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Les Soleils des Indépendances/The Suns of Independence
Ahmadou Kourouma
(First published 1953)
The ultimate affront, that neither hurries, grows weary nor forgets, is called death. It had carried away cousin Lasina from the village. Yes, the cousin; and although he was the man who by intrigue, magic spells and sacrificial offerings had usurped Fama’s place as chief of Horodugu, his death was a misfortune. Recriminations must be silenced. A dead man is for God alone to judge, and the duty of his surviving relatives is to organise a respectable funeral. Fama decided to go to the village for the funeral ceremonies; he visited all the Malinke households in the city, to break the news of his cousin’s death and announce his own departure. May God never cease to pour blessings and strength on the Malinke community in the capital city! Each Malinke outdid the other in generosity. Everyone took out money to give. Altogether there was more than enough for the journey, and for an imposing funeral. Fama could leave.
Early one morning he turned up at the road transport station, accompanied by Salimata and many other Malinke. The lorries travelling north were lined up in noisy ranks. Fama got into the lorry driven by Wedrago.
‘No! No!’ they shouted. ‘Get out, granddad! Get into the one that’s first in line!’
The man who was doing the shouting introduced himself:
‘Delegate of the national union of road carriers.’ Fama had best get out, without arguing. ‘That’s that way it is.’ Road carriers’ union or bastards’ union, Fama couldn’t care less. He stood up, pulled out his knife, and in spite of Salimata’s screams threatened the delegate and insulted everyone, the delegate and all the bastards in the union, their father and the mother of Independence. The delegate backed away and left ‘that crazy Malinke’ alone.
They started off, and as they left the city Fama congratulated himself for having bared the panther’s fangs of a true Dumbuya. He had been right, twenty times over, to have recourse to insults and threats in order to stay in Wedrago’s lorry. You need only watch the others overtake, and see the drivers, head and one arm thrust out the cab window, shouting ‘To hell with death!’ as they met and passed other vehicles in a din of hooting horns and jangling metal. Another lorry would start up a concert of horns behind you, draw level with you and swing over towards the ditch, flinging to one side the passengers sitting huddled on their luggage; then overtake, swerve back in right in front of you, speed uphill and disappear downhill. The roadside bristled with the skeletal remains of countless lorries, like carcasses whose innards had been devoured by vultures. Wedrago, on the contrary, was as cautious as a chameleon; when avoiding a fault in the road or entering a curve, he would murmur a thousand prayers mingling God’s names and the ancestors’. Fama too prayed that the journey might go well.
They were crossing the stretch of savanna that surrounded the lagoons. Shrubs clung to the slopes of endless rolling hills. It was morning. The sun had just appeared, and was hurriedly dissolving clouds and sweeping them away, before rising higher to reign over a true harmattan day. Fama was worried and melancholy. He was leaving behind Salimata, the capital, all his friends, all the ceremonies and palavers, and he did not know when he would be able to return. He was head of the tribe now that his cousin was dead. Should he accept the position and stay in the village, or decline and return to the city? Fama had not yet decided. Of course, he would consult soothsayers, offer sacrifices and choose the most auspicious course. Whatever he decided, Fama would have many difficulties to deal with; he wanted to think, so as to be ready to unravel them when they appeared. Unfortunately, though, he was not alone. There were many other travellers in Wedrago’s lorry, and Fama’s three neighbours were far too talkative.
Fama had to tell them where he was going. His neighbour exclaimed in surprise. His name was Jakite, and he was from Horodugu; of course he knew Fama’s village and the Dumbuya family, had known Fama’s cousin, had heard of Fama. ‘Peace be with you, Fama!’ he said before continuing. How many seasons was it since Fama had last been home? Years? Not for years? In that case, there were many unpleasant surprises waiting for him there. He, Jakite, had fled his village; his village was in the part of Horodugu that lay in the People’s Republic of Nikinai, and Nikinai was socialist. Did Fama know how he, Jakite, had escaped? No? It was thanks to the moon! Yes, the moon that moves through the sky.
