The Prophet's Camel Bell (24 page)

For me, also, his acting had tremendous value. It compensated to some extent for the fact that I was not hearing the stories in Somali, in which he would have been able to express them with better style. Hersi belonged to that ancient brotherhood of born story-tellers. He played by turns the different roles in the tale, transforming himself by some alchemy of expression or stance into whatever he chose – a saint or a sultan, a thief craftily plotting how to outwit a naïve tribesman. He told me the story of the three wise counsellors – three hashish addicts whom a disgruntled sultan called in when his regular counsellors had all failed him. And for this moment, Hersi became the hashish addicts, dreamily twirling in their narcotic dance. When he told me of Arawailo, he made me see the barbaric splendour and the cruelty of that fabled queen. He told me of Deg-Der, the cannibal woman, and I could visualize her horrible countenance and her donkey's ear. He was not himself at these times. He was so carried away by his stories that he lived them, taking on the characters like cloaks. His timing was always exact – he never once spoiled a story by giving away the ending before the proper moment. When he finished, he would be exhausted and would have to be revived with a mug of strong spiced tea, for he was an artist and he gave to each performance the very best of which he was capable.

——

I do not know what has become of Hersi in the years since we last saw him. It is unlikely that he will ever find what he seeks. He is no longer a tribesman, but there is no real place for him in the realm of clerks and book-keepers, either, where he would so much have liked to establish himself.

But at least in Africa a good story-teller is never entirely without honour. Out in the Haud, when the tales are told around the fires, perhaps the thin unimpressive figure still rises and begins, with his flawed speech, to build in words the caliph's palace and the enchanter's tower, while around him the listeners sit, pulling their robes close against the chill of the night, and urging him on.

“What happened next? What did they do then?”

He warms, as always, to his audience. “It was like this – listen, and I will tell you –”

And he becomes the people in the tales, the great Wiil Waal who drove the last of the Galla kings from Jigjigga, or Ahmed the miserable woodseller who – wondrously – married a sultan's daughter.

M
ohamed was always singing
belwo
. He was fond of voice tricks – the song would rise weirdly to falsetto and plummet to bass within the space of a few notes, and the
yerki
, the small boy who was cook's helper, would applaud with a wooden spoon on a saucepan. Mohamed was not the quiet sort. He liked noise; he liked to make his presence known to the world. Whether he was preparing dinner for six, in town, or opening a tin of spaghetti in the Haud, he did it with dash and verve. He dressed vividly, favouring robes of royal purple, and when he visited the town for an evening, he put on his shoes of oxblood leather, tossed an embroidered kashmir shawl across one shoulder and tucked a small cane, like a swagger stick, under an elbow. He felt I was making a ridiculous fuss about nothing when I strongly objected to my brightly patterned linen tea-towels being used as turbans.

One might have imagined – as we did at first – that he was always like this, jaunty and cheerful, skimming on the
surface of life like a beetle on a rain pool. But not so. He had times of melancholy, when some incommunicable despair took hold of him, and then he would sink into a silence so complete that he seemed to have gone elsewhere, to have vacated his shell which somehow moved around and worked without his being in it. Then some slight thing, some absurdity – the
yerki
chasing a chicken, to slaughter it, and being outdistanced by the ruffled and squawking bundle of feathers – would bring him back, and he would be garrulous and laughing once more. Mohamed had never herded camels, but this was not to say that life had been less hard for him than for the desert men. It had been quite hard enough, but in a different way. He had been born in Berbera and had lived there all his life until he came with us to Sheikh and Hargeisa and the Haud. He had worked as a servant since he was ten, beginning as cook's helper and going on to become houseboy. He considered that he had been fortunate.

