Book 243: Mayotte (French) – Tropique de la violence = Tropic of Violence (Nathacha Appanah)

 

I hear a car stop on the gravel in front of the house, I hear the cry “It’s the cops!” and we run, climb up the metal fencing, jump into other gardens and we run on and on, the grass the asphalt the mud the earth the pebbles the cement under my feet, the barking the cries the horns the screeching of brakes the muezzin my own breathing in my ears, I am scratched knocked stunned beaten held pushed aside but I run and I distance myself from the house and I know that I’ll never come back.

 

Where on earth is Mayotte? When the Comoros Islands (between Madagascar and Africa) became independent in 1975, the island of Mayotte decided to stick with France (although it is still claimed by the former). So it is the 101st département of France. Did you know that there’s a part of France where they speak (a dialect of) Swahili? So there’s a little bit of the EU in the Mozambique Channel. It’s a beacon for illegal immigration from the independent Comoros and Madagascar, and increasingly from the African continent – perhaps it will become another Lampedusa since the small population is being rapidly overwhelmed by the influx. I don’t know if this is commonly known in France, but we hear nothing about this at all. Mayotte itself seems to be much poorer than, for example, Réunion, with the vast majority living in poverty. Half the population are under 20 (fr.wikipedia.org). No doubt we’ll hear a lot more from Mayotte in the future.

Marie is a French nurse who marries her colleague Chamsiddin, who is from Mayotte, and they move there, after which their marriage falls apart. She adopts Moïse, son of an illegal immigrant who abandoned him. (Like the Biblical Moses, I guess Moïse is a ‘boat person’). He has different coloured eyes (perhaps a symbol of his two totally different lives?), which leads the locals to believe that he’s a djinn and bad luck. Certainly his life is only unlucky and mis-lead. When Marie dies (he is 15) he goes and hangs out with a slum gang led by alpha male Bruce. (It is a great portrait of a thuggish slum gang leader). The gang life in the slum (Gaza) is all law of the jungle and no more than an animal existence. Bruce tries to kidnap Moïse, but Moïse kills Bruce in the woods. Thereafter the chapters continue with a voice for each character, including the dead ones. Other characters include Olivier who is a flic (cop), Mahmad ‘La Teigne’ who is a clandestine, and Moussa who is a muzungu (‘white person’) and friend of Moise, but who doesn’t want a ‘white’ life.

It’s interesting to see the local language; muzungu is obviously the same as mzungu in standard Swahili, and I was amused to see that Swahili karibu (‘welcome’) comes out as caribou!

The story is depressing and impactful, and a great portrayal of a situation most of us know nothing about. I loved the way the narration speeds up and transitions to stream of consciousness during the thrilling episodes.

The story has been recently made into a film.

 

Appanah, Natacha (1973 – ), Tropique de la violence, Folio (Gallimard), 2018, ISBN 9782072764578

 

Book179: Comoros (French) – Le Kafir du Karthala = The Kaffir of Karthala (Mohamed TOIHIRI)

The beach was full. The Blacks were almost all in swimming costumes. The Whites, having kept their clothing on, looked rather perplexed. They were visibly wondering when they were going to awake from this nightmare. The blacks, unrestrained, yelling, laughing, provoking, bathed with a sort of artificial pleasure. It seemed as if they were much more intent on displaying their presence than in deriving any pleasure from bathing. In fact they forced themselves to enjoy it.

[my translation]

A kaffir is an ‘infidel’ in Arabic, in the Comoros context it means a ‘marginal’, and in apartheid-era South Africa it was an ugly epithet for a ‘Black’. The ‘marginal’ of the story is Dr. Idi wa Mazamba, who finds himself at odds with many of the traditions of his homeland. Mazamba finds that he is dying of cancer in less than two months, and tells no one, but this gives him courage to live his life as he thinks proper, regardless of norms that he rejects. He falls in love with Aubéri, a Jewish French literature teacher. This is the story of their struggles against the prejudices they find everywhere. (Karthala is a volcano – perhaps a symbol of Mazamba’s new volatility?)

Each of the Comoros islands turns out to be biased against the others, as well as against outsiders, which seems comically petty. Likewise, the Europeans are racist against the Comorans, and amongst themselves.

Of the local traditions, the most prominent seems to be the ‘grand marriage’ (’anda’), which Mazamba despises, yet he can’t boycott it himself. Basically, everyone is expected by society to have a huge, ruinously expensive wedding once in their life (the fact that they may already be married to someone else, via a more modest ceremony, doesn’t exempt them). The expense causes endemic corruption and theft. (Mazamba gives a hilarious pompous wedding speech in French, using as many words as possible ending in -ique, including many which don’t exist! He makes a seditious speech that goes over everyone’s head.) The hajj to Mecca (the Comoros Islands are Muslim) is another very expensive expectation.

There are still many French living here since independence in 1975 (except for the island of Mayotte which opted to stay with France), and they have a better life and their own prejudices, which doesn’t stop them taking ‘black’ Comoran wives. The opposite (as here with Idi and Aubéri) is hypocritically seen as scandalous.

Sometimes it is quite funny (”In France… not even my concierge would be afraid of me.”) Still, I couldn’t help feeling that sometimes Toihiri was using situations that were a bit over the top. Would a mixed-race couple really choose to travel to apartheid-era South Africa – were they naïve, ignorant or just asking for trouble? I also felt that the sex in church scene was labouring his point a bit too much. It could have been made a bit more subtly. Also the villains were a bit too comic-book. But it was a very enjoyable story which covered some very serious issues leavened with humour, and taught me a lot about these almost unknown islands, and a definite recommendation.

Toihiri, Mohamed (1955 – ), Le Kafir du Karthala, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1992, ISBN 2-7384-1501-6