Travels with Herodotus Read online

  Despite this, however, I still try, in my spare moments and if I have strength enough, to read: the 1899 West African Studies, by the Englishwoman Mary Kingsley, who was penetrating in her observations and courageous in her compass; Bantu Philosophy, by the priest Placide Tempels, published in 1945; or the profound, thoughtful Afrique ambiguë, by French anthropologist Georges Balandier (Paris, 1957). And in addition, of course, Herodotus.

  But during this period, I abandoned momentarily the fortunes of the people and wars he wrote about and concentrated instead on his technique. How did he work, i.e., what interested him, how did he approach his sources, what did he ask them, what did they say in reply? I was quite consciously trying to learn the art of reportage and Herodotus struck me as a valuable teacher. I was intrigued by his encounters, precisely because so much of what we write about derives from our relation to other people—I-he, I-they. That relation’s quality and temperature, as it were, have their direct bearing on the final text. We depend on others; reportage is perhaps the form of writing most reliant on the collective.

  I noticed also from reading books about Herodotus that no authorities concerned themselves exclusively with the Greek’s text itself, with its accuracy and reliability, generally paying no heed to how he gathered his raw material and then wove from it his immense and rich tapestry. It is precisely that aspect that seemed to me worth delving into.

  And there was more to the idiosyncrasy of my engagement. As time went by and I kept returning to The Histories, I began to feel something akin to warmth, even friendship, toward Herodotus. I actually became attached not so much to the book, as to its voice, the persona of its author. A complicated feeling, which I couldn’t describe fully. It was an affinity with a human being whom I did not know personally, yet who charmed me by the manner of his relationships with others, by his way of being, by how, wherever he appeared, he instantly became the nucleus, or the mortar, of human community, putting it together, bringing it into being.

  Herodotus was a child of his culture and of the climate—so favorable to humans—within which it developed. It was a culture of long and hospitable tables, at which one sat in large groups of a warm evening to eat cheese and olives, drink cool wine, converse. Open space unrestricted by walls, either at the seashore or on a mountainside, liberated the human imagination. The conviviality afforded confabulators the chance to shine, to engage in spontaneous tournaments during which those who recounted the most beguiling tale, retold the most extraordinary events, would reap regard. Facts mixed here with fantasy, times and places were misstated, legends were born, myths arose.

  Reading Herodotus, we have the impression that he eagerly participated in such banquets as an attentive and self-applied listener. He must have had a phenomenal memory. We modern folk, spoiled by the power of technology, are cripples when it comes to recollection, panicking whenever we do not have a book or computer at hand. Yet even today there are societies to be found that demonstrate how prodigiously capacious human memory can be. And it is precisely in such a world of seemingly total recall that Herodotus lived. The book was a great rarity, inscriptions on stones and walls an even greater one.

  The stuff of community was made up of two essential elements: first, individuals, and second, that which they transmitted to one another through immediate, personal contact. Man, in order to exist, had to communicate, and in order to communicate, had to feel beside him the presence of another, had to see him and hear him—there was no other form of communication, and so no other way of life. The culture of oral transmission drew them closer; one knew one’s fellow not only as one who would help them gather food and defend against the enemy, but also as someone unique and irreplaceable, one who could interpret the world and guide his fellows through it.

  And how much richer is this primeval, antique language of direct contact and Socratic give-and-take! Because it is not only words that matter in it. What is important, and frequently paramount, is what is communicated wordlessly, by facial expression, hand gesture, body movement. Herodotus understands this, and like every reporter or ethnologist he tries to be in the most direct contact with his interlocutors, not only listening to what they say, but also watching how they say it, how they act as they speak.

  His task is complex: on the one hand, he knows that the most precious and almost the only source of knowledge is the memory of those he meets; on the other hand, he is aware that this memory is a fragile thing, volatile and evanescent—that memory has a vanishing point. That is why he is in a hurry—people forget, or else move away somewhere and one cannot find them again, and eventually they die. And Herodotus is out to collect as many reasonably credible facts as possible.

  Knowing that he is on such untrustworthy and unstable ground, he is very careful in his accounts, constantly issuing warnings, emphasizing his distance from the material he presents:

  As far as we know, Gyges was the first non-Greek to dedicate offerings at Delphi …

  He wished, so they say, to reach Ithaca …

  As far as I know, the following customs exist among the Persians …

  And thus, so I assume, drawing conclusions from the known about the unknown …

  And as I learned from what they say …

  This is my account of what is said about the most distant countries …

  If this is true, I don’t know. I write only that which is said …

  I cannot accurately state which of the Ionians proved to be cowards in this battle, and which courageous, because they all accuse one another …

  Herodotus understands that he is in a world of uncertain things and imperfect knowledge, which is why he frequently makes excuses for his shortcomings, explains and justifies himself:

  It is impossible to argue against the person who spoke about the Ocean, because the tale is based on something which is obscure and dubious. I do not know of the existence of any River Ocean, and I think that Homer or one of the other poets from past times invented the name and introduced it into his poetry.

