«Lhe last war of the unknown soldier” is a very current novel which describes the wanderings of Arab regimes. It is a novel that deals with the curse of oil and gas, in banana republics, which see conspiracies on every street corner imposing anachronistic and unbreakable dictatorships on the populations.
“The Last War of the Unknown Soldier” tells the story of a second-class, named Larbi (onomastics is very important to read this novel well), who can also be read “the Arab”, who goes to war for ten long years in a desert.
He will be waiting all this time for an enemy who will never come. Together with another soldier, named Allal, they narrowly escape the madness on its endless stretches of sand. But before returning home, Larbi jumps on a mine and has his leg ripped off. He will not have fired a bullet for ten years, but he leaves part of his body in this nameless desert.
By reuniting with his neighborhood and his family, Larbi very quickly finds himself embroiled in a story that takes on national and international proportions, with a state of siege, a war that is brewing, armies ready to fight, with foreign reinforcements…
All because of the placing on a pedestal, in front of Larbi’s house, of a wooden leg, finely sculpted by a carpenter friend, in the presence of some friends and neighbors of the soldier. A small intimate ceremony as a tribute to this second-class who all the same left a leg in tribute to a war whose causes and purposes he does not know, and which never took place, at least for him and his acolyte.
This is where the novel takes an unexpected and zany turn. This piece of wood which looks like a leg, planted in the ground, in front of Larbi’s, causes a commotion in the mysteries of the State.
The agents of the oil republic, Arab and socialist, see it as a plot and the beginning of a revolution aimed at bringing down the military regime in place. Events escalate, and what was supposed to be a laugh over tea between neighbors becomes the nerve center of a revolution that mobilizes the entire army with all its reservists, generals, corporals, helicopters, fighter planes, tanks, shells and missiles pointed at the Larbi district, the case of which went around the country and stirred up millions of sympathizers from the four corners of the republic who came to assist and support him in the face of threats from the military.
There followed talks, negotiations, negotiations, threats, skirmishes, face-to-face…
A whole upheaval that shakes the fragile pillars of this Arab country, managed by a military junta that controls oil and gas and engages in all kinds of traffic crushing the citizens, reduced to silence and oppression.
When we scroll through the pages of this novel where we laugh yellow, we can guess what region of this sad Arabia the author is talking regarding. Some will see Algeria there, but this is also the case with Libya or the oil-rich states of the Arabian Gulf.
In this regard, the author opens his novel with this warning: “The actions and situations of this novel take place in an Arab republic between the Persian Gulf and the Sahel desert.
The setting in which this story takes shape is located in an immense territory controlled by a military junta which benefits from the manna of oil and gas, which enriches itself on the backs of populations crushed and left to their own devices, and which sees conspiracies are being hatched everywhere, accumulating arms and preparing for wars that never take place. Any resemblance to real, living characters is intentional!
Mismanagement, corruption, tyranny, despotism, oppression, repression, obscurantism, backwardness, backwardness, nihilism and death of all freedom in a desert country where the culture of conspiracy is cultivated and the threat of revolutions seeing in each citizen an enemy of the regime to knock down.
So, when a soldier erects a wooden leg in front of his home, the authorities see it as the celebration of a monument and an open call for revolution, while Larbi and his family are ten thousand leagues away from thinking of any revolt or still a desire to see the oil dictatorship fall.
They are simple citizens who live their lives far from all these political micmacs and who, in spite of themselves, become the leaders of a revolution invented from scratch.
The rest of this novel, both dense and tight in its vice, written with mastery, tied up in its disconcerting lightness, unfolds like a film noir once morest a backdrop of espionage, tragicomedy, all tinged with surrealism and drama. zest of fantasy that gives this story all its strength and relevance.
“The Last War of the Unknown Soldier”. Abdelhak Najib. Orion Editions. 240 pages. October 2022. Available in bookstores