As you can probably guess there’s not exactly a ton of Djibouti fiction out there, especially en anglais. But when it comes to Djibouti fiction, the author Waberi reigns supreme. He’s written a lot to the extent where most of his novels have been translated from French to English. 
The translators, Dave and Nicole Ball, in particular, did a splendid job putting into English the patois of one of the narrators, an uneducated ex-soldier named Bashir. The challenge to take french urban african slang and put it into English without making it sound like American urban slang is considerable but the Balls nailed it.
Transit interweaves Bashir’s story with that of Harbi (a member of the opposition intellectual elite) and his family. While waiting at the Paris airport, the two men reveal their life stories as the narrative arc builds toward their intersection. The novel’s plot is pretty well done so I won’t reveal much beyond what I mentioned thus far.
The staying power of this story comes from Waberi’s deft touch as he tackles the complexity of his country’s history and current political situation through the alternating monologues. This allows him to playfully jab at the idea of Djibouti’s democracy on one hand, calling it “that hot air of politicians who take bread from whoever giving it”, while also laud the Djiboutian people’s strength on the other with his admonition: “LET'S NOT FORGET that we never accepted the domination of the colonizers. Even when faced with a fait accompli and the law of the strongest, we resisted silently, secretly. Luckily, we had enough space to fall back on, unlike countries with greater population density like Burundi or Rwanda, where the Catholic church recorded its highest evangelization scores in the world. We could retreat into the brush, unseen and unheard. And above all, no official papers. Thus, what seemed to be the most generous acts of the administration, like the vaccination campaigns, were ignored if not massively rejected. Villages, schools, or cities—we rejected them. We preferred our rustic life.”
KEY QUOTES:
- “Democracy, that hotair of politicians who take bread from whoever giving it.” (11)
- “The president left with head of diplomacy to get the asshole general that used to be his true-true friend before, when they making restoration together. Together they knew how to conjugate the verb have, not the verb to be.” (12)
- “I navigate easily between different languages, historical references, cultures, rumors from yesterday still warm today, and the oldest memories. Totally natural, I'm the product of love without borders; I'm a hyphen between two worlds.” (34)
- “Poets approaching death commonly become prophets.” (44)
- “LET'S NOT FORGET that we never accepted the domination of the colonizers. Even when faced with a fait accompli and the law of the strongest, we resisted silently, secretly. Luckily, we had enough space to fall back on, unlike countries with greater population density like Burundi or Rwanda, where the Catholic church recorded its highest evangelization scores in the world. We could retreat into the brush, unseen and unheard. And above all, no official papers. Thus, what seemed to be the most generous acts of the administration, like the vaccination campaigns, were ignored if not massively rejected. Villages, schools, or cities—we rejected them. We preferred our rustic life.” (54)
- “The Angel gave the Prophet in a cave on Mount Hira. It said: “Iqrah! Recite!” From this verb comes the word Koran, recitation. At that time, reading, or recitation, was something very different from the present droning of the Word weakened by narrow minds, often bearded. Iqrah, recite and think by yourself, expand your knowledge; seek, in the bottom of your heart, the path that leads to The Unique.” (61)
- “Africa would come to me all by herself, like a big girl. Alas, my little cactus, it was not the rebellious continent, just the Africa of news reports as they're filtered through the clear conscience of the West. Then it became the Africa of dictators with Swiss bank accounts, the Africa of rickety children and bony old men, the Africa of famine and the shameless looting of its resources, the Africa of squalid huts and gleaming white teeth, the Africa of landless people, the Africa of guerrillas and desperados.” (70)
