THE MOMENT THE story came out, the cry went up all over the neighborhood of Derb Taliane: “Ichrak metet! Ichrak is dead!” Sese Tshimanga wanted to be the one to tell Mokhtar Daoudi.
Daoudi did not seem surprised to hear it.
“Follow me,” he said.
Sese entered the inspector’s office and closed the door behind him.
“Take a seat.”
For twenty minutes now, the young Congolese had been cooling his heels on a bench, waiting for the inspector to appear.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s on duty. He’s out and about, but he’ll be back,” he’d been told from behind the counter by a ripped young detective dressed like a rapper, in a Raw Uncut T-shirt, a baseball cap, and a heavy chain whose links looked like they were studded with diamonds. Sitting with three uniformed cops, he was passing the night as best he could, playing dominos while waiting for a crime to deign to happen. No one had asked Sese what he wanted; he was known to be a personal acquaintance of the chief. Sese had bided his time, but the moment the inspector set foot in the station, he’d blurted out the news.
“How do you know about it?”
“I saw the body.”
“Where?”
“Not far from her place. It’s awful, Mokhtar.”
Sinking into his chair, the inspector studied Sese’s stunned expression. Daoudi’s mind was racing. He stroked his short beard, which was intended to brighten up his large face, with its protruding nose. He shook his head, topped by salt-and-pepper curls.
“Poor woman. You’re sure she’s dead?”
“Sure as I see you in front of me.”
“I believe you.”
Mokhtar Daoudi hauled his imposing frame out of his chair and gave a sigh.
“Come on, you can show me. Choukri!”
“Yes sir, inspector!” answered the bodybuilder in a voice like a double bass. He said it the way you perform a hip-hop flow, eyes hidden beneath the peak of his cap.
“Mind the shop. I’m taking Sese; he needs to show me something.”
The police-issue Dacia turned out of Rue Souss in the Cuba neighborhood and hung a left onto Avenue Tiznit. Inside the car, Daoudi and Sese were quiet, both thinking about the same thing. They passed the library and the museum of the Hassan II mosque and took another left onto Rue Zaïr, heading for Derb Taliane. The light from the streetlamps vied with a dim red sunlight bathing the city; dawn was breaking on questions that needed to be answered, if God would lend his help, of course.
When Daoudi pulled up on Rue du Poète Taha Adnan, gawkers had already gathered at the bottom of the stone steps down which Ichrak appeared to have fallen. Silence hung over the scene. There was whispering, but the atmosphere was one of reflection. Heads turned when Sese and the inspector closed the car doors.
“Out of the way!” Daoudi shouted, wanting to begin his investigation. “How am I supposed to find clues if you mess up my crime scene?”
The crowd parted, revealing the twisted body of the young woman. She no longer looked like Ichrak; there was a gash across her throat that had also cut open her black gandoura embroidered with gold thread.
“Don’t just stand there; give me a hand,” said the inspector to Sese. “Get these people out of the way.”
“All right, move aside; there’s nothing to see!” the young man ordered.
The onlookers offered a few protests for form’s sake, but they complied, taking one or two steps back to make room for authority.
“Yes, send an ambulance,” the authority was saying, his cell phone pressed to his ear. “And get a move on! Are you waiting for the whole neighborhood to be awake? You’re right next door. OK.”
Hanging up, he studied the ground around him as if he didn’t know what to do next. He took a few photos with his smartphone, then knelt to look at the neck wound. Examining the cut without looking into the victim’s eyes was far from easy. He shifted position. Bringing his knees together, he assumed the posture of one praying. He let out a long sigh, and his shoulders visibly sank. All those present saw clearly how it was the ambulance siren that finally pulled the inspector out of his daze.
“You understand that I have to lock you up.”
“You can’t be serious, Mokhtar!”
“Who was one of the first at the crime scene?”
“Me.”
“When did you last see her alive?”
“Yesterday evening.”
“There you are. Those are the rules. One of the last to see the victim alive, one of the first at the place of the crime. I have to, Sese; your profile is suspicious.”
“But I have an alibi.”
“What were you doing going to see her at daybreak?”
“We had an errand to run.”
“Never mind that—we’ll look into it. In the meantime, take it easy. Are you innocent, or aren’t you? I’ll lock you up. Then, if it wasn’t you that killed her, I’ll let you go. Besides, you’re familiar with our cells, right?”
