The Harari, neighbors of the Somals, are another people among whom
Paulitschke fancied that he discovered signs of idealized love
(_B.E.A.S._, 70). Their youthful attachments, he says, are intense and
noble, and in proof of this he translates two of their poems on the
beauty of a bride.
I. "I tell thee this only: thy face is like silk, Aisa;
I say it again, I tell thee nothing but that. Thou art
slender as a lance-shaft; thy father and thy mother are
Arabs; they all are Arabs; I tell thee this only."
II. "Thy form is like a burning lamp, Aisa; I love
thee. When thou art at the side of Abrahim, thou
burnest him with the light of thy beauty. To-morrow I
shall see thee again."
In a third (freely translated and printed in the appendix of the same
volume) occur these lines:
"The honey is already taken out and I come with it. The
milk is already drawn and I bring it. And now thou art
the pure honey, and now thou art the fresh milk. The
gathered honey is very sweet, and therefore it was
drunk to thy health. Thine eyes are black, dyed with
Kahul. The fresh milk is very sweet and therefore it
was drunk to thy health. I have seen Sina--oh, how
sweet was Sina.... Thine eyes are like the full moon,
and thy body is fragrant as the fragrance of
rose-water. And she lives in the garden of her father
and the garments on her body become fragrant as
basil.... And thou art like a king's garden in which
all perfumes are united."
It is easy to note Arabic influences in these poems. The Harari are
largely Arabic; their very language is being absorbed in the Arabic;
yet I cannot find in these poems the least evidence of amorous
idealism or "noble" sentiment. To have a lover compare a girl's face
to silk, her form to a lance-shaft or a burning lamp, her eyes to the
full moon, may be an imaginative sort of sensualism, but it is purely
sensual nevertheless. If an American lover told a girl, "I bought some
delicious candy and ate it, thinking of you; I ordered a glass of
sweet soda-water and drank it to your health"--would she regard that
as evidence of "noble" love, or of any kind of love at all, except a
kind of cupboard love?
No, not even here, where Arabian influences prevail, do we come across
the germs of true love. It is the same all over Africa. Nowhere do we
find indications that men admire other things in women except, at
most, voluptuous eyes and plump figures; nowhere do the men perform
unselfish acts of gallantry and self-sacrifice; nowhere exhibit
sympathy with their females, who, far from being goddesses, are not
even companions, but simply drudges and slaves to lust. A whole volume
would be required to demonstrate that this holds true of all parts of
Africa; but the present chapter is already too long and I must close
with a brief reference to the Berbers of Algeria (Kabyles) to show
that at the northern extremity of Africa, as at the southern, the
eastern, the western, love spells lust. Here, too, man is lower than
animals. Camille Sabatier, who was a justice of the peace at
Tizi-Ouzan, speaks[150] of "_la brutalité du male qui, souvent même
chez les Kabyles, n'attend pas la nubilité pour déflorer la jeune
enfant._" The girls, he adds,
"detest their husbands with all their heart. Love is
almost always unknown to them--I mean by love that
ensemble of refined sentiments, which, among civilized
peoples, ennoble the sexual appetite."