The Heart of a Stranger

by André Naffis-Sahely

  For the settlers in Kenya were really parasites in paradise. Kenya, to them, was a huge winter home for aristocrats, which of course meant big-game hunting and living it up on the backs of a million field and domestic slaves, the Watu as they called them. Coming ashore in Mombasa, as was clearly shown by the photographic evidence in the 1939 edition of Lord Cranworth’s book, Kenya Chronicles, was literally on the backs of Kenyan workers. “No one coming into a new country,” he writes, “could desire a more attractive welcome. We were rowed ashore in a small boat and came to land on the shoulders of sturdy Swahili natives.” This was in 1906.

  By 1956, Sir Evelyn Baring, the governor, could still get himself photographed being carried, like a big baby, in the arms of a Kenyan worker. Thus by setting foot on Kenyan soil at Mombasa, every European was instantly transformed into a blue-blooded aristocrat. An attractive welcome: before him, stretching beyond the ken of his eyes, lay a vast valley garden of endless physical leisure and pleasure that he must have once read about in the Arabian Nights stories. The dream in fairy tales was now his in practice. No work, no winter, no physical or mental exertion. Here he would set up his own fiefdom. Life in these fiefdoms is well captured in Gerald Henley’s novels Consul at Sunset and Drinkers of Darkness. Whoring, hunting, drinking, why worry? Work on the land was carried out by gangs of African “boys”. Both Consul at Sunset and Drinkers of Darkness are fiction. Observed evidence comes from the diaries of a traveller. In her 1929–30 diaries, now brought out together under the title East African Journey, Margery Perham described the same life in minute detail:

  We drove out past the last scattered houses of suburban Nairobi, houses very much like their opposite numbers in England. But here ordinary people can live in sunlight; get their golf and their tennis more easily and cheaply than at home; keep three or four black servants; revel in a social freedom that often turns, by all accounts, into licence, and have the intoxicating sense of belonging to a small ruling aristocracy… certainly, on the surface, life is very charming in Nairobi, and very sociable with unlimited entertaining; all the shooting, games and bridge anyone could want. And in many houses a table loaded with drinks, upon which you can begin at any hour from 10.00 A.M. onwards, and with real concentration from 6.00 P.M.

  And, so, beyond drinking whisky and whoring each other’s wives and natives (what Margery Perham prudishly calls social freedom turned “by all accounts, into licence”) and gunning natives for pleasure in this vast happy valley — oh, yes, are you married or do you live in Kenya? — the settlers produced little. No art, no literature, no culture, just the making of a little dominion marred only by niggers too many to exterminate, the way they did in New Zealand, and threatened by upstart “Gikuyu agitators”.

  The highest they reached in creative literature was perhaps Elspeth Huxley and she is really a scribbler of tourist guides and anaemic settler polemics blown up to the size of books. The most creative things about her writing are her titles — The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, for instance — because in them she lets herself be inspired by native life and landscape. Beyond the title and the glossy covers, there is only emptiness, and emptiness as a defence of oppression has never made a great subject for literature. Their theatre, professional and amateur, never went beyond crude imitation and desperate attempts to keep up with the West End or Broadway. This theatre never inspired a single original script or actor or critic. In science, they could of course display Leakey. But Leakey’s speciality was in digging up, dating and classifying old skulls. Like George Eliot’s Casaubon, he was happier living with the dead. To the Leakeys, it often seems that the archaeological ancestors of Africans were more lovable and noble than the current ones — an apparent case of regressive evolution. Colonel Leakey, and even Lewis Leakey, hated Africans and proposed ways of killing off nationalism, while praising skulls of dead Africans as precursors of humanity. The evidence is there in black and white: L.S.B. Leakey is the author of two anti-Mau Mau books — Mau Mau and the Kikuyu and Defeating Mau Mau.

  In art, their highest achievement was the mural paintings on the walls of the Lord Delamere bar in the Norfolk Hotel, Nairobi.2 The murals stand to this day and they still attract hordes of tourists who come to enjoy racist aesthetics in art. But the murals in their artistic mediocrity possess a revealing historical realism. On one wall are depicted scenes drawn from the English countryside: fourteen different postures for the proper deportment of an English gentleman; fox-hunting with gentlemen and ladies on horseback surrounded on all sides by well-fed hounds panting and wagging tails in anticipation of the kill to come; and of course the different pubs, from the White Hart to the Royal Oak, waiting to quench the thirst of the ladies and the gentlemen after their blood sports. Kenya is England away from England, with this difference: Kenya is an England of endless summer tempered by an eternal spring or sprouting green life.