“Yes. But come on, Mokhtar! Be nice. If it was me, I wouldn’t have come running to let you know. I tried to call you several times, but I couldn’t get a hold of you, so I went all the way to the station in person.”
“True. But I have to write a report, and taking someone into custody is good for my stats, see. It won’t be more than forty-eight hours. You don’t mind doing that for a friend, huh? I swear I’ll bring you food made by my own wife. Choukri, my right-hand man, will personally deliver it to your cell. You know him, the guy that looks like Booba the singer. Wait and see; you’ll have a ball.”
The two men were in the car heading back to the station. They were both pensive. The ambulance had taken the body to the forensic institute morgue. Inspector Daoudi had climbed up the steps at the bottom of which Ichrak had been found; he’d combed the alley at the top in search of clues and had found and photographed traces of the victim’s blood. He’d then come back down and asked the few residents who were around the usual questions. In fact, at this end of the street, there were only some small warehouses and a few hardware shops that would open later in the morning; otherwise, it was lined by tall blank walls, which explained why there were so few passersby at daybreak. The inspector had then made some notes, taken a few more pictures, and picked up some cigarette butts, which he slipped into a small plastic bag to legitimize his presence in front of the onlookers; then he left in the company of Sese Tshimanga. The first steps in the inquiry had been carried out zealously, officially, by the book.
The city was slowly stirring. The neighborhood merchants were setting up their stalls, voices were calling to one another, life was resuming its course. Derb Taliane, where the news of Ichrak’s death was beginning to spread, was waking from a night that had been especially violent, to judge by the pool of blood drying at the foot of the steps on Rue du Poète Taha Adnan.
A pale hand bearing an indigo tattoo rested gently on the throat, concealing the dark laceration; the other, closed in a fist, was passing a wet cloth between Ichrak’s heavy breasts. The water trickled toward the stomach and sides, then spilled onto the marble slab where the young woman’s body lay. Old Zahira held herself straight. She wore a white gandoura; her head leaned to the side, her hair was loose. The neckline of her robe was awry, and the light from a high window shone on a bare shoulder, the skin wrinkled and marked with blue arabesques. She lifted her head with a groan.
“Wili! Calamity!” she said suddenly; her body folded in two and collapsed, arms stretched out, over the corpse of Ichrak, her only daughter.
A long, long sob burst forth, to the point of inhibiting her breathing. With her last strength, she filled her lungs so as to emit the wail that followed. It rose rapidly to her throat, against her will, using up all the air she had. It was unending. After a while, virtually emptied, she pulled herself together. With the back of her sleeve, she wiped her tears, which had smudged the kohl beneath her eyes. The one they called Al Majnouna—the Madwoman—was today condemned to the most merciless lucidity: Ichrak was truly dead. Compressing her lips in an attempt to suppress a prolonged moan, to lessen the feeling of suffocation, the old woman plunged the cloth into a plastic bucket and meticulously, with great tenderness, wiped this body that from now on would do no harm to anyone. Its mouth would remain shut forever; behind the closed eyelids, its gaze would no longer burn upon anyone. The stilled flesh was now as cold as the stone on which it had been laid, so it could be washed one final time, before being wrapped in a shroud and buried in the proper way.
A few months earlier, sitting on his bag at the side of the road, Sese had been unable to believe his eyes. Yet the billboard above him couldn’t lie: five models dressed as Royal Air Maroc flight attendants, Hermès-style scarves around their necks, were aiming dazzling smiles at him, advertising special rates on all flights, with a text in Arabic and Berber entwined about them. There was no question about it: Sese was in Morocco. He’d noticed that the countryside didn’t look like Normandy, even if he wasn’t really up on French geography. Yet Normandy was where Farès Lefouili—if that was in fact his real name—had promised to drop him. The bastard. Sese could have wept with rage. He never should have trusted that nice-guy type. Sese hadn’t seen it coming. They’d met in Dakar, at a table in Le Balajo, a small restaurant on Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, not far from the port. An oversweet smile, honeyed voice, baby face, curly hair that was almost blond—all of that should have sounded warning bells: he was like a White. They were ruthless, those people, as he’d just been reminded. The guy said he was a sailor on a sardine boat that was leaving the next day. Sese had just let on that he was aiming to get to Europe and that he’d fled Congo because of the political turmoil and the civil war.
“Everyone’s fleeing these days, even the sardines.”
At first the man had spoken to him of the tough economic times, caused by the industrial fishing vessels that sweep up everything.
