Blackman's Burden

V

When Homer Crawford, Abe Baker, Kenny Ballalou, Elmer Allen and Bey-ag-Akhamouk had laughed themselves out, Fredric Ostrander, the C.I.A. operative stared at them in anger. “What’s so funny?” he snapped. From his seat in the middle of the hall, Pierre Dupaine, operative for the French Community, said worriedly, “Messieurs, this El Hassan is not amusing. I, too, have heard of him. His followers are evidently sweeping through the Sahara. Everywhere I hear of him.”

There was confirming murmur throughout the rest of the gathering.

Still chuckling, Homer Crawford said, a hand held up for quiet, “Please, everyone. Pardon the amusement of my teammates and myself. You see, there is no such person as El Hassan.”

“To the contrary!” Ostrander snapped.

“No, please,” Crawford said, grinning ruefully. “You see, my team invented him, some time ago.”

Ostrander could only stare, and for once his position was backed by everyone in the hall, Crawford’s team excepted.

Crawford said doggedly, “It came about like this. These people need a hero. It’s in their nomad tradition. They need a leader to follow. Given a leader, as history has often demonstrated, the nomad will perform miracles. We wished to spread the program of the African Development Project. Such items as the need to unite, to break down the old boundaries of clan and tribe and even nation, the freeing of the slave and serf, the upgrading of women’s position, the dropping of the veil and haik, the need to educate the youth, the desirability of taking jobs on the projects and to take up land on the new oases. But since we usually go about disguised as Enaden itinerant smiths, a poorly thought-of caste, our ideas weren’t worth much. So we invented El Hassan and everything we said we ascribed to him, this mysterious hero who was going to lead all North Africa to Utopia.”

Jake Armstrong stood up and said, sheepishly, “I suppose that my team unknowingly added to this. We heard about this mysterious El Hassan and he seemed largely to be going in the same direction, and for the same reason—to give the rumors we were spreading weight—we ascribed the things we said to him.”

Somebody farther back in the hall laughed and said “So did I!”

Homer Crawford extended his hands in the direction of Ostrander, palms upward. “I’m sorry, sir. But there seems to be your mysterious subversive.”

Angered, Ostrander snapped, “Then you admit that it was you, yourself, who have been spreading these subversive ideas?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Crawford snapped in return. “I admit only to those slogans and ideas promulgated by the African Development Project. If any so-called subversive ideas have been ascribed to El Hassan, it has not been through my team. Frankly, I rather doubt that they have. These people aren’t at any ethnic period where the program of the Soviet Complex would appeal. They’re largely in a ritual-taboo tribal society and no one alleging any alliance whatsoever to Marx would contend that you can go from that primitive a culture to what the Soviets call communism.”

“I’ll take this up with my department chief,” Ostrander said angrily. “You haven’t heard the last of it, Crawford.” He sat down abruptly.

Crawford looked out over the room. “Anybody else we haven’t heard from?”

A middle-aged, heavy-set, western-dressed man came to his feet and cleared his throat. “Dr. Warren Harding Smythe, American Medical Relief. I assume that most of you have heard of us. An organization supported partially by government grant, partially by contributions by private citizens and institutions, as is that of Miss Isobel Cunningham’s Africa for Africans Association.” He added grimly, “But there the resemblance ends.”

He looked at Homer Crawford. “I am to be added to the number not in favor of this conference. In fact, I am opposed to the presence of most of you here in Africa.”

Crawford nodded. “You certainly have a right to your opinion, doctor. Will you elucidate?”

Dr. Smythe had worked his way to the front of the room; now he looked out over the assemblage defiantly. “I am not at all sure that the task most of you work at is a desirable one. As you know, my own organization is at work bringing medical care to Africa. We build hospitals, clinics, above all medical schools. Not a single one of our hospitals is not a school at the same time.”

Abe Baker growled, “Everybody knows and values your work, Doc, but what’s this bit about being opposed to ours?”

Smythe looked at him distastefully. “You people are seeking to destroy the culture of these people, and, overnight, thrust them into the pressures of twentieth century existence. As a medical doctor, I do not think them capable of assimilating such rapid change and I fear for their mental health.”

There was a prolonged silence.

Crawford said finally, “What is the alternative to the problems I presented in my summation of the situation that confronts the world due to the backward conditions of such areas as Africa?”

“I don’t know, it isn’t my field.”

