ALONE IN THE WORLD

The Mid 2030's

Africa, which had always been kept out from the great nations of her world, didn't ask herself why she has been placed in quarantine. After all, Africans had always enjoyed third-class treatments on the world scene. Then, when they realised that there would be no more buyers for their raw materials and natural resources, they started scratching their heads: Ah! What are we going to do? Who will buy what we have and sell us what we don't have? Well, they soon came to acknowledge the fact that they had always had everything they needed in their own neighbouring countries.

Then, came the uprising of robotics programmes in South Africa, which had always been playing catch up with the rich countries of Europe and America. It was then that Africa understood what had happened to their biggest suppliers, customers, and importers of their youths and brains. It didn't take much for the uprising in South Africa to be quickly stopped with the help of other African countries. 

And then?

African countries had to reinvent the world, without European scales, American references or Chinese funding. Africa and other developing countries were quite alone in the world, and very quickly they realised that they felt quite fine in fact, cut off from the little paradise over there.

For me on the other hand, I was going through hell, aware of my sisters and my mother on different three continents without the possibility of communicating with them or going to their rescue. Many expatriates lived on African soil and they too wanted to go and save their families. Together, we tried to pressure African leaders to organise an expedition over there to Little Paradise, but they all refused adamantly: They had other things to do than go save those over there who had looted them before watching them eat dirt without lifting a finger for how long? Let us count? Many centuries...

However, their intransigence of African leaders wasn't cruel. Indeed, they had other things to do: the Great Disasters of the previous years had ravaged their lands and killed their people. Pushed aside from the rich countries by a miraculous hand, their ambitions could perhaps finally become true. They no longer represented the mere guests of white people on the planet. They could now invent their own system, their own definition of heaven on Earth.

But, wait a minute! Why had Great Disasters stopped occurring all of a sudden? Had the confinement of the Little Paradise soothed the pain of planet Earth? Or could this be thanks to the confinement of the Gods of Little Paradise and their twisted minds?

"Hey Pole, what's your problem?" I heard my boss' voice exclaim behind me.

The Great Disasters having put an end to my start-up project, I had resigned myself to remaining an employee. In fact, I had never really had any entrepreneurial spirit. You have to like making your own choices and enjoy taking risks to become an entrepreneur, which wasn't my case. On the other hand, Fatou and her fashion business was becoming more and more successful, and since the last few months it had gained success in neighbouring countries as well. Ousmane had turned three years-old.

I turned to my boss with an evasive gaze. He held two bottles of cold water in one hand. He handed me one with a grin.

"Pretty women keep staring at you in awe and you're ignoring them. I understand you're working, but hey... we're all human, aren't we?" He continued.

My boss was a strong-built French man. He had settled in Senegal more than twenty years before me to set up his own construction company. Although he came across as easy-going and friendly with most people, his way of addressing the local people reflected the full extent of his arrogance. His oddly pinkish-orange face after so many years in Africa seemed to continuously look down on others. He was unaware of my Cuban and African origins. All he knew about me was what I had put on my CV. I was called Borys Leszczyński. I had graduated from college in Katowice, Poland. I had joined the Polish Forces at the age of eighteen to pursue a long and successful career in the military then eventually moved to Africa. Like my boss, the Senegalese sun had superficially coloured my skin, but it definitely hadn't made me Black. African, maybe, but not Black. I was Polish, but I was first and foremost a white man in a French-speaking African country that still depended on France for its currency and political stability. After all these years traveling and living abroad, I can say with certainty that just like any immigrants, Westerners only go into exile where they are better off and better treated than at home. For my boss, Africa and its black population gave him the illusion of unchallenged superiority. The western environment where he had grown up had taught him that having constituted the greatest value of human beings. How having materialised itself appeared to be irrelevant. What mattered in the men's world consisted of always having, and even more than others.

The extreme satisfaction that my boss felt when he addressed people with disdain often translated into patronising words under a veil of ignorance sprinkled with a pinch of hypocrisy and false humility. According to western standards, Poland hadn't acquired enough yet compared to France, Germany or the United States. Therefore, the Poles weren't worth much more than their exchange rate, which still didn't equate to much at that time. Consequently, the tone with which my boss called me by my origin aligned very much with that of which he used to address the Senegalese.

I grabbed the bottle of water to take a sip then I answered simply:

"I'm married."

" So what? What difference does it make?" He retorted, rolling his eyes. He immediately continued his interrogation: "Is your wife Polish?"

" No," I said guessing that my boss wasn't going to let go of me anytime soon.

"Is she an African woman?"

" Yes."

"A really dark-skinned one?"

"Her father's Syrian," I replied, faking a smile.

"Ah, I see," my boss exclaimed, taking a long sip of his water.

The way my boss as well as some French people in general openly related to sex made me feel uncomfortable. They probed into topics which I didn't want to explore.

"What's your type? Are you gay?" He finally exclaimed in a mocking tone after a short silence.

I remained stunned, my bottle in my hand suspended in the air. I gaped at my boss for a brief moment without answering. His tone might have been mocking, but his gaze didn't seem to care much about the answer. His childish curiosity didn't give the impression of being either cruel or harmful. He laughed at my behaviour more out of habit than out of conviction. My sexuality, orientation or tendency had no impact on his personal or professional life. Amused by my silence, my boss burst out laughing, patting me on my shoulder in a friendly way.

