The Prophet's Camel Bell (35 page)

Around the edges of the
balleh
, the camels milled and drank, led by tribesmen whose faces expressed nothing except the desire to get their beasts watered and back to the encampment. Somali women and girls hitched up their robes around their knees and waded into the
balleh
to fill their water vessels, which they then placed upon their heads and sauntered off
with barely a glance in our direction.

Hersi, snorting with angry laughter, came back from a consultation with a group of the tribesmen. He threw up his hands in mock despair.

“I am not knowing what kind of people these bush people. They saying – what is these
Ingrese
doing here, beside our
balleh
?”

It was their
balleh
now. They had assimilated it; it belonged here. Jack grinned.

“It's okay. Tell them we're going now, and we won't be coming back.”

As we climbed into the Land-Rover, an old Somali with a face seamed and hardened by the sun of many
Jilals
, passed by with his string of camels.

“
Ma nabad ba?
” he spoke the traditional greeting. “Is it peace?”

“
Wa nabad
,” we replied. “It is peace.”

And then we drove away.

When the time came, we packed everything in our bungalow, the few possessions we brought here and the things we had accumulated, the skin of the cheetah that Abdi shot, the magical ostrich egg, the spear that the thieves had dropped, the camel bell that Ahmed Abdillahi gave to us. We had accumulated a great many other things as well, but these took up no space in our luggage, for they were memories – of Sheikh, of the Haud, of Zeilah and Hargeisa, of all the people we had known here.

Outside the small stone bungalow, a flock of birds with golden breastfeathers and electric-blue wings had gathered in the thorn tree. I had never known what their proper name was, but I thought of them as firebirds, for they always
screeched distinctly the Somali word for fire –
Dab
–
dab
–
dab
. Their raucous voices followed us as we left.

Past the pepper trees waving sedately outside the Club, down the dusty thorn-fringed road, through the streets swarming with children and camels. Past the strolling Somali girls with their silk headscarves, past women in ragged brown robes, past the hobbling beggars with their outstretched hands. Past the mudbrick tea shops where young men in white shirts and bright robes were having tea and politics in the shade. Finally the airport, and then goodbye. Almost before we knew it, we were flying over the Gulf of Aden, and although we could not quite believe it, Somaliland was already in the past.

And yet the voyage which began when we set out for Somaliland could never really be over, for it had turned out to be so much more than a geographical journey.

Whenever we think of Somaliland, we think of the line of watering places that stretches out across the Haud, and we think of the songs and tales that have been for generations a shelter to nomads on the dry red plateau and on the burnt plains of the coast, for these were the things through which we briefly touched the country and it, too, touched our lives, altering them in some way forever.

Out in the Haud, we felt we had heard the Prophet's camel bell. We had come to know something of these desert people, their pain and their faith, their anger, their ability to endure. The most prophetic note of that bell, however, was one we scarcely heard at all, although the sound was there, if we had had ears for it. In less than ten years, the two Somalilands that had been under British and Italian administration had joined and gained their independence as the Somali Republic. What will happen there now, no one knows,
but whatever course they take will not be an easy one in a land that has so few resources except human ones.

The best we can wish them, and the most difficult, is expressed in their own words of farewell.

Nabad gelyo
– May you enter peace.

THE END

A
s yet there is no official orthography for the Somali language. I have therefore used an anglicized version of Somali words, which will give the reader some idea of pronunciation. I have also, in this glossary, included in brackets the spellings recommended in 1961 by the Linguistic Committee of the Somali Ministry of Education, under the chairmanship of Musa Haji Ismail Galaal.

abor:
mound-building termite (
aboor
)

amiin:
Amen (
amiin
)

aul:
Soemmering's gazelle (
cawl
)

balleh:
natural pond or manmade excavation for holding rainwater (
balli
)

belwo:
short lyric poem (
balwo
)

balanballis
: butterfly or moth (
ballanbaallis
)

biyu:
water (
biyo
)

beris:
rice (
bariis
)

dadabgal:
night spent together by an engaged couple (
dadabgal
)

dero:
Speke's gazelle (
deero
)

dibad:
dowry (
dhibaad
)

