Barbados - Laying out your clothes to dry

As part of my research for this blog, I read two novels by Bajan writers. The first, In the Castle of my Skin (1953) by George Lamming is a Bajan classic and is, no doubt, a well-established favourite on post-colonial studies reading lists the world over. The second, Song of Night (1998) by Glenville Lovell is a more modern novel, which is set in an independent Barbados, providing an interesting balance to Lamming's world.

Characters in a changing world

In the Castle of my Skin is a really important book and a record of Barbados during a period of great change for the country.  I'm sure much of the story is autobiographical and reflects Lamming's own experiences, as a young man growing up on 'the Rock'.  It's quite a heavy read, but the language is wonderfully poetic and the 'events' of the book have an almost surreal or magical quality to them.  It deals with a time of great change and political upheaval for Barbados, as the white ruling class struggled to maintain their position in an increasingly politicised society.  The book contains mixed feelings about the demise of the Empire and British control of the island.  One really powerful scene describes how a mob are about to attack and kill the white landowner, but they don't have the support of ordinary people and are held back from violence by their leader, Mr Slime.

In Song of Night, Barbados has already been through the big political changes and is facing a different kind of change, as the island's economy shifts from one based on sugar production to one based on tourism.  The changing world of Lovell's book is every bit as disconcerting as that of Lamming's and the main characters, Cyan (or Night) and Breeze, find themselves corrupted by the easy money that can be earned from (mostly US and Canadian) tourists who come to Barbados looking for exotic and sensual pleasures. 

Sense of displacement

Book covers

In both novels, the main characters also experience change in their personal circumstances and a sense of displacement or removal from the society they were born into.  In Lamming's novel, the narrator is offered an opportunity to move upwards, in terms of social class, by going to Trinidad to become an English teacher.  Even though he tries to maintain his relationship with his childhood friends and life in the village, the villagers reject him, as they recognise that he needs to move out of their world and that this is the best thing for him to do.

In Lovell's novel, it's almost the complete opposite - when Cyan's father is convicted of murder and hanged, she finds herself ostracised by the people around her and excluded from the village society that is around her.  Being as stubborn as she is, she refuses to move from the village and backs into a corner, reacting violently to the slightest provocation.  She also loses her sense of morality and does things she would never have dreamed of when her father was alive. 

The role of women in the novels



Woman in Barbados by Shardalow

Perhaps it's not surprising that the older novel, In the Castle of my Skin has a male narrator, whereas Song of Night is narrated, almost exclusively, from a female perspective.  When I was researching  Invasion of the Body Snatchers for my blog posts about Wisconsin, I noticed a similar pattern in regards to the movies that were based on the book, ie. the narrator changed from the male protagonist of the 1950's (Kevin McCarthy) to the female protagonist (Nicole Kidman) of the 2007 film version.  I wonder if this is a general trend across world literature?

Of course, there are women in Lamming's novel - the narrator's mother is an incredibly powerful character, who scares and confuses him, as she prepares his final Bajan meal before he leaves for Trinidad.  The power of white female sexuality is also felt in the novel, when the young English woman who is staying at the Landlord's house accuses some of the local boys of molesting her, to cover up the fact that she been out after dark meeting a sailor. 

Song of Night explores the world of Bajan women and Cyan (or Night) is one of the strongest female characters I've ever come across.  In Lovell's novel, the women recognise that they are in a man's world and do everything they can to assert their place in it.  Cyan takes control of her own destiny and just as quickly loses control of her life, as she refuses to listen to the advice of the women around her.  She has an incredibly strained relationship with her mother and there is a lot of tension with the other women in her life as well. 

I really loved the way that Lamming summed up the roles of men and women in Bajan society:

'The men at cricket. The children at hide and seek. The women laying out their starched clothes to dry.' 

