The King of Kahel

by Monénembo, Tierno; Elliott, Nicholas

  To begin with, he needed some land—he could never be king without it. He would talk to the almami about the Kahel plateau. He needed to acquire it now, right away. It was written that the advent of his reign, the grandiose saga of modern Africa, would be launched from this magnificent landscape, this genuine West African minaret. First the Kahel plateau, soon Timbuktu and the Limpopo!

  He knew it wouldn’t be easy. But fortunately, he was an Olivier! Courage and perseverance would do the trick. He just had to do as the Fulas did and be patient and cunning, and especially to place his pawns judiciously.

  He now had a relatively clear understanding of each of the five princes fate had placed in his path. He had dismissed Aguibou and Pâthé from the start. They were both handsome—too handsome—intelligent—too intelligent—fierce, enigmatic. In short too Fula, too high and mighty. Bôcar and Alpha Yaya seemed more ordinary, accessible, practical, and malleable. And they were friends—but for how much longer?

  His informers had told him that the simmering provincial wars and underhanded rivalries between princes had gotten worse. Timbo’s authority was weakening by the day. Labé was no longer hiding its desire for supremacy and possibly independence. Labé was half of Fouta—half its territory, half its population, half its livestock, half its warriors, half its marabouts, half its gold—but all its schemers, added the tongue waggers.

  In Timbo, two aging monarchs alternated on the throne. In Labé, a dying king was holding on for as long as he could. In both courts, two rival princes, two enemy brothers, were waiting in the wings with knives behind their backs.

  He sighed deeply and smoothed his beard, muttering: “I’d give anything to know how this will all come out, but alas I don’t have Shakespeare’s talent.”

  He traveled inland between the reefs and islets of the rio Compony. His agent Bonnard met him on the riverbank, overcome with joy. He was on his way back from Fouta Djallon, where he had just set up a trading post in Kâdé, with excellent news. Olivier’s treaties remained valid and his caravans were traveling across Fouta unharmed. In Labé, the old king had finally died and his son Aguibou had succeeded him. In Timbo, his friend almami Sory was preparing to return to power through the now legendary and still inexplicable Fula law of alternation. To top it all off, fate had placed Tierno, his other friend, on the throne of Timbi Touni to replace his brother, who had recently been killed in a war with the idolaters.

  “The sun in Fouta is shining just for you, Viscount! You can now start climbing to the peaks!”

  But before the pastures and the waterfalls, the mountains and the Fulas, he needed to carry out an indispensable ritual: to stop by Boké and pay tribute to his dear René Caillié. The trip to carry out this quasi-religious act was a real calvary.

  It took him three days of hell to hack his way through the wall of jungle. Ten strapping men armed with machetes and paid their weight in gold took the head of the column. It was the same routine as in 1880, but one never gets used to the cramps and diarrhea, the sinking into mud, or the falls. Worse yet were the capricious village chiefs who demanded cotton and amber because the column had trampled a field, picked some fruit, or violated a sanctuary.

  He reached Boké half dead, burning with fever. The port with its dry dock and warehouses was still there, but there was no one to welcome him. No sign of Moustier. No one even knew what had become of him. Olivier was shown the grave of Commander Dehous, who had died of yellow fever two years earlier, and told how his second-in-command had been sent back to France blind and half mad. The new commander refused to let him in to the fort, yelling down at him from the turret, while his Senegalese infantrymen looked on delighted at this unexpected opportunity to scoff at a foolish toubab.

  “I am Olivier de Sanderval!” he insisted.

  “Exactly!” the commander answered.

  “I am French! I have a right to be rescued.”

  “Without official orders, we have no obligation toward you.”

  “I’m going to force the door.”

  “And I am going to have the cannon fired.”

  “Open up, goddamn it! I need to see a doctor!”

  “The doctor is not here!”

  He dragged himself to the memorial he had dedicated to René Caillié and left a flower:

  “Now I understand what you endured, O hero of Timbuktu. How many wars you had to wage to return to your homeland. I’m already battered and the second assault hasn’t even begun!”

