Published online 8 August 2008

Tournai of Islamic Studies 20:1 (2009) pp. 21-45 doi:10.1093/jis/etn031

ISLAMIC MYSTICAL READINGS OF
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE'S
AMBIGUOUS ADVENTURE
REBECCA MASTERTON
School of Oriental and African Studies
CheikhHamidouKane was born in 1928 intoa noble, scholarlyfamily
from the Futa region ofSenegal, towardsthe northofthecountry. This
was a time in West African history when the French administration
exercised a policy ofremoving the eldest sons from influential families,
compelling them to attend what was commonly called the 'White
School', afterwhich they would go on to become administrators in the
colonial system, insteadofleaders in theircommunity.
TheTijani tariqa
l
wasone ofthemostwidespreadinSenegal anditis
likely that Cheikh Hamidou Kane would have imbibed its mystical
teachings, although he never specifically mentions any particular texts
whichhe readaschild,apartfromthe Qur'an.
2
CheikhHamidouKane's
father was educated in the Islamic sciences, and was familiar with the
theological andphilosophicalthoughtofboththeIslamicandEuropean
traditions. CheikhHamidouKane laterleft Senegal to studyphilosophy
at the Sorbonne and the protagonist in Ambiguous Adventure, Samba
Diallo, wrestles withphilosophical questions throughoutthe narrative.
Ambiguous Adventure has often been seen as a philosophical novel
that deals with the social and intellectual dilemmas ofAfrican Muslim
society in its having to submit to the French secular cultural norms
imported with French rule; but the story is actually about something
1 Often translated as 'brotherhood', tariqa literally means 'way', or 'path'.
ThefounderoftheTijani tariqa wasAJ:unad Tijiini(d. 1815),whoestablishedit
in the late eighteenth century. The tariqa spread to sub-Saharan Africa in the
mid-nineteenth century.
2 1. P. Little, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, L'Aventure ambigue (London: Grant &
CutlerLtd., 2000; hereafter abbreviated to CHK, L'Aventure ambigue), 17. He
was mainly influenced by the 'ambiance' created in the family by his paternal
grandfather, Cheikh Hamidou, the qaQi of Matam, and 'a noted Sufi mystic'.
Matam was an importantpolitical centre on the borderofMauritania.
\0TheAuthor(2008). Publishedby OxfordUniversity Press onbehalfofthe OxfordCentrefor Islamic
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23
22
REBECCA MASTERTON
muchmorefundamental. The disciplineofta$awwuf, which in northern
SenegalwastransmittedbytheTijanis,enablesthestudenttodevelopan
awarenessoftheinnerself,whichisconnectedtoan unseentranscendent
realitythatlies beyondthevisible,materialrealm-thatreality beingthe
3
Truth. According to the teachings ofta$awwuf, such awareness is the
most precious knowledge that a person can have, as it allows him to
realizethetruemeaningofhisexistenceanddistinguishwhatisrealfrom
whatis false. As thisarticleaimstodemonstrate,Ambiguous Adventure
is not, therefore, merely about the social, cultural and philosophical
adjustments that African Muslim society was forced to make under
Frenchrule, butaboutthe tragic loss ofthisprecious knowledge, which
occurredwith the imposition ofthe Frencheducationalsystem, andthe
devastating effect thatthat has upon Samba Diallo.
Ambiguous Adventure was written by Cheikh Hamidou Kane in the
early 1950s, but was not published until 1961. Literary production in
France and West Africa of the 1940s and 50s was dominated by the
Negritude movement, when the works of most francophone West
AfricanwritersincorporatedelementsofbothMarxismandSurrealism.
Ambiguous Adventure went against the tide ofthis literary movement,
focusing upon the human being's relationship with immaterial reality
and, by extension, the transcendent, divine Reality.
On the surface, Ambiguous Adventure is about a young African
MuslimboyfromSenegal,whoisforciblysenttoaFrenchschool,goeson
tostudyphilosophyin Paris and becomes severed from hisculturaland
spiritual roots, while remaining an objectivized, unassimilated being in
Frenchculture.Onanotherlevel, itisabouttheinternaljourneyofasoul
whoseattachmenttotheimmaterialrealityfromwhichithasemerged,is
slowly and subtly eroded by means of logical argument, leaving it
strandedonthesurfaceofmaterialreality,trappedinastaticallyobjective
frame ofmind, unabletoreconnectwithwhatlies beyond: 'Mythought
always returns upon myself, reflected by appearance.'4Heis recalledto
Africabyhisfather,whereheremainsunabletoreconnecttotranscendent
realityandin the end is assassinated, whereuponhe is liberatedfrom his
body, andentersa timeless realm ofwisdom.
In hermonograph, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, L'Aventure ambigui!, J. P.
Little, lecturerin French atSt Patrick's College, Dublin,concludes that,
'SambaDiallo's 'aventureoccidentale'seems to be amirror-imageofthe
3 In other words, God, also known in the Islamic tradition as 'the Reality'
(al-I:Iaqq).
4 Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, transL Katherine Woods
(NH: Heinemann African Writers Series, 1972), 175. Hereafter cited as
Ambiguous Adventure.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
trueinitiationquest',
5
similartothosefoundintheIshraqischoolofIbn
Tufayl's /::layy ibn Yaq;iin
6
and Shihiib aI-Din Suhrawardj's A Tale of
Occidental Exile/ but while a tale ofinitiation traces the protagonist'S
attainment of ideal attributes, Ambiguous Adventure traces the effects
upon the protagonist when that attainment is arrested; indeed, Samba
Diallo finds himself in a landscape that does not support or even
recognize the reality ornecessity ofaninternal journey.
By examining Ambiguous Adventure in light ofthese tales from the
Ishraqischool, itwillalso be demonstratedthatSamba Diallo's journey
is actually a tragic inversion ofthe classical model featured in tales of
initiation.
8
He moves from an environment in which he is able to
experience a knowledge thatcanonly be expressed throughimagery, to
one in which he is only able to discuss a knowledge that can only be
expressedthroughwords. Littlecallsthis the'rootlessintellectualism'of
the materialistWest.
9
Samba Diallo's experience of connecting to immaterial realities
Ambiguous Adventure is dividedinto twoparts. PartOne is devoted to
Samba Diallo's childhood, from just before he is forced to attend the
French 'White School' to just immediately after, where he befriends a
local administrator's son, Jean. Before going to the 'White School', he
lives under the tutelage ofa teacher, Thierno, who is passionate in his
commitment to teaching 'theWord', the Holy Text. In this half ofthe
story, Kane expresses in powerful imagery how Samba Diallo is
connected to, and experiences, a profoundknowledge ofan immaterial
reality thatlies beyond mere appearances.
10
5 Little, CHK, L'Aventure ambigue, 41.
6 Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl (d. 1185). See Ibn Tufayl, ljayy ibn Yaq;an, trans!'
Lenn Evan Goodman (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972).
7 Shihiib ai-Din Yal)ya ibn I:Iabash Suhrawardi (d. 1191) was born in
northwestern Iran andwas ofEast African descent. He tried to harmonize the
Neoplatonic philosophy ofscholars such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Tufayl. See The
Mystical & Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi, trans!' W. M. Thackston, Jr.
(London: The OctagonPress, 1982).
8 'Kane' is another name for 'Diallo'. At least some Diallos were
http://www.geocities.comlCollegeParklHousingl8584IHAJ.html; accessed June
2005.
9 Little,CHK, L'Aventure ambigue, 83.Heideggerwritesthat'therootedness
ofthe sciences in theiressentialgroundhas atrophied': DavidFarrell Krell (ed.),
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings (London: Routledge, 1993), 94.