“Those things are monsters! Japanese, Russian . . . What are the sardines supposed to do? So they got the heck away from Algeria! We thought we’d find some down this way, but all we caught were anchovies and jellyfish. When the pilchards saw our hungry mugs, they wriggled out of the nets and jumped back into the sea, I’m telling you. We’re heading out tomorrow. We came all this way for nothing. Cheers.”
The man raised his glass and drank. Sese followed suit.
“Do you know Deauville?” Farès asked after their third beer. “That’s where we’re heading tomorrow. Up there you’ve got all the fish you want. Scorpion fish, blue trout, mangosteens. It’s in Normandy, in Francia.”
“Damn! You don’t say!” exclaimed Sese, already excited, his eyes glued to those of Farès.
Sese, who couldn’t swim, had immediately thought that this was a way to get to Europe without drowning in a “Made in Senegal” pirogue, as he’d originally planned. So the two men cut a deal: a place in the hold of the ship for a fee of $500. After a further exchange of courtesies, they shook hands on $400. Farès had been classy about it and hadn’t even insisted on a down payment.
“I swear on my mother, you’ll love it up there!” he’d said, as if adding another clause to their contract. “My brother Yazid works at the Algerian embassy in Deauville; he can help you.”
“What does he do at the embassy?” Sese asked.
“Everything!”
When Sese came aboard, the Algerian took his money—almost half of the dollars Sese had. The hiding place was a recess in the hold. There wasn’t even room for Sese to stretch out fully. The voyage had seemed long to him, but in the end it wasn’t long enough, because one night Farès opened the door and told him to take his bag. He hurried him down a deserted gangway toward a metal staircase. Sese was elated: he’d made it to Europe. For so long now, he’d been anticipating the moment when the cold that people talked about so much in Kinshasa would strike his face like a stamp in a passport, certifying his arrival in the Far North. But when a door opened on the night and the sea spray, Sese was more than surprised at the blast of heat that struck him. He didn’t have time to think any further, because Farès led him running to a guardrail, on the other side of which a rope ladder dropped loosely toward the waves. Sese hesitated.
“What’s this?”
“Climb down! There’s no time for questions, the coast guard ships are close.”
“But—”
Sese was cut off: Farès pushed him down into a rubber dinghy as deflated as a toy balloon after a party.
“Take that wooden thing over there. You know what you need to do now!” he shouted over the noise of the waves slapping against the boat.
Farès pulled on a cord and set the tiny dinghy free. It rocked alarmingly from side to side, like a kiddie pool.
“Hey!” squealed Sese.
A paddle lay on the canvas floor of the dinghy. Sese began to wield it desperately on either side, trying to hold his course. The moon faintly illuminated what he guessed must be an inlet. He managed to land on a pebble beach. A rocky path led up to what he hoped would be a road. He walked in darkness without knowing where he was going, up to the moment when the truth was revealed to him: he wasn’t in Deauville; he wasn’t in Normandy, as he’d been promised, but still in Africa—to be precise, in the Western Kingdom.
Since his arrival, he’d found his feet; he was able to express himself in a mixture of French, standard Arabic, and a little Darija, and he felt at home. But now, because of Mokhtar Daoudi, he’d found himself in jail without having done a thing, when all he’d wanted was to inform the appropriate authorities.
“Ah, Vié na ngai. Na barrer Ichrak? Ata yo moko. Moto na ngai. Ah, Great Man. Me, kill Ichrak? Can you imagine? She was my dear friend!”
Sese had uttered these words in Lingala slang, face lifted up, as if speaking to an especially influential divinity. Then he dropped into a sitting position on a cement slab furnished—if that was the right word—with a thin mattress that had been used for sleeping and a great many other things besides. His gaze moved around the cubbyhole they’d put him in, and he inwardly cursed Inspector Daoudi. Him, suspected of killing Ichrak? It was ridiculous! But that’s what the inspector had claimed, booking sheet in hand.
