Day 240: Kites Over The Mango Tree

To the Portuguese belongs the distinction of politicizing the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. With the development of navigation instruments, such as astrolabes borrowed from the Arabs, guns mounted on military vessels, and better-designed ships, Portuguese mariners were able to found fortified factories in India at Cochin and Goa. Because European merchants could “short-circuit” Arab middlemen, Portuguese spice imports and profits rose dramatically. The Sultan of Gujarat, however, resisted Portuguese incursions and sought help from the Mamluks of Egypt, former allies and trading partners. In 1509, however, a huge Egyptian-Indian armada was destroyed by Almeida, a Portuguese naval captain.

 Another notable figure in the struggle of the Portuguese for control over the lucrative ports of Gujarat was Malik Gopi, a Hindu nobleman who served the Gujarat Sultanate as minister over the city of Surat. A Brahmin and friend of the Portuguese, he rose to great wealth and political position in the fifteenth century. His success in business and ostentatious display of wealth attracted other merchants to Surat, and its prosperity continued to increase from that time. When Gopi personally was affected by the unquestionable maritime superiority of the Portuguese, he surrendered himself to them as a vassal.

 “He understood the futility of the continued attempts of Malik Ayez and the Egyptians to oust the Portuguese from the Indian Ocean. The monopolistic trade of the Portuguese compelled him to join hands with them.” Unfortunately, Gopi viewed himself as above the law and used his considerable power to oppress people, particularly Muslims traders. In 1515, he was slain by Muzaffar Shah II for ill-treatment of Muslims and collusion with the Portuguese. Ironically, the title of Malik had been earlier conferred on him by the same Sultan at Gopinath.

 During the continuing conflict between the Sultan of Gujarat and the Portuguese for possession of the seaport of Diu (1510–37), acts of vengeance were committed upon defenseless coastal towns of Gujarat and Kathiawar. The terrible cruelties and injustices committed by various Portuguese governors were later regarded by Portuguese historians as one of the principal factors leading to the loss of Portugal’s Indian Empire. Yet Portuguese historians also note the courageous defense by a small Portuguese garrison for a prolonged period against overwhelming odds. Maintaining their hold during two great sieges by Turks and Gujaratis in 1538 and 1546, they achieved Albuquerque’s objective of maintaining harbors and refuges on land secure under Portuguese command.

 Dom Joao de Castro describes the Portuguese policy of ruthless terrorism in 1546. They captured ships trading with the enemy, intercepted 60 vessels carrying provisions, killed Muslims, mangled bodies, and set them afloat at the mouths of rivers so the current would carry them inland. Manuel de Lima returned from his mission with 60 Muslims hanging from the yardarms. Houses were set afire and towns burned at the mouths of the Tapti and Narmada rivers. “The cruelty outwent the destruction, for many Bramenish (Brahmin) young ladies, exempted from crime by their sex, from the sword by their faces, in colour and beauty not inferior to those of Europe, were not spared in the victory.” As is usually the case, unfortunate citizens suffered for the arrogance and stubbornness of their rulers.

 In order to further prove to the Sultan that the Portuguese desire for revenge had not been satisfied by the victory, the mainland town of Ghoghla was pillaged and burned, natives and strangers slaughtered, the guilty and the innocent punished. Hindus were hanged in the temples of their idols; the throats of cows were cut; and temples were sprinkled with cow’s blood, “an animal which is the depository of souls they adore with abominable worship.” After the victory in 1546, six ships were sent sailing about the Gulf of Cambay to proclaim in all ports that Hindus and Muslims could return to Diu. Security was promised to persons and property; merchants began to come back in large numbers.

