198 DAHLAK 



'HeovaT one of them shouted (we discovered later that he 

 was the chief but he dressed the same as the others and 

 worked harder). Then he burst into a dry laugh and re- 

 peated my gestures. Everybody shouted ^HeovaT and drew 

 on the sand. The ice had been broken and we had made friends. 



Thus Italians and Yemenites (for that is what they were) 

 came together on that flea of an island for five days. They 

 became associates and brothers. They told each other about 

 their families, their homeland and their economic troubles. 

 They exchanged news on different topics, they advised each 

 other on various matters, such as fishing, eating, finding 

 turtle eggs, making love, how to look after one's wife, rever- 

 ence for God the Father — and all this without understanding 

 one word of each other's language. The Yemenites demon- 

 strated and explained every trifle with generosity — proof of 

 their civilization. 



Our technique of conversation consisted of three forms of 

 expression : drawings on the sand, gestures (by far the most 

 effective form) and laughing. Even Tesfankièl decided that 

 the Yemenites were speaking Double-Dutch. The only word 

 that we learned from them was ^heova' which meant many 

 things — yes, all right, agreed, go ahead, best wishes, natur- 

 ally, and so forth. As for them they learned si and spaghetti. 

 They already knew pescecane (shark) but pronounced it 

 pescecan (all over the Red Sea Egyptians, Dankals, Eritreans, 

 Arabs and Sudanese say ^pescecano'Y 



Those men who had crossed the Red Sea in sail-canoes, 

 probably learned more in those five days than in all the 

 rest of their lives. And we discovered one of the hundred 

 ways of living in this world in humility. Far from being 

 pirates, they were saints. 



They had left their country, the Yemen, many weeks 

 before. They would not see their wives and children and 



