Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993

by Paul Bowles

  UNLESS ONE is actually in this land of barbed wire and watch towers, it is hard to conceive that the aims expressed above should cause the man who formulated them to be consistently attacked in the local press as “Enemy Number One.” In an editorial entitled “Survival” the review New Comment (Nairobi) of April 5 characterises Mr. Mboya’s position as “ludicrous,” and ends with the italicised recommendation: “Hard work and longer hours should be the order of the day for Kenya.”

  The remarks of the more moderate Kenya Weekly News strike a “Now let’s try to be sensible about this thing” attitude; the argument is that government by Africans “would mean the end of civilization in Kenya and a reversion to the Dark Ages, to the countless centuries when the Africans ruled themselves and produced absolutely nothing.” The Africans’ answer to this line is that for a colonial power which can maintain itself only by imposing the conditions that obtain today in Kenya, it is impolitic even to mention the word “civilization”. For them a “reversion to the Dark Ages” might be an improvement.

  Mboya is vehement in denying one of the favorite contentions of the British in East Africa – that there is considerable tribal disunity in Kenya. I had been told again and again of how the Kikuyu were disliked by their neighbors, of how the Wakamba had offered to take charge of operations against the Mau Mau (which in the beginning was a purely Kikuyu organization), of how the Kikuyu were called “the Jews of Kenya” by the other tribes because they were more interested in education and culture than in “doing an honest day’s work,” of the inability of the members of any tribe to understand or agree with those of any other. Wishful thinking, says Mboya, who as a Luo is far removed ethnically from the Kikuyus. “We’re all together. We have to be. Kenya is a test case for all of colonial Africa south of the Sahara.”

  “They call us Mau Mau,” said one Kikuyu defensively. “Do you know what Mau Mau means?” I said I did not. He put his hand over his stomach. “When this is empty, a man is Mau Mau. You see?” Like most revolutionary struggles, the freedom movement in Kenya has its terrorist elements. But the number of European victims of terrorist attacks has been unbelievably small – perhaps fifty altogether since the inception of the movement. When you compare this with the number of victims of the counter-terror initiated by the British2 – “100,000 would not cover the number of our dead,” the secretary of one of the trade unions in Nairobi told me – you become aware of the ferocity of local European reaction to any concrete effort, however small, to change the basis of colonial society. Apart from the fact that the more easily sensationalized aspects of Mau Mau activity (its connections with animism, the ceremony of the oath and the ritual mutilation of certain victims) made it excellent copy for news correspondents, there is no justification for the enormous publicity it received at the time of its apogee. Infinitely greater numbers of French colonists, for instance, died equally horrible deaths at the hand of Moroccan terrorists during the War for Independence in 1954 and 1955, but because there was no way of camouflaging the openly anti-colonial nature of the struggle, relatively little was made of it in the world press. The inference in most of the material written on the conflict in Kenya is that Mau Mau is (the British like to say: was) an irrational outbreak of bloodthirstiness on the part of a group of fanatical savages. This unrealistic conception is a natural one to expect on the part of the local European population; further afield it becomes pure colonialist propaganda.

  Since the industry of the country has a racial structure, the trade union movement has been obliged to organise itself in accordance with that structure. The Kenya Federation of Labor thus comprises nine unions whose membership is totally African. The most moving experience I had in East Africa was the afternoon and evening I spent going from office to office within the unions’ building, talking with union directors. Their desperate faith in trade unionism came out in halting sentences, sometimes in Swahili which had to be translated for me, and sometimes in English, but all of them said the same thing: “Trade Unionism is our only hope.” The office rooms were incredibly small; when night came the only illumination they had was a candle stuck on the table.

