The Prophet's Camel Bell Page 13

  We were vaguely ashamed of our feeling. We would not have dreamed of mentioning it to anyone else, but we began to notice how the others were reacting. Mohamed was always glancing back over his shoulder. Mohamedyero refused to sleep inside the building – he took his sleeping mat outside.

  “I am thinking we should proceeding Djibouti right away and awaiting there for this ship,” Hersi said. “This Zeilah place no good for us.”

  But when we asked him why, he would not say.

  Weeks later, when Jack returned to Zeilah to collect the last of the tractors which had been stored there, he chose to stay in the cramped and airless P.W.D. shack rather than the Residency.

  “I know it’s crazy,” he told me afterwards. “I’ve never felt like that before, but I just couldn’t force myself to spend a night alone in that place.”

  Then one evening in Hargeisa, we got talking about Zeilah with the wife of an administrator. Her husband was stationed there many years before, and they had lived in the Residency.

  “A rather peculiar thing occurred to me there,” she said. “My husband was out on trek and I was alone in the house. I heard footsteps very clearly on the stairs, but when I went to look, no one was there. This happened several times during the evening. When my husband came back, I told him about it, and he informed me, rather reluctantly, that there was a legend about the place being haunted by a Somali policeman who had been murdered there.”

  She laughed a little. “Believe it or not, just as you choose. I hardly believe it myself, now. But when you’re there –”

  We could see perfectly well what she meant, for we had felt the same way, there. Obviously we must have been mistaken, however, to have felt that the occupancy of the house was connected with an Englishman. We thought no more about it until a few years later, in London, when we chanced to meet a man who had been stationed for a time in Somaliland after the war, doing investigations for the War Graves Commission. He had been at Zeilah, and knew the old Residency. In the course of our reminiscing, we mentioned the story of the murdered Somali policeman.

  “Yes, that was the legend devised for local purposes,” he said, “but when I was investigating there, I turned up a good deal of information from the past. What actually happened was that a British administrative officer killed his wife there and then shot himself.”

  How implausible such a tale seems, at a distance. How hackneyed, even. Nevertheless, there it is. I cannot entirely dismiss it, nor deny the overwhelming sense of occupation we felt in the tall grey house at the edge of the leaden sea, where the locusts flew with the silken wings of destruction, while out on the shore the whorled and fluted sea-shells, pearl white or gaudy as paints, inhabited by living claws, scuttled across the wet sands like creatures of fantasy which only in that one place could exist.

  A message was brought to us at Zeilah – the ship had docked. It hardly seemed possible, after so many delays. Thankfully, we left the Residency and drove to Djibouti, thirty miles away.

  In camp I had often felt I would not care if I never saw a city again. Yet I was delighted to see Djibouti, overjoyed at the sight of pavements and paved roads and office buildings of contemporary design. For one thing, Djibouti afforded an opportunity for me to change from my trek clothes, old dirndl skirt and blouse and the necessary but unflattering headscarf, and put on my best cotton dress and my broad-brimmed straw hat with the velvet ribbon. Thus attired, and strolling as gaily as the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, I discovered that I was the object of quizzical and disapproving stares. Finally I perceived the reason – all the French women in Djibouti were wearing mushroom-like topees, and seemed to have the impression that I in my flimsy straw might drop at any moment from sunstroke. It took me less than five minutes to decide I would rather risk sunstroke than wear a topee.

  On the Djibouti streets we saw a wide variety of people. Small stunted Arabs in rags, begging. Indian merchants in white linen suits. Young Frenchmen with sunburnt skins, clad in open-necked shirts and attractively short shorts. Older Frenchmen, stout and red as Santa Claus, with bulging thighs, clad in open-necked shirts and very unattractively short shorts. Somali and Danakil women wearing mission-style dresses with clumsy bodices and hideous puffed sleeves, a contrast to the women who wore traditional Somali dress, graceful robes of scarlet and blue and gold, and the long kool, necklace of amber. A scrawny yellow-skinned Arab sprawled on top of a cart loaded with wood and charcoal, beating his thin grey donkey languorously with a stick. The short wiry Yemeni dockers looked as though they could be knocked over with a feather, but they had the reputation of being very tough. Italian mechanics in blue denim overalls shouted at one another. The many priests all wore long beards and white robes tied with a black cord at the waist. Some of them rode bicycles and looked like sails in the wind, their robes flapping around them as they veered down the crowded street.

