The Prophet's Camel Bell (23 page)

“It's all right,” Guś told him. “They can't understand. They don't speak that much Somali.”

“You never know,” said Hersi, and refused to say another word.

Unfortunately, he had picked up a number of English four-letter words, the meaning of which he did not appear to know, and even when he was talking with me, he sprinkled his conversation gaily and liberally with these.

“I believe he'd pass out,” Jack said, “if he knew what he was saying.”

We were careful never to let him know. But generally his half-tongue served him well. As our interpreter, he invested even the most trivial comment or request with an air of importance, and he made pronouncements like an oracle.

“It is growing dark,” his voice could not have been more solemn if he had been announcing the end of the world, not merely the end of day, “and we cannot succeeding in shooting any game in bloody this place. Therefore I think we must returning to camp presently times.”

His English had a grotesque lyricism about it. He specialized in high-flown phrases –
absolutely excellent
–
all our considerations
– which he scattered like hopefully sown wheat. His education in English had been brief, only a year at the government school, after which he had been forced to leave and get a job for his family's sake. But he practised reading and writing continually. Sometimes I would see him beside the camp fire at night, squinting, holding the book up close so he could see in the smoky orange light, or filling the pages of a scribbler with his laborious scrawl. He was neither educated nor uneducated, and so he was sensitive about his errors. Criticism and correction were hard for him to take, for he was
aware of his vulnerability. He scoffed at the Sheikh schoolboys, their youth and inexperience, perhaps knowing that they with their firmer grasp of English would one day make it impossible for such as himself to hold an interpreter's job.

He had attended Qoranic school for a while, and he was able to read and write Arabic. But his true talent was with his own language. It was a regret to me that I could not follow him when he spoke Somali, for he was not only an orator but a poet. In his youth he had composed many love-songs, some of which were well known throughout the country. His feeling for poetry was strong. Once at Sheikh when Musa was reciting some of his own love poetry, Hersi came up to him afterwards.

“You have opened a wound that had healed,” he said.

Hersi's mode of expression was unfailingly dramatic. Once when he and Jack and Abdi were driving past Mandeira, in the hills, Hersi pointed to the high rocks and the cliffs.

“There is the capital of the lions. When you are hearing their voice in the night, you will be shook.”

He always called the Haud “this island place.” It seemed to us that he intended to say “this isolated place,” but his phrase was better. The Haud was an island place, so seemingly remote that one almost doubted the existence of the rest of the world.

Each day in camp, Hersi taught Somali to me for an hour, and when the lesson was over, we sat in the brushwood hut and chatted. Our favourite topic was religion. Hersi was a
mullah
, a kind of lay-priest, and he had read the Qoran four times. After I had read the Qoran in English, we were able to converse better, for the
Kitab
, The Book, was Hersi's constant frame of reference. It held, he believed, all truth, all the answers for everything. He was in this sense a fundamentalist, for he took the words of the
Kitab
literally at every point. And yet some of the Prophet's furious cries against the infidel
seemed to have passed him by, for his tolerant outlook towards other religions was not commonly found among Muslims any more than it was among Christians.

“If a man is saying he is religious,” Hersi maintained, “and is not having highly respects for all the mighty prophets, then I say that man is without religion.”

And in the sand he drew a peak, an inverted V.

“This side here, it is the way of Esa,” he said, using the Arabic name for Jesus, “and this side here, it is the way of Mohamed. Both paths leading to God.”

I recalled a letter I had seen not long before in an English newspaper. It was from a Christian clergyman, who said that Jacob Epstein's statue of Christ made Him look as though He were a Syrian or an Arab or some other foreigner.

Squatting in the desert dust, wrapped in his faded pink and black robe, and wearing his squashed and grimy old felt hat, Hersi elaborated on his beliefs.

“Each land must following their own prophet, but showing greatly considerations for other prophets, too, for all prophets being sent by God.”

In the realm of politics he was on less certain ground.

“I wishing to ask you something,” he said to Jack one day. “White-skin people – these I know. Black-skin people – these I know. I even am hearing of yellow-skin people. But these ‘Reds' which Radio Somali mentioning – can you tell me is such people truly having red skin?”

