In Praise of Savagery. Warwick Cairns

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СКАЧАТЬ I wasn’t allowed to. It was for the dancers only.’

      ‘But you would have liked to?’

      ‘Yes, I suppose I would. To know what it was like in there. But it wasn’t really an option. Anyway, they came back out after a while and they arranged themselves around the edge of the circle, and the drums and the singing got louder and they began swaying forwards and backwards; and then one of the dancers crossed over into the circle and lay down on his back at the feet of an older man, who was the medicine man. The medicine man had a knife in his hand and he bent down and made four cuts in the dancer’s chest, two above each nipple, and then he took two skewers made of eagle-bone from a pouch at his waist and pushed them through the holes he had made, and attached them to two cords coming down from the pole. The dancer got up and began to dance backwards until the cords pulled tight. And then another dancer lay down, and another and another until they were all strung up to the pole. And you could see that some of them had done it quite a few times before, because of the rows of scars on their chests. And then they danced backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards to the music. And meanwhile an old man went into the circle and knelt down, and the medicine man made cuts in his back and attached cords to them to which he tied a buffalo skull; and then a small child climbed onto the skull and the old man stood up and began to drag the skull, with the child still on it, around the outside of the circle.

      ‘And the music got louder and louder and the dancers danced more intensely, pulling back harder against the cords with each pass, until at length one danced right up almost to the foot of the pole and then ran backwards, arms outspread, pulling with all his weight and snapping the skewers in his chest. Then it was the turn of the next dancer.

      ‘Meanwhile, I became aware of a queue forming over to one side of the circle, a line of people, young and old, male and female, all baring their shoulders. Up at the head of the queue stood a medicine man and his assistant, and as each person approached, they did something to each arm in turn, and the person came away with blood running down them.

      ‘I asked my companion what was happening and he said that the people in the queue were friends and relatives of the dancers, and they were each giving what he described as an “offering”.

      ‘And it struck me then that it would be only polite, only good manners, for me to do the same.

      ‘When I got to the front of the queue the medicine man’s assistant took hold of my arm with one hand, and with the other he pushed a pin or needle into my skin and lifted it up towards the medicine man, who took a small, sharp knife and ran it smartly up the needle, nicking the top of the skin, and causing the blood to flow. Then they did the same on the other arm. And then, using the same knife and the same pin, they did the same to the next person, and the next and the next.

      ‘And that,’ I said, ‘was why I came to have a blood test.’

      There was a slight pause, during which the doctor appeared to shake himself slightly, as if waking from some private reverie.

      I was aware that I had been talking for quite some time.

      ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s say between ourselves that this was your reason for coming here. But really, in this day and age, you know, it is perfectly acceptable to have issues with your … personal orientation. Absolutely fine. Just so long as you take the appropriate precautions. You’ll find details in the leaflets you’ll get on your way out. Oh, and your test result is negative. Congratulations.’

Preparations

      Two weeks later I was at Thesiger’s flat, with the books and the sword, the paintings and the photographs, drinking too much sherry than was good for me and talking about travel. I didn’t mention the clinic experience, though. It didn’t seem the place to do so.

      And he invited me out to Africa, and said he would show me the country round about, and I asked—I don’t think I mentioned this earlier—but I asked if he minded at all if I brought two companions along; my brother Frazer and my friend Andy. He replied, ‘Well, if they’re anything like you, it will be a pleasure to see them.’

      ‘They are,’ I said.

      Although on what level Andy—black athlete with a Mohican haircut—may be thought to be ‘like me’ is, perhaps, a matter for debate; but he was a good travelling companion. He’d been with me in America, building trails in the mountains, and was blessed with an extraordinarily even temperament and an ability to take more or less anything in his stride. Like the clear, sunny day, for example, on top of a bare rocky ridge high above the treeline, when we were caught, quite suddenly, by a violent electrical storm that appeared out of nowhere, as they do in those parts. There was no shelter and nowhere to hide, and a steep drop on either side, and the lightning began to hit the ground around us, so close that we could smell the singed granite boulders just feet away from where we stood.

      I was overwhelmed by fear and panic, and the sheer size and force of the storm, the power of it; and I screamed at Andy to take his pack off and get down on the ground. He considered my words carefully, rain hammering down on his head and lightning striking all around him, then removed first one arm and then the other from his rucksack, upon which hung a large aluminium cooking-pot. This done, he put it neatly down on the ground and crouched down beside it. He was like that.

      He was keen on the idea of going to Africa when I told him about it.

      ‘Is it going to be tough going, do you think?’

      ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but then again he is eighty, this Thesiger, so there’s probably a limit to how tough.’

      I booked our flights with Aeroflot, on account of it being the very cheapest airline I could find, by about £5; and in the mistaken assumption that one airline is very much like any other.

The Awash Station

      The Awash Station was not an inspiring place to be at the best of times.

      It was a low whitewashed bungalow, tin-roofed, built by the French and plonked down in the middle of nowhere on a wide, dusty plain, by the side of railway tracks that stretch off endlessly into the distance in either direction, linking Addis Ababa with what was then French Somaliland, and which is now called Djibouti.

      Behind the station stood the optimistically named Buffet de la Gare, where lodging, of a kind, and food, of a kind, could be obtained by travellers who had no other choice.

      For the fifteen Abyssinian soldiers who had been chosen by their superiors, on Government orders, to await the arrival of the Englishman, it was even less than inspiring.

      It was to be these men’s duty to accompany him on his expedition to Aussa, to provide protection for his convoy—in much the same way, in fact, that the far larger party of Egyptian soldiers, with their two cannons, had provided protection for the Swiss Munzinger’s convoy in 1875—until, that is, they were all horribly murdered.

      For the Danakil, it mattered little what a stranger did for his living, whether soldier, explorer or whatever: what mattered was the kill, and the all-important trophies to be obtained from them to increase a man’s status and his standing among his companions.

      An earlier English traveller on the borders of their land recounted in his diary how one of his servants, accompanied СКАЧАТЬ