 A century later, a French traveler, M. Dean de Thevenot (1633–67) arrived in Surat and spent 13 months in India. From his writings, we learn that the Dutch had removed their trade from Diu to Surat where a sandbar prevented loaded ships from entering the Tapti, forcing them to anchor at the mouth of the river. Travelers and merchants were searched, moreover, and their clothing removed during a 15-minute customs inspection. Two years after Shivaji’s sack of the city, the walls were in ruins, but new walls, ordered by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, were under construction. Thevenot describes Surat as a medium-sized city with a large but fluctuating population. During the fair weather, from November to April, the city was very crowded with Persian, Arab, Turk, Armenian, Dutch, and English merchants. French traders, however, did not turn up until 1668.

 Thevenot notes that a Capuchin monk, Father Ambrose, apparently wielded great influence with officials and people in general, being called on to settle all disputes among Christians, some of whom were banished for irregular living. He went so far as to meet with Shivaji, who in turn spared European factories and monasteries in his pillaging of Surat. In that city were traded goods from Europe and China, including “porcelain ware, cabinets and coffers ornamented with turquoises, agates, carnelians, ivory,” as well as “diamonds, rubies, pearls and all the other varieties of precious stones to be found in India.” Other commodities included musk, amber, myrrh, incense, manna, sal ammonia, quicksilver, lac, indigo, and the root roenas for red dye.

 Thevenot also visited Ahmedabad and described the Bhadra Citadel, built by Sultan Ahmed I, as a royal headquarters with a palace, two towers, and military equipment. He remarks that it was named for Bhadra, the Hindu capital of North Gujarat at Patan for many centuries, with its temple dedicated to Bhadra Kali, the auspicious form of the goddess, known also to Jains as Chintimani. The principal commodities bought and sold at Ahmedabad included satins, velvets, taffetas, and “wondrous tapestries of gold and silken threads with woolen grounds.” Exports from the local region consisted of indigo, dried and preserved ginger, sugar, cumin, and honey. The Dutch also bought chintz (painted cloths), although these were said to be “not as fine as those on the East Coast.”

 Although he traveled to Cambay, Thevenot noted that in 1666 the sea no longer came up to the town and was a mile and a half away, resulting in reduced trade complicated by swift tides in the Bay. Malabar pirates, moreover, were known to prey on almadies, small brigantines used by the Portuguese for coastal trade. At Cambay, the trade consisted largely of agates, rings of precious metals, and ivory bracelets. The Frenchman also described Rajput Garasias, chieftains who controlled all villages from Cambay to Broach and were responsible for the travelers within their jurisdiction. Indeed, if property was taken by bandits, the Garasias made every effort to assure its return. Thevenot took strong interest in the Charans, criminal tribes who could be engaged for protection and who threatened to kill themselves if robbers harmed whomever they were guarding. For them, death was preferable to dishonor. People feared ruin brought upon one who spilled a Charan’s blood. In fact, Bahuchara, ghost of a female Charan suicide, was considered the worst dreaded but most worshipped deity in North Gujarat.

~~Kites Over The Mango Tree: Restoring Harmony between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat -by- Janet M. Powers

Day 223: Missionary Position

Those prepared to listen to criticism of Mother Teresa’s questionable motives and patently confused sociological policy are still inclined to believe that her work is essentially humane. Surely, they reason, there is something morally impressive in a life consecrated to charity. If it were not for the testimony of those who have seen the shortcomings and contradictions of her work firsthand, it might be sufficient argument, on the grounds that Mother Teresa must have done some genuine good for the world’s suffering people.

However, even here the record is somewhat murky and uneven, and it is qualified by the same limitations as apply to the rest of Mother Teresa’s work: that such work is undertaken not for its own sake but to propagandize one highly subjective view of human nature and need, so that she may one day be counted as the beatific founder of a new order and discipline within the Church itself. Even in the quotidian details of ostensibly “charitable” labor, this unresolved contradiction repeatedly discloses itself.