Sese knew the man. Past fifty, Daoudi believed he had no time to lose and that his career deserved more than a small precinct in a crummy part of town. He would have preferred to work among the rich, not in a working-class neighborhood where people had nothing to offer him. At least, that’s what he’d thought at first. Why bother arresting them if they didn’t have the wherewithal to grease his palm? He’d moved heaven and earth to get himself a transfer. But recently things had changed, and a major upheaval was in the works around here. Like everyone else, he’d seen it coming; he heard talk of large-scale investments, and so his policing strategy had undergone an about-face. Arrests became the name of the game in Cuba and Derb Taliane. He had to prove to his higher-ups that he was the man to watch over an area destined to accommodate multimillionaires. In Casablanca poverty was brazen; it didn’t hide in the outskirts of the city but instead stared in the face of the wealth that flaunted itself with walls of concrete and glass designed by famous architects. To do the job properly, it would be necessary to expropriate and demolish the last hovels that devalued their surroundings, but the occupants had decided that their opinion mattered. They’d leave, but not without acquiring a little of the plenty being paraded before them. And so, quite naturally, they dug in their heels and resorted to extortion. The government had doubtless made a mistake in offering a sum of money for each expropriated family and relocation outside the city. Once this became known, the residents encouraged all the uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces they could to move in from the country, so they could all benefit from the promised gold mine. Inevitably, the budget for the operation skyrocketed. On top of that, word got about that those who’d quickly accepted the offer had not found their new accommodations any better; on the contrary, those thoroughgoing city dwellers had been moved to a landscape that meant nothing to them. Things were at an impasse. The people and the state were eyeing each other, waiting for a solution to emerge, but alas, pride and a spirit of resistance were the specialty of Derb Taliane—they formed part of its letters of nobility; they were built into the DNA of all who were born there. Nothing could be done about it. It was the same in the Cuba neighborhood. Despite all this, Inspector Daoudi did not despair; all these people were bound to leave sooner or later. He thought ahead, even, and made up his mind to boost his stats. When crime rates looked like they were about to drop, arbitrary arrests multiplied for the smallest reasons. He’d promised himself he’d become the best-performing cop in the country, no less.
The next day, the papers would say that a woman had been found dead and that Inspector Daoudi had rapidly begun an investigation and made an arrest. In forty-eight hours, Sese knew, he’d be out again, after having bolstered the detective’s score sheet for a moment. But forty-eight hours was time and money lost, thought Sese. As it was, things hadn’t been going that well. Before he met Ichrak, his turnover had been in decline. The charm and sincerity he displayed with his big smile on the computer screens of European women were clearly insufficient: the Western Union transfers were barely trickling in; he was having trouble making ends meet.
The day he’d met Ichrak, it had been as oppressively hot as it was at present in his cell. The air blowing from the desert not only heralded sandstorms; it could also be bringing bad luck. Like now, thought Sese. That memorable day, he’d been so sick of it all that he’d decided to change his occupation. Sese was what’s known as a brouteur, a sort of African cyber-seducer. One of those guys, often very young, who maintain a retinue of dozens—sometimes even hundreds—of women in love with them. These men are workaholic pickup artists trying to wrangle money from the women by playing on stereotypes of poverty-stricken Africa and the eternal guilt of a slave-owning, colonialist Europe in search of redemption. With this intense psychological strategy, the brouteurs made hundreds of euros a month, tethered to their keyboards, their screens, and their lies. Except that the virtual rendezvous were no longer such a profitable niche. The competition was getting tougher, and the various sites waged merciless war in their listings. So Sese had decided to switch to bank fraud—as a shayeur, or fly-by-night salesman, he’d already had some practice at this. Picking up young or older white women looking for love was right up his alley; it could even be regarded as a public service. Sese enjoyed uttering phrases that melted the hearts and the credit cards of his prey. “Listen me, you are only one make my heart beat so hard, I swear you!” he could say suavely in a Kinshasa accent. When the maiden laughed, he knew how to press his case and pursue the seduction. He was a sentimental guy, was Sese; emptying the bank accounts of suckers contacted by email was tiresome work, and it did a lot of harm to the victim, who was perhaps a little too keen, but innocent all the same.
It was out of desperation, then, that he’d wanted to apprentice in fraud with Dramé, a Senegalese hustler, but the guy didn’t show that day.
“Fuck it!”
Returning home from his failed rendezvous, he’d had to run to catch his bus, panting in exasperation.
“I haven’t got all day,” the driver grumbled, his hand on the button that would close the door.
Sese didn’t even respond. He bought a ticket and wove his way down the aisle looking for a free seat.
