My Happy Days In Hell

by György Faludy

  ‘Are you European?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head, then, resting his chin on his fist, looked curiously and provocatively into my eyes.

  ‘Have you never heard about the Vandals and Visigoths who came to Africa two centuries before our era and mixed with the Riffkabils?’

  ‘You are right,’ I said blushing. ‘Your only error is that the Vandals came to Africa not before our era but in it. In the fourth or fifth century.’

  ‘You have every right to reckon time from the birth of the Nazarene. But have the kindness to permit me to reckon it from the Flight!’

  Our conversation was interrupted by the bandit leader who turned to me and delivered a short speech in excellent French. He explained that there had been a misunderstanding. They were neither highwaymen nor murderers. However, as according to their information a single caravan was expected to pass that way tonight they had become suspicious when they noticed us on the mountain-top. True, for the time being, they were on friendly terms with the authorities but who knew how long that truce would last. They had captured us to find out whether we had been sent by the police. They knew Amar, or rather, he had frequently given them permission to camp on his land around the well: as a sign of gratitude they would put two camels and a man at our disposal in the morning to take us to our destination. Until then, however, they would consider it an honour if we accepted their invitation to a modest dinner.

  The marksman who was eager to show his prowess before we sat down to our meal took us up on the moonlit plateau. The Riffkabil had volunteered as a target. He took a twenty-five-franc silver coin between his thumb and middle finger and raised his hand with the coin to his temple. The old man took up his position at a distance of about thirty yards and, almost without taking aim, shot the coin from between the lad’s fingers seven times in succession with a pistol. When he wanted to repeat the performance with his rifle from a distance of a hundred and fifty yards we were fortunately called to dinner.

  Sidi Mohammed – this was the leader’s name – sat with his back straight, his legs crossed, a solemn expression on his face and a beautifully adjusted white turban on his head. A large earthenware dish was placed in the centre of the mat, containing boiled chicken, baked lamb and rice. They probably considered the ceremony of eating from one dish a pledge of friendship. The conversation was slow and dull, turning around conventional subjects, spiced with flatteries and polite compliments. We had reached the sweet when our host turned to me and asked me about my origin, my profession and why I was going about in Arab clothes. He seemed to find great satisfaction in my replies, I could feel excitement rise in him, his beard seemed to bristle as if with electricity generated in his body. Finally he raised his hand like some deity calming the fury of the waves, though it was his own emotional storm he was trying to calm.

  ‘It is a great honour that I am permitted to be your host. It is also a great honour that you have garbed yourself in djellaba and fez. But the circumstance that you happen to be a writer fills me with extraordinary joy. I have met many people in my lifetime but I have never yet encountered a writer. When I became paymaster in Abd el-Krim’s army I often saw journalists, even Americans. They never stopped asking questions and put down our replies in fat, little notebooks with a Parker pen, in shorthand. It is difficult to give good answers but it is easier to ask good questions. Those people,’ he snorted, ‘did not even know how to ask.

  ‘The way I see it, writers never ask questions,’ he continued, gazing at me intently without moving his head. His pupil rose and sank almost imperceptibly as he observed me from my forehead to the point of my slippers,

  For a while he remained silent; perhaps he was deliberating what to say and, at the same time, enjoying his power, for he, and be alone, having the right to speak, the others had to wait until he finished. There he sat like a Phoenician merchant-god: his hand, much softer and pudgier than one would have expected from his relatively narrow but very muscular arm, was extended in line with his chest and on each finger sparkled a heavy, gaudy, gold ring. The master marksman watched his leader with awe; Amar, on the other hand, delighted in the play of tensing and relaxing muscles in his own long, narrow feet, from which he had stripped the socks. In the light of the acetylene lamp that scattered the multiple shadows of the tall tea-glasses, the pitcher, our bodies and limbs in criss-crossing stripes over the bright mat on which we sat, his foot looked like a gracefully extended, nervous giraffe neck. The young Riffkabil eyed the moon as if she were a woman he wished to accost and take straight to bed. Only I observed them all conscientiously, as if this were my duty.

