Allah is Not Obliged (15 page)

Yacouba and me got through all the tests and, luckily, we didn’t give them any misgivings about maybe being devourers of souls (‘misgiving’ means ‘a harmful doubt, real or imagined’). Because soul-eaters are beaten up and thrown out and locked up and tortured until they vomit up the knot of blood that every soul-eater has inside him. And I tell you, it’s not easy, it’s no easy thing for a devourer of souls to vomit up the knot of blood. He has to be whipped like a thieving dog and administered enough vomitive decoctions to give two horses diarrhoea (for Black Nigger African Natives who don’t know too much, ‘administer’ means to give someone medicine).

When Yacouba introduced himself as a big important grigriman, Johnson said a short pious Christian prayer and ended with: ‘May Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit ensure that your grigris are always effective.’ Johnson was a devout Christian.
Yacouba replied, ‘Chi
Allah la ho
, they will be.’ (According to the
Glossary, ‘Chi Allah la ho
’ means ‘if Allah so wills’.) He, Yacouba, was a devout Muslim.

Johnson had a grigriman—a Christian grigriman. The grigriman’s incantations always contained passages from the Bible and he always had a crucifix around somewhere (‘incantation’ means ‘a formula used in ritual recitation; a verbal charm or spell’). Johnson was happy to meet Yacouba, a Muslim grigriman. He had never met a Muslim before. Now his guerrillas would be able to add grigris with verses from the Qur’an scrawled in Arabic to their Christian grigris.

Straight off, I was posted to the brigade of child-soldiers, small-soldiers, soldier-children with a kalash and a Para uniform that was too big for me. But the food was terrible, I mean really terrible. Nothing but boiled cassava and not even enough of that. Straight away, I tried to come up with a solution. I started by making loads of friends. Me and my friends were pretty resourceful. We stole food, we pilfered food. Pilfering food isn’t stealing because Allah, Allah in his inordinate goodness, never intended to leave empty for two whole days a mouth he created.
Walahé!

Prince Johnson was a seer, a visionary. And you don’t argue with a visionary. You don’t take the words of a visionary at face value, you don’t unquestioningly believe what he says or promises. This is something Samuel Doe, the dictator, didn’t realise until it was too late. Far too late! He only realised it when he saw, saw with his own two eyes, saw in his own lifetime, saw his limbs being hacked off bit by bit,
piece by piece. Like the parts of an old car you’re trying to fix.

Walahé!
It was at noon, exactly at noon, that an ECOMOG officer showed up at Johnson’s camp, Johnson’s sanctuary in Monrovia. Prince Johnson was busy in prayer and penitence like he was every day at noon. He knelt on stones to pray, his knees were black and blue from the stones. He was in agony.

The officer announced that Samuel Doe in person was at ECOMOG headquarters, right downtown in the centre of Monrovia. ECOMOG headquarters was neutral territory where warlords had to hand over their weapons before going inside. Samuel Doe had gone to ECOMOG headquarters by himself with no guns and ninety bodyguards who had no guns either, they were all empty-handed and powerless. Samuel Doe had gone into ECOMOG headquarters to ask the commanding officer to act as intermediary between him, Samuel Doe, and Prince Johnson. He asked one thing, only one thing of Johnson: a chance to talk. Because Liberia was weary of her children fighting. Now that Johnson had broken off relations with Taylor, Samuel Doe and Johnson could be friends. Doe wanted to negotiate with Johnson an end to the war in Liberia. The war had done great harm to the beloved mother country.

Johnson shouted, ‘Jesus Christ the Lord! Jesus Christ the Lord!’ He licked his lips. He couldn’t believe it, he couldn’t believe Samuel Doe in person was at ECOMOG headquarters. He gave thanks to Jesus Christ and all his saints. After a minute, he calmed down and spoke to the ECOMOG
officer in the same kind of language Samuel Doe had used. He, Prince Johnson, was also weary of war. Samuel Doe was a patriot, and he, Prince Johnson, respected the patriot’s gesture. Prince Johnson would go to ECOMOG and kiss him, kiss him right on the mouth like a friend. In private, as friends and patriots, they could discuss the affairs of the dearly beloved and blessed mother country Liberia. And so on.

He told the officer to go on ahead, go back to ECOMOG headquarters and inform Samuel Doe of Johnson’s tribute. The officer did what he was told and Samuel Doe listened to these honeyed words and believed them. Calmly, smoking a cigarette, sitting in an armchair at ECOMOG headquarters, he waited for Johnson.

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.