  Feeling sorry for him, some boatmen and women selling fish nearby helped him to his feet and brought him back to his column. They gave him sorrel soup and cinchona bark to soothe his headaches and reduce the fever. Then they led him a few miles away to Balarandé. The fort’s doctor was there, in the home of a certain Mattou, a Compagnie du Sénégal agent who had just settled there.

  Mattou received him with open arms. Though he knew what had happened at the fort, Doctor Roberty took out his syringes and cupping glasses and treated him.

  Five days of convalescence before he could return to the trail! He crossed the rio Nunez and cautiously ventured into the mangrove. Nalu country was in turmoil. King Lawrence had died and one of his many nephews, Dinah Salifou, had usurped the throne after a horrendous bloodbath. Countless discontented Nalus scattered throughout the country were seeking to assassinate him.

  The closer they drew to Fouta, the more the places and the men seemed familiar to him. He had camped in this forest, drunk water from that spring. But some rivers had forged new beds; new paths had appeared and villages had vanished, victims of fire, plague, or the curses of devils and sorcerers.

  The news he received in Tinguilinta finally set him back on his feet: an emissary of the almami was waiting for him with a most kind letter and several welcoming presents. This was marvelous—Timbo remained faithful despite that blowhard Bayol’s visit. After salutations befitting his rank—in other words, endless and full of praise—the emissary told him the almami requested that he travel straight to Fogoumba, where the almami himself was headed for his coronation.

  The wonders of Fouta unfolded before him again. He thought that no matter how many times he crossed it, the country would always roll out some unknown landscape or a hidden waterfall for his beauty-starved eyes.

  The locals were less hostile than the first time around. Some recognized him and warmly asked how he was and gave him a gourd of milk or a basket of oranges. The crowd of gawking bystanders was thinner; people no longer ran from him on sight. They rarely touched his skin and no longer spit when he passed. As he had become accustomed to the climate and the constant attention he attracted during his first trip, so this toubab had become less strange, less of a stranger. Those who had never seen him had heard tales of him. The legend of the man-with-the-white-gloves now rivaled that of the man-with-the-four-eyes—the Fula name for Faidherbe—in mystery and renown.

  He was in friendly country, practically at home. Yet he remained on his guard. He watched what he said and was careful about what he ate. This may have been friendly country, but more significantly it was Fula country: though it was theoretically unacceptable to betray friends, it was common practice to spy on them and not unknown to sprinkle a bit of poison in their meal or turn a friendly slap on the back into a dagger thrust between the shoulder blades. This was a country whose inhabitants were so ambiguous, so full of schemes, that one almost had to admire them for it. He knew this country now and he wanted it; he needed it. It had become his drug. He understood the enchantment of its light and the mysterious secret of its woods. He drank in its odor of fonio and jasmine, was dizzy with pleasure at the sight of its rivers and rugged valleys. His wildest dreams now depended on its luminescent horizons and bluish peaks.

  He walked with the same lighthearted cheer he felt on the volcanoes of Auvergne and the high plateaus of the Jura. He wrote poetic fragments and occasionally let loose a little ditty. He noted the rate of flow of the rivers and the angle of incline of the slopes, and collected rocks, petrified
ashes from the ancient volcanoes. He gathered roots and flowers, téli and linguéhi bark, and sangala and doubhé fruits. He would take all this to the laboratory when he got back to France, to see what could be made of it. He suspected the subsoil to be full of treasures and these adorable little forests to be a bottomless resource of natural remedies and perfumes.

  Sometimes he went miles out of his way to avoid bandits, flooded rivers, or villages stricken with smallpox or plague.

  In the evening he listened to the song of the grasshoppers and the crickets and wrote in his notebooks: “These vast woods would be so pleasant to travel through on well-traced roads in the shade of the orange trees with intelligent company; it wouldn’t cost more than three hundred thousand francs to organize the promenade de Longchamp from the ocean to the Niger via these Fouta mountains.” He had the delightful impression that his natural surroundings had sprouted in his dreams before appearing before his eyes. “Eight years ago,” he noted in all seriousness, “my legs pushed me along. Today they follow me. Next time I’ll have to carry them.” Yet despite the heat and the chaotic trail, he found the walking enjoyable. At every stop, something unusual and amusing would take place. Here, giants in loincloths faced off in a fratricidal wrestling match; elsewhere families celebrated the marriage of the youngest daughter or the circumcision of the youngest boy. These gatherings involved great feasts with mutton fonio or corn couscous with curdled milk and successive nights of dancing to the sound of the calabash and the flute.

