Excerpts from Allah is not obliged (by Ahmadou Kourouma)

Chapter 1

I’m disrespectful, I’m rude as a goat’s beard and I swear like a bastard. I don’t swear like the civilised Black Nigger African Natives in their nice suits, I don’t say fuck! shit! bitch! I use Malinké swear words like faforo! (my father’s cock—or your father’s or somebody’s father’s), gnamokodé! (bastard), walahé! (I swear by Allah). Malinké is the name of the tribe I belong to. (p. 15)

Balla was a kaffir—that’s what you call someone who refuses to believe in Islam and keeps his grigris. (According to the Glossary, a ‘grigri’ is ‘a protective amulet, often a piece of paper inscribed with magical incantation kept in a small leather purse which is tied above the elbow or around the neck’.) Balla refused to burn his false idols, so he wasn’t a Muslim, he didn’t perform the five daily prayers, or fast for one month every year. The day he dies, no Muslim is allowed to go to his funeral, and they’re not allowed to bury his body in the Muslim cemetery. (p. 24)

Grandmother really loved my mother, but she didn’t know what date she was born, or even what the day of the week it was. She was far too busy that night, the night my mother was born. Balla says it doesn’t matter what date you’re born, or what day of the week you’re born, seeing as how everyone has to get born some day or other, somewhere or other, and everyone has to die some day or other, somewhere or other, so we can all be buried in the same clay and rejoin our ancestors and discover the ultimate judgement of Allah. (p. 31)

Chapter 2

You don’t really say ‘red in the face’ for blacks. Blacks never go red in the face, they just frown.) (p. 89)

All the naked passengers from the trucks uncomfortably tried to cover their bangala if it was a man or their gnoussou-gnoussou if it was a woman (according to the Glossary, ‘bangala’ and ‘gnoussou-gnoussou’ are names for your shameful parts), but the child-soldiers didn’t let them. They ordered the embarrassed passengers to fuck off into the forest. And everyone ran off into the forest with no objections. (p. 90)

In the prison, everyone was mixed in together: prisoners of war, political prisoners and ordinary prisoners. There was even a category for prisoners that didn’t fit into any category at all: these were the husbands of women that Colonel Papa le Bon had decided to love. (p. 113)

All of us were from different tribes, but we knew that to get into ULIMO you had to be a Krahn or a Guéré. Only Krahns and Guérés were allowed into ULIMO. So everyone took a Krahn name. I didn’t have to change my name, I was Malinké, what like the Black Americans in Liberia call Mandingo. The Malinkés or Mandingos are always welcome wherever we go because we’re out-and-out defectors. We’re always changing sides. (p. 140)

We left Kik to the mercy of humans in the village the way we left Sarah to the mercy of the animals and the insects. Which of them was better off? Definitely not Kik. That’s wars for you. Animals have more mercy for the wounded than humans. (p. 153)

And when you’ve got no one left on earth, no father, no mother, no brother, no sister, and you’re really young, just a little kid, living in some fucked-up barbaric country where everyone is cutting everyone’s throat, what do you do?

You become a child-soldier of course, a small-soldier, a child-soldier so you can have lots to eat and cut some throats yourself; that’s all your only option. (p. 154)

Chapter 3

Even a chicken-thief will tell you: if you pull off a big robbery with someone, you will never truly enjoy the spoils until the other person is dead. (p. 161)

We handed over our guns with confidence. One of them brought out a Qur’an and a Bible and some grigris and made us swear on the holy books and the grigris. We solemnly swore that we were not thieves, that not a single one of us was a thief. Because ULIMO had more than enough thieves, they didn’t need any more, they had them up to here. And then they banged us up in prison. Krik-krak. (p. 167)

General Baclay was weird, but she was a good woman and in her own way she was very fair: she shot men and women just the same, she shot thieves and it didn’t matter if they stole a needle or a cow. A thief is a thief, and she shot every one of them. She was impartial. (p. 169)

A lot of the bossmen partners are Lebanese and it’s easy to see why people are always murdering them. It’s a good thing that lots of them get horribly murdered, because they’re vampires. (p. 178)

