For our headquarters I chose a large building at the edge of the district, on its main street. The only thing that hadn’t been stolen from the structure (because it couldn’t be torn away) was a blackboard painted directly on the wall; and from this I deduced that the place must have been a school. Everything that makes a school a school—tables, benches, books—had been looted. Who had been there before us? I took the principal’s office all to myself, and I sent the others to camp out in a huge room that had no doubt been a gym at some point. There I had them all line up and stand at attention, so I could give my first orders.
“We’re no longer the Mata Mata. Our unit has to choose a new name. Any suggestions?”
Actually, I already had one in mind, but I wanted them to rack their brains so I could get an idea of their abilities. It went without saying, of course, that I would reject all of their suggestions, even the good ones. I’d tell them that the names they came up with weren’t worth shit, and then I’d announce, in a commanding way, my own unarguable and definitive choice as leader. As I expected, they came up with nothing but vulgar, banal names they’d seen or heard on TV—stupid names like the Ninjas, Cobras, Zulus, Mambas, Sharks, Condors, Falcons, and so on. No one hit on anything worthwhile. So then, in a voice full of authority, I announced:
“The Indomitable Lions! That’s your new name.”
To my great surprise, I heard chuckles. They were laughing! They never did that to Giap. Even before I had time to react, I heard Little Pepper burst out in an indignant voice:
“No, no! Not that, sir!”
“And why not?” I asked, trying to keep my voice firm. “Have you got anything against the king of beasts?”
“We’re not a soccer team.”
Shit—shit! I’d forgotten that the Indomitable Lions were the national soccer team of Cameroon. How could I get myself out of this?
“So what?” I demanded. “Where’s the shame in being named after a great soccer team?”
“No, that’s ridiculous, sir. We’re not soccer players, and we’re not here to play a game. We’re soldiers. How about the Black Panthers? A panther doesn’t play around—it leaps straight onto its prey.”
This was said not by Little Pepper but by Exocet. For a long time the asshole’s name had been Missile, but one fine morning, as he was waking up, he heard a radio report on a war taking place somewhere in the Gulf, in Iraq or Iran, and he’d suddenly announced to everyone that from then on his name was Exocet. What a shit-head. But I had to come up with something quickly—a leader should never let himself be outflanked. Giap would have put a stop to all this nonsense with one of his mystical looks. So I adopted the pose of a man who was deep in thought and whose brain was revving like the engine of a warplane:
“Panther . . . panther. No—too common, too vulgar. Jaguar! That’s it—jaguar! It’s the most dangerous of the panthers, and it doesn’t even live here in our country.” (I was remembering an Indian or Brazilian film in which a man had been torn apart by a jaguar.) “We’re the Jaguar Commandos!”
Not at all a bad name. On balance I was satisfied, even if it wasn’t the name that I’d first proposed. The important thing was that I’d been the one who’d finally thought of it.
“Okay, let’s move on to something else.”
A finger was timidly raised, and behind it I recognized Piston’s head, bald as an egg. Piston was our specialist at hot-wiring vehicles—an essential skill when we were looting. The little guy could get a tank started with nothing more than a screwdriver.
“A jaguar isn’t a panther—it’s a car.”
Well, that floored me. Jaguar, a brand of car. Of course, I knew that. Shit! A leader must assert his authority from the outset. I shouldn’t have asked them for suggestions. Pili Pili, as soon as we’d named him Giap, had been instantly transformed into a leader and had sent me to fetch his boots, whereas I couldn’t even manage to impose a name on troops that were under my command. I wanted to be a democratic leader, but what do you expect—this wasn’t a democracy. Leaders didn’t get any respect in our country anymore. So, not knowing what to do to shore up my crumbling authority, I looked Piston in the eye while tilting my head back slightly, to show that I was gazing down on him from a height, and said:
“Yeah? So what?”
“Well,” he said, “we’re not cars.”
“Cars or not, we’re the Jaguars. Or the Tigers. See, we’re tigers—tigers that not only leap on their victims but roar in order to terrify them. Roaring Tigers. We’re the Roaring Tiger Commandos! Understand? Good, let’s move on to something else.”
Period. Over and out. End of sermon. And God help anyone who tried my patience with any more comments. But all of a sudden I thought: A tiger doesn’t roar. A lion roars, a dog barks, a cat meows, a sheep baas, but I didn’t know what a tiger says, and I was afraid one of the men would remark on this. Furious, I seized my Kalashnikov and cried:
“Like it or not, we’re the Roaring Tiger Commandos! Let’s move on to something else!”
Evidently there would be no further challenges to my authority, since nobody said a word. They had realized that a leader is always right, even when he’s wrong. But I couldn’t let it end there. I had to leave them with a strong impression.
