Travels with Herodotus Page 12

  But by the time we are once again entering the city, the sun has risen and it is instantly hot again. A terrible headache. The only thing I want is to sleep. Just to sleep. To not move, to not be, to not live.

  Two days later, the Sudanese came to the hotel to ask how I was feeling. How am I feeling? Oh, my friends, you want to know how I feel? Yes, how do you feel, because Louis Armstrong is coming, there’s a concert tomorrow in the stadium.

  I am instantly better.

  The stadium was quite a distance outside the city, small, shallow, with a capacity of at most five thousand spectators. Even so, only half the seats were occupied. In the center of the field stood a podium, weakly illuminated, but we were sitting near the front and could see Armstrong and his small orchestra well. The evening was hot and airless, and when Armstrong walked out, attired moreover in a jacket and bow tie, he was already soaked with perspiration. He greeted everyone, raising into the air the hand holding his golden trumpet, and said into the cheap, crackling microphone that he was pleased to be playing in Khartoum, and not only pleased, but downright delighted, after which he broke into his full, loose, infectious laugh. It was laughter that invited others to laugh along, but the audience remained aloofly silent, not quite certain how to behave. The drums and the bass resounded and Armstrong launched into a song appropriate enough to the time and place—“Sleepy Time Down South.” It is actually difficult to say when one first heard Armstrong’s voice; there is something in it that makes one feel one has known it forever, and when he starts to sing, everyone, with the most sincere conviction of his or her connoisseurship, proclaims: Why yes, that’s him, that’s Satchmo!

  Yes, that was him—Satchmo. He sang “Hello Dolly, this is Louis, Dolly,” he sang “What a Wonderful World” and “Moon River,” he sang “I touch your lips and all at once the sparks go flying, those devil lips.” But the spectators continued to sit silently. There was no applause. Did they not understand the words? Was there too much openly expressed eroticism in all this for Muslim tastes?

  After each number, and even during the playing and singing, Armstrong wiped his face with a large white handkerchief. These handkerchiefs were constantly changed for him by a man whose sole purpose in accompanying Armstrong around Africa seemed to have been this. I saw later that he had an entire bag of them, dozens and dozens probably.

  After the concert people dispersed quickly, vanishing into the night. I was shocked. I had heard that Armstrong’s concerts elicited great enthusiasm, frenzy, ecstasy. There was no trace of these raptures in the stadium in Khartoum, despite the fact that Satchmo played many songs from the American South, from Alabama and Louisiana, where he himself came from—songs that had originated with African slaves. But by then their Africa and this one here belonged to different worlds, lacking a common language, unable to communicate much less partake of an emotional oneness.

  The Sudanese drove me back to the hotel. We sat down on the terrace for some lemonade. Moments later a car brought Armstrong. He sat down with relief at a table, or, more precisely, he collapsed into the chair. He was a stout, thickset man with wide, drooping shoulders. The waiter brought him an orange juice. He downed it in a single gulp, and then another glass, and another. He was depleted, sitting with his head bowed, silent. He was sixty years old at the time and—something I didn’t then know—already suffering from heart disease. Armstrong during the concert and Armstrong immediately after it were two entirely different people: the first was merry, cheerful, animated, with a powerful voice, able to coax an astonishing range of tones from his trumpet; the second was heavy, exhausted, weak, his face covered in wrinkles, extinguished.

  Whoever leaves the safe walls of Khartoum and sets off into the desert must remember that danger and traps lie in wait. Sandstorms constantly change the configuration of the landscape, moving the orientation points about, and if as a result of these relentless natural caprices the traveler should lose his way, he will surely perish. The desert is mysterious and can arouse fear. No one goes off into it alone, largely because no one can carry enough water to conquer the distance separating one well from the next.