His father had been a wealthy and respected man (sixty head of cattle, three lorries, ten wives and only one son, he himself, Jakite). Then came Independence, socialism and the one-party system. Jakite’s father, who belonged to the opposition, was summoned and informed that his party was now defunct; he would have to join the one existing party, the NDL. He joined, and paid dues for himself, his family, his cattle and his three lorries. The next day they called him in again; he would have to pay party dues for every year elapsed since the NDL was created: ten years’ dues for himself, his son, his ten wives, his sixty cattle and his three lorries. He paid up.
A few months later, hot on the heels of the single-party system, came self-help. Jakite’s father was to hand over his lorries for use in building a bridge for the village. He placed his lorries at the party’s disposal, but since there was no petrol, the NDL youth set fire to them. The indignant old man resigned himself to his loss, and even affected an ironic smile (in any case, since Independence there were no roads and no petrol).
The party officials turned up again another day: the bridge was being built by self-help, and neither Jakite nor his father were taking part. The old man reminded him that it was harvest-time, that his son could not leave his fields and cattle. They left, but that evening when Jakite, returning home with his herd, crossed the bridge, the NDL youth were lying in wait for him; they leapt out and attacked him, pinioned him, pulled off his trousers, attached a rope to his genitals and tied him to one of the posts of the bridge, like a dog. Jakite’s father ran to implore the party secretary-general, who replied that since socialism was to bring to an end the exploitation of man by man, nobody should set foot on a bridge he had not help build. The old man begged for mercy, but he could not be moved: socialism was socialism!
Jakite’s father went home, then returned and ordered him to go and release the victim; the secretary-general burst out laughing. Then the old man went mad, raised his shot-gun and fired full in his chest; the secretary-general collapsed. Other villagers came running, Jakite’s father fired again, and panic spread. It was night-time. The demented old man went from compound to compound, and gunned down one after the other the assistant secretary-general, the treasurer and two other party members. The whole village took refuge in the bush. He went to the creek, unbound his son, untied the rope round his genitals and set him free. Luckily, there was a moon that night. For three moonlit nights Jakite was able to find his way through the bush, avoiding snakes and wild beasts, until he reached the border. His father had been tried and shot.
There was a moment’s silence. They had left behind the lagoon savanna, and were now crossing a densely forested zone. As one bend followed another, the exhausted passengers were flung from side to side, and Fama felt dizzy and nauseated. He cleared his throat, spat out sticky spittle with a sickly taste of baobab sap, then sat up.
His left-hand neighbour took up the palaver. He too had fled socialism; his name was Konate, and he was a Bambara. Yet all his features were those of a Fula: tribal tattoo-marks, the dry brittle look of a tree in the dry season, and ears like an aardvark. He repeated himself constantly. He had escaped in time, just in time, since three days later they had changed banknotes and all the traders had been irremediably ruined.
Konate missed his country, he loved it and felt that socialism would be a good thing later on; but as with all big babies, the birth and first steps were hard, too hard: famine, shortages, forced labour, prison … It was in order to temper the harshness of socialism that he hung about the borders, dealing illegally in black-market currency and smuggled goods. It was really for God, love of humanity and patriotism that he was travelling, in spite of all the risks lying in wait at the gates of socialism.
Sery, who was sitting opposite Fama, spoke next. He, Sery, knew the secret of peace and happiness in Africa. Sery was Wedrago’s apprentice, and since the start of the journey, clinging to the back of the lorry, he had not stopped wriggling about, singing and complaining. His boss drove too slowly, a real chameleon. If he were at the wheel, the lorry would have covered many more miles by now. He glowed with youth and health. He had plump hips and arms and a neck like a young bull, bulging from a shirt and trousers torn and stiff with grease; and the magnetic face of a young wild animal, with a puppy’s round eyes and white teeth.
‘Do you know what causes wars and misery in Africa? No? Well, it’s quite simple; it’s because Africans don’t stay at home,’ Sery explained.