  In Lémani, an old man pulled a penny out of his pocket and greeted him in English. At age ten, he said, he had seen ten Englishmen arrive with rifles and merchandise. They wanted to settle there and survive by farming. In eight months, six of them were dead. Sick and distraught, the survivors had returned to the coast, leaving behind their goods—to the villagers’ delight. Olivier realized that this must have been the ill-fated Puddie and Campbell expedition that had shortly preceded Mollien’s in 1817.

  The touldé in Parâdji sublime! The Paniata Valley fertile and well cultivated! He brought the column to a halt, set up his tripod, and took several photographs. He stopped in Lokouta to study the Kakrima rapids. In Débéa, he was felled by another virulent attack of diarrhea.

  In Timbi Touni, his friend Tierno, the area’s new king, offered him three days of feasting and dancing complete with fantasias and acrobatics. The white man gave him a beautiful Lefaucheux rifle and in return received a sword with a magnificent goatskin scabbard and a manuscript tracing the lineage of the Bas of Timbi Touni. In no time they were bantering like old friends:

  “What did you come to ask us for this time?”

  “For land, my friend Tierno, land! I am sick and tired of being a stranger to the Fulas. I want to become a Fula.”

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard such a request. Ask and the almami will give you land. There is no shortage in Timbo.”

  “Well, you see, I prefer the Kahel plateau, in your own kingdom. The view is splendid and it is in the heart of Fouta. And it’s so close to you.”

  “You’re flattering me.”

  “Does that mean you would be ready to grant it to me?”

  “You white men! One really has to have a good head on his shoulders to follow everything going through your mind. A Fula has never been known to give up the land of his ancestors.”

  “I am asking you as a friend.”

  “As a friend?”

  “It would permanently seal our friendship, of course, but also our mutual interests.”

  “Explain yourself!”

  He offered Tierno a ten-thousand-hectare plantation and a generous number of shares in his future railroad company. Watching the prince’s reactions closely, he was pleased to note that his gaze expressed more embarrassment than anger.

  “Let’s suppose for a moment that I agree, Yémé—it would be more of a problem than a solution.”

  The conversation was getting serious. Yémé opened his eyes wide; Tierno started thinking hard.

  “A generous stack of shares in a railroad company doesn’t make problems for anyone, Tierno, my friend!”

  Among the Fulas, there is always a problem, Tierno retorted. Kahel didn’t belong to him alone—the high plateau was at the border of the provinces of Labé and Timbi Touni. His own agreement wouldn’t be sufficient; they would also need Labé’s, and of course that of the almami—who was the master of Fouta after God and the Prophet, after all. Also, the white man must realize that to own land in Fouta one had to be Fula—better yet, Fula and noble!

  “How will you become Fula and noble?”

  “I’ll find a way. Would you sign if I had the agreement of Labé and Timbo?”

  “If that were the case, perhaps. But beware, white man—if Fouta learns what we’ve said before the almami has declared himself, I’ll have your head cut off!”

  “Don’t worry, Tierno. I may not be Fula yet, but I already know how to lie and steal.”

  He returned to his hut feeling rather optimistic. Tierno had proved suspicious, like any good Fula, but he didn’t seem scandalized at the idea of having to give up a piece of his kingdom. Olivier had expected him to be outraged. And so he had a good night—in other words, a solid quarter hour of sleep. But his host knocked at his door at dawn and he immediately sensed that the news was no longer good.

  “A Frenchman has just been arrested in Labé!”

  “A priest, a soldier, or an explorer?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t even know what his name is or whether he is alone or with a group.”

  “This is a bad sign, a very bad sign.”