Take, as one unremarked example, the visit of Dr. Robin Fox to the Mother Teresa operation in Calcutta in 1994. As editor of The Lancet, perhaps the world’s leading medical journal, Dr. Fox was professionally interested in, and qualified to pronounce upon, the standards of care. The opening paragraphs of his report in the journal’s 17 September 1994 issue also make it clear that he paid his visit with every expectation of being favorably impressed. Indeed, his tone of slightly raised-eyebrow politeness never deserts him:

There are doctors who call in from time to time but usually the sisters and volunteers (some of whom have medical knowledge) make decisions as best they can. I saw a young man who had been admitted in poor shape with high fever, and the drugs prescribed had been tetracycline and paracetamol. Later a visiting doctor diagnosed probable malaria and substituted chloroquine. Could not someone have looked at a blood film? Investigations, I was told, are seldom permissible. How about simple algorithms that might help the sisters and volunteers distinguish the curable from the incurable? Again no. Such systematic approaches are alien to the ethos of the home. Mother Teresa prefers providence to planning; her rules are designed to prevent any drift towards materialism: the sisters must remain on equal terms with the poor.… Finally, how competent are the sisters at managing pain? On a short visit, I could not judge the power of their spiritual approach, but I was disturbed to learn that the formulary includes no strong analgesics. Along with the neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good analgesia marks Mother Teresa’s approach as clearly separate from the hospice movement. I know which I prefer.

It should be underlined that the state of affairs described by Dr. Fox was not that obtaining in some amateur, impoverished clinic in a disaster zone. Mother Teresa has been working in Calcutta for four and a half decades, and for nearly three of them she has been favored with immense quantities of money and material. Her “Home for the Dying,” which was the part of her dominion visited by Dr. Fox, is in no straitened condition. It is as he described it because that is how Mother Teresa wishes it to be. The neglect of what is commonly understood as proper medicine or care is not a superficial contradiction. It is the essence of the endeavor, the same essence that is evident in a cheerful sign which has been filmed on the wall of Mother Teresa’s morgue. It reads “I am going to heaven today.”

According to many other former volunteers, Dr. Fox may have paid his visit on an unusually good day, or may have been unusually well looked after. Mary Loudon, a volunteer in Calcutta who has since written extensively about the lives of nuns and religious women, has this testimony to offer about the Home for the Dying:
My initial impression was of all the photographs and footage I’ve ever seen of Belsen and places like that, because all the patients had shaved heads. No chairs anywhere, there were just these stretcher beds. They’re like First World War stretcher beds. There’s no garden, no yard even. No nothing. And I thought what is this? This is two rooms with fifty to sixty men in one, fifty to sixty women in another. They’re dying. They’re not being given a great deal of medical care. They’re not being given painkillers really beyond aspirin and maybe if you’re lucky some Brufen or something, for the sort of pain that goes with terminal cancer and the things they were dying of …
They didn’t have enough drips. The needles they used and re-used over and over and over and you would see some of the nuns rinsing needles under the cold water tap. And I asked one of them why she was doing it and she said: “Well to clean it.” And I said, “Yes, but why are you not sterilizing it; why are you not boiling water and sterilizing your needles?” She said: “There’s no point. There’s no time.”

The first day I was there when I’d finished working in the women’s ward I went and waited on the edge of the men’s ward for my boyfriend, who was looking after a boy of fifteen who was dying, and an American doctor told me that she had been trying to treat this boy. And that he had a really relatively simple kidney complaint that had simply got worse and worse and worse because he hadn’t had antibiotics. And he actually needed an operation. I don’t recall what the problem was, but she did tell me. And she was so angry, but also very resigned which so many people become in that situation. And she said, “Well, they won’t take him to hospital.” And I said: “Why? All you have to do is get a cab. Take him to the nearest hospital, demand that he has treatment. Get him an operation.” She said: “They don’t do it. They won’t do it. If they do it for one, they do it for everybody.” And I thought—but this kid is fifteen.

