Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - "Ausgewählte Fabeln"

William Crosbie Hunter - "Evening Round Up"

Sophie May - "Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's"

Moliere (Poquelin) - "The Countess of Escarbagnas (La Comtesse D'Escarbagnas)"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Tancred

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> Tancred




For many hours throughout this region nothing was heard but the firing
of guns, the baying of hounds, the shouting of men; not a human being
was visible, except some groups of women in the villages, with veils
suspended on immense silver horns, like our female headgear of the
middle ages. By-and-by, figures were seen stealing forth from the
forest, men on foot, one or two, then larger parties; some reposed on
the plain, some returned to the villages, some re-ascended the winding
steeps of Canobia. The firing, the shouting, the baying had become more
occasional. Now a wearied horseman picked his slow way over the plain;
then came forth a brighter company, still bounding along. And now they
issued, but slowly and in small parties, from various and opposite
quarters of the woodland. A great detachment, in a certain order, were
then observed to cross the plain, and approach the castle. They advanced
very gradually, for most of them were on foot, and joining together,
evidently carried burdens; they were preceded and followed by a guard
of cavalry. Soon it might be perceived that the produce of the chase was
arriving: twenty-five wild boars carried on litters of green branches;
innumerable gazelles borne by their victors; transfixed by four spears,
and carried by four men, a hyena.

Not very long after this caravan had reached the castle, the firing,
which had died away, recommenced; the sounds were near at hand; there
was a volley, and almost simultaneously there issued from various parts
of the forest the great body of the hunt. They maintained no order on
their return, but dispersed over the plain, blending together, galloping
their steeds, throwing their lances, and occasionally firing a shot.
Fakredeen and his immediate friends rode up to the Caimacam of the
Druses, and they offered each other mutual congratulations on the sport
of the morning. They waited for the Caimacam of the Maronites, who,
however, did not long detain them; and, when he appeared, their suites
joined, and, cantering off at a brisk pace, they soon mounted in company
the winding steeps of Canobia.

The kitchen of Canobia was on a great scale, though simple as it was
vast. It was formed for the occasion. About fifty square pits, some four
feet in length, and about half as deep, had been dug on the table-land
in the vicinity of the castle. At each corner of each pit was a stake,
and the four supported a rustic gridiron of green wood, suspended over
each pit, which was filled with charcoal, and which yielded an equal
and continuous heat to the animal reposing on the gridiron: in some
instances a wild boar, in others a sheep--occasionally a couple of
gazelles. The sheep had been skinned, for there had been time for the
operation; but the game had only been split open, cleared out, and laid
on its back, with its feet tied to each of the stakes, so as to retain
its position. While this roasting was going on, they filled the stomachs
of the animals with lemons gashed with their daggers, and bruised
pomegranates, whose fragrant juice, uniting with the bubbling fat,
produced an aromatic and rosy gravy. The huntsmen were the cooks, but
the greatest order was preserved; and though the Emirs and the great
Sheikhs, heads of houses, retiring again to their divans, occupied
themselves with their nargilehs, many a mookatadgi mixed with the
servants and the slaves, and delighted in preparing this patriarchal
banquet, which indeed befitted a castle and a forest. Within the walls
they prepared rice, which they piled on brazen and pewter dishes,
boiled gallons of coffee, and stewed the liver of the wild boars and the
gazelles in the golden wine of Lebanon.

The way they dined was this. Fakredeen had his carpet spread on the
marble floor of his principal saloon, and the two Caimacams, Tancred
and Bishop Nicodemus, Said Djinblat, the heads of the Houses of Djezbek,
Talhook, and Abdel-Malek, Hamood Abune-ked, and five Maronite chieftains
of equal consideration, the Emirs of the House of Shehaab, the Habeish,
and the Eldadah, were invited to sit with him. Round the chamber which
opened to the air, other chieftains were invited to spread their
carpets also; the centre was left clear. The rest of the Sheikhs and
rhookatadgis established themselves in small parties, grouped in the
same fashion, in the great court and under the arcades, taking care to
leave free egress and regress to the fountain. The retainers feasted,
when all was over, in the open air.