10 In Le Troupeau des Songes by Diawne Diamanka, Alain Ie Pichon writes,
'Samba est Ie nom que les Peul donnent au fils cadet, doue par son rang de
naissance de pouvoirs de voyance.' [Samba is the name thatthe Fulbe give toa
25
24 REBECCA MASTERTON
In an early scene, Kane conveys how Samba Diallo, as an immaterial
entity, relates to his body as a material entity. Being a Pular (Fulani)
aristocrat, Samba Diallo becomes the subject of the envy of a fellow pupil,
named Demba. On one occasion, Demba mocks him with a lewd, earthy
irreverence and trips him up so that he falls flat on the ground. Samba
Diallo's retaliatory attack on Demba is almost an act of meditative
combat, in which he transcends any actual physical involvement:
the mutiny of his body was calmed somewhat with every blow, as every blow
restored a little clarity to his benumbed intelligence. Beneath him, the target
continued to struggle and pant and was perhaps also striking, but he felt nothing,
other than the mastery which his body was progressively imposing upon the
target, the peace which the blows he was striking were bringing back to his body,
the clarity which they were restoring to his mindY
The mastery that Samba Diallo's body imposes upon Demba's is
conveyed as a mastery of mind over matter: Samba Diallo's immaterial
mastery over his own body. His consciousness of the effect of the fight
upon his own, internal peace of mind demonstrates that, internally, he is
detached from material reality, the violence of the fight merely serving
the tranquillity of his inner state.
Later, when Samba Diallo is sent to the French school and befriends
Jean, Kane depicts a scene in which Jean is able to witness Samba Diallo's
state of being; the way in which he relates to creation, and thus to a
transcendent reality. In this scene, while Samba Diallo and Jean are
conversing, the sky changes, indicating not only the continual passing of
time, but also acting as a reminder of a more sublime existence lying
beyond the realm of creation: 'The golden rays had thinned out a little,
and the purple had turned to pink. Along their lower edges the douds
had become a frozen blue.'12 Just before night comes, time stands still.
As Jean converses with Samba Diallo, he witnesses the dissolution of
his friend's material identity. Some scholars have observed that Samba
Diallo lives in harmony with nature, but his relationship with it goes far
beyond that; he actually merges with it:
The sun was setting in an immense sweep of sky. Its rays, which are golden at this
time of the day, had been dyed purple in their passage through the clouds that
young boy, blessed by the rank of his bitth, with powers of clairvoyance.]
Diawne Diamanka, Le Troupeau des Songes (eds. Alain Ie Pichon and
Souleymane Balde, Paris: Fondation de la Maison des sciences de I'homme,
1990),3. By his name, then, Samba Diallo is already recognized as a boy who is
able to see beyond material reality.
11 Ambiguous Adventure, 19-20.
12 Ibid, 59.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
were setting the west afire. Struck diagonally by the light, the red sand was like
seething gold.
Samba Diallo's basalt countenance had purple reflections. Basalt? It was a face of
basalt because, also, it was as if turned to stone. No muscle in it, now, was
moving. In his eyes the sky showed red. Since he lay down on the ground had
Samba Diallo become riveted to it? Had he ceased to live? Jean was frightened. 13
A more literal translation seems to convey the power of this imagery
still further: 'The sky, in his eyes, was red. Since he had lain down, had
Samba Diallo become riveted to the earth?'
In some way, Samba Diallo becomes transparent. He loses the dearly
defined parameters of his external identity. He merges into creation as a
whole. In one sense, this image says that Samba Diallo is the land and the
land is Samba Diallo. In another, Samba Diallo is able to surrender his
'self' utterly.14 'Abd aI-Qadir al-Jilani says, 'the one who reaches the
limits of this path has neither form nor shape nor colour.'15 When there
is no strong attachment to a material, individual identity, it becomes
easier to blend with, or to take on the attributes of that which is not
human, but which is nevertheless an existing entity, be it nature or pure
spirit (the disembodied essence of existence).
Samba Diallo then gets up to pray, and when he prays his words come
from a part of him which lies beyond the Samba Diallo that Jean knows:
'it seemed to him that his voice was no longer his.' Not only that, but a
connection to the transcendent reality lying beyond creation is
established through Samba Diallo's stillness: 'Samba Diallo remained
motionless.' The Samba Diallo that Jean knows does not exist: 'Nothing
in him was alive except this voice' and Jean witnesses the effect of Samba
13 Ibid, 58.
14 It is about submitting to the Other-God, and, in t a ~ a w w u f the aspirant
aims for complete surrender to God: 'Spiritual ecstasy, however, is a totally
different state, a state caused by the overflow of spiritual energy. Ordinarily,
exterior influences [ ...] may cause this spiritual elevation. This happens because
at such moments the physical resistance of the being is obliterated' ('Abd al-
Qadir al-Jilani. The Secret of Secrets, trans!' Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-
Halveti, Kuala Lumpur: S. Abdul Majeed & Co., 1995,90).
15 Ambiguous Adventure, 69. In Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the
Mariner's appearance is compared, by the Wedding Guest, to 'the ribbed sea-
sand' (The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth Editions
196). Just as Jean is fearful of Samba Diallo, the Wedding Guest is fearful of the
Mariner. Coleridge too felt a distinct detachment from the material world
(Coleridge: The Ancient Mariner and Other Poems, London: Casebook Series,
MacMillan, 1973,93 and passim).
27
26 REBECCA MASTERTON
Diallo's experience of the presence of that transcendent reality: 'Then his
long white caftan [ ...Jwas swept through by a kind of shiver.'16
Jean, too, is taken out of himself by something conveyed through the
dying of the day: 'He only regained consciousness of his surroundings
when he heard the sound of footsteps not far away.'17 Samba Diallo
himself, reflecting on this moment, acknowledges that 'he had felt
himself swept by a sudden exaltation [ ...Jsuch as he had formerly felt
when he was near the teacher.'18 The power of a hidden force surges
through him; an intense force of being that goes beyond the mundane
mode of being that others later try to persuade him to adopt. This force
of being comes from his connection to a more profoundly authentic
mode of existence. It cuts through material reality.
In Chapter 9 of Ambiguous Adventure, there are hints that Samba
Diallo experiences some kind of {anit, and also kashf.19 He has been
reflecting upon an artificial dichotomy which has caused him great
anxiety: is his culture dying because his people cling to God, and is
European culture surviving because its people 'work', i.e. put material
well-being before everything else?20 He reaches a resolution: 'to proceed
from God, will to will, is to recognize His Law, which is a law of justice
and harmony among men. Work is not, therefore, a necessary source of
conflict between them .. .' Next to this comes a description of Samba
Diallo's spiritual experience: 'The darkness had completely fallen by this
time. The knight in the dalmatic was still crouched motionless, facing the
east. Stretched out on his back beside him, Samba Diallo opened wide
unseeing eyes upon the star-studded firmament.'21 Samba Diallo's eyes
are wide and unseeing. Suhrawardi writes, 'When the inner eye is
opened, the outer eye shall be closed. Then, it will be able to
continuously observe the secrets of the spiritual world'.22 Indeed, after
another philosophical passage in which Samba Diallo realises that 'The
16 Ambiguous Adventure, 60.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid, 63.
19 fanil means literally: to die, to disappear; extinction, annihilation; in
Islamic mysticism it means 'to die to oneself', or be annihilated in Allah. The
term kashf means 'the unveiling of spiritual realities'. It is like a flash of insight.
(See 'All b. 'Uthman al-Jullabi al-Hujwlri, Kashf al-Mabjub, An Early Persian
Treatise on Sufism, trans!' Reynold A. Nicholson, Wiltshire: Gibb Memorial
Trust, 2000, for more details.)
20 Blair notes that this is 'a Socratic dialogue' (Dorothy S. Blair, Senegalese
Literature: A Critical History, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984,) 79.
21 Ambiguous Adventure, 104.
22 Seyed G. Safavi (ed.), Transcendent Philosophy 311 (London: Institute of
Islamic Studies, March 2002), 22.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
death of God is not a necessary condition to the survival of man' ,23 there
follows a paragraph which again describes Samba Diallo's experience of
realization: 'Samba Diallo was not seeing the shining firmament, for the
same peace reigned in the heavens and in his heart. Samba Diallo was not
existing. There were innumerable stars, there was the earth chilled anew
by the coming of night, there was the shade, and there was their
simultaneous presence.'24 Here is {anii'. Samba Diallo experiences
annihilation. He becomes submerged, not in the physicality of the
stars, the earth and the shade, but in their presence, or rather, a presence
which permeates them.
