TOWN OF MYSTERY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 25, Issue 3759, 22 May 1936, Page 8

TOWN OF MYSTERY

SINISTER ROMANCE FOUND IN DJIBOUTI.

Djibouti on the human side is undoubtedly the most interesting spot touched by this semi-private war in Ethiopia, writes Sir Percival Phillips in the “Daily Telegraph.” Even in normal times sinister romance can be found behind its dingy facade. Slave traders, gun-runners, pearl smugglers and other gentlemen of fortune have made it their port of call during years of questionable adventuring in the Red Sea.

Dhows come and go with mysterious cargoes. Private yachts put in on apparently innocent missions, bitt are touched by the breath of scandal. Mild, harmless-looking individuals drift about with grim secrets at the backs of their minds. Prospectors and concession hunters make it their base for furtive journeys into Abyssinia in the eternal search s for sudden wealth.

The gossip of the Yemen and the remote courts of minor Arabian Sultans circulates freely in the bazaar. You can delve into the seamy side of court intrigues at Muscat and Makalle, and pick up curious iijformation about the pilgrims at Mecca by probing beneath the surface of coffee-house chatter in the native quarter.

To-day Djibouti has other interests. It is the “bottle neck” through which the backwash of war trickles down from the Abyssinian plateau. The circuitous railway ending suddenly at a sandy foreshore brings fugitives of every kind overflowing the four hotels at sea level.

Italians uprooted from the pleasant seclusion of Addis Ababa sleep in overcrowded bungalows while awaiting new and sterner tasks behind one of the fronts created by Mussolini. They assemble at fly-infested cafes in the Place Menelik to discuss their uncertain future, politely oblivious of Abyssinian neighbours at the next table, who are as concerned about i their own. The bewildering news of the conflict, if it can be called news, is served nightly by a polished Abyssinian Consul, who looks back on 10 perfect years spent in Paris, and a hard-worked Fascist Consulate fed from Rome.

You compare their output in typed broadsheets, and know less than before Of other news there is none in general circulation. The broadcasts from Europe never reach the public. Hungry Britons board the weekly steamer from Aden (having prayed that she would not founder in the Gulf) to read week-old bulletins that are still fresh here.

The heat in mid-summer is what you might expect in North Africa. Just now there is 4 seasonal drop in temperature, and soon the thin-blood-ed residents will sleep under a blanket and like it. But not for long. They are very informal as to dress. The man who wears a collar and tie is looked upon as a too superior persop; if he adds a coat he is either a tourist or an official on his way up country. If he wears trousers it must be because he is too poor to buy shorts.

Djibouti makes no greater pretension to being well dressed architecturally. The two-storeyed buildings have a mournful drabness, and are ranged w>ith French precision around right-angled streets. The covered arcades give access to vaguely-lighted shops, where all the tinned foods imaginable are stacked like books in a library, and other articles from month old French magazines to perambulators lie about below them in confusion.

Shopping for tinned dinners is one of the recreations of the housewivesThey fill the stores in the early evening, and carry away a vast amount of provisions to eke out the scant local supplies of not too tender meats. Those possessing cars drive once or twice around the dusty outskirts at sunset, and make the usual trip to and from the “Plateau” —a patch of semi-desert raised perhaps 50ft above the beach.

There is actually a cinema. It is opened two or three evenings a week, usually at 9 a.m. when sound films thunder their uncertain dialogue through the open windows and drown conversation at the cafe across the street. The most intimate love passages are hurled headlong into the windless night, and echo almost to the anchored dhows in the harbour. Until the lovers are at last united or the house falls down, peace is not restored in that corner of Djibouti. The pariah dogs shudder uneasily at the din and are almost cowed.

Night brings early 'closing time to Djibouit. The cafes in the Place may hold a few late roysterers until nearly midnight, but the streets are empty, and native police patrols challenge all wanderers in the shadows. Then the starved cats of the town begin their night-long bacchanalian antics in the moonlight. You never see a cat in the daytime, but the night is theirs.

Comes then, as Hollywood says, the dawn and the thud of Senegalese army boots as batmen tramp along hotel verandahs to awaken their captains and lieutenants for another day of drilling on the barrack square. The shrill chatter of Arab and Galla servants rises again.