Every man found his knife in his girdle, forks were unknown. Fakredeen
prided himself on his French porcelain, which the Djinblats, the
Talhooks, and the Abunekeds glanced at very queerly. This European
luxury was confined to his own carpet. There was, however, a
considerable supply of Egyptian earthenware, and dishes of pewter and
brass. The retainers, if they required a plate, found one in the large
flat barley cake with which each was supplied. For the principal guests
there was no want of coarse goblets of Bohemian glass; delicious
water abounded in vases of porous pottery, which might be blended, if
necessary, with the red or white wine of the mountain. The rice, which
had been dressed with a savoury sauce, was eaten with wooden spoons
by those who were supplied with these instruments; but in general the
guests served themselves by handfuls.

Ten men brought in a framework of oaken branches placed transversely,
then covered with twigs, and over these, and concealing everything, a
bed, fully an inch thick, of mulberry leaves. Upon this fragrant bier
reposed a wild boar; and on each side of him reclined a gazelle. Their
bodies had closed the moment their feet had been loosened from the
stakes, so that the gravy was contained within them. It required a most
skilful carver not to waste this precious liquid. The chamber was filled
with an invigorating odour as the practised hand of Habas of Deir el
Kamar proceeded to the great performance. His instruments were a silver
cup, a poniard, and a handjar. Making a small aperture in the side of
the animal, he adroitly introduced the cup, and proportionately baled
out the gravy to a group of plates that were extended to him; then,
plunging in the long poniard on which he rested, he made an incision
with the keen edge and broad blade of the handjar, and sent forth slice
after slice of white fat and ruby flesh.

The same ceremony was performing in the other parts of the castle.
Ten of the pits had been cleared of their burden to appease the first
cravings of the appetite of the hunters. The fires had been replenished,
the gridirons again covered, and such a supply kept up as should not
only satisfy the chieftains, but content their followers. Tancred could
not refrain from contrasting the silent, business-like way in which the
Shehaabs, the Talhooks, the Djinblats, and the Habeish performed the
great operation that was going on, with the conversation which is
considered an indispensable accompaniment of a dinner in Fran-guestan;
for we must no longer presume to call Europe by its beautiful oriental
name of Christendom. The Shehaabs, the Talhooks, the Djinblats, and the
Habeish were sensible men, who were of opinion that if you want to talk
you should not by any means eat, since from such an attempt at a united
performance it generally results that you neither converse nor refresh
yourself in a satisfactory manner.

There can be no question that, next to the corroding cares of Europeans,
principally occasioned by their love of accumulating money which they
never enjoy, the principal cause of the modern disorder of dyspepsia
prevalent among them is their irrational habit of interfering with the
process of digestion by torturing attempts at repartee, and racking
their brain at a moment when it should be calm, to remind themselves of
some anecdote so appropriate that they have forgotten it. It has been
supposed that the presence of women at our banquets has occasioned this
fatal and inopportune desire to shine; and an argument has been founded
on this circumstance in favour of their exclusion from an incident
which, on the whole, has a tendency to impair that ideal which they
should always study and cherish. It may be urged that if a woman eats
she may destroy her spell; and that, if she will not eat, she destroys
our dinner.

Notwithstanding all this, and without giving any opinion on this latter
point, it should be remembered that at dinners strictly male, where
there is really no excuse for anything of the kind, where, if you are
a person of ascertained position, you are invited for that position
and for nothing else, and where, if you are not a person of ascertained
position, the more agreeable you make yourself the more you will be
hated, and the less chance you will have of being asked there again,
or anywhere else, still this fatal frenzy prevails; and individuals are
found who, from soup to coffee, from egg to apple, will tell anecdotes,
indulge in jests, or, in a tone of levity approaching to jesting, pour
forth garrulous secret history with which everyone is acquainted, and
never say a single thing which is new that is not coolly invented for
the occasion.

The princes of the Houses of Shehaab, Kais, and Assaad, and Abdullah,
the Habeish and the Eldadah, the great Houses of the Druses, the
Djinblat and the Yezbek, the Abuneked, the Talhook, and the Abdel-Malek,
were not of this school. Silently, determinedly, unceasing, unsatiated,
they proceeded with the great enterprise on which they had embarked. If
the two nations were indeed to be united, and form a great whole
under the sceptre of a Shehaab, let not this banquet pass like the
hypocritical hospitality of ordinary life, where men offer what they
desire not to be accepted by those who have no wish to receive. This, on
the contrary, was a real repast, a thing to be remembered. Practice
made the guests accustomed to the porcelain of Paris and the goblets of
Prague. Many was the goodly slice of wild boar, succeeded by the
rich flesh of the gazelle, of which they disposed. There were also
wood-pigeons, partridges, which the falconers had brought down, and
quails from the wilderness. At length they called again for rice, a
custom which intimated that their appetite for meat was satisfied, and
immediately Nubian slaves covered them with towels of fine linen fringed
with gold, and, while they held their hands over the basin, poured sweet
waters from the ewer.

