IN AN AFRICAN PRISON: A MEMOIR
Alata, Jean-Paul
Late in 1976, the French Ministry of State for the Interior banned distribution of a book by Jean-Paul Alata, Prison d'Afrique (Editions du Seuil); the action was taken on the basis of a law of...
...But since Ismael was running this particular show, he would allow no such thing, for, ipso facto, it would mean ruining himself...
...The passages from Alata's book published here describe a torture scene, collective madness in Conakry, anda telephone conversation between the prisoner Jean-Paul Alata and President Sekou Toure...
...The present ban, which was brought about by pressure from Sekou Toure, affects a work that strains Franco-Guinean relations...
...under the light, it looks red...
...Reprinted, with permission, from the December 1976 issue of Esprit...
...I've already given an account of my actions in this connection...
...Rubbing you very hard straight off hurts you now, but tomorrow or the day after you'll be able to hold things almost normally...
...I've served him always, like a stupid fool...
...The adjutant calls one of the guards over, murmurs a few words to him, pointing to my forearms...
...And immediately it all begins again...
...4 "It can't be...
...A woman...
...Oulare reappears...
...President...
...White pig...
...he protested...
...two • three...
...The Minister has received orders that you are not to be injured...
...My battered rib cage will not let me breathe...
...He's got to be shown that we're not playing games, that we've got ways to bring the most stubborn among them around...
...afflictions thus induced respond to no treatment whatever, apart from traditional local remedies...
...The laughing and singing went on for hours, while, slightly to one side, hundreds of men, motionless and grave (Peouls, for the most part), fed their hatred on the spectacle...
...Merciful God, may my heart give out—now...
...When it's the heart, it's always serious...
...These documents substantiate the description and analysis in M. Alata's article...
...How do you know that...
...It was mad—or was I mad...
...They wouldn't dare...
...Drink...
...How will I be able, ever, to live with the memory of this humiliation— humiliation suffered at the hands of men I have always defended...
...He's not one for gentle tactics...
...Oh, the taste of that water as it revived every nerve end in the membranes of my mouth...
...The center light was on...
...He had abandoned me to my enemies, but he had called me, had announced the birth of my son—even more, had promised that I would see my family and had agreed that my child should bear his name...
...It's a fact, Alata...
...Until 1965, there was not a single village in which a foreigner would not feel safe...
...I had got hold of myself again...
...I indicate my manacled wrists, and I take note of the decor...
...This son who accepted his father's marriage to a black woman, who came to live with us...
...I feel underneath me that I have urinated...
...Or has the patron really sent me this message after handing me over to be abused...
...They pull my arms back violently...
...The last months had been so excruciating, and this prison was so hard to endure that I suppressed my will to live and believed myself capable of serenely contemplating the end...
...I shrug...
...I am stripped of my coat the way a rabbit is peeled of its skin...
...I howl, yet this screaming jumping jack is not I. Every organ in me is independent, is trying, on its own, to escape from the pain...
...But Jean-Francois, who chose to stand by me in the hardest moments of my life, when to a man Europeans were turning away from me, a traitor, a renegade...
...Alata, I wanted to tell you myself that I am pleased with your last depositions...
...In the wall facing me, an iron door with a grand-guignol inscription in red: DANGER OF DEATH...
...Despite all the anger, all the hatred that had slowly filled me these last months against Ismael and his clique, I still loved the man who now was at the other end of the wire...
...Alata, don't let yourself be ruined...
...Pig...
...Do you want to see them...
...The pain is so agonizing that I wish I might die of it...
...I heard the click as if in a dream...
...2 They yank me up, then make me kneel on the gravel...
...Oulare raises his arms to heaven...
...We're going , to use other methods...
...I feel a nip on the skin of my testicles, another on a fold of skin on my belly...
...To be stripped bare in front of these hilarious, strapping fellows is to become a subman...
...The guards laugh and exchange crude jokes in Malinke...
...By now he should be here, before us...
...I gave a start, for, with a smile, Ismael was offering me the telephone...
...The truth...
...People who had contemplated their faces—sometimes for as long as several hours—found them calm and peaceful...
...Haven't they told you you have a son...
...The look I turn on Oular is such that he averts his head...
...10017...
...I am helped into my clothes...
...since his return to France, he has resumed the status of French citizen...
...With one hand, Oulare stops the guards...
...Talk about what...
...When I hesitated, the Minister smiled and gestured toward the glass...
...The next discharge came after only one or two seconds...
...After all that's been published, after my statements...
...I felt myself giving way to tears...
...Not amenable, Alata, and not prudent...
...Leave...
