The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

CONAKRY, Guinea - Amadou Diallo’s coffin will be put on display here tonight - so his grieving relatives and countrymen can pay their respects to the man whose death has fueled worldwide outrage.

Diallo’s parents, accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton, headed home with their son’s body yesterday and, after a stopover in Paris, were expected to arrive here today.

Thousands of people from this city of 1.1 million are expected at the airport to greet the family - spurred on by government-sponsored radio announcements urging Guineans to turn out.

Foreign Minister Kamara Lamine will lead a group of government officials dispatched to receive the parents, Kadiadou and Saikou Diallo, who are members of a prominent Guinean family.

Cabinet members in the government of Gen. Lansana Conte will carry the coffin from the Air France jet.

Diallo’s casket will then be taken by hearse to the Ignace Deen Hospital where mourners will be allowed to file past.

Tomorrow morning, the family of the 22-year-old immigrant who made his living selling videotapes on 14th Street in Manhattan, will be at the hospital to receive the condolences of mourners.

At 8:30 a.m. New York time tomorrow, a Muslim funeral service - attended only by men - will be held at the Foycal mosque, the largest in the country.

Later in the day, the family will drive with the casket four hours to the northern region of Lelouma, spending the night at Labe, Guinea’s second-largest city.

At dawn Wednesday, Diallo will be buried in a Muslim ceremony in the tiny village of Hollande-Bouroy, the family’s ancestral home.

Meanwhile yesterday, mourners streamed into the Conakry compound of Diallo’s 64-year-old maternal grandmother, Hadja Diaray Diallo.

Women in brightly colored gowns, their hair covered by simple white cloths, and men in knee-length caftans gathered in the shade of the immense baobab tree in the compound’s center.

Frequently, a visitor collapsed in wails of grief, and one of Diallo’s siblings would rush to console them.

Diallo’s uncle, Oury Diallo, 28, said Amadou had recently qualified for a credit card, which he hoped to use to open an America Online account which would allow him to communicate by e-mail with his family.

“He was really impressed with the way things were organized in New York,” Oury Diallo, an engineer, said.

“He always said, ‘If you do things right in this city, things will work out,’” the uncle said.

“He had such a large personality and was always giving. The one consolation that we have here in Guinea is that people in New York care and have been demanding answers.”

The New York Post

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN Post Correspondent

 

CONAKRY, Guinea.

IT MAY not be easy at first to comprehend why a 22-year-old well-traveled son of an upper-middle-class West African family would love a life of street-peddling in the Big Apple.

But after talking with relatives of Amadou Diallo and walking through the streets of this seaside peninsula that his family called home, I could understand why he chose a humble existence in New York.

Conakry - a bustling metropolis dotted with palms and baobab trees - is filled with businesses bearing the Diallo name. Amadou Diallo, named after his grandfather, a retired government official, just wanted to do it on his own.

His parents are well-known here for their success in the gem trade. At least in New York, he wasn’t under anyone’s shadow.

“He just wanted to earn enough money to study computers,” his grief-stricken sister, Lauratou, told me in the living room of the sprawling family compound here.

“He just wanted to be independent.”

The Diallos are a large, prominent family in a small country where the majority of the population is without gainful employment.

Amadou and his siblings were privileged, educated in a global fashion. They are multilingual and have been in far-flung corners of the Earth. They carry themselves regally yet with an air of humility.

Even in these sad times, the Diallos stand out from most people in Guinea I have seen. One can tell from the clothes, the cellular phones and the poignant humility they exude that they are indeed a rare breed.

Rich, but way down to earth.

Amadou, it seems, was a gem of a person who wanted his star to shine on his own merit. What better place to try to make it on your own than New York City, a place that has been welcoming that special kind of immigrant for years?

“He loved it there, and he always wanted to go,” said his uncle, Alpha-Oumar Diallo, a high-school teacher, as he comforted his mother, Hadja Diaray Diallo, the 64-year-old family matriarch, under a baobab tree.

“He was so humble. He would never act like his parents had money. Amadou was the most ordinary person,” his uncle said.

And in a family where longevity is the norm, his shocking “murder” at age 22 has turned the entire clan upside down.

“We love Americans and America, so this is such a shock to us, and no one here can understand this,” he said.

The slain man’s younger bother, Ibrahima, 16, a towering high-school senior who plays basketball, also had dreams of coming to America, maybe even to New York for college.

“I am not so sure now,” he said, the pain etched on his face.

I can relate to Diallo’s dream.

Not too many years ago, I was one of those new New Yorkers. I left the same West African coast as Diallo with dreams of acquiring a New York education. My dreams came true.

For Diallo, those dreams evaporated when he was hit 19 times in a fusillade of 41 bullets in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building by elite street-crimes officers who cops say were looking for a vicious rapist.

As his kin and countrymen wait for his remains to arrive later today, they can only wonder what really happened to one of their brightest young men.

And how a promising life could be tragically cut short in a city that made him so happy.

There are many lessons to be learned here. But whatever the facts of this case, nothing can replace the son and the brother they lost.

But they will cling to the memory that up until his last moments he was happy, chasing his dreams.