Tropic of Violence

by Nathacha Appanah

  At the entrance to Gaza we mingled with the others turned out like me, smelling of deodorant and talcum powder. Bruce was in the middle, neither wholly visible nor wholly invisible. He’d only need to take one step to appear and another to disappear. A vast new car drove up with the sunlight glinting on the gray hood. Two men got out, happy and smiling. They shook hands with everyone. The taller of them went back into the vehicle and the other one, a little man with a round, friendly face, began speaking, “Young people of Kaweni, I know you are hurt by what they say about you, I know you don’t like having a bad reputation. I know life’s hard for you because there’s no infrastructure here. There’s nothing for you here, you young people, who are the future of Mayotte. If you vote for me, if you get people to vote for me, I promise they will no longer call this place Gaza but Paris! If you vote for me, if you get people to vote for me, there’ll be jobs for everyone!”

  We want internet! “Yes, you shall have the internet. Just look across from Ga … from Kaweni, just look at all those businesses, all those factories, all those supermarkets. We’ll go to them, door-to-door, we’ll tell them we need jobs for all our young people!”

  We want identity papers! “All children born on French soil are French. All those who can prove that they have a Mahorian father with a French identity card are French. All those who don’t have papers will be given residence permits because young people are our top priority!”

  And so it went on. The young crowd could shout out anything at all, at one point the demand was We want security and the man replied, Yes, you shall have security! He was sweating but smiling all the time. After that he opened the trunk of his car and took out bags filled with provisions. Bruce appeared. The man looked at him, smiling, and said Ah, there you are! They spent a long time greeting one another. Then the man got back into his car and drove off slowly, the sunlight beaming down on the dull dust and in Bruce’s hand there were banknotes. I helped to carry all the bags over to the breadfruit tree and Bruce distributed them. There was bread, sugar, flour, pasta, Coke, cookies, canned vegetables, potties for babies, diapers. Slowly, the whole of Gaza, men, women, children, babies, lined up on the two slopes of the gully and Bruce conducted the distribution smiling, in silence.

  These handouts took place two or three times a week, sometimes more often, as the first round of the election drew near. Other people came, in other fine cars and some of them spoke in French, others held forth in Shimaore but they all handed out bags of provisions and money to Bruce. There was food and drink, there was money for grass, spice, cigarettes. Bruce had given orders to the youths to stay at home. Begging in Mamoudzou or down the shopping mall was now banned. As was snatching bags at the traffic lights, or stealing mobile phones at the Mamoudzou market. House break-ins had stopped, only petty thefts at the illegal market beside the mangrove swamp were tolerated. Sometimes it seemed as if even though bellies were full, even though supplies of grass made their heads sleepy, some people couldn’t resist the urge to go down to the mangrove swamp and steal a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, some slippers.

  After the elections the cars reverted to speeding past without stopping. The noise and fury of Gaza was roused once more. Nasse was arrested and sent back to Anjouan, La Teigne disappeared for two days and reappeared missing two fingers, the youths went back to begging, stealing and extortion, break-ins started up again, and everywhere around Kaweni metal workshops sprang up and they were all making the same things: wire mesh for windows and doors, iron bars to go inside windows and doors, sharp spikes to go on the tops of walls surrounding houses. The business of security.

  It was around about this time that the smiling winner of the election set up the “Young People Forward” club in a building at the top of the hill.

  Stéphane

  I’m wandering around in the clubhouse, I haven’t gone home, I’m looking for something, I don’t know what, I’m looking for a firm hand to grasp, I’m looking for a remnant of myself to cling on to, surely there must still be a trace of the man I once was, somewhere, the one given to uttering ringing phrases like There are no problems, only solutions or Where there’s a will there’s a way or even Mens sana in corpore sano? I squeeze my body into a corner, I bang my head against the wall once, twice, I weep. I’m thinking about Moïse. Where is he right now?

  Since last night when Moïse defeated Bruce in the mourengué, Gaza has been devouring itself from the inside. All the houses are closed up, there’s not a single adult out and about, just youngsters, their eyes on fire, hands outspread, mouths open, heads cleaned out by the smoke from their spice joints. Moïse didn’t just defeat Bruce, he crushed him. When he hollered his animalistic rage, expressing all of his broken life, the drums fell silent and his cry transfixed the crowd.

