This is the fourth chapter of Margaret Laurence’s The Prophet’s Cemel Bell – Flowering Desert.
The book presents a view of Somaliland, its people, its administrators, its terrain in the 50s.
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In 1950, as a young bride, Margaret Laurence set out with her engineer husband to what was then Somaliland: a British protectorate in North Africa few Canadians had ever heard of. Her account of this voyage into the desert is full of wit and astonishment. Laurence honestly portrays the difficulty of colonial relationships and the frustration of trying to get along with Somalis who had no reason to trust outsiders. There are moments of surprise and discovery when Laurence exclaims at the beauty of a flock of birds only to discover that they are locusts, or offers medical help to impoverished neighbors only to be confronted with how little she can help them. During her stay, Laurence moves past misunderstanding the Somalis and comes to admire memorable individuals: a storyteller, a poet, a camel-herder. The Prophet’s Camel Bell is both a fascinating account of Somali culture and British colonial characters, and a lyrical description of life in the desert.
CONTENTS
Innocent Voyage
Footsteps
House in the Clouds
Jilal
Flowering Desert
Place of Exile
The Ballehs
Arrividerci, Italia
A Teller of Tales
Mohamed
Arabetto
The Old Warrior
A Tree for Poverty
The Imperialists
Nabad Gelyo
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FLOWERING DESERT
ery shortly times,” Hersi said, his words more a prayer than a prediction, “you will be hearing the voice of the tug in this land.”
The tugs were dry river-beds for most of the year, but during the rains they flowed in spate, roaring briefly with their flood, hurling the water down to the sea, carrying it off where it could not be used. Hersi’s expression had a biblical ring to it, almost like the Song of Songs.
The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
If the rains ever came, perhaps even the Haud would be like Solomon’s kingdom after the dry winter, when the flowers appeared on the earth and the vines were in blossom. It did not seem possible. The clouds had been gathering and thickening for so many
weeks that we had ceased to expect anything of them. The rains would never come. But at last they did come, and the violence of them matched the depth of the Jilal drought.
We had returned from camp and were temporarily based in Hargeisa. One afternoon we set ff along the Wadda Gumerad road, Jack and Abdi and myself, on a short trip to a place in the Haud where Jack wanted to examine a possible balleh site. The road consisted only of the wheel marks of trade trucks, and even these had been obscured by the drifting sand. Somehow we took a wrong turning, and found that we were jouncing across the desert with not a trace of a road in sight. The Wadda Gumerad had completely vanished.
“We get lost, I think, sahib,” Abdi admitted, furious at himself, for usually he could find his way unerringly through any portion of the Haud.
We were still wondering how to find the road when a sudden wind shuddered across the red sand. The sky turned greyish yellow, and the thunder began to growl. Then we heard a slow plok-plok-plok and saw the first drops of water unbelievably falling and being swallowed by the dust.
“Rain!” Abdi stopped the Land-Rover and jumped out, turning his face up to the sky. He let the quickening rain course over him – he held out his hands to it.
“Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds!” He spoke the Arabic words aloud, a mighty shout of thanksgiving. As we drove on, he talked excitedly.
“All thing come fine, this time. Sheep get fat, camel get strong now. You will see. Plenty meat, plenty milk –”
We, too, were excited, jubilant, thankful. Only gradually did our present situation dawn upon us. The storm was gathering force, and we were still lost. Because we had expected to be back before dinner time, we had brought no food and only one bottle of water. Even our customary spare water tank was empty today. Abdi’s face grew sombre once more. He felt responsible for the fact that we had wandered off the Wadda Gumerad, but he reminded us, as well, that he did warn us not to venture out this afternoon in case the rains chose this day.
“You’ve been saying the same thing for weeks,” Jack pointed out. “I could hardly wait around forever.”
We shared the blame. There was no use in thinking about it. We were here, not there – what did it matter why? The rain became denser, and the sound of the thunder grew closer. Then the lightning burst like a gigantic roman candle, and the following thunder was like a cannon fired inside our skulls. The rain was a solid mass of water now, some ocean in the sky tilting and pouring out its contents all at once. The sky was black, illuminated momentarily by the explosive lightning. The deluge beat and battered at the canvas top of the Land-Rover, saturating it. We were chilled and shivering, and we had no idea where we were going. All sense of direction was gone, for around us the desert had been transformed into a sea.
Thud! We hit a pothole. The muddy water splashed up around us. Abdi put his foot down hard on the accelerator, and the engine roared and strained, but it was no use.
The Land-Rover was mired up to the axles. We were stuck like a bug in a pool of glue. As suddenly as it began, the rain stopped. But this was only a breathing space. Soon the downpour would start again. In the meantime, Abdi got out and set to work feverishly. Jack joined him, but not hopefully.
“No stones around here. Nothing to block the wheels with. Well, let’s try branches, Abdi.”
We gathered flimsy thorn boughs, but these only snapped off or disappeared in the well of mud. I climbed tiredly back into the car. Jack and Abdi continued their efforts, but without success.
“I don’t see how we can get out of here by ourselves,” Jack said finally. “We’ll just have to wait until a truck comes along.” Abdi’s old eyes narrowed.“If we wait, sahib,” he said, “we wait one month. No truck pass this way when rain come.”
Considering the fact that we had no food, this prospect did not seem hopeful. We sat huddled in the car, smoking thoughtfully, racking our brains but not emerging with any useful ideas. Then in the distance we saw a herd moving towards us, the camels looking like dinosaurs as they squelched through the mud, their long necks swaying, bending frequently to drink the water for which they had waited so long. As they drew closer we heard the cry of the herders, their voices guiding the animals and keeping the herd together.
“Ei! Ei! Ei! Hu-hu-hu-hu-hu!”
The tribesmen approached and eyed us warily. Abdi spoke with them, and their faces, as they realized our helplessness, took on a kind of avaricious joy. There were eight of them, tall young men with their spears slung across their shoulders. They were not of Abdi’s tribe. In fact, their tribe and Abdi’s had been on exceedingly bad terms during the Jilal. Slyly, one of them poked his head inside the Land-Rover and stared covetously at the rifle. Abdi immediately launched into a long and impassioned speech, his eyes glinting with menace. The tribesmen looked at me questioningly, shuffled their feet on the slimy ground, and drew away slightly from the vehicle. Over his shoulder Abdi hissed at me in English, not taking his eyes off the herders.
“You never move, memsahib. Stay there with rifle. I tell them we have plenty ammunition, and I say the officer’s woman, she know how to shoot very well.”
What presence of mind! Jack and I could not resist grinning at one another as we recalled my one unsuccessful attempt to fire the rifle.
