Eberhardt - In the Shadow of Islam

ISABELLE EBERHARDT

ISABELLE EBERHARDT (18771904) was born in Geneva, the illegitimate daughter of a former Russian Orthodox priest and a part-Russian, part-German aristocratic mother. Her father was an anarchist and nihilist who was to convert to Islam, and his daughters life was to take similar dramatic turns before her tragically early death at the age of twenty-seven.

Increasingly isolated from her family and her inheritance, she was plagued by emotional and financial problems, but she had a fierce will. From an early age she dressed as a man for the greater freedom this allowed, and she developed a literary talent and a gift for languages, including Arabic.

Like her father Eberhardt became drawn to Islam. She converted while in Algeria with her mother. After her mothers death she cut all ties with her family, called herself Si Mahmoud Essadi and travelled throughout North Africa. She became involved with Qadiriyya Sufi order, married an Algerian soldier, worked as a war reporter, helped the poor and needy and fought against the injustices of French colonial rule. She was also the victim of an assassination attempt but later successfully pleaded for the life of the man who attacked her.

She openly rejected conventional European morality of the time, preferring to choose her own path, and drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and had numerous affairs.

She died in a flash flood in An Sfra, Algeria, in 1904.

IN THE SHADOW OF ISLAM

In the Shadow of Islam is an extraordinary evocation of the desert and its people by a woman who dressed as a man in order to travel alone and unimpeded throughout North Africa.

In 1897 Isabelle Eberhardt, aged 20, left an already unconventional life in Geneva for the Morroccan frontier. Gripped by spiritual restlessness and the desire to break free from the confinements of her society she travelled into the desert, and into the heart of Islam.

Her experiences inspired a profound self-examination, and In the Shadow of Islam is today regarded as one of the true classics of travel writing.

In the current political climate, it is also a book uncannily current in its treatment of the culture of Islam in North Africa.

Contents

PETER OWEN PUBLISHERS
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Translated from the French Dans lombre chaude de lIslam

First published by Editions Fasquelle, Paris
First published in Great Britain 1993
Translation and Preface Sharon Bangert 1993
First Peter Owen Modern Classics edition 2003
This Peter Owen Modern Classics edition 2013
This ebook edition 2014

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PAPERBACK ISBN 978-0-7206-1587-6
EPUB ISBN 978-0-7206-1669-9
MOBIPOCKET ISBN 978-0-7206-1670-5
PDF ISBN 978-0-7206-1671-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Departure
Ain Sefra, May 1904

Last year I left this place to the gusts of winter. The town was numbed with cold, and great shrill winds scoured it, bending the fragile nakedness of the trees. Today I see it quite differently, become itself again, in the dismal gleam of summer: very Saharan, very sleepy, with its tawny ksar at the foot of the golden dune, its holy koubbas and its blue-green gardens.

It is so much the little capital of the Oranian desert, solitary in its sandy valley, between the monotonous immensity of the high plateaux and the southern furnace.

Then, it seemed to me morose, without charm, because the magical sun wasnt there to wrap it in a luminous atmosphere, the chief luxury of African towns. But now that I regard it as a temporary home, I begin to love it. Whats more, I vow not to leave it again for some tedious return to the banal Tell, and this enables me to see the town with new eyes. When I leave, it will only be to descend further, towards the great South, where the gravelled plain of the hamada sleeps under the eternal sun.

Among the white-trunked poplars, following footpaths along the first undulations of the dune, smelling again the scent of sap and resin, I feel myself lost in a forest. This scent, so sweet and pure, combines sensuously with the distant aroma of flowering acacias. How I love the exuberant greenness, and the trunks, wrinkled as an elephants skin, and these fig trees swollen with bitter milk, surrounded by buzzing swarms of golden flies! In this garden, so unexpected among all the aridity, I have passed long hours on my back, drunk on warm breezes and the hypnotic oscillation of branches like a ships riggings against the sky.

Beyond the last of the poplars, now grown spindly and stunted, the track of sand climbs, ending abruptly at the foot of the immaculate dune, which seems to be of fine golden powder. There the wind plays freely, building up the hills, hollowing the valleys, opening precipices, creating ephemeral landscapes according to its whim.

At the summit, only slightly more stable with arrises of black stone, a reddish blockhaus watches over the valley; a sentinel with empty eyes that, having witnessed the passage of armies and robbers, looks out now on silence and the peace of vague horizons.

The scorching dune rises stark against the unrelenting blue of Mount Mektar. The day ends gently over Ain Sefra, drowned in soft vapours and fragrant scents. I experience a delicious melancholy, yet am strangely revitalized by my impending departure. All the cares, the heavy malaise of the last months spent in irksome and nerve-wracking Algiers, all that sorrow, my blues, is left behind.

In the city, I was forced to scorn things and people when I would have liked to understand everything, excuse everything. To have to defend yourself against stupidity when you have nothing to argue about, nothing to do with it! I dont know anymore... Im not interested... The sun is still mine, and the beckoning road. This could be, for a while, an entire philosophy.

Once in my life, in a soul that I thought was free, I watched a pure, strong passion grow, and I said to my friend: Be careful, when were happy we cease to understand anothers suffering... He set off for happiness, or so he believed, and I toward my destiny. Now I have drawn apart, and I feel my soul regain its health, innocently open to all joys, to all the delicate sensualities of the eyes and of dreams.

I rediscover in the villages only Arab street calm impressions of home, which date from the month of Ramadan last year. Many familiar folks, on benches and on mats in front of the coffeehouses. Many friendly greetings to exchange.

And all the time the secret joy of knowing that I will leave tomorrow at dawn, leave all these things which are still pleasing and dear to me this evening. Who except a nomad, a vagabond, could understand this double rejoicing?

Once more astounded by all that has captured me and all I have left, I tell myself that love is a worry and that whats necessary is to love to leave persons and things being loveliest when left behind.

Before the iron bars and pots of basil in the window of a Moorish caf, a crowd begins to form. Pipes are playing there so I go in; this droning, sad music puts an end to my reverie and, more importantly, will excuse me from talking...