Cyber Ethiopia

Ethiopian historiography justly pays great attention to the foreign travellers to whom we are indebted for so much information on the country’s past. Insufficient attention is, however, often paid to the Ethiopian guides, informants and advisers whose knowledge lay behind the writings of such travellers. Our essay for today focuses on a certain Abdallah, apparently from Tegray, who became a servant or slave of the notable French traveller Antoine d’Abbadie (1810-1897), author of a famous Amharic dictionary and many works on the country's culture. He mentions Abdallah in his "Douze ans de sejour dans la haute Ethiopie", i.e. "Twelve Years Residence in High Ethiopia", where he notes that the latter informed him about traditional Tegray ideas on augury: how travellers on a journey would be influenced,

and be guided on their progress, by the sight of a bird beside the path, etc. Statue in the Family Residence D’Abbadie had great respect for Abdallah, and later took him to France, where he subsequently had a statue of him fashioned in wood. This work of art, in which the young Ethiopian is shown holding a lamp, can still be seen in d’Abbadia, the d’Abbadie family residence in the south of France. Bloody Red Abdallah, however, was apparently not content in d’Abbadie’s service, for he subsequently left it – to become a soldier. He was enrolled with other foreigners, many of them Arabs or emigrants from the Ottoman Empire, who were therefore referred to as Turcos. Few detailns on the young Ethiopian’s career are apparently extant. We find him, however, serving with the French army at the battle of Magenta, in 1859. This engagement, which took place in the northern Italian province of Lombardy, was justly famous. It was the fight in which the French and Piedmontese defeated the Austrians, thereby making Italian unity inevitable. Abdallah doubtless found the battle terrible, for it was indeed a bloody one: so bloody indeed that the word Magenta came thereafter in many languages to signify a bloody shade of red. A decade or so passes, without any news of the good Abdallah. "To Berlin! To Berlin!" By the late 1860’s tensions were developing between France, Abdallah’s country of adoption, and Prussia, which, like Piedmont in Italy, was in the forefront of a unification struggle: in this case for the forging of modern Germany. The Prussian Kaiser, Wilhelm I, coveted the Spanish throne, which was more or less there for the taking, and sent the famous Ems Telegram, on 13 July 1870, to his scheming Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The latter doctored the text of the message to make it appear as if the German King and the French Ambassador had seriously insulted each other. This, you may remember, precipitated the Franco-Prussian War. The French public cried out in anger, "To Berlin!, to Berlin!", and their Government declared war. Emperor Napoleon III (there was never to speak of any Napoleon II), was defeated at Sedan. Promptly deposed, his fall ushered in the Third Republic. The Prussians meanwhile advanced on Paris, which they surrounded, after which the city eventually capitulated. The new French Government, situated in Versailles, had little alternative but to accept the Treaty of Frankfurt, by which they agreed to pay Prussia an immense indemnity, and to surrender the border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. No small humiliation that! Mass Shootings, Arrests, and Deportations The people of Paris – or at least many of them - shocked by the terms of the peace treaty, and fearing a restoration of the Bonapartist monarchy, rebelled against their conservative Government. In March 1871 they established the short-lived Paris Commune. Reminiscent of the earlier French Revolutionary Commune of 1793, and posthumously praised by Karl Marx, it was but a short-lived affair, crushed in May, with great ruthlessness, by the Versailles government. It is estimated that 20,000 Communards, or supporters of the Commune, were killed, 38,000 were arrested, and 7,000 deported. This left a deep scar on the French body politic for at least a generation. But what was the role of our Ethiopian friend Abdallah in all this? He joined the ranks of the Communards, how and why we do not know,, and was among the countless thousands who paid the price for this – in blood! Pierre Loti His story later caught the imagination of the French novelist Louis Viaud (1850-1923), better known by his pseudonym Pierre Loti (1850-1923), who wrote a highly fictionalised version of it. (Thank you Mary!) He thus introduced Abdallah’s sad story into French literature. In doing so he changed Abdallah’s name to Kadour, and, ignoring his Ethiopian identity, refers imprecisely as a "TURCO", Arab or African. Since Addis Tribune is no longer Francophone, I present herewith an English version of the Abdalla’s fictionalised story, entitled "The Turco of the Commune", translated by A.D. Beavington-Atkinson and D. Havers, and published in "The Pope’s Mule and Other Stories from Daudet" (London, 1893). This story cannot be taken as anything like the whole truth, but is nonetheless interesting, if only as an historic work of fiction. "He was", the translation begins, "a little drummer boy of the native musketeers. He was called Kadour, of the tribe of Djandal, and formed one of that handful of Arabs who threw themselves into Paris at the head of Vinoy's army. From Wissembourg up to Champigny he had followed all the campaign, flitting through the battlefields like a petrel on the wing, with his iron castanets and his derbourka (Arab drum); always on the move, and so swift that the balls had no chance to hit him. But when the water was come, this bronzed little African, burnt in the fire of the cannon, could not bear the nights of the long watch, immovable in the snow; and one morning in January they found him on the bank of the Marne, with frozen feet, cramped by the cold. He was a long time in the ambulance. It was there that I saw him first. Piteous and patient as a sick dog, the Turco looked around him with his large, soft gaze. When you spoke to him he smiled and showed his teeth. It was all he could do; for our language was unknown to him, and he could barely talk the sabir, that Algerian patois made up of Provencal, Italian, and Arabic, a medley of words gathered like shells along the coasts of the southern