“If they agree to help us,” Jack said, “we’ll not only have to give them what money we have – they’ll expect the cigarettes as well. While they’re busy, see if you can salvage a few, eh?”
The bargain was struck, and the young men set down their spears and began to work. I remained in the Land-Rover while it was being heaved at. The tribesmen shouted and shoved. The mud splattered like thick brown rain. The placid camels drank and gazed. Surreptitiously I managed to conceal a few cigarettes in my pocket. Finally, with a bellow of triumph, the tribesmen got the vehicle unstuck. We paid them gratefully – it was little enough for what they had done for us. The bulk of our cigarettes, however, we parted with much more reluctantly. The tribesmen retrieved their spears and again regarded the rifle longingly. My hand remained firmly on the gun. I could not really take the situation seriously. I could not imagine our being attacked, perhaps murdered for the sake of a rifle. Abdi was wiser. He kept his eyes fixed on the men and never for an instant turned his back. They were not all certain that Abdi had spoken truthfully about my excellent marksmanship, but neither were they certain he had not. We were held for an instant, all of us, in a state of suspended animation, no one wanting to be the first to make any kind of move. At last, as though they were able to communicate among themselves without words, they appeared to make the same decision simultaneously. Shrugging, they shouldered their spears, called the camels and went off. Across the plain we could hear their voices for some time, growing thin and reed-like in the wet and silent air.
“Ei! Ei! Ei! Hu-hu-hu-hu-hu!”
Night had come, so we left the car, which was now perched on solid ground, and made a fire. We sat around it on a damp hillock, smoking and looking up at the sky, a rich deep blue now that the moon had come out. Around us we heard the cackle of the hyenas. We were desperately cold, and the small fire did little to warm us, but we were glad of this respite. Then the moon and stars went out, and the rain began again.
“Must be we go on,” Abdi said.
We trusted him absolutely. He was the one who knew what to do. We climbed back into the car and set off again. At last we managed to find our way back to the Wadda Gumerad, but the road had become a river. We were forced to follow the path pointed by this swift torrent of water, for it became impossible for us to see anything. There could be no darkness anywhere to compare with this darkness, unless in caverns under the sea where the light never reaches. The rain was a black wall of water before our eyes. Abdi hunched forward, glaring at the streaming windscreen as though hoping by sheer force of will to penetrate the dark rain. The Wadda Gumerad was full of small waterfalls, where the flood had gouged chunks out of the road and burrowed channels into the clay. The Land-Rover moved slowly, straining against the mud and rain, against the wild wind. It seemed a marvel that we were able to move at all.
Two days before, men and animals were dying of thirst here. Now some of them would drown. Every year, Abdi told us, a few sheep and goats, a few children, were swept away by the tugs when they flowed in spate. This must be the ultimate irony, surely – to drown in the desert. Then we were on a vast plain, no trees or bushes anywhere. Our car was the highest object for miles, and all around us the lightning pierced down in pink shafts, a bright shocking pink that illuminated the entire plain in its flare, showing us the flat and open
land, revealing to us our own faces. It was so close that we could not see how it could avoid striking us.
“You all right?” Jack enquired, not really a question – a reassurance, rather. Yes, I told him. Quite all right. Probably I would have said so in any case, but as I spoke the words I realized with surprise that they were true. I would not have chosen to be anywhere else. If anything happened, at least it would happen to both of us at the same time. Perhaps some of the Muslim fatalism was rubbing off on me. We could not wish ourselves out of here, so there was no use in worrying about it. We would get out if we could – In sha’ Allah.
The car bogged down again, and we decided to stay where we were until dawn. After an hour or so, the rain stopped and the lightning mercifully withdrew. The canvas of our roof was sodden and dripping, and all around us we could hear the voice of the tug, just as Hersi promised we would. When he spoke of it, however, we did not imagine we would be listening from this vantage point. The moaning of the tug was low and ominous, and we could feel the water sweeping and pushing against our uncertain fortress. But we were too tired to wonder whether the car would hold against the flood or not. Abdi crawled into the back, Jack and I settled ourselves in the front, and soon all three of us had fallen into a deep exhausted sleep.
In the morning, the situation had altered. The flood had abated, and we could see stones close by with which we could block the wheels. Externally, things had improved. Internally, they had worsened. We were stiff and cramped, damp, hungry, and without cigarettes. We were also extremely thirsty, for our one bottle of water had long since gone. We would not perish of thirst with all this rain, but we would have to be thirstier than we were at the moment, before we would drink mud. I glanced at myself in the Land-Rover mirror and immediately looked away again. I was covered with clay and grime, my clothes filthy and disheveled. I had never felt more demoralized and miserable in my life. Last night we were keyed up, tense, ready for anything, but now that feeling was gone. We were depressed, wondering how long it would take us to get back to Hargeisa, or if we would get back at all. The thought of slogging through the mud again filled us with weariness.
We read these thoughts in each other’s faces, but we did not express them. We had developed, all at once, a reluctance to say anything discouraging. It was better not to talk at all. We began to gather stones, and finally got the Land-Rover out of the gumbo and into action once more. We struggled along the Wadda Gumerad, feeling the road slippery and treacherous underneath us. We had only gone without food and water for twenty-four hours. Compared to the tribesmen in the Jilal drought, this was nothing. But it was quite enough. My mouth tasted of bile, and I began to feel the nausea of emptiness.
“We try to pass Wadda Beris way,” Abdi said.
“All right.” We were in his hands. We had faith that he would do the best thing possible. We travelled quietly, talking very little, trying to reconcile ourselves to the idea of another day without food, wondering how soon we would have to drink the water from the dank puddles along the road.
But luck was with us. The rain held off, and in the afternoon we sighted Wadda Beris, the brown rain-soaked huts and the clay-and-wattle tea shop of Haji Elmi, the old man who had once shown Jack the tattered letter received twenty years before from the Englishman who had hunted in Somaliland long ago. And here was Haji Elmi himself.
“Salaam aleikum –”
He was flustered at the sight of us, so bedraggled, but he did not forget his manners. Because he was old, and given to formalities, he used the Arabic greeting rather than the Somali, for we were foreigners. He was thin and stooped, with a white beard. His frayed
green and black robe and ancient khaki jacket hung lankly on his withered body. Abdi explained our plight, and Haji Elmi clucked his tongue like a mother hen and ushered us in to his tea shop.
A small square building, it was, clay plastered over branches, roofed with flattened paraffin tins. Inside, the roof was supported by gnarled galol branches, and the floor was earthen. A fire glowed in one corner, and into this fire a slender log was being fed, the
bulk of the wood jutting out across the room. The air was heavy and pungent with woodsmoke. A few wooden benches were set around the room, and some coarse straw mats.