There was another silence.

Elmer Allen said finally, uncomfortably, “It is our field, Dr. Smythe.”

Smythe turned to him, his face still holding its distaste. “I understand that the greater part of you are sociologists, political scientists and such. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I do not think of the social sciences as exact ones.”

He looked around the room and added, deliberately, “In view of the condition of the world, I do not have a great deal of respect for the product of your efforts.”

There was an uncomfortable stirring throughout the audience.

Clifford Jackson said unhappily, “We do what we must do, doctor. We do what we can.”

Smythe eyed him. He said, “Some years ago I was impressed by a paragraph by a British writer named Huxley. So impressed that I copied it and have carried it with me. I’ll read it now.”

The heavy-set doctor took out his wallet, fumbled in it for a moment and finally brought forth an aged, many times folded, piece of yellowed paper. He cleared his throat, then read:

“To the question quis custodiet custodes?— who will mount guard over our guardians, who will engineer the engineers?—the answer is a bland denial that they need any supervision. There seems to be a touching belief among certain Ph.Ds in sociology that Ph.Ds in sociology will never be corrupted by power. Like Sir Galahad’s, their strength is the strength of ten because their heart is pure—and their heart is pure because they are scientists and have taken six thousand hours of social studies. Alas, high education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue, or higher political wisdom.”

The doctor finished and returned to his seat, his face still uncompromising.

Homer Crawford chuckled ruefully. “The point is well taken, I suppose. However, so was the one expressed by Mr. Jackson. We do what we must, and what we can.” His eyes went over the assembly. “Is there any other group from which we haven’t heard?”

When there was silence, he added, “No group from the Soviet Complex?”

Ostrander, the C.I.A. operative, snorted. “Do you think they would admit it?”

“Or from the Arab Union?” Crawford pursued.

“Whether or not the Soviet Complex has agents in this part of Africa, we know that the Arab Union, backed by Islam everywhere, has. Frankly, we of the African Development Project seldom see eye to eye with them, which results in considerable discussion at Reunited Nations meetings.”

There was continued silence.

Elmer Allen came to his feet and looked at Ostrander, his face surly. “I am not an advocate of what the Soviets are currently calling communism. However, I think a point should be made here.”

Ostrander stared back at him unblinkingly. Allen snorted, “I know what you’re thinking. When I was a student I signed a few peace petitions, that sort of thing. How—or why they bothered—the C.I.A. got hold of that information, I don’t know, but as a Jamaican I am a bit ashamed of Her Majesty’s Government. But all this is beside the point.”

“What is your point, Elmer?” Crawford said. “You speak, of course, as an individual, not as an employee of the Reunited Nations nor even as a member of my team.”

“Our team,” Elmer Allen reminded him. He frowned at his chief, as though surprised at Crawford’s stand. But then he looked back at the rest. “I don’t like the fact that the C.I.A. is present at all. I grow increasingly weary of the righteousness of the prying for what it calls subversion. The latest definition of subversive seems to be any chap who doesn’t vote either Republican or Democrat in the States, or Conservative in England.”

Ostrander grunted scorn.

Allen looked at him again. “So far as this job is concerned—and by the looks of things, most of us will be kept busy at it for the rest of our lives—I am not particularly favorable to the position of either side in this never-warming cold war between you and the Soviet Complex. I have suspected for some time that neither of you actually want an ending of it. For different reasons, possibly. So far as the States are concerned, I suspect an end of your fantastic military budgets would mean a collapse of your economy. So far as the Soviets are concerned, I suspect they use the continual threat of attack by the West to keep up their military and police powers and suppress the freedom of their people. Wasn’t it an old adage of the Romans that if you feared trouble at home, stir up war abroad? At any rate, I’d like to have it on the record that I protest the Cold War being dragged into our work in Africa—by either side.”

“All right, Elmer,” Crawford said, “you’re on record. Is that all?”

“That’s all,” Elmer Allen said. He sat down abruptly.

“Any comment, Mr. Ostrander?” Crawford said.

Ostrander grunted, “Fuzzy thinking,” and didn’t bother with anything more.

The chairman looked out over the hall. “Any further discussion, any motions?” He smiled and added, “Anything—period?”