  Clearly no one knows about Europe, neither about the parts lying to the East nor to the North, and whether it is surrounded by the sea …

  What lies beyond this land … no one knows precisely; I can find out nothing from anyone who can say that he saw it with his own eyes …

  I was unable to determine precisely how numerous were the Scythians, and heard quite contradictory things about this …

  But to the extent that it is possible to do so—and, given the epoch, this speaks to a tremendous expenditure of effort and to great personal determination—he tries to check everything, to get to the sources, to establish the facts:

  Although I tried very hard, I was unable to learn from any eyewitness if a sea exists north of Europe …

  This temple, as I discovered through research, is the oldest of all the temples to Aphrodite …

  Wanting to obtain reliable information from people who would be able to impart it to me, I even sailed to Tyre in Phoenicia, because I had heard that there was a temple to Heracles there … and I engaged in a conversation with the priests of the god and asked them … But I saw that their answer does not agree with what the Greeks say …

  There is a place in Arabia where I went myself to gather information about winged snakes. Upon arrival there, I saw the snakes’ bones and backbones in quantities impossible to describe …

  (about the island Chemmis)… it is said by the Egyptians to be a floating island. I myself never saw it floating or moving, and …

  But these stories are in my opinion nonsense … because I saw myself that …

  And if he knows something, how does he know it? Because he heard, he saw:

  I say only that which the Libyans themselves recount …

  Whether this is true or not, I do not know. I write only that which is told …

  According to the stories of the Trachis, the left bank of the Ister is populated by bees …

  Until now my accounts were driven by my own observations, judgment
s, and investigations: from now on, however, I intend to speak of Egyptian history according to what I have heard about it; this will also be accompanied from time to time by what I myself saw …

  Anyone who finds such things credible can make of these Egyptian stories what he wishes. My job, throughout this account, is simply to record whatever I am told by each of my sources.

  When I queried the priests as to whether the story told by the Greeks is sheer blather or not, they declared that they know about it from an interview conducted with Menelaus himself…

  (about the Colchians) I first came to realize myself, and then heard from

  others later, that the Colchians are obviously Egyptian…. I myself had guessed their Egyptian origin not only because the Colchians are darkskinned and curly-haired … but more importantly because Colchians, Egyptians, and Ethiopians are the only peoples in the world who practice circumcision and have always done so.

  And I will write as some Persians, who do not want to beautify the history of Cyrus but to present the actual truth, say …

  Herodotus is by turns surprised, astounded, delighted, terrified by things. To some he simply gives no credence, knowing how easily people can be carried away by fantasy:

  These same priests say, which does not seem credible to me, that the god himself comes to the chapel…

  [The Egyptian king Rhampsinitus]… what he did—so the story goes, but I find it unbelievable—was install his daughter in a room with instructions to accept all men indiscriminately …

  The bald-headed [??] people say, which strikes me as improbable, that the mountains are inhabited by a goat-footed race, and when one passes them, one will find others, who sleep for six months at a time. I cannot believe that at all …

  (about the Neurians’ ability to turn themselves into wolves): Personally I do not believe this, but they make the claim despite its implausibility, and even swear that they are telling the truth.

  (about statues that fell to their knees before people): This thing does not seem credible to me, but perhaps to someone else—yes …

  History’s first globalist sneers and scoffs at the ignorance of his contemporaries: I am amused when I see that not one of all the people who have drawn maps of the world has set it out sensibly. They show Ocean as a river flowing around the outside of the earth, which is as circular as if it had been drawn with a pair of compasses, and they make Asia and Europe the same size. I shall now briefly explain how big each of these continents is and what each of them should look like on the map.

  And after delineating Asia, Europe, and Africa, he ends his description of the world with the sentence: I have no idea why the earth—which is, after all, single—has three separate names (each of which is the name of a woman)…

  BEFORE HE IS TORN APART

  BY DOGS AND BIRDS

  The driver with whom I traveled about most frequently in Ethiopia—which I had reached by a somewhat circuitous route, through Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya—was called Negusi. He was a slight, thin man, on whose skinny neck swollen with veins rested a disproportionately large yet shapely head. His eyes were remarkable—enormous, dark, obscured by a shiny film, like the eyes of a dreamy girl. Negusi was compulsively neat: at each stop he carefully removed the dust from his clothes with a little brush, which he always carried with him. This was not wholly unjustified in this country, where in the dry season, there was no place free of dust and sand.

  My travels with Negusi—and we drove thousands of kilometers together under difficult and hazardous conditions—were yet another lesson in what an abundance of signs and signals any human being is. All one has to do is make an effort to notice and interpret them. Predisposed to thinking that another person communicates with us solely by means of the spoken or written word, we do not stop to consider that there are many other methods of conversation. Everything speaks: the expression of the face and eyes, the gestures of the hand and the movements of the body, the vibrations which the latter sends out, his clothing and the way it is worn; dozens of other transmitters, amplifiers, and mufflers, which together make up the individual being and—to use the conceit of the Anglophone world—his personal chemistry.