  On another wall are two murals depicting aspects of settler life in that Kenya. One shows the Norfolk — the House of Lords as it was then known — in 1904. Here again are English ladies and gentlemen — some on horseback, others sitting or standing on the verandah — but all drinking hard liquor served them by an African waiter wearing the servant’s uniform of white kanzu, red fez, and a red band over his shoulder and front. In the foreground is an ox-wagon with two Africans: one, the driver, lashing at the dumb oxen; and the other, the pilot, pulling them along the right paths. The ribs of the “pushing boy” and the “pulling boy” are protruding, in contrast to the fully fleshed oxen and members of the House of Lords. But the most prominent feature in this mural is “a rickshaw boy” with grinning teeth holding up this human-powered carriage for a finely dressed English lady to enter. Oxen-powered wagons for English survival goods; African-powered carriages for English lords and ladies. Eleanor Cole, in her 1975 random recollections of pioneer settler life in Kenya, writes: “Transport in Nairobi in those days was by rickshaw, one man in front between the shafts and one behind, either pushing or acting as a brake. People had their private rickshaws and put their rickshaw men in uniform. There were also public ones for hire.”

  The other mural depicts the same type of royal crowd at Nairobi railway station. At the forefront, is a well-fed dog wagging its tail before its lord and master. But amidst the different groups chatting or walking stands a lone bull-necked, bull-faced settler in riding breeches with a hat covering bushy eyebrows and a grey moustache. He could have been a Colonel Grogan or a Lord Delamere or any other settler. The most representative feature about him is the sjambok he is firmly holding in his hands.

  The rickshaw. The dog. The sjambok. The ubiquitous underfed, wide-eyed, uniformed native slave.

  In March 1907, Colonel Grogan and four associates flogged three “rickshaw boys” outside a Nairobi court-house. The “boys” were later taken to hospital with lacerated backs and faces. Their crime? They had had the intention of alarming two white ladies by raising the rickshaw shafts an inch too high! The rhetoric of the magistrate when later Grogan, Bowkes, Gray, Fichat, and Low were summoned before him for being members of an unlawful assembly, left not the slightest doubt about the sadistic brutality of the deeds of these sons of English nobility and graduates of Cambridge:

  From the first to the last it appears to me that out of all the people present assisting at the flogging of these men, there was no one of that number who ever took the trouble to satisfy himself as to whether these natives had ever done anything deserving of punishment at all. There was no trial of any sort nor any form or pretence of trial. These boys were neither asked whether they had any defence or explanation to give, nor does it appear that they ever had any opportunity of making one. Grogan, who ordered the flogging, has himself stated that no plea or defence which they might have made would have diverted him from his purpose. This is a very unpleasant feature in the case and I consider it about as bad as it can be. Yet, in my opinion, it is further aggravated by the fact that the place selected for this unlawful act was directly
in front of a courthouse.

  Sweet rhetoric versus bitter reality: the culprits, all found guilty, were given prison terms ranging from seven to thirty days. Prison? Their own houses where they were free to receive and entertain guests! Elsewhere, in the plantations and estates, the “bwana” would simply have shot them and buried them, or fed them to his dogs. In 1960, Peter Harold Poole shot and killed Kamame Musunge for throwing stones at Poole’s dogs in self-defence. To the settlers, dogs ranked infinitely higher than Kenyans; and Kenyans were either children (to be paternalistically loved but not appreciated, like dogs) or mindless scoundrels (to be whipped or killed). In his autobiography, The Words (1963), Sartre has made the apt comment that “when you love children and dogs too much, you love them instead of adults”. The settlers’ real love was for dogs and puppies. Thus, to hit an attacking dog was a worse crime than killing a Kenyan. And when Poole was sentenced to death, the whole colonial Herrenvolk cried in unison against this “miscarriage of justice”. Peter Harold Poole had done what had been the daily norm since 1895. In 1918, for instance, two British peers flogged a Kenyan to death and later burnt his body. His crime? He was suspected of having an intention to steal property. The two murderers were found guilty of a “simple hurt” and were fined two thousand shillings each. The governor later appointed one of them a member of a district committee to dispense justice among the “natives”. The gory details are there in Macgregor Ross’s book Kenya From Within. Justice in a sjambok!

  I thought about this in my cell at Kamin prison and suddenly realized that I had been wrong about the British settlers. I should have written that book. For the colonial system did produce a culture. But it was the culture of legalized brutality, a ruling-class culture of fear, the culture of an oppressing minority desperately trying to impose total silence on a restive oppressed majority. This culture was sanctified in the colonial administration of P.C., D.C., D.O., Chiefs, right down to the askari. At Kamlti, we called it the Mbwa Kali3 culture.

  2 On 31st December 1980 the Norfolk Hotel was bombed, reportedly by revolutionaries. But the Lord Delamere bar remained intact.