  ‘It is getting late and you must be tired,’ the chief said at last somewhat stiffly. ‘I do not want to exhaust you with endless stories. I am afraid that were I to tell you stories like Sindbad the Sailor was wont to tell his listeners, you would be sorely disappointed. Everyone who has travelled in various countries has similar stories to tell. I do not even know whether or not you intend to remember me in your works. Perhaps, when one day you recall this evening it will be the physiognomy of the moon and not mine that will rise in your mind.

  ‘A while ago, when you summed up your life-story in a few words I felt deeply moved. Willy-nilly, you have conjured up all the things I regard as the spurs of my actions and which, it seems, are common to us both. It was then that I decided to tell you something about myself. Not a story, but rather a train of thought.’

  He raised his tall glass of mint tea to his lips and, with a flick of his hand, gave us permission to do likewise. He waited a few moments, rather for the sake of tension than to give himself time to think, then he began.

  ‘I was born at Dar-es-Salaam and studied at the al-Azhar University in Cairo like my father and grandfather before me. Then I became head of the business inherited from my ancestors, We have always been importers of tea and spices but we also owned a large clothes shop in the Bazaar. We sold Moroccan fezes, burnouses from Manchester, djellabas from Rumburg and liks from Osaka. I had five assistants and two clerks, I knew the captains of the ships; in Sumatra it was my pepper they loaded last so as to unload it first back in Dar-es-Salaam. My caravans left and returned with exemplary punctuality carrying my tea to the Chad Lake arid to the southern regions of Fezzan.

  ‘My private life was not unhappy. I had bought myself three wives, gave my first-born son an excellent education in preparation for his entering the University of Cairo. I was considered one of the worthiest citizens of the town and had numerous friends. I was on good terms with the British authorities and therefore had little trouble with my taxes. I did not have to cheat more than was usual.

  ‘I liked my occupation. Late in the afternoon I used to go to the shop, supervise the accounts and look into the store-room to make sure my ginger wasn’t getting mouldy or my tea too dry. After dinner I talked with my friends at the café and before supper I visited the brothel to have a little fun with one or another of the girls. In general I preferred them unformed and immature, between the age of ten and eleven. After supper I was wont to return to the shop, for that was always the busiest time. After midnight I locked up the shop myself, returned home and spent the night with the wife whose turn it was.

  ‘You can sec that my happiness was complete, but even had it not been so I should not have complained because I never pretended that man was born to happiness. And yet, each night, after having sent my employees home but before locking up the shop, I used to walk up and down filled with despair and anxiety. I was in complete darkness as to the cause of my despair but it was becoming increasingly unbearable. The clock ticked on unceasingly, the years flew by with frightening speed. But it was not the mad flight of years that scared me. It was the thought that I should live in exactly the same way until the sand of my life had run out. When the son of my friend, a goldsmith from Zanzibar, was called up for military service by the Sultan, I was sick with envy. I thought: lo, this boy who was brought up from the day of his birth to be a goldsmith like his father,
will now learn soldiering, become an outstanding horseman or a mediocre sergeant, but at any rate, he is on the threshold of a new life.

  ‘Gradually I began to understand the cause of my despair. I, my father before me and my son after me, had all been born into a determined way of life, a sharply outlined mould, a finished pattern. We obtained everything ready-made, our occupation, our friends, our pastimes, our pleasures. I lived like a grain of wheat sown by a peasant in the soil at a certain spot. What can a grain of wheat do? Grow into an ear and wait for the scythe.

  ‘I related my problem to a friend of mine, a captain who was always travelling to distant lands. He replied that though he loved his profession, he often thought of me, my peaceful life, my beautiful family and great happiness with envy when he was fighting the storms of the Indian Ocean or waiting for cargo in filthy harbours. He said he would gladly change places with me, and that I was lucky not to have been born in his skin. But such is man: on firm ground he yearns for the ocean, but spending his days on the sea he dreams of a quiet life on firm ground. He warned me not to rebel against Allah’s will, then invited me to accompany him on a trip that would take several months, in order to regain my equanimity.