Haji Elmi’s two boys, grandsons perhaps, bustled around and made sweet spiced tea for us, and soon the old man was handing us plates of dried dates and bowls of steamed rice moistened with ghee, clarified butter made from goat’s milk. It had been a long drought, and there was not much food in any of the encampments throughout the Haud. But whatever he had, Haji Elmi gave to us. We crammed the rice and dates into our mouths – we had never eaten a meal as good as this one. When we had finished, we saw that the old man was searching through his treasure chest, a large tin box with a brass
padlock.
“One still left – yes, I think so –”
Finally he found what he had been looking for. He held it up – a slightly mouldy pack of Player’s cigarettes. We could hardly believe it. This man was a wonder. Next he brought a blanket and pillow, both embroidered in the Somali traditional designs, birds and stiff-petalled flowers in brilliant red and green and yellow. These he placed in an alcove for me, so I could rest before we continued our journey. While I was lying down, Haji Elmi talked with Jack, displaying the ceremonial sword he once received for saving the life of a district commissioner during a riot.
“I take the stones on my own body,” he said, “on my own body.”
In my alcove, I listened and wished he had not spoken in this way, sanctimoniously. But I recognized that the thought was foolish. He was not perfectly designed and lifeless like a cardboard cut-out figure.
We were not surprised when he came to us, many months later, with a flowery petition requesting Jack’s help in obtaining government payment for a small balleh which Haji Elmi had got his grandsons to dig and from which he had been selling the water at a profit quite handsome enough to have made his enterprise worth while without any attempt at procuring a completely unwarranted subsidy. Haji Elmi was not surprised, either, when Jack said he had no power to help the old man in such a request. He had not really expected Jack to plead the unlikely case with the government. But it might have worked – it was worth a try, anyway. Haji Elmi had a sharp eye for a
shilling, and he was addicted to intrigue and oratory. The petition was as much a part of his nature as the proud display of the ceremonial sword or the much-folded letter, and neither aspect of him was in fundamental disagreement with the generosity he showed us in his tea shop the first day of the rains.
That day at Wadda Beris, when we rose to leave, he refused to take from us a chit for money in payment of the meal and cigarettes. No, he told us – he could not take payment for such a thing. If he met us in Hargeisa or if we came out to Wadda Beris under different circumstances, that would be another matter. But this time we were travellers in need, and a basic tenet of Islam was that the hungry wayfarer must be fed. We could only thank him and drive away. But afterwards, whenever we recalled the drenched desert, the dripping thorn trees and threatening sky, we thought of this hospitality, compared to which our own, given out of a state of plenty, would always
seem poor.
“Aleikum salaam, Haji Elmi”.
Back in Hargeisa, Mohamed and Hersi and the others greeted us as though we had returned from the dead.
“Wallahi! You are here! We think we never see you, never no more!” Mohamed shook hands with us vigorously, then rushed off to heat buckets of much-needed bath-water.
Hersi raised his arms as though in benediction. “I giving thanks to Allah this day, for He is saving you from bloody terrible death.”
Mohamedyero, Mohamed’s small helper, beat loudly and joyfully on an improvised saucepan drum.
“Hey, Abdi!” Arabetto cried in amazement. “How you get back, eh? You fly? I try to go find you, but my lorry can never pass that way.”
Arabetto was the good-natured and slightly jazzy youth from Mogadisciou, half Arabian and half Somali, who drove our Bedford truck. He had gone out, together with another driver and truck from P.W.D., to search for us, but had been forced to turn back. Now we realized how fortunate we had been. If we had been driving a heavy truck, we would never have got it out. The nature of our vehicle, the chance encounter with the tribesmen – these were strokes of luck. But if it had not been for Abdi’s tenacity, we would probably not have made it. We felt a new bond with him, the sense of having lived through something together, and the awareness that we might owe our lives to him.
We were forced to wait in Hargeisa until the Gu rains were over. Our house was close to the tug, and in the darkness, through the steady hammering of the rain, we could hear the deep voice of the night river. When we walked out early in the morning, however, the rain had stopped and the tug was almost dry. Huge piles of sand had been deposited in the riverbed, like brown snowdrifts with fantastic contours, and Somali children were already playing there, in the same spot where only a few hours earlier the spate of water had foamed.
When the rains were reckoned to be nearly over, we went back out to camp in the Haud. The change in one month was unbelievable. We could scarcely recognize it as the same land. On that portion of the plain where once only the red termite-mounds stood, now the grass grew several feet tall, rued by the wind and swaying greenly. The thorn trees were thick with new leaves and the country seemed to have lled in, the grey skeleton no longer visible. The whole land was laced with owers. White blossoms like clover were sprinkled through the short grass under the acacias. There were pale yellow owers the colour of rich cream, and small mauve wah-harowallis, and the scarlet owers of the aloes spreading out on slender branches like some mythical tree. The air was full of the songs of birds and the high-pitched whine of insects. The swallows ew at such speed that they could be seen only as a blur of blue. The vultures were no longer in evidence – life had come back, and the birds of death had hidden themselves. Along the road, clumps of butteries gathered around pools of water. They were small and light green, these butteries, and clustered together they looked like a gigantic ower with innumerable uttering petals. As the car approached, they swarmed into ight. The ower broke, and all the petals were scattered, only to form again into the living green
water-lily when we had passed by.
We saw remainders of the Jilal, the skeletons of camels that had died in the drought. Now the grass and wildowers twisted around the bare bleached ribs. But we had not yet been here long enough to realize, as the Somalis did, that the Jilal would come again. The Somali tribes were walking out into the interior with their ocks and herds. Now the people smiled and waved as we drove past. The women were wearing new clothes, the red and blue and gold of their robes looking appropriate in a land suddenly grown to colour again. Some of the girls walking across the Haud, leading the burden camels, were so striking in appearance and moved with such an easy grace that they would have made the polished products of Mayfair look clumsy in comparison. They were voluptuous looking women, with coppery brown skin and softly rounded faces. Their eyes were large and dark, with long lashes. They seemed to glide along, almost like
ballet dancers, with a perfection of balance that may have been gained from carrying jars and baskets on their heads. Many men of the desert were extremely handsome as well, tall and lean, with straight sharp features and keen eyes. The young herders had new robes, a ashing white, which they wore jauntily, the cloth draped around them in the manner of a toga and flung across one shoulder. What a contrast the people were, to themselves of a few months back. The season of new grass and plentiful water would not last long, so they made the most of it while they could. In the evenings, we could hear the sound of singing and the rhythmic clapping of hands from the nearby encampments.
