As soon as the officer turned his back, Johnson burst out laughing, laughing uncontrollably and muttering to himself. Here was a man who had gravely wronged the people of Liberia, a man of the devil. There he was, unarmed, in the centre of Monrovia. He, Prince Johnson, was a man of the Church, a man who had become involved in tribal wars at God’s command. God had commanded that he, Prince Johnson, wage tribal war. Wage tribal war to kill the devil’s men. The devil’s men who had so gravely wronged the people of Liberia. And chief among the devil’s men was Samuel Doe. Now God in his infinite goodness had offered Johnson a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take care of Samuel Doe once and for all. The voice of the Lord compelled him, it urged him on.
Prince Johnson organised a commando team of veteran soldiers twenty men strong. He himself commanded the commandos. They hid their weapons under the seats of the Jeep. The guns were well hidden; they drove right past the checkpoint where visitors were supposed to hand in their weapons. As soon as they got inside the ECOMOG compound, they took out their guns and started massacring Samuel Doe’s ninety bodyguards, then they went up to the first floor where Samuel Doe was meeting with the Ghanaian general who was in command of ECOMOG. The commando squad forced everyone to lie down, and they seized Samuel Doe. They tied Samuel Doe’s hands behind his back, shoved him down the stairs, and threw him into a Jeep full of soldiers armed to the teeth. All of this was done double quick, at the double so that the ECOMOG forces had no time to regroup, to retaliate. The commando team was able to drive right out the gates of ECOMOG without firing a shot. The commandos brought Samuel Doe to the safety of Johnson’s sanctuary (‘sanctuary’ means ‘a secret, sacred place’). There, they untied him and threw him to the ground.
Once on the ground, in a fury of shoes and fists, in a fit of delirious laughter, Prince Johnson hurled himself at Samuel Doe screaming, ‘You are the president of Liberia making war to remain president. You are a man of the devil! A man guided by the devil. You want to remain president by force of arms. President of the Republic, President of all the peoples of Liberia. Lord Jesus!’
He took Doe by the ear and sat him down. He cut off his ears, the right ear after the left.
‘You want to negotiate with me. This is how I negotiate with the devil’s minions.’
The more the blood flowed, the more Johnson laughed, the more delirious he became. Prince Johnson ordered that Samuel Doe’s fingers be cut off, one by one, and, with his torture victim squealing like a suckling calf, he had his tongue cut out. Through the torrent of blood, Johnson hacked at the arms, one after the other. When he tried to hack off the left arm, the victim had had enough: he gave up the ghost (‘give up the ghost’ means ‘die’).
It was then, only then, that ECOMOG officers arrived at Johnson’s camp. They had rushed there to negotiate the release of Samuel Doe. They arrived too late. They noted the torture and witnessed what followed (‘torture’ is corporal punishment that is enforced by justice).
Between wild fits of laughter, Johnson shouted orders. Samuel Doe’s heart was removed. One of the officers ate some human flesh to make himself look more cruel, more brutal, more barbarous and inhuman—real, genuine human flesh. Samuel Doe’s heart was put to one side for the officer so he could make a delicious kebab out of it. Then a tall rickety platform was set up outside the town on the road down there that leads to the cemetery. The dictator’s carcass was lugged there and thrown on top of the platform. For two days and two nights it was left there, exposed to the vultures, until a royal vulture, majestically, came to perform the final act, came to pluck out the eyes, both eyes from their sockets. In doing so the royal vulture destroyed Samuel Doe’s immanent power and the immanent forces of his many grigris. (‘Immanent’ is that which is inherent, which comes from the very nature of the thing itself.)
After that, the carcass, whose stench could be smelled a mile away, was taken down and thrown to a pack of dogs. A pack of overexcited dogs that fought it out, snarling and biting for two days and two nights under the platform. The dogs attacked the corpse, wolfed it down, carved it up between them. They made a hearty meal of it, a tasty lunch.
Faforo! Gnamokodé!
