by Tahir Shah
And it’s the masses that Rachel and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are working on. Shying away from the militant image of the old days, the Knights have set their sights on national leadership.
‘I think we’re going to see our organization becoming a major political force in this country,’ says Rachel earnestly. ‘The Klan has a sensible, sane approach to the turmoils of America, and women have a central part to play in the new Ku Klux Klan.’
Rachel Pendergraft stops midstream.
She glances at Charity and Shelby as a lump gathers in her throat. Then, ever so softly, she whispers in a faltering voice:
‘I see with all sincerity that the Klan will sit in the White House. I mean it sincerely. I believe a Klansman will lead the nation within the next twenty-five years. I could never see a black man in the White House, he wouldn’t belong there. The White House is white. It was built for a white leader!’
The rise of women in the Klan during the ’twenties is thought to have begun after they were given the power to vote, in 1920. When the Ku Klux Klan was at its height, there were an estimated three million Klanswomen in the United States. Known as Kleagles, the women developed their own Klan groups, which were set quite apart from those of the men. Ironically, when suffrage was granted, women began to focus on their own differences.
The roots of Ku Klux Klan go back to 1865, and the end of the American Civil War. Donning ominous white hooded robes, the original Klansmen hoped that their gowns would give them a supernatural aura. Taking its name from the Greek kuklos, meaning a ‘circle’, the Ku Klux Klan first came to life in a small wooden shack in Pulaski, a remote town in east Tennessee. In homage to the founders of their order, the Knights of the KKK return to Pulaski once a year. They return to honour their ancestors and to preach their reworked message.
On a stormy day in mid-December, Rachel Pendergraft leaves her motel room. Bundling her daughters aboard their rusting olive-green van, she joins the Klan convoy heading for Pulaski and the Homecoming.
Advertisements in the local press announce: Hey Kids! Come see Santa Klaus * Souvenirs * Krafts * Kountry Music * Klowns * Bagpipers * Have your picture taken with a robed Klansman.
As the rain pours down, the convoy reaches the centre of Pulaski. Ashamed of the town’s sordid legacy, the people of Pulaski have stayed at home. The mayor has no power to refuse the Klan its right to demonstrate.
‘Until a couple of years ago,’ he says wearily, ‘they used to yell “Nigger Out! Nigger Out!” and do Nazi salutes as they marched. They wanted to change the street names to things like “Ku Klux Klan Boulevard” and “KKK Hill”. But worst of all is hearing people from other communities referring to Pulaski as “The Klantown”.’
Once at the main square, Rachel and her associates set up stalls and Ku Klux Klan bunting. As Klansmen appear from the woodwork, the new face of the Klan is put on view. Merchandising and public donations form the basis of the Klan’s funds.
‘We have hot-dogs, nachos, T-shirts and baseball caps,’ says Rachel, unloading a stack of brown boxes. The merchandise is aimed to present the friendly face of the new Klan.
‘Klan Kitsch’, as it’s known by non-Klansmen, comprises of KKK ball-point pens, badges which read ‘Klan Kids Kare’; T-shirts with slogans such as ‘Racial Purity is America’s Security’; KKK Barbie dolls, and ceramic hooded Klansmen with eyes that glow red in the dark.
The current issue of The White Patriot newspaper, a monthly publication written and edited by Rachel Pendergraft, is passed around. Inside, along with articles telling Klansmen not to kill ‘Negroes’ or to pedal drugs, is a section enticing you to become ‘a friend of the Knights of the KKK’. For this, you have to remit a small fee and sign a form declaring ‘I am an Aryan and not of racially-mixed descent. I am not married to a non-white, nor do I date non-whites’.
On the right side of the square, a batch of hot-dogs are being cooked up by a grey-haired Klanswomen. Like many present, she’s dressed in the new politically-correct uniform of the Klan: black tie and white shirt, its front peppered with badges. She sports a KKK baseball cap as well, embroidered with a robed klanswoman and the slogan ‘girls in the hood’.
Rachel turns on a recording of the German Nazi Youth song Tomorrow Belongs to Me. Her smile turns to a look of disappointment as her father whispers something in her ear. Unfortunately, he tells her, the Klan bagpiper won’t be attending, on account of the fact he lost a finger in a fight the night before.