  Segregation here is fairly thorough, but not complete. Thus although there are European and non-European waiting-rooms and toilets in the stations in Nairobi as in Mombasa the municipal buses merely have first- and second-class sections, and the seating depends wholly upon the class in which the passenger chooses to ride. This arrangement gives rise to some strange little scenes. An African policeman in khaki shorts was sitting alone on the wide three-passenger seat in front of me. An English woman boarded the bus, and the policeman shifted over to the end of the seat by the window, to leave space for her. She glared furiously at him for an instant, said in a voice for the whole bus to hear: “Well, you make a most presentable lady, I must say!” and strode indignantly to the seat behind me, where she sat down beside an Englishman, remarking: “Did you see that incredible performance?” They ended by having a good laugh together, but the meaning of the episode eluded me. I decided there must be a law providing that European women and African men shall not sit next to one another on a public conveyance. Not knowing, however, I asked about it at the first opportunity. There is no such law; it was not a question of seats at all. The English woman was angry merely because the policeman had not stood up when she came into the bus: some Africans still do, it seems, in their deference to their superiors.

  MOMBASA

  There was a riot in the Athi River Detention Camp two days before I left Nairobi; a British guard was stabbed. Severe disciplinary measures were urged by the press. Today there is a news story of a mass escape of Mau Mau convicts on their way back to a camp from the quarry where they had been working. Twenty prisoners are still at large. Before going up to Nairobi I should have hoped vaguely for their capture as a part of the necessary process of reestablishing order in the land. Now I find it difficult to wish them anything but the best of luck.

  Tangier Diary: A Post-Colonial Interlude

  Africa South, Capetown, 1957

  THE CITY is still here, spread out along the hill-tops and overlooking the circular harbor, the strait and the mountains of Andalusia. In the late afternoon people sit along the low wall bordering a vast empty lot on the Boulevard Pasteur in the very heart of Tangier, watching the gyrating clouds of swallows in the air far above, like locusts swarming. The British still have their big villas on the Mountain, but it is harder to get workmen to keep the gardens in trim. The Americans, having given up their extra-territorial rights if not their Cadillacs, can no longer make faces at the policeman who tries to stop them from going in the wrong direction down a one-way street, or snarl “Screw you, Buster,” at him as he tells them it is forbidden to park in a particular spot. To give the streets a more “European” aspect, girls are encouraged to go about “naked” – that is, without their veils. At the same time, all signs and advertisements must now be printed in Arabic as well as in Roman characters, with the result that the place looks considerably less European than it has in years.

  If you see a new face, the chances are it belongs to a policeman; the city is overrun with police, most of them not in uniform. These are what in colonial days would have been called chkama, informers. They are also skilled agents-provocateurs, used among other things for trapping girls not averse to being followed by a young man who is making flattering remarks out of the side of his mouth as he walks along. When the right moment has come, the amorous pursuer turns back his jacket-lapel and discloses his badge, a tactic which the people of Tangier are still old-fashioned enough to find wholly offensive.

  THIS IS THE SECOND anniversary of the winning of Moroccan independence. The trees along the main thoroughfares are ablaze with colored electric bulbs, and the enormous baroque kiosk in the center of the Place de France, built earlier in the year in celebration of the first visit of the Sultan to Tangier since 1947, has been cleaned up and rewired, so that its mottoes in Arabic script (as well as the four large numera
ls indicating the year – 1377) flash again. One waits for dusk impatiently, to walk beneath the canopies of lights strung from building to building; Tangier is such a small town in feeling, that a surfeit of light makes it seem much larger.