2S
This is followed by another philosophical passage, although its nature
is quite different from the previous ones, rather closer to the kind of
poetic or allegorical discourses employed by masters of the spiritual path
when they need to explain something which goes beyond purely
speculative reasoning: 'It is at the very heart of this presence that
thought is born,' he reflected, 'as on the water a succession of waves is set
off around a spot where something has fallen. But there are those who do
not believe .. .'26 Then Samba Diallo experiences an insight: 'Samba
Diallo suddenly saw the sky. In a flash, he realized its serene beauty.'27
This insight could be interpreted as a kash{, in which, having seen an
inner vision of the presence of God, he now awakens to an outer vision
of the presence of the sky. The inner and the outer are connected. He
awakens to the beauty of the sky as if he had not seen it before, and its
serenity contrasts with the inner perceptional conflict with which he was
grappling, but which he has now resolved. As soon as he attains a state of
internal serenity, he becomes aligned with the serenity of the whole of
creation and is able to perceive its presence.
28
23 Ambiguous Adventure, 104.
24 Ibid.
25 In Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaq:r-iin (trans!. Goodman, 139), l;Iayy 'asked
himself then why he of all living beings should be singled out to possess an
identity that made him very like the stars. He had seen how the elements changed
into one another. Nothing on the face of the earth kept the same form.'
26 Ambiguous Adventure, 105.
27 Ibid. SuhrawardI, explaining 'flashes' which increase insight, says 'the more
ascetic exercise is increased, the more the flashes come until one reaches the stage
wherein one recalls something of other-worldly conditions in everything one sees'
('The Simurgh's Shrill Cry' in Mystical & Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi
(trans!. Thackston), 91.
28 In Islamic metaphysics, this realization through the presence of an existent
is called 'ilm i?uq,uri, 'knowledge by presence'. Tabataba'i writes: 'the Exalted
Essence is absolute existence not bounded by any limit, nor is it devoid of
existence or any existential perfection. Hence all the details of creation, of
29
28 REBECCA MASTERTON
All existents are connected: they are not separate from one another.
29
Kane clearly elucidates Samba Diallo's sense of realization which comes
from the presence of the existence of multiple things: the stars, the earth,
the shade.
The first step away from his deep connection to his inner, immaterial
self is when the Most Royal Lady, head of the Diallobe clan,30 removes
him from the Hearth of the teacher for one week. She tries to bring
Samba Diallo back down to the material realm and to materialist values:
'making much of him in every way, as if to correct the effects of the
education of the Glowing Hearth', and for a brief moment, Samba Diallo
enjoys being pampered, but then he begins to sense that something is
lacking: 'he did not experience that plenitude of spirit he had felt at the
hearth, which would set his heart to beating, for instance, when under
the teacher's formidable eye he would pronounce the Word.'31 What is
lacking is 'authenticity',32 and if a life is not authentic, it is not real and if
it is not real, it is not a life.
Just before he is sent to the French school, Samba Diallo's family
gather together one night to hear him recite the Qur' an. It is through the
recitation of the Qur' an that he also experiences something of a reality
that lies beyond its words. He loves it for its spiritual and aesthetic
qualities: 'its mystery and its somber beauty,.33 It is also 'pure and
limpid',34 untouched by worldly corruption, but more than this, when he
utters it, its inner dimensions are revealed to him: 'He contained within
himself the totality of the world, the visible and the invisible, its past and
existence and existential perfections, with their existential order, exist in It in
their highest and noblest form without being separate from one another. Hence
he knows them with an undifferentiated knowledge, which at the same time
discloses details ('ilman ijmiiliyyan fi'ayn al-kashf al-taf{i/i)': Sayyid Mu/:lammad
l;Iusayn Tabataba'i, The Elements of Islamic Metaphysics, Bidiiyat al-ljikmah,
trans!' and annotated by Sayyid 'Ali Qiili Qarii'i (London: Islamic College for
Advanced Studies Press, 2003), 140.
29 'Individuality is a property of existence; hence our knowledge of our selves
is by virtue of [the multiple things'] presence for us with their very external
existence [ ...] This is another kind of knowledge, called 'immediate' knowledge
CUm lJu4uri, lit., 'knowledge by presence')' (Ibid,
30 In the French original, the Most Royal Lady is called 'La Grande Royale'.
This term designates her noble status.
31 Ambiguous Adventure, 39.
32 Ibid. This is not the supposed 'African authenticity' of Negritude, but an
internal, human authenticity acknowledged and nurtured by the ethics and
practices of an Islamic way of life.
33 Ibid, 4.
34 Ibid, 5.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
future.'35 Furthermore, 'This word which he was bringing forth in pain
was the architecture of the world - it was the world itself.'36
Kane describes 'the Word' as 'incandescent'. Repeating it brings
Samba Diallo 'close to unconsciousness',37 which is not an unusual
physiological effect resulting from an intensity of self-effacement into
ecstasy. Samba Diallo observes the effects of the Word upon his teacher:
'he would stand erect, all tense, and seem to be lifted from the earth, as if
raised by some inner force'. 38
The night when Samba Diallo recites the entire Qur'an to his family
has been written about in a number of critiques.
39
Here, Kane manifests
in physical imagery the metaphysical effects of Qur' anic recitation.
35 Ibid. This is a direct reference to the Qur'an (64.18): God is 'Knower of the
invisible and the visible'. The Qur'an also recounts mankind's past, going back to
the time before he existed, then his early history and the future of world, its
destruction and the rising of the souls into an immaterial reality, the barzakh,
where 'man is told the tale of that which he hath sent before and left behind' (75.
13). In mastering the Word, Samba Diallo also absorbs what it reveals.
36 Ambiguous Adventure, 5. Harrow wrongly attributes these words to the
teacher: 'Camara Laye, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, and Tayeb Salih' in Kenneth W.
Harrow (ed.), Faces of Islam in African Literature (NH: Heinemann Educational
Books, Inc., 1991),292. Samb, in his work on the practices of the Tijani tariqa,
explains that 'La parole divine, par exemple, remplit deux functions: elle cree et
elle transmit la Verite. Le monde a ete cree par la Parole ou Logos et toute la
Revelation vient de la Parole. La parole humaine est capable d'exprimer la Verite
et de transformer l'homme. Autrement dit, la parole, dont les fins sont differentes
de la parole divine, a['instar de celle-d, a deux functions: exposer un aspect de la
verite et prier.' ['For example, the divine word fulfils two functions: it creates and
it transmits the Truth. The world has been created by the Word, or Logos, and all
Revelation comes from the Word. The human word is capable of expressing the
Truth and of transforming the person. In other words, the human word, whose
aims are different from the divine word, in imitation of this, has two functions: to
expound an aspect of the truth and to pray']: Amadou Makhtar Samb,
Introduction a la Tariqah Tidjaniyya: ou, Voie Spirituelle de Cheikh Ahmad
Tidjani (Dakar: Imprimerie Saint-Paul, 1994), 17.
37 Ambiguous Adventure, 6.
38 Ibid, 7.
39 'Camara Laye, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, and Tayeb Salih' in Harrow
Faces of Islam, 293; Little, CHK, I:Aventure ambigue, 49, 50, 56. Harrow says
that Samba Diallo 'experiences a moment of fana which is the goal of the Sufi
mystic' without specifying to which Sufi mystic he is referring (since baqii' is the
goal of some) and without effectively conveying Samba Diallo's own personal
experience of this possible fana'. It is Kane's effective means of conveying Samba
Diallo's experience that lends the story its meaning. Little focuses on the power
of Kane's imagery, rather than, again, Samba Diallo's internal experience.