  During his trip through Egypt, Herodotus, knowing that the Sahara was all around, wisely kept to the river, staying always close to the Nile. The desert is a sunny fire, and fire is a wild beast, which can devour everything: the Egyptians regard fire as a living creature (one which consumes everything it takes hold of until at last, when it is sated, it dies along with the object it has been devouring) … And he offers as an example what happened when the king of the Persians, Cambyses, having set off to conquer Egypt and then Ethiopia, dispatched part of his army against the Ammonians, a people inhabiting the oases of the Sahara. These troops, departing from Thebes, arrived after seven days of marching through the desert in a city called Oäsis, at which point all trace of them disappeared: … after that the only information available comes directly or indirectly from the Ammonians themselves; no one else can say what happened to them, because they did not reach the Ammonians and they did not come back either. The Ammonians, however, add an explanation for their disappearance. They say that after the army had left Oäsis and was making its way across the desert towards them—in other words, somewhere between Oäsis and their lands—an extraordinarily strong south wind, carrying along with it heaps of sand, fell on them while they were taking their midday meal and buried them.

  The Czechs arrived, Dushan and Jarda, and we set off immediately for the Congo. The first settlement on the Congolese side was a roadside hamlet—Aba. It nestled in the shade of an enormous green wall, the jungle, which began here abruptly, rearing up like a steep mountain from the plain.

  There was a gas station in Aba, as well as several shops. These were shaded by decaying wooden arcades, beneath which lounged several idle, motionless men. They sprang to life when we stopped to ask about what awaited us deeper inside the country, and where we could change some pounds into local francs.

  They were Greeks, and formed a colony similar to the hundreds that were already scattered around the world in Herodotus’s time. That type of settlement had clearly survived among them to this day.

  I had my copy of Herodotus in my bag, and when we were leaving I showed it to one of the Greeks as he was saying goodbye. He saw the name on the cover and smiled, but in such a way that I couldn’t tell if he was expressing pride, or else embarrassment at having no idea who this was.

  THE FACE OF ZOPYRUS

  We have come to a standstill on the outskirts of the little town of Paulis (Congo, Eastern Province). We have run out of gas, and live in hope that someone will pass this way one day and agree to give us some, if only a jerry can full. Until then, we wait in the only place possible—a school run by Belgian missionaries, whose prior is the delicate, emaciated, and seriously ailing Abbé Pierre. Because the country is in the grips of civil war, the missionaries instruct their charges in military drills. The children march around in fours, holding long thick sticks against their shoulders, singing and shouting out. How stern their facial expressions are, how vigorous their gestures, how at once solemn and exciting is this game of soldier!

  I have a cot in an empty classroom at the end of the school barracks. It is quiet here, and the sounds of the battle drills barely reach me. Out front is a flower bed full of blooms—lush, tropically overgrown dahlias and gladioli, centauries, and still other beauties, which I am seeing for the first time and whose names I do not know.

  I too am infected with the contagion of war—not the local one, but another, distant in place and time, which the king of the Persians, Darius, is waging against rebellious Babylon, and which Herodotus describes. I am sitting in the shade on the verandah, swiping at flies and mosquitoes and reading his book.

  Darius is a young, twenty-something-year-old man, who has just become the king of what was then the world’s most powerful empire. In this multinational realm, one people or another are constantly lifting up their heads, rebelling, and battling for liberty. All s
uch uprisings and revolts the Persians quash with ruthless ease. But this time a great threat has arisen, a genuine danger that could severely affect Persia’s destiny: Babylon, the capital of the Babylonian empire that had been incorporated by King Cyrus into the Persian empire nineteen years earlier, in 538 b.c.e., is in mutiny.

  That Babylon desires independence is hardly surprising. Situated at the intersection of trade routes connecting the East with the West and the North with the South, it is the largest and most dynamic city on earth. It is the center of world culture and learning, renowned especially for mathematics and astronomy, geometry and architecture. A century will pass before Greek Athens is able to rival it.