He spoke of his wife and children, who lived with his tribe. He had, alas, only daughters. If a girl was not beautiful, she would have difficulty in finding a husband, and if she did find one, you could be sure he would not be a man who owned many camels. To be beautiful, a woman should be tall and have copper-coloured skin. Both Hersi's daughters were
still quite young, but he had begun to worry already.

“One is very shiny,” he said, “but the other is small and black.”

He knew, however, that there was no use in his worrying about anything, for all things were in the hands of Allah. His fatalism was total. Once when we were in Hargeisa to get supplies, Hersi bought a small bottle of
ghee
, the liquid butter that was eaten on rice and was regarded as a delicacy. He shoved the bottle in the back of the Land-Rover, and on the return trip to camp, it was joggled and the
ghee
was spilled.

“Why didn't you tell me it was there?” Jack demanded. “I could have put it some place where it wouldn't have spilled.”

Hersi shook his head. “No. Such thing is not possible. If Allah was intending me to eating that
ghee
, it would not getting spilled.”

Hersi came of a distinguished family. Risaldar-Major Haji Musa Farah had been his uncle. During the wars against Sultan Mohamed Abdullah Hassan at the beginning of this century, Musa Farah fought with the British and was the highest-ranking Somali in the Camel Corps. His exploits had become legends. Hersi spoke of him with reverence.

“He was a man. Such we are not having in these days.”

Hersi himself toiled mightily, but he would never see himself in such a high position as that of Haji Musa Farah. He cherished his uncle's fame, and envied it, and yet it was a burden to him, too, not only as a personal reproach but as a heritage of community suspicion. For among the most anti-British of the Somalis, Hersi's tribal section, the Musa Arreh, was taunted for having long been too close to the government.

“Musa Arreh,” they said, “
Ingrese
Arreh.”

——

Hersi was the peacemaker of the camp, and he applied himself to this task with enthusiasm. The night-long discussions, the bizarre arguments, the complicated settlement of quarrels – these were meat and drink to him.

Arabetto overstayed his leave and arrived back in camp several days late, and Abdi, who was always gunning for him, tried to persuade Jack to fire him. Jack refused, and Abdi and Arabetto had a long and heated disagreement. Hersi acted as mediator, and later made a report to us, in which his own role as counsellor was emphasized to the full.

“I saying to him, ‘Abdi dear, you are my sections. We are same tribe. But you ask me to tell the sahib to give discharge to Arabetto. I can't do it, Abdi dear, I can't do it, my cousin.' And I saying to him, ‘Are we Muslims?' And he saying, ‘We are Muslims.' And I saying to him, ‘All right. If we are Muslims, must be we cannot sucking the blood of other Muslim peoples. This man is Arabian. Doesn't matter his mother was Midgertein. He is Arabian. But he is Muslim. Must be we cannot sucking his blood.'”

Then he told us of the advice he had given to Abdi regarding Europeans.

“I saying to him, ‘Abdi, my cousin, you must keep from getting so hot. I am understanding the conditions of the Europeans better than you. You must giving the sahib a sweet answer. It is in their character. You must not shouting and getting so tempered.'”

This gave us something to ponder, we in whose character it lay to need a sweet answer.

One day Hersi received the news that his wife had just given birth to their third child. He was completely downcast, for it was another girl. Three girls – such bad luck no one should
have. Shortly afterwards, he brought his family to see us, his wife Saqa and the two younger children, Amiina who was six years old, and the new baby, whose name was Fadima. I had imagined his wife would be older and more shrewish than she was, considering Hersi's woeful recounting of the demands made on his wages and the way in which his wife, as soon as she got to Hargeisa, always wanted to buy new clothes. Saqa, however, was only in her middle twenties, finely built and tall, with large dark eyes and long lashes. She was a magnificent woman, and possessed an extraordinary amount of poise. It seemed strange that she was married to a man as slight and nervous as Hersi.