“We are happy now,” Hersi said, “for meat and milk have come back to our land.”
The sheep and goats were lively, and the camels had their humps back again. Soon there were new flocks, too, composed entirely of lambs and baby goats, and these were invariably tended by a Somali child, a little boy or girl who pranced along as lightly as the young animals.
All was not paradise in camp, however, despite the season. We had taken up residence in the back of the Bedford truck, mainly because I felt more secure when sleeping at some slight distance from the ground. We had draped a mosquito-net across the open end of the canvas-covered structure, and had placed inside this makeshift caravan our camp chairs and table, and our bed, a new one complete with airfoam mattress. Let hardier souls sleep on canvas cots – they were not for me. I have never seen any reason for being more uncomfortable than necessary. Our truck-home would have been perfect had it not been for one thing. The renewal of life in the desert
naturally did not exclude the renewal of insect life. Nightly, we waged a battle of the bugs. Mohamed would rush from the cook-tent to the truck with our dinner, hoping that not too many flying-ant wings would land in the food en route.
“Quick, quick!” He would shove the plates in under the net, but never quickly enough. “Oh-oh, I think some small something fall in –”
A dozen detached ant-wings and several frantic beetles would be floating like croutons on the surface of the venison soup. If this invasion had occurred when we first arrived in this country, I would probably have starved out of sheer repugnance. Not any more. Stoically, I spooned the bugs out and began to eat. The soup was easy – it was the rice which presented a problem. Mohamed cooked rice with snippets of fried onions in it, and in the half-light of our dining hall it was not easy to distinguish insects from onions. To Mohamed, the situation presented limitless possibilities for laughter.
“I get dinner with no light in the cook-tent tonight,” he announced, grinning broadly.
“Everything very dark. I can no see nothing. I think maybe no bugs come, that way.” No bugs, perhaps, but goodness knows what he had put in the dinner, groping his way around the cook-tent in the darkness. The mosquito net on our truck-house was alive, a crawling mass of wings, and Mohamed was fond of making comments on them.
“Ei, wallahi! Look here! Must be we call in the Locust Control men!”
Sometimes he would classify the creeping tangle of wings and antennae.
“Many dierent tribes here. See this small one? Plenty this kind – I think this one Habr Yunis. Plenty, plenty – but very small.”
He himself was Habr Awal, and could not resist this dig at a rival and larger tribe. “What about that big beetle there?” Jack asked him.
“Which tribe is he?”
“That one is Ogaden,” Mohamed said without hesitation, “Ogaden who get lost from his tribe.”
We set our pressure lamp at a distance from the truck, in order to attract the bugs away from us, and although the method did not appear to work very well, we had only to approach the lamp to see how much worse the insects might have been on our net. Around the lamp they were a grotesque sight. They battered their wings against the scalding glass and even managed to thrust themselves compulsively inside until they reached the bare ame. The lamp was clogged with them and the ground was littered with charred wings.
My bête noire was the balanballis madow, the black buttery. It was really a giant moth with a corpulent furry body and eyes that glowed red like a demon’s in the darkness. Each night at least one of these moths insinuated itself into our truck, and flapped around like a panic-stricken bird.
I had grown used to all manner of crickets and cicadas, to stink-ants with an odour that veried their name, to hordes of fawn-winged moths, to the green praying mantis with its coral limb-joints and its piously uplifted arms, to zooming beetles the size of golfballs. But I could never become accustomed to the black balanballis. To me, they were like the bats of hell.
Our relations with the nearby Somali camps had improved. Tensions had eased now that the Jilal was over, and the tribesmen’s tempers were not so strained. They visited our camp often, and usually talked quite amicably with us. But the old rumours persisted. They always mentioned that they had heard that the water in these new ballehs would be poisoned, or that the government planned to put a heavy tax on the use of the water.
Occasionally we met with active opposition. One day when Hersi and Omar were out digging test holes near a proposed balleh site, some Eidagalla men came up and threatened them.
“You have no right to dig there.” The words were emphasized with a brandishing of spears.
Hersi, however, knew precisely how to reply.
“Is this your country,” he enquired haughtily, “or is it Allah’s?”
He had them there. They remained surly, but they lowered their spears. The nomads continued to seek medicine from us. This season, which at rst appeared wholly good, had its own evils. With the rains came the anopheles mosquitos, laden with malaria. We had obtained large supplies of quinine from the Hargeisa hospital, and we distributed these pills as widely as possible, but they reached only a relatively small number of people.
These particular quinine tablets had been left behind by the Italians when they were driven out during the war, after their brief occupation of this country. For some unknown reason, the pills were coated with a thick scarlet waxen substance which did not dissolve in the stomach, and so the quinine had to be chewed in order to do any good. Carefully, I explained this fact to each tribesman as I handed over the pills. Then I questioned Hersi – was he sure the man had understood?
“Oh yes, memsahib. He is understanding completely all your instructions.”
But did he really? I had no way of knowing. We heard from time to time of tribesmen spreading warnings against this quinine, maintaining it to be useless. I sometimes had the feeling that most of the quinine would be wasted because the tribesmen, although
many of them seemed to have faith in its efficacy, did not comprehend at all why it should be necessary to chew the bitter-tasting pills. For all I knew, they might feel the same towards these impressive red disks as they would about a Yibir’s amulet – the advantage of it was in the possession of a powerful thing rather than in any physical action such as that of chemicals upon disease parasites. It was not a matter of intelligence but of viewing the whole of life through differentnt eyes. How could I hope to explain the necessity, in my view, of rendering under Caesar the things which were Caesar’s? If you are going to use the potions of science you must use them scientifically. But for the Somalis, nothing was Caesar’s – everything, in effect, was God’s. If the medicine had power, it was essentially a spiritual power. What could it possibly matter whether the pills were chewed or not? I was wasting my breath in explanations which simply did not strike home. We were looking at the same object, the tribesmen and I, this vial of red tablets. But I suspected that we were not seeing the same thing.
It was certainly not that they lacked the powers of observation. These were acute, a fact which was borne out by an odd item in an old book I had come across recently, written in the mid-1800’s by an Englishman who was big-game hunting in Somaliland.
The sahib had been troubled with malaria which, he said, was well known to emanate from the noxious night fumes around swamps and river-beds. The Somalis, he added with amusement, had a quaint belief that malaria was brought on by the bite of mosquitoes. In some ways this story seemed to contradict my feeling that the tribesmen looked for spiritual causes and cures, but it did not really do so, for the insect had merely been observed as the agent or carrier, and what we termed disease germs might here be regarded as malignant djinn. But these were only theories, possibly quite unreliable. My difficulty was in discovering how the tribesmen actually looked at things, for without a knowledge of basic concepts, communication is impossibly confused.