  3 Mad Dogs.

  SARGON BOULUS

  Du Fu in Exile

  “The smoke of war is blue

  Human bones are white”

  Du Fu reaches a village

  A fire is about to go out

  He arrives knowing that the word

  like his dying horse

  might not stay in bloom

  after all these catastrophes

  without a handful of grass

  How many battlefields did he pass through

  In which the wind howled

  The rider’s bones mixed

  with those of his own horse

  and soon thereafter the grass hid the rest

  A fire warming two hands

  the head droops

  the heart is firewood

  He started wandering at twenty

  and never found a place to settle until the end

  Wherever he went, war and its burdens were there

  his daughter died in a famine

  It is said in China that he wrote like the gods

  Du Fu reaches another village

  The smoke billows from its kitchens

  The hungry wait at the door of a bakery

  the bakers’ sweaty faces are mirrors

  attesting to the fire’s ferocity.

  Du Fu is you, sir

  The master of exile

  Translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon

  JUSUF NAOUM

  As a Dog

  As a dog living in Berlin this long,

  I’d already be naturalized and wouldn’t need

  to beg for a residence permit every year.

  As a dog living in Berlin this long,

  I’d already have the rights of a German human

  and nobody would want to deport me.

  As a dog living in Berlin this long,

  I wouldn’t be barred from the pub

  instead I’d be welcomed in every house.

  As a dog living in Berlin this long,

  I’d have a respectable, warm home

  and not have to squat in a condemned building.

  As a dog living in Berlin this long,

  I wouldn’t have to feel ashamed

  of having many children.

  As a dog living in Berlin this long,

  nobody would call me Kanake

  or Kameltreiber.

  Yes, if I were a dog

  and had lived in Berlin this long,

  a pretty collar would decorate my neck

  and I could shit wherever I pleased.

  Translated from German by Martin Kratz

  LUCI TAPAHONSO

  In 1864

  In 1864, 8,354 Navajos were forced to walk from Dinetah to Bosque Redondo in southern New Mexico, a distance of 300 miles. They were held for four years until the US government declared the assimilation attempt a failure. More than 2,500 died of smallpox and other illnesses, depression, severe weather conditions, and starvation. The survivors returned to Dinetah in June of 1868.

  While the younger daughter slept, she dreamt of mountains,

  the wide blue sky above, and friends laughing.

  We talked as the day wore on. The stories and highway

  beneath became a steady hum. The center lines were a blurred guide.

  As we neared the turn to Fort Sumner, I remembered this story:

  A few winters ago, he worked as an electrician on a crew

  installing power lines on the western plains of New Mexico.

  He stayed in his pickup camper, which was connected to a generator.

  The crew parked their trucks together and built a fire in the center.

  The nights were cold and there weren’t any trees to break the wind.

  It snowed off and on, a quiet, still blanket. The land was like

  he had imagined it from the old stories — flat and dotted with shrubs.

  The arroyos and washes cut through the soft dirt.

  They were unsuspectingly deep.

  During the day, the work was hard and the men were exhausted.

  In the evenings, some went into the nearby town to eat and drink

  a few beers. He fixed a small meal for himself and tried to relax.

  Then at night, he heard cries and moans carried by the wind

  and blowing snow. He heard the voices wavering and rising

  in the darkness. He would turn over and pray, humming songs

  he remembered from his childhood. The songs returned to him

  as easily as if he had heard them that very afternoon.

  He sang for himself, his family, and the people whose spirits

  lingered on the plains, in the arroyos, and in the old windswept plants.

  No one else heard the thin wailing.

  After the third night, he unhooked his camper, signed his time card,

  and started the drive north to home. He told the guys,

  “Sure, the money’s good. But I miss my kids and it sure gets lonely

  out here for a family man.” He couldn’t stay there any longer.

  The place contained the pain and cries of his relatives,

  the confused and battered spirits of his own existence.

  After we stopped for a Coke and chips, the storytelling resumed:

  My aunt always started the story saying, “You are here

  because of what happened to your great-grandmother long ago.”

  They began rounding up the people in the fall.

  Some were lured into surrendering by offers of food, clothes,

  and livestock. So many of us were starving and suffering

  that year because the bilagáana kept attacking us.

  Kit Carson and his army had burned all the fields,

  and they killed our sheep right in front of us.

  We couldn’t believe it. I covered my face and cried.

  All my
life, we had sheep. They were like our family.

  It was then I knew our lives were in great danger.

  We were all so afraid of that man, Redshirt,4 and his army.

  Some people hid in the foothills of the Chuska Mountains

  and in Canyon de Chelly. Our family talked it over,

  and we decided to go to this place. What would our lives

  be like without sheep, crops, and land? At least, we thought

  we would be safe from gun fire and our family would not starve.

  The journey began, and the soldiers were all around us.

  All of us walked, some carried babies. Little children and the elderly

  stayed in the middle of the group. We walked steadily each day,

  stopping only when the soldiers wanted to eat or rest.

  We talked among ourselves and cried quietly.

  We didn’t know how far it was or even where we were going.

  All that was certain was that we were leaving Dinetah, our home.