Bear in mind that Mother Teresa’s global income is more than enough to outfit several first-class clinics in Bengal. The decision not to do so, and indeed to run instead a haphazard and cranky institution which would expose itself to litigation and protest were it run by any branch of the medical profession, is a deliberate one. The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection. Mother Teresa (who herself, it should be noted, has checked into some of the finest and costliest clinics and hospitals in the West during her bouts with heart trouble and old age) once gave this game away in a filmed interview. She described a person who was in the last agonies of cancer and suffering unbearable pain. With a smile, Mother Teresa told the camera what she told this terminal patient: “You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you.” Unconscious of the account to which this irony might be charged, she then told of the sufferer’s reply: “Then please tell him to stop kissing me.” There are many people in the direst need and pain who have had cause to wish, in their own extremity, that Mother Teresa was less free with her own metaphysical caresses and a little more attentive to actual suffering.

After I had helped to make Hell’s Angel, a documentary about Mother Teresa’s shortcomings which was screened on Channel Four in England in the autumn of 1994, I received a number of communications from former volunteers and even from former members of the Missionaries of Charity. Some wished to remain anonymous and some seemed actuated by motives of revenge or other personal disorders. My practice in citing the ones I consider to be genuine is as follows: the person must have been willing to be quoted by name and to give bona fide answers to some background questions. Let me instance Ms. Elgy Gillespie, author, journalist and sometime editor of The San Francisco Review of Books. Experienced in the care of AIDS patients, she spent some time at Mother Teresa’s San Francisco branch:

Sent to cook in her hostel, tactfully named “The Gift of Love” (it is for homeless men with HIV), I found a dozen or so very sick men; but those who weren’t very sick were exceptionally depressed, because they were not allowed to watch TV or smoke or drink or have friends over. Even when they are dying, close friends are not allowed. They are never allowed to drink, even (or especially) at the funerals of their friends and roommates and some have been thrown out for coming home in drag! When I mentioned the Olympics to them, they looked even more depressed. “We are not watching the Olympics,” said a sister from Bombay, “because we are making our Lenten sacrifice.” When they’re very sick and very religious (which is often the case …) this doesn’t matter, but with brighter men or older men it seems intolerable.

A Guatemalan writer that I befriended there was desperate to get out, so a friend of mine who also cooks there (an African American who is a practicing Catholic) adopted him for as long as she could. He became much sicker and when she begged him to go back because she couldn’t mind him, he begged her to keep him because he knew they didn’t medicate enough, or properly, and was afraid he would have to die without morphine … I am now cooking occasionally for the homeless men at the Franciscans where one of the patients, Bruce, is an ex-Mother Teresa and neither he nor the priest have a good word to say for the Sisters at “The Gift of Love.”

Many volunteers at hostels and clinics from Calcutta to San Francisco have comparable tales to relate. Especially impressive is the testimony of Susan Shields, who for nine and a half years worked as a member of Mother Teresa’s order, living the daily discipline of a Missionary of Charity in the Bronx, in Rome and in San Francisco. I have her permission to quote from her unpublished manuscript, In Mother’s House, which is an honest, well-written account, offered by a woman who left the Missionaries of Charity for the same reason that she joined it—a love of her fellow humans.3 If her memoir reads like the testimony of a former cult member, this is because in many ways it is. She relates that, within the order, total obedience to the dictates of a single woman is enforced at every level. Questioning of authority is not an option.

I was able to keep my complaining conscience quiet because we had been taught that the Holy Spirit was guiding Mother. To doubt her was a sign that we were lacking in trust and, even worse, guilty of the sin of pride. I shelved my objections and hoped that one day I would understand the many things that seemed to be contradictions.