Had they really understood? I asked Hersi again, seeking his reassurance – nonsensically, for I was by no means certain that he knew, himself, the reasons for the instructions he was conveying to them.
“They are hearing all,” Hersi replied decisively.
Hearing, yes. We understood each other’s words but not necessarily each other’s meanings. A great many people were ill with malaria throughout the Haud. Groups of women arrived at our camp carrying in their arms children who were so lethargic with fever that they could barely open their eyes. Malaria is the largest child-killer in all Africa. If a child manages to survive until the age of five or six, the chances are that he has developed quite a strong resistance to the disease. But it is the children under six who are most afflicted, and it was these young ones whom I found hardest to look at. Their small limbs burned to the touch, and they shuddered spasmodically with the fever’s convulsive chills. Their eyes occasionally ickered open in a kind of bewilderment. And I turned away, unable to meet those eyes.
For many of the Haud women, the brief time of rejoicing after the rains was already over. They had managed somehow to keep their children alive during the season of drought, only to see them die of malaria in the season of plenty. I no longer marvelled that the Somalis believed in a God of ultimate mercy who at the Last Day would restore all things.
Who shall give life to bones when they are rotten? He shall give life to them who gave them being at first, for in all creation is He skilled: who even out of the green tree hath given you fire, and lo! ye kindle flame from it. So the Qoran gives suffering a meaning and refuses the nality of death. I saw the necessity of this belief, without which life for these people would be intolerable. I would have shared such a faith, if it had been a matter of choice, but I could not. To me, it seemed that these children died point-lessly, and vanished as though they had never been, like pebbles thrown into a dark and infinite well.
——
The rains were not quite over yet. One evening a strong wind whirled up out of nowhere. The sky opened, and within minutes the entire camp was ooded. Everyone rushed around, trying to anchor things down. Under the pelting rain and wind, the big tent was on the point of collapse. Jack and Abdi hurriedly tied the guy-ropes from the tent to the LandRover, while Arabetto turned the Bedford truck around so that all our possessions would not get soaked. The camp was a shambles, six inches deep in water, like a big shallow balleh. Drenched to the skin, we ploughed through the water, gathering up ropes, buckets, shovels, before they could oat away. Finally everything
was more or less secure, and we all hastily took shelter in the big tent. The ferocity of the storm was something to behold – rain lashing like bursts of gunfire, the big wind beating at our canvas, the earth turned into a swamp, the ashes of sheet-lightning, the brooding sky.
In the tent, waiting for the rain to ease, we experienced that sense of companionship which sometimes occurs during even a minor crisis. Ourselves, Hersi, Mohamed, Abdi, Arabetto, young Omar the survey helper, the other drivers and labourers – we all talked together easily and lightly. Could thunder ever kill a man, Mohamed wondered. Jack attempted to explain what thunder was, whereupon both Hersi and Arabetto maintained that they had known this all along. The exact same information, Hersi added with more piety than accuracy, was
to be found in the Qoran.
After the storm, Jack and I returned to our truck, and the Somalis sat around the fire until nearly morning. Hersi led the singing, chanting the verse of a long narrative poem, while the others joined in the chorus. For a long time we listened to these strong voices singing in the African night. They blended with the rustle of water as the streams poured across the desert and emptied into the tugs. Occasionally we could hear the shrilling of still-wakeful birds in the thorn trees, and the mournful cry of the night-ying ghelow. All this was good, in ways we could not explain, better than anything we had ever known before.
Every day the Illaloes went through their drill. The corporal barked out orders, and I discovered that these bush police were trained in English. The drill commands were all the English that most of them knew. The words, therefore, had undergone a subtle transformation and were given a Somali intonation until they were scarcely recognizable to me.
“Ra – toor!” shouted the corporal, and the men turned right.
“Sho – hah!” And they shouldered arms.
“Ki – mah!” They understood him perfectly, and commenced a quick march. They did not neglect their ancient skills, however. When they had time to spare, they practised spear throwing. One afternoon we had a spear-throwing contest, with the Somalis from our camp pitted against some visitors from a nearby rer. Our men won, much to their delight, although the local herdsmen appeared rather disgruntled at this unexpected reversal, for most of those in our camp were men of the magala, towndwellers who were not reckoned to be as handy with a spear as the men of the desert. I waited until the visitors had gone, not wanting to embarrass our sta, and then I tried
pitching a few spears myself. I did very poorly. The diculty was not only one of strength – the chief skill to be mastered was balance. You must know exactly how to hold the spear and when to release it. A good spearman can kill a lion with what appears to be an exceedingly inadequate weapon to use against such a beast.
Somali boys are taught how to throw spears from an early age, and begin practising with miniature ones. Even when they join the police or the army, and learn to use other weapons, it often remains second nature with them to trust their spears most of all. One evening we heard low growls and snarls outside our camp, and the terrified cry of a young camel which was being attacked by a hyena. The Illaloes immediately dashed out.
The first man was practically on top of the hyena when he suddenly realized that in the heat of the moment he had instinctively thrown down his rie and picked up his spear instead. He came back to the camp for his gun, looking very sheepish, and the others teased him for days.
We packed up and prepared to move camp. A messy procedure, this, for we had had rain the night before and now everyone was slithering perilously through the mud. Our camp, usually in good order, now resembled a garbage dump. Tin charcoal burners,
bedrolls, old vegetable peelings, boxes and tools – all were scattered about in wild disarray.
“We may as well have a quick lunch before we go,” Jack said. “Tell Mohamed not to fuss – just a tin of beans.”
The camp tables were already packed. We sat down to luke-warm baked beans with our plates balanced precariously on a baramile, a squarish metal water-container. We were a sorry looking sight, the pair of us. I was wearing canvas tennis shoes which were
caked with wet mud, a pair of Jack’s socks, a wrinkled old cotton skirt and blouse, and a kerchief wound around my head turban-style. Jack was clad in mud-splattered khaki shorts, a filthy bush-shirt and a fedora which looked as though it had been handed down
through countless generations.
We heard the sound of a car approaching. Jack glanced up, stared and then gasped.
“Do you see whose car that is?”
Quickly I looked, and observed with horror the shiny black Humber. His Excellency the Governor of Somaliland had chosen this day to pay a visit to our camp. We had met the Governor under formal conditions at Government House, and had been startled by the shrewdness of his questioning about Jack’s work. He seemed to know all about everything – not a detail had escaped him. He had asked me, very directly, what I did with myself in camp. I had stammered over a reply, hesitating to tell him that I spent most of my time in attempting to translate Somali poems and folktales.