  The Somali magala was a shantytown, hovels of flattened paraffin tins and wooden boxes. The stench and the hordes of flies were indescribable. Europeans were not encouraged to come here, as it gave an unfavourable impression of the city. The French residential sections were what one was supposed to look at – comfortable bungalows and apartment blocks, in both contemporary and Eastern styles. The contrasts between the African and European standards of living were the same as those found in Hargeisa, but here they seemed slightly sharper, more emphasized. The magala was a worse slum, the European cantonments more polished and sophisticated.

  Djibouti was surrounded and almost overpowered by the strong glare of the sun. The buildings and the dark green palms seemed to waver before our eyes. The colours blurred and glowed – the turquoise sea, the buildings of soft ripe yellow like the melons that grew in the salt flats outside the city. A really incongruous note was the famous railway, the only one in this part of the world, that chugged between Djibouti and Addis Ababa three times a week.

  We had iced German lager at a bar called Le Palmier En Zinc, where the metal palm was said to have been the first tree in Djibouti. One difference from British Somaliland struck us as refreshing – here, French people worked as shop clerks, waiters, barmaids. The barmaid in Le Palmier looked young, old, very pale. Her hair by nature was brown, and this shade showed at the roots, but it grew progressively more blonde until at the ends it was nearly colourless – it resembled those paint-colour charts the hardware stores had at home, showing how many variations of yellow it was possible to obtain.

  Most of the shops were Greek, with a few French and Indian ones. The Italians sold excellent ice cream. One of the buildings in the central square looked like an illustration from a book of sorcery, a design for a warlock’s residence. Its basic shape was indiscernible, for it was covered all over with gables and pagoda-like protuberances, and verandas flowered from it in clusters. Its walls were robin’s egg blue, its roof a bright orange slate. Grey shutters, latticed in a crude wooden filigree, were tacked onto windows the shape of mosque windows, tapering gracefully upward. The eyes of many women in purdah seemed to be peering from behind these shutters, or so we imagined, peering out at a world which they were never allowed to touch. Was it an old-style eastern brothel, or the house of a sultan whose fifty concubines were kept in strict seclusion, or a Chinese establishment that sold potted lilies in the front and opium in the back? More likely it was an importing firm that dealt in paraffin or soap, but we never found out, and I was not sorry.

  A striking feature of Djibouti was the large number of churches and missions. Only one state school existed, we were told, and many Somalis sent their children to mission schools. The Somalis with us were deeply shocked by this situation, for in the Protectorate no missionaries were allowed. They referred to the mission priests as “child stealers,” and Hersi told us why this name was used. In times of famine, here and in Italian Somaliland, many Somalis took their children to the missions, where they were fed – at the price of relinquishing Islam. Whether or not this was actually ever made a condition of receiving help, I do
not know. The significant thing was that the Somalis believed it.

  The police in Djibouti were among the most magnificent men I have ever seen anywhere. They were Senegalese, huge men with muscular necks and legs which resembled carvings of the ancient Assyrians. They wore crimson fezzes and smart khaki uniforms, and were tall, broad, handsome, completely self-assured. Hersi, Abdi, Mohamed, Arabetto and the others did not share my admiration of these Senegalese. They were extremely apprehensive about them, and I soon realized why. The French administrators here followed a stunningly simple policy – if the police were recruited from another colony, and did not have tribal or family connections in the country where they worked, they would have no objections to strong-arm tactics in dealing with the locals. The Somalis and Senegalese were completely alien to one another, and their mutual mistrust could easily turn to hatred. Divide and rule. Whatever one could say against the British administration in colonies, this was one gimmick they did not use.