He himself had never left the Ebony Coast to settle in another country and deprive its inhabitants of work, whereas other people had come to his country. The French colonizers brought along people from Dahomey and Senegal, who knew how to read and write and were French citizens or else Catholics; smarter, more civilised, harder-working Africans than the native inhabitants of the country, who belonged to Sery’s tribe.
‘The white colonizers gave them all the jobs and all the money, and with that money the Dahomeyans bedded our girls, married the prettiest ones, took over our best land, lived in the tallest houses; they cut our children’s throats as offerings to their fetishes, and French justice didn’t interfere because they themselves were the judges and lawyers. Whenever there was a new post created, they brought someone from Dahomey to fill it, and whenever someone was sacked or out of work, it was always one of our own people. This is how it was,’ Sery demonstrated with his hands, ‘the Europeans on top, then the Dahomeyans and Senegalese, and we were just nothing, lying underfoot.’
So, as soon as Independence came, the Sery rose up and attacked the Dahomeyans.
‘First we took back our women, then we beat their children and raped their sisters before their very eyes, before plundering their goods and setting their houses on fire. Then we chased them down to the shore. We wanted to drown them, to see the waves wash them ashore with swollen bellies, unrecognisable, like dynamited fish. Luckily for them the French troops intervened, herded them into the harbour and guarded the entrance with tanks. So the Dahomeyans boarded ship and left. Once they had left and independence had come, the country was really in fine shape. There were jobs and houses for everyone. So our students and intellectuals said we should get rid of the French; that would bring us a lot more in the way of houses, goods and money. But that was different, because of the French troops; besides, it wouldn’t have been a good thing, because without the French there would be no jobs and we were tired of being out of work.’
That was why the Sery had refused. But now things were going wrong again, because other Africans wouldn’t stay at home; they kept coming to the Ebony Coast, Nago from the south, Bambara and Malinke fleeing socialism, Mossi from the north, Hausa from the east.
The Mossi and Hausa could be tolerated, they came to work, and took the jobs the native inhabitants didn’t want, the unpleasant or dangerous ones. But when the others arrived, especially the Nago, they were as wretched and threadbare as an orphan’s only pair of drawers, and even dirtier. And they never turned up alone, always with their wives who bred like lizards, and their brats more numerous than two litters of mice; they also brought along their beggars, their blind men, their cripples, their madmen, their liars and thieves to invade our public squares and surround our mosques, our churches, our markets. Furthermore, whether handicapped or not, the Nago never worked, but hung about factories, workshops and shops with outstretched hands.
‘Out of charity we gave them alms, since they were as dried-up as dead snakes and didn’t need food, they saved up what we gave them to buy cigarettes, and turned up again to sell them to us on tick; soon it was rice, shirts, shoes they sold on tick, and they ended up advancing us half our salaries and charging money-lender’s rates of interest. They were rich; they came to live in our houses, and in less than a week our compounds were as disgusting as their brat’s unwashed faces, as stinking as their brat’s unwiped arses. So we left them to it. They bought the compounds, fixed them up, left, rented them out and started on other compounds. That’s how they managed to take over the whole city. Our leaders began to use them as fronts for buying, selling, borrowing. It’s the Nago who can get loans from the French and the Syrians; we’re the ones who work, and it’s the foreigners who earn the money. We don’t like that at all. Will we have to start killing again, driving people into the sea? It’s not nice, ‘ concluded Sery.
That was why he said that Africa would know peace when every African stayed at home.
The passengers were all silent. The lorry was on a straight stretch of road, dazzling hot in the sun; they had crossed the Budomo river, and the trees were smaller.
‘So my words have been greeted with silence, like the old grandmother’s fart among respectful grandchildren,’ remarked Sery, with a burst of laughter that drew no response.
He looked up, and was startled to see everyone staring at him in weary amazement. People’s lips were drawn and pressed tight, and their ears heard only the motor’s roar.
