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Allah is Not Obliged

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(This edition originally published in U.K. in 2006)

Birahama, a young Malinke tribal boy of West Africa, narrates this fascinating, amusing and horrific novel. When his disabled mother dies, his grandmother sends him with a shaman/con artist to live with his aunt in Liberia. While on the way to find her, they meet up with rebel armies and Birahama becomes a child-soldier. During his travails, his mantra becomes the Islamic saying "Allah is not obliged to be fair about the things he does here on earth."

In telling his story, Birahama offers details of village life, the deplorable state of medical care for his mother and others, and his ritualistic initiation into manhood. He shows the unfortunate results of tribal warfare and revolutionary coups on the citizens of Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia. The pathetic existence of the child-soldiers in these conflicts is described fully.

Armed with AK-47s, the child-soldiers are fed hashish to make them feel brave and then used as point men, lookouts, and cannon fodder by the adult members of warlord and revolutionary armies. In addition to their own precarious position, they witness and take part in all manner of cruelties. Yet throughout the telling, Birahama doesn't quite succumb to madness and remains genuinely likeable.

The book's author, the late Ahmadou Kourouma, grew up in Cote d'Ivoire and was familiar with the revolutions in that region. While the flow of story is frequently interrupted with term definitions that the narrator assumes the reader may not know, it grips with the excitement of a tale told by a child, in most sections. I found myself reading on even as I dreaded whatever new form of wartime atrocity that would befall the characters next.

It is not an easy book to read, but is well worth the effort to understand the human crisis of western Africa a bit better.

Armchair Interviews says: Hard to read for the violence against fellow man, but harder to put down because the story was so well told.

Orphaned following the death of his mother, Birahima, ten or twelve year old self-declared "fearless blameless street kid", leaves his native village in Ivory Coast to find his aunt in far away Liberia. He is accompanied by Yacouba, "money multiplier", shaman and "gri-gri man", a man who makes amulets for whatever religion seems appropriate at the moment and claiming to protect the wearer from hostile bullets from the other side. They are caught up in the middle of West Africa's brutal civil wars of the nineteen nineties. Having little education and no training, Birahima joins the hordes of child soldiers, fighting for whatever faction supplies them with food, weapons, protective amulets (gri-gri) and hashish. Ahmadou Kourouma, highly respected award winning Ivorian author, has created with ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED a vivacious, often hilarious, but also disturbing and thought provoking novel.

Published in 2000 in its original French, it was likely the first of fictionalized or factual accounts capturing the life of child soldiers in West or East Africa. Written in the voice of a boy with less than three years of schooling, and with limited French, the author uses his protagonist to convey much more than the intimate reflections of one of the "small soldiers" and what the youth describes as his "miserable existence". The young hero, like the author, is Malinké, an ancient and powerful West African civilization with its own unique language. Birahima shares his story in an unusual and often slang-type French. The author uses this approach to give the reader a flair of the idiomatic Malinké expressions that are full of vivid imagery, curious connotations and convey its distinct African logic. To help the reader understand the young narrator, he explains French, African and pidgin terms and phrases in brackets, using several dictionaries and phrasebooks Birahima has acquired at some point. French terms or concepts are often interpreted in his own child-like way to benefit his African readers, he states. While this initially interrupts the flow of the narrative, it gives Birahima's account a very personal, conversational and often humorous touch. His language does not lack in vulgarity when conveying the often objectionable and brutal reality he encounters. "My characters must be credible and to be credible they must speak in the novel as they speak in their own language..." the author explained in a 1999 interview. The translation by Frank Wynne does convey both the narrative and the odd language quirks expertly.

A ten (or 12) year old boy has only a limited horizon and narrow understanding of the politics of his country and geographic region. Growing up in extreme poverty, however, while being confronted with the corruption, violence and power grabs around him, makes him an astute and sarcastic observer. Birahima's journeys bring him face to face with the vicious commanders of some of the most cruel dictators in the region. Each of them relies not only on the effectiveness of arsenal of guns - 'kalashs', AK 47s, being the weapon of choice given to the child soldiers - but any "magic" such as gri-gris, or religious ritual they can muster or buy. Birahima learns to understand the intricacies of power as well as the futility of the traditional powers. His comments are astute. At the same time, kids are kids; he and the other child soldiers need bonds of affection and emotions can run high when one of theirs is killed or punished.

As the story progresses, the author mixes Birahima's voice, relaying his experiences as a "small-soldier", with that of a more adult narrator who provides the factual context of the complicated historical sequence of events in, primarily, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Aware of the lack of detailed knowledge most people have of these events, it is helpful to relate these to the reader - a technique Kourouma has used in his previous novels also. Here as in those Kourouma has always tackled social injustice, whether during colonial times or since with the corruption and cruelty of West African dictators being one of his target subjects.

With ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED, the author raises important questions about the absurdity of war, of the power structures that lead to them and the suffering of the innocent people caught up in them. It was Ahmadou Kourouma's last published novel; the author died in December 2003. [Friederike Knabe]

The author was successful in putting a face on the child soldiers of West Africa. He did so in a very unique style, first person and in the street smart, at times crude voice of a child soldier who had witnessed and experienced more than he should have. The author also shed a good deal of light on the greed and ruthlessness of African politics as well as the recent history of Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia. I'm really glad I read this. The international media has deservedly paid a lot of attention to eastern, southern and central Africa over the years, but the devestation of West Africa has often escaped the spotlight which it deserves.