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Yesterday afternoon this guy was bothering the wife of Yeza, the joiner who lives over the way, and things went badly wrong. The nuisance guy, the one they call ‘the Lady Whistler’, because he’s always chatting up married women, you’d think there was a shortage of single women in this town, though according to the people who know about these things, there are more women than men in our country, which is why men often marry three or four different women.
The Lady Whistler didn’t know Yeza was in his workshop, busy making a coffin. He makes them in advance so he doesn’t run out if there are ever several deaths in one day. Besides, there are also people who order a coffin as soon as their relative goes into hospital, because it works out more expensive afterwards. If you argue over the price of a coffin when someone’s already dead, the joiner will look you up and down and say, ‘Well go and make the coffin yourself, then, if you don’t like my price.’
As soon as Yeza’s wife heard whistling outside, she quickly went out and followed the Lady Whistler down to the end of the Avenue of Independence. At that moment I saw Yeza come out of his workshop with a hammer in his hand and I said to myself, ‘Oh-oh, now the Lady Whistler’s going to end up in that coffin the joiner’s making.’
I followed the crowd that was walking behind the joiner and already shouting ‘Ali bomba yé! Ali bomba yé! Ali bomba yé!’ Round here, if someone shouts like that it means there’s a fight brewing. It’s a way of working up the crowd and urging the people quarreling not to change their minds. Papa Roger thinks that the first people to shout Ali bomba yé! were the people of Zaire, the year Mohammed Ali and George Foreman came to fight on our continent, as if there was no room left back home in America. They were both black Americans, and apparently they came to Zaire to fight so as to be near to their black ancestors. The man who did the publicity for the fight was called Don King, another black American with such a big shock of hair on his head, a bird could have mistaken it for a tree and come and settle there to make its nest and lay its eggs. According to Papa Roger, this Don King guy had been paid millions and millions by the dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko to organise the fight, but the black American didn’t realise that the reason the President of Zaire had put up all this money was to get publicity for himself so the whole world would think he was a good man, when in fact he was bad, and frightened his own people, and stole money from the State and hid it in European bank accounts, and was one of the people who assassinated Patrice Lumumba, who had done everything to try to free the Belgian Congo.
Every time my father talks to me about that boxing match, I move out of the way a bit because he always tries to copy Ali’s hard right-hand punch that knocked Foreman out. If you’re too close to my father his punch may land on your jaw. He says that to start with the Zairians were all for Foreman: his skin was darker than Mohammed Ali’s, therefore he was the real African. Ali was too light-skinned, like our classmate Adriano; the Zairians were suspicious of someone with skin like that claiming to be black. But when Foreman arrived at the airport in Kinshasa with his great big dog with its tongue hanging out and its ears sticking up like the antennae at Radio Congo, everyone was afraid. The Zairians said, ‘That dog has the same face as the dogs of those Belgians who ordered us about during colonisation! How can a black man have a dog from the same family as the dogs of the colonisers? How can he bring a dog here that reminds us of the dogs that were trained to pick up the scent of a Black, and find him in the bush, at dead of night, when he was trying to escape from being hassled by the Whites?’ The people of Zaire said to themselves: ‘This Foreman guy isn’t a real Black like us, he wants to become like the Whites, Ali must get the knock out to avenge our parents and our grandparents who were bitten by the Belgians’ dogs. Besides, look how straightforward Ali is, off jogging with the little kids along the river, and in the streets of Kinshasa while that traitor Foreman stays in the gym punching away at a bag full of sand like a madman. Ali is a man of the people. Ali’s like us. We have to help him win, even if Foreman’s never been beaten in his life. The fetishes are on our side. Our ancestors are on our side. We’ll ask the fetishes and our ancestors to support Ali. And our fetishes will fight the fight for Ali, and our ancestors will make sure Foreman gets tired quickly, so he can’t see where Ali’s punches are coming from.’
On the day of the fight, at the 20th May Stadium, Ali was dancing round the ring, with his amazing footwork. Our ancestors helped him keep supple. Foreman was tired of jab, jab, jabbing away. Ali set to work, listening to the ancestors, following the advice of the fetishes. Instead of hitting with his left, though he’s a left hander, he hit with his right. And in the eighth round — bam! — he let his punch fly. Foreman didn’t see it coming, his legs went from under him, he fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. By the time he got up again the fight was over. Ali had won. And it started to rain. That meant our ancestors were pleased, that they were celebrating Mohammed Ali’s victory.
So when I heard the crowd following the joiner shouting ‘Ali bomba yé! Ali bomba yé! Ali bomba yé!’ I started shouting too, like everyone else. But I didn’t know who was going to be Ali and who would be Foreman in this fight. Meanwhile the wife of the joiner had disappeared.
The Lady Whistler saw Yeza coming with his hammer. He tried to run but the crowd quickly caught him.
Someone said to him, ‘You can’t run away like that, you’ve got to fight! You’re not going to cheat us of our fight! Come on, fight!’
He replied, ‘Oh no, I’m not fighting unless my opponent puts his hammer down.’
The crowd turned to Yeza.
‘Put your hammer down! Put your hammer down! Put your hammer down! Put your hammer down, if you’re a real man, if you’ve got any balls!’
And since the joiner was not prepared to put his hammer down, a big man, as strong as a hundred-year-old baobab took it off him. They made a circle round the two men. The man who was as tall and strong as a hundred-year-old baobab said to the two combatants, ‘Yeza the joiner can be Foreman because he’s got more muscle. The Lady Whistler can be Ali because he’s better looking.’
That really annoyed Yeza, who wanted to be Ali because Ali always wins.
‘Who says the Lady Whistler’s better looking than me?’
The Lady Whistler sniggered, and everyone sniggered with him, which Yeza did not appreciate.
‘Why are you all laughing with him? Are you on his side or what? Can’t you see he just goes round making trouble in other people’s lives? Well I’ll show you I’m Mohammed Ali, not him!’
With one leap, the joiner fell upon the Lady Whistler, who, like a cat, flipped him over and got on top. The two men were biting the dust. I couldn’t make out who was on top now, and who was underneath. Fists were flying everywhere. When Yeza was doing well, a hand from the crowd would push him, and he’d suddenly be underneath again. The fight which had started in the middle of the Avenue of Independence was now right down the far end and everyone was jostling the two men. No one could separate them.
After they’d been fighting for over ten minutes, I saw people start to run away, jumping over the fences between lots. Police sirens could be heard. I said to myself: ‘When the police arrive they always thump the witnesses before they work out who’s fighting.’ So I ran off like everyone else. I came to a stop in front of our lot and from there I saw Yeza going back into his house with his shirt all torn and blood on his face, looking as though he’d fought a pack of lions and an army of pygmy chimps all in the same day. He went straight into his workshop with his hammer in his hand. He banged away so hard at the coffin, I felt like he was hammering on my chest.