12
ALICE
THIS WAS AT THE TIME when there were still straw huts (ariches, they're usually called) on the main street, Boulevard de Gaulle today—our beloved France hadn't yet taken the hammering it got in 1940—the last huts of this kind disappeared at the turn of the seventies, just before we arrived here. The name Boulaos remains, at the spot of the first fishing village. Dromedaries laden with bundles of sticks and saddled donkeys carrying water would often parade through the main streets of what was still called the native village—the magalla—which would steadily expand through the years. In Ambouli, there was also a zoo facing the palm grove. A wind turbine towered majestically over it; a crowd of children rushed there every afternoon like beggars charging at a cigarette butt that someone just threw away.
All that was yesterday, at the time when Alfred Ilg and Léon Chefneux had just launched the train, and the cathedral was still the church Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc; it was roughed up by the earthquakes of 1929, 1930, and 1942. A whole yesterday still fresh in my mind, not your time, my little cactus, but rather the time of your father when he was still a teenager. You'd think it's already been relegated to time immemorial, like the women who sorted coffee beans on Place Ménélik; today they'd be as old as your grandmother. Or the time of the native militia (your grandfather was one of its first recruits). With the help of the Senegalese infantrymen—in reality not only Senegalese but from all over the AOF1—they maintained order in the model city, as model as a sub-prefecture of Ardèche or Ariège in France, or at least that was the claim of the weekly paper of the colony, whose banknotes came from the Banque de l'Indochine. During that whole period, they particularly had to keep their eyes on the Place des Chameaux (the future Place Rimbaud, now Place Mahmoud-Harbi, a stone's throw from the great Hammoudi mosque, which symbolized Djibouti and the Côte Française des Walals at the famous Paris Colonial Exposition of 1931). It served as the terminal for caravans but also as the main market for wood, milk, butter, and the spicy rumors from the backcountry, so dreaded by the governor. As soon as he got up in the morning, the governor would inquire into what was being said on the Place des Chameaux, who had arrived that day, what could have been said about him, what would Paris think of his silence, it's been three days since he didn't send them a letter through the usual channels. A colonial intelligence agent, relying on his three informers from the native tribes, would reassure him immediately. Nothing to worry about as far as our interests are concerned, the same old stories of bloodshed, poisoned wells, kidnapped fiancées, raids on zebus, and vendettas between rival clans. Trouble could come from the greed of the Abyssinians, but we've known that for ages. So, a promising day for the governor despite the blazing sun, so hot it could addle the brains of the little blond heads of the schoolchildren in the École de la Nativité. And the aroma of coffee would attract the governor. A table was set under the oleanders for this ritual. He would go inspect the brand-new premises of the Messageries Postales built by Duparchy and Vigoureux, the same firm that had put the final touch on all the viaducts between Djibouti and Addis Ababa as early as 1897, making generous use of metallic constructions of the Eiffel type. In short, a real day's work.
There was in our house a dog-eared sepia photograph sitting on a piece of furniture in the living room. You could see Mahmoud Harbi with a baby face, although he had already turned thirty, in a suit, with a bow tie. A baby face because it's only after they've reached forty-four that men here are fully entitled to be called an adult, your grandfather would have said in his gentle voice. Whoever entered the living room could not fail to take off his hat before that heroic figure. Could the dead really be the only creatures to inspire respect and dignity in this world here below? Behind the photo, on the wall, a map of Greater Somalia would attract the visitor's attention. A sand-yellow territory on a sky-blue background, and all around it the four colonialists (France, Great Britain, Italy, and Ethiopia) who cut up the land of the sons of Samaale. That very allegorical map was less appreciated than the photo of the great fighter.
1. Afrique Occidentale Française, French West Africa.—Author's note