My aunt always started the story saying, “You are here
because of what happened to your great-grandmother long ago.”
They began rounding up the people in the fall.
Some were lured into surrendering by offers of food, clothes,
and livestock. So many of us were starving and suffering
that year because the bilagáana kept attacking us.
Kit Carson and his army had burned all the fields,
and they killed our sheep right in front of us.
The literature of travel and exploration during the early modern period in the West is largely a blood-soaked chronicle of jingoism overseas, where animalistic natives are either exterminated or “civilized”, or both. As outsider perspectives on the West during this period are quite rare, it is particularly interesting to pause on the reflections of Mirza Sheikh I’tesamuddin (c.1730–c.1800), who embarked on a diplomatic mission to Britain on behalf of the Mogul emperor in 1765. I’tesamuddin’s memoirs of his trip, The Wonders of Vilayet, see him tour many parts of the world, including a visit to Oxford’s renowned “madrassah”, and his observations of the age-old Anglo-French dispute are engrossing for their deviation from white masochistic accounts of the “other”:
The French say that the present excellence of the English in the arts and sciences, trade and industry, is the result of French education; in the past, when they lacked this education, they were ignorant like the mass of Indians. However, even the French admit that the English have always been outstanding soldiers. The French say that the lower classes of Englishmen do not go to foreign countries to seek trade or employment because, being stupid and without any skills or business acumen, they would fail to earn a decent livelihood. The French, on the other hand, are skilled in all the arts and sciences, and wherever they go they are cordially received and acquire dignity and honour in diverse professions. I realized clearly that the French are a conceited race, whose conversation was always an attempt to display their own superiority and to unfairly belittle other nations.
It is in earlier chapters of The Wonders of Vilayet, however, that we come across a fine description of the slaveocracy of French Mauritius (1715–1810), where the Code Noir ruled supreme:
The French notables live in mansions built on stockaded plots of a couple of bighas in the middle of their estates, which are cultivated with the help of a hundred or so male and female slaves. Oranges, Indian corn and vegetables are grown for the market. One half of the proceeds goes to the landlord, the other half is divided among the slaves. These slaves are brought as adolescents from Bengal, Malabar, the Deccan and other regions and sold for fifty to sixty rupees each […] It is reported that the Portuguese were the island’s first colonizers, but they found it so heavily infested with snakes, serpents, scorpions and other noxious creatures that they were soon forced to abandon it. After them the French moved in and had better luck. French priests, using a kind of necromancy, caught the dangerous creatures, took them out to sea and drowned them. Since then there is no sign of them on the island. Of course, Allah alone knows how far the story is true.
As technological advancement shortened distances, economic migration accordingly increased, and in a time of renewed xenophobia, as the West raises it drawbridge to keep out the rabble of its present and past empires, many would benefit from turning to the words of Mary Antin (1881–1949), a Jew who emigrated from Czarist Russia at the age of ten and who in 1912 penned a famous memoir of her journey from immigrant to citizen, appositely entitled The Promised Land. In a lesser-known work published only two years later, They Who Knock at Our Gates, Antin posed an increasingly important question that continues to divide opinion around the world to this day: do our beliefs in fundamental human rights truly afford anyone a say over restricting new arrivals into a country? As Antin says:
Let any man who lays claim to any portion of the territory of the United States produce his title deed. Are not most of us squatters here, and squatters of recent date at that? The rights of a squatter are limited to the plot he actually occupies and cultivates. The portion of the United States territory that is covered by squatters’ claims is only a fraction, albeit a respectable fraction, of the land we govern. In the name of what moral law do we wield a watchman’s club over the vast regions that are still waiting to be staked out? The number of American citizens who can boast of ancestral acres is not sufficient to swing a presidential election.
While nativists across the world spew their hatred, the death toll continues to rise as increasing numbers of people put themselves at risk in order to seek better lives. The 2017 UN Migration report noted that just over 170,000 migrants illegally entered Europe by sea that year, with “70 per cent arriving in Italy”. “In Lampedusa”, a poem written by the Italo-Eritrean Ribka Sibhatu (1962–), records one of the many forgotten episodes of the crisis, when a ship carrying 518 passengers sank taking 368 victims with it, almost all of whom were Eritreans fleeing the dictatorship of the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice. Sibhatu’s realism is unsparing:
To send a distress call,
they set a sail on fire, and as the
flames began to spread, some frightened people
jumped overboard and tipped the boat.
They were all adrift in the freezing sea!
Amidst that storm, some died right away,
some beat the odds and cheated death,
some who could swim tried to help
some drowned using their last breath
to send messages back to their native land.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
from Coriolanus, Act III, Scene 3
BRUTUS
There’s no more to be said, but he is banished,
As enemy to the people and his country.
It shall be so.
CITIZENS
It shall be so, it shall be so.
CORIOLANUS
You common cry of curs, whose breath I hate
As reek o’th’ rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air: I banish you!
And here remain with your uncertainty.
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts;
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders, till at length
Your ignorance — which finds not till it feels
Making but reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you
As most abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising
For you the city, thus I turn my back.
There is a world elsewhere.
ANDRIAS MACMARCUIS
The Flight of the Earls
This night sees Éire desolate,
Her chiefs are cast out of their state;
Her men, her maidens weep to see
Her desolate that should peopled be.
How desolate is Connla’s plain,
Though aliens swarm in her domain;
Her rich bright soil had joy in these
That now are scattered overseas.
Man after man, day after day
Her noblest princes pass away
And leave to all the rabble rest
A land dispeopled of her best.
O’Donnell goes. In that stern strait
Sore-stricken Ulster mourns her fate,
And all the northern shore makes moan
To hear that Aodh of Annagh’s gone.