Later I realized that I should have told him, for it was a subject which interested him. This morning in camp, however, we could think of only one thing – he was a man who placed considerable emphasis upon formality. Only a short time before, we had read in a book about Kenya a description of him in his days there, when he used to don full-dress uniform to go and inspect a distant post where only four African policemen were stationed. We rose, shuffled through the mud, faced the splendid car and the tall white-clad man.
His Excellency remained calm and unperturbed. Never once did he refer to our disorganized state. He acted as though everything were in perfect order. He did not even lift an eyebrow in mild surprise.
There were no repercussions from this visit. Only indirectly did we later learn that His Excellency had made enquiries at P.W.D. to make sure that we had been issued with the proper camping equipment. The night came when we saw the symbol of Islam plainly visible in the sky. The thin crescent moon, with the one star in startling symmetry above it, hung like a pendant of gold against the black throat of the sky. Ramadan had begun.
“There is no God but God,” the muezzins called, and the People of the Book knelt in mosques of marble or mud, from Dakar to Kabul, from Ankara to Abadan, their faces turned towards the yearned-for city, receiver of pilgrims, holy Mecca.
In that assembly of wealth and want, of kings and fellaheen, praying for strength in the month of fasting, the tribesmen in the Somali desert also knelt, unaware that they were among the least blessed of Allah’s subjects. Their worship was as bare and lacking in outward splendour as their lives. Their mosques were circles of brushwood, their ritual ablution waters the brackish dregs of mud pools or simply the sand, their religious relics the memory of graves abandoned in the desert. No minarets drew their eyes to the place of prayer. Across the Haud, only the red termite-mounds stood higher than a man, and the thorn trees where the vultures waited for the next Jilal. The grandeur of Islam, the riches of Persia and Arabia – these were only fables, heard, like the hope of heaven, with a longing that could not conceive of its object. Yet poverty gave them its compensations. The fasts of Ramadan held no unaccustomed terrors. Hunger and thirst
they knew as well as the faces of their kinsmen. They had no light but the ash-coated embers of their campfires to rob the luminous star and crescent of its gold, and no intrusive doubts to rob it of its meaning. Faith to them was as necessary as life, inevitable as death. They looked up and knew the Word had been made visible. The Lord of the Three Worlds, Creator of men and djinn, had given a sign and a symbol to His people.
Muslim law forbids the taking of any liquid or food during the daylight hours in Ramadan, and even forbids the swallowing of saliva. In camp, only our meals were prepared during the day. At sundown everyone prayed as usual, and then they were allowed to break their fast. They had another meal at two a.m., and prayers and discussions went on during most of the night. It was therefore necessary for them to sleep in the afternoon, and this they did for as long as possible in order to lighten the fast, so the work was slowed down to a maddening degree. It was a trying time. Tempers became short; old grievances were brought forth; everyone went around spitting profusely. But in the evenings, after they had eaten, they had a sense of well-being and sometimes they would gather to listen to our small “saucepan” radio, so called because its round blue metal case resembled a cooking pot. Jack fiddled with the dial, and got dance music from Nairobi, sounding thin and far away and dreary. At times we managed to get a station in India, and listened to the high-pitched, nervous, syncopated music. Sometimes it was sensuous drum-lled music from Morocco, or snatches of melody from Ethiopia, a single flute with a high sweet sound, a rustling and rippling music like a mountain stream. One evening we achieved Radio Pakistan, and an
argument arose between Hersi and Arabetto over what language was being spoken.
“I am hearing very plainly,” Hersi said. “That is Arabic.”
“No, Hersi, that’s not Arabic.” Arabetto, being half Arabian, had grown up speaking the language.
“Yes, it is,” Hersi insisted. “You are not understanding it because it is grammatical Arabic.”
Other issues arose in our evening sessions. Hersi explained to me about the “low” tribes, saying they used to be servants of the “higher” tribes.
“You know – the same way the black people in some parts of Africa are being servants to the Europeans.”
He excluded the Somalis from this classification. They were men doing a job because they chose to, not because they had to. They passionately believed this, and in a way it was true. All of them had a few camels in the interior plains, somewhere, and could return to their tribes if they wanted. None of the men in our camp, with the single exception of Arabetto, had cut themselves o from their tribes. This was a good thing at the present time, for it enabled them to maintain their identity under the impact of an outside culture. But I wondered about the future. When this country had selfgovernment, what then? How long would it take them to overcome inter-tribal
bickering, or could it ever be overcome as long as the economic reasons for it still existed, the shortages of water and grazing? The tribal system might be anachronistic in some parts of Africa now, but despite its drawbacks, could it ever really be done away with here, where membership in a tribe was a nomad’s only protection in a harsh environment? But against the likelihood or even inevitability of continued tribal disagreements must be set the very real advantages which the Somalis had in comparison with some other African countries. They had a common religion and a common language. With certain local variations they possessed a common culture.
Somalis from Mogadisciou to Djibouti knew the stories of Arawailo the wicked queen, or the legends of Darod or Sheikh Ishaak. The Esa around Borama could speak with the Ogaden men, and be understood. The Habr Awal in the Guban and the Habr Yunis in the Haud spoke the same words when they prayed.
Gradually we unearthed the presence of another irony, this time one which struck us as amusing. In Hargeisa and Berbera we had heard a number of sahibs and memsahibs holding forth on the insensitivity of the Somalis, whom they believed to be incapable of any emotion as subtle as tenderness or love. Now we discovered that the Somalis, for their part, believed precisely the same about the English, whom they regarded as utterly uninterested and indeed childishly uninformed in matters of love.
Love was one of the two great subjects of Somali poetry, the other being war. Love between men and women did not here contain the dichotomy long ago imposed upon it in the western world by the church, that of separating it, as though it were oil and water, into elements labelled “spiritual” and “physical.” The Somalis recognized no such distinction. Furthermore, love – like tribal war, in their view – was not only a necessity and a pleasure, but a skill and an art. It was discussed interminably among those of the same sex, but men and women were not supposed to discuss love, even in the abstract, unless they were married or belonged to one another’s taboo group. The system of marriage was highly complex, and any blood relative, however distant, was taboo. So repugnant was the idea of incest, which would of course include any member of the taboo group, that talk could be relatively free within this group, for it was assumed that
such talk would not under any circumstances lead to sexual contact. Within the “possible” group, however, all talk of love was banned, even between a boy of fourteen and a woman of eighty.
Marriages were usually arranged by the two families, with an eye to mutual financial advantage. Together with the tribal elders, the men in both families met to settle the essential questions, the sums to be paid by the young man for the bride-price (yarad), the token payment (gabbati) made at the time of betrothal, the percentage of the man’s estate (meher) to be made out to his wife upon marriage, and the dowry (dibad) given by the bride’s family.