In the meantime, Butros Keramy opened his heart to Rafael Farah.

'I begin,' said Butros, quaffing a cup of the Vino d'Oro, 'to believe in
nationality.'

'It cannot be denied,' said Rafael Farah, judiciously shaking his head,
'that the two nations were once under the same prince. If the great
powers would agree to a Shehaab, and we could sometimes meet together in
the present fashion, there is no saying, prejudices might wear off.'

'Shall it ever be said that I am of the same nation as Hamood Abuneked?'
said Butros.

'Ah! it is very dreadful,' said Rafael; 'a man who has burned convents!'

'And who has five hundred Maronite horns in his castle,' said Butros.

'But suppose he restores them?' said Francis El Kazin.

'That would make a difference,' said Rafael Farah.

'There can be no difference while he lives,' said Butros.

'I fear 'tis an affair of blood,' said Rafael Farah.

'Taking horns was never an affair of blood,' said Francis El Kazin.

'What should be an affair of blood,' said Butros, 'if----'

'But nothing else but taking horns can be proved,' said Francis El
Kazin.

'There is a good deal in that!' said Rafael Farah.

After confectionery which had been prepared by nuns, and strong waters
which had been distilled by the hands of priors, the chieftains praised
God, and rose, and took their seats on the divan, when immediately
advanced a crowd of slaves, each bearing a nargileh, which they
presented to the guests. Then gradually the conversation commenced. It
was entirely confined to the exploits of the day, which had been rich in
the heroic feats of forest huntsmen. There had been wild boars, too,
as brave as their destroyers; some slight wounds, some narrow escapes.
Sheikh Said Djinblat inquired of Lord Montacute whether there were
hyenas in England, but was immediately answered by the lively and
well-informed Kais Shehaab, who apprised him that there were only lions
and unicorns. Bishop Nicodemus, who watched the current of observations,
began telling hunting stories of the time of the Emir Bescheer, when
that prince resided at his splendid castle of Bteddeen, near Deir el
Kamar. This was to recall the days when the mountain had only one ruler,
and that ruler a Shehaab, and when the Druse lords were proud to be
classed among his most faithful subjects.

In the meantime smoking had commenced throughout the castle, but this
did not prevent the smokers from drinking raki as well as the sober
juice of Mocha. Four hundred men, armed with nargileh or chibouque,
inhaling and puffing with that ardour and enjoyment which men, after
a hard day's hunting, and a repast of unusual solidity, can alone
experience! Without the walls, almost as many individuals were feasting
in the open air; brandishing their handjars as they cut up the huge
masses of meat before them, plunging their eager hands into the enormous
dishes of rice, and slaking their thirst by emptying at a draught a vase
of water, which they poured aloft as the Italians would a flask of wine
or oil.

'And the most curious thing,' said Freeman to Trueman, as they
established themselves under a pine tree, with an ample portion of roast
meat, and armed with their traveling knives and forks, 'and the most
curious thing is, that they say these people are Christians! Who ever
heard of Christians wearing turbans?'

'Or eating without knives and forks?' added True-man.

'It would astonish their weak minds in the steward's room at Bellamont,
if they could see all this, John,' said Mr. Freeman, pensively. 'A man
who travels has very great advantages.'

'And very great hardships too,' said Trueman. 'I don't care for work,
but I do like to have my meals regular.'

'This is not bad picking, though,' said Mr. Freeman; 'they call it
gazelle, which I suppose is the foreign for venison.'

'If you called this venison at Bellamont,' said Trueman, 'they would
look very queer in the steward's room.'

'Bellamont is Bellamont, and this place is this place, John,' said Mr.
Freeman. 'The Hameer is a noble gentleman, every inch of him, and I
am very glad my lord has got a companion of his own kidney. It is much
better than monks and hermits, and low people of that sort, who are not
by no means fit company for somebody I could mention, and might turn him
into a papist into the bargain.'

'That would be a bad business,' said Trueman; 'my lady could never abide
that. It would be better that he should turn Turk.'

'I am not sure it wouldn't,' said Mr. Freeman. 'It would be in a manner
more constitutional. The Sultan of Turkey may send an Ambassador to our
Queen, but the Pope of Rome may not.'

'I should not like to turn Turk,' said Trueman, very thoughtfully.

