by Isak Dinesen
He thought the matter over and said: “No. No, that would not be good, Memsahib. But I will tell you what we will do. I shall take over this lot.” So we left it at that, and the Somali are such furious tradespeople that Farah at once got the hitherto unknown article introduced on the farm, so that soon every self-esteeming Kikuyu went about chewing cardamom and dashingly spitting out the capsules. I tried it myself and it was not bad. I feel that Farah will have made a handsome profit on the transaction.
Farah’s knowledge of Native mentality came in useful to me.
Once, at the end of a month, when I had been paying out their wages to my people on the farm, in going through my accounts I found that a hundred-rupee note was missing and must have been stolen. I passed on the sad news to Farah, and he at once very calmly declared that he would get me my money back. “But how?” I asked him. “There have been more than a thousand people up here, and we have no idea at all as to who may be the thief.” “Nay, but I will get you your money back,” said Farah.
He walked away, and towards evening returned carrying with him a human skull. This may sound highly dramatic, but was in itself nothing out of the normal. For centuries the Natives had not buried their dead but had laid them out on the plain where jackals and vultures would take care of them. One might at any time, riding or walking there, in the long grass knock against an amber-coloured thigh-bone or a honey-brown skull.
Farah rammed down a pole outside my door and nailed the skull to the top of it. I stood by and watched him with enthusiasm. “What is the good of that, Farah?” I asked him. “The thief will already be far away. And must I now have that skull of yours set up just outside my door?” Farah did not answer, he took a step back to survey his work and laughed. But next morning, by the foot of the pole a stone was lying, and underneath it a hundred-rupee note. By what dark, crooked paths it had got there I was not told, and now shall never know.
Farah, as already told, was a strict Mohammedan, burning in the spirit.
In speaking about Mohammedans and Mohammedanism, I am well aware that I got to know in Africa only a primitive, unsophisticated Mohammedanism. Of Mohammedan philosophy or theology I know nothing; from my own experience I can but tell how Islam manifests itself in the course of thought and conduct of the unlearned Orthodox. All the same I feel that you cannot live for a long time among Mohammedans without your own view of life being in some way influenced by theirs.
I have been told that the word “Islam” in itself means submission: the Creed may be defined as the religion which ordains acceptance. And the Prophet does not accept with reluctance or with regret but with rapture. There is in his preaching, as I know it from his unlearned disciples, a tremendous erotic element.
“Sweet scents, incense and perfumes are dear to my heart,” says the Prophet. “But the glory of women is dearer. The glory of women is dear to my heart. But the glory of prayer is dearer.”
In contrast to many modern Christian ideologies, Islam does not occupy itself with justifying the ways of God to man; its Yes is universal and unconditional. For the lover does not measure the worth of his mistress by a moral or social rod. But the mistress, by absorbing into her own being the dark and dangerous phenomena of life, mysteriously transluminates and sanctifies them, and imbues them with sweetness. An old Danish love poem has it: “There is witchcraft on your lips, an abyss within your gaze.” What the wooer desires is freedom to adore, what he craves and thirsts for is the assurance of being loved back. Kadidja’s caravaneer, with his eyes on the new moon, in the words of a later author, even though in a somewhat altered sense, is “God’s own mad lover-dying on a kiss.”
I sometimes wondered whether the tribes of the desert had become what they were by having been in the hand of the Prophet for twelve hundred years, or whether his Creed has taken such deep roots in them because from the very beginning they were of one blood with him. I imagined that just as the erotic aloofness of the founder of Christianity has left his disciples in a kind of void, or of chronic uneasiness and remorse, within this province of life, so has the formidable, indomitable potency of the Prophet pervaded his followers and made mighty latent forces in them fetch headway. Eroticism runs through the entire existence of the great wanderers. Horses and camels are desirable and exquisite possessions in a man’s life, and well worth that he should risk it for their sake. But they cannot compete or compare with women. To the hearts of the ascetic, hardened, ruthless tribes it is the number and the quality of the wives which decides a man’s success and happiness in life, and his own worth.
When, on the farm, I was called upon to give judgment in matters between my Mohammedan people, I looked up rules and regulations in the manual of Mohammedan law, Minhaj et Talibin. It is a thick and heavy, highly imposing book to have carried about with you, a surprising work as well to a North European mind in its taboos and recommendations, enlightening as to the Mohammedan view of life, infinitely detailed in its regulations on legal purity, prayer, fasting and distribution of alms and particularly upon woman and her position in the community of the Orthodox. “The law,” the classic states, “forbids a man to clothe himself in silk. But a woman may wear clothes of silk and should do so whenever this be in all decency possible to her.” The Somali whom I knew did, however, wear silk, but Farah explained to me that they would do so only when outside their own country and in the service of other people—and surely my old valued friend Ali bin Salim of Mombasa, or the old Indian high priest who came to see me on the farm, wore but the finest and most delicate wools. The book also lays down as law that a husband shall supply his wife not only with the necessary nourishment, lodgings and clothes, but that he shall also give her such and such luxuries, within his means, which are truly worthy of her and will make her truly value her husband. “In the case, however,” it adds, “of a woman of remarkable beauty, jurists may find themselves entirely in accordance and will have to weigh the matter between them.” The very grave and somewhat pedantic book thus registers woman’s beauty as an indisputable, juridical asset in existence.
