In the garden by my little house there are pink hibiscus with red hearts and yellow pistils, a frangipani tree with velvety white flowers, allamandas that produce flowers as yellow as the sun all through the year, and fuchsia bougainvillea climbing up one panel of the boundary wall. I spend hours here, trimming, pruning, nurturing, removing the insects one by one, nurturing, feeding, watering, protecting. I spend a part of my life here, looking, marveling at the colors, the shapes, the perfumes, like a freshly arrived tourist. I bow down in awe before the fineness of the veins in the flowers and the softness of their petals, I watch butterflies, hummingbirds, bulbuls, and many species of songbird. Every morning when I walk in after a night on duty, I stand motionless in this garden and feel as if I’m taking root here, taking on the colors of these intense, unchanging hues and every morning I contrive to feel as if I belong a little, just a very little, to this land.
But this afternoon when I finally come home after twenty hours on duty, this garden seems to me a fraud, a cliché, a picture postcard for tourists. I go into the garden and beneath the blazing metallic sunlight I wait to be moved, I wait to be washed clean, I scan the flowers with my eyes, I listen for the birds, I wait to be calmed, I wait to be comforted.
Bruce’s body has been taken to the mortuary at the Dzaoudzi hospital. It’s not really a mortuary, it’s a solid structure separate from the main buildings. Three air conditioners turned up to the maximum keep the room cold. Bacar and I did our best to avoid news of the affair spreading but when we came back down the hill with Bruce’s body wrapped in a sheet there was already a crowd around the emergency services vehicles. People were boldly calling out Who’s that? and Bacar snapped back It’s a tourist. Just now a reporter from Mayotte’s daily newspaper called the police station to ask for information about the body found near the lake. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep it quiet, act as if nothing had happened, act as if it were just a trivial incident.
I think about Moïse and about Bruce, and suddenly the unbearable thought hits me that they look like one another. The same build, the same shaped head, the same full lips, both with lean faces. I was once told that they’re all cousins here and that the blood that flows into the ocean passes back into the sand, the land, feeds the rivers and the plantations. My skin’s burning, my head’s about to burst and I look at my flowers. Are they so lovely because they feed on flesh? Are they so vivid because they gorge on blood? My heart begins racing and to stop myself from going mad, before the flowers change into hands, the branches into arms, the tree trunks into bodies, I grasp the spade and strike down the red, smash the velvety white, beat down the sun yellow, kill the pink, silence the fuchsia bougainvillea forever.
“Olivier! Olivier!”
It’s Bacar. He has the keys to my house, as I have his. When I go on vacation he calls every day to water my plants and to check that I haven’t been burglarized. When he’s away I go to his house.
He gives me such a sad look that it makes me want to weep. What are we going to do, Bacar? I want to ask him. What can we do to fix it all?
He hands me a sheet of paper and says, “The chief constable tried to call you several times but you didn’t pick up. The boy has to be driven to the court.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Hold on, take a look.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s an article that appeared on the internet an hour ago.”
The piece was several lines long and had been posted at 3:55 p.m. I read it as I followed Bacar to the car.
YOUTH KILLED BY FIREARM THIS MORNING
A youth was killed by a firearm on Petite-Terre this morning. Our sources inform us that it was a certain Bruce, a gang leader known to the inhabitants of Gaza, the shantytown on the outskirts of the capital city, Mamoudzou. This is the first crime involving firearms in France’s most recently created département. Our sources inform us that Bruce was a minor.
For several years Mayotte has experienced an alarming increase in violence and delinquency. France’s 101st département, known as the isle of perfumes or the lagoon island, also faces pressure from constant immigration from the Comoros Islands, Madagascar, and even some African countries. Almost 20,000 people were deported in 2014 but the kwassa-kwassas still arrive daily on the shores of Mayotte, and 597 landings were intercepted in 2014. It has been estimated that in France’s 101st département some 3000 unaccompanied minors have now been living as outlaws for a sustained period of time.
S.R.
I looked at Bacar, who was having trouble starting his car. He was shaking.
“We must get him away, this youngster. He’s just a kid.”
“Yes, the prefect recommends that he be transferred to Réunion, but first he has to be brought before the magistrate, and the court’s in Mamoudzou.”
“We’d better get there fast, before the news spreads.”
Bacar turned to me and I knew what he was about to say, I knew what my friend of twenty years was thinking. At this very moment the whole of Gaza knew about Bruce’s death and was preparing for war. I folded up the sheet of paper, the car drove off and for the second time that day I closed my eyes and prayed.