Baboons for Lunch

by James Michael Dorsey

  Halis calling to prayer

  The Last Muezzin of Timbuktu

  Throughout much of the world, an ethereal call comes to the ear five times a day. It floats light as birdsong on the wind; an inviting muse, beckoning the listener to God. It is the Islamic call to prayer known as the adhan, and the caller is known as a muezzin. But, to simplify them as callers is to say that Pavarotti is a singer.

  The title comes from the Arabic word “Mu’addin,” which literally means “prayer caller.” The first muezzin, believed to have been chosen by the prophet himself, was Bilal ibn Rabah, a 7th-century Abyssinian slave from the Horn of Africa who is thought to be one of the first seven converts to Islam.

  Because of his beliefs, Bilal ibn Rabah suffered great torture at the hands of his owner before being bought and freed by a follower of Muhammed. He accompanied the prophet in his military campaigns as a sort of aid de camp and was given the honor of carrying the prophet’s spear into battle. With poetic justice, he ended the life of his former owner at the battle of Badr in what is modern-day Saudi Arabia in 624 A.D.

  But his finest moment came six years later after Muslim forces captured Mecca in 630 A.D. There, because of his loyalty, strength of character, and fine voice, Bilal ibn Rabah was picked to ascend to the top of the Kaaba, that most sacred of Islamic shrines, to send forth the first public call to prayer, and thus began a tradition that continues to this day.

  As with most ancient traditions, the muezzins have collided with the modern world; in many places they are being replaced by digital pre-recorded adhans played through loud speakers. This technology is rapidly spreading, and so it came as a great surprise when I was photographing in the sandy back alleys of Timbuktu, that true human ethereal sound found me and led me to Halis al Bokra.

  He was lean as a whippet, dressed in a simple well-worn thobe, his head wrapped in an aging tagelmoust, his sandaled feet the color of saddle leather. His sparse beard hugged his chin line and he had the beady black eyes of a desert fox. And then there was his voice. He would walk a block, stop, and throw his head back, flamboyantly framing his mouth with his hands to send forth such an enchanting sound as to defy its human origin. He was at once a singer and a performer.

  I followed his meandering route from a discreet distance, not wishing to be noticed and not wanting the moveable concert to end. When finished, he disappeared through a door at the rear of the Djinguereber Mosque. I wandered past hoping to get a look inside but it was dark, so summoning courage I stuck my head inside and called out a hello.

  He had continued on to another part of the mosque, but a quick look around spoke volumes of the man. The room was tiny and spartan: A simple wooden chair occupied a corner, its reed seat eaten through, probably by rodents. There was no window, only the wooden door with no interior lock; the floor was sand. A low bed was made on a straw mattress, and a small wooden table supported a clay oil lamp. There were matches and candles and of course, a heavily dog-eared copy of the Koran, but surprisingly, there was also a book of poetry by Emily Bronte, out of which stuck a delicate, lace-edged bookmark. I was standing inside the monk-like cell of an intellectual aesthete. I almost opened the poetry book to look for an inscription, but, embarrassed by my intrusion, I turned and left without doing so.

  The next morning I awoke to the first adhan and followed it to its source. I crept along walls, keeping to the shadows, but rounding a corner I found myself face to face with Halis al Bokram as he asked in accented English why I was following him. Off guard and embarrassed I relied on my fallback reason for such encounters that has bailed me out so many time in the past. “I wish to learn,” I said. “My name is Halis,” he replied. “Come to my room this afternoon.” Then he added, “You know where it is,” deepening my embarrassment.

  And so began the first of several conversations during my time in this ancient Malian city, sometimes in his room, with me sitting in the chair with half a seat while he sat on the edge of his bed. I told him of my interest in the role of the muezzin, so, by the light of a single candle he began a discourse on the history of his profession.

  Before accurate clocks, gathering large masses of faithful was difficult as was communicating over large distances that it was time to pray, so the first minarets were constructed. Minarets are merely hollow towers topped with the crescent icon of Islam. They accommodate a spiral staircase for the muezzin to ascend to an elevated walkway where his voice can carry across the city. At first, only blind men were considered in order to assure those living below the minarets of their privacy from prying eyes, but that practice ended long ago.

  The next morning Halis invited me to walk with him and hooked my arm with his in that natural way so common among Middle-Eastern men but misunderstood by many Westerners. He told me how Bilal had set the bar high for future generations of muezzins, so his successors have always been chosen both for their moral character and pleasant voices and each country has annual competitions to choose the finest ones. As we strode the sandy backways of Timbuktu, Halis explained that there are different tonal modes for the adhan and each muezzin is defined by the mode he occupies—much like an opera singer being a baritone or tenor. It becomes their trademark sound. With that he gave out his call softly to show me what he meant, tempering it with subtle variations that struck me as similar to Tuvan throat singing.

  Halis went on to tell me that he walked the streets rather than use pre-recordings because he wanted to keep the role pure, as Bilal had intended it to be. But with no protégé, he feared he would be the last of the street muezzins. “No young men seem interested in such a life anymore, they are of the flesh and not the spirit.” Then in a whisper that was also a lament he added, “This is a calling to something higher than ourselves and no one is answering.”