'I know what you are thinking of, John,' said Mr. Freeman, in a serious
tone. 'You are thinking, if anything were to happen to either of us in
this heathen land, where we should get Christian burial.'

'Lord love you, Mr. Freeman, no, I wasn't. I was thinking of a glass of
ale.'

'Ah!' sighed Freeman, 'it softens the heart to think of such things away
from home, as we are. Do you know, John, there are times when I feel
very queer, there are indeed. I catched myself a singing "Sweet Home"
one night, among those savages in the wilderness. One wants consolation,
John, sometimes, one does, indeed; and, for my part, I do miss the
family prayers and the home-brewed.'

As the twilight died away, they lighted immense bonfires, as well to
cheer them during their bivouac, as to deter any adventurous panther,
stimulated by the savoury odours, or hyena, breathing fraternal revenge,
from reconnoitring their encampment. By degrees, however, the noise
of the revellers without subsided, and at length died away. Having
satisfied their hunger, and smoked their chibouques, often made from the
branch which they had cut since their return from hunting, with the bud
still alive upon the fresh green tube, they wrapped themselves in their
cloaks and sheepskins, and sunk into a deep and well-earned repose.

Within, the Sheikhs and mookatadgis gradually, by no means
simultaneously, followed their example. Some, taking off their turbans
and loosening their girdles, ensconced themselves under the arcades,
lying on their carpets, and covered with their pelisses and cloaks; some
strolled into the divaned chambers, which were open to all, and more
comfortably stowed themselves upon the well-stuffed cushions; others,
overcome with fatigue and their revel, were lying in deep sleep,
outstretched in the open court, and picturesque in the blazing
moonlight.

The hunting party was to last three days, and few intended to leave
Canobia on the morrow; but it must not be supposed that the guests
experienced any very unusual hardships in what the reader may consider a
far from satisfactory mode of passing their night. To say nothing of the
warm and benignant climate, the Easterns have not the custom of retiring
or rising with the formality of the Occidental nations. They take their
sleep when they require it, and meet its embrace without preparation.
One cause of this difference undoubtedly is, that the Orientals do not
connect the business of the toilet with that of rest. The daily bath,
with its elaborate processes, is the spot where the mind ponders on the
colour of a robe or the fashion of a turban; the daily bath, which is
the principal incident of Oriental habits, and which can scarcely be
said to exist among our own.

Fakredeen had yielded even his own chambers to his friends. Every divan
in Canobia was open, excepting the rooms of Tancred. These were sacred,
and the Emir had requested his friend to receive him as a guest during
the festival, and apportion him one of his chambers. The head of the
House of Talhook was asleep with the tube of his nargileh in his mouth;
the Yezbek had unwound his turban, cast off his sandals, wrapped himself
in his pelisses, and fairly turned in; Bishop Nicodemus was kneeling
in a corner and kissing a silver cross; and Hamood Abu-neked had rolled
himself up in a carpet, and was snoring as if he were blowing through
one of the horns of the Maronites. Fakredeen shot a glance at Tancred,
instantly recognised. Then, rising and giving the salaam of peace to
his guests, the Emir and his English friend made their escape down a
corridor, at the bottom of which was one of the few doors that could be
found in the castle of Canobia. Baroni received them, on the watch
lest some cruising Sheikh should appropriate their resting-place. The
young-moon, almost as young and bright as it was two months before at
Gaza, suffused with lustre the beautiful garden of fruit and flowers
without. Under the balcony, Baroni had placed a divan with many
cushions, a lamp with burning coffee, and some fresh nargilehs.

'Thank God, we are alone!' exclaimed Fakredeen. 'Tell me, my Tancred,
what do you think of it all?'




CHAPTER XLIV.

_Fakredeen's Debts_

IT HAS been a great day,' said Tancred 'not to be forgotten.'

'Yes; but what do you think of them? Are they the fellows I described;
the men that might conquer the world?'

'To conquer the world depends on men not only being good soldiers, but
being animated by some sovereign principle that nothing can resist,'
replied Tancred.

'But that we have got,' rejoined Fakredeen.

'But have they got it?'

'We can give it to them.'

'I am not so sure of that. It seems to me that we are going to establish
a theocratic equality by the aid of the feudal system.'

'That is to say, their present system,' replied Fakredeen. 'Islamism
was propagated by men who were previously idolaters, and our principle
may be established by those whose practice at the present time is
directly opposed to it.'

