feels like it. He has to get rid of the boat first …’

He scratched his back with his sabre, embarrassed. He wanted to talk, but had run out of ideas. I needed him to talk, in order to know who his accomplices were, what they were planning to do with us, where we were; above all, I needed to get an idea of our chances of getting out of here, to believe in them with the force of desperation, just as a condemned man who has exhausted every possibility and refuses to give up believes in a miracle. I thought there was a chance I could get through to the boy. Who was to say? Surely there was no such thing as a criminal completely resistant to emotion; as long as he had something resembling a soul, however deeply buried it was in his animal-like nature, it was still possible to reach him provided you could find a chink in his armour.

‘Are you also allergic to white people?’ I asked, in order to encourage him to continue.

‘Not especially,’ he replied, pushing his spectacles up towards his eyebrows. ‘I don’t meet them often. The first time I saw a white person for real was three years ago. It was a guy from the Red Cross. For Joma, the Red Cross is a modern version of the missionaries. You know, those guys in cassocks who used to spread the good word among the tribes. Joma is convinced they’re the same bunch of spies, except that the white fathers had the Bible, and the medics have vaccines.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I objected. ‘How can he say something as stupid as that? The Red Cross is a nongovernmental body. It takes action where you live and where we live too. A lot of people working for it have paid with their lives for the help they gave others. They’re everywhere where people suffer, without distinction of colour of skin or religion. They don’t baulk in the face of war, dictatorships, epidemics, or imprisonment. Your friend is being unfair and way off the mark. If he can’t recognise one of the most generous acts of our time, it’s because he’s blind and heartless.’

‘Personally, I don’t give a damn. Whether they’re spies or mercenaries isn’t going to change anything in my life. And besides, I’m not into politics.’

‘This Joma, is he the big guy with the amulets?’

‘They’re real amulets from a great marabout. Each one has a special power. They protect him against fear, bad luck, betrayal and bullets.’

‘Be that as it may, Joma is wrong. He should wear an amulet against prejudice.’

‘That’s in his nature. It’s the way he is, and that’s all there is to it.’

He listened out, went and made sure that nobody was near the cave and came back and sat down next to me. There was a more moderate look in his eyes now.

‘Why do you always carry that sabre with you?’ I asked, trying to win him over. ‘We’re chained up and we have no desire to fight.’

He shook his head. ‘It isn’t a sabre,’ he said cautiously, ‘it’s a machete.’

‘It’s a formidable weapon.’

‘It’s a piece of old iron. It’s the way you use it that makes it formidable.’

Outside, the giant started yelling at his men. The boy gave a small enigmatic smile and shrugged his angular shoulders.

‘So you’re really German?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow! … Do you know Beckenbauer?’ he asked suddenly.

The change of subject was so incongruous, I wondered for a few seconds if I had heard correctly. ‘Franz Beckenbauer?’

‘Yeah … Have you met him?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t you live in Germany?’

‘Yes.’

‘It isn’t possible. You can’t live in the same country and not have met him.’

‘Oh, yes, you can. There are people who live in the same building and never meet their neighbours.’

‘That’s crazy. Here, everybody knows everybody … My father would have given anything to meet Beckenbauer. He was a fan of his. The only poster we had in the house was of Beckenbauer dribbling past an opponent with his arm in a bandage. It had been pinned to the wall a long time before I was born. And whenever my father stood in front of the poster, he’d shake with excitement … There were no other pictures in the house. Not of grandfather who died by falling down a well, or grandmother who I didn’t know …’

I couldn’t quite follow him.

He was biting his nails like a rodent.

‘I think I heard the name Beckenbauer before any other,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘My father wanted to be called the Kaiser, but in the village, everyone, young or old, called him Beckenbauer. It’s true, he had class, my father. He was tall and cool-headed, and he played for the local club. It wasn’t really a club, more a bunch of idlers running after a punctured ball on a dusty stretch of waste ground all day long. Whenever anyone scored a goal, he’d jump up and box the air then wave to the “stand”. The stand was a handful of kids and a few goats grazing in the bush … My father played centre back. He wore a captain’s armband even though he wasn’t the captain of the team, and a white shirt with a big number 5 on the back that he’d drawn with a felt-tipped pen. His shorts he’d cut out of a pair of trousers and soaked for days in a dye he’d made himself to turn them black. He loved wearing the colours of the German national team, a white shirt and black shorts. The shirt was okay, but for the black shorts, my father had got the formula and quantities wrong when he made the dye. After the match, he started getting spots on his buttocks and around his genitals. And the next day, he was really sick and walked around as if he’d shit in his pants.’

I found it hard to comprehend the fact that you could tell amusing, heart-warming stories in the same part of the world where a man could be thrown in the sea like a cigarette end being flicked away.

‘And who are you a fan of?’ I said.

He shrugged, losing interest. ‘There’s Messi, Ronaldo and lots of others, except that Joma says an idol doesn’t have to be a white man. So I went for Drogba, Eto’o and Zidane.’

‘Zidane’s white.’

‘Only white-skinned. He’s African at heart.’

‘Do you play football?’

‘I’m rubbish at it.’ He looked at his toes sticking out of his worn-out espadrilles and wiggled them. An unexpected sadness came over his face. ‘I’ve never been good at anything,’ he sighed.