Bitter Chocolate Read Free Page A

fighting. Others said that the refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia were causing trouble because they wanted to go home.
    Pascal wished his father would come home and stay home. He was scared that he might be caught up in the fighting while he was away, and that they might never see him again. Besides, he wanted his father to be there to protect them.
    ‘What if Papa is at work and the rebels come here?’ he said to Angeline. ‘What will we do?’
    ‘They won’t come here. There’s no reason for them to come here.’ Angeline tried to reassure him, but Pascal could tell that she was anxious herself.
    ‘What are they fighting about, anyway?’
    ‘I don’t really know. Perhaps they just want change. Perhaps they want a better life and fighting is the only way they can think of to get it.’
     
    One morning, a crackled news bulletin on the radio in the village shop told of people being attacked in another village.
    ‘Is that village near here?’ Pascal asked his mother as she hurriedly paid for her groceries and shunted him outside.
    Mrs Camara shook her head and busied herself with Bijou.
    Olivier saw them from across the road and dashed over to them, greeting his aunt politely. To Pascal he said, ‘Did you hear the explosions last night? They sounded really close.’
    ‘Sound travels,’ Mrs Camara broke in. ‘You’ll find they were many kilometres away.’
    ‘Papa doesn’t think so,’ replied Olivier. ‘He sleeps by the door at night with an axe and a knife.’
    ‘Your father has always been over-cautious.’
    Olivier looked somewhat taken aback by this criticism of his father by his aunt.
    Mrs Camara sensed his unease and patted him on the arm. ‘It never does any harm, though,’ she said.
    Together they walked back to their homesteads and no further mention was made of explosions or fighting.
    As they approached, Pascal was delighted to see his father. He was carrying a large piece of wood across their yard, but put it down as soon as he saw them. Pascal ran to him, cheering loudly.
    ‘Hey, Papa,’ he called. ‘I thought you weren’t coming home till the end of the month.’
    ‘Well, I decided to come home early and spend some time with my family.’ He smiled, squeezing Pascal’s shoulder.
    He gave his wife a hug, then lifted Bijou high above his head. She wriggled and squealed with pleasure. They went indoors, where Angeline was preparing their meal.
    The conversation over dinner that evening revolved mostly around Mr Camara’s work at the diamond mines. Mrs Camara regularly steered the talk back to this topic if it looked like it was heading towards more sombre subjects. There were things Pascal wanted to ask his father, but he soon realised that his mother wouldn’t allow their time together to be spoiled, and in any case he was happy just to have his father there. Pascal didn’t want to follow in his footsteps, but he loved hearing about how he passed his days and the people he worked with. As a manager, his father didn’t have to pan for diamonds himself, but that didn’t stop Pascal wanting to know everything about the process of searching for diamonds and what happened when a worker found one.
    ‘What’s the biggest diamond anyone’s ever found?’ he asked. ‘Can the person who found the diamond keep it? How much do you get paid if you find a diamond?’
    Pascal especially liked listening to stories about what the miners did when they were off duty. Mr Camara and his fellow managers seemed to spend many hours playing card games, or watching sport on television in a bar in the nearby town, or kicking a ball around with the local townspeople.
    ‘I wish we had a television,’ Pascal said when he heard that they had watched the national team playing football against rival Malawi.
    ‘We only drew,’ said Mr Camara. ‘We threw away a one-goal lead, so you didn’t miss anything.’
    Pascal asked him, not for the first time, if he would teach him some card games. Not for the