Mother Superior Marie-Béatrice was a saint who made love like every woman in the universe. Except it was hard to imagine the saint underneath a man receiving love on account of how she was a virago. (A ‘virago’ is a woman whose looks and manner are masculine.) She was too muscular and too tall. She had a wide, spreading nose, her lips were too thick and she had the eyebrows of a gorilla. And another thing: her hair was cropped short. And another thing: she had rolls of fat at the back of her head like men have. And another thing: she wore a soutane. And another thing: on top of the soutane she wore a kalash. And all that was on account of tribal wars. But it was really, honestly, hard to imagine her kissing Prince Johnson on the lips and lying underneath him to take his love. Walahé!
Let’s start at the start.
When the tribal wars arrived in Monrovia, Marie-Béatrice was mother superior of the biggest convent school in the capital. The bishop’s palace sent ten soldiers and eighteen child-soldiers under the command of a captain to defend the school. The captain deployed his men. And then looters came along and attacked the convent. The guards panicked and were quickly outmanoeuvred. The looters started to loot all the holy relics. Well, that got Saint Marie-Béatrice really angry, she took off her cornet, ripped a kalash out of one of the soldiers’ hands, got down on the ground, and machine-gunned and machine-gunned. She killed five looters and the rest of them made a run for it. From then on, Saint Marie-Béatrice took the defence of the convent in hand, in her iron fist. She informed the captain that he and his men were to take orders from her and her alone.
Before attacking the convent school, the looters had taken the bishop’s palace where they horribly tortured the monsignor and five priests before murdering them. The rest of them ran away, made off like thieves. Marie-Béatrice’s convent school was the only institution still functioning in the centre of Monrovia, seeing as how all the other Catholic missions and all the houses round the convent school had been looted, and abandoned by their occupants. That’s where Marie-Béatrice showed herself equal to the challenge; that’s when she performed her miracles, her feats, her acts of heroism; that’s when she earned her stripes as an actual, genuine saint.
For Saint Marie-Béatrice, every day was the same, each one just twenty-four hours long and it never seemed enough. Every day there was always work left over for the saint to do the next day. Marie-Béatrice woke up at four in the morning, grabbed the kalash that she always had right by her side all night. That’s tribal wars for you. She put on her cornet, her soutane, tied her shoelaces and then quietly crept up to the sentry posts to surprise the sentries. Every morning she surprised the stupid sentries snoring and kicked them in the arse to wake them up, then she’d come back inside and ring the bell. The nuns and everyone else in the convent woke up for morning prayers. After that, there was breakfast if last night’s alms had been plentiful (‘alms’ means ‘money or food given as charity to the poor’).
Saint Marie-Béatrice would have her four-by-four convertible brought round, and she’d sit up front beside the driver wearing her kalash and her cornet, obviously. She’d arrive back at about ten or eleven and every day, she performed the same miracle, because the four-by-four would arrive stuffed with victuals (‘victuals’ means ‘provisions, food’). Then she’d start the healing. The crippled, the lame, the blind would gather round her and she would heal them vigorously. Then she would go into the courtyard where there were sick people all over the place, some even lying on the ground ready to drop dead, and the nuns would tend to them and Saint Marie-Béatrice would give them the last rites. After that, she would do a quick tour of the kitchen and she’d always find little brats dodging in and out between the cooks pilfering vegetables and eating them raw. She’d give them a whack of her stick like you’d give a thieving dog. They screamed and ran away.
> Then came lunch; but before that Saint Marie-Béatrice would thank the Good Lord for giving them their daily bread. After lunch came religious education. Everyone listened to the religious education, even the cripples and the blind and the people about to drop dead. Then there was more healing on account of there was always a couple of the sick who needed to be healed twice a day. Then there was dinner if last night’s alms had been plentiful and after that came the interminable evening prayer. Before she went to bed, Saint Marie-Béatrice would go and check on the good-for-nothing guards at the sentry posts who were still dozing and by the time she was ready to take off her cornet and put the AK-47 beside her bed and lie down for her well-deserved rest, it was already four o’clock in the morning and the fucking sun was about to pop up again over this cursed country of tribal war, Liberia.