“I get lucky. Only few times I no get job –”

Now, at eighteen, he was a cook, and this appeared to be as far as he could go. He was quick-witted, intelligent, energetic – and illiterate. Easy enough to say, as many
Ingrese
did, that what a man has never known he cannot miss. But Mohamed had lived by his wits long enough to know that he had wits. He had a friend at Sheikh school, a boy whom he had known since childhood. Abdillahi's father had been in the army and was killed in the war; the government was paying for the boy's education. Mohamed brought Abdillahi over one day to meet us. Abdillahi, whose English was excellent, began to discuss the Gezira Scheme in the Sudan, a project about which he had been reading. Mohamed, who could not follow the conversation at all, and who had never heard of the Gezira Scheme, stood very much apart, his face vacant as sand. He
never brought Abdillahi to see us again.

Mohamed's father, like a good many Somalis, had once been a seaman.

“He was going to Italy, and England, and – oh, many places, many many places.”

He could not be more specific, for outside his own country, these two were the only ones whose names he knew. When his father returned to Somaliland, Mohamed told us, he bought camels with his savings. But most of them died one year during a severe drought. The ones that remained were taken, after the father's death, by Mohamed's older halfbrother, who still kept them in the Guban.

“Seven belong for me,” he said. “Seven camels, mine.”

Perhaps some day he would be able to claim them, but it would not be easy, for the half-brother was determined not to give them up. This brother was Mohamed's only close relative. He did not remember his mother, for she died when he was very young. He clung to the thought of his elusive inheritance, the camels which were rightfully his. Unlike most Somalis, who could bring themselves to slaughter or sell one of their camels only under conditions of desperate need, Mohamed would have liked to raise what cash he could from his small herd. His ambition was that of a town-dweller – to buy one of the mud-and-wattle tea shops.

When the war came, Mohamed was thrown on his own resources and lived in any way he could, by thievery or begging – he was careful never to relate precisely how. When the Italians invaded Somaliland, the British retreat was attended by considerable confusion. Arms and equipment were left scattered and abandoned. In Berbera the Somalis foraged, gleaning what they could. On one occasion, some Somali families out in the Guban became alarmed when they
received the news that heavily armed persons were approaching their camp. The tribesmen quickly gathered to meet these invaders, expecting a band of rival tribesmen, bent on attack. Instead, they saw a small boy who staggered as he walked, for he was weighted down with the three rifles he was carrying. Relating it, Mohamed rocked with laughter.

“I find them some place,” he said. “I think maybe I can sell them.”

Was he fortunate, to be able to laugh, or was his laughter a screen, a necessary protection? I do not know. All I know is that he was eight years old at the time, and he was alone. Those who grow up within a tribe are never alone, but Mohamed's father in becoming a seaman began the process of breaking away, and while Mohamed still prudently maintained some associations with his tribe, he had not lived within his clan for many years and he seemed uncertain how much they would stand beside him in time of need.

Shortly after he came to work for us, he asked us to leave the house unlocked when we went out in the evenings. Locking the bungalow was a reflection upon him, a seeming doubt of his capacity to guard our goods against outside thieves or his own temptation. He used small quantities of our tea and sugar, for this was one of the perquisites of a cook's job, but no one else was allowed to touch our possessions. We agreed to leave the house in his care, for we took his request as an indication of his sense of responsibility and also of his personal liking for us. This came as no surprise to us, for unconsciously we had fully expected ourselves to be more likeable as employers than the majority of English, known to us as “the sahib types.” Were we not more democratic? What a good thing that Mohamed appreciated this quality.

In fact, of course, whatever we may or may not have
been had nothing to do with the case. But only slowly did we come to see that Mohamed's identification of his own interests with those of his employer would have taken place whoever the employer happened to be. He acted not in response to what we were, but to what he himself was. But for a time we managed to ignore any indications to the contrary, and saw him mainly as happy and joking, self-reliant and responsible, because that was the way we wanted him to be.

We were all the more easily misled, however, because he was misleading, although he did not mean to be. He appeared so confident, so much his own master. He scorned to ask, when he did not know something. He would never admit ignorance. At Sheikh, once, we were given a cucumber – a rarity here, and not to be treated lightly. I told Mohamed we would have it for lunch, but it never occurred to me to tell him how to serve it.

