Yasmina Khadra - The African Equation

I walked to the helicopter, deaf to Elena’s cries. I was in a parallel world. The inside of the aircraft stank of fuel. The engines started wheezing more and more loudly, then, like a huge dragonfly, the helicopter spun into the air. The colonel tapped me on the knee. I felt like screaming at him to keep his hand as far away from me as possible. I did nothing. My whole being was bowed like a weeping willow. The noise of the helicopter drilled into my eardrums. On the bench facing me, five armed soldiers looked out at the desert through the windows. They were the colonel’s escort. Handpicked, probably expert marksmen. Young as they were, some beardless, they were battle-hardened. Their calm was like the lull before a storm.

‘What happened?’ I asked the colonel.

‘An engagement between a detachment of the regular army and a group of rebels. Our soldiers didn’t know there was a hostage.’

‘A blunder, in other words?’

‘Certainly not,’ he exclaimed, outraged. ‘Our detachment wasn’t on active operations, it was carrying out a supply mission. It came across the rebels by chance, and they immediately opened fire to cover their retreat. Our response was perfectly appropriate. Our soldiers, I repeat, didn’t know that there was a hostage among the criminals. And we are the first to deplore this … this accident.’

‘Accident?’

‘Absolutely, sir.’

‘And you’re sure it’s Hans Makkenroth?’

‘According to the two suspects you identified from the photographs, it was definitely him. They both confessed. And they took us to the place where they buried him.’

‘When?’

‘Yesterday afternoon.’

‘Does the embassy know?’

‘They were informed immediately after the discovery of the body. A plane went to pick up the ambassador very early this morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘He’ll get there the same time as we do.’

‘Is it far from here?’

‘About two hours’ flight.’

‘I suppose you’re counting on me to identify the body?’

‘I can’t think of anybody else who’d be entitled to do so.’

I sat back and said nothing.

Below, pitiful hills, weary of sinking into the sand, formed lines to hold back the advance of the desert; scarlike anthracite patches told of the ages before the flood and their forests filled with game, which a cataclysm had decimated in an instant. Where was man in all this? What did he represent in the cosmic breath? Was he aware of what made him naked and isolated? Was the desert around him or inside him? … I pulled myself together. I had to empty my head. I was in too fragile a state to venture into such unknown territory.

After two hours of noise and the stench of kerosene, the helicopter dipped to the side, straightened up again and started losing altitude. The colonel went into the cockpit to give instructions to the two pilots. Through the window, I saw a column of armoured vehicles parked along a track, soldiers and, further on, a little propeller plane beside which a delegation of civilians stood watching us land.

The German ambassador greeted me as I got out of the helicopter. He introduced the people with him, who included Gerd Bechter. They were all grief-stricken. There were no reporters or cameramen. A high-ranking Sudanese officer whispered something to me that I didn’t catch. His obsequiousness maddened me. I was relieved to see him fall back into the ranks. I asked to be taken to see my friend. The ambassador and his staff set off after a young officer, and I trailed behind. I felt as if my shoes were sticking to the ground. A platoon of soldiers was mounting guard around a heap of stones, their rifles trained on two prisoners: Ewana, the former malaria patient, and the driver of the sidecar motorcycle. Handcuffed and in chains, they were in an indescribable state; it was obvious from the marks on their faces, limbs and clothes that they had been tortured. As I passed them, I looked them up and down. Ewana bowed his head, while his accomplice openly defied me.

We came to six makeshift graves. Some had been desecrated by jackals or hyenas, the soldiers had done the rest. The decomposing corpses were mostly unrecognisable … Chief Moussa had his mouth open, exposing his gold tooth, a hole in the middle of his forehead … Hans, my friend Hans, was lying in the same pit as his kidnapper. His head had been smashed in, and there were black stains on his chest. His white beard quivered in the breeze, his eyes closed over his final thoughts. I wondered what he had been thinking about just before he died, what last cry he had taken away with him, if he had died instantly or if his agony had been long and cruel … My God! What a waste! What could I say in the face of such absurdity? All the words in the world seemed pointless and inappropriate. I could look at the sky, or my trembling hands, or the inscrutable faces of the soldiers and the officials, I could cry until my voice failed me, or say nothing and be one with the silence, it made no difference. And besides, what power did I have left, except for the strength to stare at my friend’s body and the courage to admit that I had arrived too late?

‘He came here to equip a hospital for the poor,’ I said to the two pirates.

Ewana bowed his head a little more and stared at the ground. I lifted his chin to make him look me in the eyes and went on, ‘He came to help the poor and the defenceless. Do you understand what that means? The man lying there gave his fortune and his time so that he could deserve to be called a human being.’

‘Nobody asked him to do it,’ the motorcycle driver muttered.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said in disgust.

‘You heard me.’

An officer slapped him, and the pirate reeled under the blow, but didn’t flinch.

‘Your friend is dead,’ he grunted. ‘Ewana and I will be joining him soon. They’re going to shoot us. That’s the price to be paid and we’re not haggling. You haven’t done too badly out of this so stop pissing us all off.’

Anger and indignation exploded in me like a geyser and I threw myself at him. I tried to blind him in the eye, to tear his tongue out, to crush him with my bare hands. I looked and found only emptiness: soldiers had grabbed me by the waist, while others jumped on the pirate and dragged him away from me and towards an armoured vehicle. He put up no resistance, but continued to taunt me: ‘If you’d stayed at home in your nice silk sheets, nobody would have come looking for you!’ he cried. ‘Where did you think you were, eh? On a five-star safari? People who walk in shit shouldn’t complain if they smell bad. Your friend knew the risks, and so did we. He’s dead, and we’re going to be executed. Why are you the one who’s crying?’ His coldness burnt me like the flames of hell. I struggled to reach him and make him aware of his own wickedness, of how everything he said and did was an insult to the day and the wind and the noise and the silence, to everything that made up life. My arms were like smoke, my rage was consuming me from within. I was my own cremation. I knew there was nothing more to be done, that the wonderful friend unravelling down in his hole saw nothing of my grief — maybe he wouldn’t even agree with the way I was behaving, but what could I do? … I wanted to be somewhere else, a long way away, I wanted to shut myself up in my house in Frankfurt and resume mourning my wife. I wished I had never got on that damned boat or met anyone on my route. I wished for many pointless, ugly things, I wished to be invisible too, I wished there were oceans between me and the graves fouling the ground beneath my feet, but my demands were merely the expression of my refusal to confront the grim reality: men are the worst and the best of what nature has created; some die for an ideal, others for nothing; some perish from their own generosity, others from their own ingratitude; they tear each other apart for the same reasons, each in his own camp, and the irony of fate presides over that terrible drama, finally reconciling, in the same foul-smelling pit, the enlightened and the unenlightened, the virtuous and the depraved, the martyr and the executioner, all delivered to everlasting death like Siamese twins in their mother’s womb.