  ‘I explained to him that he had misunderstood me. Had I been born in his skin I should feel just as miserable as I was feeling now. The only solution would be if he took over my business and I became captain of his ship. However, he knew nothing about business and I knew even less of navigation; besides, my family, social and other obligations made it impossible for me to free myself from what I had been born into. I was not rebelling against Allah’s will; on the contrary, I felt convinced that Allah had given every man several lives to live in a single lifetime and only convention prevented us from doing so. My friend looked at me sadly, shook his head and departed.

  ‘Two weeks later I was again in the throes of utter despair. This occurred at the time when the news of the Riff uprising reached us, though I must confess the event itself made little impression on me. I was so depressed that I did not even visit the brothel, although I knew that a new consignment had arrived. I sat on the sea-shore and wondered whether I had lost my reason, whether there was really no escape from this life of misery, this life without will or freedom. I mused for hours without finding an answer to my question. On the way back I noticed a blazing red light in the sky. At first I thought it was a figment of my imagination, a heavenly sign, a vision. But when I got closer I realized that the Bazaar was burning.

  ‘I immediately started to figure out the value of my stores compared to the amount at which they were insured. The day before, a caravan had taken a thousand burnouses and almost my complete stock of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg to be sold elsewhere: the fire brought me a profit of at least ten thousand pounds. Then I stopped calculating: it was not money I needed, but glory. My whole body trembled with joy because I knew the time had come, that here was the hour for which I had waited. I concealed myself in an archway and listened to the desperate cries of people running like madmen from one end of the Bazaar to the other. I learned from the talk that the fire had spread with terrific speed in the palm-leaf-covered alley and in the dry store-rooms, that panic had broken out in the Bazaar and several persons had lost their lives in the flames. Suddenly I distinguished the smell of burning tea-leaves. I had twenty-five tons of tea in my store-room. I don’t know whether you have ever smelled burning tea but I can tell you that it is a divine perfume.

  ‘The next second, however, I felt the smell of burning human flesh and, nauseated, ran to the harbour as fast as I could. By then I knew exactly what I would do, although I had not been conscious of making plans. I hired a fisherman from Zanzibar to sail me across the channel and then took a ship to Port Sudan. For years I had been carrying large sums of money on me, though I never quite knew why.

  ‘My first idea was to open a brothel in Cairo. But my mother was of Persian descent and her brothers, who lived in Shiraz, often came to Cairo. Besides, I could easily run into a business friend and a few years hence my son would come to Cairo. But even apart from these considerations, this occupation was far too stationary and that was exactly what I wanted to avoid. This is how I came to the Riff, four thousand kilometres from my place of birth, and offered my services to Abd el-Krim.

  ‘I lived in an ecstatic dream, like an adolescent boy, although the wrinkles under my eyes were deepening and when I sat alone in the afternoons I felt the skin on my cheeks crack like dry tree-bark. I had exchanged my old life, characterized by stability, for a life of perpetual movement and while, until then, I had always been led by utilitarian principles and regarded my servile humility towards the authorities as an irksome duty, I was now fighting for the freedom of the Arabs against the armies of Spain, selflessly, without hope for reward. Even my rules of sale and purchase had been turned upside down. Until then, my principal worry had been to sell my wares and empty my store-rooms. Now my dominant preoccupation was how to fill them. I found all this indescribably amusing.

  ‘Believe me, friend, the rebels of the Riff would have been defeated within a few weeks had I not arrived on the scene. In a very short time I familiarized myself with the intricacies of European politics of which I had been entirely ignorant, and found out that only from the Germans could we expect to obtain arms, money and equipment. Because the Republic had held on to the claims of Imperial Germany in Morocco. Our weapons were smuggled to us across the desert and the desert bandits became our bitterest enemies because they attacked the caravans and stole our consignments. It was my task to thwart the intentions of the robbers. My activities were successful, our consignments arrived untouched even from the Bay of Guinea.