  For the time being, the Babylonians are preparing an anti-Persian uprising and a declaration of sovereignty. Their timing is good. They know that the Persian court has just come through a long period of anarchy, during which power had been held by the priestly caste of the Magi. They were recently overthrown in a palace coup staged by a group of Persian elites, who had only just selected from among themselves a new king—Darius. Herodotus notes that the Babylonians were very well prepared. Clearly, he writes, they had spent the whole troubled period of the Magus’ rule … getting ready for a siege, and somehow nobody had noticed that they were doing so.

  The following passage now appears in Herodotus’s text: Once their rebellion was out in the open, this is what they did. The Babylonian men gathered together all the women of the city—with the exception of their mothers and of a single woman chosen by each man from his own household—and strangled them. The single woman was kept on as a cook, while all the others were strangled to conserve supplies.

  I do not know if Herodotus realized what he was writing. Did he think about those words? Because at that time, in the sixth century, Babylon had at least two to three hundred thousand inhabitants. It follows, then, that tens of thousands of women were condemned to strangulation—wives, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, cousins, lovers.

  Our Greek says nothing more about this mass execution. Whose decision was it? That of the Popular Assembly? Of the Municipal Government? Of the Committee for the Defense of Babylon? Was there some discussion of the matter? Did anyone protest? Who decided on the method of execution—that these women would be strangled? Were there other suggestions? That they be pierced by spears, for example? Or cut down with swords? Or burned on pyres? Or thrown into the Euphrates, which coursed through the city?

  There are more questions still. Could the women, who had been waiting in their homes for the men to return from the meeting during which sentence was pronounced upon them, discern something in their men’s faces? Indecision? Shame? Pain? Madness? The little girls of course suspected nothing. But the older ones? Wouldn’t instinct tell them something? Did all the men observe the agreed silence? Didn’t conscience strike any of them? Did none of them experience an attack of hysteria? Run screaming through the streets?

  And later? Later, they gathered them all together and strangled them. There must have been a meeting place, where everyone had to report and where the selection took place. Those who were to live to one side. And the others? Were there municipal guards of some sort who strangled one by one the girls and women brought to them? Or did the husbands and fathers have to strangle them themselves, in the presence of judges appointed to supervise the executions? Was there silence? Or were there moans, and pleading for the lives of infants, daughters, sisters? How were the bodies disposed of, the tens of thousands of them? Because a decent burial of the dead is a condition for the continued peace of the living; without it, the spirit of the departed returns by night and torments the survivors. Did Babylon’s nights terrify its men from that moment onward? Did they wake in panic? Did nightmares haunt them? Were they unable to fall asleep? Did they feel demons seizing them by the throat?

  To conserve supplies. Yes, because the Babylonians were preparing for a long siege. They understood the value of Babylon, a rich and flowering metropolis, a city of hanging gardens and gilded temples, and knew that Darius would not readily retreat but would do his utmost to continue their subjugation, if not by the sword, then by siege of hunger.

  The king of the Persians did not waste a moment. As soon as news of the rebellion reached him, he mustered his army in full strength and marched against them. Once he reached Babylon he began to besiege the city, but the inhabitants were not in the slightest bit concerned. They used to climb up to the bastions of the city wall and strut about there, taunting Darius and his army. Once one of them called out, “What are you doing sitting there, men of Persia? Why don’t you just go away? Babylon will fall into your hands only when mules start bearing young.” (And mules, as we are meant to know, are usually infertile.)

  They jeered at Darius and his army.

  Let us imagine this scene. The world’s largest army has arrived at the gates of Babylon. It has made camp around the city, which is encircled by massive walls of clay brick. The city wall is several meters high and so wide that a wagon drawn by four horses all in a row can be driven along its top. There are eight great gates, and the whole thing is additionally protected by a deep moat. In the face of this monumental fortification, Darius’s army is helpless. It will be twelve hundred more years before gunpowder makes its appearance in this part of the world. Firearms won’t be invented for another two thousand years. There aren’t even any siege machines—the Persians do not possess battering rams, catapults. So the Babylonians feel invincible, able to behave with impunity—nothing can happen to them. It is no wonder, therefore, that standing atop their wall, they were taunting Darius and his army. Taunting the greatest army in the world!

