Read Online I Didn't Do It for You by Michela Wrong - Free Book Online Page A

put their cases with impassioned sincerity. The trust placed in the journalist is so unwavering, the hospitality so warm and, on closer examination, the people he was originally gunning for seem so reasonable. Years later, looking back on the glowing write-up that resulted, he winces at how easily he allowed himself to be manipulated, shrugs his shoulders and blames it on a heavy lunch. But it is hard to argue that Martini’s keen intelligence was momentarily befuddled by the justifications presented by the colonial officials he met. In later life, he never showed any sign of regretting his role as co-author of the vital report. What puzzled contemporaries described as Martini’s ‘conversion’ to the colonial cause was to be a permanent change of heart.
    Did the quest for self-advancement play a role? Here, the picture becomes more murky. Martini was undoubtedly vain and hugely ambitious. It seems unlikely that he could already have had his eye on the post of Eritrea’s governorship, which would only be created 10 years into the future. But once granted a place on a high-profile royal inquiry, investigating a topic known to be particularly close to King Umberto’s heart, Martini must have been aware that a bland finding would mean political rewards somewhere down the line.
    Martini’s own explanation for his U-turn–however nigglingly unsatisfying–probably lies implicit in the pages of Nell’Affrica Italiana , a highly personalized account of the Eritrea trip published after his return. Written in the self-consciouslyliterary language of the day, but blessed with the author’s characteristic sharp eye for detail, it became a runaway bestseller, appearing in 10 editions and remaining in print for 40 years. Reaching a far wider audience than a dry government report ever could, Nell’Affrica Italiana , it could be argued, played a more crucial role in shaping public opinion towards Eritrea than anything else Martini wrote.
    In it, Martini pulls no punches about the Italian-made horrors he witnessed in Eritrea. He describes the notorious ‘Field of Hunger’–a desolate plain outside Massawa where the town governor had ordered destitute natives to be taken and left to die. ‘Corpses lay here and there, their faces covered in rags; one, a horrible sight, so swarmed with insects, which snaked their way through limbs twisted and melted by the rays of the sun, he actually seemed to be moving. The dead were waiting for the hyenas, the living were waiting for death.’
    Martini takes to his heels after glimpsing a group of young Eritrean girls sifting through mounds of camel dung in search of undigested grain, fighting for mouthfuls from a horse’s rotting corpse. ‘I fled, horrified, stupefied, mortified by my own impotence, hiding my watch chain, ashamed of the breakfast I had eaten and the lunch that awaited me.’
    He winces at the use to which the curbash is put, on both sides of the recently-established border. ‘Across the whole of Abyssinia, not excluding our own Eritrean colony, the curbash is an institution. Native policemen and guards are issued with it and when needs must (and it seems, from what I saw, that needs must rather often) they flog without mercy.’
    Visiting an orphanage, he is repulsed by the sight of the sons of Eritrean rebels, shot ‘for the sole crime of not wanting Europeans and not wanting to take orders’, being taught to sing Rome’s praises. ‘Conquest always comes with its ownsad, sometimes dishonest, demands. Yet this seemed, and still seems, an outrage against human nature. Even now, remembering it, I feel a rush of blood to my head.’
    Elsewhere, he bitterly ruminates on the hypocrisy of the Italian colonial project. ‘We are liars. We say we want to spread civilization in Abyssinia, but it is not true…Far from being barbaric and idolatrous, these people have been Christians for