Men smile at childhood’s play no more
Music and song, their day is o’er;
At wine, at Mass the kingdom’s heirs
Are seen no more; changed hearts are theirs.
They feast no more, they gamble not,
All goodly pastime is forgot,
They barter not, they race no steeds,
They take no joy in stirring de
eds.
No praise in builded song expressed
They hear, no tales before they rest;
None care for books and none take glee
To hear the long-traced pedigree.
The packs are silent, there’s no sound
Of the old strain on Bregian ground.
A foreign flood holds all the shore,
And the great wolf-dog barks no more.
Woe to the Gael in this sore plight!
Hence forth they shall not know delight.
No tidings now their woe relieves,
Too close the gnawing sorrow cleaves.
These the examples of their woe:
Israel in Egypt long ago,
Troy that the Greek hosts set on flame,
And Babylon that to ruin came.
Sundered from hope, what friendly hand
Can save the sea-surrounded land?
The clan of Conn no Moses see
To lead them from captivity.
Her chiefs are gone. There’s none to bear
Her cross or lift her from despair;
The grieving lords take ship. With these
Our very souls pass overseas.
Translated from Irish Gaelic by Robin Flower
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
from Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Many a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pré,
When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile,
Exile without an end, and without an example in story.
Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed;
Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind from the north-east
Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of Newfoundland.
Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to city,
From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern savannas, —
From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the Father of Waters
Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the ocean,
Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of the mammoth.
Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, heart-broken,
Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor a fireside.
Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards.
Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and wandered,
Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things.
Fair was she and young; but, alas! before her extended,
Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life, with its pathway
Marked by the graves of those who had sorrowed and suffered before her,
Passions long extinguished, and hopes long dead and abandoned,
As the emigrant’s way o’er the Western desert is marked by
Camp-fires long consumed, and bones that bleach in the sunshine.
Something there was in her life incomplete, imperfect, unfinished;
As if a morning of June, with all its music and sunshine,
Suddenly paused in the sky, and, fading, slowly descended
Into the east again, from whence it late had arisen.
Sometimes she lingered in towns, till, urged by the fever within her,
Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and thirst of the spirit,
She would commence again her endless search and endeavor;
Sometimes in churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses and tombstones,
Sat by some nameless grave, and thought that perhaps in its bosom
He was already at rest, and she longed to slumber beside him.
Sometimes a rumor, a hearsay, an inarticulate whisper,
Came with its airy hand to point and beckon her forward.
Sometimes she spake with those who had seen her beloved and known him,
But it was long ago, in some far-off place or forgotten.
“Gabriel Lajeunesse!” they said; “Oh yes! we have seen him.
He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have gone to the prairies;
Coureurs-des-Bois are they, and famous hunters and trappers.”
“Gabriel Lajeunesse!” said others; “Oh yes! we have seen him.
He is a Voyageur in the lowlands of Louisiana.”
Then would they say, “Dear child! Why dream and wait for him longer?
Are there not other youths as fair as Gabriel? Others
Who have hearts as tender and true, and spirits as loyal?
Here is Baptiste Leblanc, the notary’s son, who has loved thee
Many a tedious year; come, give him thy hand and be happy!
Thou art too fair to be left to braid St Catherine’s tresses.”
Then would Evangeline answer, serenely but sadly, “I cannot!
Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere.
For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway,
Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness.”
Thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor,
Said, with a smile, “O daughter! Thy God thus speaketh within thee!
Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted;
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
Patience; accomplish thy labour; accomplish thy work of affection!
Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.
Therefore accomplish thy labour of love, till the heart is made godlike,
Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!”
Cheered by the good man’s words, Evangeline laboured and waited.
Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the ocean,
But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, “Despair not!”
Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort,
Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence.
Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer’s footsteps; —
Not through each devious path, each changeful year of existence,
But as a traveller follows a streamlet’s course through the valley:
Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam of its water
Here and there, in some open space, and at intervals only;
Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that conceal it,
Though he behold it not, he can hear its continuous murmur;
Happy, at length, if he find the spot where it reaches an outlet.
OLAUDAH EQUIANO
The Middle Passage
At last, when the ship we were in had got in all her cargo, they made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel. But this disappointment was the least of my sorrow. The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often
fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. Happily perhaps for myself I was soon reduced so low here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck; and from my extreme youth I was not put in fetters. In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself; I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs. Every circumstance I met with served only to render my state more painful, and heighten my apprehensions, and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites. One day they had taken a number of fishes; and when they had killed and satisfied themselves with as many as they thought fit, to our astonishment who were on the deck, rather than give any of them to us to eat, as we expected, they tossed the remaining fish into the sea again, although we begged and prayed for some as well we could, but in vain; and some of my countrymen, being pressed by hunger, took an opportunity, when they thought no one saw them, of trying to get a little privately; but they were discovered, and the attempt procured them some very severe floggings.
MIRZA SHEIKH I’TESAMUDDIN
from The Wonders of Vilayet
It was late March when we arrived in Mauritius. There I met a Sareng — a lascar officer — from Chittagong and seven other Muslim lascars from Hooghly, Vellore and Shahpur. They had come to the port city to pray at the Eid congregation that marks the end of Ramadan. They had all settled on the island and had no inclination to return to their own country, having, so to speak, married into slavery. Their wives were slaves of French masters who wouldn’t in any case allow them to leave the island. I was glad to meet my countrymen, whose hospitality ensured my comfort during the sixteen days we stayed there. But I also grieved inwardly because they had forsaken their own land. Mauritius has a perimeter of 600 miles. The central part is taken up by hills, woods and wild tracts, but the eastern coast has 2,000–3,000 bighas of cultivated land and a small city where the French have built a factory and a fort.
The Heart of a Stranger Page 6