~~Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice -by- Christopher Hitchens

Day 147: Book Excerpt: The Undivided Past

For many in the West, the prototypical case of two religious communities locked in inexorable conflict, from which it was thought only one could emerge victorious, is still the one that preoccupied the first half millennium of the Common Era, when the pagan Roman Empire was undermined and overwhelmed by the rise of what has been termed “Christian Europe.” Within three hundred years of the crucifixion of Jesus, a small and localized religious sect in the eastern Mediterranean, having survived relentless and murderous imperial persecution, came to be recognized as an official religion by the emperor Constantine in 313 CE under the so-called Edict of Milan, and went on to vanquish paganism across the whole of Rome’s realms. This extraordinary story, of one religious collectivity defeating and conquering another, was recounted in heroic terms by the earliest chroniclers of the Christian church, such as Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, and was only much later to receive an exhaustive (and much more skeptical) treatment by Edward Gibbon in his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon would describe and explain Rome’s collapse as “the triumph of barbarism and religion.” What barbarism meant to Gibbon will be treated in a later chapter. For now, suffice it to say that by religion, Gibbon meant Christianity, a vigorously assertive new belief system that would prove fatal not only to paganism but to the Roman Empire as well.

Gibbon was much influenced by the Enlightenment ideas of his time, which helps explain why The Decline and Fall is shot through with so many contrasts, polarities, dichotomies, and antitheses, of which that between paganism and Christianity is one of the two most prominent (along with that of barbarism and civilization). Having been attracted at different times to Protestantism and to Catholicism, Gibbon in his mature attitude to the Christian religion was by turns cool, ironic, skeptical, and detached. He disliked priests, monks, and ecclesiastical hierarchy; he was suspicious of saints and scornful of miracles; he deplored religious asceticism and the “superstition” on which it was based; and he thought the historic role of the church had been more destructive than creative. But Gibbon was also an ardent follower of theological disputes, and he recognized that religion was a major force in history, albeit one that needed to be understood in human terms rather than just accepted uncritically and credulously as the preordained working out of the divine will and providential purpose. As he once observed, “For the man who can raise himself above the prejudices of party and sect, the history of religions is the most interesting part of the history of the human spirit.” More than half a century after Gibbon’s death, Cardinal Newman grudgingly admitted that he was the most incisive historian of religion that Britain had ever produced, and Gladstone (who was no less alert to religion’s importance in human motivation and identity) regarded Gibbon as one of the three greatest historians of all time.

According to The Decline and Fall, paganism was one of the two principal reasons why the Roman Empire managed to expand and endure long enough to reach such heady heights of achievement by the time of the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE. The Roman belief system was capaciously and inclusively polytheistic, while also effectively reinforcing the imperial virtues of civic duty and public commitment. Across the empire, a great variety of gods were worshipped and venerated, many of them carried over from indigenous cults that had long thrived before the arrival of the conquering legions. These diverse deities provided Rome’s many peoples with the comfort of local loyalties, while an overlay of official Roman idols and cults ensured that the fortunes of the empire actively engaged the hopes and concerns of its citizens and subjects. As Gibbon described and acclaimed it, this “mild,” eclectic, flexible, nonproselytizing civic religion, devoid of any separate priesthood or church hierarchy, and without any agreed scriptural authorities, was a great source of strength, and the resulting imperial culture of tolerance and forbearance, enforced by local magistrates, effectively prevented religious discord or doctrinal conflict. In an oft-quoted summation, he writes, “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” However cynical Gibbon’s admiration, he recognized in paganism’s practice a tolerant spirit that engendered among the subjects and citizens of the empire not only a disinclination toward religious strife, but also actual social concord.

Christianity, by contrast, was a very different kind of religion: it was monotheistic, it was dogmatic, it was all-consuming, it was proselytizing, it was exclusive, it was well organized, and it had its own priesthood and hierarchy. Gibbon outlined five reasons why, from its unpromising beginnings in the eastern Mediterranean, it eventually triumphed over paganism to become the state religion of the Roman Empire. To begin with, the early Christians were “obstinate” in their faith: once converted, they felt zealously that they were on the right side of an absolute, Manichean divide between the godly and the unrighteous. Moreover, in a world where life was hard for most, Christianity benefited from its doctrine of the immortality of the soul and its promise of future glory in heaven, which boosted conversions and stiffened the morale of the faithful. In the third place, the many early claims of miracles and visions established Christianity’s truth and efficacy, appealing especially to what Gibbon lamented as the “dark enthusiasm of the vulgar” (although it was hardly a faith restricted to the lower echelons of society). Fourth, it was difficult not to respect the Christians for their superior conduct and rigid rectitude; in aspiring to holiness and salvation, they were highly moral, sometimes extraordinarily ascetic, and often exemplary in their fortitude in the face of persecution. Finally, Christianity was remarkably well organized, with its cellular network of churches and its hierarchy of priests and bishops. So it was scarcely surprising that in the aftermath of the emperor Constantine’s conversion, and with unprecedented official support, Christianity “was received throughout the whole empire” in “the space of a few years.”

