But given the date these events occurred — we are somewhere around 1903—Mr. Rozier did not dare pronounce the word homosexuality, as we would have done today. At that time homosexuality was considered a repulsive vice. He was afraid of alienating once and for all the jury composed of narrow-minded Frenchmen, minor civil servants, and tradesmen. He launched into a petty argument. Hakim was left-handed and would have been unable to deal such a blow. Everyone in Bingerville could vouch for the affection he had for Kwame Aniedo, who even called him “Papa.” On the fateful night fifty pairs of eyes had seen them leave Njiri’s bar the best of friends. The prosecution claimed a drunken brawl had broken out between the two. The prosecutor presumed. He was incapable of producing evidence, of showing why Hakim had suddenly turned on Kwame Aniedo and stabbed him over twenty times. That was the weak point in the case: the motive for the crime! It was more likely that one of those criminal types who thrived at Bingerville had followed the two men home, broken in, tried to rob them, and, surprised by Kwame Aniedo, had butchered him. This clumsy fabrication convinced nobody, and rightly so. Nevertheless, in spite of the inexperience of his defense attorney, Hakim would have been sentenced to only a few years in a colonial jail — the man he had killed, though an Akan crown prince, counted for little in the eyes of the colonial authorities — if Thomas de Brabant, governor of the Ivory Coast, had not intervened in person. He sent a confidential memo to his superior, the governor-general of French West Africa, informing him of the real personality of Jean Seydou, alias Hakim. In his classes at Bingerville he had denigrated France’s civilizing mission. He was a ringleader, a hot-head, a formidable agitator, a son worthy of El-Hadj Omar Saïdou Tall, his ancestor on his mother’s side. Those very words scared the life out of everyone. Our unfortunate hero got the maximum sentence and was banished to the penal colony in French Guiana.
7
Hakim could smell the sweet baked-bread scent of the ocean.
Straining his ears, he could even hear its commotion and, depending on the day, assess its humor — ever so gentle or ever so angry. But his eyes could not see it. The prison where he was kept was housed in the ruins of a fortified residence whose back faced the island of Gorée. Long ago slaves from all over Africa were stored there awaiting shipment to the little island offshore. The prison was a round chamber where three hundred men and women once stood chained by the neck to the wooden supports bolted to the ground. At present, the only inmates were a handful of poor wretches who had not paid their taxes or refused to carry out their corvée. At noon, three Sisters of Charity, who treated their dysentery and their fevers, brought them a dish of fish with rice. In the evening the old Serer warden waddled in on his crooked legs and served them soup. Hakim was given preferential treatment — salad, fruit, papayas, and mangoes. He was the only prisoner they had ever seen sentenced to hard labor in a penal colony, and they were impressed. He was waiting for his transfer to Serouane, a small town on the coast of Algeria, where he would embark on a ship that would take him halfway around the world to French Guiana. For months he had remained in a cell, twelve feet by twelve, up against the side of the main building. He relieved himself in a hole dug into the ground. His youth and curly hair broke the heart of the Sisters of Charity. They knew he was a Muslim, therefore damned in advance. Even so they could not help reciting dozens of rosaries, just in case — God is great — they could save his soul.
The only window in the cell looked out onto a wall. All day long, the sun used it like a palette to mix its colors. It began with a milky white, followed by a light yellow. Then a deeper yellow, which grew paler and paler, finally turning white again, unbearably white. His eyes were dazzled by the glare, hurt, and made him blink. The heat shimmered. And then the white began to fade. It took on every degree of blue, changed to violet, and turned an ever darker shade of gray. Finally turning to black. Jet black.
As long as there was daylight, Hakim stood in front of this window. He never tired of gazing at this wall, for him a symbol of his life. At age twenty-four his hopes had been dashed. A penal colony. What could it look like? Like a fortress. Surrounded by stone walls. Rather than think about it, however, he filled his head with all sorts of imaginings. Better not look into the past. Bamako. Bokar. Bingerville. Celanire. The Home. Kwame Aniedo. All that was over with. Gone were the rage and revolt that had racked him while he awaited his sentence. He had grown indifferent, like a lamb passively awaiting the slaughter at the feast of Tabaski. Mr. Rozier, who visited him regularly once a week, promised him a presidential pardon. He also told him that Guiana was a French territory in South America, situated between the Amazon and the Orinoco. This set Hakim dreaming. He imagined a dense, sempiternally green forest. Slow-moving, muddy rivers whose banks are eaten away by mangrove swamps. Dugout canoes loaded with naked, oily-haired Amerindians plying upstream. The men standing at the prow, armed with arrows whose heads are daubed with curare, a deadly poison. The women breast-feeding their babies, clinging to their sides like tadpoles. On their faces an expression of placid bliss. Setting foot on shore, they merged into the forest, heading for their huts in single file under the protection of the trees. At night, swaying in their hammocks, the men made love, preferably among themselves, sometimes with the women. Why had humanity shunned these mornings of the world? Why had predator nations wanted to discover other lands? And conquer and colonize them — in other words, destroy them?
As soon as night fell, Hakim’s thoughts took on a darker shade. In the icy darkness, however tightly he curled himself up, however much he called out to it in tears, sleep wanted nothing to do with him. He shivered with cold. His desperately sad life stretched out forever in front of him. A half-caste mockingly nicknamed Toubabou, “white boy,” growing up an outcast among other outcasts. Where was Bokar buried? He had never seen his grave. Mr. Philosophizer at Adjame-Santey, ridiculed by the Africans, held in contempt by the French. Then assistant to the merchant he had stupidly thought a friend. In reality Betti Bouah had always despised him because he wasn’t an Akan, he was merely a bastard without a race. Odd as it may seem, the only person who had taken any interest in him, had desired him, perhaps loved him, was Celanire. Pity he could not return the compliment. Unfortunately, you cannot force your nature. However much a prisoner he was, rotting in his dungeon, the very thought of what she expected of him made him feel sick.
One day two white men in pith helmets and khaki uniform, their faces cooked red like those exposed to the colonies, pushed open his cell door. They looked at him as if he were a heap of vermin, muffling their noses with a handkerchief against the stink that no longer bothered him. One of them unrolled a document and in a strong Corsican accent read him a series of orders. He retained just one thing. In one week he would embark on the Neptune for Serouane, where he would join the other convicts, all Arabs assembled together from every corner of North Africa. From Serouane the voyage to the transportation camp at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in Guiana would take three months. When he had finished reading, the Corsican’s voice mellowed. He added that if Hakim renounced his political ideas and proved to be a model prisoner, he might be freed before the end of his sentence. In such an event he would be granted a piece of land. He could even take a wife and settle in Guiana. Other convicts before him had married and had sons.