seas. "To amuse himself Kadour had only his derbouka. Now and then, when he was very weary, they put it on the bed for him and let him play, but not very loud, because of the other sick folk. Then his poor dark face, so dulled and quenched in the yellow light and melancholy winter outlook on the street, kindled and twitched, following all the movements of the rhythm. Sometimes he beat off the attack, and the twinkle of his white teeth broke into a fierce laugh; or again his eyes moistened over some Mussulman reveill~ (dawn music), his nostril inflated, and through the sickly odours off the ambulance, amid the phials and compresses, he saw again the groves of Blidah, laden with oranges, and the little Moorish women leaving the bath, muffled in white and perfumed with verbena. He Thought that the War Was Going on Still "Two months passed away thus. Paris, in those two months, had done many things; but Kadour knew nothing about them. He had heard beneath the windows the return of the worn-out and disarmed troops; later on the cannon went by, rolling from morning to night; then the alarm, and the cannonade. Of all this he understood nothing, except that war was going on still, and that soon he would be able to fight too, for his legs were healed. Behold him gone, his drum on his back, off to look for his company. He did not seek long. Some Federals [i.e. supporters of the Commune who were passing brought him into the Square. After a long interrogation, as nothing could be extracted from him but bonobezif macacho bono, the general for the day ended by giving him ten francs and an omnibus horse, and attaching him to his staff. "There was a little of everything in those staffs of the Commune, red shirts, Polish dolmans, Hungarian doublets sailors' pea-jackets, and there was bravery of gold, velvet, spangles, and gold lace. With his blue vest broidered with yellow, his turban, his derbouka, the little Turco came to complete the masquerade. Full of delight to find himself in such fine company, giddy with the sunlight, the cannonading, the bustle in the streets, the medley of arms and uniforms, persuaded, besides, that it was still the war with Prussia that was going on, only with some wonderful life and freedom about it, this deserter, in spite of himself, mingled innocently in the great Parisian orgy, and became a celebrity of the moment. Everywhere the Federals hailed him and feted him. The Commune were so proud of getting him that they showed him off, advertised him, wore him, as it were, like a cockade. Twenty times a day the Square sent him to the war office, the war office to the Hotel de Ville. For, you see, it had been whispered that their marines were make-believe marines, their artillery make-believe artillery! At any rate, here was a genuine Turco. To convince oneself of that, one had but to look at the frizzled crop of the young monkey, and to note the savage lissomness of his little body swaying about on the big horse in the caracoles of the fantasia. "Yet there was something wanting to the happiness of Kadour. He would have liked to fight to smell powder, Unfortunately, under the Commune~ as under the Empire, the staff was not often under fire. Except for messages and parades, the poor little Turco passed his time on the Place Vendome, or in the courtyard of the Ministry of War, in the midst of the disorganised Camp, full of brandy casks for ever running, of barrels of lard staved in, of stuffing and swilling, where yet the starvation of the siege was plain enough to see. Too good a Mussulman to take part in these orgies, Kadour kept apart, sober and calm, made his ablutions in a corner, his kouss-kouss with a handfu! of semolinaa; then after a little derbauka he would roll burnoose and go to sleep on a step by the bivouac fire. One Morning in May "One morning in May the Turco was awakened by a terrible firing. All the headquarters was in commotion; everybody took to his heels and fled. Mechanically he did like the rest, leapt on his horse, and followed the staff. The streets were full of mad, wild trumpet-calls, of disordered battalions. Evidently something extraordinary was going on . The nearer to the quay, the more distinct was the firing, the greater the tumult. On the bridge De la Concorde Kadour lost the staff. A little farther on they took away his horse; it was for a hussar with eight stripes, in a desperate hurry to see what was going on at the Hotel de Ville. Furious, the Turco began to run in the direction of the fight. Still running he loaded his chassepot, muttering between his teeth "macacha bono, Brissein" . . for as far as he knew it must be the Prussians who were entering the city. Already the balls whistled round the obelisk among the trees of the Tuileries. On the barricade of the Rue de Rivoli the avengers of Flourens called out to him: ' Hi, Turco, Turco !' There were only a dozen of them, but Kadour alone was worth an army. " Erect on the barricade, proud, conspicuous as an ensign, he fought with leaps and cries under a hail of cannon-shot. One moment the curtain of smoke that rose from the ground divided a little between two cannonades and let him see the red trousers massed in the Champs Elysees. Then all was confusion again. He thought he must have been mistaken, and peppered away harder than ever. Suddenly there was Silence " Suddenly there was silence on the barricade. The last artilleryman had fired his last charge and fled. As for the little Turco, he never budged; lurking in ambush ready to spring, he fixed his bayonet firmly and waited for the pointed helmets. It was the French line that came on! Through the dull thud of the advancing feet the officers shouted, ' Surrender! '"The Turco stood stupefied for a second, then darted forward, his musket aloft: 'Bono, bono Francese !' " Vaguely, with the savage instinct, he supposed this must be the army of deliverance, under Faidherbe or Chanzy, which the Parisians had been expecting so long. How happy then was he, how he laughed at them with all his white teeth. " In a twinkling the barricade was surmounted. They surround him, they hustle him. "’ Show your musket!' "His musket was still hot. " ' Show your hand !' "His hands were still black with the powder, and the little Turco showed them proudly, with the same jolly laugh. Then they pushed him against awall, and. . . rranl "He was dead, and never knew why".