  A segment of the Moroccan population is regretful that the celebration should come at this time, so that it could mistakenly be construed by the 50,000 or so Spanish residents as having been arranged in honor of the birthday of Jesucristo. Christmas has always been the great general holiday of the year in Tangier, and it was the Spanish who animated it for a fortnight beforehand, donning masks, dressing as shepherds and marching in mock-military groups through the streets playing their zambombas (which made a noise like a lion grunting rhythmically), clapping their hands, clicking their castanets and occasionally singing between swigs of vino tinto from the flasks hanging over their shoulders. Such unbridled festivities are not at all in keeping with the surge of puritanism being propagated by the younger generation of Moroccan patriots, and the fact that it was exclusively the Spanish who indulged in them (even if to the delight of the entire population of Moslems, Jews and Christians), makes their observance that much less acceptable this year. It is only two days to Christmas, and so far I’ve seen no sign of zambombas, merrymaking shepherds, or anything else indicating the advent of the December holidays. The discretion of the Spanish civilians is understandable when one considers that at the moment their armed forces are busy shooting Moroccans, their warships are bombarding the Moroccan coast south of Agadir, and that just behind Djebel Musa (Mount Moses) which I can see from my window, at the entrance to the town of Ceuta, barricades of barbed wire have been thrown up by Spanish troops to prevent possible violence between Spanish and Moroccans.

  The twin cities of Ceuta and Melilla, at opposite ends of the Rif, are considered by the government in Madrid (and with the same variety of logic as that used by the French in defining the status of Algeria) to form an integral part of metropolitan Spain. One assumes that at some point in history they became detached from the mother country and floated across to Africa. Uppermost in the minds of Moroccans since independence has been the question of liberating these two key cities, which also happen to be Morocco’s only Mediterranean ports. On paper, of course, there has never been any question of a change of sovereignty; officially it is understood that Melilla (Spanish since 1506) and Ceuta (since 1580) would continue to be regarded as presidios inseparable from the rest of Spain.

  There is little doubt that the guerrilla warfare in progress at present in the south of Morocco over the relatively unimportant question of control of the Ifni enclave is merely the opening salvo in an extensive long-term military operation – a campaign led by the F.L.N. of Algeria and the Moroccan Army of Liberation with the aim of ousting both France and Spain from all Saharan territories. For the past eighteen months the Moroccans have been pointing out that there is every reason why their country should extend its hegemony southward through Rio de Oro, the Spanish Sahara and French Mauretania, to the northern borders of Senegal. The Algerians are equally determined that the area lying roughly between 20° and 30°N.L. and 0° and 10°E.L. shall not remain in French hands, regardless of what happens in Algeria proper. During a recent conversation about the “Greater Morocco” project with an official of the Moroccan government, I was interested to note that he used as justification of the policy the argument that at the time of the Saadi Dynasty, in the Sixteenth Century, Moroccan control extended to the Sudan, and I remarked lightly that in that case Andalucia and Castilla as well would have to be annexed. He smiled. “First things first”, he said. “That will come later.”

  So far the Moroccans show surprisingly little resentment toward the Spanish when one considers that the two nations are in a sense unofficially at war with one another. A possible reason for this complacency is that in recent times anti-colonial hatred has been directed almost exclusively against the French. Generalissimo Franco made political capital out of this tradition at the time of the French-Moroccan War, between 1953 and 1955, when, in spite of French pleas, he refused to outlaw the nationalist movement in his part of the Protectorate. Then too, relative justice in the ex-Spanish Zone was far greater than in the ex-French; that is, the Spanish government’s treatment of its colonial subjects and its treatment of Spanish subjects differed only in degree – it was all rough and authoritarian – while there was a terrifying disparity between the favoritism France showed her own nationals in Morocco and the cynical contempt with which she governed the native Moroccans. It is also true that many of the Spanish, being only slightly removed racially and culturally from the Moroccans, tended to think of the latter as human beings, whereas the French colonist’s classical epithet for them was “animals”. (A small illustration of the difference in attitudes: if a Moslem funeral passed through the streets of Tetuan or Larache or another of the Spanish Moroccan cities, some of the Spanish passers-by always stopped for a moment and crossed themselves respectfully; I never once saw this happen in the ex-French Zone.)