  Where is he now? How did he manage to disappear like that, in the face of that crowd stunned at seeing their king down on the ground? There he stood, with his foot on Bruce’s throat, mouth open emitting his animal cry, fist raised. Then he vanished and Bruce was still down on the ground.

  I looked for him briefly but there was such tension in the air, the drummers had vanished, the crowd was hurriedly breaking up, even the little kids were following their mamans without a backward glance and I saw Bruce picking himself up, staggering. I couldn’t see his face because he kept his head down, his hands plunged in his hair. Then I went up to the clubhouse as fast as possible. When I got there I looked to see if Moïse’s brown rucksack was still buried in its hiding place beside the water meter. It had gone. For a moment I was relieved, it meant he’d managed to climb up here, it meant he was still alive, they hadn’t caught him yet. Then I had a kind of bad premonition, I opened the door quickly, I went straight into the office and slammed my hand down on the light switch. The strip light crackled and flickered several times before coming on but I could see that the drawer had been forced open and I knew I wouldn’t find the pistol.

  I had no more time to think because I heard the gate creaking and footsteps quickly approaching on the gravel path. I closed the door with my foot, went back into the main hall, and turned on all the lights so that when Bruce and three other boys appeared on the terrace I was in a full, harsh, yellow light. They asked me if Mo was there. I shook my head. I was afraid, my heart was pounding like the drums, I still had the memory of the last time they’d come visiting.

  Bruce stayed outside while the three came in looking for Mo. I could vaguely make out Bruce’s silhouette in the half-light but I knew he could see me perfectly and hoped that in every feature of my face he could read my hatred and disgust. He didn’t move, neither did I.

  After they’d left I paced around, turning a thousand things over in my mind, picturing the best outcome and the worst, I lingered on and at the back of my throat there was an acrid taste of smoke. In the end I fell asleep.

  I open the door of the little kitchen that leads to the terrace. Every morning my gaze would be lost in the green of the trees, the russet red of the huts and beyond them, the blue of the lagoon. In my mind I’d thread my way along the twists and turns of the footpaths and swim with the dolphins. Every morning this magnificent, unreal view of the Bay of Mamoudzou was enough to give me energy and I’d forget the dregs, forget the violence, forget the filth. But today all I can see is a shantytown, all I can hear is anger, all I can see is the sea violated by deaths and blood, and I long to delve down into those dregs, to turn this violence inside out, I long to dive into the filth to retrieve Mo.

  I stay here, hoping for a sight of Mo again as I saw him that first day on the far side of the road, standing there, motionless, his cap pulled down on his head, one hand holding on to the strap of his rucksack, the other in his pocket. That was a few months ago, I’d just arrived on Mayotte as part of my year of voluntary work with a certain NGO. My mission was to open a center for the youth of Kaweni. I’d been told it was like an inner city housing project, with youngsters hanging around, dealing on the black market, steeped in boredom, with no prospects,
no jobs, drugs galore. A building had already been found, what was lacking was ideas. I was twenty-seven and just two of us had volunteered to come here. Mayotte is still part of France and no one was interested in that. The others wanted to go to Haiti, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Madagascar, Ethiopia. They wanted the “authentic” poverty, centuries-old destitution established like a deeply rooted canker, of “really hot countries,” places where storms and wars are endemic, where earthquakes follow droughts. The favorite destination that looks great on your CV was still Gaza, and I mean the real Gaza, in Palestine, but that was reserved for the most experienced volunteers.

  As for me, I just wanted to get away, so I signed up for Mayotte.