'I still cling to my first idea of making the movement from the desert,'
said Tancred: 'the Arabians are entirely unsophisticated; they are now
as they were in the time of Mahomet, of Moses, of Abraham: a sublime
devotion is natural to them, and equality, properly developed, is in
fact the patriarchal principle.'

'But these are Arabians,' said Fakredeen; 'I am an Arabian; there is not
a mookatadgi, whatever his present creed, who does not come from Yemen,
or the Hedjaz, or the Nejid.'

'That is a great qualification,' said Tancred, musingly.

'And, see what men these are!' continued Fakredeen, with great
animation. 'Lebanon can send forth more than fifty thousand well-armed,
and yet let enough stay at home to guard the mulberry trees and the
women. Then you can keep them for nothing; a Bedouin is not more
temperate than a Druse, if he pleases: he will get through a campaign
on olives and cheese; they do not require even tents; they bivouac in a
sheepskin.'

'And yet,' said Tancred, 'though they have maintained themselves, they
have done nothing; now, the Arabs have always succeeded.'

'I will tell you how that is,' said Fakredeen. 'It is very true that we
have not done much, and that, when we descended into the plain, as we
did in '63, under the Emir Yousef, we were beat, beaten back even by the
Mutualis; it is that we have no cavalry. They have always contrived
to enlist the great tribes of the Syrian desert against us, as for
instance, under Daher, of whom you must have heard: it was that which
has prevented our development; but we have always maintained ourselves.
Lebanon is the key of Syria, and the country was never unlocked unless
we pleased. But this difficulty is now removed. Through Amalek we shall
have the desert on our side; he is omnipotent in the Syrian wilderness;
and if he sends messengers through Petraea to Derayeh, the Nejid, and
through the Hedjaz, to Yemen and Oman, we could easily get a cavalry as
efficient and not less numerous than our foot.'

'The instruments will be found,' said Tancred, 'for it is decreed that
the deed should be done. But the favour of Providence does not exempt
man from the exercise of human prudence. On the contrary, it is an agent
on whose co-operation they are bound to count. I should like to see
something of the great Syrian cities. I should like also to see Bagdad.
It appears to me, at the first glance, that the whole country to the
Euphrates might be conquered in a campaign; but then I want to know how
far artillery is necessary, whether it be indispensable. Then again,
the Lesser Asia; we should never lose sight of the Lesser Asia as the
principal scene of our movements; the richest regions in the world,
almost depopulated, and a position from which we might magnetise Europe.
But suppose the Turks, through Lesser Asia, conquer Lebanon, while we
are overrunning the Babylonian and Assyrian monarchies? That will never
do. I see your strength here with your own people and the Druses, and
I do not underrate their qualities: but who is to garrison the north of
Syria? Who is to keep the passes of the North? What population have you
to depend on between Tripoli and Antioch, or between Aleppo and Adanah?
Of all this I know nothing.'

Fakredeen had entirely imbibed the views of Tancred; he was sincere in
his professions, fervent in his faith. A great feudal proprietor, he was
prepared to forsake his beautiful castle, his farms and villages, his
vineyards, and mulberry orchards, and forests of oaks, to assist in
establishing, by his voice and his sabre, a new social system, which was
to substitute the principle of association for that of dependence as the
foundation of the Commonwealth, under the sanction and superintendence
of the God of Sinai and of Calvary. True it was that the young Syrian
Emir intended, that among the consequences of the impending movement
should be his enthronement on one of the royal seats of Asia. But we
should do him injustice, were we to convey the impression that his
ardent co-operation with Tancred at this moment was impelled merely,
or even principally, by these coarsely selfish considerations. Men
certainly must be governed, whatever the principle of the social system,
and Fakredeen felt born with a predisposition to rule.

But greater even than his desire for empire was his thirst for action.
He was wearied with the glittering cage in which he had been born. He
panted for a wider field and a nobler theatre, interests more vast and
incidents more dazzling and comprehensive; he wished to astonish Europe
instead of Lebanon, and to use his genius in baffling and controlling
the thrones and dominations of the world, instead of managing the simple
Sheikhs and Emirs of his mountains. His castle and fine estates were no
sources of satisfaction to him. On the contrary, he viewed Canobia with
disgust. It entailed duties, and brought no excitement. He was seldom
at home and only for a few passing days: continued residence was
intolerable to his restless spirit. He passed his life in perpetual
movement, scudding about on the fleetest dromedaries, and galloping over
the deserts on steeds of the highest race.

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