  ‘I was the only person in Abd el-Krim’s entourage who knew from the first that our cause was hopeless. But, just as I had enjoyed ridding myself of the rich, cautious and lazy merchant I had been and assuming the role of an enthusiastic, selfless and determined freedom fighter, I was glad that this life, too, would come to an end. I knew it in my bones that this stage of my life would go up in flames like my store-rooms in Dar-es-Salaam, and that I should again begin a new life.

  ‘The alarm bell rang when the French promised the Spanish considerable military aid because they were afraid the rebellion might spread to French Morocco. We were, at the time, expecting a large consignment of arms from the south. With twenty hand-picked men I set out to meet the caravan in the valley of the Draa. One day, at dawn, we were attacked by bandits on the road between the Atlas and the Anti-Atlas. It was the same large band that had caused us so much trouble in the past. The battle lasted throughout the day. At sunset one of our cases of ammunition exploded and the stable in which we had spent the previous night was burned to the ground.

  ‘After darkness fell I lay in the sand not far from the still smoking ruins of the stable, wondering whether it would not be best to retreat under cover of the night and abandon the battle of uncertain outcome. Suddenly a hand touched me on the shoulder. It was a messenger from the enemy camp who had come to tell me that their leader was gravely wounded and would not live to see the morning. The gang, unlike their leader, did not want to fight against the liberator of the Arabs. They hoped to be accepted as volunteers and asked me to lead them to the Riff as their commander so that they might fight on Abd el-Krim’s side.

  ‘With the stimulating smell of the burning stable in my nose I felt the same excitement I had felt at Dar-es-Salaam while watching the burning of the Bazaar. I told the messenger that I was ready to accept their offer, would merge our two teams and take command. There was but one condition: that instead of joining Abd el-Krim we should continue as bandits, with me as chief. It took some time before I could convince the messenger and then the bandits. It turned out that by the time they had, in the kindness of their hearts, put an end to the suffering of the wounded, only eight of them remained. Later it became obvious to me and my men that even these were utterly unsuited to being members of a well-organized gang and therefore we finished them
off. Quickly,’ he added with the smile of a merchant praising his wares, ‘quickly and painlessly.

  ‘However, it was not easy to convince my own men either. But when they heard that the rebellion had been defeated they realized how right I had been and repaid me for my wisdom in loyalty. Since then I have completely forgotten Abd el-Krim. Only recently did it occur to me that in his exile on the island of Reunion he is probably speaking of me as his most loyal follower who died a hero’s death fighting for him against the bandits of the desert.

  ‘I felt that the freedom I enjoyed in the months that followed was fuller, sweeter, than any freedom on earth. The moments when we held up a caravan were moments of pure delight. The men in the caravan were usually petrified with fear, they aged ten years in one second. Some of the camels bolted and the women, first to realize the seriousness of the situation, screamed with fright. This scream was their answer to everything they believed awaited them; this high-pitched scream was the synthesis of all screams, that of the fear of death, the terror of rape, of surprise, a prelude to desperate sobs and many other things, although I still hadn’t made up my mind what to do with them. Should I have them killed? Should I have them raped? Should I treat them to a feast and let them go after giving them gifts? Should I rob them and release them? Should I hold them for ransom?

  ‘There I stood and I could do whatever I pleased. More than once I refrained from attacking a rich caravan though we were starving and only rarely did I force a boy or a woman in a captured caravan to share my bed. This, too, was part of my freedom. I wanted to be free, fully and completely free, like a god who has neither greeds nor passions.

  ‘Gradually I began to see that the road to freedom led from the outside towards the inside, from the sphere of action towards the sphere of thinking, from the rational pleasures of the world to the spiritual orgies of asceticism, more perverted than physical perversion. When travelling on camel-back or lying in ambush I had excellent opportunities, almost compelling opportunities to meditate. I recalled the books I had read in my childhood and adolescence, books that had lain yellowing and dusty in the lumber-room of my memory. Not that I had forgotten them, but I simply had no use for them. Now at last I understood the meaning of my readings, al-Maari’s rationalism, Iraqi’s mysticism, Saadi and al-Farid, the whole library that I had carried around in my head for decades without using it. I added my own thoughts to theirs and after that they filled my mind in the daytime as well as under the soft light of the moon.