...No one had witnessed their final, grotesque convulsions, but all of Conakry had had to endure what one reporter, more cynical and insensitive than the others, had called the Conakry carnival...
...Death is easier than to have testicles and anus burned...
...Thousands of sparks flash before my eyes...
...Seydou interrupted me brusquely: "Dog...
...My voice was choked...
...You've been sick, Alata...
...I no longer feel anything...
...Another guard disappears, to return with Oulares...
...They throw me, face down, on the floor...
...What have I to answer...
...Now, only now, do I understand their humiliation...
...The frightful faces of the four bodies swaying all day long beneath the Tumbo Bridge both revolted and terrified me...
...As I was passing through the doorway, I heard "Think of your wife and her child, too...
...You say you fought for us the day of the attack...
...Go on and drink...
...Take off your jacket...
...The magneto-man chafes at getting no reactions...
...When my ropes—I notice that they are actually electric wire—begin to drop away from my body, I start to howl again...
...What do you know about the invasion...
...You're not in yokr office at the President's Palace anymore, you slob, you're here...
...Mr...
...When I struggle, I feel the weight of a shod foot against the small of my back...
...Take it...
...Not too much, and not too fast...
...In another corner, a small white wood table...
...Then, aloud, I add, "At least, let go of me now, so that the circulation can start up again by itself...
...Attached to it is a heavy pulley, from which a rope is hanging...
...You've asked for it, that's for sure...
...We've got to put the screws on him...
...All those who occupy currently or who for quite a long time did occupy posts that carry a title including the word "general"—secretary-general of a branch (political), secretary-general of a region (administrative), inspector-general, etc.—are addressed as general...
...Talk now, before it's too late...
...We have proof that you did indeed take up arms, but it was to help the mercenaries...
...We only do what we're told...
...Is he making it up...
...I dislike using the means of persuasion my companion favors, but one must admit that they work miracles in searching out the truth...
...He pounded on the table...
...The swine...
...I don't answer...
...Your boss is crazy...
...Coming to, I see that I have fallen on my side...
...The man nods, picks up my jacket from the floor, seizes my right arm, which is bleeding at the elbow, and falls to rubbing the wound the way you rub down a horse...
...Still smiling that same smile, the Minister continued: "Unfortunately, I've nothing else to offer you, but if your conversation is satisfactory, I'll have you brought some bread and hot coffee...
...Alone 422 in what seemed to me an enormous room, and bereft of companionship, I let myself sink into deep despair...
...420 flesh, or the hundreds of sharp-pointed stones that are slowly digging into my knees...
...One of the guards makes as if to put on the handcuffs...
...I have lost control...
...Today, they were forcing me to admit that I had wanted to kill him, that for years I had been secretly betraying him, yet he found it entirely natural that my son should be named after him...
...Cisse reported to him that you've been sick...
...And to the guards: "Get on with it...
...he is worried, hurried...
...Well, are you pleased...
...Jean-Paul Alata is French by birth...
...He came back carrying a tall misted glass, which he set down on the table within my reach...
...To be obliged to thank one's tormentor for his solicitude...
...Get hold of yourself, Alata, and trust me...
...The essential thing is to steel myself for the electric shock, which recurs every five seconds...
...Shame sweeps over me...
...I was convinced that getting in touch directly with the President would resolve many problems...
...Eds...
...You don't think so...
...But then I am dumped on the floor in a small, glaringly lighted room...
...The committee's asking for you...
...Well, after all," one of them says, with a sigh of mock commiseration, "he's already got children and his wife's pregnant...
...In my opinion, you're coddling him...
...The President had talked to me...
...That guard over there, let him get as upset as he likes, twirl his magneto, fiddle with his rheostat: nothing happens...
...Now I am unable to brace myself against the brutal assault of the current or to foresee how long it will last...
...The journalist had made much of how these women used long sticks to obscenely jiggle the sexual organs of the executed men...
...The gendarme went into the next room...
...Well, show a little understanding presently, and your troubles will soon be over...
...Ismael looked at me thoughtfully, as I sat holding my empty glass awkwardly because of the handcuffs...
...Carnival in Conakry: July 25, 1971 THE ANNEX was a group of buildings previously occupied by subaltern units of the gendarmes which had been hastily converted into a prison...
...So I could not hope to be set free soon, indeed not for a long time...
...He's talking to me seriously about friendship...
...The blood flowing toward the extremities of my forearms slams into a wall, and with each pulse beat it sends back a wave of pain...
...I'll be able to hold out...
...You're not being exactly amenable...
...I feel as if I am being thrust into live coals...
...I scream...
...In a flash, I see in my mind's eye a film sequence about the German camps which shows a long line of Jews being forced to regain their barracks by trotting, naked, across the entire camp...