-
3
0 REBECCA MASTERTON
The knight gets up to listen 'and it seemed now that in listening to the
Word he sustained the same levitation as that which increased the
teacher's stature.'40 For Samba Diallo, his recitation is important to him
as a Diallobe who is enacting the tradition of his forefathers, perhaps for
the last time, yet at the heart of this tradition lies a mode of being 'which
today was threatened,.41
Just as the delineations of Samba Diallo's being dissolved into the
landscape, so now, his porous, mutable, inner being evaporates: 'In the
humming sounds of this voice there was being dissolved, bit by bit, a
being who a few moments ago had still been Samba Diallo.'42 The
recitation of the Word acts to open up hidden realities: 'rising from
profundities which he did not suspect' and the voices of those who have
recited before him emerge from his mouth. He does not construct these
'profundities' with his imagination. He experiences an auditory vision.
The immaterial owners of these voices submerge Samba Diallo's own
being 'substituting themselves for him,.43 This does not really seem to be
a moment of (anii'. Rather, his being, his identity as a person, is
transformed into something so transparent that it melts into the traces of
other beings whose presences resonate with love.
Kane effectively depicts Samba Diallo's internal experiences of either
realizing or 'seeing' immaterial realities. The difficulty for Samba Diallo
comes when, internally, his connection to these realities, his ability to
'see', experience and know them, is cut off. Guy Ossito Midiohouan,
taking Samba Diallo's conflict to be purely intellectual,44 rather than
experiential, puts this conflict down to the fact that Samba Diallo finds
himself 'without a point of anchorage' because he is busy pursuing 'an
ideal': 'incapable of confronting a reality to which he objects, he effects a
flight into religious mysticism' and Samba Diallo's 'suicide' (as it has
often been interpreted) is nothing but the expression of 'his power-
lessness before the reality' (son impuissance devant la realite).45 Itis true
that Samba Diallo finds himself without a point of anchorage, but not
because he is pursuing an ideal, i.e. something that exists purely in the
imagination. At the root of Midiohouan's interpretation lies an
unquestioned assumption of what constitutes reality. The entire point
40 Ambiguous Adventure, 71.
41 Ibid, 72.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 Guy Ossito Midiohouan, L'Ideologie dans la litterature negro-africaine
(Paris: L'Harmattan, 1986), 200.
45 'Celui-ci, incapable d'affronter une realite qu'il recuse, opere une fuite dans
la mystique religieuse'. Ibid, 199.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
3
I
of Ambiguous Adventure is that material reality is not the reality. Of
course Samba Diallo cannot accept the version of reality with which he is
presented: this is because he knows that, ultimately, it is not real.
Therefore, he does not flee from unreality into religious mysticism, but
from unreality into actual reality.46
In Part Two, rather than depicting Samba Diallo experiencing this
realization through the medium of nature, Kane has him explain it to a
young French Marxist, Lucienne: 'As for me, I have not yet cut the
umbilical cord which makes me one with [Nature].'47 Similar imagery
can be found in Jalal aI-Din Rumi' s Mathnavi. Claude Kappler notes:
The breath is a wire which joins the body to the soul, which joins Man to the
divine and to the cosmos. The creature holds on to the universe by a sort of
umbilical cord which can be a golden chain (it is a golden chain which, according
to Homer, holds the worlds together - an image which is constantly revived and
diversely interpreted by the Greeks, in a wide variety of texts: Orphic, Platonic
etc.), a golden chain which can be a wire of light, the wire of his own breath or
that of his prayer, as it appears in the Pseudo-Denys. (Divine Names, 3, 1)48
46 Joppa brusquely accuses Samba Diallo of being 'trop absolutiste pour
pouvoir trouver une solution aune situation qui demande, comme il sait bien, un
compromis' ['too absolutist to find a solution to a situation that he knows full
well demands compromise']: Francis Anani Joppa, L'Engagement des ecrivains
africains noirs de langue franfaise, (Quebec: Editions Naaman de Sherbrooke,
1982),216. In other words, Samba Diallo is just being perverse.
47 Ambiguous Adventure, 140. This is in contrast to Lucienne, to whom he
says: 'You have not only raised yourself above Nature. You have even turned the
sword of your thought against her: you are fighting for her subjection - that is
your combat, isn't it?' (Ibid, 140-1). His statement is supported by Sartre's
comment on the white proletariat: 'la Nature c'est pour lui la Matiere, cette
resistance passive, cette adversite sournoise et inerte qu'illaboure de ses outils.'
['Nature is for him a material, this passive resistance, this crafty and inert
adversity which he labours with his tools']: Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Orphee Noir', in
Leopold Sedar Senghor, Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948), xii. The Marxist attitude to nature
may be derived from the Cartesian attitude: 'we can and should achieve
knowledge that is "useful in life" and that will one day make us "masters and
possessors of nature".' Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of
Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 1999),225.
48 Claude Kappler, Le Dialogue d'Iblis et de Mo'awiye dans Ie Daftar II du
Masnavi de Mowlavi, Beyts 2604-2792: Une Alchimie du Coeur (Paris:
Association pour I'Avancement des Etudes Iraniennes, Studia Iranica 16,
1987), 71.
33 3
2 REBECCA MASTERTON
It is through his oneness with being that Samba Diallo becomes what
he is: an entity that transcends his humanity: 'thus he was taking on the
appearance of some strange and enormous bird of prey, with wings
spread. He seemed suddenly to be filled with profound exaltation.'49 His
words, uttered while in this "iiI (spiritual state), are not simply part of an
intellectual argument, but come from an actual and dynamic way of
being. Again, he is no longer an individual person, but an expression of a
higher entity: 'I am only that end of being where thought comes to
flower.'5o In other words, he is only the manifestation of the thought that
exists before creation comes into being.
Part Two of the novel shows Samba Diallo becoming detached from
his previous "iiI. He begins to reflect, in a more detached manner, on
what is rapidly becoming a past experience: 'I have been the sovereign
who, one step away from the master, could cross the threshold of
unity, penetrate to the intimate heart of being, invade it and make one
with it, without anyone of us overstepping the other. ,51 On closer
inspection, this imagery seems akin to Ibn (Arabi's concept of the oneness
of being (wa"dat al-wujud). It is in experiencing this unity that Samba
Diallo perceives the unity of the transcendent reality which lies hidden
behind the veils of being. 52 He refers, also, to what was a state of self-
mastery: 'I have been the sovereign' and to his closeness to immaterial
reality. It was at this 'intimate heart' that he belonged, and his experience
was not a cause for any social disturbance in his clan. The secular realm
of the Diallobe allowed for it.
Again, speaking in past tense, Samba Diallo reflects: 'I felt Thee to be
the deep sea from which spreads out my thought and, at the same time,
everything. Through Thee, I was the same wave as the whole.'53 Samba
Diallo's experience is depicted in the story when he becomes one with the
landscape at sunset and also when his internal being is substituted with
those of his ancestors on the night that he reads the Qur' an. He no longer
49 Ambiguous Adventure, 139.
so Ibid, 140.
51 Ibid, 123. The master in Suhrawardi's 'On the State of Childhood' says to
the aspirant: 'one with unlimited reach can penetrate the world of the unseen and
be convivial with the hidden ones of that realm from behind the veil of
mysteries': Mystical and Visionary Treatises (trans!. Thackston), 59.
52 'Abd ai-Qadir al-Jilani mentions the ability to perceive such unity: 'The
heart has two eyes, one lesser, the other greater. With the lesser eye one may be
able to see the manifestation of Allah's attributes and Names. This vision
continues all through one's spiritual evolution. The greater eye sees only that
which is rendered visible by the light of unity and oneness' (The Secret ofSecrets,
56).
S3 Ambiguous Adventure, 127.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
experiences this unity with existence. It is only after he dies that he enters
the reality of what he used to feel.
In Chapter 3 of Part Two, Kane effectively conveys the horrific decay
of Samba Diallo's luminous connection to a transcendent reality:
A firm-spun thread of clear thought was filtering with some difficulty through the
heavy down of his sensations, as a current of cool water courses through the inert
mass of a tepid sea. Samba Diallo was forcing himself to concentrate what
remained of his attention on the point where that slight gleam of thought came
through.