“Dramé’s beginning to act the wise guy . . . I need training, me! I call him, he never answers, and when he does pick up, he makes a bogus appointment: ‘Come to Place des Nations-Unies; we’ll get a bite to eat.’ Then he makes me wait like an idiot!” Sese found a spot next to a woman who seemed absorbed in the passing scenery. He brooded on his frustrations. His affairs were not going the way he would have wanted. He was wondering if his virtual sex appeal had dried up. Those damn women must have been spreading the word on some forum, saying that Koffi the Big Ngando—that was his online name, Big Crocodile—was nothing but a cheap swindler. He should look into it.
He was deep in his thoughts when there was a nastier-than-usual bend in the road, and he felt his pelvis sliding to the left. He had to hold on to the seat in front of him. At that moment an electric sensation originating at his right hip rippled through his entire body: driven by centrifugal force and the universal laws of gravitation, a firm, curvaceous flesh, endowed in addition with diabolical suppleness, had pressed against his own flesh and had muddled his spatiotemporal awareness for a good three or four seconds. The feeling gradually ebbed as Sese became aware that it was the hip and thigh of his neighbor that had been responsible for this inner turbulence. After the shock, a sweet warmth overcame Sese, and his mind left terrestrial reality behind for an indeterminate length of time. At that point, a low voice came from the woman’s lips, whispering words in an emphatic, finely chiseled flow, with a rhythm that undulated like dunes in the desert standing out against the sky: Of infinite length, the night will not offer me any rest, relieve me of any weight. Quite the opposite—it will give me ever greater clarity, and I shall see, as I have never before been given to see, to what point my presence here is in fact unknown, my needs unmet, my requests ignored; to what extent too, in this house all is conflict, struggle, and failure. Wearing earphones, the young woman was reciting a text that caressed Sese’s ears. The soft hiss of the bus’s tires against the asphalt resonated in his head like a steady accompaniment. He closed his eyes, and the light, which had a slightly stroboscopic quality from the passing cityscape, intensified his flight of fancy. The thigh had not moved; on the contrary, its pressure had increased. A sweet tranquility swept over Sese Tshimanga. He wanted to yield to it, but he felt an erection twitching into existence, and that helped him collect his thoughts. Not wishing to become distracted and ill-mannered, he restrained himself and mastered the beating of his heart. The psalm-like chant poured irregularly, like a stream of honey, from the young woman’s throat. Sese, eyes closed, was far away, while everyone else in the bus remained deep in the twists and turns of their own thoughts . . . His head resting on my lap, I continue gently to stroke his face, his neck, his arm. I speak to him of the weather outside. It’s sunny, I repeat, it’s sunny, despite the rainwater dripping from the metal gutters, despite the absence of exterior light, despite the chill in the house. And without making any sound, I get up . . . The bus rode on like a flying carpet. In Sese’s head, at least, there was no doubt as to the marvel he was experiencing.
“Excuse me!”
Sese looked up and stared uncomprehendingly at the young woman standing over him. He jumped to his feet and let her pass. He must have dozed off. This was her stop. Looking out the window, he realized it was his too. As he got off the bus, the woman set off immediately down Avenue Tiznit, carrying a cardboard box under her arm. He followed her. In the bus, Sese had only seen her in profile. He’d caught a brief glimpse of her face when she’d risen to get off, but here he had before his eyes the outline that could be made out undulating beneath her full-length robe, which bore a leafy pattern in red, yellow, and green against a dark turquoise background. As she walked, at times the rhinestones adorning her sandals could be seen. Shoulders pulled back, she was like a sculpture, and the vigor of her body could be sensed from the movements of the fabric, whose resistance was most sorely tested at the level of her hips. Sese watched the play of the leg muscles as they pulled the buttocks taut. The hang of the garment was intended to hide this subtle mechanism, but Sese’s eyes and his other senses once again found themselves troubled by the fluidity, the power, and the emotional force generated by the panther-like walk of the bus rider.
“Mademoiselle!”
“What do you want, kid?” she asked, barely turning her head.
“‘Of infinite length, the night will not offer me any rest, relieve me of any weight. Quite the opposite, it will give me ever greater clarity and I shall see, as I have never before been given to see . . .’ You could have kept repeating that sentence for a thousand and one nights; I wouldn’t have said a word because you’d be giving me ever greater clarity.”
“What is this? Are you spying on me?” the woman said with a scornful look.
“Don’t be mad, my sister; I’m Sese.”
“I’m not your sister.”
“Mademoiselle, then?”
“Best not to talk at all. Look at yourself. And you’re trying to pick people up? Buzz off!”
