Travels with Herodotus (29 page)

In this bloody tumult, the most courageous man, according to Herodotus, turned out to be the Spartan Aristodamus. He had been the last of the three hundred soldiers of Leonidas’s regiment, which perished defending Thermopylae. Aristodamus, no one really knows how, survived, but for that piece of luck he suffered shame and contempt. According to the code of Sparta, one could not have honorably survived Thermopylae: whoever was there,
and truly fought in the defense of his homeland, would surely have died. Hence the inscription on the collective tombstone of Leonidas’s regiment: “Passerby, tell Sparta that we who perished here were faithful to its laws.”

Evidently, Sparta’s strict laws did not envisage different categories of combatants on the losing side. Whoever went into battle could survive only if he were victorious; defeated, one had to die. And here was Aristodamus, sole survivor. This distinction plunges him into infamy and ignominy. No one wants to speak to him, everyone turns away with disdain. His miraculous salvation soon starts to rankle, smother him, burn. It weighs upon him, becoming increasingly difficult to bear. He searches for a solution, for some relief. And along comes a chance to remove the humiliating brand, or, rather, to end heroically the life so branded: the battle of Plataea. Aristodamus accomplishes miracles of bravery: he
had clearly wanted to die, because of the slur against his name, and so had recklessly broken rank and achieved such heroic exploits
.

In vain. The laws of Sparta are implacable. There is no pity in them, no human feeling. A fault once committed remains a fault forever, and whoever tainted himself can never be cleansed. And so Aristodamus’s name is not among the heroes of this battle recognized by the Greeks—
among those who fell in this battle, all the men I mentioned, apart from Aristodamus, received special honours. Aristodamus did not, for the reason already mentioned—that he wanted to die
.

The outcome of the battle of Plataea was decided by the death of the Persian commander, Mardonius. In those times, commanders did not hide behind the lines in camouflaged bunkers, but went into battle at the head of their armies. When a commander died, however, his troops would disperse and flee the field. The commander therefore had to be visible from afar (most frequently, he
sat on a horse), because the conduct of his soldiers depended on what he himself was doing. And so it was at Plataea
—Mardonius rode into battle on his white horse… But after he had been killed and the men of his battalion, the most effective troops on the Persian side, had been cut down, all the others turned and fled before the Lacedaemonians
.

Herodotus notes that one man on the Greek side stood out because of his exemplary inflexibility. He was an Athenian, Sophanes:
he used to carry an iron anchor, attached with a bronze chain to the belt of his breastplate, and whenever he reached a spot near the enemy he would drop anchor, so that as the enemy charged at him from their ranks they could not make him move; if they turned and fled, however, it was his plan to pick up the anchor and go after them
.

What a great metaphor! Rather than a lifeline, which allows us to float passively upon the surface, how much greater that which can chain us to our labors.

I
t takes less than half an hour for the local ferry to sail from the dock of Dakar to the island of Goree. Standing at its stern, one can see the city, which seems to bob on the crests of the waves created by the propeller as it grows smaller and smaller, and finally is transformed into a bright, rocky bank stretching along the horizon. At just that moment, the ferry turns its stern toward the island and, amidst the din of rumbling engines and rattling iron, scrapes its side on the concrete edge of the marina.

I walk first along a wooden pier, then a sandy beach, then a twisting, narrow little street until I reach the
pension de famille
, where I am awaited by Abdou, the watchman, and Mariem, the boardinghouse’s quiet, always busy landlady. Abdou and Mariem are married, and, judging by Mariem’s figure, will shortly have a child. Although they are both still very young, this will be their fourth. Abdou looks with satisfaction at his wife’s clearly protruding abdomen: it is proof that all is well in their home. If a woman walks about with a flat stomach, says Abdou—and Mariem nods in assent—it means that something untoward is happening, something contrary to the order of nature. Anxious family and friends start asking questions, prying, spinning various frightening and sometimes also malicious tales. Everything should take
place in accordance with the world’s natural rhythms—and this means that a woman should once a year give visible proof of her generous and indefatigable fertility.

