I and the president: the saga of a Genesis theorist and a dictator
Today marks the 29th anniversary of Mu'wiya Ould Sidi Ahmed Tayyi''s ascent to power in a bloodless coup in Mauritania. This mysterious man is the only former president who is not dead and not in Nouakchott. When he came to power, I was only 5 years of age. My late grandmother associated his coming to power with rain. He came after a long draught. He was a blessed man in her imagination. He would not be as good when her grandson came home eighteen years later from the university with a bloodied-face and a few other minor scars and bruises after a crackdown on a protest at the university. That was the end of grandma's support to the president, even though she openly put the blame on me. Of course, I made sure to exaggerate the brutality of the police and my bravery pushing them out of campus along with my comrades. I repeated the story so many times that I forgot the true one, the one where I wasn't able to resist beating and teargas and had to run for safety.
When he came to power, the 5 years old who was me had already written his Genesis, a sort of theory where I carelessly and childishly enough accounted for how all the things, which I saw around me in the nomadic encampments, came to be. It is a very lax evolutionary theory where, for example, dogs were 'born' on saturday morning from wood, and where cats metamorphosed the following day from mushroom. Don't ask me to explain to you how or why. In the three versions in which I had orally produced my Genesis theory, everyone around me laughed and warned my mother that these may be signs that I may have been touched by a genie: no one asked me how and therefore that part never bothered me. My mother was too young and bold to care for whether I was touched by a genie. She would worry later that I was touched by a genie when I became more rebellious and recalcitrant.
Of course, whether it was a touch of a genie or a flash of genius mattered little to me at the time. I was simply allowing my oratory skills to do their magic as the darkness fell every night on the forgotten world of the nomadic group in which we lived and travelled at the time. A few daring kids-- who acted against the sincere advice of their moms and dads-- would join me to hear different chapters of my Genesis, which kept evolving as I noticed that more and more objects, animals, phenomena weren't accounted for in the earlier versions, and as I forgot some of the details of the earlier version. The beauty of oral tradition is that you will not have to deal with the rationally-defective and imagination-barren minds of the urban world.
Unlike our president, I was at five years of age fluent in Hassaniyya and able to produce with grace some complex sentences in classical Arabic. In the country of one-million poets, one-million shaykhs, one-million divorcees, one-million political analysts, and one-million world theorists, both me and the president seemed quite unaccomplished. He was struggling to say the most basic things in our native tongue and I couldn't prove to the elders of the group that my Genesis is anything but a demonic-inspired nonsense. In his impressive inarticulateness he was unique and so was I am--a boy touched by a genie. But he was better than me, for sure. He had a bigger audience, all the millions I spoke earlier about--don't add them. The entire population was only one million, and most of these were there only in certain seasons. They spent the rest of the year in one of the neighboring African countries engaged in their petty commerce.
Not unlike me, He was made fun of. With me, people did so in my presence. With him, it was done behind his back. But he has many talents I didn't have. For one, he spoke French. I considered it the language of the enemy. I held on to that belief as long as I could even if it made no sense. I held on to that belief until I joined politics as a 'cultural attaché' to the office of the spokesperson of one presidential candidate in 2003. Then I found out that the only people who try to speak our language when they are serious are the French themselves. Our politicians all spoke French. Then I learned that the enemies of the nation are very nationalistic and the nationalists are the very enemies of the nation.
I will not know the president until I was eight when I was told in school that he is the president. I assumed the president is someone that loves everyone and everyone must in turn love him. Politics wasn't my strongest suit, although I led a massive army of five boys and warred on a regular basis with another major gang's leader (he commanded seven) in the village in which we would have settled by then. Of course, I won all the battles which took place at night and lost all of those which took place in the day time. I do better when my adversaries are asleep, even if my army was asleep as well. In contrast to my constant wars, our president didn't engage in war, even though he was trained as a soldier. He used his stratagem to stay in power in the same way I used my skills to destroy all the infrastructure, which the other the 7-members gang builds--cages for their chickens.
The president promoted women involvement in politics in the country. I did so as well. Whenever there was a danger of any kind, I would give orders to my sisters and their friends to go check it first. They alway did with bravery and grace, catching and killing unknown insects and bringing to me the motionless poor carcasses to explain how they fit in my Genesis. I always gave them names if no one existed in the language or if I didn't know it.
