Hear my country’s roar, hear Gaza’s rage, hear how it creeps and raps its way toward us, hear that nigga music, feel the glowing embers against your scarred face. Look, Mo, take a look with your cursed djinn’s eye. They’re coming for revenge.
They’re coming for you.
Marie
You must believe me. Here, I’m a memory rising to the surface, a shadow lengthening at dusk, the misty corner of an eye. I still turn in the wind, but I no longer burn in the sun. Hours and days and years pass down this same road, with no colors, no contours, no light. Lies and dreams no longer exist. Just life subsists and the hell of others.
I can hear the clamor and fury swelling in the lanes and alleyways of Gaza, I can feel the ground shaking as all those feet pound the earth in its streets. Something’s coming near but my son doesn’t know it yet.
I watch Moïse lying on the ground in his cell. He’s tired from his journey to hell which began the day I collapsed onto our kitchen floor. And the other boy, the one who could never be still, the one who couldn’t believe he was dead, wants to get away but he can’t. He hasn’t yet learned that it’s not his decision.
The silence around Moïse is doing him good, he’s looking through the window at the unmoving blue sky and remembering the word he was trying to find just now, trompe l’oeil. He closes his eyes.
His thoughts are dancing around like mayflies at the end of the southern winter. He’s imagining the moment when he’ll be able to slip his arms through the straps of his rucksack again, give a little hitch of his hips to hoist it up, tighten the buckles and feel its familiar weight on his back. He’s thinking about the way the policeman spoke to him just now. He’s wondering how long he’s going to stay in this big, square cell. He tells himself he could stay here for weeks, even years, and he’d be content with that blue sky, with this cool concrete floor.
One thought is followed by another. He thinks about me and sees me in his mind’s eye at Nassuf’s restaurant one evening, in my blue-and-green silk scarf. Right there, in front of our steaming plates of fish in coconut milk, I’m laughing and saying But to be a coral planter’s not a profession! The memory of me, of us two together, stops his shaking. He smiles very slightly and the scar running across his face barely moves. His stomach rumbles but he has no desire to eat, he now prefers to withstand his own body, to feel independent of it. When he thinks about the juvenile magistrate who’ll be seeing him soon now, or tomorrow, he pictures himself in an elegant office opposite a woman whose face looks like mine.
Outside, suddenly, the wheels of a vehicle squeal on the gravel. Car doors slam. There are hurried, impatient shouts.
Moïse’s thoughts slow down, I can see their contours, huddling back, closing in on themselves, withering with fear, turning into heavy marbles and plummeting silently to the ground one by one.
Moïse gets up and stands in the elongated rectangle of light. He closes his fingers around an imaginary pistol, points his index finger at his own brow and says Bang.
Moïse
The cop takes me by the right arm, the fireman by the left, and they pick me up as if I were nothing but a bit of dry wood, hollow inside. As my feet leave the ground they pause for a microsecond and look at one another in surprise, as if they were expecting something else, for me to be heavier, for me to protest, I don’t know.
I want to ask the cop if I can retrieve my rucksack but he’s red in the face and sweating heavily. His shirt is soaking and at intervals the sugary, acrid smell of him reaches my nostrils. The fireman, in uniform, settles in at the wheel but before driving off he looks at me in the driving mirror. The look he gives me is so gentle that it’s unbearable. I look down.
“Moïse?”
“Yes.”
“We’re taking you to see the magistrate but don’t get out of the car until we reach the courthouse. Even on the ferry we’ll stay in the car, do you understand? Otherwise I’ll put the cuffs on you.”
“They’re looking for me, aren’t they?”
The cop doesn’t answer, but just slaps the driver’s seat with the flat of his hand. The fireman drives off at full tilt.
Inside the red 4×4 I do what I’ve so often done in Gaza. I sit with my knees pressed together, my hands between my thighs, my head sunk into my shoulders, staring at my feet. I inhale deeply, holding my breath as long as possible, breathing out slowly. Making myself small, as small as a useless pebble.