...Have I attained that threshold of pain beyond which, they say, one no longer perceives pain...
...We did everything to spare you...
...And Guinean hospitality was famous...
...And don't forget, this leaves its mark...
...Oular6 comes back...
...The Minister wants to be kept informed about everything that concerns you...
...Translated hl' ADRIENNE FOULKE q 424...
...I shake my head painfully...
...I come to find myself stretched full length on the floor despite the ropes that have turned my hands to ice...
...Locks had been removed and replaced by bolts, and the doors had been reinforced by iron bars...
...The Minister and Seydou...
...For how long...
...In one corner, heavy truck tires, piled one on the other...
...Arms and shoulders are wrenched back still more brutally...
...You've betrayed him all down the line...
...Get up...
...Oulare led me inside, armed with new equipment—a metal bed with springs and a foam pillow...
...Outside, the air is fresh, and there are stars...
...Oulare's hand pushed the glass from my lips...
...I trembled with pleasure...
...Stop hiding behind the President...
...I was still as ready to fight for him as I had been on November 22nd...
...Alata's book is an account of what befell him in Guinea: a personal friend of President for Lire of the Republic of Guinea Sekou Toure and a well-placed Guinean political figure, A lata found himself one of the numerous Guineans who were tortured in the Borio camp on the sole decision of an autocratic President...
...I can no longer hold myself upright, and I stagger...
...C1Ei1 this time...
...he orders the men to stop...
...They remove, or rather they rip off my handcuffs...
...I was gripping the phone...
...None of that has got anything to do with our feelings...
...five...
...All this is painful, but bearable...
...To myself, I count, "One...
...It wasn't so much a matter of my being pleased...
...They're not about to arrest him, oh no, not break him too, this boy who has given himself with such passion to the continent of Africa...
...I was, yes, cared for, Comrade Minister...
...You're asking for it...
...Each and every incendiary had been closely watched...
...Ismael quieted him with a wave of his hand, but now he was not smiling...
...4 President Sekou Tour, 423 "Oh, come on...
...Of one thing I was convinced...
...Want to talk to your friend...
...President, how could my child bear your name...
...Conversation with Skou Tour: July 27, 1971 I HAD just finished signing in and, plunged in gloomy thoughts, was waiting for a signal to return to the annex...
...The idea flashed through my mind that I should shout to him that I was innocent...
...There were only two people in the committee room...
...Once again, the heavy iron-plated door, the high-wheeled jeep in which Adjutant Oulareis waiting for me...
...Slowly, slowly, M. Alata...
...it is an instinctive reaction of my whole body, and it makes him roar with laughter...
...On the floor, a quantity of gravel...
...I am so absorbed in my inner revolt that I no longer hear, no longer see anything...
...The President...
...Alata's book is not the first to suffer from an aberrant application of what was in principle an anti-Nazi decree...
...So, give some thought to this little problem and go along now with Oulare...
...Sit down...
...I am too corpulent for my elbows to meet in this position, yet the two men manhandling me are not content until they have trussed me up like a fowl...
...The face of Tenin, my dearly beloved, her belly misshapen by pregnancy...
...I had not understood its purpose before...
...in 1975, French authorities, claiming that legally he was a French national, secured his release from prison in Guinea...
...Who was with 419 you that day...
...It seems as if the pain that bores into my brain must explode it...
...I had to find the courage to envisage the final moment, when the years of struggle and misery would end...
...I must have produced a very feeble smile...
...Nobody wants to join you in jail, but people love you...
...Copies of this document may be had by writing to the International League for Human Rights, 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y...
...she fainted...
...If it really is he who's sent you, tell him I know nothing...
...Who could say...
...It was essential not to dwell on the past...
...a near relative...
...Too many of their intellectuals had already come to know the rigors of the camps...
...No mysterious greetings lIsmacl Toure, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Inquiry...
...We'll have to proceed to stage two...
...His voice rose...
...In Guinea, families are too extended, too complex, still too clan-minded for these mad women ever to escape punishment...
...My sex is no longer part of me...
...He wants to do something for you...
...Would it be possible...
...All fear had left me, and I laughed scornfully...
...When it stopped—the way a whip stops cracking—I fell like a log...
...The guard who was operating the magneto began to laugh...
...The pain now is as great as when the ordeal began...
...four...
...Who was it who was never out of your sight...
...I started...
...If he's been tied up for more than an hour, he won't be able to use his arms for a couple of weeks...
...I've nothing to say, and you know it...
...One of them comes over and pinches my earlobes...
...You're an important figure...
...This time, they have left me stretched out, but my feet have been bound...