Finally Jake Armstrong came to his feet. He said, “I don’t agree with everything Mr. Allen just said; however, there was one item where I’ll follow along. The fact that most of us will be busy at this job for the rest of our lives—if we stick. With this in mind, the fact that we have lots of time, I make the following proposal. This meeting was called to see if there was any prospect of us field workers cooperating on a field worker’s level, if we could in any way help each other, avoid duplication of effort, that sort of thing. I suggest now that this meeting be adjourned and that all of us think it over and discuss it with the other teams, the other field workers in our respective organizations. I propose further that another meeting be held within the year and that meanwhile Mr. Crawford be elected chairman of the group until the next gathering, and that Miss Cunningham be elected secretary. We can all correspond with Mr. Crawford, until the time of the next meeting, giving him such suggestions as might come to us. When he sees fit to call the next meeting, undoubtedly he will have some concrete proposals to put before us.”

Isobel said, sotto voce, “Secretaries invariably do all the work, why is it that men always nominate a woman for the job?”

Jake grinned at her, “I’ll never tell.” He sat down.

“I’ll make that a motion,” Rex Donaldson clipped out.

“Second,” someone else called.

Homer Crawford said, “All in favor?”

Those in favor predominated considerably.

They broke up into small groups for a time, debating it out, and then most left for various places for lunch.

Homer Crawford, separated from the other members of his team, in the animated discussion that went on about him, finally left the fascinating subject of what had happened to the Cuban group in Sudan, and who had done it, and went looking for his own lunch.

He strolled down the sand-blown street in the general direction of the smaller market, in the center of Timbuktu, passing the aged, wind-corroded house which had once sheltered Major Alexander Gordon Laing, first white man to reach the forbidden city in the year 1826. Laing remained only three days before being murdered by the Tuareg who controlled the town at that time. There was a plaque on the door revealing those basic facts. Crawford had read elsewhere that the city was not captured until 1893 by a Major Joffre, later to become a Marshal of France and a prominent Allied leader in the First World War.

By chance he met Isobel in front of the large community butcher shop, still operated in the old tradition by the local Gabibi and Fulbe, formerly Songhoi serfs. He knew of a Syrian-operated restaurant nearby, and since she hadn’t eaten either they made their way there.

The menu was limited largely to local products. Timbuktu was still remote enough to make transportation of frozen foodstuffs exorbitant. While they looked at the bill of fare he told her a story about his first trip to the city some years ago while he was still a student.

He had visited the local American missionary and had dinner with the family in their home. They had canned plums for dessert and Homer had politely commented upon their quality. The missionary had said that they should be good; he estimated the quart jar to be worth something like one hundred dollars. It seems that some kindly old lady in Iowa, figuring that missionaries in such places as Timbuktu must be in dire need of her State Fair prize-winning canned plums, shipped off a box of twelve quarts to missionary headquarters in New York. At that time, France still owned French Sudan, so it was necessary for the plums to be sent to Paris, and thence, eventually to Dakar. At Dakar they were shipned through Senegal to Bamako by narrow gauge railroad which ran periodically. In Bamako they had to wait for an end to the rainy season so roads would be passable. By this time, a few of the jars had fermented and blown up, and a few others had been pilfered. When the roads were dry enough, a desert freight truck took the plums to Mopti, on the Niger River, where they waited again until the river was high enough that a tug pulling barges could navigate, by slow stages, down to Kabara. By this time, one or two jars had been broken by inexpert handling and more pilfered. In Kabara they were packed onto a camel and taken to Timbuktu and delivered to the missionary. Total time elapsed since leaving Iowa? Two years. Total number of jars that got through? One.

Isobel looked at Homer Crawford when he finished the story, and laughed. “Why in the world didn’t that missionary society refuse the old lady’s gift?”

He laughed in return and shrugged. “They couldn’t. She might get into a huff and not mention them in her will. Missionary societies can’t afford to discourage gifts.”

She made her selection from the menu, and told the waiter in French, and then settled back. She resumed the conversation. “The cost of maintaining a missionary in this sort of country must have been fantastic.”

“Um-m-m,” Crawford growled. “I sometimes wonder how many millions upon millions of dollars, pounds and francs have been plowed into this continent on such projects. This particular missionary wasn’t a medical man and didn’t even run a school and in the six years he was here didn’t make a single convert.”

Isobel said, “Which brings us to our own pet projects. Homer—I can call you Homer, I suppose, being your brand new secretary.”

He grinned at her. “I’ll make that concession.”

