The Prophet's Camel Bell (28 page)

So it had come at last. Now there was no way of avoiding it. Jack fired Abdi, and the old man left the camp. We saw him in Hargeisa several times after that, but he turned the other way and would not even look at us.

If there had been a fire in the camp, it was certainly Abdi, for after his departure the tensions eased immediately. Suspicions dwindled, and the Somalis were more relaxed, not only towards us but among themselves as well. Now it was songs that we heard around the fires at night, not the previous interminable bickering.

But it could not end here for us. Why had events moved so inexorably in this way? Could they have been dealt with in any other way? We did not know. All we knew was that we
could not forget the man who drove through the blinding rain that night when we were lost on the desert, the man who was always the first to start work when we set up camp and whose work songs got the others going, the man who had wished us the blessing of a son. Trying, by writing it out, to unearth something of his meaning, I put in my notebook – “He is an exaggeration of all the qualities he possesses. He is courage and pride and anger writ large. Perhaps his is the face of Africa – inscrutable to the last.” My feeling at this time was that I would never understand.

Probably I never will. But I no longer think it was a simple matter of his having hated us all along, as I thought in my first bitterness, although he certainly came to hate us eventually. He did have a deep resentment against the English, whose lives must have seemed so easy to him, but this readily understandable resentment was only one factor in the situation, and perhaps not even the determining factor at that. After a number of years, things do not look quite the same. I recognize now, as I did not dare to do then, how eagerly I listened to what I felt to be his admiration, but it was not merely a question of flattery falling upon ready ears, either. A possible clue to the puzzle was provided not long ago by Mannoni's description of the dependence complex in
The Psychology of Colonisation
, a book which I read with the shock of recognition one sometimes feels when another's words have a specific significance in terms of one's own experiences. Seen from a distance, the details in my notebooks begin to take on a new meaning.

We felt that Abdi had let us down, but now I think that he must have felt, equally strongly, that we had let him down. I do not think his demands upon us were made callously or contemptuously, as I thought once, but with a feeling that it
was his right to demand of us whatever he needed. Perhaps it all began with the night on the Wadda Gumerad. That event had significance for him, but not the same as it had for us. We cannot know with certainty how he thought of it, but my guess is that he felt a bond had indeed taken shape between us, but not the bond of friendship as it seemed to us. We acknowledged some bond, however, by our gratitude and by the gift. We even asked him what he would like, saying we would give him anything he wanted, within reason. Did we, then, in his eyes, agree to become his power at court? Did Jack, in firing one of Abdi's relatives, appear to negate a tacit agreement to act as a kind of protector to him and his family? I think so. We ourselves had established the bond. He was not to know that we did not see it in the same way as he did. His later and increased demands, which seemed so outrageous then, seem in retrospect to have been a frantic effort to prove that the bond still existed.

Abdi was a man of integrity, but in his own terms, not ours. He was also a man filled with rage against fate. But he was a faithful son of Islam and so he could not curse his fate, for that would be blasphemy against God. He fought, instead, where he could. He was a warrior, trained as a fighter both with the spear and with the rifle, and his heritage was that of a warrior. He was a Somali, and in his arid land life is uncertain and impoverished, and a man seeks help wherever he can find it. He was a tribal man, to whom the idea of gaining the support and aid of a sultan came naturally – and if not a sultan or a governor, then the closest ally at court that could be found, and the strongest. Even the words which we at first took as compliments and then as unscrupulous flattery, now seem to have been neither, to have been in fact almost totally unrelated to us as individuals.
You are a king. You are a queen
.
If a man must seek a power at court, must he not also seek to reassure himself that the chosen official is indeed a strong one, capable of giving protection?

Everything moved inevitably to the conclusion. We did not comprehend his outlook, and he did not comprehend ours. He could not have acted in any way other than he did, and we could not have, either. And yet now I think that we would all have wished it otherwise.

In Paradise, the Qoran says, there are gardens where the fountains flow eternally and where the faithful may recline on divans and be attended by lovely women for ever and ever. A desert dweller's heaven, the heaven of Islam. But for some of the sons of the desert, I do not think this heaven will be quite enough. If I believed, I would wish there to be battles somewhere in Paradise, for an old warrior who never knew – and who probably could not have borne to know – that his truest and most terrible battle, like all men's, was with himself.