...In fact, underpinning the cones there are often very real and efficacious preparations used to poison or to cause blindness or skin ailments...
...I do hope you will not put me to shame by refusing in any way to cooperate...
...Forbidden faces came between me and them...
...And yet indeed it was his voice, his voice with the grave, beguiling inflections that mesmerized thousands of listeners, that could work so many "spells...
...Ismael was not about to leave my side, he wouldn't let me speak out...
...I did not hear the door open, but the guardroom officer is shaking me by the shoulder...
...Yes, not prudent," he repeated, choosing his words with care...
...Under the ceiling, a beam has been installed at wall height...
...You look great like that, General...
...I heard a refrigerator door slam...
...He turned to Ismael: "This man's nothing but a dirty slob, and I've always said so...
...Your wife said you would have liked him to have my name...
...It's carnival time in Conakry...
...Oulares takes them from him, and keeps them...
...It came in bursts so brutal, so powerful that I tried to get up to escape from them...
...Jean-Francois and Tenin...
...It wasn't serious...
...Tenin...
...What do you mean...
...He doesn't need them anymore...
...The pain returns...
...I was securely locked in...
...Have confidence in him and speak out...
...I cursed my emotionalism, but I was unable to answer...
...Without waiting for my answer: "Oulare, go find a glass of water for our friend...
...Sometimes it continues for interminable seconds—almost as if it were dawdling—then by degrees it mounts to an intensity likely to blast my eyeballs from their sockets...
...Until then, the thought of food had not moved me much, but the liquid I had just absorbed had aroused my hunger...
...A kick to the ribs brings me to my feet...
...That makes me howl...
...This man has been comforted quite enough...
...I rejected it...
...The ropes fettering me are not ordinary ropes...
...I was dumfounded...
...The young republic of Guinea has already learned many of the techniques of European totalitarianism...
...When I try to lower myself to one side, he fetches me up with a kick from his booted foot...
...3Cortes denotes magic practices for casting a spell on one's enemies...
...We know what has to be done...
...Actually, that makes him very happy...
...My thoughts were somber...
...You've worked the electrodes loose...
...I took the phone as if it were going to explode in my face...
...It was even asserted that they were already dead by the time they were hung, because their faces bore no traces of their suffering...
...I was in full possession of myself, my head was clear...
...The President is still hopeful that you will understand...
...Resting on it, an oblong box, probably of bakelite...
...Mr...
...All right, let's get on with it...
...Inside my new cell, which had no electricity, it was as dark as pitch...
...You were misled...
...Still smiling, Ismael took the phone from my hands and replaced it in its cradle...
...Than the sensation of scalding mud being pushed into my bowels...
...Oular ', take him away...
...The Minister had noticed the sneer...
...Presi—Tenin and my child...
...Despite my desire not to demean myself but to put on a brave show, I do groan, for the pain is too intense...
...He's been too kind to you...
...Windows had been walled up, leaving only the regulation ten-by-fifteen centimeter slits...
...My friendship for him was such that I had wanted my son to be named after him...
...With a sweeping gesture of his hand, Ismael pointed to a crude stool...
...My hands, my wrists are dead...
...The President knows that from the very first shots I fought—" I had no time to finish...
...We're not torturers, after all...
...You're lucky, M. Alata...
...The pain penetrated my skull, my eyeballs...
...Still almost a child...
...The prisoners had had long discussions about the circumstances surrounding the executions but not the condemned men's last moments, for no one had been present...
...Then the pain returned...
...To me, he simply signals that I am to follow him...
...You stay there .quietly," one of my torturers orders...
...at other times, it merely grazes but then bashes the brain with a single charge, turning it into a bloc of molten lava...
...If he were informed by a trustworthy man about the cruelties that had been inflicted in his name in order to establish impudent lies, he would react...
...An old woman was forced by these same Megaeras to dance beneath one of the bodies...
...He comes and turns me over with his foot...
...I can scarcely see...
...I scowl at the man who brutalizes me in such fashion...
...Within a few moments, I can no longer tell which is causing me the more searing pain: the ropes that oppress my chest and gnaw into my 2Since independence, a kind of custom has been created in Guinea...
...Projection Room Technique: January 13, 1971 A harsh light bores through my eyelids...
...Tenin...
...The cortes3 that appease the souls of the dead must already be in preparation...
...Wouldn't he think I was toadying...
...No, no, it's for your own good, really...
...the guard, still laughing, was playing with his rheostat...
...The men are laughing...
...I find the strength to smile...
...By now I am convinced that lsmaP is trying to buttress a very fragile pyramid that he's constructed on lies...