While they continued to stand at attention, I took the Kalashnikov I was holding and, keeping my eyes on the men, I removed the clip, pulled the cover off the breech block and the repeater mechanism, and then—still without looking at my hands—removed the action and separated it from the housing. Immediately after dismantling the gun, my expert fingers reassembled it, and I concluded by tripping the release twice to make sure it was working properly. At last I fired a volley into the air. The whole maneuver hadn’t taken me more than ninety seconds. They couldn’t help applauding. Our leader—he can handle his gun with his eyes closed! That’s what they’d be saying over and over. And that would mean one thing: respect. They were going to respect me, even though some were older than me or had bigger muscles. And then I looked at them. I pointed at Twin-Head:
“Hey, Twin-Head, go fetch my boots!”
He stared at me as if he hadn’t understood.
“My boots! On the double! Don’t make me say it again!”
I think he must have silently called me a son of a bitch, since I saw his lips move but didn’t hear him say anything. He left the room and came back with the boots.
“Don’t forget to polish them before you give them to me!” I snapped, and returned to my office—with chin high, chest out, and a military gait, just like a general.
At that moment I heard Giap’s voice on the radio:
“This is General Giap speaking. Our brave freedom fighters have fought like lions, like buffalo! They’ve struck fear into the hearts of our enemies, who have fled with their tails between their legs. Victory! La luta continua! We are afraid of nothing! We will pursue them to the depths of the ocean—we will cling to them like lice! To celebrate this triumph of a liberated people, I, General Giap, together with our new president, give you full authorization to take anything you want for a period of forty-eight hours . . .”
I headed immediately for the room where my men were hanging out. In fact, they had already heard Giap on their own radios. A leader should always be a step ahead of his troops, and I wanted to show them I had more information than they did: I explained to them that the looting was a compensation for the bonus that had been promised us but not paid (the money that had caused the death of my friend Gator). And as for Giap, whether he liked it or not we were going to loot as much as we pleased. I made a big hit when I stood up to Giap like that—the men all applauded me. Some of them wanted to start right away. There were so many militias let loose on the town—aside from the regular soldiers and foreign mercenaries who’d come to help us win this war—that if we didn’t hurry, the city would be picked as clean as an elephant carcass after an attack of army ants.
I told them they were right: it was important to get there fir
st—for just as when an elephant is killed on a hunt, the first men on the scene would get the best parts. But there was a cardinal error to be avoided at all costs: one must never attack the Chechens by night, for they had owl-eyes that could see in the dark, and one was liable to be neutralized on the spot before even having the chance to lob a grenade or cock a machine gun. Of course, the darkness is an ally, but it can also be the worst of traps. The best way to take an enemy by surprise is to attack at first light, between darkness and sunrise, when no one really knows whether it’s still nighttime or already morning. That’s when people and animals are the least on their guard. It wasn’t Giap who had taught me this, but Major Rambo, our previous commander. That’s also the best time to begin raiding a town, because the people are taken by surprise and haven’t had time to conceal their money or their valuables. Some of them even bury their possessions before they flee. Once, Gator and I had surprised a guy who’d already buried his bicycle and was in the process of digging a hole to bury his fridge. So the best thing to do is wait until the crack of dawn—then descend on the houses without warning, chuck a few grenades, kick down the doors, roust the women out of bed naked without giving them a chance to put on their pagnes.
I don’t know why I said all this to a bunch of guys who knew everything there was to know about looting, since they’d already done it a thousand times and since it was the main reason we were fighting. To line our pockets. To become adults. To have all the women we wanted. To wield the power of a gun. To be the rulers of the world. Yeah, all of these things at the same time. But our leaders and our president had ordered us not to say this. They insisted that when people asked us questions we should say that we were fighting for freedom and democracy. By saying this, we’d win the sympathy of the outside world.
Maintaining my military posture, and holding my cell phone to my ear as if I were listening intently to an important message, I went outside.
The sky was beginning to brighten in the east. Soon daybreak would come, and in the blink of an eye the Roaring Tigers would descend on the town.
Chapter Nine
Laokolé
Mama gave me a stinging slap.
“Laokolé!”
I started as if I were coming back from another world, and the violent sobs that were racking me ceased abruptly.
“Fofo—where’s Fofo?” she asked, panic-stricken.
With a shock, I realized that Fofo wasn’t with us. Where could he be? In the madness of our flight, we’d lost him. Or rather, he had lost us. But where on earth should we begin looking for him?
“Fofo! Fofo!” we both cried, appalled, desperate, not caring that our shouts could give us away to the militia fighters if they returned, or to others who might come by.
The echo of his name, the echo of the sound oh, rebounded from the walls, circulated through the streets nearby, and like a magical summons drew forth as if by enchantment—from behind hedges, walls, and trees, from behind anything that could serve as protection or hiding place—dozens and then hundreds of people. They wasted no time; all resumed their headlong flight, a flight with no object, unless it was that of simply continuing to move forward. I had to face facts: we weren’t going to find Fofo by sitting there on our behinds. He was young and wasn’t carrying anything, so he obviously had been running faster than us and must surely be far ahead. We had to get going. I didn’t ask Mama what she thought. I grasped the handles of the wheelbarrow and we once again began walking, in the wake of the others.
Dust, jostling, cries, sobs. We were fleeing, but why? What had we done? Why did we have to suffer in a power struggle that meant nothing to us? What would change in our lives if the Chechens ruled the country instead of the Mata Mata? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Yet that’s the way it was: we were the grass on which two elephants were engaged in combat.