The fact that Marie-Béatrice’s convent school managed to withstand the looters for four months was extraordinary. It was a miracle. Feeding fifty people for four months in looted, deserted Monrovia was extraordinary. It was a miracle. Everything Marie-Béatrice had managed to do in the four months under siege was extraordinary. It was a miracle. Marie-Béatrice had performed miraculous feats. She was a saint: Saint Marie-Béatrice.
In spite of what everyone says about Allah never leaving empty a mouth he has created, everyone was speechless and everyone said Marie-Béatrice was a genuine saint for having fed so many people for four months. We don’t need to get into an argument, we’ll just call her what everyone else called her: Saint Marie-Béatrice. A genuine saint. A saint with a cornet and an AK-47! Gnamokodé!
At the beginning of civil war in tribal war Liberia, there were only two factions, Taylor’s and Samuel Doe’s. The two factions hated each other to death and fought on every front. Prince Johnson’s faction didn’t exist back then. Back then, Prince Johnson was part of Taylor’s group; he was the most efficient, the most veteran, the most influential general that Taylor had. Right up until the day when the Prince had a revelation. The revelation that he had a mission. A mission to save Liberia. To save Liberia by demanding that power could not be wielded by any warlord who, gun in hand, had fought to liberate Liberia.
That was the day he broke with Taylor, on account of Taylor wanted to be president. Prince Johnson deserted, taking Taylor’s best officers and declared himself Taylor’s sworn enemy, his bitter opponent. Samuel Doe, the dictator, heard his tirades against Taylor. (A ‘tirade’ is a long, angry speech, usually of a censorious nature.) And Samuel Doe believed the speeches and thought that in Prince Johnson he had found a natural ally, a friend with whom he could negotiate. Everyone knows what happened, what it cost him. Some officer made a tasty kebab out of Samuel Doe’s heart and the royal vulture made a tasty lunch of his eyes one afternoon under the perpetually hazy skies of Monrovia.
After the rift with Taylor, Prince Johnson had to find subsistence for everyone who had followed him, everyone who had put their trust in him, and there was a whole battalion of them. Every man with his people and his family. And, even though Allah never leaves empty a mouth he has created, things were tough. Really tough! Faforo!
He started out by attacking one of the NPFL frontier posts so that he could get some duties and taxes for himself, some of the customs duties of independent Liberia. Prince Johnson used maximum force; he sent in several waves of fighters, grenade attacks, mortars, shells. The attack lasted so many days that there was even time to alert the ECOMOG peacekeeping forces, there was even time for them to get there. They arrived with even more maximum forces. The peacekeeping forces didn’t keep the peace, they didn’t take any unnecessary risks. (I’ll explain the word ‘risk’ for Black Nigger African Natives: it means ‘the possibility of suffering harm or loss’.) They weren’t bothered about details, they just fired at random, they fired shells at the people doing the attacking and at the people being attacked. They bombed right into the crowd, into the chaos. In a single day they produced loads of innocent victims, more victims than a whole week of the rival factions just fighting with each other. When the uproar died down, the peacekeeping force picked up the wounded. The wounded were evacuated to field hospitals run by ECOMOG. They drew up a report about the area. That was their role, their mission. They ascertained that it was Johnson’s territory. He had the upper hand. Therefore Johnson got to take advantage of the customs post. Under their surveillance.
Now that was sorted, Prince Johnson could take care of the dead. We dug a mass grave for our dead, and there were lots of dead. Among the dead were three child-soldiers. Three of the Good Lord’s children, according to the saint. They weren’t friends of mine. Their names were Mamadou the Mad, John the Proud and Boukary the Damned. They died because that’s how Allah wanted things. And Allah is not obliged to be fair about everything he does. And I’m not obliged to say a funeral oration for these three child-soldiers.
The funeral prayers were led by Prince Johnson in person. After the prayers, we stood round the mass grave and raised our guns and fired the parting salvo. (‘Salvo’, according to the Petit Robert, means ‘a simultaneous discharge of firearms’.)
But news of the battle for the customs post had got about pretty much everywhere. There’d been so many dead, so much blood and chaos that all the foreign companies started avoiding the customs post.