Abdou and Mariem both belong to the Peul community, which is the largest ethnic group in Senegal. Peul speak the Wolof language and have a paler skin than other West Africans—which is why one theory has it that they arrived in this part of the continent from the banks of the Nile, from Egypt, long ago when the Sahara was awash in green and one could wander safely over what today is desert.

From this stems a more general theory, developed in the 1950s by the Senegalese historian and linguist Cheih Anta Diop, about the Afro-Egyptian roots of Greek civilization and, by the same token, of European and Western civilization. Just as humankind arose physically in Africa, so European culture, too, he maintained, could trace its beginnings to this continent. For Anta Diop, who created a large comparative dictionary of the Egyptian and Wolof languages, the great authority was Herodotus, who had argued in his book that many elements of Greek culture were gathered and assimilated from Egypt and Libya—in other words, that European culture, especially its Mediterranean manifestations, had an African ancestry.

Anta Diop’s thesis dovetailed with the popular movement of Négritude, developed in Paris at the end of the 1930s. Its authors were two young poets, the Senegalese Léopold Senghor, and Aimé Césaire, a descendant of slaves from Martinique. In their poetry and in their manifestos, they promulgated black pride—pride in their race, which for centuries had been humiliated by the white man—and praised the accomplishments and values of black people and their contributions to world culture.

•   •   •

All this occurred more or less in the middle of the twentieth century, when a non-European consciousness was awakening, when the people of Africa and of the so-called Third World in general were searching for their own identity, and the inhabitants of Africa in particular wished to rid themselves of the complex of slavery. Anta Diop’s thesis and Senghor and Césaire’s advocacy of Négritude—echoes of which can be found in the writings of Sartre, Camus, and Davidson—contributed to a European realization that our planet, dominated for centuries by Europe, was entering a new, multicultural epoch, and that non-European communities and cultures would have their own ambitions for dignity and respect in the family of man.

This is the context in which the problem arises of the Otherness of the Other. Until now, when we pondered our relation with the Other, the Other was always from the same culture as us. Now, however, the Other belongs to an altogether foreign culture, an individual formed by and espousing its distinct customs and values.

In 1960 Senegal gains its independence. The aforementioned poet, Léopold Senghor, a habitué of the clubs and cafés of the Latin Quarter in Paris, becomes its president. That which for years had been a theory, a plan, a dream harbored by him and by his friends from Africa, the Caribbean, and both Americas—the dream of a return to symbolic roots, to lost sources, to a world from which they had been brutally torn by hordes of slave traders and cast for entire generations into an alien, debasing, and hostile captivity—now for the first time can be put into practice, translated into ambitious projects, bold and far-reaching initiatives.

From the first days of his presidency, Senghor starts preparing the first-ever world festival of black art (Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Negres). Exactly—world festival: because the goal here is
the art of all black people, not just Africans; the ambition is to show that art’s immensity, greatness, universality, diversity, and vitality. Yes, Africa was its source, but it spans the globe.

Senghor inaugurates the festival in 1963 in Dakar; it is to last several months. Because I am late to the opening ceremonies and all the hotels in town are already full, I secure a room on the island, in the
pension de famille
run by Mariem and Abdou, Senegalese from Peul, perhaps the descendants of some Egyptian fellahin or—who knows?—even of one of the pharaohs.

In the morning Mariem sets down before me a piece of juicy papaya, a cup of very sweet coffee, half a baguette, and a jar of preserves. Although she likes silence best, custom dictates serving up a ritual morning portion of inquiries: how did I sleep, am I rested, was it too hot for me, was I not bitten by mosquitoes, did I have dreams? What if I had no dreams? I ask. That, says Mariem, is impossible. She always has dreams. She dreams about her children, about good times, about visiting her parents in the countryside. Very good and pleasant dreams.

I thank her for breakfast and go to the harbor. The ferry takes me to Dakar. The city lives and breathes the festival. Exhibitions, lectures, concerts, plays. Eastern and western Africa are represented here, as well as southern and central; there are also Brazil and Colombia, and all of the Caribbean, with Jamaica and Puerto Rico at the fore; there are Alabama and Georgia, and the islands of the Atlantic and of the Indian Ocean.