“What’s your own dream?”

He broke some bread, automatically doing it with his left hand, as proscribed in the Koran. They both noticed it, and both laughed. “I’m conditioned,” he said.

“Me, too,” Isobel admitted. “It’s all I can do to use a knife and fork.”

He went back to her question, scowling. “My dream? I don’t know. Right now I feel a little depressed about it all. When Elmer Allen spoke about spending the rest of our lives on this job, I suddenly realized that was about it. And, you know”—he looked up at her—“I don’t particularly like Africa. I’m an American.”

She looked at him oddly. “Then why stay here?”

“Because there’s so much that needs to be done.”

“Yes, you’re right and what Cliff Jackson said to the doctor was correct, too. We all do what we must do and what we can do.”

“Well, that brings us back to your question. What is my own dream? I’m afraid I’m too far along in life to acquire new ones, and my basic dream is an American one.”

“And that is?” Isobel prompted.

He shrugged again, slightly uncomfortable under the scrutiny of this pretty girl. “I’m a sociologist, Isobel. I suppose I seek Utopia.”

She frowned at him as though disappointed. “Is utopia possible?”

“No, but there is always the search for it. It’s a goal that recedes as you approach, which is as it should be. Heaven help mankind if we ever achieve it; we’ll be through because there will be no place to go, and man needs to strive.”

They had finished their soup and the entrée had arrived. Isobel picked at it, her ordinarily smooth forehead wrinkled. “The way I see it, utopia is not heaven. Heaven is perfect, but utopia is an engineering optimum, the best possible human techniques. Therefore we will not have perfect justice in utopia, nor will everyone get the exactly proper treatment. We design for optimum—not perfection. But granting this, then attainment is possible.”

She took a bite of the food before going on thoughtfully. “In fact, I wonder if, during man’s history, he hasn’t obtained his Utopias from time to time. Have you ever heard the adage that any form of government works fine and produces a utopia provided it is managed by wise, benevolent and competent rulers?” She laughed and said mischievously, “Both heaven and hell are traditionally absolute monarchies—despotisms. The form of government evidently makes no difference, it’s who runs it that determines.”

Crawford was shaking his head. “I’ve heard the adage but I don’t accept it. Under certain socio-economic conditions the best of men, and the wisest, could do little if they had the wrong form of government. Suppose, for instance, you had a government which was a military theocracy, which is more or less what existed in Mexico at the time of the Cortez conquest. Can you imagine such a government working efficiently if the socio-economic system had progressed to the point where there were no longer wars and where practically everyone were atheists, or, at least, agnostics?”

She had to laugh at his ludicrous example. “That’s a rather silly situation, isn’t it? Such wise, benevolent men would change the governmental system.”

Crawford pushed his point. “Not necessarily. Here’s a better example. Immediately following the American Revolution, some of the best, wisest and most competent men the political world has ever seen were at the head of the government of Virginia. Such men as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Washington. Their society was based on chattel slavery and they built a Utopia for themselves but certainly not for the slaves who outnumbered them. Not that they weren’t kindly and good men. A man of Jefferson’s caliber, I am sure, would have done anything in the world for those darkies of his—except get off their backs. Except to grant them the liberty and the right to pursue happiness that he demanded for himself. He was blinded by self-interest and the interests of his class.”

“Perhaps they didn’t want liberty,” Isobel mused. “Slavery isn’t necessarily an unhappy life.”

“I never thought it was. And I’m the first to admit that at a certain stage in the evolution of society, it was absolutely necessary. If society was to progress, then there had to be a class that was freed from daily drudgery of the type forced on primitive man if he was to survive. They needed the leisure time to study, to develop, to invent. With the products of their studies, they were able to advance all society. However, so long as slavery is maintained, be it necessary or not, you have no Utopia. There is no Utopia so long as one man denies another his liberty, be it under chattel slavery, feudalism, or whatever.”

Isobel said dryly, “I see why you say your utopia will never be reached, that it continually recedes.”

He laughed, ruefully. “Don’t misunderstand. I think that particular goal can and will be reached. My point was that by the time we reach it, there will be a new goal.”

