The Sword

1

IN SEPTEMBER the northeast monsoon begins to blow across the Indian Ocean, and the Arabs in the Persian Gulf turn towards Mecca and give thanks to the Prophet for his goodness. Then they load up their dhows and, trusting to the wind and to the stars, they sail down the Gulf of Oman, around the Cape of Ras el Hadd, and westwards to the coast of Africa.

They come from Muscat and Shinas and Sohar, and they carry in their ships great bundles of carpets from Khuzistan and boxes made of mother-ofpearl finely painted in water color by the artists of Isfahan, which is a place high up in the mountains. Some carry stacks of red bricks and brightly colored tiles for the roofs of houses, and some—but these are rather a superior type of Arab —carry beautiful curved swords attached to a wide belt made of solid silver, rather crudely worked. And so, with the help of the winds and with the stars to guide them, they head for Mombasa or Tanga or Dar es Salaam.

In the autumn of 1939 one of these dhows put into the harbor of Dar es Salaam, which is the capital of Tanganyika, lying just south of Zanzibar. I was in Dar es Salaam at the time, working for a large oil company, and I happened to be down by the harbor talking to a man in the customs warehouse when the dhow came in. It was broad in the beam and it sat comfortably in the water, low down, like an old man in a huge armchair. It had a big bright vermilion square-rigged sail, with a white patch near the bottom, and it came sailing in and dropped anchor not more than a hundred yards from where I stood.

The customs man said, “That’s the first one this year, and a little earlier than usual. I’ve got to go on board anyway. Would you like to come?”

I said, “Yes,” and we jumped into the launch.

“She’ll smell,” said the customs man; “she’ll smell like hell,” and he began to light his pipe.

He was right. It hit us when we were still fifty yards away. It was a smell so solid that you could almost feel it smack you in the face. It was a heavy, rather complicated smell, made up of many people and many things.

I lit a cigarette and we chugged alongside and jumped on board. There the smell was stronger than ever, and I asked the customs man what it was and why it was so strong. He was a little man called Dicky Kale, with a thin red face and long yellow teeth, who had come to the Coast twenty-two years ago.

“It comes,” he said, “from putting about thirty Arabs into a space about the size of a small billiard room, for five or six weeks. All the dhows have it, although some are worse than others.”

Then he went about his business of examining the cargo, while I stood on deck trying to get as much fresh air as possible. After a little while he popped his head up through the hatch and said, “Come and have a look at this.”

He was holding a long curved sword in a silver scabbard attached to a wide leather belt inlaid with silver and gold. The scabbard was beautifully worked with a design depicting various phases of the life of the Prophet, and the sword itself was made of hard steel, with an edge like a razor blade. Unquestionably it was a fine specimen.

“D’you want to buy it?” said Dicky, after I had already made up my mind to do so.

“Yes,” I said, “but won’t they want the devil of a lot for it?”

“Leave that to me — I know these lads,” he answered, and disappeared below. He came back in three minutes and said, “It’s yours for three hundred and fifty shillings.”

I said, “I’ll take it. Tell them to come to my house this afternoon for the money.”

So that morning I proudly bore my new treasure back to my house and called my head boy, whose name was Salimu, and told him to hang it on the wall in the sitting room, over the sofa. He took it from me and examined it carefully.

“M’suri sana, Bwana, m’suri kabisa,” he said, which means, “Very good, very, very good.” Then he drew the blade from the scabbard and tested the edge with his thumb. “Una kali sana, kali kabisa, Bwana,” he said, which in literal translation means, “He is very, very angry.” I said that it was indeed both very good and very angry. Then I told him that he would be personally responsible for seeing that it was always kept beautifully polished. The blade, I told him, should be wiped regularly with a soft oily rag, while the leather part on the belt should be polished with a bone taken from the foreleg of a cow. He nodded vigorously and said, “ M’deo, Bwana, m’deo, m’deo,” and continued running his fingers up and down the smooth blade.

He was an intelligent boy, Salimu, and he came from a tribe called the Mwanumwezi. His people had always been great fighters. They were the only tribe in East Africa who had ever defeated the fierce Masai warriors from the north of Tanganyika.

