“Every people, if left to its own devices, would exterminate all the other peoples vexing it or for which it has no need”
The Harmattan Winds, by Sylvain Trudel (translated by Donald Winkler), tells the story of two young boys who feel out of place in the world within which they are being raised. They become friends, declaring themselves blood brothers and enacting rituals to bring this into effect. Their escapades are recounted from a viewpoint the adults in their lives fail to grasp, regarding it simply as naughty behaviour. There is humour and horror in equal measure given the danger the boys put themselves in, yet always with poignant reasoning as they seek answers to their feelings of alienation, longing for a return to a mythical homeland.
The narrator is Hugues Francoeur who was adopted as an abandoned infant by newly weds. The couple go on to have two children of their own – who do not have the oriental eyes of their eldest. When Hugues overhears them talking about his origins – something they have never before shared with him – he is plunged into a darkness of unbelonging from which he cannot emerge.
Into this time of confusion arrives Habéké Axoum, an African child brought to Montreal aged nine years old by aid agencies, to be adopted after his entire birth family die from a well televised famine in Ethiopia. When he moves with his new parents to the small town where Hugues is living the boys bond over the bullying they are subjected to by peers for looking different. They have, however, more than this in common. They are dreamers, storytellers within their own heads, who now find in each other someone with whom they can share their deepest thoughts and hopes of escape.
Habéké has never abandoned the beliefs he was raised to revere. He explains these to Hugues who can see more hope in them than the supposed Christianity of the local population. The boys set out on adventures seeking links with ancestors through nature and alchemy. They brew concoctions that ruin pots; steal vital ingredients for their potions; travel north in a desperate attempt to find Africa, to return to a paradise they call Ityopia. When they get caught in a fire of their own making, one that almost ends in tragedy, events are put in motion that will have wider consequences.
The boys are granted a freedom more common at the time to pursue their misadventures. When caught they admit to their actions, although without explanation, and try to make amends. Given their reasoning it is unlikely they would have been understood anyway let alone tolerated. What the author does brilliantly is to put his readers into the boys’ heads while recounting what is happening in a manner that will leave adults both entertained and appalled.
“Parents are like that: if you ask them about their private life, you get a whack, but if you don’t answer when they ask you about your private life, you get an even harder whack!”
The dreams, schemes and hopes that inspire the boys’ actions eventually spiral towards an inevitable reckoning. Along the way are lessons that readers would do well to pay attention to. The language used is often lyrical. The boys lack guile but can still understand the damage caused by human prejudice and widespread folly. The denouement is appropriately cyclical even if dark.
A somehow beautifully rendered account of mischief and horror, fuelled by adults and their ill thought through fine intentions. Although first published in French a couple of decades ago this remains a tale for our times, and is one I highly recommend.
The Harmattan Winds is published by Archipelago Books.