T
his part of a Somali
gabei
always seemed to me to express Somali literature as a whole, which in its way was also a tree for poverty to shelter under, and so, when I had completed the translations, I took a title from these lines. Ultimately, the collection was published by the Somaliland government. It was the product of many people's work besides my own – Guś Andrzejewski and Musa Galaal, who gave me the literal translations of the poems, Hersi and Arabetto who told me the stories, and all those who talked with me about the subject. The following are excerpts from the introduction to this collection.

“Although they have no written language, the Somalis are a nation of poets. In the evenings, around the camp fires, the men sing and tell stories far into the night. And in the
magala
, or town, they gather in the tea shops and often several
gabei
poets will spend hours chanting their own poetry, listened to by a large audience. This country is lacking in almost
all materials needed for painting or sculpture, and in any event the Somalis, being Muslims, are not in favour of making ‘images'. But stories and poems require no special materials other than the talent of the person concerned. Folk literature is easily portable and costs nothing. Although the life of the Somali camel-herder is drab and harsh, in their poetry and stories one finds sensitivity, intelligence, earthy humour, and a delight in lovely clothes and lovely women.

“There are about ten different types of Somali poems, although some of these are not commonly used. The
belwo
, a fairly recent form, is a short lyric love-poem, and is easily recognizable both by its length and by the distinct tunes to which it is sung. The literal meaning of
belwo
is ‘a trifle' or ‘a bauble'. The same tune fits nearly any
belwo
. The verses are strung together, sometimes as many as fifteen or twenty, to make one long song, but the individual verses are not necessarily related.

“The composing of
belwo
is considered to be the normal literary activity of young men, and the general opinion seems to be that
belwo
-making is a relatively unskilled craft. The older men always hope that the young
belwo
poet will, as he grows older, desire to learn the vocabulary and style of the more complex
gabei
. The older men scorn the
belwo
, not because of its subject, love, but because of its shortness and ‘lack of style'. They say it is frivolous and immature.

“The Somali
gabei
is considered to be the highest literary form.
Gabei
may be on any topic, but the rules of
gabei
-making are strict and difficult. A
gabei
poet must not only have an extensive vocabulary and an ability to express himself fluently, alliteratively and in terms of figures of speech. He must also possess considerable knowledge of the country, its geography and plant-life, Somali medicine and animal husbandry. The good
gabei
poet must know something about
Muslim theology and religious history, for these subjects are often used in poetry.

“Love and war are among the most favoured themes for
gabei
. With the war
gabei
, the poetic form reaches considerable heights of drama and emotion. The Somali is a warrior by tradition and inclination as well as by necessity, and in the
gabei
, tribal war is painted as a man's proper occupation. The war
gabei
are composed with great spirit and with that feeling of recklessness and bravery that characterizes the Somali in tribal battles.

“Literary Somali is a superstructure erected on the foundation of everyday speech. A vast number of words are never used except in poetry, and these have a subtle and precise meaning. Often an amazing amount of information is compressed into one word.

“In the Somali
gabei
there is a wealth of material for future research. Many hundreds of
gabei
, of varying literary merit, exist in this country. At their best the
gabei
offer not only an interesting study of a highly disciplined and developed poetry, but also a great deal of information about Somaliland and the way of life of its people.

“A number of the stories found in Somaliland are Arabic in origin, and some of them must have come to this country many years ago. Arabia is the centre of the Muslim religion, and also has racial and cultural ties for the Somalis. The legendary founders of the Somali race – Darod and Ishaak – came from Arabia, and the majority of the Somali people still trace their ancestry back to these Arabian aristocrats.

“The modern Somali is portrayed in such tales as
'Igaal Bowkahh
. 'Igaal is a humorous character, and yet there is something in his essential toughness, his way of laughing in the face of disaster, his pride and jauntiness, even in the most discouraging of circumstances, that remind one very much of the pride,
courage and humour of the ordinary Somali. It is this toughness and defiance that save 'Igaal from starvation and death.

“In a country as barren as this, where the population is almost entirely nomadic and where the actual process of survival demands so much effort and tenacity from each tribesman, it seems remarkable that there should be such a large body of unwritten literature, containing such a high degree of dramatic sense, vivid imagination and wit.”

BELWO

GABEI