The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana Read online

  I am going to talk of Sundiata, Manding-Diara, Lion of Mali, Sogolon Diata, son of Sogolon, Nare Maghan Djata, son of Naro Maghan, Sogo Sogo Simbon Salaba, hero of many names.

  I am going to tell you of Sundiata, he whose exploits will astonish men for a long time yet. He was great among kings, he was peerless among men, he was beloved of God.

  History tells us also of the splendor of certain kingdoms, like the one of Segu which has caused so much ink to flow. Oddly enough it was the Tukolors waging jihad to impose their one and only god who laid waste to the region and made it ripe for colonization. Ivan and Ivana knew nothing of this past. In fact all they knew of Africa were the negative images they saw on television: coups d’états perpetrated by loutish soldiers, famine, and Ebola epidemics that without foreign aid the Africans are incapable of curing. They were surprised to find Bamako such a pleasant place. The avenues crisscrossed at right angles under the shade of magnificent trees. They stopped short in front of the main market, which was surrounded by a wooden fence carved with all sorts of animals. They admired the fabrics and the rugs in the Pink Market. Inside, they were amazed at the vivid colors and size of the fruit: mangoes, guavas, and cherries. They didn’t dare taste or buy them, however, since they instinctively felt they shouldn’t run the risk. Lansana had sent them the address of a restaurant owned by one of his sisters (same mother, same father, he indicated) called Délices du Sahel; it was nothing but a modest shack whose walls were made with woven straw. Aunt Oumi was a large woman, badly rigged out in her indigo wrapper, but welcoming. She embraced them affectionately exclaiming, “You’re genuine Diarras. Both of you look like your father.”

  Thereupon she introduced them to the few customers present and explained, “These are my brother Lansana’s children. They live in Guadeloupe with their mother. Now they’ve come to live with him.”

  Live with him! Ivan and Ivana didn’t dare protest. Upon answering the question “What would you like to drink?” with “A beer please,” the aunt’s face fell.

  “We don’t serve alcohol here,” she said severely. “Otherwise, you can have anything you want. Hibiscus flower juice, bissap, for instance. I make it myself.”

  Suddenly the restaurant was swarming with men in military attire. They all wore the same red-colored fez, like the former Senagalese infantrymen, and the same bottle-green uniform.

  “Who are they?” Ivan asked intrigued.

  “They’re the militia,” the aunt explained. “Last week there was a terrible bomb attack at the Metropolis hotel: over twenty-seven dead. A state of emergency has been declared and there’s talk of imposing a curfew, which will be bad for business.”

  “Another bomb attack?” Ivan repeated in amazement. “The same thing happened in Oran.”

  The aunt shrugged her shoulders.

  “A bunch of individuals thought the West was having too much of an influence on us and claimed to remedy it,” she continued. “According to them, our education system must be totally overhauled and religion made all-powerful. The same thing’s happening in Lebanon and Cameroon, not to mention Syria and Libya.”

  As the days went by, ever since they had left Guadeloupe, Ivan and Ivana found themselves thrown into a strange environment, riddled with a tension they were incapable of deciphering.

  Finally, around five in the afternoon, they had to head for the airport again to fly to Kidal, less than an hour’s flight away. The sky was streaked in scarlet. They flew over regions of the same reddish-brown color, where there was no apparent sign of life—not a tree, dwelling, or animal in sight—to the great surprise of the twins, who had so far never seen the desert. Lansana was waiting for them at the airport, surrounded by a dozen boys and girls whom he pushed forward as he introduced them one by one.

  “This is your brother Madhi,” he said. “This is your brother Fadel, this is your sister Oumou, and this is your sister Rachida.”

  The introductions lasted almost an hour. Ivan and Ivana were astonished, since they thought they were Lansana’s only children. They did not know that the terms “brother” and “sister” also applied to first cousins, second cousins, nephews, and nieces—in short, every possible relative. Lansana must have once been a strong, handsome man. Now he was wizened and thinner and limped, leaning on two crutches.