  “I am fearing we getting into some trouble here,” Hersi said. “If so, who will believing us in this place?”

  Hersi relied, always, on his verbal skill, for he was of a slight and slender build. Here his oratory would not serve him, for the Senegalese did not speak Somali or English, and Hersi did not speak Senegalese or French. Jack and I shared his nervousness. The trouble could be real, or it could be trumped up. We did not want any difficulty with the authorities at this point. We could see ourselves flung out of the country, going back without the tractors for which we had been waiting so long.

  “For God’s sake, be careful,” Jack cautioned everyone. “And whatever you do, stay away from those Senegalese.”

  Yes, yes, of course – they would be extremely careful, they promised.

  “I go softly-softly,” Mohamed said fervently. “I swear it.”

  His idea of going softly-softly was to raise a thunderous howl – “Thief ! Thief !” – when my purse strap was neatly cut away with a razor blade one day and Mohamed managed to snatch it back. We narrowly escaped a riot. The hefty police glowered but providentially did not pounce. On another occasion, Abdi reckoned some Djibouti Somalis were speaking derisively about him, and once again we avoided disaster by a hair’s breadth. The old warrior was quite prepared to take them all on at once, all two hundred of them, and only through the concentrated efforts of Jack and Arabetto, one on each side of him, did we manage to drag him away.

  None of the Somalis with us had ever seen Djibouti before, and their feelings were very mixed. For one thing, the openness of the love game here was both shocking and exciting to them. In Djibouti there was a belief that it pays to advertise. Outside doorways were large signs – Club Des Jeunes Femmes Somalis et Dankali and Club Des Jeunes Femmes Arabiques. One place, especially anxious to impress, said “Established 1935,” but failed to state whether or not the same jeunes femmes had frequented the establishment since that date. Collections of postcards sold in the shops were entitled “Views of Djibouti,” but the title was not entirely accurate, as the views were mainly concerned with unclad Somali womanhood. We received a variety of reactions to the city from the Somalis who had accompanied us. Abdi virtuously maintained that the young men could not work as hard as he, an old man, and the reason was quite plain.

  “Man he get woman too much, he no get strength,” Abdi said, flexing his biceps.

  Mohamed refrained from mentioning this aspect of Djibouti, at least directly. But he, too, claimed to dislike the city.

  “Djibouti too cost,” he said with a regretful sigh. “All thing cost too much.”

  Hersi, always conscious of his status as a mullah, had yet another point of view.

  “People in this place, they are not proper Somalis,” he said. “They never showing us proper hospitality, as the Kitab commanding. They are thieves, these people, and also bloody poor Muslims as well.”

  Only Arabetto, less divided or more frank than the others, admitted he liked the city.

  “Just like Mogadisciou,” he said with a grin. “Plenty girls.”

  All were united in one respect, however. They believed that great wealth could be obtained by buying goods cheaply here and selling at an enormous profit when they returned to Hargeisa. Mohamed, Abdi and Arabetto purchased large quantities of cheap perfume, which they subsequently disposed of at a small profit. Hersi, inexplicably, decided to go into the sweater business. He bought a dozen thick wool sweaters and later could not sell them at all, for by the time we returned to Hargeisa it was the height of the hot season.