When he came to power, the 5 years old who was me had already written his Genesis, a sort of theory where I carelessly and childishly enough accounted for how all the things, which I saw around me in the nomadic encampments, came to be. It is a very lax evolutionary theory where, for example, dogs were 'born' on saturday morning from wood, and where cats metamorphosed the following day from mushroom. Don't ask me to explain to you how or why. In the three versions in which I had orally produced my Genesis theory, everyone around me laughed and warned my mother that these may be signs that I may have been touched by a genie: no one asked me how and therefore that part never bothered me. My mother was too young and bold to care for whether I was touched by a genie. She would worry later that I was touched by a genie when I became more rebellious and recalcitrant.
Of course, whether it was a touch of a genie or a flash of genius mattered little to me at the time. I was simply allowing my oratory skills to do their magic as the darkness fell every night on the forgotten world of the nomadic group in which we lived and travelled at the time. A few daring kids-- who acted against the sincere advice of their moms and dads-- would join me to hear different chapters of my Genesis, which kept evolving as I noticed that more and more objects, animals, phenomena weren't accounted for in the earlier versions, and as I forgot some of the details of the earlier version. The beauty of oral tradition is that you will not have to deal with the rationally-defective and imagination-barren minds of the urban world.
Unlike our president, I was at five years of age fluent in Hassaniyya and able to produce with grace some complex sentences in classical Arabic. In the country of one-million poets, one-million shaykhs, one-million divorcees, one-million political analysts, and one-million world theorists, both me and the president seemed quite unaccomplished. He was struggling to say the most basic things in our native tongue and I couldn't prove to the elders of the group that my Genesis is anything but a demonic-inspired nonsense. In his impressive inarticulateness he was unique and so was I am--a boy touched by a genie. But he was better than me, for sure. He had a bigger audience, all the millions I spoke earlier about--don't add them. The entire population was only one million, and most of these were there only in certain seasons. They spent the rest of the year in one of the neighboring African countries engaged in their petty commerce.
Not unlike me, He was made fun of. With me, people did so in my presence. With him, it was done behind his back. But he has many talents I didn't have. For one, he spoke French. I considered it the language of the enemy. I held on to that belief as long as I could even if it made no sense. I held on to that belief until I joined politics as a 'cultural attaché' to the office of the spokesperson of one presidential candidate in 2003. Then I found out that the only people who try to speak our language when they are serious are the French themselves. Our politicians all spoke French. Then I learned that the enemies of the nation are very nationalistic and the nationalists are the very enemies of the nation.
I will not know the president until I was eight when I was told in school that he is the president. I assumed the president is someone that loves everyone and everyone must in turn love him. Politics wasn't my strongest suit, although I led a massive army of five boys and warred on a regular basis with another major gang's leader (he commanded seven) in the village in which we would have settled by then. Of course, I won all the battles which took place at night and lost all of those which took place in the day time. I do better when my adversaries are asleep, even if my army was asleep as well. In contrast to my constant wars, our president didn't engage in war, even though he was trained as a soldier. He used his stratagem to stay in power in the same way I used my skills to destroy all the infrastructure, which the other the 7-members gang builds--cages for their chickens.
The president promoted women involvement in politics in the country. I did so as well. Whenever there was a danger of any kind, I would give orders to my sisters and their friends to go check it first. They alway did with bravery and grace, catching and killing unknown insects and bringing to me the motionless poor carcasses to explain how they fit in my Genesis. I always gave them names if no one existed in the language or if I didn't know it.
Both the president and I disliked school. He was courageous and therefore left it, or failed it at an early stage; it doesn't matter. He was ever since at home with his ignorance or in denial of it. It is hard to tell. I, on the other hand, didn't have that luxury. My mother forced me to go to school and, even worse, to study Quran and Arabic language after school with some cool shaykhs and shaykhas (the feminine form of that noun). I developed a taste for poetry, arithmetic and an almost an obsession of being the first in the class. But I was always late to classes. My teacher, who was also the village chief, sherif, doctor, surgeon general, French language expert, mason and above all agricultural engineer, was the only person I feared in the village. The only one among men, that is. Well, that doesn't say it all. I dreaded and loved a young girl, who had a very weird sense of humor or courtship. She would always complain to the teacher that I had walked across to the girls bench and hit her, which was of course not true. The teacher bought it every time, even though everyone would testify that they saw no such thing. He had no choice. Between me and her, it was always clear who seemed innocent. I was reprimanded every time and the first time was particularly difficult. The tough Genesis theorist left the class that day with wet pants. She laughed. Her smile still tortures me. She probably doesn't remember. I hope she doesn't, and I hope I will one day have the courage to forgive her. It will, for sure, be hard. Great men never forget humiliation.
To be continued!
To be continued!
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