- “Since the beginning of time, we—that is, me and all my colleagues working in Guistir, the region of the three borders (Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia) that saw me born—haven't needed official documents to accompany that melody, to catch it at its birth, at the time when the cold desert night is separated from the reseda-yellow light of dawn. No member of our army of border guards, called ANG,1 has an authentic birth certificate; we were all “born circa…” Because nomadic time is not regulated by any calendar or encumbered by any archive, it does not sign the official papers demanded by the goatees of the Third Republic. Everybody was “born circa” in my time, and only the intrusion of the French colonial administration could impose such a delicate intention on us. For our own good, of course with some exceptional periods, like the English blockade under Churchill, which plunged the Territory, governed by the Vichy regime with an iron hand, into the depths of hunger and thirst. During that blockade, the people of this country tasted bitter roots and cat bouillon: the memory of that time is still tattooed on them to this day.” (98)
- “Do not call me a mulatto, a métis. Metis was the first wife of Zeus, king of the Olympian gods. She died horribly.” (103)
- “As I think of Him, I immediately open myself to Him, to pray serenely. To chant, with my eyes closed in ecstasy, the ninety-nine names of the very holy Prophet. That is how I regain peace of mind and body.” (111)
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- The section on the novel that mentions the lack of official documents rang especially true given my own experience in Comoros (p. 98). During the beginning of my tour in Madagascar, when I was cutting travel orders for different Comorian military officers to train the US, I was dumbfounded to learn that so many them were born on 31 December. That is until one of them later shared with me that most of the older generation didn’t know the actual day they were born so they just picked a day, and most picked 31 December.
- One can’t underestimate the significance of France’s influence on most of its former colonies. Its latent presence is embedded in the psyche of the countries’ citizens. It manifests itself as both a hatred and a yearning--a hatred that France should still attempt to wield any influence but also a yearning as a place to which one could escape to a better life (yes, this is a vast oversimplification--I am just brainstorming here).
KEY PAIRING:
Jelloun's tragic Morocca tale Leaving Tangier; read my take on it here.
KEY REFERENCES:
Location: 45
The chapters in Transit are a succession of monologues by each of the characters in the novel: Bashir, a very young veteran of Djibouti's civil war; Harbi, a Djiboutian intellectual and an opponent of the regime; Harbi's French wife, Alice, and their son, Abdo-Julien; and Abdo-Julien's grandfather Awaleh.
Location: 49
One character gives us the same kind of pleasure we have in reading great tragicomic works of literature: Bashir, the poor, adolescent ex-soldier. His monologues are delivered in a slangy, comical language very much his own, a mix of naïveté and sly,
Location: 91
Waberi is one of the leading francophone writers of his generation, internationally recognized, one of those to whom the French novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio dedicated his Nobel Prize for Literature in his acceptance speech. Translated
Location: 96
for his latest novel, published in 2011, Passage des larmes (Passage of Tears),
Page: 6
people think migrants arrive naked in a new land at the end of their odyssey; yet migrants are loaded with their personal stories and heavier still with what is called collective history.
Page: 7
One day, as I was walking with my aunt along one of the avenues in our neighborhood, I passed by a military patrol. Like a chrysalis about to burst, the question popped out instantly: “Who are those people?” “The French, our colonizers.” “Why are they here?” “Because they're stronger than we are.”
Page: 8
I'm not afraid of nothing, not even foreigners (oh no! am I off my rocker or what? the foreigners, that's us now, the natives here, it's them).
Page: 11
Democracy, that hotair of politicians who take bread from whoever giving it.
Page: 12
Then, the president left with head of diplomacy to get the asshole general that used to be his true-true friend before, when they making restoration together. Together they knew how to conjugate the verb have, not the verb to be.