Salimu himself was a true Mwanumwezi, tall and broad, with almost black skin and thick protuberant lips. He had a nice wide face, crowned by a mop of coarse curly hair, and when he spoke he always laughed with one side of his mouth. He was a good, intelligent boy with a great sense of humor and great loyalty, and I knew that my sword would be well cared for.

And so it was. Every evening when I came home from work and went into the sitting room for my first Scotch and soda, it was always the first thing that I saw. It hung on the wall, over the sofa, shining and beautiful.

2

THAT was in August, 1939, when the German armies were already mustering on the Polish frontier and when the whole of Europe was boiling and heaving under the threat of war. We in Tanganyika had our own particular worries because, as you probably know, the territory was thick with Germans. It used to be German East Africa before the last war, and even after it was confiscated the majority of the Germans remained and flourished in the country. They owned diamond mines and gold mines and tin mines, and they grew sisal and cotton and tea and ground nuts. They were to be found in every part of the country where there was business to be done, and they greatly outnumbered all the other Europeans put together. Elaborate plans were made for the rounding up of all these Germans in the event of war, and we were all made “Special Constables” and given specific instructions.

Two days before England declared war on Germany, when everyone knew that it was inevitable, I was detailed to take a squad of Askaris, or native troops, out to guard the road running south into Portuguese East Africa, which, being neutral territory, was the direction along which most of the Germans would probably run. But before I went, I had a word with Salimu and told him as briefly and simply as I could what it was all about.

“The Germans,” I said, “are m’baya sana, very bad. And over in Europe, which is ten times as far away as from here to Kilimanjaro, they will, if war is declared, try to kill all my friends. Then, of course, we shall have to try to kill them before they can kill us.”

Salimu, being a true child of his tribe, understood the principle of war very well. He nodded and said that it was a bad business, but that it might be rather fun, might it not.

Then I went away and did my road-guarding duty. I stayed out in the jungle beside the road with my twenty native troops for a couple of days before the field telephone buzzed and told us that the war was on.

The Germans started coming along a little later, beating it for Portuguese East as fast as they could. Some were in trucks and some were in private cars, Fords and Chevrolets mostly, and we rounded them up bit by bit without much difficulty. They saw our machine gun and very quickly gave themselves up.

The next evening we took them all back to Dar es Salaam, and after seeing them safely inside the concentration camp, I went off home to get a bath and some sleep. I was very tired and very dirty, but from force of habit I went straight into the sitting room for a Scotch and soda.

I noticed it at once; even before I had got through the door. The sword had gone. The scabbard was still hanging on the wall, but it was empty.

I shouted for Salimu. “Salimu, Salimu, come here!” But there was no answer. I went out into the kitchen where my old native cook, Piggy, was squatting on the floor peeling potatoes.

“Piggy, where’s Salimu?”

The old man got up from the floor, still holding a half-peeled potato in one hand and his little knife in the other. “He went away yesterday, Bwana. He went away in the evening. He just said he was going away for a little while. But he will come back, Bwana, I know he will come back.”

I went into the sitting room and got myself a Scotch; then I sat down on the sofa. It was a very hot evening and I soon fell asleep.

I was awakened, just after midnight, by someone turning the handle of the other door in the room, the one which led straight out into the garden. Then it burst open, and there stood Salimu. He stood framed in the doorway with the moonlight shining through his curly black hair. He was breathing heavily and he had a tense, excited expression on his face. His body, which was naked save for a small pair of black cotton shorts, was glistening with sweat.

In his right, hand he held the sword.

He stopped dead when he saw me and stood there still as a rock, save for the heaving of his chest. Truly he was a wild and magnificent sight.

I blinked two or three times and sat up abruptly.

“Salimu, where have you been?” I said, and as I spoke I noticed the blade of the sword. It was darkened from top to bottom with something which looked, from where I sat, very much like dried blood.

“Salimu, where have you been?”

He looked down at the sword in his hand, and for quite a long time he didn’t speak. Then he looked up quickly, and the dam broke. Words poured out of his mouth so quickly that they tumbled over each other and tangled themselves up in a mass of mad, almost incomprehensible sentences. He talked in a mixture of Swahili and Mwanumwezi, and he never once halted or paused until he had finished his story. And all the time, as he spoke, he was laughing with one side of his mouth.