Onika withdrew, sat down, her son and her daughters-in-law rallied round her. Soldiers, child-soldiers, joined them. Everyone huddled together, got into a circle, it was an organised concert of weeping. Everyone started sobbing. There we were, a bunch of criminals, crooks of the worse kind, crying like babies. You should have seen it, it was worth the trip. (p. 207)

Chapter 4

Johnson had a grigriman—a Christian grigriman. The grigriman’s incantations always contained passages from the Bible and he always had a crucifix around somewhere (‘incantation’ means ‘a formula used in ritual recitation; a verbal charm or spell’). Johnson was happy to meet Yacouba, a Muslim grigriman. He had never met a Muslim before. Now his guerrillas would be able to add grigris with verses from the Qur’an scrawled in Arabic to their Christian grigris. (p. 214)

Chapter 5

‘No and no. You are not Mende, you do not understand Mende, you are Malinké. The ceremonies of initiation are sung and danced in Mende. At the end of the ceremonies, a lump of meat is eaten by the young initiate. The hunk of meat is prepared by sorcerers with many ingredients and perhaps human flesh. Malinkés dislike eating this meat, Mendes do not. In tribal wars, a little human meat is necessary. It makes the heart hard, very hard, and protects against bullets. The best protection against whistling bullets is probably a piece of human meat. For example, I, Tieffi, never go to the front, never go to battle without a calabash (a bowl) of human blood. A calabash of human blood makes you strong, makes you fierce, makes you cruel, and protects you from whistling bullets.’ (p. 285)

Sister Hadja Gabrielle Aminata was one-third Muslim, one-third Catholic and one-third animist. (p. 294)

Every year, between early March and late May, the brotherhood of hunters organises the donkun cela. The donkun cela, or ‘rites of the crossroads’, is the most important ceremony of the brotherhood. During the ceremony, all the members of the brotherhood share a communal meal. At the end of the meal, the dagas conons are exhumed. The dagas conons are the kanaris containing the fried hearts of brave hunters. These hearts are consumed by the brotherhood in secret. It gives them passion and courage. (p. 304)

This is why people say, why everyone says, that the heart of Sister Aminata, colonel of the army of Sierra Leone, served as a delicate and delicious dessert at the end of a merry meal. (A merry meal is a meal during which lots of millet beer is drunk.) Faforo! Gnamokodé!

Chapter 6

The leaders in Johnny’s army were getting crueller and crueller, more and more bele-bele (tough). To prove it, they’d eat the hearts of their victims, of victims who fought bravely before they died. They’d point out the cannibal, they were afraid of him, and the cannibal was proud of being thought of as cruel, capable of any inhumanity. (‘inhumanity’ means barbarism and cruelty.) (p. 324)

The prayers were said by Yacouba in a voice so pure and clear that they went straight up to heaven. But maybe they weren’t accepted because out of the seven people around the mass grave where the aunt was buried, three of us were criminals. The seven people were: the doctor, the generalissimo’s aide-de-camp, Yacouba, Sekou, Saydou, Sekou’s coadjutor, and me, Birahima, the blameless, fearless street kid. The three criminals who feared neither God nor man on account of who Allah couldn’t accept the prayers were Saydou, Yacouba and Sekou. That’s why we had to say more prayers, more suras, lots more prayers for the repose of my aunt’s soul. (p. 347)

I got good and comfortable, good and settled, and I started: The full, final and completely complete title of my bullshit story is: Allah is not obliged to be fair about all the things he does here on earth. I went on telling my stories for a couple of days.

First off, Number one … My name is Birahima and I’m a little nigger. Not ’cos I’m black and I’m a kid. I’m a little nigger because I can’t talk French for shit. That’s how things are. You might be a grown-up, or old, you might be Arab, or Chinese, or white, or Russian—or even American—if you talk bad French, it’s called parler petit nègre—little nigger talking—so that makes you a little nigger too. That’s the rules of French for you. (p. 349)