Tropic of Violence

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Tropic of Violence Page 6

by Nathacha Appanah


  First off I watched them smoking, then I lit my spliff, I remember Bosco going eee-eee-eee and maybe my dog was trying to tell me something, but I put the spliff to my lips and inhaled. After that I toppled over, head first, into another world.

  I’m lying there and Marie’s looking down at me, she’s saying Wake up Moïse, you’re going to be late for school.

  I’m lying there and I can hear Bosco scratching at the door. I say to Marie, He’s hungry, but Marie isn’t there it’s Bruce who’s there, saying to me Oh yes he has to eat. Then he starts laughing.

  Now I’m on my feet and chanting words I don’t understand. Nigga nigga nigga nananana fuck fuck fuck nananana. La Teigne is on the ground, laughing his metallic laughter and I go up to him and say, nigga nigga nigga. He’s still laughing. I kick him in the ribs. He laughs more than ever.

  I piss outside, I shit outside and a woman walks by. It’s not Marie, it’s someone I don’t know. The sun fills the sky and it’s so hot I strip off my clothes. The woman starts yelling.

  I’m still smoking and drinking Oasis that has a funny taste. I’m drinking from Bosco’s half coconut shell, but Bosco’s not there, I call him but my dog doesn’t appear, he must be sulking. That’s what Marie used to say when he didn’t want to show himself, Bosco’s sulking. All at once I hear my own voice, is it me, is it someone else, is it a memory? Mam! Mam! And I want to get out of the banga but I can’t, there are no doors, no windows.

  I’m on my feet and I’m reciting. “When I was still very young we lived in the country. Our house was no more than a small leasehold farm, standing isolated in an expanse of fields. There we spent a peaceful existence. My parents had living with them my father’s great-aunt, Aunt Martine.” Bruce starts laughing and I chant Aunt Martine fuck Aunt Martine Aunt Martine iz a nigga, and I rap just like I was the greatest rapper of all time. Mo Tupac Mo Jay Z Mo Dr. Dre. And Bruce is laughing so much that he cries. And I, Moïse, I’m fourteen years old, I’m smoking, I’m drinking, I’m rapping and dancing with my pals, I have no past, no future, I’m happy.

  Bruce

  I wish you’d shut up, just shut the fuck up, I know your mouth’s closed but I can still hear you loud and clear and the whole tale you’re telling is coming straight at me like that bullet in the woods when you shot me. I wonder where my body is now, is it still up there? You left me there the way you left your mother lying rotting, your mother being devoured by rats as big as cats and her body swollen like a balloon and the stink, do you remember the stink, you who talk about Gaza the way all whiteys talk about Gaza, you talk about shit you talk about garbage you talk about poverty like all those journalists who come to our turf the way they go to the pictures, then afterwards they write big words like the biggest shantytown on Mayotte or like a garbage dump open to the skies. You do the same. You talk and think just like that.

  You should’ve known how it was before, that gully filled with shit you’re talking about. A tall, green forest’s what it was, a forest my father my mother my brothers and I visited every week. I don’t have words like you Mo, I don’t have big phrases in my head but I often think about those years. I’m eight-nine-ten, I live in my father’s house on the slopes of Mamoudzou. I’m never hungry, I go to the French school every day and in the evening I go to the madrasa. At the French school I learn Je suis tu es il/elle/on est nous sommes vous êtes ils/elles sont and the teachers are elegant white women and they say you’re French Allons enfants de la patrie and they don’t use a stick to hit you with when you do something wrong no they stroke your head and say you little devil. At the madrasa we dress in white and we recite the Quran and if you make a mistake thwack you get hit by a branch from a mango tree but it’s not too bad that’s how life is and they say to us you’re Muslims and that’s how I live, I’m Mahorian, I’m French, I’m a Muslim what do I know about it I never go hungry. I’m the only one of my father’s children to go to school because I’m the youngest and my father has asked the djinn on the hill to watch over me. I go and play with my friends. I go and eat at my friends’ houses, I climb the coconut palms and the mango trees, I never go hungry, I bathe in the gully and my mother and my aunts washing their laundry there tell me to bathe higher up but I like the smell of soap and the water turning white so I bathe and my skin itches and peels from the bars of soap bought at Sodifram but I never go hungry.

  It’s Friday and I’m on the lookout behind the door for my father. I’m wearing my fine tunic embroidered with threads of gold and I’m waiting for my father who arrives in his fine Friday tunic as well and we’re going to see the djinn. We walk down the gully, we cross over the clear water that goes slap slap slap against the rocks that are still white from soap and my father says Hoist up your tunic and I hoist up my tunic and we climb up as far as the orchard and my father says Hush and I walk softly and I’m proud to be with him, there’s nothing here apart from fruit trees and lianas and trees so vast that they make me a little afraid. My father takes a small pot of honey and an egg out of his bag and puts them down beside a tall tree. It’s for the Wanaisas he says Do you know who they are? I answer him with what I’ve learned at the Koranic school. The Wanaisas are little hairy men with their feet pointing the other way each with a missing left arm who protect the forest and the riverbeds. My father looks at me and smiles. He shows me trees, he tells me never to pick those fruits after nightfall and, There, he points again, and as he raises his arm like that to point to the tops of the trees his tunic falls back so his fine wristwatch can be seen There, that tree must never be cut down, even if it’s diseased it must be left to die here and it will turn into dust and the Wanaisas will use the dust and another tree, even finer, will take its place.

