Between Cultures. Jerrold Seigel
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of one of his books, clearly a stand-in for the author, refers to himself as a “semi-oriental,” based on his direct grasp of social and political relations that others could only view in a Western mirror.25
But the “semi” in this label needs to be stressed, because Burton’s attempts to represent himself as an “Oriental,” and even in some way to become one, had the effect of at once blurring his identity as a European and bringing it into sharper focus. He well understood a basic and perhaps universal dilemma in the relation between identity and disguise, that however much a person may feel his or her sense of self altered by taking on some sympathetic and attractive new character, the need to keep up the appearance and the recognition that the stratagem may fail is bound to heighten awareness that beneath it all one remains the same person as before. His awareness on this score is evident in a comment he made about Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, whom opponents accused of being a fraud. In his account of the trip to Salt Lake City he undertook in 1860, Burton defended Smith, arguing that no movement as substantial as the one he started could owe its strength to “mere imposture”; but he added that all the same “it is impossible to ignore the dear delights of fraud and deception, the hourly pleasure taken by some minds in finessing through life, and in playing a part till by habit it becomes a nature.” Only the self that knows it is playing a part can experience such delights and pleasures, however attached it becomes to the mask it dons.26 He described his relationship to Mirza Abdullah, the personage he became in Sind, in just these terms, and it surfaced again in some more casual and playful moments, such as the time he truculently walked by some fellow officers in Egypt while gotten up as an Arab. Failing to recognize him, they were on the point of maltreating the uppity stranger when he shocked them by suddenly revealing who he was.
On the pilgrimage, too, Burton’s disguise at once drew him into the Eastern character he assumed, and highlighted the distance he necessarily maintained from it. The persona under which he made the bulk of the journey was not quite the one he thought to take on when he boarded a ship to Alexandria from England; at that point his plan was to resume my old character of a Persian wanderer,” the Mirza Abdullah of Sind, but with somewhat altered features. He was no longer to be a merchant, but a prince and a Dervish, an identity especially “proper for disguise” because it is assumed by all ranks, ages, and creeds,” and because having renounced all ordinary social roles, the Dervish “is allowed to ignore ceremony and politeness” and wander where he likes. If threatened with discovery he has only to give freer rein to the oddness expected of him and become a maniac, and he is safe,” treated with the same indulgence as is “a notably eccentric character in the West.” One danger loomed, that among those who sought shelter behind the veil of the Dervish were criminals and cutthroats, whose company had to be avoided. Burton hoped to find protection from them by carrying enough money (carefully concealed to be sure) to remain independent, and by his ability to present himself also as what he actually was, a devotee of study and of books, and in particular a bearer of medical knowledge, in which he had long taken an interest and had a certain competence.27
Drawing on this knowledge, he revised his character before leaving Egypt, exchanging his claimed Persian origin for a more mixed one, as a physician “born in India of Afghan parents … educated at Rangoon, and sent out to wander, as men of that race frequently are, from early youth.” He had enough Persian, Hindustani and Arabic to sustain such a mix, and “any trifling inaccuracy was charged upon my long residence at Rangoon.” He continued to represent himself as a Dervish, but in demeanor he now “assumed the polite, pliant manners of an Indian physician, and the dress of a small Effendi (or gentleman).” This transformation (first suggested to him by a clever and sharp-eyed merchant of Russian origin who befriended him in Cairo) fit with the understanding Burton earlier exhibited in India, that a hybrid identity was safer because it provided an explanation for his inevitable deviations from any pure one.
However composite the guise he assumed, however, it required a special ability and willingness to study the ways culture imprints itself on personality and to open oneself to being altered by them. He knew that the superficially mixed identities generated by European expansion could be awkward and unconvincing: his first sight of a Sepoy (the name given Indians employed in the lower ranks of the British army) soon after landing in Bombay nearly sent him back to the ship: although picturesque, the man was “an imitation European article. … The coat of faded scarlet seemed to contain a mummy with arms like drumsticks.”28 Whether or not he had such examples in mind, Burton was explicitly determined to avoid a similar fate. He tells of spending much time on the voyage to Egypt “getting into the train of Oriental manners,” schooling himself in such things as drinking a glass of water (giving an elaborate account of five differences between the way a European and an “Indian Moslem” perform the act), the exclusive use of the right hand to touch things regarded as clean, “the manipulation of the rosary,” the way of sitting in a chair (“your genuine Oriental gathers up his legs, looking almost as comfortable in it as a sailor upon the back of a high-trotting horse”), the manner of walking “with the toes straight to the front, the grave look and the habit of pious ejaculations.” He was similarly attentive to differences in attitude that affected behavior, for instance explaining what lay behind the general point illustrated by the story of the rescued swimmer recounted above: that “if you save a man’s life, he naturally asks you for the means of preserving it” (a notion he saw confirmed by his ventures into medical practice). The unlikelihood of being thanked was tied up with the observation that “in none of the Eastern languages with which I am acquainted is there a single term conveying the meaning of our ‘gratitude.’” This lack was no mere “absence of a virtue” but an expression of a worldview in which every person had the right to every other’s surplus, all necessities having been provided by the Creator, who also imposes on everyone the duty of helping others: by rendering someone a service you have but done your duty, and he would not pay you so poor a compliment as to praise you for the act.” To a benefactor one responds only with a prayer that “Allah increase thy weal” and “that your shadow (with which you protect him and his fellows) may not be less.”29 Burton valued this level of ethnographic understanding both for itself (later he would make use of it in regard to cultures that attracted him far less) and as a tool for successfully carrying out his project. But he never lost the anxiety that someone along the way would see through him; just for this reason he reported himself relieved and gratified on the Mecca trip whenever his action and speech overcame some person’s suspicion or doubt.30
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But Burton’s taking on an Eastern identity was more than a mere masquerade; the genuine quality of his desire to experience “Moslem inner life” appears with special clarity once he arrives in Medinah and then in Mecca. Until then, and along the road between the two places, other topics captured most of his attention: the landscape and climate, the feel of being in the desert and the physical features of those who live there, local food and dress both male and female, the dangers of being caught sketching or taking notes (he reproduced some of his drawings in the book), measures taken to defend against thieves, Arab hostility to the region’s Ottoman overlords, and the likely future end of Turkish rule it portended. The features of Arab life that attracted him on this part of his journey were those that contrasted with “civilization,” among them the fierce independence and the noble, even chivalric quality of social relations, especially among the Bedouins, the high emotional tone of both desert existence and the poetry written about it, the persistence there of near-animal qualities in human nature that are suppressed in more urbane settings, and an appreciative attitude toward brigands and outlaws: “Who so revolts against society requires an iron mind and an iron body, and these mankind instinctively admires, however misdirected be their energies.”31 Where these elements were absent he found little to value—for instance, inside Medinah, its style of life softened and corrupted by the presence of the many visitors and tourists. Once arrived at the sacred sites, however, it was Muslim faith and practice that became the focus of his attention.
Toward some elements of popular belief he felt deep skepticism, to be sure. “Although at least fifty female voices” at a famous cemetery “loudly promised that morning, for the sum of ten parahs each, to supplicate Allah in behalf of my lame foot, no perceptible good came of their efforts.” And even though “every Moslem,