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TALK OF THE DEVIL
Riccardo Orizio is the author of Lost White Tribes,
which was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book
Award. He lives in Kenya.
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Riccardo Orizio
AERO Pee) E Vie
Encounters with Seven Dictators
TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY
Avril Bardoni
V
VON AGE
Published by Vintage 2004
24681097531
Copyright © Riccardo Orizio 2002
Translation copyright © Avril Bardoni 2003
Riccardo Orizio has asserted his right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author
of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by
way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or
otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by
Secker & Warburg
Vintage
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
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The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
www.randomhouse.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 099 44067 9
Papers used by Random House are natural, recyclable
products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.
The manufacturing processes conform to the environ-
mental regulations of the country of origin
Printed and bound in Denmark by
Norhaven Paperback, Viborg
Contents
Preface
Amin
Bokassa 33
Jaruzelski
59
Hoxha 89
Duvalier ql
Mengistu I4I
Milosevic 163
For many years I kept two old, yellowing newspaper cuttings
which, despite many a good resolution, I had never had the
heart to throw away. When one wallet wore out, I transferred
them to the new one. When they became creased, I pressed
them between a banknote anda plastic phone-card.
For all their apparent flimsiness and fragility, they survived
every kind of maltreatment. Over the years they fell out in
the most diverse places: in the hallway of an Istanbul hotel at
the feet of a mafioso wearing a purple shirt; at the check-in
desk at Split airport; behind craters newly blasted out by
Serb navy. shells; at the home of an old school-friend in
Brescia. I even remember them falling out as I searched for
a business card before interviewing the republican leader Gerry
Adams in a windowless room behind as teel door in the Falls
Road in Belfast. Each time I was tempted to leave them
lying on the floor, but each time I picked them up and
replaced them in the wallet, giving them yet another lease of
life.
Told like that, it might seem that the two cuttings lived
a pretty exotic and adventurous life. In reality, most of the
time they accompanied me to the newsroom of the paper in
Milan where I worked as a journalist. They shared my long
hours of boredom and frustration. Sometimes, during those late
afternoon hours when the pages have yet to be composed and
one is wondering how the paper is ever going to make the
news-stands by the morning, I would take them out and look
I
Talk Of The Devil
at them. Occasionally even read them. In their own way, they
kept my spirits up.
I had come by my two clippings while rummaging casually
among the foreign newspapers finished with and waiting to be
shredded. They were not the only clippings I kept, of course.
I had whole piles of them, sorted by subject. Not the subjects
I normally dealt with; rather those I dreamed of covering, but
to which the editor never assigned me. I had a bulging folder
dedicated to the Falklands. Another dealing with mercenaries
fighting in various post-colonial wars. One file was devoted to
the last white settlers in Sri Lanka. Others to obscure African
countries such as Equatorial Guinea and Togo, theatres for
whose tragedies the papers never found space. We all did the
same. I remember a colleague who had a cupboard stuffed with
material about certain Islamic terrorists of whom nobody, at the
time, had ever heard. Another whose prize collection was in a
file labelled ‘Bulgaria’.
But my clippings were different. Together, they were my
talisman. One day they might come in handy, I thought.
Eventually they became part of me. Like the identity card that
we Italians keep in our pockets.
I was struck by their similarity. Both referred to personalities
accused of cannibalism. Both referred to former African dic-
tators. Both had been clipped from the Guardian, a London
newspaper that has always had its eye on the perversions
of the world. One of the clippings was headlined ‘Former
Emperor Goes Home and Proclaims His Sainthood’, the other
‘Former Uganda Dictator Goes Shopping in the Frozen Food
Aisle’. The former referred to Jean-Bedel Bokassa. The latter
to Idi Amin.
Resigned to my paper’s indifference to the Falklands and to
Equatorial Guinea, I took out the two clippings one day and
used them as a starting point for research into those fallen
tyrants. I tracked down others, in many different countries
and over several years, the search continuing even after I left
the newspaper. Each personified an obscure, forgotten chapter
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