  The British consul, who was also the manager of an export-import firm here, kindly offered to put us up. His wife and child were away during the hot season, he told us, so he would be glad of the company. We accepted gratefully, and moved in. The bungalow had electric ceiling fans in every room, and the blades whirred night and day but seemed only to whip the air into an invisible froth without ever cooling it. The heat felt worse here than it had on the exposed Guban. The house thermometer read 115 one day, and after that I refused to look at it. The consul was at his office all day, and Jack was down at the docks, getting the tractors unloaded, so I was alone in the bungalow. I wanted to work on the Somali translations, but all I could think of was the oppressive heat. Finally I discovered a way to escape it. The consul’s bathroom was enormous, with a sunken blue-tiled tub like a small swimming pool, and great flagons of eau-de-cologne standing invitingly around. Each morning I filled the tub with cold water and perfume, and spent most of the day there, emerging at intervals to re-fill my pint glass of orange squash. I felt a few qualms, true, as I sat in the cool depths of the consul’s bathtub and worked on translations of desert poetry. But these misgivings were never sufficient to make me seriously consider moving to more uncomfortable surroundings for the sake of atmosphere.

  In the evenings we went out, often for dinner and then on to a nightclub. No one in Djibouti attempted to sleep before two or three in the morning. The nightclub we visited most often was on the sea front, hemmed in with potted palms and surrounded with an air of gloomy nostalgia. The orchestra was composed of Italians, and as the night wore on, they became fed up with the dreary waltzes and foxtrots. Abruptly they would leave the dance floor and go out on the veranda, where they would sing Italian songs, slow and sad ones. The same people came to the nightclub every evening. There was a kind of esprit de corps in Djibouti at night – the misfits, traitors, outcasts, smugglers, wan middle-ageing prostitutes, the colonial service men in their immaculate whites, the perspiring commercial men whose sallow faces were pimpled with prickly heat – they were all the same here in the nightclub. No difference existed between any of them now. There was no feverish gaiety, no pretence. A few of the younger dancers asked for jazz, and the orchestra obliged, but half-heartedly. Most people preferred to dance more languidly. Conversation over the drinks was low, subdued. The evening was too hot to permit raised voices. Life was an existing from one whisky-and-soda to the next, and home was a place you would never see again.

  Once when we got back to the consul’s bungalow, we found the livingroom filled with locusts. The entire front of the house was like concrete lace, open to the air in geometrical patterns, a design which ensured a maximum of insects. The locusts were everywhere – the sound of their wings was louder than the steady chunking of the ceiling fans. But we, exhausted and full of gin-and-lime, couldn’t have cared less. Jack and the consul got out rackets and used the locusts as tennis balls.

  “How many do you make it?” the consul puffed cheerily, swiping away at the locusts.

  “I haven’t a clue – I lost count after the first couple of dozen.”

  Victory was achieved at last. The livingroom floor was strewn with locust corpses, and we retired and slept fitfully under the eternally whirling fans.

  For Jack, the days were a nightmare. The equipment consisted of two Caterpillar D-4 tractors with scrapers, and a D-4 bulldozer. When he first went to the docks to supervise the unloading, he discovered that the machiner
y was packed down under everything else in the ship’s hold, crated in gigantic wooden boxes, one of which was jammed solidly behind a pillar. No one had the remotest idea how to get them out. In the port, there were no cranes heavy enough, so the job had to be done mainly with the ship’s limited equipment. Jack toiled like a coolie on the docks all day and every day. When the boxes were finally lifted out, the task of uncrating the tractors remained, and then loading them one at a time onto the old diesel truck, Alfie, and getting them back to Zeilah, where they would be temporarily left until they could be transported one by one back to Hargeisa. Ugo and Jack, in a situation filled with all kinds of technical difficulties, were forced to communicate in a tortuous manner. When Jack wanted to say something to Ugo, he gave Hersi the message in English. Hersi told Arabetto in Somali, and Arabetto passed the information on to Ugo in Italian. The reply came back in the same way. Considering that Hersi and Arabetto knew nothing about tractors, and that the words for various parts of the machines did not exist in the Somali language, it was little wonder that Jack and Ugo frequently had to make wild guesses about what the other was trying to say. As if these difficulties were not enough, the crane operator at the port spoke only French, which none of our party could speak.

  “I know now,” Jack said heavily, “exactly what the tower of Babel must have been like.”