54
The mention of the 'heavy down of sensations' seems to be a refutation
of a mode of existence in which reality is perceived exclusively through
physical phenomena. Samba Diallo struggles to maintain what was once
a searing clarity of perception which went beyond the 'inert mass' of the
material realm.
He observes that the streets of Paris are 'bare': 'No, they are not empty.
One meets objects of flesh in them, as well as objects of metal. Apart from
that, they are empty. ,55 This emptiness results from a complete lack of
active dhikr. Samba Diallo's observation is fascinating. Detached from
himself internally, he sees a world reduced exclusively to materiality, a
materiality that is purely phenomenological, without any meaning: 'One
also encounters events. Their succession congests time, as the objects
congest the street. ,56 In a frantic, industrialized environment, there are so
many things happening at once that there is no time to think, or to live:
'One does not perceive the background of time, and its slow current.'
Perception becomes myopic. The awareness of the coming of the end of
time is obscured by a 'mechanical jumble'. The presence of the absolute
transcendent reality is buried by absolute materiality: 'There is nothing,
nothing but me, nothing but my body, I mean to say.'57 In Sartre's
phenomenological novel, Nausea, Antoine Roquentin makes a similar
observation: 'Never have I felt as strongly as today that I was devoid of
secret dimensions, limited to my body, to airy thoughts which float up
from it like bubbles. I build my memories with my present. I am rejected,
54 Ibid, 128.
55 Ibid. He mentions this later to Pierre-Louis, a young man of African decent: 'I
don't know whether you have at times had that poignant impression of vacuity
which the streets of this city may give - streets nevertheless so noisy in other
respects. There is, as it were, a great absence, one does not know of what.' (Ibid,
148).
~ 6 Ibid, 128.
n Ibid, 128-9.
35
REBECCA MASTERTON
I
34
abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past.'58 Later, Samba
Diallo reiterates his detachment in conversation with Lucienne. Having
described a beautiful scene of nature, he says to her: 'that scene, it is a
sham! Behind it there is something a thousand times more beautiful, a
thousand times more true! But I can no longer find that world's
pathway.'59 Beyond the material reality of nature there exists another
reality that is even more real and more authentic, but Samba Diallo no
longer lives in a state of being which enables him to perceive it and
experience it. While his Islamic way of life was the pathway to that
perception, his current life in Paris provides him no such means. Thus he is
exiled on the outer surface of material reality.
As mentioned above, Samba Diallo's exile is not cultural or
geographical. As he himself says to Marc, a Parisian of African descent:
'I don't think that it is the material environment of my country that I
miss.' 'It might be said that I see less fully here than in the country of the
Diallobe. I no longer feel anything directiy.'60 Samba Diallo is talking
about an obscurity of perception. He also appears to refer to a loss of
'ilm lJuquri-direct intuitional knowledge.
There is a hadith that recommends a Muslim to remember death
often,61 as the Most Royal Lady acknowledges earlier on: 'the thought of
death keeps the believer on guard.'62 Samba Diallo refers again to an
authentic quality of life, acquired, in the country of the Diallobe, from an
intimate relationship with death. In Paris, he loses his sense of the reality
of death ('death has become a stranger to me'), and with it, the reality of
life: 'I have lost a privileged mode of acquaintance.' With this mode of
acquaintance came a mode of existence, and from that, a mode of percep-
tion of reality: 'everything took me into the very essence of itself, as if
nothing could exist except through me.'63 No such thing as observing a
passive world objectively. Samba Diallo reflects that, before he came to
Europe, 'The world was not silent and neuter. It was alive. It was
aggressive', but 'Here, now, the world is silent'.64 In words that echo
58 Sartre, Nausea, 53.
59 Ambiguous Adventure, 144.
60 Ibid, 148 (my italics).
61 'The heart becomes rusted like iron in water.' When asked how to banish
this corrosion, the Prophet replied, 'Remember death frequently and recite the
Qur'an' (Sunan Al;mad ibn Shu'ayb al-Nisii'i, on the authority of 'Abdullah ibn
'Umar. See Shamii'il al-Nabi, Stuttgart: Tradigital, 2004).
62 Ambiguous Adventure, 24.
63 Ibid, 149.
64 Ibid, 150-1. Heidegger writes (seemingly quite cheerfully): 'Because beings
as a whole slip away, so that just the nothing crowds around, in the face of
anxiety all utterance of the 'is' falls silent' (Heidegger, 'What is Metaphysics?',
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
Ill-Jilani, Samba Diallo says: 'No scholar ever had such knowledge of
anything as I had, then, of being.'65 Catastrophically, he has lost the most
fundamental and valuable knowledge: not of philosophy, or politics, or
literature, but of being. His internal paralysis does not come from being an
African in a European environment, or a rigid traditionalist unable to
adapt to modernity, but from the death of a mode of being. Samba Diallo
is already dead: 'there is no longer any resonance from myself. I am like
a broken balafong. ,66
Samba Diallo used to have complete self-mastery and mastery over the
way that he related to reality. It was this which made him fully conscious,
or perhaps it was his consciousness which lent to him his self-mastery.
Now he is faced with a situation that is almost irrelevant to the most
fundamental task of gaining knowledge of being: that of being perceived
as an object by the colonizing powers, and he says: 'If we do not awake the
West to the difference which separates us from the object, we shall be
worth no more than it is, and we shall never master it.,67 Of his French
teachers he says: 'Progressively, they brought me out from the heart of
things, and accustomed me to live at a distance from the world. ,68 Seeing a
vision of the face of his teacher in a crowded train he says in his
in Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, 101). In The Journey to the East,
the protagonist laments: 'Oh, which of us ever thought that the magic circle
would break up so soon! That almost all of us - and also I, even I - should again
be lost in the soundless deserts of mapped-out reality.' (Hermann Hesse,
The Journey to the East, trans!' Hilda Rosner, London: Granada Publishing,
1979,53).
h ~ Ambiguous Adventure, 150. 'One who cannot find this knowledge in his
being will not become wise even if he reads a million books' (al-jilani, The Secret
of Secrets, 28-9).
66 Ambiguous Adventure, 150 (The balafong is a traditional African
instrument like a xylophone.) Little makes a poignant observation: 'this is a
death aI'europeenne, death from which the spirit is absent, a 'dead' death which
cannot nourish, unlike the value-charged concept of death in the pays des
DialloblP (CHK, L'Aventure ambigue, 78).
67 Ambiguous Adventure, 154. Fanon protested against this objectification:
'On that day [while in France] completely dislocated, unable to be abroad with
the other, the white man, who unmercifully imprisoned me, I took myself far off
from my own presence, far indeed, and made myself an object.' (Franz Fanon,
Black Skin. White Masks, trans!' Charles Lam Markmann, London: Pluto Press,
11952) 1986, 112.) Fanon's experience goes beyond the political: the internal
connection which he has with his own being, his own consciousness, is utterly
levered, effecting, as with Samba Diallo, a profound internal death.
till Ibid, 160. This is a powerful argument against the claim that objectivity is
required for understanding the reality of anything.
37 3
6 REBECCA MASTERTON
mind: 'Master, what is left for me?' Internally he is dead. There is nothing
left in front of him but a life of artifice, of living 'on the solid shell of
appearance.'69
His assassination occurs almost as a response to his contemplation of
the state of his connection to the transcendent entity: 'To give Him the
choice, between His return within your heart and your death, in the
name of His glory.'70 Before the fool shoots him, he is already
contemplating becoming a shahid (a martyr), hoping that this might be
a way of regaining proximity to the transcendent entity, but this is not
the same as desiring suicide.