Standing over a stall selling hooded KKK Barbie dolls is Anastasia Robb, Rachel’s sister-in-law.
‘I made the Barbie robes myself,’ she winces. Aged just nineteen, Anastasia, who has been married to Rachel’s brother for a year, is a new recruit and already a diehard Klanswoman.
‘The Klan’s the main part of my life now,’ she says resolutely, ‘I’ve never had any close minority friends. I always knew that I wanted to marry an Aryan man and have Aryan children. When I became a member of the Klan my family was apprehensive at first. They had mixed feelings. Although they’re not members, they’re supportive.’
Anastasia, an intelligent, blonde all-American girl, is glad she joined the Klan when she did.
‘Women are important members of the KKK,’ she explains, ‘as the Klan becomes more liberal it’s attracting more and more women who see its message as the future they want for their children.
‘It’s important for kids to be involved. They should come to rallies. The media steers them in the wrong direction and gives them stereotypes. Children come here and learn what the Klan is all about. They learn about our white Christian heritage.’
Rank and file members of the Klan continue to arrive from across the country, pouring into Pulaski’s main square. Although attendance is hindered by the terrible weather, dozens have travelled thousands of miles to come home to the birthplace of the KKK. Shelley Watts, fifteen, whose family has made the three-day drive from Utah, has come with her parents and five sisters.
‘We’re Mormons,’ she says. ‘The Mormon Church doesn’t like us being members of the Klan, but the KKK is a very important part of our family. I want to stick up for the white race, and when I have children I’ll bring them up to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.’
As the Klan’s Homecoming gets underway, anti-Klan groups monitor the proceedings from a distance. Pat Kelly of Neighbours Network looks on through binoculars from the far end of the square.
‘Much of the hard day to day work is done by the women’, he says, ‘they tend to get on with running the organization while the men sit about talking. But don’t be deceived, the women don’t have an equal voice with the men. The Klan claims that it puts women on a pedestal, but that’s far from the truth. What we’re seeing increasingly is the attitude that “my skin colour is my nation”. This may be one of the new “female” effects on the Klan. We’re also seeing a severe drop in the average age of a Klan member: most are in their late teens or early twenties.’
Back at the T-shirt stall, Cheri, a middle-aged lady from New Orleans, is trying to find a KKK sweatshirt in her size. ‘I’m the new kid on the block,’ she says through a southern drawl. ‘Although I always wanted to join up, I’ve never had the courage to become a member until now. I’m super-patriotic: I care what happens to America! I saw a Klan advertisement on cable TV. Now I’m a member and I’m going to recruit all my friends!’
Thom Robb, Rachel’s father, saunters about ensuring that everyone is buying enough hot-dogs. Short and rather mousey, in a dark suit and shabby raincoat, he has struggled hard to bring the Ku Klux Klan up to date. In the past he called for the execution of gays and the shooting of illegal immigrants, but now, like his daughter, he’s careful to be PC.
Robb rose to power when his predecessor was thrown in jail for trying to overthrow the government of Dominica. As leader of the Knights, he ditched the designation ‘Imperial Wizard’, preferring ‘National Director’, and has striven to clamber aboard the political bandwagon.
; ‘We de-robed on our marches,’ he explains in his articulate manner, ‘because we wanted to identify with the American voters. We still wear robes at our private cross lightings because they’re part of tradition, in the same way that a judge wears a powdered wig to court.
‘My two sons and Rachel are very much involved in the Klan,’ he says. ‘Women have an important part to play in the KKK. We all have the same thing to lose – our white heritage. Remember that the majority of American voters are women. We must therefore appeal to women and appoint them to high levels of leadership.’
The de-robing of Klansmen was seen by KKK-watchers as an insane move. An undercover police officer, ensuring orderly behaviour, notes that the robes were always popular with the Klansmen.
‘Once you go public you lose the allure,’ he says, ‘you forfeit the mystique, and lose the people who are attracted by that. Stephen King said that you should never open the closet door all the way, or you’ll see the zipper up the monster’s back.’