Bajan boys on the beach by Shardalow

Darkness and Rain

Cyan is also known as 'Night' and darkness/the night is an important theme in Lovell's novel.  Cyan feels most comfortable at night and the novel opens with the scene of fireflies descending on her garden and filling her with comfort and joy.  In the Castle of my Skin opens with a rain storm on the narrator's ninth birthday.  Rain and darkness are persistent themes throughout both novels and it's an interesting contrast to the image of Barbados that we might see in tourist brochures, ie. full of light and sunshine.  Like many societies that look relaxed and happy on the surface, I guess Barbados also has a dark side?

A denial of race?

I found a great contrast in the role that race plays in both novels.  Lamming's Barbados is a society that is strictly organised along lines of race.  At the top of the social pile is the White plantation class, next down the growing black middle-class, overseers and administrators - at the bottom is the majority, who Lamming describes as 'my people'; patronised by the white plantation owners, who think that they live in some kind of idyllic native paradise; despised by the growing black middle-class as backward and powerless.  In Lamming's novel, the teachers deny that slavery was ever practised in Barbados, which seems like a terrible denial of the nation's past.

The role of race in Lovell's novel is a lot more complicated.  Cyan becomes friends with a black woman called Koko, who came to live on Barbados from the US and, in her own way, also idealises Barbados as a place where she can be fully respected, despite the colour of her skin.  Koko describes the racism she experienced in the US and tries to inspire Cyan with faith in Barbados as a more egalitarian society.  But Cyan doesn't feel it.  The issue isn't so much about race for her, as the general prejudice the villagers have towards her because of actions of her father.  For Cyan, the colour of her skin is complicated by the fact that, just as it attracts prejudice and snide remarks from the other, lighter-skinned islanders, the darkness of her skin equally attracts the attention of the white touristmen - her skin colour becomes something exotic and worth paying for.  The racial problems of the US are not something she can really relate to.

In Lamming's novel as well, one of the narrators childhood friends, Trumper, goes to work in the US and comes back radicalised and inspired by a sense of Black Pride, that people on the island find hard to understand, as though he'd come back speaking a foreign language. 

Trinidad and St Lucia

It's interesting to note the references to other neighbouring islands in both novels.  When the narrator of In the Castle of my Skin is getting ready to move to Trinidad, he gets lots of advice from neighbours and people who've been there, telling him how terrible life in Trinidad is.  Although they have a similar culture to Barbados, the Bajan characters look down their nose at life in Trinidad and see it as a corrupt version of their own culture.  As the narrator's mother puts it:

Trinidad is a nice place - but fire, fire down there

Bajan Siesta by Shardalow

St Lucia doesn't fare much better, in Song of Night.  Cyan's mother was born in the island and her mother's foreign origin is another reason why Cyan and her sister have little support from their neighbours and society, after her father is hanged.  Cyan takes no interest in her mother's culture and seems to agree with the other Bajan characters that a lot of her mother's faults stem from the fact that she was born elsewhere.  Again, St Lucia is seen as a corrupt version of Barbados.  This reminds me of any number of countries I've lived in, where neighbouring countries are often viewed with distrust and there is a general denial of the cultural commonalities that don't necessarily end at the political border!   

The skill of suspense

I enjoyed reading both novels although, perhaps due to age, In the Castle of my Skin is a much more involved read, suited to academic study.  If you want an easy way into to Bajan literature, I'd highly recommend Lovell's Song of Night - it's a beautiful story, incredibly well-written and Lovell is a master of suspense - we know from the outset that Cyan has done something wrong, but her crime isn't revealed until the very end of the novel.  I don't think the novel is widely available in the UK, but I managed to have a copy shipped over from the US and there are several US sellers on Amazon that have the novel in stock. 
Image credits:

The image of the book covers was taken by me - the cover of Song of Night is from a painting called Paradise of Anubis by Bajan artist David Gall.  David now lectures at the University of North Carolina. 

For this blog post I wanted to highlight images of Barbados that were taken by flickr member Shardalow - you can see more of Shardalow's images on their flickrstream.  Thanks for sharing these with us using the Creative Commons license.