  The distance between both sides is so small that the besieged and the besiegers can converse, the former cursing the latter’s names. If Darius happens to ride close to the walls, he can hear the worst invectives and terms of abuse hurled his way. It is quite humiliating, all the more so because the siege has lasted so long already: A year and seven months passed, and Darius and his men were getting frustrated with their inability to overcome the Babylonians.

  And then something changes. In the twentieth month a remarkable thing happened to Zopyrus … : one of his packmules gave birth.

  Young Zopyrus is the son of the Persian noble Megabyzus and belongs to the small elite of the Persian empire. He is excited by the news that his mule has produced offspring. He sees a sign from the gods in this, their signal that Babylon can indeed be conquered. He goes to Darius, recounts everything, and asks how important the capture of Babylon is to him.

  Very, Darius replies. But the Persians have been laying siege to the city for almost two years, they have already tried countless methods, stratagems, and subterfuges, none of which have made even the slightest dent in the walls of Babylon. Darius is discouraged and doesn’t know what to do: to withdraw covered in shame, and, moreover, losing the empire’s most important satrapy; to press on, the prospects for conquering the city looking impossibly slim.

  Doubts, dilemmas, hesitations. Seeing the king so dejected, Zopyrus tried to find a way whereby he could be the one to bring about the fall of Babylon, as his own achievement. After giving it some thought, he takes up an iron or brass knife, cuts off his own nose and ears, shaves his head (as criminals are shorn), and has himself flogged. Thus mutilated, wounded, streaming with blood, he presents himself to Darius. At the sight of Zopyrus’s injuries, Darius goes into shock. He jumped up from his throne with a cry and asked who it was who had disfigured him and why.

  The wound where his nose had been, the damaged bone, must have been horribly painful, and the upper lip, cheeks, and the rest of his face were surely grotesquely swollen, his eyes bloodied, and yet Zopyrus manages to answer:

  “No one did it to me, my lord; after all, you are the only person who could. I did it to myself, because I think it’s dreadful to have Assyrians mocking Persians.”

  To which Darius replies:

  “No, that won’t do at all. To claim that you have given yourself
these permanent injuries as a way of doing something about the people we are besieging is to gloss over the utter vileness of your deed. It’s just stupid to think that your injuries might hasten our opponents’ surrender. You must be out of your mind to have disfigured yourself like this.”

  In Zopyrus’s preceding statement Herodotus presents to us a mind-set that had manifested itself in this culture thousands of years before—namely, that a man whose dignity was undermined, who felt himself humiliated, could free himself from the burning sensation of shame and disgrace only by an act of self-destruction. I feel that I have been scarred, and being thus scarred, I cannot live. Death is preferable to a life with the mark of shame burning into my face. Zopyrus wants to liberate himself from just such a feeling. And he does this by altering his face, changing that ignominious Persian physiognomy which the Babylonians mocked into a more dreadful and terrifying version of itself.

  It is noteworthy that Zopyrus does not consider the Babylonians’ affront as an individual act of injustice, directed against him alone. He does not say, They insulted me; he says, They insulted us—all us Persians. Yet he does not see exhorting all Persians to war as the way out of this degrading predicament and chooses instead a singular, individual act of self-destruction (or self-mutilation), which for him is a liberation.

  It is true that Darius condemns Zopyrus’s action as irresponsible and reckless, but he will soon take advantage of it, seizing upon it as a last resort, a way to save the nation, the empire, the majesty of monarchical power from disgrace.

  He accepts Zopyrus’s plan, which is as follows: Zopyrus will go to the Babylonians, pretending that he is fleeing from persecutions and tortures inflicted upon him by Darius. And what better proof of this than his wounds! He is certain that he will convince the Babylonians, that he will gain their confidence, and that they will give him command of the army. And then he will let the Persians into Babylon.