~~The Undivided Past -by- David Cannadine

Day 74 : Book Excerpt : Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

By 1246, Toregene had tightened her control of the empire and felt confident that she could orchestrate her son’s election. The deliberations and election of Guyuk transpired in private, limited to members of the Golden Family and important functionaries, but Toregene organized his installation as a major affair for foreign dignitaries as well as the Mongol people. Throughout the summer until the ceremony in August, foreign delegates arrived from the distant corners of the empire. Emirs, governors, and grandees jostled along the same roads beside princes and kings. The Seljuk sultan came from Turkey; representatives of the caliph of Baghdad also arrived, as well as two claimants to the throne of Georgia: David, the legitimate son of the late king, and David, the illegitimate son of the same king. The highest-ranking European delegate was Alexander Nevsky’s father, Grand Prince Yaroslav II Vsevolodovich of Vladimir and Suzdal, who died suspiciously just after dining with Toregene Khatun.

By happenstance, on July 22, 1246, in the midst of the massive gathering, the first envoy arrived at the Mongol court from western Europe. Friar Giovanni of Plano Carpini, a sixty-five-year-old cleric, who had been one of the disciples of Saint Francis of Assisi, arrived as the agent and spy for Pope Innocent IV, commissioned to find out as much as possible about these strange people who had threatened Europe. After leaving Lyons, France, at Easter of 1245, Carpini required nearly a year to cross Europe to the Mongol lines at Batu’s camp in Russia. Once in the Mongol transport system, however, Carpini covered approximately three thousand miles in a mere 106 days—an average of more than twenty-five miles on horseback each day for nearly three and a half months.

Because of the success of their military campaigns in Europe, the Mongols eagerly received Carpini in the mistaken belief that he was bringing the submission of the pope and all the people of western Europe, but his letter carried quite a different message. Pope Innocent IV offered the khan a pedantic synopsis of the life of Jesus and the main tenets of Christianity, all of which was probably well known to the khan through his Christian mother and his frequent attendance of religious services with her. Guyuk was likely a Christian himself; if not, he was certainly well disposed toward Christianity and relied heavily on Christian Mongols in his administration. The pope’s letter chastised the Mongols for invading Europe, ordering the khan to “desist entirely from assaults of this kind and especially from the persecution of Christians.” He demanded an explanation from the khan “to make fully known to us . . . what moved you to destroy other nations and what your intentions are for the future.” The letter informed the khan that God had delegated all earthly power to the pope in Rome, who was the only person authorized by God to speak for Him.

After the Mongol officials found out that Carpini brought no tribute and offered no submission, they mostly ignored him, but in a letter of November 1246 that still survives, Guyuk asked Innocent IV the obvious questions: How do you know whom God absolves and to whom He shows mercy? How do you know that God sanctions the words you speak? Guyuk pointed out that God had given the Mongols, not the pope, control of the world from the rising sun to the setting sun. God intended for the Mongols to spread his commandments and his laws through Genghis Khan’s Great Law. He then advised the pope to come to Karakorum with all of his princes in order to pay homage to the Mongol khan.