  Ivan and Ivana were surprised they felt nothing on this, their first meeting. Ivan even found him disagreeable with his stingy face, his narrow eyes, his balding head, his yellowed teeth, and the gray hairs that poked out of his nose and ears. Well, he said to himself, perhaps affection grows on you as the days go by.

  Outside the air was dry and burning, the heat stifling, even more so than in Bamako. Night had fallen unnoticed, a jet-black darkness the likes of which they had never seen before and from which all sorts of spirits could emerge. Childhood fears suddenly awoke in them. It was probably on such a night that Ti-Sapoti grabbed his victims who were mesmerized by his tiny body and dragged off to their death.

  Following Lansana as he limped on his crutches, they arrived at a compound which once upon a time must have been grandiose. A wall encircled half a dozen huts that had been wrecked by the incursion of the jihadists. They had wreaked havoc, especially on the music building which, apart from a collection of precious musical instruments, housed a state-of-the-art recording studio. Mats had been laid out on the ground in the yard and everyone sat down to share the dinner that was served in a huge communal dish. Ivan and Ivana, who had never eaten with their hands, did the best they could to imitate the other guests. The meal was almost over when a short, stocky man with braided hair under his helmet emerged, dressed in a soldier’s uniform and with a gun swinging by his side.

  “This is Madiou,” Lansana said, introducing him to Ivan and gesturing him to sit next to him. “He’s the commander in chief of the militia, in charge of security not only for our town but also for the entire country. You will work under his orders.”

  After having swallowed several mouthfuls, Madiou motioned to Ivan to follow him into a corner of the yard. There he looked him up and down.

  “How tall are you?” he commanded.

  “One meter ninety-two,” Ivan answered, surprised by the question.

  “How much do you weigh? Almost a hundred kilos I can guess. I bet you think that’s all it takes. Unfortunately, it’s not the muscles that count, it’s the brain. It’s the brain that makes decisions, drives you to act, and combats fear.”

  The disagreeable impression Madiou immediately made on Ivan only worsened the following morning when he went along to the Alpha Yaya barracks. Madiou was nationally nicknamed El Cobra like in an American film. A batch of stories circulated about him. He was a callous ruffian. He had spent several years with the Foreign Legion until he was expelled for a dubious affair. It was whispered he had raped a small boy, a case rapidly hushed up by the authorities. Everyone was astonished and amazed when he was appointed commander in chief of the national militia. From the very beginning he made his authority felt, selecting Ivan for the most dangerous and singular missions. Sending him, for instance, into the middle of the desert to monitor suspicious comings and goings; asking him to attend the mosque on Fridays to study the faces of the worshippers after the imam’s preaching, something Ivan couldn’t understand since it was given in a foreign language, such as Bambara, Malinke, Fulani, or Soninke; or demanding he burst into the Koranic schools to ensure the children were chanting the suras in rhythm with their nodding heads. After a few weeks of this Ivan was fed up and confided in his sister.

  “I’d do better to go to France,” he declared. “To learn how to make chocolate. If he goes on like this, I’ll end up giving this Madiou a good punching.”

  Ivana listened to him in amazement. Ever since she had arrived in Kidal, on the contrary, she had been overjoyed and fallen in love with her surroundings: first of all the landscapes, these vast, wonderfully fawn-colored expanses of se
mi desert; and then the people whose beauty and elegance transformed their humble clothes. She who was keen on music was fascinated by the chants of the griots and attended classes by a pupil of Fanta Damba, whose great voice we have now lost. She learned the national languages and was already capable of babbling in Bambara or Fulani. She loved her work. The Sundjata Keita orphanage where she worked housed a mere twenty or so children, for African families are tightly knit and refuse to abandon those children whose parents have perished in a bomb attack. Here an uncle, there an aunt or cousin would fight to take charge of them.

  In the morning Ivana would wash the infants, feed them, teach them how to keep clean, and above all sing them the nursery rhymes that she had grown up with: “Savez-vous planter les choux à la mode de chez nous,” or else “Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, dormez-vous, dormez-vous, sonnez les matines, ding, dang, dong.”