Zanzibar - Memoirs of an Arabian Princess

One of my favourite things about writing this blog is finding out more about the lives of some of the people who have lived in the places I blog about.  One of the most famous records of life in 19th-century Zanzibar, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar was written by a woman called Emily Ruete. This was the name that she adopted after she had eloped with a German merchant, but her birth name was Salamah bint Said and she was the daughter of the 19th-century ruler of Zanzibar and Oman, the Sultan Seyyid Said. Hers is a fascinating story and reminded me a little bit on another book I've read about Gayatri Devi, the last Maharani of Jaipur (see my previous blog post about Gayatri Devi).

Although she was born and brought up in Zanzibar, Salamah bint Said was eventually forced to leave the islands.  She'd become somewhat of a persona non grata in the eyes of most of her family, as she had, rather foolishly, got caught up in a plot against her eldest brother, Majid and then, in an effort to make amends had offended his successor and rival, Bargash, which meant that both sides of the feud turned against her.

Book cover

No wonder then that she sought comfort in the arms of her neighbour, a German merchant, and it caused no small degree of scandal when she turned up pregnant in Aden, where she converted to Christianity and married Herr Ruete before moving back to Germany with her new husband.  She bore him another two children before he was tragically killed in a tram accident and she found herself alone, in a strange land, struggling to bring up three small children all by herself, with little hope of ever returning to Zanzibar. 

She did eventually return to Zanzibar, many years later, but couldn't settle there and made her way back north to Lebanon and Germany again.  As well as telling the fascinating story of her life, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar also describes Zanzibari life in great detail and deals with a range of themes that touch on culture and society.  I've picked out a few of them below:

Race

To the modern reader, Frau Ruete's opinions come across as being terribly racist.  Her description of the Africans who worked for the Sultan in the chapter entitled On the idleness of the Negro, show a common 19th-century view of black people as being work-shy and in need of constant instruction.  Perhaps I should have titled this paragraph, On the idleness of Concubines and their children, as a more accurate (and 21st century) appraisal of life in the Sultan's harem!  She also alludes to the racial tension between some of the Sultan's wives.  Her own mother was Circassian (originating in the Caucasus region of, what is now, southern Russia) and Emily refers to the tension that existed between the Sultan's Circassian and Abyssinian wives, with the Circassian women looking down on the Abyssinians as darker skinned and therefore inferior.

She seems to reserve most of her vitriol for the Hindu merchants who managed a lot of the trade on Zanzibar and she refers to a horrific incident when a Hindu was tricked into entering a courtyard where an animal was being slaughtered, his horror being the subject of ridicule and abuse by the Hindu's Muslim neighbours.

Education and Work

Racism aside, I'm always interested to see how 'the West' is perceived in the eyes of other cultures and Emily's stay in Germany gave her the perfect opportunity to compare life in the North with life in the South.  She talks a bit about the different approaches to work in Europe and in East Africa and points out the influence of the weather on the European's v the African's approach to work.  She struggled to survive the harsh winters in Germany and generally believed that Europeans had a tougher life, as survival itself was a constant struggle.

She also makes an interesting point about Education and how European schools so closely resemble prisons!  She criticised the tendency in Europe to teach children lots of useless facts that they will never use in their adult lives.  I think it was an astute observation and I was also interested in her views on giving children homework, something that wouldn't have happened in Zanzibar, because it would have disrupted family life.

Attitudes towards Child care

Emily with her husband and two of her children

She also compares life in Europe rather unfavourably, with regard to child care and how children are raised.  She felt that European children didn't spend enough time with their parents, particularly their mothers and she couldn't understand how English children would be sent off to boarding schools, where they might not see their parents from one end of the year until the next.  This was a stark contrast to Zanzibar, where children were more or less constantly in contact with their mothers and, at least once a day, with their fathers.

I was interested to learn about the tradition of 'swaddling' that existed in Zanzibar and in many parts of the world in the 19th century.  According to Islamic custom, children were bound for the first forty days of their lives.  I guess swaddling was believed to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (also called Cot or Crib Death).  