In his article on Ambiguous Adventure in Nouvelles du Sud, Kenneth
Harrow says of Kane that, 'the Sufi author concludes on the same note,
with an image of (ana as the limit of the power of expression of the
world.'71 However, I argue that Samba Diallo's death is not (ani/. It is an
instant and actual transference from exile on the surface of material
reality, to the home of immaterial reality. He passes from a state of pure
speculation to a state of pure experience. This chapter confounds all
previous intellectual discourse, especially that of Lucienne. Samba Diallo
dies and finds himself in the immaterial realm of the shadow, where he
has been liberated from the prison of time: 'At the heart of the moment,
behold man as immortal, for the moment is infinite, when it is. The
purity of the moment is made from the absence of time.'72 Compare with
the Qur'an: '[And it is said:] That is that which ye were promised. [It is]
for every penitent and heedful one, who feareth the Beneficent in secret
and cometh with a [devoted] heart. Enter it in peace. This is the day of
immortality.'73
In this realm, the apparent absolute nature of external reality loses
substance. The voice which addresses Samba Diallo says: 'See how
appearance cracks and yields.'74 Material reality, which seemed so
dominant, can already be seen for what it really is: 'Light and sound,
form and light, all that is opposed and aggressive, blinding suns of exile,
69 Ibid, 83. These are the teacher's words, which he follows with a plea: 'Lord,
preserve us from exile behind appearance.'
70 Ibid, 174.
71 Kenneth Harrow, 'The Power and the World: Aspects of Islam in Cheikh
Hamidou Kane and Tayeb Salih', Nouvelles du Sud (Ivry: Editions Silex, 1984),
157.
72 Ambiguous Adventure, 177.
73 50. 32-4. AI-Ji1ani writes (The Secret of Secrets, 30), 'When they see the
beauty and the grace of their Lord there is nothing of their temporal being left in
them.'
74 Ambiguous Adventure, 176.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
you are all forgotten dreams.'75 The voice informs Samba Diallo that he is
'rehorn into being'. He is no longer mentally trapped: 'Feel how thought
no longer returns to you like a wounded bird, but is unfurled infinitely.'
Thought, being immaterial, is liberated in the immaterial realm. Samba
Diallo responds: 'Wisdom, I sense your approach! Singular light of the
depths, you are not circumventing, you are penetrating.'76 In other words,
wisdom is no longer merely discursive; with concentrated power it
permeates existence.
77
Samba Diallo is no longer stranded on the surface
of external reality: 'Announcer of the end of exile, I salute yoU.'78
He is not in a state of unconsciousness or intoxication and, while he is
no longer confined by physical limits, he nevertheless observes an 'other',
the glittering sea of wisdom: 'I fix my eyes upon you, and you harden
into Being.'79 He says of himself, 'I am without limit' and: 'I fix my eyes
upon you, and you glitter, without limit. I wish for you, through all
eternity. ,AO It is said of the shahid, that he witnesses God, or the presence
7 ~ Ibid. 'He will say: How long tarried ye in the earth, counting the years?
They will say: We tarried but a day or part of a day' (Qur'an, 23. 112-13). The
Prophet was also known to have said: 'This life is a dream and when you die you
wake up.'
7 ~ Ambiguous Adventure, 176.
77 AI-Ji1anI says (The Secret of Secrets, 16) that 'the hidden spiritual essence
itself I ... J is called wisdom'.
7H Ambiguous Adventure, 177.
7Y Schimmel says (Mystical Dimensions of Islam, Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 1975, 284), that it is likely that 'Abd ai-Jab bar
al-Niffari (d. 965) first used the symbolism of the divine ocean although it could
be argued that this ocean exists at a certain level of reality. AI-JIlani says (The
Secret of Secrets, 30): 'When meaning becomes manifest in being, it becomes easy
to pass through the shallows into the sea of creation and to immerse oneself in
the depth of Allah's commandments. All of the material universes are but a drop
in comparison to the sea of the spiritual world.' RumI writes that 'When waves of
thought arise from the Ocean of Wisdom,ffhey assume the forms of sound and
speech.ffhese forms of speech are born and die again,ffhese waves cast
themselves back into the Ocean' (Mawlana JaW ai-Din RumI, Masnavi-i
Ma' navi, trans!' E. H. Whinfield, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Ltd, 1898, Book 1,24). In 'The Simurgh's Shrill Cry' (in Thackston, The Mystical
and Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi, 95), SuhrawardI writes: 'The most
masterly of all say that, 'you-ness; 'I-ness' and 'he-ness' are all terms superfluous
to the Self-subsistent Essence. They have submerged all three locutions in the sea
of obliteration'.
NO Ambiguous Adventure, 178. Ibn 'Arabi writes (Journey to the Lord of
POW", tran.l. Rabia Terri Harris [New York: Inner Traditions International,
UIIl, 19891. 64)1 'Still the knower is thirsty continually forever, and desire and
aw. cl.lv. to Him continually forever.' Approximately eighty years before Kane
39 3
8 REBECCA MASTERTON
of God before going to Paradise. Furthermore, Samba Diallo expresses
longing: 'I wish for you', which is known in as shawq,
or 'longing', 'yearning'. Yearning for the Beloved is what draws the
mund
81
closer to the Beloved. Schimmel says that, according to Iqbal,
'[l]onging is the highest state the soul can reach, for it results in creativity,
whereas union brings about silence and annihilation.'82 The greater the
longing, the more the thirst is quenched. Thus, Samba Diallo's
relationship with the transcendent reality is one of eternal longing, and
'the great reconciliation,83 happens in a realm of 'darkness" or 'shadow':
'You know that I am the darkness.'84 This is an eternal ocean which was
still perceived by him and his father in the material world, a barzakh
where the soul resides before beginning its journey to Paradise.
8s
wrote this Verlaine was writing about an 'inner sense of exile' (Jennifer Birkett
and James Kearns (eds.), A Guide to French Literature, London: MacMillan
Press Ltd, 1997, 166).
81 The term murid literally means 'one who desires' and refers to the aspirant
who undertakes the journey of the soul. One of the ideal qualities of an aspirant
is intense desire for knowledge of the Beloved.
82 Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, 307. In his explanation of Suhrawardi's
'map' of the five states of those who witness taw/;1id, Thackston writes (Treatises
of Suhrawardi, 15): 'The remaining state, the fifth and the highest of all, is the
ineffable mute state wherein all connections with humanity have been severed
and all traces of temporal existence in the soul have been obliterated. To reach
this state renders words meaningless and explanations useless.' Suhrawardi says,
'[Those who reach this state] have destroyed expressions and eradicated
references' ('The Simurgh's Shrill Cry' in ibid, 95).
83 Ambiguous Adventure, 176.
84 Ibid, 175. Ibn Sina's f:layy ibn Yaq;;an also describes this darkness, which is
the Spring of Life: 'Thou hast heard of the Darkness that forever reigns about the
pole. Each year the rising sun shines upon it at a fixed time. He who confronts that
Darkness and does not hesitate to plunge into it for fear of difficulties will come to
a vast space, boundless and filled with light. The first thing he sees is a living spring
whose waters spread like a river over the barzakh. Whoever bathes in that spring
becomes so light that he can walk on water' (Henry Corbin, 'Translation of the
Recital of f:layy ibn Yaq;;an', in Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, transL Willard
R. Trask, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960, 142). Suhrawardi also writes
in 'The Red Intellect' (Treaties ofSuhrawardi, 42): '''Where is the Spring of Life?" I
asked. "In the Darkness," he said. "If you would seek it, lace your shoes like Khidr
and take the road of trust that you may reach the Darkness.'''
85 The Prophet talks about death as being a journey, the grave being its first
stage: 'The grave is the first stage to IDe journey into eternity' al
Tibrizi, Mishkat al-Masabih).
CHEIKH HAMID au KANE
It is not, as some critics have said, death which resolves Samba Diallo's
internal conflict. 86 It is not that, in death, the ambiguity of perceptions of
reality within the material realm disappears; 87 rather, as Thierno says, it is
the immaterial realm which is 'the place where there is no ambiguity'. 88
In other words, the immaterial realm is certain and real. It cannot be
argued away. It does not resolve, but rather renders unreal, in a dramatic
form, the speculative dialogues of Part Two of the story.