  When Chebani, a member of the Mamoudzou fire brigade, who was also a volunteer with the same NGO as me, gave me a tour of Kaweni before showing me our building, I remember thinking, But this is a shantytown. As if he’d heard my thought, he turned to me and said You weren’t expecting this, were you? I walked along behind him and we passed a baby who was whining like a little dog. Its left arm was burned, covered in blackened scabs and pink blisters here and there. It wasn’t crying, or yelling, but was just sitting on the ground whining like a little wounded animal. A woman wrapped in a length of red-and-brown cloth emerged from a hut still talking animatedly to someone inside. She didn’t pick up the child in her arms but sat down on the low wall beside it. The baby buried its head between the legs swathed in brown-and-red fabric and continued whimpering. I then made the stupidest remark of my life, But, for heaven’s sake, we’re in France here! and Chebani laughed until tears came into his eyes. Farther up he showed me a group of young people sitting under a breadfruit tree and behind them there was a wall on which GAZA had been graffitied in green. I took a photo of it and sent it to some friends in Paris. Ha, ha, very funny!

  With two members of the local mission, Roukia and Toyba, two Mahorian women of about twenty, who’d lived on Réunion for a long time, we decided to make this clubhouse a place where young people could come and read, watch films, listen to music and play board games. We had no internet connection but we had this open, attractive pale yellow house, surrounded by fuchsia bougainvillea, we had a whole range of music, pop, rap, trap, R&B, classic hits, film screenings on Saturday evenings, domino tournaments and other games, and educational activities to help the young people escape from their “boredom.” Maybe later we’d arrange literacy classes for anyone interested. Such were, more or less, the contents of the first report I sent to the Paris office.

  It took us a good two weeks to move everything in, books, a good hi-fi system, an overhead projector, and several young people came to have a look. I was pleased, I’d learned several words in Shimaore, the local language, kwezi, wawe ouhiriori bani, jeje bweni, marahaba, ewa, “Good day, what’s your name, good day Madame, thank you, yes,” and my accent made them laugh but they never argued with me. Chebani told me to watch my step with “the little scumbags” but I didn’t want to listen to other people, their cynicism, their views on everything, their judgment. I wanted to do things differently, not be the clichéd embodiment of the embattled, embittered humanitarian.

  The newly elected member of parliament, a little man with a friendly, smiling face, opened the clubhouse one Thursday evening. He gave a speech to some fifty guests and very few young people. There were two TV cameras and women singing merrily in Shimaore while banging on two pieces of wood. This reminded me of the claves, the hardwood sticks played in my youth when I was studying music at the Conservatoire. I was happy, convinced that I’d be doing good work here. The following day I’d arranged a film screening in the open air, with the overhead projector displaying the film on a big white sheet. I chose Goldfinger and the courtyard, the street, and the hillside were packed with people, dogs, and goats.

  For a time the “Young People Forward” club was a roaring success. I received regular visits from the newly elected member who strolled about in the courtyard, his hands clasped behind his back as if all of this, the house, the garden, the hill, and all the huts one could see, belonged to him.

  I steered clear of talk about the illegal immigrants, the burglaries, the lack of security. I lived in Combani, at the center of the island, in a little flat above a wrought-iron craftsman’s workshop. This was the countryside, where there were vast trees with grooved trunks that produced fruits that had a prehistoric look about them: enormous and twisted. Behind the house there was a large vegetable plot and in front of the house women sold their vegetables and slept beside them, on boards. I’d bought a motorbike and often rode around the island. On Saturday nights I’d go out with a group of friends whom I’d got to know around the place, among them midwives, nurses, young entrepreneurs, teachers, all young like me and white like me, with theories spilling out of their mouths and not an ounce of courage in their hands. To remake the world by grilling chicken on beaches, going clubbing, having a quick fuck, enjoying midnight swims, waking at noon to the sound of the muezzin, and diving in the most beautiful lagoon in the world, making the most of it, knowing that this was only a phase of our careers. Quite soon, in a year, two years, three at the very most, we’d be returning home, our pockets bulging with our bonuses, our hands still clasped behind our backs, and great theories still spilling out of our mouths.

  But one day I saw Mo. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of truth for everything to tip over. He was standing on the other side of the dusty road, watching me opening boxes of books the club had just received. I’d never seen him before. I was sure of it because there was something about Mo, something that set him apart from the other local boys who always strolled around in twos and threes, I don’t know how to explain it properly. It was as if he was there but in the blink of an eye he could vanish.