They rush forth, these warriors of the great fantasias, to meet the will of God—his adorable will—as the Jews rush forth to meet the Sabbath: “Get thee up, brethren, to welcome the bride!” Or David, King of Israel, in his Psalm 119: “O how love I thy law!” They are a communion of yes-sayers, they are in love with danger, with death and with God.
As Job’s laments are not silenced by expositions of the justice and mercy of God, but it is before the revelation of God’s greatness that the complainer surrenders and consents, the Prophet surrenders and consents; “God is great.” In the same way did Farah consent when after three weeks’ hard tracking we came up close to a herd of elephants and I shot and missed, and the elephants marched away so that we never saw them again. In the same way did he consent when in a year of drought, news was brought him from Somaliland that half his camels had perished, and when I told him of Denys Finch-Hatton’s death: “God is great.”
It is a general notion among Christians that Mohammedanism is more intolerant than Christianity, but such is not my own experience. There were three great prophets—Nebbes—Farah told me, Mohammed, Jesus and Moses. He would not recognize Christ as the Son of God, for God could have no son in the flesh, but he would agree that he had no human father. He named him Isa ben Mariammo. About Mariammo he spoke much, praising her beauty and virginity—she had, he said, been walking in her mother’s garden when an angel had brushed her shoulder with his wing; through this she had conceived. He smacked his own small son Saufe because he repeated some words of abuse about the Virgin which naughty Kikuyu totos from the Scotch Mission had taught him.
When in the thirties I was staying in the south of England with Denys’ brother, the Earl of Winchilsea, the painter John Philpot came down to paint the portrait of my hostess, who was very lovely. He had travelled much in North Africa, and on an afternoon when we were walking together in the park he recounted to me an experience of his from there.<
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In the First World War, he said, he had had a shell-shock or a nervous breakdown; he would never feel sure that he was doing what he ought to do.
“When I was painting a picture,” he explained, “I felt that I ought to make up my bank account. When I was making up my bank account, I felt that I ought to go for a walk. And when, in a long walk, I had got five miles away from home, I realized that I ought to be, at this very moment, in front of my easel. I was constantly in flight, an exile everywhere.
“It happened by then that I and my African servant in our travels in Morocco came to a small town or village. I cannot really describe the place to you, it looked like any other North African village. It stood in a flat plain, and in itself it was nothing but a number of mud-built huts with an old, broad mud-built wall round it. The only particular thing that I remember about it is its great multitude of storks, a stork’s nest on almost every house. But at the moment when I had come through the gate in the wall I felt that this was a place of refuge. There came upon me a strange, blissful calm, a happiness like what you feel when a high fever leaves you. ‘Here,’ I thought, ‘one can remain.’
“And as now I had stayed in the village for a fortnight, all the time in that same sweet peace of soul and giving no thought to the past or the future, on the day when I was once more painting a picture, an old man, a priest, came up and spoke to me. ‘I hear from your servant,’ he said, ‘that you have finished your wanderings and will stay with us, since here you have found rest.’ I answered him that it was as he said, but that I could not explain to myself why it should be so.
“ ‘Master,’ said the old man, ‘I shall explain it to you. There is something special about our village, things have happened here that have happened nowhere else. It came about not when I was a boy myself but when my father was a boy of twelve, and he has related it to me as it happened. Turn your eyes to the gate in the wall behind us. Above it you will see a ledge, where two men can sit, for in old days watchmen were here looking out for foes that might approach across the plain. To this very ledge above the gate came the Prophet himself and your Prophet Jesus Christ. They met here to talk together of man’s lot on earth and of the means by which the people of the earth might be helped. Those standing down below could not hear what they said to one another. But they could see the Prophet, as he explained his thoughts, striking his hand against his knee, and thereupon Jesus Christ lifting his hand and answering him. They sat there, deep in talk, till night fell and the people could no longer see them. And it is from that time, Master, that our village has got peace of heart to give away.’
“I wonder,” said Mr. Philpot, “whether a clergyman of the Church of England would have told that tale.”
Like all Mohammedans Farah was without fear. Europeans call the Islamitic view of life fatalism. I myself do not think that the Prophet’s followers see the happenings of life as predestined and therefore inescapable. They are fearless because confident that what happens is the best thing.
Farah, in one of my first years in Africa, stood beside me when a wounded lion charged—“charged home” as hunters say, meaning that now only death will stop him. Farah had no rifle with him, and at the time, I believe, but slight faith in my marksmanship. But he did not move, I do not think that he winced. Good luck had it that in my second shot I hit the lion so that he rolled over like a hare, then Farah very quietly walked up to him and inspected him.