  “Please,” Ivana begged her brother. “Be patient. Think how hurt Maman would be if we left Mali now. If you are just as unhappy in a few months we’ll see where we stand and make a decision.”

  Ivan, who couldn’t deny his sister anything, resigned himself to staying in Kidal where he soon made two friends despite the circumstances. The first was called Mansour. He was the son of one of Lansana’s sisters who had died during a particularly painful childbirth. Everyone made Mansour responsible for her death and the poor boy never managed to get over it. He was the compound’s whipping boy: puny with a dour expression and hardly affable, afflicted moreover by a high-pitched voice which made most people shriek with laughter. Because of a heart condition he had been rejected by the militia, which didn’t exactly enhance his reputation. He was also blamed for being a good-for-nothing. For the time being he was working in a restaurant in the town center, Le Balajo, a kind of modest café-bar owned by a French couple who allocated him the dishonorable job of dishwasher.

  Ivan and Mansour hit it off straight away. They immediately sensed they were carved from the same wood that made them losers for life. In fact Ivan had hardly made any friends, so obsessed was he by his sister. He discovered the pleasure of finding someone who had similar reactions, concerns, and opinions. He surprised himself by talking to Mansour about his childhood, as he had always thought his childhood to be of no interest to anyone. He was not at a loss for words when describing his island, his mother, or his grandmother, as well as a thousand small events which suddenly emerged and filled his memory. In the evening, Ivan and Mansour drew their folding chairs up close and chattered well into the night. Usually silent when confronted with the jibes he was regularly showered with, here Mansour kept up a constant string of words. He liked to repeat: “We must get out of this country. It’s one of Europe’s vassals, where nothing original is created and nothing good can emerge. We must go to Europe and strike the heart of capitalism.”

  Ivan listened to him, not entirely convinced. But he was no more interested in making chocolate than he was in participating in this violence. Go to Europe, yes, he was prepared to do that, but not to destroy capitalism. In order to find a better life, better than the one in Guadeloupe or Mali. Sometimes Mansour uttered serious accusations that Lansana was a drunkard, a marabout-cognac.

  “A marabout-cognac?” Ivan repeated in amazement. “Why do you say that?”

  Mansour lowered his voice.

  “You only have to watch how he behaves when he returns home in the evening. He walks askew, then locks himself up in his room and doesn’t come out till early morning. It’s because he’s drunk and has to sleep it off.”

  By dint of hearing such comments, Ivan set about watching his father whom he was not overly fond of. He very quickly realized that Mansour was entirely mistaken; it wasn’t alcohol that Lansana locked himself up with in his room, but women of whom it seemed he could never get enough. Women. All kinds of women. Some were married and looking to make ends meet. Others were naive young girls who were impressed by the prestige of this man twice their age. Finally, there were the professionals, specializing in love with a price tag. Ivan was horrified by this debauchery since the love he bore his sister protected him and made him chaste. For him the body of a woman was sacred. He could not imagine possessing a woman without love. The hypocrisy of his father, an arrant sermonizer constantly quoting the Koran, disgusted him.

  More and more Ivan detested the compound and found his father’s authority increasingly difficult to tolerate. Lansana ordered him around as if he were a ten-year-old kid and didn’t hesitate to take him down a peg or two in front of witnesses. He had nicknamed him “the guy who walks without knowing where he puts his feet.” Ivan didn’t understand why it made everyone laugh and constantly wondered whether he was conceited, reckless, or simply a blind fool.

  One evening Mansour drew up his chair even closer. You sensed he was racked by a deep emotion and on the point of confessing something terrible.

  “Yesterday I met a certain Ramzi,” he whispered. “A smuggler from Lebanon. Together with a group of other boys he will take us to Libya then Europe, the very heart of all the terrorist attacks. Do you want to join us?”

  Since Ivan remained speechless, he insisted.

  “It will only cost you five hundred Malian francs, as Ramzi is not doing it for money. He has the faith. We must destroy this world of ours that has been reduced to the status of a vassal.”

  Ivan shook his head and apologized. He could not leave his sister behind all alone in this compound where she knew very few people and set off for another life.