When the hot-dogs are all gone, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan prepare to march around Pulaski. Rachel gathers the children together, hands out KKK banners, and helps arrange the Klansmen ten feet apart. Orders are given that they are to march in silence. There are not be no racist slogans.
In absolute silence, the men, women, and children of the Klan march around the deserted streets of Pulaski. Some of the young generation clutch Klan flags and others balloons. At the head of the entourage is Rachel Pendergraft.
Walking on her right is the KKK Santa Klaus.
As the Klan marchers reach the house where their organization was born, they pause. Rachel’s face swiftly loses its characteristic, yet often forced, smile. With cold eyes, and an expression that could break glass, she raises her arm in a Nazi salute.
Beside her, Santa Klaus does the same.
THIRTY-NINE
Remembering Sir Wilfred
THE FIRST TIME I MET Sir Wilfred Thesiger, he was sitting in the shade of his porch in Kenya’s remote Samburuland, drinking piping hot tea.
The porch was attached to a shack, which looked as though the great English explorer had built it himself. It clung like a limpet to the side of the hill. The temperature was touching forty-five degrees and Thesiger was wearing a pair of thick twill trousers and a tweed jacket with tatty elbow-patches and a tear down one side. He was staring out dreamily at the zebras slumped under the thorn trees down in the valley below.
The noise of my final ascent up over the crags, panting and wheezing, caused him to turn slowly and to peer down. Narrowing his eyes, he shaded a wrinkled hand to his brow, and called out, ‘You’re fussing like an old woman, what’s wrong with you?!’
My first visit to Thesiger’s home began a friendship that lasted until the explorer’s death at ninety-three. It was a friendship of mentor and pupil, one that I value higher than any other of my life. Almost twenty-five years have passed since the afternoon I turned up in the Kenyan desert, and first set eyes on him, sitting there in tweeds. I was nineteen and was in need of raw encouragement, waiting for the order to seek out a path of my own
Thesiger was born a centenary ago, his life reflecting the stark hardship of the desert world in which he made his home. He is remembered as one who chronicled regions of Africa and the Middle East that hadn’t changed in centuries, documenting them in the nick of time – before they were reshaped forever. And he is remembered as an icon, the kind of man who endured the unendurable without any fuss, and refused to tow a politically correct line.
These days he’s regarded as an almost mythical character, someone unapproachable… the kind of lofty figure who’s cast in bronze and put on a plinth somewhere posh.
But, for me, Sir Wilfred was never aloof or distant in any way.
He was warm and caring, with a shockingly mischievous sense of humour, and the ability to inspire – not in a limp way, but deep down to the marrow of your bones.
His was inspiration right out of the Boy’s Own Annual.
As he told me again and again over the years, by my age he had already been invited to the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia. After the pomp and grandeur of it all, he set off to hunt lion in the land of the Dannakil, a tribe who wore the testicles of their slain victims around their necks. He was still little more than a schoolboy himself. But death-dicing travels among the Dannakil in the Afar desert, paved the way for a life of exploration, a life unbounded by the expectations of others.
After Eton, Thesiger went up to Oxford. It was there that he won a Blue in boxing, and acquired the profile that was in many ways to become his trademark. It was best described in Eric Newby’s classic travel narrative, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush: ‘…and Thesiger himself, a great, long-striding crag of a man, with an outcrop for a nose and bushy eyebrows, forty-five years old and as hard as nails…’ That meeting between the two extremes of English traveller was in the wilds of Afghanistan – yet it is for his travels in Arabia that Wilfred Thesiger is best known.
Following active service with the fledgling SAS during World War II, he spent more than five years with the nomadic Bedouin of the Arabian peninsular. He once told me that, from the first moment, he decided the only way to live with the Bedu was to do so without any compromise. He would live as they did, enduring levels of harshness that have become the thing of legend.
Along with them he twice crossed Rub al Kali, the fabled Empty Quarter, developing bonds of kinship that were far more important than anything else. Indeed, he would say that without his companions, a desert crossing would have been a meaningless penance. It was for the kinship alone that he travelled.
