An extract from the novel The Boys Are Not to Blame
by Liberian author Saah Millimono)
Part One
By the time I was handcuffed and taken to one of the police cars waiting in the yard, my three children had joined my wife and me. Like their mother, they were all weeping. A group of journalists had come with the police, parking their news vans and other vehicles on the side of the road in front of the house. Neighbors and a few other people had gathered to watch as I was being handcuffed and taken away. The journalists stood with their microphones, tape recorders and cameras, taking pictures of me and trying to get me to talk as I was led past and into one of the police cars by two policemen holding onto my arms tightly, as if I would disappear if left alone. I knew the Italian media from my days of playing football in Italy and that they could be very racist, especially went it came to speaking of African footballers, and I didn’t like them much. And when one of the journalists who, more than his colleagues, had tried to get me to talk by pushing his microphone into my face, I said to him:
“Get out of my face, scum.”
Later, much later, I would come to regret those words, because the Italian media would come to make the most out of it. Some said it showed that I was unrepentant and that I had no remorse for the evil things I had done as a child soldier back in Liberia; some said my reaction to the journalist was unbecoming of somebody of my stature and that I ought to be ashamed of myself; and still others said that by insulting the journalist I had shown my hatred for freedom of expression, especially in a civilized country like Italy. But that I ought to remember that I had gotten rich at the expense of Italy’s taxpayers. There were loud calls to strip me of my Italian citizenship immediately and to deport me to Liberia. But the Italian media were hyenas. Insulting a journalist, who had nearly pushed his microphone into my face, I felt was a proper response, regardless of how others would interpret it and despite the consequences. During my playing days I remember how the Italian media would have each and everything to say about my teammates and me, especially after we had lost a match that we were expected to win or after we had drawn with a lesser football team. Because I was black, I suffered. I remember seeing a photo of myself, taken during a match in which I had screamed and bared my teeth because the referee had refused to blow when I was gruesomely tackled by a player from the opposition team. The photographer had managed to take the photo from an angle that made me look very ugly, like a monkey. That photo had been published in every Italian newspaper, especially during days when I played poorly. It had sometimes been accompanied by banana ads. But anyone seeing the ads next to the photo wouldn’t have missed the meaning: that being a black footballer meant I was fit for nothing except eating a banana. This left me more infuriated with the Italian media than ever I could.
At the police station, the handcuffs were removed. I was told of my right to speak or to stay silent, as well as to get myself a lawyer. And then I was interviewed and placed in a police cell. My wife, who had come with me to the police station, went to talk on the telephone and soon got to hire a lawyer.
The lawyer soon came, dressed in a dark suit and eyeglasses and carrying a briefcase, his well-polished black shoes making clop-clop sounds on the tiled floor of the interrogation room where I was allowed to meet him. His name was Tim Billotti. Billoti was well-known in Italy as a defense lawyer of repute and didn’t come with a small fee. During the time I played football, I had met him a few times, especially when one of my teammates had been involved in a motor accident. But I didn’t like him and hadn’t spoken to him before. He made my teammate pay through the eyeballs and seemed to care about nothing but money. But much to my surprise, my teammate’s case had ended in a not guilty verdict. Undoubtedly, Billotti had earned his reputation as a good defense lawyer. So that in Italy anyone who was in any serious trouble at all would do better to seek his services or go to jail.
“I’ve heard about Civitas Maxima,” said Billoti, speaking of the human rights organization which had brought the case – containing eleven counts – against me. “They’re politically motivated and nothing but a tool that’s being used by the West primarily to send Africans like yourself to jail. They’ve also been accused of using fake witnesses.”
I nodded my head at the lawyer sitting across the table from me and my wife, who was still dressed in the pair of trousers and T-shirt that she had put on hastily to come with me to the police station on the morning of my arrest at home. She sat with her arms folded across her chest, alert to what the lawyer was saying. Her eyes were red as she had been weeping all the way from the house to the police station.
The lawyer had been given a copy of the indictment, which I had read and felt like John the Baptist in the wilderness. There were all sorts of crimes ranging from murder to rape, from forced displacement to torture, from abduction to arson, from looting to vandalism, from sexual slavery to human trafficking, which made me feel more of a sinner than the devil himself. The papers rustled as the lawyer, his nails finely cut and polished, with hair on the back of his hands, went through them.
“There’s a man,” said the lawyer, “a human rights lawyer in Liberia. His name is Willy Wolomongai. He works to bring former rebel leaders and child soldiers of the Liberian civil war to court. He and Civitas, along with a few other human rights organizations, have been responsible for filing cases like yours. But he’s been accused of paying witness to lie. As for us,” continued the lawyer, “We’d need to gather as much evidence as we can. This would mean meeting nearly all of those so-called witnesses. Doubtless they’re being manipulated by both Civitas and Mr. Wolomongai. But I’d need to travel to Liberia myself, to gather more evidence and perhaps to change public sentiment that cases like yours are, in themselves, really politically motivated and are being used by western countries to exercise selective justice.”
The lawyer, my wife and I were sitting in the interrogation room of the police station. There was only a CCTV camera, a table and three chairs, and no policeman on guard. As often, the police were respectful towards me. They had even given us tea and slices of bread with peanut butter. My wife and I refused to eat and drank only the tea instead. The lawyer took neither the tea nor the bread, saying that he had already had breakfast at home.
Later, my wife and I thanked the lawyer, and he left. My wife wept some more. I hugged her close to myself, trying to reassure her that all would be well. Then she left too. I was taken back to the police cell where I was to spend the entire day and the night alone, without my family and fearful of the days ahead.
To be cont’d next Friday.