Page: 16
fauna; the tragic, camel-like swaying of its hips; the aquatic flora pictured on postage stamps; the desert islets like the famous Guinni Koma (also called l'île du Diable, Devil's Island by the French). I can feel its salt on my body. I am this pit like a wounded vulva between the hills. You'd think she was reading from a geography textbook. Yes, everything here is mine. The salt lakes, the bald peaks, the whimsical firmament at Lake Assal, the small forest from times long past, the limestone high plateaus, the Grand Bara and Petit Bara, the main summit culminating
at almost seven thousand feet. The bitter waters and their extraordinary salinity. The liquid heart of the gulf, its solitude crenellated with waves. Her world forever inviolable. This is my country stirring the air just like the lyre palm and the traveler tree dragging its exiles over the crust of the earth. My country running breathlessly, endlessly. My country sad and beautiful like the oilcloth of a village café in Brittany on a rainy Sunday morning. My dad and I would burst out laughing. She's stubborn and endearing. And there she goes now, changing the subject and the textbook. From geography to history. My country's history in the annals of the continent? Barely room for a lowly footnote at the bottom of a page. Seventy thousand square miles of hatred and misery, my country of ergs and acacias. She's flying off the handle now, excited as a young goat.
Page: 18
They'd laugh and joke in rhythm; they're sure good at that, bigger jokers you won't find.
Page: 23
African heads of state like so-so much Israeli bodyguards cause Israeli bodyguards they protect from military coup like rubber protect from AIDS you get me?
Page: 27
My mother, with her hair twisted together like those sentences of Monsieur Proust that no one can unravel, fears neither the sunburns that knock off foreigners with delicate skin nor the narrow little streets covered with dust. As a child I was fed on the milk of love, and reading.
Page: 31
To get back on subject. Oh yah I was saying: Wadags or not Wadags, not the problem. All that's politics, I'm telling you. In a lot of neighborhoods of the capital, in Einguela, Ambouli, Districts 1, 2, 4, Plateau, etc. Wadags, Walals, an Arabs, we all mixed, with plenty Hindis an even some Whites married to our girls, or just weirdos. And then, in the Dikhil district, between Wadags an the others it's fifty-fifty (that English, I speak it a little-little. Learned it when I worked in front of the American Embassy, I'll tell you about that later. I know how to talk English an that's that, OK?).
Page: 31
Problem is dirty tricks, corruption an politics. You know, Restoration!
Page: 34
Oum Kalsoum giving a masterly interpretation of Anta Oumri: sixty minutes of pure bliss.
Page: 34
I navigate easily between different languages, historical references, cultures, rumors from yesterday still warm today, and the oldest memories. Totally natural, I'm the product of love without borders; I'm a hyphen between two worlds.
Page: 35
Serge Gainsbourg's Dieu est un fumeur de havanes (“God is a smoker of Havanas”).
Page: 40
now it's haga* (that Djibouti summer, sun it hot lead melting on your skull, even the asphalt on the road yell mama mama I'm too-too melted). Haga, too fierce.
Page: 44
Poets approaching death commonly become prophets.
Page: 48
the same old stories of bloodshed, poisoned wells, kidnapped fiancées, raids on zebus, and vendettas between rival clans.
Page: 49
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.
Page: 49
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.
Page: 59
LET'S NOT FORGET that we never accepted the domination of the colonizers. Even when faced with a fait accompli and the law of the strongest, we resisted silently, secretly. Luckily, we had enough space to fall back on, unlike countries with greater population density like Burundi or Rwanda, where the Catholic church recorded its highest evangelization scores in the world. We could retreat into the brush, unseen and unheard. And above all, no official papers. Thus, what seemed to be the most generous acts of the administration, like the vaccination campaigns, were ignored if not massively rejected. Villages, schools, or cities—we rejected them. We preferred our rustic life.
Page: 59
got caught up in the game and first sent a little boy, some little orphan, to their school just out of curiosity. Then the youngest boy of the family, then the middle son, and finally the eldest, the keeper of the flock. But what could the children be doing all day? ventured the most skeptical. Faithful as the evening stars, they went to the same place every day, remaining seated, filling out little spiral notebooks with the district chief's stamp on them, and came back a few years later with a salary, without breaking their backs. Their fathers immediately opened up a store. From then on, they would rent out the donkey they used to lend. Little by little, they cut themselves off from their clan, spoke about their ancestors for no good reason, and were reluctant to give out alms. They shut themselves off from the others and saw only people like themselves, or passing foreigners like the nurse or the stationmaster, French from France or Greeks. And finally the truck driver replaced the camel driver, already threatened by the train.