  I stood up: would he like to help me bring in the books? For a moment he stayed there, leaning against the scrub-covered hillside the color of earth, and I remember shading my eyes with my hand, wondering if I’d been dreaming. But no, he detached himself from the slope and came over. He was tall and very thin. He kept his rucksack on his back and his cap on his head and began opening the boxes and carrying in the books. I noticed the tail end of a scar on his face, but as he kept his cap on I didn’t see any more of it. He didn’t say a word, but worked in silence with an economy of movement. Afterward we folded up the cardboard boxes and that was when I heard his voice for the first time. He asked me, in perfect French and in a husky voice, as if he’d not spoken for a long time Could I keep one of these boxes please?

  I don’t know why this voice broke my heart, I’m not ashamed to say this. I nodded vigorously, adding Of course, of course, take as many as you want. He thanked me and went away.

  Mo came back a few times, always a little after the lunch hour when Gaza empties of its inhabitants and it’s too hot to hang around. He’d help me if there was something to be done but often I let him be and he’d sit down with his book, always the same one, The Boy and the River, one hand on his brown rucksack, his cap always pulled well down on his head. Around four o’clock he’d turn down the corner of a page, stand up, come and find me wherever I was, offer me his hand, and say thank you in his voice that was still hoarse. Once or twice I tried to engage him in conversation, but he always kept his head down and his hands clung to the straps of his rucksack. I abandoned the attempt, mindful of what we’d been told at head office in Paris: always listen, but don’t interfere.

  At any rate the days passed quickly in a mixture of heat, dust and noise. The adolescents themselves, the ones whom the administration referred to as “unaccompanied minors,” kept their distance. When I came to work in the morning I’d see some of them at the entrance to the neighborhood, under the canopy of a grocer’s shop or a little farther off beneath a more solid shelter. They’d watch me passing by with impassive faces, their bodies leaning forward, they were high, and I knew they’d been sleeping or been trying to sleep there. Sometimes, at the end of the morning, I’d see them again, the same on
es or almost the same, sitting there, heads resting on chests, knocked out by joints and the heat.

  One day the elected member invited me to a mourengué. He told me it was an ancestral style of fighting and I don’t know why I assumed it was a variant of the martial art capoeira. He seemed pleased with the work of the club, telling me there had been a fall in delinquency, that people were less afraid to walk through Gaza, and, by the way, that this neighborhood should no longer be referred to as Gaza but could resume its proper name, Kaweni.

  The drummers with their gomas, the local drums, were already there, as well as a sound system playing strong, rhythmic, traditional music. Night had fallen but it was still hot. A man stepped forwards with a whistle around his neck and the drumming began. Then two boys joined him, stripped to the waist, and when the signal was given they hurled themselves at one another, flinging out their arms and legs without any real technique. The one who fell to the ground first lost the round, and walked sheepishly back into the crowd, while the other did a few dance steps, to the rhythm of the gomas and even the strains of the referee’s whistle. There were several rounds like that. The crowd laughed wholeheartedly, was quick to applaud and sometimes the fighters danced together, it was joyous, amusing, festive. Then this young man appeared. I’d never seen him before but the crowd began yelling, more in earnest than before, more solemnly almost, and the yelling drowned out the drumming of the gomas. There was a little boy beside me and I asked him Who’s he? Eyes shining, he replied That’s Bruce, the Don of Gaza, he wins all the mourengués. The winner of the previous bout, a sturdy young man, came dancing forward. His eyes were shut as if he were in a trance. Bruce went up to him. There was a group of youngsters behind him, I recognized a few, having seen them during the open-air film screenings. The atmosphere was no longer joyous but tense, uneasy. The referee blew his whistle and the fight began. Bruce was very strong, he dealt blows both with his head and his fists, his aim was good, he made good use of his energy and strength. His adversary held his own but his face was bleeding as the blows rained down on him. Suddenly Bruce kicked out and struck the other one in the belly. The thickset fighter fell to the ground. Unlike the other winners, Bruce didn’t begin dancing but went over to his opponent on the ground and made as if to punch him in the face. The thickset young man brought his knees up to his chest and went into the fetal position. The crowd fell silent, only the gomas went on drumming and all of a sudden I had the impression that I was in a quite different space, a place of black magic, one with rules I didn’t understand. Bruce stood up, raised his arm in the air and the crowd gave a joyous yell.