Transit

Transit is a work of historical fiction by Abdourahman A. Waberi. Taking place in Paris as well as the tiny country of Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, it cycles between the narratives of five Djiboutian characters, Harbi, Alice, Awaleh, Abdo-Julien, and Bashir, respectively a husband, wife, father’s father, son, and lone foot soldier. Each of the characters has a starkly different personality from the others, deals uniquely with Djibouti’s poor political and economic conditions, and aspires to reach different goals. Collectively, the five stories compose a microcosm of the Djiboutian-French experience, and the nation’s historical struggle to affirm its autonomy and dignity in the wake of a fraught colonial history.

Transit begins in Paris’ main airport, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Throughout the novel, Waberi links France to Djibouti: the latter was first established as a French colony and did not gain its independence until 1977. The narratives of Bashir and Harbi take place in Paris. There, the young Bashir takes on the name “Bashir Binladen” as a small, subversive expression of the irony of his relative powerlessness. While Bashir was born in Djibouti after its independence, Harbi moved to France before Djibouti gained autonomy. He falls in love and gets married to Alice, a woman from the northwestern French city of Rennes. Harbi now lives alone in Paris, lamenting his separation from Alice, his father Awaleh, and his son Abdo-Julien.

Harbi’s voice disappears until the end of the novel. Its middle is filled with the stories of Alice, Awaleh, Abdo-Julien, and Bashir, who each challenge the idea that immigration enacts a clean break from the emotions and identities of one’s home nation. Awaleh grounds the book in the collective history of Djibouti, reflecting on the time before the rest were born. He recalls a series of subtle political resistances organized by Djiboutians that endeavored to undermine French control. Awaleh tried to thwart France’s development of French-speaking cities, schools, and other institutions, the injection of French educational norms, and even their efforts to provide everyone with a standard set of vaccinations.



Alice tells a more modern story: she aspires to get a good education in France, studies journalism and history, and meets Harbi while he is on a visiting scholarship from Djibouti. Because they are an interracial couple, they stand out. In 1973, Alice decides to follow Harbi back to Djibouti to live. They give birth to Abdo-Julien, and he grows up to become a precocious child, a lover of literature who makes sense of his national identity by alluding to the books he reads. He grows up to be an idealist whose classical training has made him naive to the world’s irrational motivations and forces.

Bashir, the same age as Abdo-Julien, tells a rougher story of growing up. Lacking a formal education, he has been at war most of his life, even before he became a soldier. The character foil to Abdo-Julien, Bashir gloats about killing indiscriminately, pillaging homes, and committing rape. His officers consider him an effective soldier because he is more or less a machine that carries out their interests unthinkingly. Beneath Bashir’s obedient persona, however, he is scared and lost, and knows of no other way to maintain a semblance of order as a Djiboutian transient.

Transit ends full-circle, at the same airport in Paris. Harbi’s voice resurfaces, lamenting the needless suffering his family has been through. He wonders whether it is accurate to place the full blame on the Djiboutian government, which floundered without a national identity after France withdrew. Waberi’s novel proposes that the post-independence Djiboutian subject is cosmopolitan and rightfully ambivalent.