I will try to give you a fairly literal translation of what he said as he stood there in the open doorway, with the full moon shining into the room from behind him.

“Bwana,” he said, “Bwana, yesterday down in the market I heard that we had started to fight the Germani and I remembered all that you had said about how they would try to kill us. As soon as I heard the news, I started to run back to the house, and as I ran I shouted to everyone I saw in the streets. I shouted, ‘We are fighting the Germani! We are fighting the Germani!’

“In my country, as soon as we hear that someone is coming to fight us, the whole tribe must know about, it as soon as possible. So I ran home shouting the news to the people as I went, and I was also thinking of what I, Salimu, could do to help. Suddenly, I remembered the rich Germani that lives over the hills; the one that owns so many hundreds of gardens of sisal. I remembered him because you took me with you in your car when you drove out there to see him on business last month.

“Then I ran even faster towards home, and when I arrived and ran through the kitchen, I shouted at Piggy the cook, ‘We are fighting the Germani!’ I said I was going out, but would come back soon.

“I ran into this room and took hold of the sword, this wonderful sword which I have been polishing for you every day.” And here Salimu lifted it up and glanced down at it for a moment.

“Bwana, I was very excited to be at war. I could feel it in my stomach and in my chest — but in my stomach mostly. All men in my tribe who are worth a grain of rice go out and fight when there is a war. You were already out with the Askari on the roads, and I knew that I should do something too.

“So I ran into this room and took hold of the sword. I pulled it out of its glove and ran outside with it. I ran towards the house of the rich sisalowning Germani, which I knew was over the hills.

“I did not go by the road because some Askari or some other inquiring person might have stopped me, seeing me running with the sword in my hand. I ran straight through the forest, and many times I had to struggle with the roots and the tangled trees which are very thick and twisted.

“But I never stopped and when I got to the top of the hills, which are about twenty miles away, I looked down the other side and saw all the hundreds of gardens of sisal belonging to the rich Germani. Away beyond it I could just see his house, the big white house made of wood which we visited together. And as I ran down the other side of the hill into the sisal, I shouted aloud, and went on shouting until suddenly I remembered that I wars in the land of the enemy, and from then on I kept very quiet. But I went on running.

“By then it was getting dark, and it was very difficult dodging around the tall prickly sisal plants, and many times I ran into them and pricked myself badly. But I did not mind and still went on running.

“Then I saw the white house in front of me in the moonlight and I ran straight up to the front door and pushed it open. I ran towards the back of the house and pushed open a door at the end of the passage — and there he was.

“He was sitting at a desk in his pajamas writing something, and he half turned around as I rushed in. But I didn’t give him any time. I lifted the sword and sw ung it at his neck. I was holding it with both hands now so that the blow would be fiercer. I remember seeing him start to open his mouth as I swung, but he never had time to say anything.

“Bwana, it is a beautiful sword. With one blow it cut into his neck so deeply that his head hung over sideways, so that when I gave it one more chop it fell onto the floor with a big thud and rolled under his chair.

“Then I said aloud, ‘Germani, your head is lying on the floor under the chair. Why don’t you pick it up and put it on again? Pick it up, Germani, pick it up.’ But he did not move, and little spurts of blood were shooting up out of his neck. He did not look proud any more.

“Then I turned round and ran out of the room, down the passage and out of the house, back the way I had come. But this time I was not frightened of shouting as I ran through the sisal gardens, because there were no longer any Germani there to hear me. I shouted, ‘We are at war with the Germani! We are at war with the Germani!’ There was a full moon shining, and I ran even faster than before, because I was excited and wanted to come back and tell you what I had done. I said, ’I will go back by the road, because it is quicker than the jungle. No one will stop me.’

“So I got onto the road and ran down towards the town. The sword was in my hand, and sometimes I waved it above my head as I ran, but I never stopped. Twice people shouted at me on the way, and I answered, ‘We are at war with the Germani!’ but I never stopped.

“It is a long distance, Bwana, and it took four hours each way. That is why I am so late. I am sorry to be so late.”

“Now,” and he looked down again at the sword, “now I will go and polish this and make it shine again, because it has become very dirty.”