Abdourahman Waberi - Transit

What do you think the French did with the president's request and the so-rich words of the head of diplomacy? I say request, that a very correct word, they say it on black-an-white TV even, like at Samireh's our neighbor the shopkeeper. The French they say we are presently handing over the general (only they don't add asshole, like me, Binladen) if you in Djibouti respect the rightsaman too like in our country. The general has the right to be assisted by the lawyer of his choice before he even opens his mouth. He has right to a fair trial, insisted the ambassador in a shirt with red-white-an-blue flowers before presently handing over the asshole general. President happy as a clam, he busted the asshole general. Hey, he together again with his lieutenants in the terriblific Gabode prison. The motherfucka now with the little Ethiopian thieves he used to bust himself, I say little cause the big ones they still out there, making restoration with the president's wife.

Worst off in this whole business is regular little soldiers, that's what City say. I don't agree. Little soldiers, they used to be little darlins of the asshole general (no way he deserves a capital G ), they did anything they wanted, selling off gas ration coupons, stealing the refugees' bags of food, borrowing people's cells, drilling girls — even the girls of their neighborhood got diarrhea when they saw them. Besides, little soldiers, sure thing! They're all sergeants, second lieutenants, lieutenants. No ordinary draftee like us in their department. There's even a colonel, I obliterated his name — I like to use big fancy words like the French, in my own personal language. City a hypocrite, double hypocrite. They forget to say people-there all cousins of the tribe, so same cousins same aunt same uncle, I say. And tomorrow if the president fired the asshole general City would say so-so unfair etcetera etcet. Me I'm telling you City don't know what they want. One day they cheering real loud for the president specially when a boat comes into our port with liquidities (yes, liquidities the word, in fact very correct word). Next day, they say: we support the opposition. Our bold, active opponent, the Pele of the opposition, he was journalist an soldier before, so, he sick of City, believe me faithfully. He better off leaving for France like me Binladen, like all the others I see here at Roissy hugging the walls, like the intellectual genleman who lost his French wife and his rich-kid son. Matter of fact, president will get out too, when there nothing left to eat. Restoration over. That man-there, he like ole empty battery can't start up the country no more. So, everybody's salary ten months overdue. Not one head of a boat in port, not one tail of a plane stopped over with white tourists saying Reunion, Mauritius, Malagascar, wow! it's too-too hot. And the stupid idiots come to Djibouti for a breath of fresh air!

Now I'm gonna show you the poem Monsieur Djama our principal recited to us in elementary school of District 6. That's where I live in Djibouti, actually. My buddy Ayanleh found it in his small little brother's things. Monsieur Djama, he's a funny one. He been giving same poem to all his pupils for ten year or what? I don't get all of it, no big deal, right? I'm gonna show it to Moussa who's coming back loaded like a Yemenite donkey (donkey rub donkey, that a naughty proverb of ours). Yemenites strong for business, Yemenites king of commerce right after Hindis who sad like a day without khat. Hey, Moussa gonna read it to you:

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.

OK poetry fine but hey, what I wanna do is tell you more about my life. I can tell you right away I never got one slap in the face from my daddy. Papa he wasn't very old when he died, tootoo broke down by his longshoreman job, but gentle like little lamb fresh from its mama's belly. He'd piss blood like that for no reason before he checked out. Me, I'm still running. When I was a baby I was already running a lot-lot. I also liked the games kids play like soccer. Not so many soccer games around no more. The city going through a difficult period, maybe Papa could've esplained you the how and why of all the problems. Veterans, the handicapped an disabled from civil war, they all demonstrate yesterday front of Presidential Palace ( beit al wali* the old folks say, that Arabic) asking for their puny pensions not paid for months. Hey, what you think goverment did? They fired on the crowd of cripples, with real bullets. A lot of corpses, lot of wounded on the boulevard to presidential palace. An guess what, no one lifted a finger. The crowd run away like scared little chicken. The wounded more or less taken care of and the dead buried in dead bush silence.

Same evening, City clapped regular as a broken toilet at the president's endless speech. So's not to think of their pain, everybody get giddy on rumors. They go like this: yah-yah we gonna get revenge this time, yah, arright….Our bellies grumbling with the noise of rising waters, the noise of a fast-moving stream over stones. Like we're wolfing down the bitter mango, bitter mango even ants and little insects won't eat it.

AS A CHILD I walked around naked every blessed day. My protruding belly button would catch the eye like a smiling little sun. A sun the color of licorice at night, copper-color in the afternoon. My mom was entirely devoted to me. I was her first sun, her only sun to this very day. Maman kept repeating to whoever would listen that this country was hers too. This is where love made me put down my bags, she would say. It's a five-camel hotel, she'd repeat without really realizing how ridiculous the image sounded. Everything in this land is mine: its volcanic hillocks, its skinny fauna; the tragic, camel-like swaying of its hips; the aquatic flora pictured on postage stamps; the desert islets like the famous Guinni Koma (also called l'île du Diable, Devil's Island by the French). I can feel its salt on my body. I am this pit like a wounded vulva between the hills. You'd think she was reading from a geography textbook. Yes, everything here is mine. The salt lakes, the bald peaks, the whimsical firmament at Lake Assal, the small forest from times long past, the limestone high plateaus, the Grand Bara and Petit Bara, the main summit culminating at almost seven thousand feet. The bitter waters and their extraordinary salinity. The liquid heart of the gulf, its solitude crenellated with waves. Her world forever inviolable. This is my country stirring the air just like the lyre palm and the traveler tree dragging its exiles over the crust of the earth. My country running breathlessly, endlessly. My country sad and beautiful like the oilcloth of a village café in Brittany on a rainy Sunday morning. My dad and I would burst out laughing. She's stubborn and endearing. And there she goes now, changing the subject and the textbook. From geography to history. My country's history in the annals of the continent? Barely room for a lowly footnote at the bottom of a page. Seventy thousand square miles of hatred and misery, my country of ergs and acacias. She's flying off the handle now, excited as a young goat.

Choice? Do you really think you can choose your destiny in life? Only morons or gullible fools believe such nonsense. It's true that I wanted wind in my sails, light in my eyes, a child in my womb, a black member in the hollow of my belly, and what else? My chest chock-full of air. Chastity, poverty, and obedience are not my most cherished vows. I'm not a chick raised in a poultry factory. But before meeting some spindly students on a college campus in Rennes, how was I supposed to know I would land in Djibouti and forever leave the house with its walls eaten away by the black grape vine? Choice? Don't make me laugh. What on earth made me go there, in the midst of those strange strangers with their Afros and bell-bottom pants? You always like to think of yourself as different; you want to escape the common fate, out of pride perhaps. To speed up the end of adolescence. What am I doing here? I let myself be sucked up by destiny, something stronger than myself, like the current of the tide that carries away the careless swimmer. Why would a young student, a girl from Brittany like me, set out for this crazy place? Fate took over and I dove into it headfirst. Jesus, that feeling of having bought a one-way long-distance ticket!