Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

For a fraction of a second, the pastor’s face appeared to me, and Hans’s voice shook me like an electric shock: Stand firm. Every day is a miracle .

The hatch was raised. I covered my eyes with my hands to shield them from the sudden light and waited to recover my sight. Slowly, the configuration of the stones became clearer, then that of the walls. Something fell to the ground and rolled between my legs. It was an orange. A soft, battered orange, not much bigger than a prune. I picked it up greedily — I was aware that my gesture wasn’t exactly decent, but I didn’t care — and bit into it as if biting into life. Without peeling it. Without wiping it. When I heard it tearing beneath my teeth, when the acidity of the very first squirt of juice hit my palate, when the taste reconciled me with my senses — for all at once I recovered taste and smell and hearing — I realised that I was intact. I closed my eyes to savour every morsel. I think I took a good ten minutes, maybe a little more, to slowly chew the orange, without swallowing anything, to make the pleasure last as long as possible: a pleasure that was exaggerated of course, but which, at that moment, had the violence of an orgasm. I chewed it into little pieces, turning each piece over and over several times on my tongue until I had transformed it into a spongy paste that I began sucking again with delight; I had the feeling I was tasting a fruit that was like no other. When all that was left of it in my mouth was the distant taste of bitter pulp, Joma’s laughter brought me abruptly down to earth.

‘Stand up in there! The convalescence is over. Get out of there, and be quick about it, you wimp.’

Arms gathered me up, pulled me out of my hole, and dragged me across the burning ground. My clothes were thrown in my face and I was forced to get dressed. My lack of coordination made this latter operation an acrobatic feat. The sun burnt my eyes. I couldn’t tell my shirt from my trousers, and had to rely on my sense of touch. All the same, I somehow managed to put on my pants, and then my trousers. At the end of this bizarre gymnastic exercise, I presented myself to Joma, who, very proud of the state he had reduced me to, declared, ‘Now, Dr Krausmann, you have some small idea of what it means to be an African.’

Bruno let out a curse when Joma threw me into the jail. I fell face down, my nose in the dust. Joma turned me over with his foot, bent over me like the angel of death gathering up a lost soul, grabbed me by my shirt collar, and finally let go of me, exhausted by his own abuses.

Bruno was shocked. ‘I suppose you’re pleased with yourself, Sergeant-Major Joma.’

Joma cracked his neck joints and retorted, ‘I never wear stripes or medals. I leave those accessories to clowns and veterans.’

‘Where do you think you are? Abu Ghraib?’

‘We can’t afford that kind of luxury hotel.’

Bruno got up on his knees and cried, ‘You’re nothing but a monster.’

‘Thanks to you, Mr Civilised Westerner. We learnt everything from you people. And when it comes to such skills, I don’t think the pupil can ever surpass the master.’

With a gesture of his head, he ordered his men to follow him outside.

As soon as the door was closed, Bruno ran to me and lifted my head. From the distressed, incredulous way he looked at me, I realised what a sight I must be.

‘Good Lord, you look like a zombie.’

He dragged me to my mat, wedged a cloth behind my back, and helped me to sit against the wall. I wanted to get up and walk about to relieve the aching of my stiff muscles, but I had all the energy of a dehydrated old slug. My bruised body didn’t have a single tendon that worked. Like someone who has been exorcised, I had the impression that the demonic entity that had possessed me was my own soul and that all that remained of me now was an empty shell.

‘Give me something to eat …’

Bruno ran to fetch me a piece of meat. I tore it from his hands and bit into it with the feeling that I was fighting over every mouthful with my hunger, that my hunger and I were Siamese twins, that I was the mouth and it was the belly, that it was robbing me of the taste of flesh, and I was robbing it of the meat’s nutritional strength. Bruno had to calm me down. He advised me to go easy and take my time chewing. When I finished gnawing at the bone, he ran to fetch me a piece of bread and what remained of some gelatinous soup. I gulped them both down in one go.

‘Bloody hell, where have you been?’ sighed Bruno with pity.

He handed me his flask. I knocked back the entire contents and immediately fell asleep.

Loud voices rang out in the yard. Bruno, who was standing by the door, motioned to me to come closer. Gathered in the doorway of the command post, the pirates were squabbling, all making a noise at the same time like farmyard animals, each one shouting louder than the others to make himself heard. Some were within an inch of coming to blows. On one side, there was Joma, who was trying to handle the situation, and Blackmoon, sitting on the steps, his hands on the handle of his sabre and his chin on his hands; on the other, the four remaining pirates, all in an excited state. The tallest, who was almost white-skinned, had a falsetto voice that cut through his comrades’ protests. He was waving his arms about in all directions, calling the sky, the fort, the barracks, the valley, to be his witnesses. I couldn’t understand what he was saying in his cabbalistic jargon. Bruno translated the most forceful statements for me: things were getting nasty, he said. A very thin man in a tracksuit tried to get a word in edgewise and was immediately taken to task by a boorish fellow with a talismanic necklace and a mouth big enough to gobble an ostrich egg. He was so furious that he was dribbling from the corners of his mouth. He stood up on tiptoe to dominate the others and pointed to a wing of the fort, a gesture that the thin man dismissed with his hand, provoking even more bedlam than before.

‘It’s three weeks since the captain left to join Moussa!’ the thin man cried. ‘And we haven’t heard anything from him! That isn’t normal.’

‘So what?’ Joma retorted, his fists on his hips.

‘We don’t have any more provisions,’ said a stiff teenager with unusually broad shoulders.

‘It isn’t only that,’ the thin man went on. ‘The captain was very clear. If we didn’t hear from him, we should evacuate the fort and fall back to Point D-15.’

‘How did he tell you that?’ Joma cried. ‘By telepathy? We don’t even have radio contact with him. If we’re forced to leave here, it’ll be for Station 28.’

‘That makes no sense,’ the tall man with the falsetto voice said. ‘The captain went to Point D-15, in the south. That’s where it’s happening. There’s nothing for us at Station 28. It’s two days further north, and we don’t have enough fuel. Plus, it’s a high-risk area, and there are only six of us. How will we fight if we’re ambushed?’

‘That’s enough!’ Joma roared. ‘We already talked about that yesterday. We’ll only leave this fort for Station 28. I’m in charge here. And I warn you I won’t hesitate to execute on the spot any joker who dares disobey my orders. The situation’s shambolic enough, and no form of insubordination can be tolerated.’

‘What do you think we are?’ the man with the necklace protested. ‘Cattle? Who are you to threaten us with death? We tell you we haven’t any more provisions, and we haven’t heard from the captain. How long are we going to stay here? Until a rival gang attacks us?’

‘We have to join the rest of the squad at Point D-15,’ the four ‘mutineers’ insisted. ‘That’s where it’s happening.’