But the choice was not entirely out of the young man’s hands. His family would attempt to nd a girl who pleased him, and he would usually make enquiries about the girl, through an aunt, and would ask all kinds of pertinent questions – what were her manners like, had she good legs and breasts, was she pleasant-tempered, had she wit and thrift? Standards of womanly beauty among Somalis were very specic. To be truly beautiful, a girl should be fairly tall, plump but not fat, with ample hips and breasts. A woman’s buttocks should be well rounded – so important was this aspect of female appearance that Somali women often arranged their robes in a kind of bustle, to pad
out their rumps in much the same way as women in our breast-conscious society assist nature with padded brassieres. Somalis placed great value upon a graceful walk and a proud bearing in a woman. The most favoured shade of skin was a light copper colour.
Another mark of beauty was a brown or pinkish line across the teeth, a fairly common sight here. In one song the lover compares his beloved’s teeth to a white vessel made of the pale inner bark of the galol tree and bound around with a string of pink Zeilah pearls – a reference to this beauty mark. Dark shining gums were also admired. In a well-known poem, in which the lover enumerates the features of his beloved, he places this one high on the list – “Her gums’ dark gloss is like blackest ink –”.
A young man saw his betrothed alone only once before marriage, when by custom he was allowed to spend a night with her. On this occasion he could undress her and do anything he wanted with her, short of actual intercourse. Should she prove a disappointment, however, practical considerations made it difficult for him to change his mind at this point, for if he did so, he forfeited the bride-price he had paid. With what care he scrutinized her, therefore, on the night of dadabgal, which means “to go behind a screen,” and she, no doubt, scrutinized him with an equally sharp eye. True, he could divorce her easily by Muslim law, but this procedure would involve lengthy
wrangling between his family and hers. He could also take three other wives besides her, but it was a rare man here who could aord more than one or two wives. Sometimes a woman would say that her meher was the penis of her husband, by which she meant that she received no legal portion of his estate, for he had agreed instead to take no other wife.
Love was an intense and highly emotional state – it was not expected to endure.
Indeed, so much was it at variance with the starkness of usual life that no wonder love in this sense did not often survive for long after marriage. After marriage, Somali women, especially those of the desert, led lives of continual heavy work and drudgery.
They cooked, cared for the ocks and children, wove the baskets and mats, fashioned and set up the huts, dismantled the camp when the tribe moved, and packed the household goods on the burden camels. They led the burden camels across the plains – but if they never rode the camels, neither did the men, for camels were almost never ridden in Somaliland. Not surprisingly, most women lost their beauty within a few years. Not surprisingly, also, they frequently became irritable and nagging. This was the chief complaint Somali men made about their wives.
“What a tongue she has, that woman – like flame.”
But the status of women was low, according to both tribal and religious traditions, and a woman’s wits and her sharp tongue were often her only protection. A husband who was unusually considerate of his wife would be thought weak and would be mocked at by his fellow tribesmen. Sexual fidelity was demanded of her, but not of him. Like the owering desert after the drought, love was of a season, not for ever. While it ourished, therefore, let the songs be made and the beauty of young girls remarked upon, for soon enough they would enter their own Jilal.
Love as it appeared in Somali poetry was many things. It was the sensuous and lyrical
belwo:
He who has lain between her breasts,
Can call his life fulfilled.
Oh God, may I never be denied
The well of happiness.
It was the sombre, almost macabre sense of mortality that ran through so many
Somali love poems – take what today oers, for who can tell if there will be a
tomorrow?
Your body is to Age and Death betrothed,
And some day all its richness they will share –
Or,
Turn not away in scorn.
Some day a grave will prove
The frailty of your face,
And worms its grace enjoy.
Let me enjoy you now –
Turn not away in scorn.
Some of the figures of speech in Somali love poetry might appear odd and even ludicrous to a European, for it was quite common for a poet to compare himself to a sick camel, when he was suering from an unreturned love, or to boast that he was like the nest camel in his herd – strong, lithe, swift. But in order to appreciate what such comparisons meant to a Somali, it was necessary to understand what his camels meant to him. Camels were the mainstay of Somali life. They provided the tribesman with meat and milk, his staple foods, and they packed his goods across the desert. Their endurance in the drought was what saved him. Without his camels he would have been lost. They were not simply anonymous domestic animals to him. They were his livelihood, his wealth, his pride. He always knew each of his animals by name and could discern the footprints of each in the sand. He tended his camels not only with care but with affection. There were dozens of words in Somali to describe every kind and condition of camel. It was no wonder that camels figured so largely in Somali poetry, even in love poetry, for they were as close to the Somali’s heart as his own family.
Like a camel sick to the bone,
Weakened and withering in strength,
I, from love of you, Oh Dudi,
grow wasted and gaunt.
When a poet expressed his love in this way, one could be quite certain that, in North American parlance, he had been hit where he lived.
Another face of love was found in Elmi Bonderii’s famous poem Qaraami (Passionate), in which he described not only Baar’s beauty but her domestic accomplishments as well, and ended with these lines:
When you behold my lovely, incomparable Baar,
Your own wives, in your eyes, will all be old.
Alas, alas, for ye who hear my song!
Elmi Bonderii (Elmi the Borderman) was said to have died of love. He fell in love with a young girl named Hodan Abdillahi, but as he was not wealthy, she was married instead to Mohamed Shabel (Mohamed the Leopard). Elmi cherished his hopeless
affection for five years.
“Then,” Hersi said, “he died of love. Absolutely nothing else.”
No one found this surprising at all. Love was a serious matter, a delight which could turn to disaster. But no Englishman ever died of love – of this fact the Somalis were quite positive. It seemed doubtful to them that the Ingrese had much need of love at all. Most Englishmen here were physically heavier than Somalis, owing to a better diet, and had greater muscular strength, although not as much endurance, for few Englishmen could have survived the hardships of the Jilal. This greater physical strength the Somalis attributed to sexual abstinence. Also, most English families had only one or two children, or else appeared to have none at all, for their school-age children were in England. Many Somalis therefore believed that sex was something practised only infrequently by the English, who were indifferent where love was concerned, and probably inept as well.
We were very much entertained by the discovery of this widespread belief, until we found that it was also, perforce, applied to ourselves. This revelation placed it in a slightly dierent light. When nally Hersi agreed to recite some of his own belwo, he told us he would not do so before because he did not think we would be capable of understanding or appreciating love poems.
“You Ingrese,” he said delicately, “are not so highly acknowledgements as us in these considerations.”