The girl, finished with her main dish, sat back in her chair and looked at him from the side of her eyes, as though wondering whether or not he could take what she was about to say in the right way. She said, slowly, “You know, with possibly a few exceptions, you can’t enslave a man if he doesn’t want to be a slave. For instance, the white man was never able to enslave the Amerind; he died before he would become a slave. The majority of Jefferson’s slaves wanted to be slaves. If there were those among them that had the ability to revolt against slave psychology, a Jefferson would quickly promote such. A valuable human being will be treated in a manner proportionate to his value. A wise, competent, trustworthy slave became the majordomo of the master’s estate—with privileges and authority actually greater than that of free employees of the master.”

Crawford thought about that for a moment. “I’ll accept that,” he said. “What’s the point you’re trying to make?”

“I, too, was set a-thinking by some of the things said at the meeting, Homer. In particular, what Dr. Smythe had to say. Homer, are we sure these people want the things we are trying to give them?”

He looked at her uncomfortably. “No they don’t,” he said bluntly. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, either your AFAA or my African Development Project. We utilize persuasion, skullduggery, and even force to subvert their institutions, to destroy their present culture. Yes. I’ve known this a long time.”

“Then how do you justify your being here?”

He grinned sourly. “Let’s put it this way. Take the new government in Egypt. They send the army into some of the small back-country towns with bayoneted rifles, and orders to use them if necessary. The villagers are forced to poison their ancient village wells—one of the highest of imaginable crimes in such a country, imposed on them ruthlessly. Then they are forced to dig new ones in new places that are not intimately entangled with their own sewage drainage. Naturally they hate the government. In other towns, the army has gone in and, at gun point, forced the parents to give up their children, taken the children away in trucks and ‘imprisoned’ them in schools. Look, back in the States we have trouble with the Amish, who don’t want their children to be taught modern ways. What sort of reaction do you think the tradition-ritual-taboo-tribesmen of the six thousand year old Egyptian culture have to having modern education imposed on their children?”

Isobel was frowning at him.

Crawford wound it up. “That’s the position we’re in. That’s what we’re doing. Giving them things they need, in spite of the fact they don’t want them.”

“But why?”

He said, “You know the answer to that as well as I do. It’s like giving medical care to Typhoid Mary, in spite of the fact that she didn’t want it and didn’t believe such things as typhoid microbes existed. We had to protect the community against her. In the world today, such backward areas as Africa are potential volcanoes. We’ve got to deal with them before they erupt.”

The waiter came with the bill and Homer took it.

Isobel said, “Let’s go Dutch on that.”

He grinned at her. “Consider it a donation to the AFAA.”

Out on the street again, they walked slowly in the direction of the old administration buildings where both had left their means of transportation.

Isobel, who was frowning thoughtfully, evidently over the things that had been said, said, “Let’s go this way. I’d like to see the old Great Mosque, in the Dyingerey Ber section of town. It’s always fascinated me.”

Crawford said, looking at her and appreciating her attractiveness, all over again, “You know Timbuktu quite well, don’t you?”

“I’ve just finished a job down in Kabara, and it’s only a few miles away.”

“Just what sort of thing do you do?”

She shrugged and made a moue. “Our little team concentrates on breaking down the traditional position of women in these cultures. To get them to drop the veil, go to school. That sort of thing. It’s a long story and …”

Homer Crawford suddenly and violently pushed her to the side and to the ground and at the same time dropped himself and rolled frantically to the shelter of an adobe wall which had once been part of a house but now was little more than waist high.

“Down!” he yelled at her.

She bug-eyed him as though he had gone suddenly mad.

There was a heavy, snub-nosed gun suddenly in his hand. He squirmed forward on elbows and belly until he reached the corner.

“What’s the matter?” she blurted.

He said grimly, “See those three holes in the wall above you?”

She looked up, startled.

“They weren’t there a moment ago.”

What he was saying, dawned upon her. “But… but I heard no shots.”

He cautiously peered around the wall, and was rewarded with a puff of sand inches from his face. He pulled his head back and his lips thinned over his teeth. He said to her, “Efficiently silenced guns have been around for quite a spell. Whoever that is is up there in the mosque. Listen, beat your way around by the back streets and see if you can find the members of my team, especially Abe Baker or Bey-ag-Akhamouk. Tell them what happened and that I think I’ve got the guy pinned down. That mosque is too much out in the open for him to get away without my seeing him.”

“But… but who in the world would want to shoot you, Homer?”

“Search me,” he growled. “My team has never operated in this immediate area.”

“But then, it must be someone who was at the meeting.”