  On a more personal note I asked why he was not married because as a verger, and not considered to be clergy, that, and having a family was an option. He told me that as a young man he had served in the Foreign Legion and during the insurrection in Chad in 1969 he had witnessed such carnage that he has sworn to God that should he survive, he would devote his life to being a chaste mendicant.

  I finally had to ask about the book of poetry with the lace bookmark. With a shy smile he answered, “Well, there was once a girl.” After that, I asked no more questions.

  On our final day we shared a goodbye embrace and I walked away with that enchanting adhan growing fainter in the distance. It is a sound that will stay with me forever.

  I receive an occasional letter from Halis as he has no e-mail. He always includes a quote from a Bronte poem after which he signs off with, “Once there was a girl.”

  PART SIX

  Personal Essays

  The author and his guide Geoffrey on the Kilimanjaro trail

  Listening to the Silence

  “Pole´” is a Swahili word that means “slowly.” I first heard it on the lower flank of Kilimanjaro in Kenya, East Africa. It would in time, become one of the most important words in my life.

  Although approaching fifty at the time, I still held vestiges of the naiveté of youth that convinces us of our immortality. It had long been my way to charge straight ahead while on the road, taking in all I possibly could in the time allowed, always afraid I would miss something, and counting a trip successful by how many new sites I had visited. I saw no reason to alter that course just because I was climbing to the roof of Africa.

  Geoffrey, my stalwart guide, kept urging me to go pole´ as we passed one trekker after another on the trail, until he gave up trying, lagged behind, and forced me to slacken the pace, but by then the die was cast.

  He knew I was angry at him for him holding me back but he just took my gaze and said, “Pole´ is the only way here.” Later at 3 a.m., on a perfect night made for climbing and only 1,000 feet from the 19,341-foot summit (5895 m), I collapsed, spent and frustrated. I lay on my back gazing at more stars than I had ever seen, sucking air like a drowning man and totally defeated in
a pursuit for the first time. Geoffrey just picked up my pack and quietly said, “No one climbs the mountain unless the mountain allows it.” He believed my arrogance had defeated me and that was a heavy weight as I silently followed him pole´ down through the scree field, realizing then that ignoring his wisdom had cost me the summit.

  It was a long flight back from Africa as I visited memories that lacked detail, a litany of all the places I had visited but could only vaguely recall. I had been looking but not seeing, traveling without ever having been. Travel was my passion but I was only passing through it. Maybe there was something to this pole´ stuff.

  Lessons come to us in the most unexpected ways in the most remote places and it is usually in hindsight that we recognize these moments for what they are. That night on the mountain had shown me that my see-all approach to travel had been preventing me from seeing anything at all, but changing ones nature is easier said than done.

  Not long afterward, I was introduced to an elder of the Maasai nation by a mutual friend. The Maasai are an ancient people, nomadic herdsmen with a formidable history as warriors, and Moses had invited me to his village in the rural savannahs of southern Kenya. No sooner had I arrived than my new, slow travel plans went out with the dawn as I was overwhelmed by the color, smells, and sheer noble pageantry that is the everyday life of these people. Where some walk, the Maasai stride, and where others stand, the Maasai pose. I had never witnessed such dignity, poise, or sense of self-worth. The entire village projected a regal but heartfelt air that I could feel wrapped around me like a blanket. My new mantra of pole´ was left by the wayside as I regressed to my usual self, rushing about with a camera in front of my face; behavior which everyone in the tiny village found very entertaining. Moses, the headman, took it all in with the bemused look of a kindly father and then asked me to walk with him.

  He was stately in his long red shuka (Maasai robe) and carried an enormous walking stick I could liken to an Irish shillelagh, only much larger. It was also his staff of office. The Maasai have no chiefs, only elders, and Moses, I found out, was at the top of the food chain, not due to power or intimidation but because of his kindness and wisdom. I noticed that Moses’s tread made no noise while I sounded like a buffalo crashing through the brush. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper and his face held a perpetual smile as though Leonardo himself had painted it on. He seemed to float through the landscape as an organic part of it.

  He spoke of his life, growing up with wild animals and reckoned he was probably close to ten when he first heard a mechanical sound. He was not just an observer of his world but understood it in the most primal sense. It was a different world than mine and I found myself calming in his presence and realized he was imparting knowledge learned by his people through the centuries. He was teaching me in his silent way, a way that did not betray the process. When he too used the word pole´, it struck home with new force.

  We walked throughout the day and time did not follow us. Moses was the first person I ever met who truly lived in the moment and the joy he took from this was in constant evidence. He saw a ballet in the jump of a fish and heard an aria in the song of a bird. He pointed out creatures I never would have spotted and had the Maasai gift of storytelling, ending each tale with a moral twist. It took three of his parables before I realized that he was showing me how to look at the world through the eyes of a child, the eyes I once looked through but which the modern world had clouded over with distractions and my own self-importance. Pole´ was starting to make sense.