The month of Ramadan was not yet over when the kharif began. The summer monsoon came up from the south-west, over the Ethiopian mountains and across the plains of Somaliland, gathering heat as it travelled. The wind blew cool at night in the Haud, but by the time it reached the coast, the sands and the rocks would have imparted to it something of their heat and its breath would be like fire day and night.
The kharif would blow until autumn, lling the days with dust-devils and the nights with its moaning. On the great plains, the camel herders’ eyes would be sore with blown sand. In the stations, tarpaulins would be whisked from lorries and secret files from office desks. Ocers on trek, having a sundowner outside their tents, would nd their glasses of gin and lime blown o the camp table. Young Englishmen in outstations would wonder why they had not gone into commerce in London, as they lay awake at night listening to a wind whose sound was like the distracted wailing of hysterical women. In the stiing town of Berbera, wooden shutters on the old government houses
would clatter all night, and hot wind would rush in to half-strangle the angrily wakeful occupants.
On the Gulf of Aden the dhow traffic would slacken off, and the dhow men who ventured out would pray mightily to Allah to spare their fragile craft. The wind would be everywhere. It would ring in the ears, clog the nostrils, drive breath from the throat. When it had spent itself it would suddenly collapse, leaving the country to the hot season. The kharif battered all night against our truck, making the canvas roof sound like the beating of giant wings. One night I imagined I had been wakened by the thudding of the canvas, until I glanced up and saw that it was something else that had roused me from sleep. There, outlined against the net at the end of the truck, was a large dark shape. I was frightened, but not unduly so, for I was groggy and not fully awake. I nudged Jack and told him that something was trying to get into our caravan. He heard me only dimly through his sleep and thought I meant my old enemy, the black moth.
“Shine your torch on it,” he mumbled, “and it’ll go away.”
I groped for my ashlight, but by the time I had switched it on, the shape had disappeared. I turned over and went back to sleep. In the morning I was wakened by Jack’s shocked yell.
“My God! Everything’s been taken!”
Thieves had ransacked our truck-home, taking the typewriter, Jack’s theodolite, the briefcase containing all his papers, the drawing instruments, slide-rule, our radio and innumerable smaller objects. It was not only the value of the haul that distressed us.
Many of Jack’s instruments could not be replaced in a hurry, and he could not work without them. One of the thieves had dropped his spear, possibly when I wakened and shouted, and the Somalis in our camp picked it up and examined it with great interest. Mohamed,
Hersi, Abdi, Arabetto and others – all lamented loudly.
“Never in my life I seeing such bloody thieving as contained in bloody this place –”
“Oh-oh – too bad, sahib, too too bad!”
Underneath, they were actually delighted with the excitement of the event. They darted hither and yon like swallows, gabbling at the top of their voices. I, too, could not help feeling the same secret excitement. The Somalis had hopes of tracing the thieves by the dropped spear, the shaft of which was splintered at the end – enough, they said, to make it clearly recognizable.
Jack, Abdi and Hersi set o in the Land-Rover for Selahleh, the nearest Somali settlement. At camp the rest of us waited nervously, unable to settle down to any work.
The slow hours passed. At last in the distance we heard the furious honking of the Land-Rover horn – Abdi’s invariable signal of a successful hunt. They roared into camp like three triumphant generals after a battle. With them they carried the typewriter, theodolite, briefcase and all the rest of the loot.
What happened? What happened? We could not wait to hear. Everyone shouted at once. Finally, piecemeal, the story emerged. They drove, they told us, to the tea shop at Selahleh and asked if anyone could identify the spear. The tea-shop owner disclaimed any knowledge of the weapon and refused to discuss the matter. At that moment a young Eidagalla man came into the tea shop. He took one look at the spear and nodded his head.
“Every man around here knows the owner of that spear,” he said.
Where were the thieves, then? The tea-shop owner maintained a stubborn silence. At this point Hersi and Abdi applied their strongest methods. Glorying in the situation, they threatened the tea-shop man and the entire village of Selahleh with annihilation if the
culprits were not yielded up. Abdi paced the room, waving the rie and glaring in his ercest manner while Hersi gesticulated, shrilled and bellowed, outlining in vivid detail the fate that awaited the inhabitants of this unfortunate settlement. The whole Army would descend, Hersi cried passionately, and would raze Selahleh to the ground. Camels would be looted. Huts would be burned. Nothing would remain. The desert would cover their dwelling-places and the hyenas would gnaw their bones.
His English version of it, to me, was only a pale imitation. In Somali, it would have been magnicent. He must have made it sound like the destruction of Sennacherib. The teashop owner began to have second thoughts, and nally his resolve to protect his fellow tribesmen, or perhaps to share in their haul, crumbled completely. He shrugged and signalled to his waiting kinsmen, who trooped out and returned a few minutes later with one of the thieves.
“Here is the man. He is yours.”
The thief sweated and shook. His accomplice had ed, he said, but he agreed to take Jack to the place where the stu was cached, provided Jack would promise not to go to the police. Jack’s sense of British justice at that point was not nearly so strong as his desire to recover his theodolite and the invaluable papers which represented months of work. He readily agreed. They drove out across the Haud, and there, in a deserted zareba, they found everything hidden. Recalling it, Jack laughed.
“You won’t believe this,” he said, “but I swear it’s true. After he showed us the zareba, the rst thing he did was to ask me for a cigarette. I was so surprised that I gave it to him. I figured that any man who had that much brass neck deserved one.”
The thief had revealed his disappointment in the theodolite. It was in a large wooden box, and when he stole it he thought it was a chest full of gold. As we listened to the story, Mohamed brought around mugs of tea.
“No Ramadan today!”
They would make up the day of fasting later. Such days as this did not occur often. This was a victory, to be celebrated ttingly, with healths drunk in scalding tea and the story, embellished and embroidered, recounted again and again. We discovered, a few days later, that people in nearby Somali camps were very upset about the theft, as they considered it a blot on their honour. Some of the Eidagalla
pointed out that the thieves were members of the Arap tribe, and there were murmurings in the area to the eect that no one would feel safe until “spears have been raised against the Arap.” Thus are tribal wars touched o. Fortunately the muttering died down after a while, and no spears were raised.
But the tale lived on, and was told many times around the re at night, and lost nothing in the telling. For all we know, fty years from now the Eidagalla in the Haud may be chanting a gabei called The Thief of Selahleh which tells how Abdi the warrior and Hersi the orator outwitted the enemy and vanquished him utterly, although by that time it will have been forgotten what was stolen and from whom. And so perhaps the theodolite case may be transformed, after all, into some rare carved chest laden with golden coins and necklaces like the sun.
Source: The Prophet’s Camel Bell, Margaret Laurence, New Canadian Library