At a later time, though, to my surprise I heard Farah speak in deep admiration of my skill with a rifle. During one of our long safaris, when in the morning after a night’s shooting I was still in bed in my tent, a young Englishman who had his camp some miles south of ours, and who had heard about us from the Natives, came over to enquire about water and game and to have company. He and Farah were talking together outside the tent, and I could follow their conversation through the canvas. “What kind of Bwana are you out with?” the Englishman asked. “Is he a good shot and are you getting anything?” “I am with no Bwana,” Farah answered, “but with a Memsahib from a distant country. And she never misses a thing.”
On this occasion Farah seemed to enjoy talking about me. Generally the Somali will not discuss women and you cannot make them tell you of their wives and daughters. Only in regard to their mothers do they make an exception, and the Koran, Farah said, orders that each time you name your father with reverence you should name your mother with reverence twenty-five times. In this point as in others the Somali are like the old Icelanders. Tormod Kolbrunnaskjald was exiled from Iceland because he had sung the girl he loved, naming her “Kolbrunna.”
It is a strange thing that I should have this taboo in me still. At times, when people speak or write about me, I feel that I am breaking my covenant with Farah.
When the Prince of Wales, the present Duke of Windsor, in 1928 came on his first visit to Kenya, I had been invited by my friend Joanie Grigg, the Governor’s wife, to stay for a week at Government House. I felt that this was an opportunity of bringing the cause of the Natives, in the matter of their taxation, before the Prince, and was happy about this chance of getting the ear of the future King of England. “Only,” I said to myself, “it will have to be done in a pleasant manner. For if it does not amuse him he will do nothing about it.”
As I sat beside the Prince at dinner I cautiously tried to turn his interest the way I wanted, and he did indeed on the next day come out to the farm to have tea with me. He walked with me into the huts of the squatters and made enquiries as to what they possessed in the way of cattle and goats, what they might earn by working on the farm and what they paid in taxes, writing down the figures. It was to me later on, when I was back in Denmark, a heart-breaking thing that my Prince of Wales should be King of England for only six months.
In the course of another evening I had been describing to the Prince the big Ngomas on the farm, and as he said goodnight to me he added: “I should like to dine with you on Friday and to see such an Ngoma.” This was Tuesday night and for the next two days the Prince would be up at Nanyuky for the races.
When I came up to my rooms in Government House I found Farah there waiting for orders for the morrow, for you always bring your own servant with you when staying in the houses of your friends. I said to him: “Something terrible has happened to us, Farah. The Prince is coming out on Friday to dine and to see our people dance. And you know that they will not dance at this time of the year.” For these Ngomas were ritual dances connected with the harvest, and all settlers knew well enough that in this matter the Natives would rather die than break with a sacred law of a thousand years.
Farah was as deeply shaken by the news as I myself. For a few minutes he was struck dumb and turned into stone. In the end he spoke: “If it be indeed so, Memsahib,” he said, “to my mind there is only one thing for us to do. I shall take the car and go round to the big Chiefs. I shall speak to them and tell them that now they must come to help you. I shall remind them that three months ago you helped them.” I had had the luck to be able to assist the Natives in a matter between them and the Government concerning salt-rocks to which they had formerly brought their cattle to lick salt. “But then,” Farah added with some misgiving, “I can do nothing about this dinner. You will have to look after that, with Kamante, Memsahib.” There was some distance and hardly any roads between manyattas of the great Chiefs, and the old men would seize this opportunity to talk. I answered: “Nay, give no thought to that. I and Kamante will be able to look after it. For I think that you are right and that this is the best thing we can do.”
I returned to the farm to make preparations for Friday with a somewhat heavy heart, and Farah drove out from it, an ambassador on a tricky mission. When on the morning of Friday he was not back, the entire household, preparing the lobster up from Mombasa, the spur-fowl brought in by Masai Morani, and Kamante’s Cumberland sauce for the ham, was dead silent. It would be a dark, eternal shame to our house and to all of us, were the Prince to come out to see an Ngoma, and w
e have no Ngoma to show him.
But already at eight or nine o’clock our own young men and girls of the farm began to hang round the house, in the mysterious way of the Natives aware that great things were about to happen. During the next few hours dance-loving young people from farms further away followed, coming up the long avenue in small groups. Kamante, for once taking his optimistic view of a situation, remarked to me that this was like the time when the locusts came: one by one, then a number together, then in the end more than we would be able to count. At eleven o’clock we heard the car coming up the drive asthmatically. She was all plastered in mud and dust, and Farah himself as he stepped out of her seemed to have faded, in the way of dark people when thoroughly exhausted. I felt that all through these two nights he must have sat up in unceasing palaver with the old Chiefs. Yet at the very first glance we all knew him to have come back victorious.
“Memsahib,” he said in a voice almost as hoarse as that of the car, “they are coming. They are coming all of them, and they are bringing with them their young men and their virgins.”
They did indeed follow close on the track of the car, swarming, as Kamante had predicted it, locust-like, a stream of supple, fiery young people of both sexes, set on dancing, should it cost them their life. The small groups of an old Chief and his aged counsellors, in rich, heavy monkey-skin cloaks, advanced in state, isolated from the common crowd by ten feet of empty space before and after them.