The first direct diplomatic contact between Europe and the Far East had degenerated into an exchange of comparative theology mixed with religious insults. Despite the extensive spiritual beliefs that the Mongols and Europeans shared in common, the opening relationship had been so negative and misguided that in future years, the entire base of shared religion would eventually erode. The Mongols continued for another generation to foster closer relations with Christian Europe, but in the end, they would have to abandon all such hope, and with it they would, in time, abandon Christianity entirely in favor of Buddhism and Islam.

~~Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World -by- Jack Weatherford

Day 60 : Book Excerpt : The Sahara- A Cultural History

The arrival in the Islamic Sahara of individuals preaching the Christian gospel was often seen as a threat not only to the quiet life of those living unremarkably in remote oases, but also to the authority, and possible stability, of the state. Where one foreign preacher was allowed to wander, others might follow, and men of the Good Book were sometimes the forerunners of men of the gun. Suspicion thus fell on Christian missionaries, who were viewed as theologically unsound and harbingers of conquest, perhaps reporting back on a town’s defences or the disposition of its inhabitants.

Few nineteenth-century missionaries were in the direct employ of their national governments but the majority of them unquestionably arrived with a strong belief that European imperial rule was in the best temporal and spiritual interests of the natives. Yet Islam was, and is, so dominant that any success on the part of European missionaries in finding converts among the denizens of the Sahara probably enjoyed no more than single figures.

The most famous foreign missionary to live in the Sahara was Charles Eugene de Foucauld (1858-1916). As a young man, the Strasbourg-born, aristocratic Foucauld was fond of those things most young men appreciate, including women and wine. General Laperinne, known in French history as the conqueror of the Sahara, and military cadet with Foucauld at the Ecole Speciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, used to say that when they trained together, “The only thing Foucauld liked about the mass was the wine.” Laperinne’s fame was such that during French rule Tamanrasset was called Fort Laperinne, becoming Tamanrasset only after Algerian independence. Although somewhat dissolute, Foucauld did well as an army officer, attracting some fame in France for his travels through southern Morocco, disguised as one Rabbi Joseph Aleman, gathering topographical and other intelligence for French military cartographers, for which exploits the Societe Geographique of Paris awarded him their Gold Medal.

Whatever else in his background or upbringing might have influenced his development, it was Foucauld’s travels in the Sahara that were the catalyst for his transformation in adulthood. Leaving the army, he toyed with the idea of converting to Islam before becoming a Trappist monk, to the surprise of everyone who knew him. Twelve years later, after living and studying in Palestine, whose deserts he found too heavily populated for his extreme ascetic tastes, he asked to be sent back to the Sahara. Foucauld moved to one of the Sahara’s most remote spots, Assekrem, which means “the end of the world” in Tamasheq, the Tuareg language. In the Ahaggar Mountains, thirty miles from the famed if hardly accessible Tamanrasset, the site provided Foucauld with the solitude for which he yearned.

Like St. Anthony 1600 years earlier, the desert’s loneliness was precisely what appealed to Foucauld. As one diary entry noted, “I find this desert life profoundly, deeply sweet. It is so pleasant and healthy to set oneself down in solitude, face to face with eternal things; one feels oneself penetrated by the truth.” Yet in spite of choosing the life of a hermit, Foucauld also frequently bemoaned his isolation and enjoyed the company of his compatriots on the rare occasions they visited.

Over time the Tuareg accepted Foucauld’s presence, allowing him to live among them for the next fifteen years. In terms of his mission to convert them, Foucauld must be considered a failure. As he wrote in a letter, those he converted consisted of “an old black woman at Beni Abbes. I also baptised a small baby who was in danger of dying, who had the joy of leaving this earth almost immediately for heaven. Lastly, I baptised a 13- year-old boy, but it was not I who converted him. He was brought to me by a French sergeant who had taught him his catechism and prepared him to receive the sacraments. You see, my dear brother, I am really a useless servant. Of more practical use, Foucauld produced the first dictionary of Tamasheq. One of the more intriguing discoveries he made while compiling this was that the language has no word for virgin.

~~The Sahara- A Cultural History -by- Eamonn Gearon