“Fine,” he said. “I fix it.”

His manner indicated that he was completely familiar with this type of vegetable. Nobody could have guessed that he had never seen one before. And so the precious cucumber was duly served for lunch – boiled.

He was always at his best in times of crisis. The night of the big storm in camp, when everything was soaked and muddy, and the desert had become a lake, I went over to the cook-tent after the rain to tell Mohamed not to bother trying to cook anything. A tin of beans would be sufficient for dinner. To my astonishment, I discovered Mohamed calmly preparing dinner on several charcoal burners which the
yerki
was holding down so they would not float away. Mohamed himself, wading around in six inches of water, was not only unperturbed – he was positively triumphant. He appeared to be enjoying himself greatly.

“Dinner in five minutes,” he promised briskly.

And in five minutes dinner appeared, complete with soup course.

Mohamed came to me one day with an exercise book and a pencil.

“Memsahib – you will teach me to read and write?”

No one had ever asked me to teach anything before. I was pleased by this request, and touched by his wish for self-improvement. Certainly, I told him, I would be only too glad to teach him. Why I should have thought myself qualified to teach anyone to read and write, especially in a language not his own, I do not know. But it seemed to me that it would be relatively easy, for Mohamed had a quick mind and a good memory.

I have read, in many books about Africa, of Europeans who taught their servants how to read and write.
Under my tutelage, Ali made very rapid progress and was soon able to write down his market accounts and to read the correspondence in The Times
. I wonder how they managed it. Mohamed was as clever as the next person, but he had never become accustomed to the discipline of constant practice. He soon grew tired of copying the same words over and over. As for myself, it became obvious that I did not have the faintest idea how to communicate a knowledge of reading and writing. One day he closed his exercise book and smiled ruefully.

“I think maybe not much use,” he said.

The failure, I felt, was mine. Perhaps he felt it was his. Actually, we had both under-estimated the difficulties. But it was I who should have known better, simply because I was literate and ought to have had some comprehension of the fact that literacy is not acquired magically in a few days. What else had I under-estimated?

Ismail had been hired as houseboy, Mohamed as cook. Ismail was Habr Yunis, while Mohamed was Habr Awal, but this difference of tribe was only one of the troubles between them. Mohamed was the younger and least experienced of the two, yet we had made him cook, which was usually the senior post. Ismail had a brooding nature, and his resentment grew inwardly for some time without our being aware of it. He became more and more quiet; he barely spoke at all. Then, suddenly, touched by some trivial flame, the whole situation exploded. He and Mohamed had wrangled before, but never as vehemently as this. They screamed accusations at one another, and when we tried to sort it all out, we became hopelessly entangled.

Mohamed claimed that Ismail had frequently said, “Is the sahib your father, that you don't steal from him?” Ismail claimed that Mohamed had told everyone the sahib and mem-sahib liked him so much they could not refuse him anything.

Who to believe? We were angry at both of them. We resented everything that was implied in the conflicting statements. Had Ismail, so competent and so devoted to the formalities (“all sahibs have soup on trek”), merely been using this apparent concern as a mask for wholesale theft? Had Mohamed misconstrued what we intended as casual friendliness, and taken it instead as some magnetic attraction, some power over us? We felt ourselves to be misunderstood, and we knew that we had misunderstood both of them. More than anything, we felt confused. Only one thing was plain.

“We can't possibly discover which of them is telling the truth,” Jack said. “Probably neither one is. All we can do is choose the one we want to keep, and fire the other.”

Rightly or wrongly, we chose Mohamed. Ismail left us with bad feeling all around, having first handed us a letter
written by a local scribe, in which his many grievances were set down in copious detail. We did not deceive ourselves that justice had been done. But what was justice, in this situation? We did not know.