  A few days later Mansour disappeared, leaving Ivan his copy of the Koran as a souvenir; it bore the dedication: We will meet again one day. Your brother who loves you now and forever. Once Mansour had gone, a lot of stories were rumored about him. Just imagine, at La Balajo he gave himself to foreigners, tourists obviously, who paid dearly for the possession of his body. According to intelligence the police had received, Mansour had left for Belgium to join a group of terrorists who were planning an attack. Unfortunately nobody in the compound could provide any information or confirm the rumors.

  Ivan often thought about Mansour. Since he had left, the compound seemed even emptier. There was nobody to speak to. The endless nights were pierced by the shrill refrains of the singers gathered around Lansana’s hut. He always had the same nightmare: he saw his friend muffled up, wearing a woolen bonnet, setting off bombs in airports and shooting bullets from his Kalashnikov at customers sitting on the terraces of cafés. He admired his courage, nevertheless, and constantly regretted his friend’s departure.

  It was then that Ivan met a second friend, different from Mansour yet subtly similar. He was a member of the militia going by the name of Ali. He was handsome, a giant over six feet tall, and light-skinned since his mother was a Moor. Yet he was constantly attacked and cruelly mocked by the other members of the militia who were jealous of his noble ancestry. He was the son of a well-known scholar of the Koran and a singer who some compared to the great Umm Kulthum.

  Their friendship began when they were both assigned the same mission. They were ordered to go to Kita, a small village fifty kilometers away from Kidal, where some farmers had been killed and their herd of goats carried off.

  “This mission is one of the stupidest I’ve ever heard of,” Ali declared, sitting down in the military jeep next to Ivan. “If in all likelihood the terrorists are responsible, by this time they must have safely hidden most of the herd and roasted the rest in the shelter of the cliffs.”

  “You shouldn’t say things like that,” Ivan commented. “You never know into which ears your jibes will fall. This camp is full of guys only too keen to denounce the slightest gossip to the commander in chief in order to make an impression.”

  “You’re not one of them,” Ali assured him, starting the engine. “I’ve been watching you for weeks. What’s that place you come from? I know you’re a foreigner.”

  “I come from Guadeloupe,” Ivan replied. “It�
�s not really a country; it’s a French overseas department.”

  “A French overseas department!” Ali guffawed. “What does that mean?”

  Ivan attempted to explain the strangeness of the place he came from and found himself repeating the words he had heard from the mouth of Monsieur Jérémie. He depicted a dilapidated land and an unemployed youth reduced to drug trafficking and violence.

  “Well I never,” commented Ali. “Here’s one more place to be liberated.”

  After a few moments of silence he continued.

  “If we drive straight ahead we’ll soon come to Algeria. There, we’d have no problems taking a plane to France or even better, to Belgium.”

  “France? Belgium?” Ivan exclaimed.

  Once again he heard talk of Europe as a place where you could start life over again.

  “Why do you want to go to France?” he insisted.

  Ali didn’t answer.

  The village of Kita numbered around a hundred or so souls. The streets were deserted. Inside their houses the women whose husbands had been assassinated were sobbing their hearts out.

  “We’ve lost both our husbands and our herds,” they lamented. “What have we done to deserve such a fate?”

  “You have probably offended God,” Ali replied drily.

  He soon invited Ivan to his house in Kidal. Within the genuine palace where his parents lived—tapestries, silk drapes, thick-pile woolen carpets and deep-sunken sofas—he had arranged for himself a narrow room with a low ceiling, rudimentarily furnished with a bed and some brown leather ottomans. Ivan quickly understood why his three younger brothers had nicknamed him the ayatollah. He did not drink, did not smoke, dutifully said his five prayers, was the first at the mosque on Fridays, and finally, as soon as he had a moment to himself, he fiddled with his string of beads chanting suras. He only allowed himself two things: food and, like Lansana, women. He had a Moroccan cook at his service, a sort of hunchbacked gnome, who prepared succulent dishes for him such as tajines, guinea fowl cooked in honey, and stuffed squash on a bed of herbs and spices. As for women he had two or three spend the night fondling him every evening.