  We walk slowly and I like watching the water gushing down between the two flights of stone steps. These steps are so old that they were already there when my father was a child. My father won’t allow me to dive in here but all my friends go there. I watch them, they say to me, Come on in scaredy-cat but I never go there, I’ve given my word, Mo, I watch them climbing up the steps and leaping into the pool shouting and laughing but I never go in. Beyond the steps there are more trees and further on a big green pool. Then my father brings out the bottle of eau de cologne, some milk and cakes. The water’s as green as your frigging eye that’s brought me bad luck and my father prays and kneels on the ground his tunic gets dirty and I know my mother will wash it the next day, going ttt with pursed lips but my father doesn’t care. Every Friday my father and me go to see the djinn and my father asks him to watch over me, he prays for me to go far for me to cross the seas for me to wear a suit and tie for me to speak good French and write good French for me one day to work in an office, he says all that my poor father. My father warns me This djinn is watching you, this djinn has its eye on you and the evil that you do to it, it will do to you in return and the good that you do to it, it will do to you in return and when I was little I used to keep looking over my shoulder but I didn’t jump into the pool with my friends because the djinn was watching every one of my actions.

  I’m eight-nine-ten and my name is Ismaël Saïd. I like listening to the bats in the trees and I picture myself flying like them, hanging upside down and seeing another world, maybe that’s stupid but that’s how my thoughts are. One day in a group arranged by the muzungus that was called “The Children of Mayotte” they showed us the film Batman and that’s the moment when I realize that I’m Bruce Wayne, I feel him within myself, I copy his voice, I copy his anger and I want to paint everything black and have a cape and all that crap.

  I’m eight-nine-ten and I don’t go hungry, but I don’t have enough exercise books and I don’t understand everything J’ai tu as il/elle/a nous avons vous avez ils/elles ont I don’t understand proper nouns and the nouns that are not proper and I get tired in class because it’s so hot in the room in my father’s house where we sleep that I can never get to sleep and I don’t have enough time and I’m not clever enough so say the teachers who are elegant
and white and the headmaster says the same thing to my father who’s silent from shame. That day he’s wearing his dark cotton trousers and his shirt with blue stripes and he hasn’t put his embroidered kofia on his head to go to see the French people and my father thinks he’s having a meeting about my transfer to secondary school, and before even getting there he’s full of pride but the headmaster says No this school doesn’t suit him he finds it hard he’s not happy here, he wouldn’t be happy at secondary school and the headmaster gives him the name of a special school for children with serious learning difficulties. I’ll never forget that with serious learning difficulties and he says Ismaël will do better there and my father turns to me and in his eyes something is broken. I begin shouting, I’d like to leap onto the desk and grab the headmaster by the throat but he stands up and says You can see for yourself, Monsieur, secondary school wouldn’t suit him.

  I’m eight-nine-ten and I refuse to go to this school for the disabled. I weep I yell my father beats me my mother beats me but I refuse to be with people who drool and spend the whole day drawing and every afternoon I go to wait for the headmaster because I want to talk to him to make him change his mind but when I see him I want to thump him I want to thump his family and one day I throw a stone that hits him in the back then another and a third and after that I lose track.

  I’m ten-eleven and I steal one euro from my big sister’s purse. My father ties me to a chair and every member of the family comes and slaps me once or twice. My father says that if I start again he’ll tie me up in the village square. That no longer affects me, I’m not a little boy anymore I’m no longer Ismaël Saïd my name is Bruce now, I jump into the pool, I run around all day, I sleep under the veranda decks of strange houses and I go hungry. Someone, I don’t know who, gives me a cigarette and a Coke, then a cigarette and a beer. I steal fruits and sell them to illegal immigrants who set up stalls by the roadside and sell them on. I go hungry, my mother feeds me in secret but in my father’s house I’m always in a rage, it’s as if an evil djinn enters me as soon as I cross the threshold and I strike out, I yell.

  I’m ten-eleven and the corrugated iron huts are starting to appear one after another. Illegal immigrants coming and building them where it shouldn’t happen, where the Wanaisas live, they dig holes, they make fires, they lay down pipes to collect water from the pools and they shit everywhere and the pool dries up and nobody jumps in there anymore because there’s no water left and no one washes their laundry anymore and the water smells of shit and piss and gasoline. The forest’s dying and in its place there are tinsmiths covering the earth with iron and fire.

  I steal here and there, I win a couple of times in the mourengué fights, I become strong, I become dangerous, I want to hit anything that moves. I’m twelve-thirteen my prick itches and I want a woman but for a woman you need euros and one day I steal my father’s watch and I go see the sousou girls at the Cavani crossroads and I fuck for the first time in the mangrove swamp. When I go home, my father’s waiting for me at the bottom of the village but I’m a man now, I’ve fucked and my name is Bruce and I’m not afraid and I dance around him the way I do in the mourengué fights and he looks at me with that same broken look and it’s all over.