  Before I left, he pressed a small river pebble into my palm and told me to keep it. He said it had power and I was to think of him whenever I touched it. The power was in his words and soon that pebble became my trigger; a constant reminder of the awe and wonder that is all around me. It was my guide, whispering to me from my pocket that I was surrounded at all times by creatures and events much larger than myself. Most importantly, the pebble was a reminder to stop wasting time.

  My travels continued to take me further off the beaten path into more and more remote cultures until I found my attitude shifting from “These poor people” to “These are such happy people.” There was no sense of time in these places because life was lived by the cycles of the earth and as my days in such places grew, my internal clock slowed.

  Gradual immersion in remote cultures began to alter my world vision until I could imagine it before modern technology and I liked what I saw. By escaping from the trappings of the material world, at least temporarily, I was experiencing the natural world in real time for the first time, and it was a revelation. Moses had told me that when you are quiet, all you hear are the sounds of the earth. As I learned to slow down and listen, the sounds began to emerge. The earth was playing a symphony.

  Thanks to people like Geoffrey and Moses, I came to realize the gift I had been given. I was not only privileged to travel through these remote societies but had the ability to write about them. Many of the people I visit have no written language and when they pass their loss will leave a gaping hole in the collective consciousness of mankind. By slowing down and immersing myself in these vanishing cultures, I have been able to share them with the world at large that might otherwise have no knowledge of their existence. My books and articles have given them a voice in some small measure where there was none before and that in turn has enriched my own life beyond measure. I now feel I have true purpose, but had I not learned the meaning of the word pole´, I might still be passing through the world with blinders on.

  Our lives are an evolutionary process in which we change at a glacial pace, influenced along the way by the unconscious details and nuances of all that surrounds us. Living in an industrial nation my life is by necessity, geared to a faster pace. At home, I am surrounded by media and electronic screens. The sound of an engine is never far away while sirens, helicopter rotors, and ringing telephones are all part of life in the big city that will only become more dependent on technology. But these things do not have to dominate that life. In such surroundings it is more difficult to listen to the silence, but once a pilgrim sets foot on that road, there is no turning back. It took time to learn to appreciate the beauty of a sparrow on a phone line or to listen to the flap of a butterfly wing, but now, my God, I see that there is art and music all around me.

  My pebble is there also after all these years. It reminds me to step outside at night and gaze at a full moon rather than a television screen and it whispers of the inherent beauty of a spider’s web. It tells me how much I enjoy the chirp of a cricket and the expanding ripples of a rain puddle. One can be awed by the wonders in a grain of sand if you have an open heart.

  The natural peace of the world is gradually being pushed aside by manmade distractions, not all of them bad, while others are quite necessary, but that same ancient peace once enjoyed by our ancestors is still accessible. All you have to do is slow down, and listen to the silence. It will come to you.

  Choosing which story to write next

  Thoughts of a World Traveler

  I entered this world about the same time as international air travel so I include commercial flight under the umbrella term of “baby boomers.”

  A mere half-century after the Wright brothers first lifted humanity into the sky; the giant clipper ships began their first epic voyages through the seas of the air. The great depression and the Second World War had ended, the bitter taste of austerity and rationing was dissipating, and the common man wanted to bust out and see the world because for the first time ever, he really could.

  Journeys that used to require months, if not years, could now be made in days, but it quickly became obvious that pilots who only spoke one language could not communicate with traffic control in a foreign land. Oh to have been there for those first early flights that must have been comparable to the building of the tower of Babel. Keeping armies of translators on the payroll was not practical, so an international conference was convened in the United States in 1954, to decide on
a universal language of flight and the world chose English. For that, the French have never forgiven us but c’est la vie.

  As a little boy, I used to sit in my back yard, head craning upward, looking for those majestic metal birds climbing into the clouds that at the time seemed to me to be pure magic. How could those little specks high up in the sky be full of people? How could something that weighed so much lift off into the air? MAGIC!

  I remember my father taking me to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in the 1950s where we would stand at the end of their glass observation corridor and watch with awe and wonder as giant silver tubes filled with people rose majestically into the clouds. It was also the early days of television but I preferred going to the airport to watch people fly to and fro to anything I could see on that glass screen. The roar of engines filled the glass corridor as though they came from living beasts and nothing else could feel as powerful.

  At the time, it was beyond my comprehension to think of entering such a machine at all, let alone doing so on one side of the world and walking off of it on the other.

  Now, decades later, I travel for a living, all over Africa and Asia to gather stories for magazines and that is something the little boy from Los Angeles would never have dreamed of. Now, whenever I am stuck in the quagmire of clearing security those days come back to me. I cannot help but reminisce about the time when air travel was not just simple, but fun. We got paper tickets right from the front counter from a person who made you feel welcome and walked directly to the waiting area without getting undressed, felt up, X-rayed, or videotaped. No one looked inside your bags because no one would even think of carrying something dangerous onto an airplane.