I say, dragoman, Jildi jao, sub admi push karo [Hurry up, everybody push] !
-Flashman on the March, George MacDonald Fraser
When Flashman gave those orders to his dragoman, he had just landed in Zula, near the Buri Peninsula in what is now the country of Eritrea not far from the Axumite seaport of Adulis, known perhaps as Wddt to the ancient Egyptians, cited by Pliny and visited by the 6th C. Greek merchant Cosmas Indicopleustes who thought the world was flat. Flashman did not mention Adulis which at the time had already been surveyed by French archeologists. He only cared about bints and birr, not basalt and burnt bricks.
Why he gave his orders in Hindi is not known. Why not Saho or Afar, the local tribal linguae franca, or maybe Arabic or Amharic, or Himyaritic or Sabaic if he wanted to go way back. I don’t know why he used the English word Push in the middle of a Hindi imperative.
I can say with almost complete certainty that I am the only person within five miles of here who has been to Adulis two times- why once more than is strictly necessary I cannot say, other than that the second time I was leading an American tour group that for some reason included a fully covered, chain smoking Norwegian convert to Islam. If it were up to me I would have said Idfa’ou kullkum, Everybody push, in Arabic when our jeep sank into the sand there.
I was the dragoman, key grip, and best boy on the second camel trip. I translated and pushed and sometimes pulled and always ran after Ned carrying his camera bag if he needed it. Steve was our sound engineer, the muhandis, a title which gave him a lot more respect among the drovers than had Ned, who in their eyes was only the musawwar, cameraman. Engineers knew how to drive trucks and fix pumps at bore wells and get the electric lights to work. Musawwars were mostly tourists, clicking away at silly things like ruins and camels and sand dunes. I was just Luwees, who ate his aseeda with one finger, not two or even three as did the drovers who knew enough to eat heartily at every meal, because it may be their last for some time and tomorrow was another day on the Way of the Forty.