We (we meaning the members of Johnson’s faction) thought it was temporary. For long weeks we waited but nobody showed up at the customs post. There was nothing to loot, so we didn’t get paid and we didn’t have much to eat. People started complaining. Then the soldiers started deserting. Johnson knew what he was up against, he abandoned the border post. He abandoned the post and all the graves of all those who died in order to capture it. Faforo!
There was still the problem of secure and steady profits, and it had to be solved. Even grigrimen like Yacouba were starting to complain; they hadn’t got enough to eat and they weren’t being paid for the grigris they made. This time, Johnson attacked a gold- and diamond-mining town controlled by ULIMO, who were supporters of Samuel Doe. In his usual way—a dog never gives up his shameless habits—Prince Johnson used maximum force. Grenades and mortars and wave after wave of soldiers. The attackers resisted heroically. There was lots of blood and lots of people dead. The battle lasted several days. The attack lasted so many days that there was even time to alert the ECOMOG peacekeeping forces, there was even time for them to get there. The peacekeeping forces didn’t keep the peace, they didn’t take any unnecessary risks. They weren’t bothered about details, they just fired shells at random, they fired shells at the people doing the attacking and at the people being attacked. They bombed every part of the town, the natives’ quarter, full of Black Nigger African Natives, and the miners’ quarter. When everything was demolished, when no one was moving any more, not the attackers or the attacked, the peacekeeping forces stopped massacring. They picked up the wounded. The wounded were evacuated to their field hospitals. They drew up a report about the status of forces on the ground. That was their role, their mission, their duty. They ascertained that it was Johnson’s territory. Therefore Johnson was awarded control of the town and took over running the mines.
The dead were taken away. Lots of dead. In spite of all the Christian grigris and all the Muslim grigris, four child-soldiers had been blown to bits. They were more than dead, twice as dead. Their remains were dumped in a mass grave with the rest of the dead. As the grave was being filled in, Prince Johnson cried. It was strange seeing a warlord, a warlord like Johnson, crying his heart out because he was so, so angry at ECOMOG. He was wearing his monk’s habit for the occasion, and he prayed and made speeches. Like Saint Marie-Béatrice, he said that the child-soldiers were the Good Lord’s children. God had given them, God had taken them away. God doesn’t always have to be fair. Thanks be to God. It was as good as a funeral oration and that means I don’t have to give a funeral oration that I don’t want to give. Thanks be to God.
But capturing the gold- and diamond-mining town had caused so
much blood, caused so much death, that everyone in the area had run off. Nobody wanted to come back; the bossman partners didn’t want to come back. No bossman partners, no mining; no mining, no taxes; no taxes, no American dollars. Johnson found himself back at square one where he was before he seized the town. And time was getting on, and the soldiers and their families and all the child-soldiers and the men in the battalion were starting to grumble. They had made too many worthless sacrifices; they were impatient. Prince Johnson had to do something, he had to find something gnona-gnona.
Johnson went back to Monrovia. Everything in Monrovia had been looted, destroyed; the only thing left, the only building left standing, was Saint Marie-Béatrice’s convent. Saint Marie-Béatrice was proud; she was provocative, she incited people and defied them.
And there were rumours … there were thousands of rumours about all the stuff inside the convent. Masses of food, loads of gold and fat wads of American dollars. All stuffed in huge catacombs that spread out and out and went on and on.
Prince Johnson wanted to find out for himself if the rumours people were spreading were true. He decided to seize the convent. He started by sending an ultimatum to the mother superior, Saint Marie-Béatrice. (An ‘ultimatum’ is a proposal that is not open to discussion.) This ultimatum demanded that the mother superior officially declare her allegiance to the only legitimate faction in Liberia, meaning Johnson’s faction. The mother superior responded that the only thing in the convent was children, women, nuns and a few pitiful wretches. (A ‘wretch’ is a poor, miserable, unfortunate or unhappy person.) All she asked of any Liberian worthy of the name was a little alms, a little mercy. She didn’t have to take sides.
This wasn’t an answer, it was a rejection. It was bullshit, it was an affront, an insult. Prince Johnson got angry and, in retaliation, he ruled that the convent school had to pay taxes in the amount of three hundred American dollars to his government as a contribution to the war effort. Immediately.
Allah is Not Obliged Page 12