"Ah Borys, Borys, Borys! You should go for a walk on the beach," he finally said in a more affectionate tone before walking away.

The beach, its fine white sand, its tireless waves and these half-naked human bodies. My boss had sent me for a walk to the beach like we send children do their homework. Having grown up in Cuba halfway between the countryside and the beach, Senegalese beaches didn't evoke anything exotic to me, except perhaps that the local population in Dakar was much more reserved than in Cuba. Instead of half-naked bodies, Senegalese beaches sported a profusion of bodies in colourful wet clothes, mostly young male bodies. After my boss' interjection, it was with an open and free childish curiosity that I observed the beach this time; its fine white sand, its tireless waves and these half-naked human bodies in wet clothes. As I allowed myself to examine this very familiar landscape, I dared to question for the first time the trajectory my gaze was following and what it was searching for under this diversity of human bodies.

***

It took about fifteen years for African countries to finally decide to go and see what had happened to their earthling cousins. Because of their proximity to the European continent, and to my great disappointment, Europe was the only continent they chose to venture into to begin with, very cautiously. At the first announcement of the expedition of African troops to Europe, I enlisted in the army. I suspected that my language skills and my experience as a pilot would make me a valuable asset. Africa having created its own union with its own currency, and its own military forces, men and women from every country on the continent joined what had then become the African Forces. I remember the recruitment interview as one of the most defining moments of my life.

"Borys Len...!" A middle-aged black woman in military uniform began. She paused for a moment, peering more closely at her device. She pouted, studying her clipboard while adjusting her glasses.

"Borys Leszczyński! Yes, that's me!" I said jumping up from my seat to walk towards the woman.

She scrutinised at me from head to toe before saying with a broad smile:

"Perfect! Well, please follow me."

She led me along several corridors. We finally stopped in front of a closed door.

"Wait here. It shouldn't take long. They're going to call you," she said then walked away.

I watched her going back down the corridor as if my life depended on hers. Once her silhouette disappeared, I turned my attention for a few moments to my feet, then again to the other end of the corridor. Suddenly, I heard the door open to my side, my heart immediately jumped in my chest. I turned my head while keeping my back facing the wall, my hands crossed behind my back.

"I'm not going to try to pronounce your family name, please come in," a middle-aged black man in military uniform said.

The man invited me to follow him into the room with a hand gesture. I walked into an office where two other black men in military uniform were sitting on either side of a very large U-shaped desk; the main seat was unoccupied. An empty chair was placed in front of them inside the U. Through the three large windows behind them, I could see a few military aircrafts standing in line like grocery items on a supermarket shelf.

The man still standing invited me to take a seat on the chair, then he headed to the desk to sit on the chair opposite me. I held my back as straight as a broomstick, my shoulders turned backward, my head held slightly high, my hands resting symmetrically on my thighs, my feet parallel to each other. Prior to the recruitment interview, I had familiarised myself with the military ranks of the African Forces. In front of me stood a captain, to my right a major, and to my left a lieutenant colonel.

"So, tell us what are your motivations for joining the African Forces?" The captain resumed, gazing at me, stern, and curious.

I took a deep breath to stifle my emotions and swallow back the tears that came to my eyes. Then, I answered in one breath with a dry voice, a firm tone as my gaze locked with their theirs:

"I have a sister in the United States and another in China. My mother lives in Poland. I've had no news for fifteen years now."

"Is your mother Polish?" The captain asked.

"No sir, my mother is Cuban. My late father was Polish."

"And you're fluent in Polish, aren't you?" He continued.

"Yes sir," I said.

"And you also speak Spanish, French and several Eastern European languages ​including Russian, don't you?" The major asked.

"Yes sir," I said again.

"Fluently?" The lieutenant-colonel probed.

"Yes, sir," I replied, glancing at each one alternately.

"Many immigrants want to go and save their families in Europe, the United States, China, Australia, which we fully understand. But it's important for them to also understand that this mission isn't a personal matter, let alone a family matter," the captain began dryly, looking me straight in the eye. "We're about to use the valuable resources of our nations to go and see if maybe we can help the Europeans first, then hopefully the other countries too," he added, trying to discern the emotion on my face. "We have to choose Europe simply because it is the continent closest to us. There's nothing personal here!"

I barely managed to hide my disappointment by breathing calmly while wiggling my toes furiously inside my shoes. The captain's words, which were still spinning in my head, made my stomach turn, but I gathered all my strength to say in a calm tone:

"I understand, sir,"

"You can pilot, can't you?" The major said immediately.

"Yes sir, "

"Which aircrafts?" The lieutenant colonel asked.

"Every single one of those out there behind you, sir," I replied confidently.

All three men gave each other a knowing look for a fraction of a second before staring at me with a thin smile.

This is how I joined the African Air Force as a colonel. Since Fatou and I had divorced five years earlier and she had full custody of Ousmane, I had no reason not to want to go and make myself more useful elsewhere. I hardly ever saw Ousmane. I still didn't have the courage to answer his questions.