...You know him well enough to be sure that tricks are out of the question...
...He seizes my left arm, and subjects it to the same treatment...
...Then, suddenly, everything is black...
...That interests you, does it...
...He did tell me a long time ago to let you know you had a son...
...Yet Guineans were naturally good and peaceable people...
...My screams redouble...
...He laughs...
...I understand this only when my shorts are 421 roughly pulled down, exposing my wretched nakedness...
...For as long as you're down there, I promise you I will take care of your family...
...The relatives of the dead would never forget...
...A gray pallor spread over his face...
...I had steeled myself for a tough attack...
...I felt myself being lifted from the stool by two stalwart guards who had come in at the adjutant's beckoning...
...The guard shakes his head...
...They are tied so tightly that already I can no longer feel my hands or wrists...
...Documentation • We have received a copy of a thick document, issued by the International League for Human Rights and addressed to the United Nations, which brings together large quantities of evidence concerning the torture and brutality practiced by the S4kou Tour4 regime in Guinea...
...the action was taken on the basis of a law of July 29, 1881 that authorizes the government to regulate the distribution of "works of foreign origin that are written in the French language and published abroad and in France...
...It's as if a saw were cutting into my forearms and elbows...
...My temples were wet with sweat...
...I'll arrange a meeting with your wife and son...
...Don't make me repeat...
...The vast Peoul masses, muzzled by terror, were becoming firmly convinced that they were the victims of the purge...
...We treat you like a comrade, like a friend almost, and you take us for children...
...My brain is a boiling lake in which nothing remains afloat but fierce hatred for these men...
...You have helped the cause, and you know you can count on me...
...My body arches like a bent bow...
...Fat smartaleck...
...I scarcely noticed their dragging me away, their almost carrying me into the darkness of the camp courtyard toward other lights, other rooms...
...And it was a different intensity...
...A second man, sitting by the table in the corner, turns a crank rapidly...
...More reasonable, Alata...
...They bite into, they saw the flesh...
...The adjutant returns...
...He pummels me as he pulls me upright...
...You're aware of the role your countryFrance—played in it...
...my bloody jacket is draped over my shoulders...
...Tell us what you yourself really did...
...These paternal remarks threw me off balance...
...I do not hold it against them that they are torturing me but that they all too visibly enjoy it...
...Wanting to talk to me, to me, a prisoner...
...I no longer even think of ever getting out...
...He went on: "Are you thirsty...
...A message from the President, M. Alata...
...The invasion...
...subsequently, he opted for Guinean citizenship...
...The furrows on his face deepened...
...What did they call him...
...This was ideal terrain...
...I still had the strength to lift my head and look the adjutant in the face...
...But how was that end to be brought about...
...There were numerous witnesses to my actions during the days from November 22nd to 24th...
...You'll never be the same when you leave...
...I hope that you were well cared for and that you're no longer worried about your heart...
...Was she his mother...
...My friend Keita doesn't seem overfond of you...
...Seydou had been silent, but now he came onstage, addressing his "boss...
...When you've got it in for somebody, you leave him alone—like that, with no rubbing...
...he had cried, by way of describing how infamous furies danced below the bodies, which had soon been bloated by the hot January sun...
...But for tactical reasons, I thought it better to put that off until there would be some recompense...
...Seydou was literally spitting out his words...
...They have to do mainly with my sexual parts, and the difficulty my wife will have in being satisfied, if indeed I do recover...
...A strange kind of love," I answer, under my breath...
...The second guard is supporting me on my feet, and the man attending to my arms takes advantage of the fact that Oulare has just left to whisper in my ear, "You must forgive us, General...
...This law, which had lapsed, was revived in 1939 by a decree-law aiming to prevent the introduction of Nazi writings into France...
...Very disagreeable for you, since you have a young wife...
...He begs you in the name of your friendship not to compromise everything by being stubborn...
...Release him and put on his clothes...
...Oulare turns on his heel, flinging a brief order to the guards: "Won khai [Let's get going...
...Comrade, may I remind you that we have a busy schedule...
...Rain was falling in torrents, beating on the roof with a monotonous rhythm and casting a pall over Conakry...
...I remember perfectly what I thought to myself at that moment: But he's not laughing...
...I was no longer falling down, my groans were less loud...
...The bloody carnival dishonoring the four executed men, two of whom were Peouls, could not be quickly forgotten...
...Suddenly abandoning his amiable smile and tone, he leaned forward: "What do you know about the invasion, Alata...
...Even when I was still free, I used to wonder how he would take my proposal...
...Listening to you, I gathered that I'm due for a good dressing down...
...I was flabbergasted...
Vol. 24 • September 1977 • No. 4