Hersi took his family that day and put them on a trade-truck bound for Awareh. As they were leaving, Saqa said to him, “Give my salaams to the white woman.” At this, the other passengers glared at both Saqa and Hersi, and several voices muttered the old mockery.

“Musa Arreh –
Ingrese
Arreh.”

Hersi was caught, partly by the past, the memories and handed-down sagas of Haji Musa Farah's achievements, and partly by his own frail present-day. Only through jobs with the
Ingrese
could he utilize what accomplishments he had, those of reading and writing. Yet his education was so limited that his position could never be really secure. Nor was his education sufficient to enable him ever to break away from his tribe. He needed an established status in both worlds, but he achieved it in neither.

Only once, while he was working for us, did he gain a kind of fame, the recognition he yearned for. But the price he paid was a high one. At Balleh Gehli, the Balleh of the Camels, Hersi one day caught a ride on the back of a scraper, although everyone had been warned to stay away from the machinery
when it was in operation. The driver, unaware that Hersi was there, let down the scraper apron and the heavy steel thudded back and jammed Hersi's hand. The drivers brought him back to camp. He was suffering with shock and was only half conscious. Three fingers had been crushed down to the middle joint, and were flat and limp like the fingers on a rag doll. On one, the bone was sticking out through the pulpy flesh.

For a moment we were all stunned, for this was the first serious accident on the job. Then everyone moved rapidly. Mohamed brought a bowl of camel milk – the Somalis' first remedy for all ills – and held it to Hersi's mouth. I put a temporary and loose dressing on the hand. Jack scribbled a note to the doctor. Abdi and Arabetto, who had warred so often, forgot their differences for the time being. Between them, they managed to get Hersi propped up in the Land-Rover, and then they drove him in to Hargeisa, two painful hours distant.

“It would have to be Hersi,” Jack said morosely. “He always has such damn bad luck.”

Slight consolation as it might be to Hersi, Jack decided to call the next
balleh
after him. When it was completed, it became Balleh Hersi Jama. Ultimately the name was announced over Radio Somali, and when Hersi went to visit his family at Awareh, he discovered that people there had heard of it, and he had become quite a personage.

But he would never have back the use of his hand.

Hersi really came into his own as a story-teller. When we first went out to camp, I realized he had this ability, for in the evenings we often heard his voice, chanting the
gabei
or rising excitedly in a lengthy recitation. But it took many months before he trusted me enough to tell me any tales at all. For a long time, whenever I mentioned the subject, he looked vague
and pretended not to know what I was talking about. Stories? What on earth were those?

“We are not having such things presently times,” he would murmur evasively.

I respected his reticence and was careful not to press the matter. After I had obtained literal translations of some
belwo
and
gabei
from Guś and Musa, together with a few folk-tales, I decided to try again with Hersi. I had heard an interesting story the other day, I told him. Perhaps he might know it.

“Oh?” he said distantly. “What is it?”

It happened to be one of the best-loved of Somali tales, the adventures of the outrageous 'Igaal Bowkahh. When Hersi discovered who had told it to me (for Musa was very highly regarded as a poet), he looked extremely thoughtful for a moment. Then he struck his forehead as though in utter astonishment.

“Why you are never telling me you wishing to hear such things?” he cried. “Stories – if we are speaking of stories, who is knowing more of these considerations than I? I know ten thousand!”

I told him I was sorry – it had certainly been remiss of me not to have brought up the question before.

From that day, we never looked back. Hersi not only told me the stories he knew himself – he also went to considerable trouble to gather tales from various elders in the town and in nearby camps in the Haud. He edited, of course, and would only tell me such tales as he considered suitable for my ears, but I realized that I could not expect the impossible, and I was grateful for whatever stories he could bring himself to tell me.

Every afternoon, when he was not needed at the work site, Hersi came to the brushwood hut. He told the stories to
me in English, with an admixture of Somali and Arabic, for such English words as “saint” and “angel” were unknown to him, but I knew the Somali or Arabic equivalent. Although most of the labourers and drivers did not speak much English, there was always an audience. They drifted into the hut quietly, those who were off duty, and listened. They did not understand many of the words, but they recognized the familiar tales by the way in which Hersi acted them out.