I like to think that if I’d looked out I’d be seeing all the things I used to see when I lived on Petite-Terre with Marie and Bosco. The almost perfect view of the airport to the left, just after the Judo Club, the elegant sidewalks neatly lining the road that always seems newly resurfaced, black and smooth, the torrent of fabrics of all colors hanging from the verandas of the little corrugated iron shops, the smell of fries from Maoré Burger, the dry, closely mown lawn in front of the airport, the palm trees in the wind, the white-and-blue aircraft against the horizon. Or maybe the pizza van beside the post office with its permanent advertisement, “Buy four pizzas get one free,” the dense bougainvilleas at the entrance to the Chinese restaurant, and the market women reclining beside their displays of tomatoes and bananas. I like to think that for one last time I’d catch sight of my friend Moussa coming back from school, impatient to listen to his mgodro music and to shake his buttocks. In Labbatoir there’d be the usual old men, the bacocos who don’t speak a word of French, tucked away in odd corners selling jasmine flowers for one euro a bunch. In the little bay beside the fishermen’s jetty there’d certainly be children and in the car park the fishermen would be using bits of cardboard to chase away the flies from the treasure of their catch: tread-fins, parrot fish, bonitos, long-fin tuna.
As the car gathered speed along the boulevard des Crabes, I imagined the wind on my face, the sea, blue and green on both sides of the road, beating against the black heart of the rocks.
At this time of the afternoon there’d certainly already be blue smoke from the grilled meat stalls and dozens of taxis in the car park by the landing stage. In the distance, if I’d been able to look out, I’d have seen the ferry approaching. And then I’d have waited, counting the way Marie used to inside her hand, on the thick flesh of her finger joints, the seconds that elapsed before hearing the ferry’s siren, one-two-three little finger, four-five-six ring finger …
On the ferry, Olivier, the cop, tells me to keep my head down which isn’t a problem for me. Beneath my feet I can feel the throbbing of the boat’s engine and the backwash of the waves. In the depths of the water I picture the invisible furrows left by the dugongs and coelacanths and, deeper still, those creatures with huge mouths and teeth shaped like claws that only live in the ocean’s darkness. The pleasant rocking motion made me stop thinking about Bruce, about Marie, about Bosco, about the house. I thought about a boy born fifteen years ago on one of the Comoros Islands who could have had a different life if he’d been born with two dark eyes. I wondered what he could have done, that boy, to break free from his chains, to avoid that path he’d started on of violence, ignorance, and revulsion. I wondered if the truth wasn’t that he was done for before he’d even begun, that boy, and along with him, all those other boys and girls, born, like him, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I thought about those long minutes spent swimming in the bay at Bandrakouni, the velvety water that had taken me in its arms gently, gently. Maybe I should have gone on swimming that day, thrusting with my arms and legs, the way I still know how to do, swimming, swimming until I came to a land that would accept a boy like me.
The siren sounds as we approach the bay of Mamoudzou and the ferry comes alongside. The fireman drives off and slowly the car moves down the creaking gangway, then up onto the jetty. Olivier says to me That’s right, keep your head down. I give him a sidelong glance, he looks uneasy but smiles and whispers Everything’s OK Moïse. Then he gestures and holds out his hand so that it lies across the part of my face that’s scarred. His skin’s cool against
my scar which no longer feels tight, it no longer exists at all and I’d like him to keep his hand against my face a little longer, just a little longer. The vehicle drives forward in the line of cars, it’s heading down the laterite track which runs beside the market which soon joins the main road. Over to the right lies Gaza, along to the left lie the magistrate’s court, then the towns of Passamainti, Dembeni, Bandrele, Kani-Kéli. And all the while Olivier has kept his hand there, maybe I’m leaning my head gently against his palm the way Bosco used to do when he wanted me to go on stroking him, but all at once he has a sharp intake of breath, withdraws his hand from my face and says Holy shit, what the fuck’s going on? But I know.
I’ve stopped keeping my head down. I’m looking out of the window because when the moment comes and it’s all over, you’ve got no choice. What I can see is unreal and, in all its unreality, its ponderousness, depth, and darkness, it is becoming magnificent.
