THE LIZARD WAS sleeping on my notebook. Myriam complained from her spot on the bed. “We’re not doing anything here, we’ve just been bored stupid for three weeks. You never talk, you just think. You’re not paying any attention to me. I’m going back to The Hague, I’ll find a job as a translator, or a waitress.” Carefully, I moved the lizard aside to keep from disturbing its sleep. The two of us have become fast friends. “Do what you want, Myriam.” We have done everything there was to do in Bunia. We went for drinks at the Café de la Paix, we ate with the Lebanese who talked trafficking and deals, and we even went to the movies. The Bunia movie theatre! A large whitewashed room, a couple dozen plastic chairs, a cooler full of Primus, a big TV set perched on metal shelving probably pilfered from MONUC, and every film featured Jackie Chan or Sylvester Stallone. Then back to the hotel for a beer, with Vietnamese and Kurdish music trading places. Sayed and Maïko still in wonderment before this lousy world that brought them together, a place of stupidity and ignorance. They listened to BBC in the kitchen. They wanted to have children. We even went to the Sunday service led by Kabanga who received God’s revelation in his cold prison cell in The Hague, a humid little box you wouldn’t use to punish a dog. One night, warmth filled him, then a light appeared and a voice was heard, imperious and solemn. “You have sinned by the sword, but you will know redemption by the cross. The Hema people will dominate only if they follow the path of my word.” The church dissolved in shouts of “Hallelujah” and “God bless the Hema.” In the tent, all dressed in white the way he was, Kabanga’s lieutenants lifted their arms heavenward, shouting, “Praise God,” echoed in unison by the crowd. Myriam smiled. I felt like throwing up. We travelled to Lake Albert and ate a meal with some Canadians in the oil business. They were waiting for Kabanga to take over again. I thought of Josué. I’d heard nothing from him, but he was sending out rumours, according to Joseph.
Myriam wanted to live. What did that mean? She probably didn’t know. But our mechanical lovemaking that was happening ever less frequently wasn’t going to provide her with the illusion of living. “Do what you want, Myriam.”