She quickened her pace and ignored him, looking straight ahead as she walked on. Sese caught up with her.
“Sister, I’m a poet too. Listen, this is a Cameroonian poem.”
Keeping time with his right hand, he recited in super-precise rhythm:
Hey, my friend, see, you’re not talking to me?
I say, come share a njoka with me and you put on airs?
I wanda about you, eh.
My friend, what’s going on?
If you didn’t want njoka,
Molla, you shoulda stayed home!
Stick to it, stick to it, baby.
Stick to it, stick to it, stick to it, baby.
“That’s what you’re doing? And you have the nerve to say it!” she exclaimed, one eyebrow raised. “You’re nuts!”
“I’m just trying, sister; don’t hold it against me.”
The young woman stopped and studied Sese the way you’d examine an extraterrestrial whose dimensions went far beyond what you’d imagined. Then she burst into peals of crystalline laughter that to Sese’s ears was like a melody from the heavens. Her face was already of an incomparable beauty, but when she laughed, her perfect features seemed suddenly illuminated as if by a spotlight, the way only the best movie directors know how. She was as tall as a daughter of the Kasaï region of Congo, and her hair, gathered in a bun, increased her height even more. A broad lock of hair lay across her forehead, and her almond-shaped eyes seemed to be holding back a lake at the rim of her lower lashes. A soft fold of skin hemmed them, no doubt restraining the excess of emotion that her gaze did not dare to reveal. That gaze was intensified by full, clearly defined eyebrows and long lashes. Her nose was straight. Her lips, fleshy as petals, had the color of glistening pomegranate, while her skin was copper hued. In the heat and the sunlight that burned everything around, a sublime vision had materialized before the young Congolese. He forgot about the tidal wave that had crashed against his right thigh; he could feel only his heart melting as swiftly as an ice floe filmed in time lapse. Ichrak was extraordinarily beautiful.
“You’re crazy, kid,” she said, breathing regularly again. “Make yourself useful; carry this.”
She handed him the box that was under her arm.
“What’s your name?”
“Ichrak. You’re Sese, is that it? Where does that name come from?”
“Take note! It’s a great name. I’m from the Congo. The Democratic Republic. The big one. Zaire, you know.”
“What are you doing in Morocco? You’re trying to cross, is that it? Into Spain?”
“I didn’t plan to be here. You can’t trust anyone in this world, sister. A crook left me here when he’d promised to take me to Normandy. I was supposed to get off in Deauville, then go to Paris on the TGV, direct. ‘You know Deauville?’ he kept asking me. The louse. I wanted to see Belgium, London, Paree. Not Morocco! I was on a boat; then I found myself here.”
“You’re not happy to be here?”
“Sure, but you have to understand: I thought I’d left Africa; I wasn’t intending to end up back here. Especially against my will. But I’m adapting; I have plans. It’s not bad here.”
“So what are you doing in the meantime?”
“I’m a poet, I told you. I really liked the things you were saying before. A poet is sensitive to words.”
“You can’t live on words. I asked you what you do.”
“I’m in business,” said Sese evasively.
“What business?”
“I talk with people on the internet, and they send me money.”
“You talk with women, is that it? Tell me the truth.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong, sister. They need me over there. In Europe, men and women don’t live together so much anymore, you know. It’s all modern there. A lot of men live as couples together, so I’ve heard. So what are the women to do? Luckily I’m there for them. In the evening, after work and all that, when they need a bit of masculine company, they only have to turn on their computer, and there I am.”
“And talking with you helps them in some way? All you do is tell them nonsense.”
“Me, I’m just there to warm them up. After that, they only need to finish the job. There, in White countries, they’ve got objects they call sex toys. Apparently those things are stronger than their men. More effective. They work on batteries.”
“I don’t want to hear any more. It’s disgusting, that business of yours.”
“I’ve also heard that over there they think African men are super-powerful. So all the woman has to do is look at me on the screen and talk to me, and she wants it. That’s why they give me money.”
“Doesn’t that make you a bit of a con man?”
“Not at all. They fantasize about my face, my voice. You don’t expect me to give them all that for nothing?”
“Give them what? Have you seen yourself?”
Sese looked down at what he was wearing. In his Barcelona soccer shirt with the Qatar Airways logo, his jeans, and his red and blue Nikes, he looked pretty good, he thought. With that and his angelic mug with its short dreads, they had nothing to complain about.
