Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

‘He’s right, Joma. Ewana needs drugs, and we don’t have any.’

‘That’s not the point!’ Joma protested. ‘This cretin has no right to talk down to us. Does he think he’s dealing with cavemen or what? What was all that about voodoo? If I were you, I’d grab a car jack and teach him to swallow his arrogance.’

‘That’s enough!’ the chief said. ‘It’s been a tough journey and I’m exhausted. Take the doctor back.’

With a weary hand, he dismissed us.

Once outside the tent, Joma jabbed his rifle butt into my back to make me walk faster.

‘You’re a tough guy, aren’t you?’

I didn’t reply.

He grabbed me by my shirt collar and twisted me round to face him.

‘Well, I’m an old cooking pot. A cauldron straight out of hell. We’ll soon see how tough you are. I’m going to cook you on a low heat until you melt in my mouth.’

He showed his teeth in a fierce grin.

I looked at him dejectedly, turned towards the pale sky and searched for my star among the thousands of constellations, which all seemed oblivious to my prayers tonight. A vague premonition took root in me: I’d just made myself a sworn enemy.

When I woke up, I found the chief crouching by my side. He was in his fatigues, his eyes hidden by his sunglasses. He hadn’t expected to find Hans and me in such a terrible state. He stood up, paced up and down the cave angrily, and kicked a tin can, which rolled into the shadows with a clatter. Then, unable to contain himself, he turned to Joma and screamed, ‘Have you been keeping them tied up all this time?’

‘I don’t have enough men to keep an eye on them,’ Joma said grudgingly.

‘I never asked you to chain them like that.’

Joma didn’t like the way he was being scolded. ‘What did you want me to do, Moussa? Mollycoddle them? We didn’t have anything to eat, and the joker you put in charge of looking after the hideout wasted the drinking water and let the cans of rations go off in the sun.’

‘I’m talking about the hostages, Joma. They aren’t prisoners of war, damn it.’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘Yes, a big difference!’ the chief cried, exasperated by his subordinate’s attitude.

Joma gave a shudder. ‘If you have a problem with me, Moussa, talk to me in private. I don’t like being lectured in front of strangers …’

‘I don’t care if you like it or not, Joma!’ the chief spat, and left the cave.

A few minutes later, we were untied. Electric shocks went through me every time I moved a finger or a toe. My wrists were covered in blackish scabs, and my hands were grey and pale. Hans had to put himself through a crash course in order to learn to push himself off the ground and get to his feet. His joints had stiffened up and he couldn’t put his arms in front of him. The bloody patch on the back of his shirt had turned black. We were dragged to a reservoir of stagnant water, not far from the cave, to wash our faces and our clothes, which we let dry on our bodies. Hans began to sway on his stiff legs, and was shaken with convulsions; he complained of stomach pains and dizziness, but our kidnappers forbade me from going near him. After the makeshift bath, we were taken back to the cave and given a piece of fish and a slice of pancake. The brackish, polluted water from the reservoir had merely aggravated our wounds, which, now that the scabs had come off, bled and caused great excitement among the flies.

In the afternoon, Moussa ordered his men to get ready to evacuate the place. The tent was immediately taken down and the pirates’ kit was wrapped and loaded into the vehicles along with bags of provisions. Hans and I were shoved onto two separate pick-ups, and the little convoy set off. I was so relieved to be leaving the cave that I didn’t even think to wonder what other hellhole we were being transferred to.

We drove for hours without coming across a living soul. Towards evening, we stopped in a gorge whose ridges were crowned with undergrowth. The pirates called the place ‘the station’ — I would later discover that stations were hiding places scattered around the countryside where smugglers and rebels kept supplies of fuel and water when they were on the move. The drivers filled up the vehicles and checked the state of their tyres and the level of water in the radiators, and then, after a basic supper, we spent most of the night driving.

Very early the next day, the convoy entered an area of scrub where the paths were impassable. The ground was hard and uneven, and the vehicles bounced over it, almost knocking us senseless. We passed between narrow ravines, and the branches of the thorny shrubs rustled on the sheet-metal bodywork and scratched our backs. If one of the boulders had fallen on us, we’d have been done for. Joma drove without a thought for those of us in the back. All he knew how to do was press his foot down on the accelerator, move the wheel wildly from right to left and crank the gear stick back and forth. He didn’t care about the engine speed, or how much we were being shaken about, or the dust being thrown in our faces by the shovelful. Curiously, his clumsiness amused his associates, who burst out laughing every time a heavy jolt threw them against each other.

With my wrists tied, I held onto the seat. I could feel the knocking of the axles reverberate right through my body.

Judging by the position of the sun, we were heading due west.

The ordeal eased after a hundred kilometres. There weren’t even any ruins around to suggest anyone had ever settled in the area. A valley covered in varicose scrub stretched to infinity, anonymous, totally devoid of distinguishing features — if you were trying to figure out where you were, or if you were thinking of escaping and wanted to know which direction to go, it was a depressing prospect.

The convoy halted at the foot of a mountain shrouded in dust. It was the only thing approaching a landmark for miles around. I asked the boy who brought me food if the mountain was sacred and if he knew its name. Joma, who I hadn’t seen behind me and who had guessed where I was going with this, retorted that it was Kilimanjaro: with global warming the snow had melted, and all that was left of the legendary mountain that Hemingway loved was a mere boulder stuck in the middle of a crater, so insignificant that it would inspire neither budding griots nor visionaries at odds with authority. The boy burst out laughing, and Joma pointed two fingers at me and went ‘boom’, delighted to have scored a point.

During the stop, tied as I was to a root, I didn’t manage to catch a glimpse of Hans.

A ragged man was crouching at the top of a hill — God knows where he’d come from. At the sight of the convoy, he picked up his bundle and ran down the slope, gesticulating wildly … The pick-up swerved to the side and headed straight for him. He had now reached the edge of the track. Instead of slowing down, Joma accelerated and charged at him. Surprised by the vehicle’s sudden detour, the stranger just had time to move back to avoid being hit. He fell backwards. Around me, the pirates shrieked with laughter and slapped their thighs … The poor man started to pick himself up from the dust, and at that moment the jeep, which was behind us, now also left the track and hurled itself at him. At first dumbfounded, he realised that he wasn’t out of trouble yet and still, by some extraordinary reflex, had to perform a superhuman feat of acrobatics to dodge the wheels passing a few inches from his head. Disoriented, he dropped his bundle and set off at a run straight up the hill, without turning. His headlong flight merely increased my kidnappers’ hilarity. There was something so indecent in their exaggerated laughter it was beyond my understanding. They were laughing proudly, as if the impunity they allowed themselves instilled in them an overwhelming sense of courage and invincibility. They were also laughing because they noticed that their attitude shocked me as much as their murderous attempts to knock a man down. Much to my despair, I realised that these men who held me captive, these men who would decide my fate, these men devoid of conscience, weren’t content with trivialising the deliberate act of killing, they also claimed it as a right.