  Strange, strange—Olivier de Sanderval hadn’t heard a single word of a mission heading for Fouta, not in Gorée, nor in Bolama or Boké.

  “Do you think I should be on my guard?”

  “No. You are the almami’s friend and that is a real shield here. But despite that, you are now in a brand-new situation.”

  He didn’t need to go any further. Yémé understood immediately from the way he scratched his head:

  “Tell me frankly, Tierno, are you scared for yourself or for me?”

  “Fouta is complicated, Yémé. Nothing is ever certain here.”

  “I understand. When do you want me to leave?”

  “Today is Saturday. Saturday is a good day to embark on a long journey.”

  “Very well. Just do me one last favor, then. Can you lend me about twenty soldiers to cross the Kokoulo?”

  “Your request is granted. I am still your friend, Yémé. There is no need to doubt it.”

  His worries were soon confirmed: an armed guard came to meet him and took him out of his way to Digui, a hamlet of some twenty huts, at least two hours’ walk from Fogoumba.

  Here we go, he told himself. They’re pulling the same stunt as last time, only then I was in Timbo and now I’m in some forgotten backwater in the bush. If I died of hunger here, or of a snakebite or some lethal poison, no one would know about it in Boké, let alone in Saint-Louis. These perverts would swear with their hands on their hearts that they had waited for me in Fogoumba but that I never arrived. Poor Olivier de Sanderval, he was so gentle, so convivial. Probably some wild animal or bandits got him. No one from Saint-Louis or Paris would ever suspect that the bandits were acting on behalf of the throne of Timbo.

  He was told that he was being housed in Digui because Fogoumba’s population had quadrupled for the coronation ceremony. “But don’t worry,” he was told. “The almami will send for you as soon as he has found a place for you.”

  He was skeptical of everything they told him, but when he settled in Digui, he found that in fact the granaries were empty and the markets poorly supplied. Whenever someone found some chicken or eggs, they thought first of feeding their children, not the white man. So he had to make do with dining on an orange or a wild berry puree. He distracted himself by reading Sully-Prudhomme or watching the stars shine.

  Finally, Arabia, an old woman living nearby, took pity on him. W
hen her stooped body and rheumatic legs permitted, she would bring him a bowl of fonio, a handful of peanuts, or a honey wafer. Her eyes welled up with tears when she saw him throw himself on the food. She stroked his hair as he ate and would only leave once she was sure he had eaten every last bit.

  “Go on, eat everything! Don’t leave anything for the others, you’re the unhappiest of all. Is your mother still alive?”

  It was a waste of breath telling her that he was forty-eight years old, that he got along very well without his mother, and that she did not need to exhaust herself for him.

  “Come, I’m going to wash your socks. I’ll bring your blankets back tonight; I put them out to dry on the roof of my hut.”

  “Leave that to my men, Arabia, and rest a little. Anyhow I can do it myself, I’m not a child anymore.”

  “Eat. They are so mean to you because you are not from around here. My son is in Saint-Louis. What we’re doing to you here must be what they’re doing to him there.”

  After two weeks of depression under the maternal protection of old Arabia, turning over bitter memories, and using camphor water and bismuth to try and forget about his hunger, deliverance finally came in the voice of a young soldier:

  “The almami has sent me to bring you to him.”

  “Ah, finally! When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow! Diango, fab’i diango! I know that tune! Let him tell me right away if I am his prisoner!”

  “What do you mean, prisoner? Oh, I understand, the white man is angry because he wasn’t received right away. That was because of the coronation!”

  Upon his arrival in Fogoumba, he was greeted by a beautiful fantasia. The royal guard opened a path for him through a blinding sea of gold jewels and dazzling boubous, leading him past the rows of soldiers, griots, and turbaned notables, and seated him two or three chairs away from the almami. The almami gently turned his head to watch him sit down. He was relieved to recognize a friendly glow in the monarch’s eyes. It was a pleasant afternoon, devoted to relaxing and festivities, but in a typically Fula atmosphere—heavy with sighs and whispers, side-glances and insinuations.