Theatrical performances abound in the streets and squares. African theater is not as formalistic as the European. A group of people can gather someplace extemporaneously and perform an impromptu play. There is no text; everything is the product of the
moment, of the passing mood, of spontaneous imagination. The subject can be anything: the police catching a gang of thieves, merchants fighting to keep the city from taking away their marketplace, wives competing among themselves for their husband, who is in love with some other woman. The subject matter must be simple, the language comprehensible to all.

Someone has an idea and volunteers to be director. He assigns roles and the play begins. If this is a street, a square, or a courtyard, a crowd of passersby soon gathers. People laugh during the performance, offer running commentary, applaud. If the action unfolds in an interesting way, the audience will stand there attentively despite the punishing sun; if the play does not jell, and the ad hoc troupe proves unable to communicate and move the action forward effectively, the performance is soon over and the spectators and actors disperse, making way for others who may have better luck.

Sometimes I see the actors interrupt their dialogue and begin a ritual dance, with the entire audience joining in. It can be a cheerful and joyous dance, or the opposite—with the dancers serious, focused, and collective participation in the common rhythm an evidently profound experience for them, something meaningful touching their core. But then the dancing ends, the actors return to their spoken parts, and the spectators, for a moment still as if entranced, laugh once again, happy and amused.

Street theater includes not just dance. Its other important, even inseparable element is the mask. The actors sometimes perform in masks, or, because it is difficult in this heat to wear one for long, simply hold them near—in their hands, under their arms, even strapped to their backs. The mask is a symbol, a construct full of emotion and resonance that speaks of the existence of some other universe, whose sign, stamp, or presence it is. It communicates
something to us, warns us about someone; seemingly lifeless and motionless, it attempts by means of its appearance to arouse our feelings, put us under its spell.

Borrowing from various museums, Senghor collected thousands upon thousands of such masks. When seen in the aggregate, they evoke a separate, mysterious world. Walking through that collection was a singular experience. One began to understand how masks acquired such power over people, how they could hypnotize, overwhelm, or lead people into ecstasy. It became clear why the mask—and faith in its magical efficacy—united entire societies, enabled them to communicate across continents and oceans, gave them a sense of community and identity, constituted a form of tradition and collective memory.

Walking from one theatrical performance to another, from one exhibit of masks and sculptures to others, I had the sense of being witness to the rebirth of a great culture, to the awakening of its sense of distinctness, importance, and pride, the consciousness of its universal range. Here were not only masks from Mozambique and Congo, but also lanterns for macumba rituals from Rio de Janeiro, the escutcheons of the guardian deities of Haitian voodoo, and copies of the sarcophagi of Egyptian pharaohs.

But this joy at the renaissance of a worldwide community was accompanied also by a sense of disappointment and disillusion. Example: It is in Dakar that I read
Black Power
, the affecting and then recently published book by Richard Wright. At the start of the 1950s, Wright, an African American from Harlem, moved by the desire to return to Africa, the land of his ancestors, went on a trip to Ghana. Ghana was fighting for its independence just then, and there were constant meetings, demonstrations, protests. Wright took part in these, got to know the daily life in cities,
visited the marketplaces in Accra and Takoradi, conversed with merchants and planters—and concluded that despite his sharing with them the same black skin, they, the Africans, and he, the American, were total strangers to each other, had no common language, and what was important to them was of utter indifference to him. In the course of the African journey the alienation Wright felt became for him increasingly difficult to bear, a curse and a nightmare.

In the
pension de famille
I have a room on the second floor. It is immense, all hewn out of stone, with two openings in the place of windows and a single large one, proportioned like an entrance gate, where the door would be. I also have a wide terrace, from which one can see the Atlantic stretching to the horizon. Ocean and more ocean. A cool breeze wafts constantly through the room, and I have the sensation of living on a ship. The island is motionless and in a sense the continuously calm sea is also motionless, whereas the colors are always changing—the colors of the water, of the sky, of day and night. Of everything, really—of walls and rooftops, of the neighboring village, of the sails of fishermen’s boats, of the sand on the beach, of the palm and mango trees, of the wings of the seagulls and terns that always circle here. This sleepy, even lifeless place can render anyone sensitive to color dizzy, can enthrall, stun, and after a time numb and exhaust him.