Samba Diallo's 'journey to the West'
That Samba Diallo is severed from his connection to an internal reality is
in some ways acknowledged by scholars, but this is usually done in a
purely intellectual fashion and is still often linked to the cumbersome
notion of his'Africanness'. 89 The lightness with which this severance is
mentioned indicates that, as with Lucienne, Samba Diallo's internal
catastrophe is not completely comprehended; certainly it is not really
felt. Ironically, just as Samba Diallo's internal death is not completely
acknowledged by the characters in the story-apart from his father-so
critics of francophone literature who write about this issue do not really
demonstrate a full acknowledgement of its horror.
Islam is called the din al-fitra, which could be translated as 'the
primordial way of life' and Amadou Makhtar Samb, a Tijani, writes that
'In our time, the restoration of the possibilities of the primordial state is
the most important of the goals that initiation has in mind.'90 Thus,
Islam returns us to our original and true state of being. The process of
initiation aids this return. When Samba Diallo is taken out of the
process, he is also removed from any access to his true state of being, a
state which is intimately connected to an immaterial reality.
Little mentions one particular element that Ambiguous Adventure has
in common with tales such as lfayy ibn Yaq;n and A Tale of Occidental
86 Little, CHK, L'Aventure ambigue, 75.
87 Ibid, 82.
1111 Ambiguous Adventure, 177.
119 In an essay published as late as 2001, Anne V. Adams is still talking about
'the African Self' and links an '(Islamic) metaphysical approach to what it means
to be an African'. Note that 'Islamic' is in brackets, being relegated to a mere
accident and remaining subordinate to the issue of race (Adams, 'The Gender of
Ambiguity', in Ute Fendler and Christoph Vatter, eds., Litteratures et Soc;etes
Africaines, Tubingen: Gunter Nan Verlag Tubingen, 2001, 560 and 562).
9() 'de nos joun. la restauration des possibilidis de I'etat primordial est Ie
premier de. but. que Ie propo.e I'initiation': Samb, Introduction ala Tariqah
Tid/a"i"a, 139.
41 4
0 REBECCA MASTERTON
Exile: that of the symbolism of 'the West' .91 This can be seen in the way
that 'the West' is symbolized in the nomadic Fulbe tradition:
The people of the Futa Toro have always migrated, mainly for economic reasons.
There is in fact a Pular saying, So mi mayani, mi yahate hirnangue, 'If I don't die,
I will go to the West', since the West is inevitably the direction in which all the big
cities lie in relation to the Futa [ ...] The West is therefore associated with
economic prosperity and individual adventure, but cultural exile as far as the
Hal-pulaar'en are concerned.92
This might parallel the symbolism of 'the West' from elsewhere in the
Islamic mystical tradition. Little writes that '[t]he association of exile
with the West, and with the East as spiritual home, is a constant in the
mystical and Sufi tradition.'93 Since she refers only to Henry Corbin and
Martin Lings for an understanding of Sufism, perhaps it is easy to make
such an assumption. However, this concept of 'the West' actually belongs
to a specific strain of ta?awwuf which is linked to the Ishraqi tradition,
developed by Ibn Sina and Suhrawardi.
94
Ibn Sina' s Bayy ibn Yaqzan describes 'the Occident' as being 'on the
left side of the universe' ,95 the Orient therefore being on the right. Each
of these realms contains many kingdoms and in fact lies 'beyond' both
directions.
96
Suhrawardi does give specific place names to these
locations, Yemen symbolizing the realm in the East and Kairouan
symbolizing the realm in the West.
97
Kairouan, in Suhrawardi' s case,
represents 'the bonds of matter' in which the soul is imprisoned and
which it longs to transcend.
98
Samba Diallo's decaying connection to
immaterial reality as he becomes overwhelmed by the phenomena of
91 See the adaptation of Shaykh Erzinjani's 'Cities of the Soul', published at
the back of Shihab aI-Din Yab.ya al-Suhrawardi's, The Shape of Light [or]
Hayakil al-Nur, interpreted by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti
(Louisville: Fons Vitae, 1998).
92 Little, CHK, L'Aventure ambigue, 40-1.
93 Ibid, 41. In Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization,
(London: Vintage, 1987, 87), Bernal writes: 'in both Egyptian and Greek
cosmology the western islands of the sunset were associated with the Underworld
and astral realms of the dead.'
94 Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2nd edn., 1983), 132, 164.
95 Corbin, 'Translation of the Recital of ijayy ibn Yaq?:an', 145. See Chapter
3. 'For each of them, there is a barrier preventing access from this world [ ...] for
no one can reach there or force a passage save the Elect' (ibid, 141).
96 Ibid.
97 Suhrawardi, 'A Tale of Occidental Exile', in Treatises of Suhrawardi.
98 Ibid, 107.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
material reality in Paris can be seen as a depiction of the soul falling into
99
the prison of matter. Paris is a hideous inversion of the mundus
imaginalis. Rather than gaining beneficial knowledge, going on a journey
into himself, he experiences the reverse: he journeys away from
himself. 100 Ambiguous Adventure is not a 'mirror image' of the tale of
initiation, but a horrific parody, for once Samba Diallo has lost his
knowledge, he cannot regain it, except in death.
To embark on a mystical journey is by no means free of dangers. In his
treatise Journey to the Lord of Power, Ibn 'Arabi details the spiritual
IItages through which the aspirant passes when he engages in khalwa, a
method of retreat practiced by some turuq, including Tijanis.
101
As
Rahia Terri Harris says in her introduction to his treatise: 'Khalwa is by
no means a technique for everyone [ ...] [Ibn 'Arabi] further points out
that to pursue the experiences of khalwa without being thoroughly
Accomplished in the duties and practices of Islam is to invite spiritual
destruction.'102 Samb warns: 'It is dangerous to practice it without the
guidance of a master.'103 In fact, to practice any methods of initiation
Y9 Corbin outlines the 'Hymn of the Soul' in the Acts of Thomas, which tells
of R young prince whose parents send him from the East to Egypt in the West to
obtain a special pearl. He takes off the robes of light which his parents made him,
and puts on the robes of Egyptians, so that he will not be noticed, but 'he is
divined to be the Stranger, he who is not of this world'. Significantly, 'he is given
fuud that blots out his memory, he forgets that he is the 'son of a king'. Then his
father sends him a message and he remembers who he is. He obtains the pearl, is
Iluided back to the East and resumes his robes of light (Corbin, 'Orientation', in
Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, 157-8).
100 Little says that Samba Diallo's journey is 'none the less a journey into the
self' (CHK, L'Aventure ambigue, 42). I argue that this statement is made much
too and is based upon the deceptiveness of the narrative structure.
10 The practice of khalwa was in fact relatively rare in West Africa as a
whole: 'en dehors de certains foyers privilegies, comme Ie Senegal or Ie Nord
NiKeria, cette implantation est loin d'avoir ce caractere d'universalite qu'on lui
parfois' ['besides some privileged hearths, in Senegal or Northern Nigeria,
the implantation [of the khalwah] was far from universal as one sometimes takes
It to be'l (Triaud, 'L'Afrique occidental et centrale', in Jean-Louis Triaud and
David Robinson (eds.), La Tijc'iniyya, Une confrerie musulmane ala conquCte de
l'Afrique, (Paris: Editions Karthala, 2000), 418), although, notably, Sidi
Mahmiid aI-Baghdadi, with his 'connexions suhrawardis' made it 'Ie sommet
de I. pratique' ['the pinnacle of the practice'] (Ibid).
1112 Rabia Terri Harris, 'Translator's Preface', in Ibn 'Arabi, Journey to the
turd of Power. 2.
lUI 'il elt dangereux de 111 pratiquer sans la direction d'un maitre'. Samb,
Intruductlm' ala Tarlqah Tldlanlyya. 230.
