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Authors: Sven Lindqvist
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he became her favourite author. When his
The Desert
came out in 1895, she was eighteen years old. Two years later she set out into the desert on her own for the first time. Loti was the one she always took with her on her journeys, the only person she looked up to as a forerunner and example.
She thought she had found her soulmate. He had a beloved older brother who had gone to sea, she has a beloved older brother who became a legionnaire. Her life, like his, is shrouded in departure and loss. Both live in disguise. And both love the desert, where they see their emptiness and their longing for death take shape.
Eberhardt as a Bedouin.
Eberhardt as a spahi.
57
Michel Vieuchange set off into the desert disguised as a woman. Isabelle sets off into the desert disguised as a man.
To her it is not just a disguise. The French language mercilessly reveals whether the writer considers him- or herself to be a man or a woman. Even in her diary Isabelle uses the masculine to describe herself.
Pierre Loti disguised himself as an Arab, but also as a Chinese, a Turk and a Basque. In every harbour, in every book, he takes on a new disguise. He became a cut-out doll for ever in new costumes, a cultural chameleon melting into every environment and lacking authenticity wherever he went.
The disguise goes deeper in Isabelle. When she returns to Africa, she wants to free herself from her past and take on a new and Arab identity. She becomes the Tunisian author Si Mahmoud Essadi.
Dressed in the clothes of an Arab man, she sets off into the desert. She has been waiting for this moment all her life. She rides between the oases with a few native cavalrymen, with a group of legionnaires, with a
chaamba
caravan, with an African on his way home to his village to get a divorce. She writes:
Now I am a nomad – with no other homeland than Islam, with no family, no one in whom to confide, alone, alone for ever in the proud and darkly sweet solitude of my own heart …
She soon finds a separate confidant in one of her Arab lovers. Slimene Ehni is a sergeant in the native cavalry. She meetshim in El Oued and through him becomes a member of a Sufi community, which is secretly opposed to French rule.
Another Arab fraternity closer to the French tries to murder her. A stretched washing line softens the blow and saves her life.
The French army banish her from North Africa and she ends up in Marseilles, where she supports herself for a while by writing letters in Arabic for the guest-workers.
Slimene also goes there, and on October 17, l901, they marry. By marrying an Arab in the service of France, she becomes a French citizen and can return to the desert.
With Slimene she rents a small house in Ain Sefra, which is the headquarters of the French troops during the ‘pacification’ of the border with Morocco.
Even as Madame Ehni, she wears men’s clothes and continues her androgynous life beside camp fires and in soldiers’ brothels. Only the male rôle provides her with the freedom to ride around reporting for the newspaper
l’Akbar
in the Sahara, which the French are just conquering. Only the male rôle gives her the freedom to make love with anyone, to drink anisette with the legionnaires and smoke kif in the cafés, where she shocks listeners with her expositions on the pleasures of brutality and the voluptuousness of subjection.
58
I push my way through a thick dark desert of trees which is called ‘forest’. I am in a hurry and must not come too late. In the end the forest opens up into a clearing. I see a figure hanging by the feet from a branch and I rush over. It is Isabelle! Hernormally moon-pale face is blue-black and contorted. I cut her down and carefully arrange the dead body on the ground.
59
The Globe, a sports arena in Stockholm, is transformed from a descending hot-air balloon into a diving bell. Isabelle and I are sluiced out into the water, spouting cascades of pearly bubbles from our oxygen masks. But very soon we are
The Desert
came out in 1895, she was eighteen years old. Two years later she set out into the desert on her own for the first time. Loti was the one she always took with her on her journeys, the only person she looked up to as a forerunner and example.
She thought she had found her soulmate. He had a beloved older brother who had gone to sea, she has a beloved older brother who became a legionnaire. Her life, like his, is shrouded in departure and loss. Both live in disguise. And both love the desert, where they see their emptiness and their longing for death take shape.
Eberhardt as a Bedouin.
Eberhardt as a spahi.
57
Michel Vieuchange set off into the desert disguised as a woman. Isabelle sets off into the desert disguised as a man.
To her it is not just a disguise. The French language mercilessly reveals whether the writer considers him- or herself to be a man or a woman. Even in her diary Isabelle uses the masculine to describe herself.
Pierre Loti disguised himself as an Arab, but also as a Chinese, a Turk and a Basque. In every harbour, in every book, he takes on a new disguise. He became a cut-out doll for ever in new costumes, a cultural chameleon melting into every environment and lacking authenticity wherever he went.
The disguise goes deeper in Isabelle. When she returns to Africa, she wants to free herself from her past and take on a new and Arab identity. She becomes the Tunisian author Si Mahmoud Essadi.
Dressed in the clothes of an Arab man, she sets off into the desert. She has been waiting for this moment all her life. She rides between the oases with a few native cavalrymen, with a group of legionnaires, with a
chaamba
caravan, with an African on his way home to his village to get a divorce. She writes:
Now I am a nomad – with no other homeland than Islam, with no family, no one in whom to confide, alone, alone for ever in the proud and darkly sweet solitude of my own heart …
She soon finds a separate confidant in one of her Arab lovers. Slimene Ehni is a sergeant in the native cavalry. She meetshim in El Oued and through him becomes a member of a Sufi community, which is secretly opposed to French rule.
Another Arab fraternity closer to the French tries to murder her. A stretched washing line softens the blow and saves her life.
The French army banish her from North Africa and she ends up in Marseilles, where she supports herself for a while by writing letters in Arabic for the guest-workers.
Slimene also goes there, and on October 17, l901, they marry. By marrying an Arab in the service of France, she becomes a French citizen and can return to the desert.
With Slimene she rents a small house in Ain Sefra, which is the headquarters of the French troops during the ‘pacification’ of the border with Morocco.
Even as Madame Ehni, she wears men’s clothes and continues her androgynous life beside camp fires and in soldiers’ brothels. Only the male rôle provides her with the freedom to ride around reporting for the newspaper
l’Akbar
in the Sahara, which the French are just conquering. Only the male rôle gives her the freedom to make love with anyone, to drink anisette with the legionnaires and smoke kif in the cafés, where she shocks listeners with her expositions on the pleasures of brutality and the voluptuousness of subjection.
58
I push my way through a thick dark desert of trees which is called ‘forest’. I am in a hurry and must not come too late. In the end the forest opens up into a clearing. I see a figure hanging by the feet from a branch and I rush over. It is Isabelle! Hernormally moon-pale face is blue-black and contorted. I cut her down and carefully arrange the dead body on the ground.
59
The Globe, a sports arena in Stockholm, is transformed from a descending hot-air balloon into a diving bell. Isabelle and I are sluiced out into the water, spouting cascades of pearly bubbles from our oxygen masks. But very soon we are
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