To my right, the mangrove swamp seems to be stirring, quivering, moving. Dozens of children are emerging from between the mangrove trees and their green leaves and tangled branches along that stretch of sand-earth-and-sea. They aren’t running, they’re not hurrying, it’s as if they’re in slow motion. They’re wearing shorts and T-shirts, their legs are the color of ash, their mouths are shut but they have sticks in their hands. All along the road that leads to Gaza barrels are rolling toward us with a rumbling sound and behind each barrel there are children and young men. In the gullies on the red hill facing us other children are waiting. To the left, coming down from place Mariage and the steps of the administrative building, above which the blue, white, and red flag is flying, boys with bare chests are advancing toward us. They have machetes in their hands and they, too, are walking slowly.
There is a brief moment of silence when in the yellow afternoon light all that is moving is the mangrove swamp, the earth, the hill and the children of Mayotte.
The cars begin hooting, some of them are trying to get out of the line of traffic, others try to back away. Olivier and the fireman start yelling into their phones. Their words reach my ears in jerky bursts, reinforcements, kids, Gaza, rioters, war and I only half understand their words. I’m outside my body, I’m in the car, but I’m also outside it, I don’t know if it’s fear that does this or if madness is taking possession of me.
Soon this moving noose that surrounds us begins to open its mouth and only one sound, one single syllable emerges from its giant mouth, MO! And the sticks beat the ground, MO! And the machetes slice the air, MO! And the children wave their fists that are clutching stones, MO! The noose unfurls around us like some monstrous octopus.
I don’t know what comes over me, it’s like an impulse, as deep as the ocean, not to give in, not to march to their tune, this time, and while the acrid and sugary stench from Olivier fills the passenger compartment, and the fireman is reaching under his seat for a big stick, I leap out of the car. I hear Olivier’s voice yelling, Moïse, but I don’t look back. Behind me the mangrove swamp, the hillside and the whole road that leads to Gaza all explode at the same time with a monumental din.
MO! they all yell.
I don’t stop, tonight it’s war, tonight it’s the wolves’ banquet and no one could protect me from this pack. I bob and weave between the cars, I see stunned faces behind the windows, people hiding between rocks but I don’t stop, I’m running toward the sea that brought me here. As long as my feet are pounding the earth I’m not afraid, as long as I can feel the hot, salty breeze lashing my face, hear the fury behind me, no, it’s not like it was before when everything would shrivel up inside me, when I no longer knew who I was and what my name was. No, as long as I’m heading for the ocean, I’m no longer afraid.
My name’s Moïse, I’m fifteen years old, and I’m alive.
I see the jetty and I speed up, I’m thrust onward by the chacal’s breath of the pack, by my desire to wash away that whole shitty life, I’m thinking about Marie, I’m thinking about Bosco and about Gatzo and Pascalet and it seems to me that they’re here, running beside me, encouraging me, carrying me along. I can feel the ground changing, it’s no longer earth but the jetty’s hard cement beneath my feet. I can’t see the others, I’m no longer scared of them, armed with their machetes, their cudgels, and their stones. I soon get to the end but I’m not afraid, this magnificent, shining blue, this blue that maybe only exists here in this ocean, is calling me. Without pausing I do what all the children on Mayotte do at least once in their lives, I launch my body off the end of the jetty, my chest swells, my legs and arms fly up. I dive into Mamoudzou’s harbor, I cleave the ocean with my supple, living body, and I don’t resurface.
NATHACHA APPANAH was born in Mauritius in 1973, and she was brought up there, eventually working as a journalist, before moving to France in 1998. Her previous novels include The Last Brother and Waiting for Tomorrow. Tropic of Violence was the winner of the Prix Femina des Lycéens in 2016, as well as seven other literary awards.
GEOFFREY STRACHAN is the translator of the novels of Andreï Makine and Jérôme Ferrari, as well as of Nathacha Appanah’s The Last Brother and Waiting for Tomorrow. He was awarded the Scott Moncrieff Prize for his translation of Le Testament Français.
The text of Tropic of Violence is set in Haarlemmer. Book design by Libanus Press. Composition by Bookmobile Design and Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by McNaughton & Gunn on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
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