“You give nothing, and you charge money for it? I wouldn’t mind being in your shoes.”
“It’s easy, sister. You have to understand that it’s all virtual. I was listening to the things you were saying before. I swear, if I could talk like you, I’d be raking it in hand over fist. We could go into business together. You’d be my communications consultant. In exchange for that, I’ll train you, and you’ll make yourself some dough.”
“All you need to do is read some books, and you’ll know as much about it as I do.”
“Read novels? Me and literature, you know . . . I don’t have the patience. I’m a businessman, a man of action. All I’m lacking is a dependable partner. Where do you live?”
“Derb Taliane. Why?”
“I’m nearby, in Cuba. You could come over to my place; we can run a trial. People need words like the ones you were saying. With that, sister, they’d be dropping like flies; I know it.”
“Your place? You think I’m going to go just like that, with someone I don’t even know? Who do you take me for?”
“Easy now, I was just talking. Trying to explain things to you. With the language I heard, you could make money easily, but for that you need a network.”
Sese looked left and right, as if to ensure no one was listening, and said confidentially:
“I’ve got one. It’s solid. To get the Western Union rolling in, you need to have a conversation, but at a certain point yacking doesn’t cut it. Women need poetry; men need to see. We’ll be there, side by side.”
“Are you putting me on?”
“Not at all. Listen . . .”
Sese put the cardboard box on the ground to better convince his interlocutor.
“I’ve got all these women in my computer, but recently you’d think they’d been tipping each other off. When I press them for money, they block me without warning. I ought to add a box that they click on to say they accept my conditions before they can talk to me. Do you reckon my language has gotten limited?”
In fact, the young woman had thought so from the moment Sese had started reciting his crummy little “Stick to It” poem. On the other hand, he was right: women needed poetry.
“I’m not interested.”
“If you start tossing out words like the ones you were saying, anyone’d be hooked; I’m certain of it. And I know how to make them pay. Frustrated people will always have need of us.”
“Also, you don’t even respect them, those clients of yours. You should be ashamed. I’m this way,” Ichrak said, pointing down an alleyway that plunged into a kind of multicolored labyrinth of old houses whose walls and woodwork bore the patina of time. “This is where we part. I’ll take my box.”
“Hang on! Give me your number at least.”
She took a cell phone from her leather handbag, pressed some buttons, and showed him a number on the screen.
“Here.”
“Got it!” He tapped it in. “Tell me your name again.”
“Ichrak.”
“Whoa! That’s complicated. I’m Sese. I’m calling you; don’t pick up—that way you’ll have my number too. Don’t forget. If you hear, ‘This is Sese!’—it’s me. All right, sister. To be continued . . .”
The young woman walked off. Sese didn’t leave right away. He lingered for a while, playing at making himself dizzy merely by keeping his eyes riveted on the powerful centerline of Ichrak’s body as it shifted from one hip to the other. Holding his breath, he wondered how such a slim figure could coordinate those forms with such suppleness while making them describe their measured ellipses in space. It was only when he was on the point of collapse that he turned and walked away, his senses even more disturbed than they’d been at the moment the two of them met.
“Ah, Vié! Tala kaka! Ah, Great Man! Really!”
Still squatting in his cell, face and palms turned upward, Sese was once again taking the late President Mobutu as witness. The Great Man had died when Sese was still a child, but Sese considered him his mentor, his master in thinking, his source of enlightenment; at times of need like the present moment, he called upon him. Had he not been given the epithet of Guide? Sese, then, had taken him as his own adviser. When he had some question in his life, it was to Mobutu that he turned to resolve it. When adversity loomed, the Marshal was the shot of courage he needed. When Sese was feeling lonely and overcome by nostalgia, Mo Prezo was there to comfort him. To the younger man, he was like a superhero, because after all, this leader, born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, had had to change his name to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga—because no one is born with the name of Superman, the Hulk, Catwoman, or Spider-Man. For a time, you can accept being called Clark Kent in New York, Selina Kyle in Gotham, or Joseph-Désiré in Kinshasa, but at a certain moment you have a mission to carry out. That was indeed the duty felt by those in the personal pantheon of Sese Seko Tshimanga—for such was Sese’s true patronymic.
