My baby, sleeping close to me, all pink and fresh,
So like a tiny drowsy Jesus in his crèche;
Your sleep so free of care, so calm, so full of love
You do not hear the bird who sings far from the light.
But I breathed in the heavy sweetness of the night
And the sombre mysteries of the world above.
I take back my piece of paper and put it back in my pocket. I haven’t read the poem he’s just recited in class. He says it’s by Victor Hugo, for his daughter. When he says that it makes me think of the photo of Victor Hugo on the wall at my uncle’s house.
We don’t mention my poem, though I want to know if he thinks it’s good or bad. We listen to the grass singing in the wind and it makes us sleepy.
Lounès stands up and says he has to go to karate club. It’s just started, over in Savon, run by someone called Maître John.
‘I have to be there on the dot of five o’clock.’
‘Who’s this Maître John?’
‘He’s this really strong man, he flies through the air, like in the Bruce Lee films. He’s a black belt, sixth degree. As soon as I learn how to fly like that, I’ll teach you.’
He can see I’m still feeling sad, so before we say goodbye, he touches my right shoulder and says, ‘I really want to help you, but Caroline’s gone to stay at my mother’s sister’s house, over in the Fouks quartier. I don’t know when she’s coming back. Anyway, it’ll give you time to get your poem right.’
~ ~ ~
The American, Roger Guy Folly announces that the president of Uganda — called Idi Amin Dada — has just fled his own country because his neighbours in Tanzania have marched into the capital, called Kampala. The Tanzanians were angry because the Ugandan military had invaded Tanzania, supposedly to get rid of the Ugandans who were making trouble for Idi Amin Dada.
When I hear Papa Roger say that name, ‘Idi Amin Dada’, I howl with laughter. He looks at me very sternly, like I’ve committed a sin. ‘Careful, Michel, it’s no laughing matter! This is a serious business. Are you aware this president has killed over three hundred thousand people? And not just Ugandans, he’s been killing foreigners too, for the past eight years he’s been in power. He doesn’t just kill, kill and kill again, he eats people too, he cuts their heads off, and their private parts too, like meat at the Grand Marché.’
That does make me stop laughing at the name of the Ugandan president, even though I still think it’s funny to be called ‘Dada’, like the dog that lives near us, with a wiggly tail and one eye that waters all the time.
My father turned down the radio so he could explain to us that Idi Amin Dada was a monster, worse than a dragon, and ate people with spicy pepper and salt. I’m amazed to hear that in fact he couldn’t read very well, when he was almost two metres high. Why didn’t he take the time to go to school like everyone else? Ok, you’re going to say Maman Pauline can’t really read or write either, but she’s never killed anyone and she speaks French well, you can still speak a language even if you don’t know how to read or write it. Otherwise, how come we manage to speak all our languages — like lingala, munukutuba, bembé, lari, mbochi or vili — without learning to read or write? It’s not my mother’s fault she didn’t go to school when she was little, like I do. Maman Pauline told me that when she was little, people were so stupid they said school wasn’t good for women, it would make them argue with their husbands about everything, and make them refuse to obey when their husbands ordered them about. If a woman goes to school, they’d say, she’s finished, she’ll end up talking French like those big cheeses over in France, saying NO every five minutes, like white women, who manage to shout at their husbands without getting wallopped. Even if Maman Pauline never went to school, she’s still more intelligent than Idi Amin Dada, who killed over three hundred thousand people and ate some of them with salt and spicy pepper. Why didn’t they catch him, instead of letting him escape and hide away in a Muslim country? My father reels off the names of the countries in question: Libya (capital, Tripoli), Saudi Arabia (capital, Riyad). Saudi Arabia gave the criminal a quiet little house with people to prepare his food, when there are people who’ve never killed over three hundred thousand people dying of hunger on this continent. Is that normal? Do you have to go out and kill over three hundred thousand people to get free housing in a Muslim country or what? And they give him pocket money every month, like he’s some good pupil who’s done well at school, when he never even went to one.
Yes, Idi Amin really is a monster, worse than a dragon. I don’t want to hear any more about him, though Papa Roger’s determined to make us listen. Since Maman Pauline’s listening carefully, even though politics isn’t really her thing, I can’t really leave the table, it would look rude, people would think that boy Michel isn’t interested in what’s going on in a country that’s part of our continent.
Papa Roger explains again that Idi Amin Dada was a military man who came to power by a coup d’état. Well that doesn’t surprise me one bit, what self-respecting country’s going to say to someone who can’t read and write, ‘You can’t read, you can’t write, but don’t worry, you can still go and speak on our behalf to the whole of the rest of the world’? And how is this illiterate going to manage to sign the papers that real presidents who’ve been to school sign when they all get together? How will he know when he’s actually signing his permission for the capitalist countries to steal the wealth of the Ugandans, for example? The worst thing is, Papa Roger says Idi Amin Dada was also the president of the Organisation for African Unity, the OAU, which is like being the head of all the African countries. The African presidents made him that, and not just for a joke either. It suited the Europeans very well that Idi Amin Dada couldn’t read or write. In this case that meant the English — it wasn’t just the French that colonised our continent. They had to leave a few countries for other Europeans too, otherwise a war would break out among the Whites. And the English said: ‘It’s a good thing Idi Amin Dada can’t read or write, it means we’ll be able to control him at a distance even if colonisation is meant to be over in his country.’
This makes Papa Roger really angry. ‘The man’s a dictator, but even the United States and Israel supported his coup d’état to become president! And after the coup d’état he stuffed the army with his own people and threw out people from other ethnic groups, and had them killed, the monster. He was so crazy, he woke up one morning looking sad and solemn, saying “I had a dream, sent straight from heaven”! It’s not like he’s a black American, like Martin Luther King! Why should his dream be special?’
Everyone has dreams, I think to myself. The problem is, according to my father, Idi Amin Dada had a really big dream: God asked him to drive out all the Asians from his country, even though they were the ones who ran the shops, so that the Ugandans could eat three times a day. Could God really be that wicked, to make someone dream a dream like that? Idi Amin Dada did drive out the Asians, saying, ‘We’re going to run our country ourselves now, we’ll manage our own shops and businesses. We’re sick of you eating the Ugandans’ bread. If you haven’t left Uganda, my ancestors’ land, in three months from now, be warned. Now get out, leave everything, just take your toothbrush, pants and sandals.’