Dhair:
the autumn rains (
Dayr
)

dab:
fire (
dab
)

faal:
a way of telling the future (
faal
)

Guban:
the coastal plain; lit. “burnt” (
Guban
)

Gu:
the spring rains (
Gu
)

gabei:
long narrative poem (
gabay
)

gerenuk:
Waller's gazelle (
garanuug
)

gabbati:
token payment made to bride's parents (
gabbaati
)

galol:
type of acacia tree (
galool
)

ghelow:
a night bird (
galow
)

gedhamar:
an aromatic herb (
geedchamar
)

gorayo:
ostrich (
gorayo
)

harimaad:
cheetah (
harimacad
)

helleyoy:
refrain used with songs (
helleyoy
)

In sha' Allah:
if God wills it (
In shaa' Alla
)

is ka warran:
give news of yourself (
is ka warran
)

Jilal:
the winter drought (
Jiilaal
)

jes:
one family travelling alone (
jees
)

jinna:
species of ant (
jinac
)

kharif:
the summer monsoon. An Arabic word

khat:
a leaf with narcotic properties (
qaad
)

Kitab:
the Book, i.e. the Qoran (
Kitaab
)

libahh:
lion (
libaach
)

lunghi:
a length of cloth used as a man's robe. An East Indian word

magala:
town (
magalo
)

miskiin:
destitute (
miskiin
)

marooro:
a plant (
marooro
)

mas:
snake (
mas
)

meher:
percentage of man's estate made over to his wife (
meher
)

ma nabad ba?:
is it peace? – Somali greeting (
ma nabad baa
)

madow:
black (
madow
)

Nasa Hablod:
two hills near Hargeisa; lit. “The girl's breasts” (
Nasso Hablood
)

nabad gelyo:
may you enter peace – Somali farewell (
nabad gelyo
)

nabad diino:
the peace of faith – response to “nabad gelyo” (
nabad diino
)

nin:
man (
nin
)

odei:
old man, elder (
oday
)

Qadi:
Muslim judge (
qaaddi
)
qaraami:
a love poem; lit. “passionate” (
qaraami
)

rer:
Somali tribal unit; section of a tribe (
reer
)

rob:
rain (
roob
)

shabel:
leopard (
shabeel
)

saymo:
a dangerous situation (
saymo
)

shir:
a meeting (
shir
)

shimbir:
bird (
shimbir
)

shaitan:
devil (
shaydaan
)

tusbahh:
Muslim prayer beads
(
tusbach
)

torri:
a knife or dagger (
toorri
)

tug:
a river-bed (
tog
)

wadda:
road (
waddo
)

Wallahi:
by God (
Wallaahi
)

wadaad:
a man of religion, a holy man (
wadaad
)

wahharawallis:
a type of flower (
wacharawaalis
)

warya:
hey! (
waariya or waarya
)

wein:
big (
weyn
)

warabe:
hyena (
waraabe
)

wa fulley:
he is a coward (
waa fulle
)

yarad:
bride-price (
yarad
)

yerki:
a small boy (
yarkii
)

I
am very grateful to Dr. B.W. Andrzejewski, of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, for the information and advice he has given me about the spelling of Somali words.

I should also like to thank Messrs. Martin Secker & Warburg, Ltd., for their permission to use four lines from “The Gates of Damascus,” by James Elroy Flecker, as the motto.

M.L.

Sir Richard Burton,
First Footsteps in East Africa
, J.M. Dent, London, 1856.

R.D. Drake-Brockman,
British Somaliland
, Hurst & Blackett, 1912.

J.A. Hunt,
A General Survey of the Somaliland Protectorate
,
1944–50
, H.M. Stationers.

Douglas Jardine,
The Mad Mullah of Somaliland
, Herbert Jenkins, London, 1923.