  Technology, which reduces human exchange to an electronic signal, impoverishes and mutes this multifarious nonverbal language with which, when we are together, in close proximity, we continually and unconsciously communicate. This unspoken language, moreover, the language of facial expression and minute gesture, is infinitely more sincere and genuine than the spoken or written one; it is far more difficult to tell lies without words, to conceal falsehood and hypocrisy. So that a man could truly camouflage his thoughts, the disclosure of which could prove dangerous, Chinese culture perfected the art of the frozen face, of the inscrutable mask and the vacant gaze: only behind such a screen could someone truly hide.

  Negusi knew only two expressions in English: “problem” and “no problem.”

  But using this gibberish we communicated ably in the most fraught circumstances. In conjunction with the wordless signals particular to each human being and which can speak volumes if only we would observe him carefully—drink him in, as it were—two words sufficed for us to feel no chasm between us and made traveling together possible.

  A military patrol stops us in the Goba mountains. Soldiers in these parts maraud with impunity, are spoiled, greedy, and frequently drunk. All around are craggy mountains, a desolate emptiness without a single living soul. Negusi gets into a negotiation. I can see that he is explaining something; he puts his hand to his heart. The others are also speaking. They adjust their automatic rifles, pull their helmets lower down on their foreheads, which only makes them look more menacing. “Negusi,” I ask, “problem?” The answer can be twofold. He can reply, dismissively: “No problem!” and drive on, looking satisfied. Or he can say in a serious, even fearful voice, “Problem!,” which signals that I must pull out ten dollars, which he will hand over to the soldiers so that they might let us pass.

  All of a sudden, for reasons I cannot fathom, seeing nothing on the road as we drive through an unpopulated, lifeless area, Negusi becomes anxious, squirming and looking all around. “Negusi,” I ask, “problem?” He doesn’t answer and continues to peer in all directions, visibly nervous. The atmosphere in the car grows tense. His fear starts to rub off on me: who knows what lies in wait for us? An hour passes in this way, and then, after a turn in the road, Negusi relaxes and happily slaps the steering wheel to the rhythm of some Amharic song. “Negusi,” I ask, “no problem?” “No problem!” he exclaims joyfully. I discover later in a nearby town that we had been driving a stretch of road notorious for armed bands that attack, rob, and even kill passersby on a regular basis.

  People here have little awareness of the greater world, do not know Africa well, or even their own country, but on the circumscribed territory of their small homeland, of their own tribe, they are familiar with every path, every tree and stone. Such places hold no mystery for them, because they have come to know them from childhood, walking countless times at night in the darkness, touching with their hands the boulders and trees standing by the roadside, feeling with their bare feet where the invisible paths run.

  It is thus during my travels over Amharic lands with Negusi. He is a poor man, but in some little corner of his heart he feels pride in this vast region, whose real boundaries only he can truly delineate.

  I am thirsty, so Negusi stops by a stream and encourages me to sip its cold, crystalline water.

  “No problem!” he calls, seeing that I am hesitating about whether this water is clean, and he submerges his large head in it.

  Later, I want to sit down on some nearby rocks, but Negusi forbids it:

  “Problem!” he warns, and indicates with a zigzagging motion of his hand that there might be snakes there.

  Every expedition into the depths of Ethiopia is a luxury. Ordinarily, my days are spent gathering information, writing telegrams, and going to the post office, so the telegrapher on
duty can forward my dispatches to the Polish Press Agency offices in London (this turns out to be less costly than sending them directly to Warsaw). The collecting of information is a time-consuming, difficult, and dodgy business—a hunting expedition that rarely results in capturing one’s quarry. Only one newspaper is published here: four pages called the Ethiopian Herald. (I witnessed several times in the countryside a bus arriving from Addis Ababa, bringing not only passengers but a single copy of this publication as well. People gathered in the marketplace and the mayor or a local teacher read aloud the articles in Amharic and summarized those written in English. Everyone listened raptly and the atmosphere was almost festive: a newspaper had arrived from the capital!)

  An emperor rules Ethiopia at this time; there are no political parties, trade unions, or parliamentary opposition. There are Eritrean guerrillas, but far away in the north, in mostly impenetrable mountains. A Somali opposition movement operates out in a region of equally difficult access, the desert of the Ogaden. Yes, I could somehow make my way to both places, but it would take months, and I am Poland’s only correspondent in all of Africa. I cannot just suddenly go silent, disappear into the continent’s uninhabited wastelands.

  So how am I to gather my material? My colleagues from the wealthy news agencies—Reuters, AP, or AFP—hire translators, but I lack the funds for this. Furthermore, their offices are equipped with a powerful radio: an American Zenith, a Trans Oceanic, from which one can tune in the entire world. But it costs a fortune, and I can only fantasize about it. So I walk, ask, listen, cajole, scrape, and string together facts, opinions, stories. I don’t complain, because this method enables me to meet many people and find out about things not covered in the press or on the radio.