43 42 REBECCA MASTERTON
without being part of a tariqa and under the guidance of a master 'can
cause psychic disorders' .104
Samba Diallo's stay at the Glowing Hearth, while not exactly a
khalwa, nevertheless is a form of retreat from the world and his
education is meant to develop in stages, which likewise are not without
their dangers: 'So closely would he live with God, this child, and the man
he would become, that he could aspire - the teacher was convinced of
this - to the most exalted levels of human grandeur. Yet, conversely, the
least eclipse - but God forbid!,105 It can be seen from this, then, that the
slightest disturbance or disruption on the path of the initiate can be
enough to bring about internal sickness and destruction, yet even the
Most Royal Lady fails to recognize this.
The first ominous sign that Samba Diallo is about to be forced 'in the
wrong direction.t06 is his reaction to being separated from the teacher.
His joy at being told that he is to return to L 107 to see his parents
dramatically switches to grief when the chief of the Diallobe says: 'But
before you leave, you are going to say goodbye to the teacher [ ...] At this
word, Samba Diallo had felt his heart rising in his throat and choking
him.' 108 This is the beginning of his severance from the path to
immaterial reality, to what is really real, and to what he himself really is.
When he goes to bid farewell to his teacher he is 'overwhelmed' and
'[t]ears choked him anew,.109 Seeing the sadness in his father's face, he
'had melted into tears, and a thousand times regretted his departure from
the Glowing Hearth'. 110 Here, Samba Diallo seems to be gripped by an
instinctive sense of foreboding. There is also an underlying mood of
terror, of panic.
Samba Diallo's initiation is aborted. Later in Paris he says: 'I had
interrupted my studies with the teacher of the Diallobe at the very
moment when he was about to initiate me at last into the rational
understanding of what up to then I had done no more than recite - with
wonder, to be sure.'111 Seen from the Neoplatonic perspective which had
104 'peuvent provoquer des desequilibres psychiques'. Ibid, 259.
105 Ambiguous Adventure, 5.
106 Little, CHK, L'Aventure ambigue, 40.
107 Cheikh Hamidou Kane seems to adopt the nineteenth century Russian
trend of referring to locations just by an initial, although in this case, L. is
thought to refer to the town of Louga, where he himself attended Qur'an school
and his father worked as an administrator (Little, CHK, L'Aventure ambigue,
18).
108 Ambiguous Adventure, 64.
109 Ibid, 66.
110 Ibid, 70.
III Ibid, 160.
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
Influenced Suhrawardi,112 the teacher has followed the correct philo so-
I,hicdl path in his education of Samba Diallo. The soul of the child is to
'discover its true vocation as an immaterial substance'. Through the
pursuit of wisdom, and the practice of asceticism and devotion, 'the
cleansing of the Soul from the material accretions that may attach to it
during its confinement in the body will be achieved', but '[s]o long as it is
weighed down by the body' it will be unable 'to ascend' in order to
'contemplate directly' immaterial realities.
113
The teacher exhibits a
Himilarly Neoplatonic Islam: 'Substance, weight ... When his thought
abutted on these words, the teacher shuddered. Weight! Everywhere he
encountered weight. When he wanted to pray, weight opposed him, the
heavy load of his daily cares over the upward sweep of his thought
toward God.'114 For his murids, he fears 'those essential properties of
weight that were desperately eager to hold them to the earth, to keep
them far from the truth'Ys When Samba Diallo goes to the West, the
properties of weight, of matter, gradually prevent him from contemplat-
ing directly any immaterial reality.116
Little says, optimistically, that, in Paris, 'a learning process takes place'
for Samba Diallo.
117
Yet what he learns is that he has lost forever the
means to perceive and experience immaterial reality. In some ways he
does not learn, but 'unlearns'. He does not gain knowledge, but loses it.
He does not develop, but remains stunted. He is not initiated into higher
levels of refined perception, but instead 'de-initiated' into the lower
reality of the material realm. Just as the Word brought him closer to
perceiving a transcendent reality, so the words of existentialist
philosophy and dialectical materialism push him away from it. If one
cannot journey towards the infinite, then there is nowhere else to go.
Earlier, the Most Royal Lady had inferred that he was 'paralysed by the
112 According to Fakhry (A History of Islamic Philosophy, 19-20), the two
main Neoplatonic works that provided the foundation for a Neoplatonic
interpretation of Islam were the Theologia Aristotelis, which propounded the
theory of emanation, and the Liber de Causis, a work by Proclus known as
";lements of Theology.
11.1 The Ikhwan al-Safa', an Isma'i1i movement within Islam influenced by
Neoplatonic texts such as the Theologia, mapped out the ideal journey of the
.nul from the time of its infancy. This meant that the soul must transcend the
weight of the body and its desires in order to be reunited with the immaterial
realm from where it originated. See Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy,
176.
114 Ambiguous Adventure, 148.
"J Ibid, 33.
116 Ibid, 148.
117 Little, CHK, L'Avflnture ambigue, 42.
45
REBECCA MASTERTON
44
sense of what is sacred,;118 yet in the West he becomes paralysed by the
senselessness of the profane.
In the epic of Sunjata, Sunjata learns the art of survival while in exile,
and returns to take what is rightfully his. In A Tale of Occidental Exile,
the narrator and his brother are called back from the Western lands
in a letter by their father and journey to the mundus imaginalis, where
they are reassured that, while they must return to exile, they will be able
to visit the immaterial realm easily and that, one day, they will escape the
Western lands completely. Samba Diallo's exile endows him only with
discursive forms of knowledge, none of which even acknowledge an
immaterial reality towards which it is possible to ascend. This discursive
knowledge remains confined to the material realm, with no ultimate
destination. There is nobody to provide Samba Diallo with the road back
to 'the East'. By the time his father recalls him it is too late. He does not
return triumphant to become the leader of his people. He is found
'reclining on a rattan couch', 119 in a symbolic state of passivity.
Samba Diallo's return as a mutilated, dis empowered soul contrasts
dramatically with the protagonists of the narratives mentioned above,
where, in spite of their exile, they return to a felicitous state, either
through having maintained contact with a divine reality, or else through
having been rescued and restored to that connection.
The conclusion of Ambiguous Adventure demonstrates that Samba
Diallo's prayer is answered. He gives himself a choice: 'between His
return within your heart and your death, in the name of His glory'. 120
His death has been frequently called a 'failure' by various scholars, yet it
is not completely clear in which way it is such, except that he does not
become a fully integrated, Afro-Frenchman.
121
It is not his failure that
the culture to which he must assimilate is, in effect, a culture with a dead
reality, a with nothing beyond it, the same intolerably constricted
world that Heidegger chooses to posit as the only existent, but which is
ultimately meaningless.
118 Ambiguous Adventure, 121.
119 Ibid, 169.
120 Ibid, 174.
121 Joppa (L'Engagement des ecrivains africains noirs, 214-15) writes: 'Tout
effort de la part de Samba Diallo pour retrouver la paix interieure est voue a
l'echec' ['All effort on Samba Diallo's part to rediscover internal peace is destined
for failure']. Midiohouan (L'Ideologie dans la litterature negro-africaine, 199)
talks about 'L'echec du heros qui ne parvient pas afaire la synthese des valeurs de
l'Islam et des valeurs de I'Occident materialiste' ['The failure of the hero who
does not succeed in making a synthesis between Islamic values and the values of
the materialist West'].
CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE
Many of Cheikh Hamidou Kane's contemporaries advocated litera-
ture that provided practical social and economic solutions for a post-
Independence society, based upon Marxist concepts of society, religion
lind, ultimately, reality. Kane was actually criticized for not providing
IIlu;h 'solutions', but what seems to have been missed, in this argument, is
that i\ significant part of Ambiguous Adventure is spent in refuting the
Marxist perception of reality and in positing another perception, which
is even more fundamental. 122
If the only option given to Samba Diallo is to live in a realm devoid of
meaning, then perhaps it is better to find meaning in death; as his father
says: 'man's slavery amid a forest of solutions - is that worth anything
more?,123
E-mail: kaidara@hotmail.com
122 'Man has never been so unhappy as at this moment when he is
accumulating so much' (Ambiguous Adventure, 101).
12.1 Ibid,69.