Page: 61
the Angel gave the Prophet in a cave on Mount Hira. It said: “Iqrah! Recite!” From this verb comes the word Koran, recitation. At that time, reading, or recitation, was something very different from the present droning of the Word weakened by narrow minds, often bearded. Iqrah, recite and think by yourself, expand your knowledge; seek, in the bottom of your heart, the path that leads to The Unique.
Page: 69
The Théâtre des Salines is where we play for the working people of the neighborhoods.
Page: 70
Africa would come to me all by herself, like a big girl. Alas, my little cactus, it was not the rebellious continent, just the Africa of news reports as they're filtered through the clear conscience of the West. Then it became the Africa of dictators with Swiss bank accounts, the Africa of rickety children and bony old men, the Africa of famine and the shameless looting of its resources, the Africa of squalid huts and gleaming white teeth, the Africa of landless people, the Africa of guerrillas and desperados.
Page: 78
Dixit the Breton storyteller Maria Kermadec, who often concludes her ramblings with a proverb she attributes to a sailor from Cancale: “He who has words in his mouth can never get lost in the world.”
Page: 79
Abdo-Julien, that's me, stillborn in his seventeenth year, spirit wandering in the great tradition of the dibbuks you can find in The Golem, a small child returning periodically like the abikou* in the region of the Gulf of Guinea whose umbilical cord is buried next to Ilé-Ifé—an extraordinary fate, in the direct line of the shafeec* of our people. I owe everything I know to my parents. Does that surprise you?
Page: 87
And the little tree of memory, can you guess? The cactus. That's you, my little cactus.
Page: 97
The most gifted of us had the power to put the deepest song of the earth into words, wary of the small change of everyday words, a song that wells up from its belly, song of the slow crossing, a song unfolding to infinity.
Page: 98
Since the beginning of time, we—that is, me and all my colleagues working in Guistir, the region of the three borders (Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia) that saw me born—haven't needed official documents to accompany that melody, to catch it at its birth, at the time when the cold desert night is separated from the reseda-yellow light of dawn. No member of our army of border guards, called ANG,1 has an authentic birth certificate; we were all “born circa…” Because nomadic time is not regulated by any calendar or encumbered by any archive, it does not sign the official papers demanded by the goatees of the Third Republic. Everybody was “born circa” in my time, and only the intrusion of the French colonial administration could impose such a delicate intention on us. For our own good, of course with some exceptional periods, like the English blockade under Churchill, which plunged the Territory, governed by the Vichy regime with an iron hand, into the depths of hunger and thirst. During that blockade, the people of this country tasted bitter roots and cat bouillon: the memory of that time is still tattooed on them to this day.
Page: 100
They suffer under our sun. They die under our moon, knowing the extreme urgency of the creative act. They are from no place. They tell time. They tell destiny.
Page: 103
FALL 1892. They were exhibiting Ka'lina Amerindians from French Guyana completely naked in a Parisian park at the same time as our grandfathers in traditional dress, gathered in a flimsy hut indicating their generic name—Somalis—in the Zoological Garden of Acclimation. Take the Chemins de fer de l'Ouest, the Western Railroad, and get off at Porte Maillot station, said the poster announcing the attraction in all the French newspapers. All that memory is available with one little click.
Page: 103
“Do not call me a mulatto, a métis. Metis was the first wife of Zeus, king of the Olympian gods. She died horribly.”
Page: 111
As I think of Him, I immediately open myself to Him, to pray serenely. To chant, with my eyes closed in ecstasy, the ninety-nine names of the very holy Prophet. That is how I regain peace of mind and body.
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