Scrabble: A Chadian Childhood

by Michaël Ferrier, Martin Munro (Translator)

"But when I close my eyes, I first fall as if drowning into the silty waters of the Chari River, which traces the border between Chad and Cameroon, and into which so many men, women and even children were thrown, sometimes still alive, their hands knotted behind their backs, or tied up in a shoulder bag. I sink with them towards the sand and the clay, down amidst the green and the brown, passing purple weeds, shards of pottery, and crocodile scales. My head is heavier than a cannonball and carries me toward the I dive into a bottomless bag where the letters collide or slip away, call out to or ignore each other, I bathe in an unlimited space free from the constraints of cycles and dates, and I enter into the time of childhood, which indeed has no concept of time. [...] all my memories take flight in the wind of the sands, the past flows in the river, plays out in the branches, explodes in the foliage. The past is all around me now - and I laugh when I say 'the past',
because none of all this is past."
Michael Ferrier

In 1979, two young boys play Scrabble in a hot, dusty district of N'Djamena, Chad, while around them war rages, apparently destroying all in its people, places, and memories. And yet, just as the boys take their letters from the depths of the pouch, so Michael Ferrier draws from the darkness words and images that he reassembles into a beautiful and moving tribute to the city, its people, and the childhood that seemed to end there in those days of chaos and destruction but which he brings miraculously back to life in a defiant, poetic statement on the power of friendship, family, and memory.

160 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 2022

Reviews

[Amanda Rosso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michaël Ferrier is an incredible writer. Every sentence is carved into stone, chiselled to perfection, evocative and precise, imaginative and specific, a well of lyricism and pragmatism.
His descriptions are both vivid and poetic, accurate and wondrous. His land, his childhood, his family and friends, every single element of this coming of age story is portrayed with a masterful and controlled language. An incredible memoir that juxtaposes the searing light of a childhood in the luminous heat of Chad, and the darkness of war, the intoxicating fog of fear and death. And amongst the joyful chaos of youth and the terrifying brutality of war, the hypnotising power and solace of words, language, books, stories.