Sese’s worship of Mobutu came from long ago—from his father, to be precise. The latter was still in Mbuji-Mayi in eastern Kasaï when the strongman came to power and eased restrictions on diamond mining. A teenager at the time, Sese’s father, like most of the inhabitants of the region, had gotten it into his head to become what was called a “diamondist,” so he could be rolling in dough, like the CEO of the Bakwanga Mining Company. It was at this time that the young Mwamba Tshimanga made his first dollars. He showed off a Newman denim outfit imported by a Lebanese and bought for an exorbitant sum, washed his moped in champagne while everyone watched, and laid all the chicks that not long before would not have given him the time of day. After that, his admiration for the Founder never wavered: his appeal for “National Authenticity”; the introduction of a new currency, the zaire, worth two dollars; the Zairianization of all foreign assets; and, of course, the move that the young Mobutist found most stylish of all—organizing the match of the century, Ali vs. Foreman, in Kinshasa. He adopted Mobutan sayings that became his life philosophy. These included “Corruption is a foreign import!” “Zairians don’t steal; they merely relocate things”; and “High up in the air, the eagle does not fear the spit of the toad.” All this combined to magnify the hero of the Battle of Kamanyola in Mwamba Tshimanga’s imagination, and it was with such precepts that he achieved his rise through the ranks of the Kinshasa civil service within MOPAP, the regime’s propaganda wing, which he had joined with his wife, a former classmate.
On April 24, 1990, there was a great upheaval in the life of Mwamba Tshimanga. On that mournful day, after locking down the entire republic, Mobutu appeared on television in his marshal’s uniform, scepter in hand and teary-eyed, to declare before a full chamber, in front of the whole world, that he was opening the country up to democracy, to a multiparty system—and so on and so forth—and that he was stepping down as president of the state party. In other words, since in theory the president of the MPR party was president of the republic, in making this announcement, Mobutu was de facto giving up the position of president of the Republic of Zaire. The shock experienced by Tshimanga that day was passed on to his wife, who was over eight months pregnant at the time. Her contractions began immediately, and the child entered the world around three thirty in the afternoon. The young father, in despair, knowing he would be unable to bear the absence of the dictator, filled the yawning void by naming his son Sese Seko, like Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga. “No one will ever be as great as Mobutu, and my son will be there to remind future generations of Zairians of the times when providence was on our side,” he declared solemnly to the mother and the two midwives present. “The operation of the mines will no longer be as joyful as in the days when every yard along the banks of the Lubilanji was occupied by a family, a secretary, a schoolboy, a civil servant, just after work, just before the time for an aperitif. Without him, hyenas and jackals will show their snouts,” he predicted too. “Democracy!” Mwamba Tshimanga had long loathed that word. It was also true that around seven that evening Mobutu, smiling and relaxed, no longer in his marshal’s uniform, his leopard-skin toque once again on his head, performed an about-face, live in front of the cameras of French TV, saying in surprise: “Me, no longer president? I said that? Really?” It did nothing but magnify the man even more in Tshimanga’s eyes. A true head of state has to be capable of such a reversal—otherwise, how could he take part in the community of nations? Immersed in Mobutism since his earliest childhood, Sese carried his name with extreme pride. He would not have changed it for anything in the world.
“Vié, na regretter mabe—I really regret it, Great Man. If I’d stuck to your ideals and been cautious with Ichrak, I wouldn’t have ended up here.”
Because after all, Sese reasoned, Mobutu had forbidden men to look at a particular point of female anatomy, banning the wearing of pants in favor of the pagne, which was supposed to be more becoming in covering up the charms of African women. At that time, the president was concerned for both feminine and masculine sexes, wanting to protect the former from lustful glances, which were in total contradiction with the values of the republic. Sese had looked at Ichrak too much; because of that, he couldn’t help striking up a conversation with her, getting to know her, and now he felt lost without her. In his mind he could still hear her laugh and see the sparkle in her eyes when they briefly met his. Sese lay on his back and went through his memories. With nothing but a couple of days of police custody ahead of him, he had the time. It was nothing, he told himself; he’d been through ups and downs before, after leaving Congo. During all this time, lying on his mattress or pacing his cell, Sese had been weeping for the woman who was his pire moto na ye—his own pure person, his closest friend—in this country. He wept for her till he was exhausted, and he didn’t even notice that Daoudi’s promise to bring him meals cooked by the inspector’s wife had not been kept. From the flood of tears he’d shed, at one point he had the feeling that his body, which had broken into pieces several times before, was now as cracked as a land that had not seen rain in the longest time, and whose soil there was no hope, ever, of bringing back to life.