The position of women in Zanzibari society

She also talks about the position of women in Zanzibari society.  Whilst some of her observations regarding the limitations of being a woman might be expected of an Islamic society, she also talks a lot about the rights that women had, such as rights to property and the right to marry above or below your social standing.  On one hand, she talks about the enclosed life of the harem, where the Sultan's wives are not allowed to see daylight for fourth months after his death.  On the other hand, she tells us about her great Aunt Assha, a fiercely independent woman, who ruled Oman and fought battles to protect the regency of the Sultan, Emily's father.  Frau Ruete herself challenges many of the preconceptions we have about a woman in the 19th century and this book was the first autobiography ever written by an Arabian woman.

An apple a day

The medieval practice of cupping

One part of European life that she really respected was the modern approach to medicine that she experienced in Germany.  This time Zanzibar compares unfavourably with Europe and she regrets that her homeland remained behind the times and antiquated in its approach to medical science.  She refers to old-fashioned practices such as 'cupping' (ie. applying hot cups to the skin) and blood-letting, which was commonly practised in Zanzibar when she was growing up.  She also mentions remedies that involved boiling pages containing verses from the Qu'ran and then drinking these in a kind of tea.  There seems to have been no recognition of mental health issues in 19th-century Zanzibar and depression was seen as a kind of 'demon' that took possession of the person's body.  The best cure was . . . well, cupping and bleeding!

Her mother died when she was fifteen, in a cholera epidemic that swept across Zanzibar. Without her mother around, she lacked appropriate guidance during the turbulent time after the Sultan's death, when different family members took sides with different heirs to the throne.

Torch-lit parades through Stone Town

There is a lot more to this story than I have time to write about in this blog post and the book is well-worth a read, if you fancy getting out of your cultural comfort zone!  She went to great lengths to explain the nature of Islamic traditions and festivals, such as Ramadan and I couldn't help observing that, what is quite familiar to most Europeans today, needed a more detailed explanation for the benefit of the 19th century European reader.  Perhaps we have moved forward and embraced other cultures after all?

My abiding memory of the book is the scene of rich Zanzibari women paying visits to each other, in the early morning hours before sunrise, with a retinue of servants carrying massive lanterns to light their way through the huddled streets of Stone Town.

Image credits:

The image of Emily Ruete with her husband and two of their children is taken from Wikimedia Commons - this image is in the public domain, as its copyright has expired and you can see more information at the image's description page.

The image of cupping is also from Wikimedia Commons and is originally from a 15th century English manuscript, which is kept at the British Library.  This image is also in the public domain and you can also see more information at the descrition page on Wikimedia Commons.

Xinjiang - saying goodbye to the Music of Central Asia

Xinjiang is approximately 7 times the size of Britain and almost 4 times the size of California.  It has one sixth of China's land area but, with over 20 million people, barely a sixtieth of China's population.  As usual, when I'm writing my final blog post, I feel that there is so much more I could learn about this region of the world, but the time has come to say goodbye!

A summary of the topics

My learning experience about Xinjiang has given me an opportunity to learn about the history of the region and the politics of Xinjiang versus East Turkestan.  I've also learned a lot about the geography of the region and the diversity of its landscape.  Not just deserts and mountains, but the Turfan Depression, the Dzungarian steppe and the fertile Ili Valley.  I learned how to cook Dà pán jī and how to make my own noodles.  I learned about Khoja Iparhan, the Fragrant concubine and how the Occident represented adventure and exoticism to the Chinese, similar to the way that the Orient was perceived by 19th century Europeans.  I learned about the magical qualities of Jade, how important this stone has been in the development of Chinese history and China's relationship with the people on its Western borders.  I learned about the Uyghur language and where it sits in the Turkic language family.  The Indo-European mummies of Tarim gave me an opportunity to explore the origins of race and the specific nature of racism in China.