J.W.C. Kirk,
A Grammar of the Somali Language
, Cambridge, 1905.

M. Laurence,
A Tree For Poverty, Somali poetry and prose
, Eagle Press, Nairobi, 1954.

R.G. Mares, “Animal Husbandry in Somaliland,”
British
Veterinary Journal
, Vol. 110, Nos. 10 and 11.

O. Mannoni,
Prospero and Caliban: A Study of the Psychology
of Colonisation
, Methuen, 1956.

BY CLARA THOMAS

W
hen Margaret Laurence reminisced with me about her African years, it was almost always about the books that had issued from them and her admiration for African people and their ancient tribal cultures. There were snatches of life memories – sometimes the early years of her children Jocelyn and David would surface, or the stint of baby-sitting she willingly did for a British officer in Ghana, not because she was fond of him, but because he had a complete set of the writings of Sir Richard Burton which she read avidly, or, most surprisingly, the fact that, while in Ghana, she typed for Barbara Ward the manuscript of her landmark work on African nations,
Faith and Freedom
. Often we talked of the African writers she admired so much, particularly
the Nigerians, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, to whom, with others, she had paid tribute in
Long Drums and Cannons
. Achebe she met only three times, the last time in 1984 when she was already deliberating on the memoirs she would write and when he was struggling to finish his novel,
Anthills of the Savannah
. I was present at all of their meetings and watched, deeply moved, as an empathetic, brotherly-sisterly bonding sprang up from their first moments together.

Two years in Somaliland and five in Ghana had been a powerful catalyst to Margaret's talent, issuing in
A Tree for Poverty
, her translation of Somali folk-tales and poems, the novel,
This Side Jordan
, the stories collected in
The Tomorrow-Tamer
, and culminating in
The Prophet's Camel Bell
, the book in which she closed the door on her African years, her apprentice years, and prepared the way for Manawaka. Many times she said that, once in Canada again, she knew beyond doubt that literature's themes were universal and that now she had to write of her own place and her own people. Ten years away from Somaliland she wrote
The Prophet's Camel Bell
, reflecting on her diaries and reconstructing her younger self from their notations and her memories. The book was “the most difficult thing I ever wrote,” she said. Fiction she always considered her true
métier
. The first draft of
The Stone Angel
was already complete. Hagar in her wilderness had been growing in Margaret's mind and imagination for years, ever since her desert encounter with the Somali woman and her dying child. Then Hagar found her voice and began to tell her story. “It all came out complete. I did scarcely any revision.”

She had found her themes in Africa, though – exile, the journey towards wholeness, personhood, knowing “the heart of a stranger,” the unique dignity of every individual, the drive to freedom, faith, and the recognition of grace. It was during
one of our frequent telephone conversations, she at “the Shack” on the Otonabee River near Peterborough, I in Toronto, that she lighted upon “Heart of a Stranger” as the title of her essay collection. We were both sorting through our heads for possibilities and that one, the absolutely right one, surfaced – to our enduring delight. Margaret honed her techniques in the African works, too. Undoubtedly her ear for tones of speech and shades of meaning was naturally acute, but it was certainly sharpened by her hours of listening to the Somalis tell their stories at their campfires and then working with the translations of her interpreter. She was fond of saying that she wrote
This Side Jordan
in episodes, then spread them all out on the dining-room table and thought, “Now what'll I do?” What she did was to achieve a compelling novel, playing many levels of variation on the themes of love and loss, exile, despair, and the finding of faith as she juxtaposed her African characters moving pell-mell into a new day and beset by its manifold terrors, and the anxious, exiled British, former masters and now, speedily, deposed and homeless, strangers to both Africa and England. At the same time she bore witness to her love of Ghana, the deep understanding she had developed for its past and its people, and the hope she shared with them for its future. The same themes permeate the nine
Tomorrow-Tamer
stories, written between 1954 and 1962 and first published separately, though begun while she was still in Ghana.