Mama was now obviously in great pain, but let no sound escape through her tightly compressed lips. Only the tension in her face betrayed her agony. The stump of her leg was swollen and turning black. I feared that gangrene was setting in. How much longer could I cart the poor woman around like this, without finding a doctor for her, without any idea where we were going? I was afraid to answer my own question.
At that moment, from some unidentifiable source, a shout arose and spread through the crowd: “The embassy! The embassy!”
I don’t know which embassy they meant, but all of a sudden it was like a password—a word that for us opened the door to hope.
I realized we were in the neighborhood where nearly all of the diplomatic missions were located. I’d always been taught that embassies were inviolable domains: if we could get into one, we’d be protected from the hordes of militiamen who were trailing us. I’d also heard people speak of the “International Community”—in particular, the fetishistic phrase “aid of the International Community.” Along with those words, I’d learned that this International Community was the enemy of barbarism, and that never again would it sit with its hands folded and witness the massacre of a people, of a community. We were a people, a community, in the process of being massacred, so it couldn’t let us down. But who represented that much-vaunted Community? I had never thought to ask myself this question. Were our heads of state members of it? Those leaders who marched heedlessly to power on roads paved with corpses—were they members, too? And was I myself a member?
I lifted my gaze and saw the row of embassy buildings in the distance, their flags rippling in the wind. I saw the flag of the European Union, blue with yellow stars. I saw the red, white, and blue flag of France. I saw the star-spangled banner of the United States. I saw the red maple leaf of Canada. On the flag of the United Nations, in front of the UN compound, I saw the two olive branches cradling all of the earth’s continents, set off on a pale blue ground. The flags flapped in the breeze like a humanitarian call, a call to safety. For the first time since our departure at dawn, I felt that our flight was no longer a blind haphazard effort but that it had a direction, a goal: to reach one of those diplomatic missions, break through the metal barrier at the gate or scale the wall, and on the other side find—sanctuary. Safe harbor. I no longer felt the weight of Mama’s body in the wheelbarrow or that of the bundle I bore on my back. My feet had wings. We were no longer walking—we were running. My anxiety about Fofo eased. I was sure he was safe and sound behind the walls of one of the embassies. In a few minutes, when I’d covered the fifty meters that separated us from those flags, Mama would be in the care of a physician from Doctors Without Borders. And we would be under the protection of the International Community.
Chapter Ten
Johnny, Known as Matiti Mabé
We fell upon the city the way roaring, bounding tigers attack a herd of antelope, except that those weren’t antelope we were aiming to massacre but Chechen bandits who were preventing our leader from assuming power. And except that we had a surprise setback—for even before we entered the district, long streams of refugees were already flowing into the main boulevard of Huambo, streams fed by a continuous human flood that poured from the adjacent streets like tributaries joining a great river.
The fleeing people were transporting an incredible array of bric-a-brac in wheelbarrows, basins, demijohns, baskets, plastic bottles—all this junk, in addition to the babies the women were carrying. A cloud of ocher dust rose from the ground.
We hadn’t expected such floods of people. For a moment, I didn’t know how to proceed. My commandos were already at fever pitch, like a pack of hunting dogs poised for the chase—and then: ratta-tat-tat. The troops had begun firing volleys into the air, without waiting for my orders. This infuriated me, and I wanted to rip the head off the guy who’d sparked the shooting, so they’d understand that I was the boss and that nothing could be done unless I gave the go-ahead. But how could I find the guilty party when there were a couple of dozen men all firing at the same time?
In contrast, the refugees had been thrown into a panic. Those at the front of the crowd had stopped
abruptly, while the ones coming up behind had collided with them as if running into a wall. A hellish confusion resulted among those who were trying to turn around and escape the gunfire, those who had tripped over abandoned bundles and were being trampled, those who were shouting, those who were weeping.
“Plug it up, guys! Plug it up!”
I was giving the order to plug up the street—that is, to put up barricades. Barricades to block the stream of people, and also to filter it. That would allow us to spot the enemies hidden in the crowd. We also had to search the people to see who was concealing weapons and who was carrying money.
The staccato noise of the gunfire ceased. We began dealing out kicks and blows to control the people and make them stop in their tracks. Yet while some of them had halted, the majority had managed to turn around in the chaos and were fleeing in the direction they’d come from. But it was no accident that Giap had made me the leader. He knew I could size up a situation quickly, and this situation demanded that we immediately barricade the main street leading out of the district—the exit toward which some of the refugees were now heading.
Scarcely had I finished reflecting on the situation when I heard a car horn honking and a motor revving, emitting a high-pitched whine as if the driver had one foot on the clutch and was having fun pumping the accelerator with the other. Looking for the source of the racket, I saw a vehicle whose luggage rack, covered with a blue tarp, was clearly visible above the stream of people. I craned my head a bit and made out a large Japanese 4×4. The driver was evidently having trouble turning around in the dense crowd. He had already managed a three-quarter turn; he needed only to back up slightly and he’d take off in the opposite direction.
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