Other areas of interest

Again, there are many other things I've learned during the past month or so, but not had time to write a blog post about.  I'll try to summarise these below so, if you're interested in finding out more, I'd encourage you to do some research into topics that I have only had a chance to scratch the surface of.  These include:

Uyghur demonstration in Helsinki, July 2011

- the history of Islam in China, including the Chinese muslims, the Hui people.
- K2, the second highest mountain in the world, which is situated on Xinjiang's southern border.
- Nuclear testing in the Taklamakan desert
- the Tocharians, their language and culture.
- the Parthians and the origin of the phrase 'a Parthian (or parting) shot'
- the story of the Chinese princess who gave away the secret of silk
- the Legend of Prester John
- Wuer Kaixi, a Uyghur who was one of the student leaders during the Tiananmen rebellion
- the role of Eunuchs in the Chinese Imperial court
- the symbolism of oleaster
- the Taiping rebellion (hopefully I'll be able to come back to this one!)
- the story of Yakub Beg and his independent Kashgaria in the 1860's
- George Hunter and the China Inland Mission
- the Xinjiang Military Region Production and Construction Corps "August First" Field Army Swearing to Defend the Thought of Mao Zedong to the Death - probably the longest name ever for a military regiment (I wonder if they used an acronym?)
- the claim that there were (or even are) gulags in Xinjiang

The Jiayuguan Gate by Richard Towell

- the Jiayuguan Gate in the Great Wall of China, often the last sight of China for exiles heading West.
- the Manchus of the Ili Valley
- the development of the Han Chinese city of Shihezi, just north of the capital Urumqi.
- the Uyghur diaspora and the challenges faced by the East Turkestan 'government in exile'
- the cause of goitre, attributed to the lime and magnesia salts of the southern Taklamakan
- the lake monster of Kanas
- the story of Tutuqash and the Mangqys

As you can imagine, I could have gone on blogging about Xinjiang for some time to come!

The sound of Central Asia

One topic I do want to draw your attention to is the rich musical traditions of Xinjiang and Central Asia, in general.  When I was preparing to go to Uzbekistan, I bought a CD of classical Uzbek and Tajik music, which I played over and over again, as I was packing my bags and getting ready for my 'big adverture' on the other side of the world!  Whilst the musical traditions of Central Asia have a lot in common with music throughout the Islamic world, I couldn't help noticing the influence of, what I perceived to be, Chinese music, on the music of Uzbekistan.  I think it was the sound of wind instruments, like the surnay (known as in shawm English, an ancestor of the oboe) that made me think Central Asian music sounded slightly Chinese.

Two shawms or surnay by tomfbh

The chanting that is so common in the Central Asian classical tradition sounds very much like chanting throughout the Arab world - but the solo singing, especially that of female artists, has a pitch that wouldn't sound out of place in a Chinese Opera.  As with everything else in Xinjiang, I think the music is an end result of centuries of cultural interaction.  Whether or not the wind instruments came from China, or the drums came from India or Arabia, Central Asian music has a sound that is pretty unique - it can sound both Western and Eastern, Islamic and Oriental.

The most popular form of traditional music in Xinjiang is a style called Muqam, a set of 12 musical suites, which is usually grouped into three parts; the muqaddime or introduction, the dastan or narrative songs, usually with a set text and the meshrep which is a faster beat and gets people dancing at weddings!  It's a shame I've not had time to delve deeper into the music of Xinjiang but, if you're interested in finding out more, the website of the London Uyghur Ensemble has more information about Uyghur music than I could ever give you.  As well as links to recordings of various instruments, their website also has great research documents by Rachel Harris, who is a Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at London's School of Oriental and African studies. 

I'm going to leave you with a video from YouTube, which features a performance by the London Uyghur Ensemble.  It's a recording of the Penjigah Muqam, which is popular in the Ili Valley.  The picture quality isn't great, but the most important thing is to sit back, listen and enjoy!



On Learning about the World next month, Y . . .


Image credits:

The photo of the Uyghur demonstrators in Helsinki was posted by Amnesty International Finland - you can find out more about this demonstration on their flickr stream and see a news report on the situation in Xinjiang at their website


The photo of the Jiayuguan Gate (aka Jiayu Pass) was shared with the world by flickruser Richard Towell - you can see more information about Richard at his profile page on Flickr

The image of the surnay/shawms was posted on flickr by tomfbh - you can see more of Tom's photos at his flickr photostream.