As a travel writer, I know too well the pressure which burdens one of getting a commission, the cold hard cash that will pay for the next great journey. But the wonderful thing about Thesiger’s writing is that it came about years later, almost as an after-thought. He never intended to write about the years with the Bedouin, and only did so when his mother and the respected publisher, Mark Longman, begged him to do so. The critically acclaimed Arabian Sands followed, and was first published in 1959. It established Thesiger as one of a kind – the last of the Victorian gentlemen-explorers.
After Arabia, Sir Wilfred travelled to the marshes of southern Iraq. The lure was at first the prospect of a little duck shooting. He stayed in the marshes for years, returning once in a while to his mother’s flat in Chelsea’s Tite Street, where Oscar Wilde had once made his home. Again, only after leaving the marshes, and the life he so loved there among the labyrinthine waterways, he published The Marsh Arabs, in 1964.
As one who had known the rugged beauty of Arabia, and traditions that had been moulded by the desert terrain, Thesiger was understandably critical of the change that seemed to follow on his coattails. No long conversation with him would ever be complete without periods of silence, in which he was transported back to his youth – to the world of the Dannakil, the Bedouin, and the Marsh Arabs. In the same way, no cup of tea in his company was quite complete without him snarling at the ‘infernal combustion engine’, or exclaiming that cars and aeroplanes were robbing the world of all diversity.
It wasn’t only motorized vehicles of which Thesiger disapproved. He despised anything mechanical. Towards the end of his life, he returned to England to live at the top-floor flat on Chelsea’s Tite Street that his mother had bought during the Blitz. I used to go over a great deal, thrilled that I no longer had to traipse up to the shack in Samburuland to see him.
One summer afternoon we were sitting in silence over mugs of weak tea. Sir Wilfred was ninety, and had become a great deal more frail. He enjoyed just sitting in his old armchair, in the company of another. I always felt it were as if we were squatting around a campfire in the desert, the two of us lost in our thoughts.
Something stirred me to break the silence.
I spat out an idea that I hadn’t thought through very well – said I was thinking of cycling from London down to Cape Town.
Thesiger look
ed up, squinted over at me hard, wiped his eyebrows away from his eyes. ‘Sounds like nothing but a stunt,’ he said coldly. I choked out an explanation, insisting that it was all about meeting people along the way. The great explorer winced, sipped his tea pensively. Then he seemed to rise up out of the chair, his lanky form looming over me like an executioner. ‘On a bicycle you won’t meet anyone or see anything at all!’ he barked. ‘You’ll be going too fast! If I were you, I would walk it.’
I breathed in deep, and championed the idea. ‘Walking, yes, I’ll walk it,’ I said nervously. Thesiger seemed pleased. He almost smiled. I asked if he had any advice, advice for walking. Sir Wilfred touched a long index finger to his lips and sunk back into his chair,
‘Get yourself a good pair of army boots,’ he said.
FORTY
Romantic Travel
IF MOROCCO IS A LAND of romance, then its heart is surely the remote Berber village of Imilchil, without doubt the most romantic place I have ever been.
Nestled in the Atlas, it lies beyond the Gorge of Ziz, in a wild and unforgiving frontier of narrow passes and sweeping mountain vistas.
Once each year, in September, a festival is held in which the young are permitted to choose a spouse for themselves. In a realm usually confined by tribal tradition, the would-be brides and grooms are free to pick whomever they wish to marry.
Dressed in roughly woven striped black robes, jangling silver amulets and amber beads heavy around their necks, the girls stream down from their villages. There’s a sense of frivolity, but one tempered with solemn apprehension, as they approach the doorway to a new life.
Reaching the village square, they catch first sight of the grooms. All of them are dressed in white woollen robes, their heads bound tight with woven red turbans, their eyes darkened with antimony.
The betrothal festival owes its existence to a legend, itself a blend of love and tragedy, a kind of Moroccan Romeo and Juliet. The story goes that, forbidden to marry, a couple who hailed from feuding tribes, drowned themselves in a pair of crystal clear lakes called Isli and Tislit. (One version of the tale says the lakes in which they drowned were made from their tears). So horrified were the local people at the loss, that they commenced the annual festival.