  Place Amrah in the Tangier Medina – Paul Bowles bought a small traditional house close by here, when he first settled in Tangier in 1947 (PB)

  Allal el Fassi, the dynamic founder-leader of the all-powerful Istiqlal party, is at the moment making a comprehensive tour of the Moroccan hinterlands, using his legendary oratorical gifts to persuade the tribesmen and peasants to defend their country by joining the ranks of the Djij Tsahrir, the army of liberation; recruiting of volunteers is going on all over Morocco. The general belief of the Europeans living here is that the Sultan is powerless to impede the activities of the Army of Liberation, and it is probably true that on occasion they have caused him embarrassment; yet there is no doubt in the mind of any Moroccan that the tactic of having an official army and another unofficial one, for whose behavior he is not necessarily to be held responsible, is definitely a part of Mohammed the Fifth’s policy, as indeed there is every reason it should be. (In the Ifni hostilities the Royal Army is used purely defensively, on the “Moroccan” side of the border.)

  The obvious question for the European mind to pose here is: how safe is it to have an unofficial army which is stronger than your official one? But the query does not occur to the Moroccan, because his faith in both the Sultan and the Djij Tsahrir makes their aims indistinguishable, and to him the mere postulating of such complexities and difficulties is sheer defeatism. And who can be certain that the man in the street is not correct? There is assuredly no proof that the Sultan is not in absolute control of his realm. It is true that such a supposition would necessarily alter somewhat the popular international conception of the Sultan as a staunch defender of democracy and the status quo, but is not a monarch’s first responsibility to his country? When Time crows that Mohammed the Fifth is unconditionally with the West, it is referring only to his present foreign policy and not to what he does within his own kingdom, which is after all his own affair. In Moroccan opinion the Royal Army and the Army of Liberation are the right hand and the left hand, and each one is fully aware of what the other is doing.

  TANGIER OF THE DUBIOUS BARS, the maisons closes, the pimps and panderers, the smugglers and refugees from Scotland Yard and the F.B.I., the old Tangier that tried valiantly if unsuccessfully to live up to its inflated reputation as a “sin city”, is dead and buried. By day the place does not look very different from the way it has always looked, but its nocturnal aspect would shock a native returning home after two years’ absence. “Gone! Shut!” he would murmur as he searched for the familiar landmarks in streets and alleys unexpectedly dark and deserted. For the social reformers have passed this way, and their war is waged loudly against prostitution and drunkenness and with slightly less fanfare against homosexuality and hashish-smoking. The first year was a tough one: the inhabitants of Tangier, among all Moroccans the only urbanites who had not been through at least a minimal period of terrorism and suffering, simply refused to believe that the Istiqlal was serious when it announced its clean-up camp
aign. Strong-arm squadrons imported in part from other cities had to be used to convince them, since the local police appeared to share the general incredulity. Street brawls were constant nightly occurrences a year ago. Now, the prisons crammed to bursting with offenders, the population is sufficiently certain of the party’s seriousness of purpose for political commandos to be no longer in evidence, and for the police to be adequate to the situation.

  But there is a catch: the Tangier police force had to be entirely disbanded and its members replaced by men from other parts of the country. It was inevitable that this substitution of personnel should give rise to widespread local dissatisfaction. The Tangerines were accustomed to recognizing all the faces among the officers of the law in their tiny world, and they were recognized in turn. Now personal indulgences are finished; law enforcement has become mechanical, anonymous, and with anonymity comes a certain ineptitude. As a Moroccan lawyer remarked the other day: “Every kid who ever carried a sandwich to a terrorist in hiding has been rewarded with a policeman’s uniform and a revolver.” The indignation of the native populace is analogous to that which would result if, say, Monaco were suddenly to be thrown open by the French and the Monegasque police replaced by French gendarmes; Tangier had become that provincial and hermetic. The only special privilege it retains is the right to buy and sell foreign currencies. From all other points of view it is just one of the Moroccan cities, still livelier than most in spite of the blue laws (Casablanca, Fez and Meknès are lugubrious), because the economic crisis gnawing at Morocco has not made as much headway here as elsewhere, but definitely no longer a place apart, operating to the advantage of get-rich-quicks from all over the world and at the expense of the poorer inhabitants, as was the case before.