  I’m fourteen-fifteen I’m on the streets and all day I hang around, I drink, I smoke. When I haven’t got enough money for the sousous I go with the other homeboys to steal goats and fuck them, it’s not the same but it calms you down. At night I stalk and rob and make decent people like my father jump he’s left his house and now lives up north and I know how and who to rob and I know who sells what, I know who buys, I barricade the streets when I want to and I’ve only to say the word and it’s war. When there are elections you’ve seen how they eat out of my hand, you’ve seen how they seek me out, where’s Bruce, what does Bruce think, what’s Bruce doing. The king of Gaza, that’s me.

  I wonder where they’re going to bury me and what name they’re going to give me. I wonder if they’re going to notify my father by telling him Your son Ismaël Saïd is dead or if they’ll tell him Bruce is dead he won’t understand a thing and all this fuckries is because of you.

  Moïse

  There was nothing left to smoke, nothing left to drink, nothing left to eat. I was on the ground, it felt like my mouth was full of earth. There was nobody around in the banga. I crawled over to the door and outside the sunlight transfixed my eyes, the yellow light bored into my head with the noise of a power drill. Somehow or other I found a barrel filled with water, I plunged my head into it again and again. I drank more and more from the water I’d just plunged my head into with my filthy face. I was barefoot. Maybe if I’d stayed a little longer, alone on that dry, red hillside, outside that corrugated iron banga, maybe if I’d looked around me and seen that Gaza was no more than a collection of huts stained red with dust, tangled electric cables, and corrugated iron roofs held in place by big rocks, if I’d seen that there would never be any way out for me, if I’d understood that these footpaths and alleyways held no good for me, then maybe I’d have run back to Mamoudzou as fast as I could, back to the ferry, back to the house, back to Marie’s lifeless body. But while I was washing myself Bruce appeared and behind him were La Teigne, Rico, and a couple of other homeboys I didn’t know. These two looked like they were barely ten years old. Bruce said We’re out of here. I said Where are we going? My voice was hoarse, the words stuck in my throat. Bruce didn’t reply.

  We walked down the hill single file. We were walking toward Mamoudzou, I looked at the clock in front of the landing stage, it showed twenty past one but I didn’t know what day it was and I still don’t know how much time I’d spent up there. Bruce bought tickets for the six of us and it was only at that moment that I thought about Bosco. I asked La Teigne Where’s my dog? He shrugged. When we got on the ferry I went up to Bruce and asked him the same question and he answered You take care of the money and you’ll see your dog later. I began to be scared and I asked What money? Bruce came up to me, he was wearing clean clothes, his breath was fresh. La Teigne, Rico, and the two kids were the same, as if freshly washed. I was the only one who was dirty and stinking. Bruce put a hand on my leg. You said your mother had some cash at her house and you knew her carte bleue pin number and you said we should go to your house, didn’t you, don’t you remember, you said that only this morning so we’ve washed and got ourselves spruced up to go and call on your maman, haven’t you noticed? While he was talking he was squeezing my thigh harder and harder. The people around us noticed nothing, they were chatting, laughing, drowsing, or looking at the sea. How was it that no one noticed I was scared? Scared of Bruce, scared of going back to the house, scared of everything, it was a feeling that overwhelmed me, kept me from thinking, from running away, from doing anything other than stay there sitting on that wooden bench, staring at the sea without seeing it, watching Petite-Terre draw closer, recognizing the corrugated iron shelter on the landing stage where I’d waited for Marie so many times, still feeling so totally terrified that I ended up feeling that fear is all I am, all I have, feeling that fear is my very name.

  We took a taxi, just as if we were boys from school, and in the cab Bruce joked with the others in Shimaore and the driver joined in their laughter.

  Bruce stationed one kid at the corner of the road that led to my house and another one fifty yards lower down. I’d found the bunch of keys in my pocket. It had stayed there since the day I ran away from the house with Bosco. How was that possible? I was shaking as I opened the padlock to the little iron gate that led to the garden. Bruce ordered Rico to wait beside the gate. We walked along the right-hand side of the house. I was shaking without being able to stop myself and it took me several attempts to open the padlock on the big gate to the terrace. La Teigne sniffed noisily and Bruce said It stinks here. My teeth were chattering as the chain fell at my feet with a big crash. Everything swam before my eyes and Bruce said Fuck me, what’s that smell?

  The buzzing of the flies. Bruce giving
me a kick in my back and talking in Shimaore, I’m on the ground, I’m afraid, I cling to his ankles, I don’t know why, the smell’s unbearable and he yells Where’s the cash, where’s the cash? as he’s struggling to break free. I crawl up to Marie’s bedroom where everything’s as perfect and white as before, but the smell of death lurks there too, I catch sight of her dark brown rucksack and check that her wallet is inside it, I go into my room, I pick up my book and want to stay there. I’ll shut myself in here in this white perfection and in the end the smell will go away. One of the kids outside gives a yell and Bruce bursts in on me, tries to snatch the bag from my grasp but I resist and then he grips me by the throat and I’m outside.

 

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