26 December 2006
Abdul Abulbul Amir
I read something quite moving and disturbing this morning. It was a recollection by a special forces soldier who survived his one year tour in Iraq, assigned as an advisor to Iraqi troops. He was quite outside the sealed cocoon of the Green Zone, or the fire bases that we airlift oveseas, and he thus had the opportunity to see his own army from outside it.
His words were not encouraging. He saw us as people of olden times must have seen the Romans, crisp, efficient, and hardly concerned with local sensibilities. For his part, he found himself using the small courtesies of Muslim society- the ritual greetings of peace, the holding of hands, the constant observation that life is submission to God's will- as a means of survival.
We do not understand very much about the people to whom we have brought democracy and anarchy, and when we go away, as of course we will, we will leave a reservoir of resentment with the anarchy.
It did not have to be this way. We just needed to understand a bit more about what we were doing.
My Dad would occasionally burst into song on the interminable car trips we took when we were small. His voice was deep and rich, though I never recall him singing anything but this song. He must have sung something in church, on those occasions when we would attend, but I do not recall it.
To this day I am filled with the smell of a new Rambler Ambassador station wagon, and of mystery for the young man with the close-cropped black hair who was driving.
A little research showed me the origins. I had always thought it was “anon,” which is what I found the last time I looked in a real library, and how daunting the search was in the Dewey Decimal System. It is really quite simple these days, discovering where this song came from was child's play.
It is an Irish ditty, written in 1977 at the height of the Empire by Percy French, an Irish music hall entertainer. It was intended to evoke the triumph and tragedy of the Crimean War of 1854 - 1856,
The conflict is mostly remembered for Tennyson's poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which memorialized the suicidal attack of light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Battle of Balaclava, in what is now Ukraine. More than a third of the 637 participants in the charge were killed or wounded, a ratio that would easily be surpassed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Britain entered the war, because Russia sought to control the straits of the Dardanelles, which in turn controlled access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and the world ocean beyond. Russian control of the Dardanelles threatened British sea routes, or so the thinking went, and that is the way it was at the height of the Pax Britannica. It must have been quite as tiresome in its way as listening to the Americans these days, which is why they don't.
Since what passed through the Dardanelles later was a matter that preoccupied my career, or at least enforcing the provisions of the Montreux Convention of 1936,
The treaty has answered a Turkish request for permission to refortify the Straits zone, and was favorably received by nations anxious to return to an international framework controlling the passage that had meant so much to the Ottoman and Eastern Roman Empires.
They were also looking to gain an ally against German and Italian expansion, and though vain, the attempt was probably worth a try. The treaty abolished the International Straits Commission, established under the League of Nations, and returned the Straits zone to Turkish military control. Turkey was authorized to close the Straits to warships of all countries when it was at war or threatened by aggression. Merchant ships were to be allowed free passage during peacetime and, except for countries at war with Turkey, during wartime.
The USSR was authorized to send their fleets through the Straits into the Mediterranean in peacetime, with the exception of aircraft carriers and submarines, which is what interested us. The convention was ratified by Turkey, Great Britain, France, the USSR, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, Yugoslavia, and, with reservations, Japan.
Since Europe could not learn from the astonishing slaughter of the American Civil War, the Crimean adventure and the Tennyson's account of the charge should have raised more alarm bells.
The war was fought between Imperial Russia on one side and a jarring predecessor of the World War One's Entente Cordial, an alliance of France, United Kingdom, and the Ottoman Empire, The majority of the conflict took place on Russia's Crimean Peninsula, though additional action occurred in Western Turkey, the Baltic and the Russian Far East.
The war is generally seen by Europeans as the first modern conflict, since it did not happen in America, and "introduced technical changes which affected the future course of warfare.”
Victoria's Diamond Jubilee was still more than a decade away, and you might say that the great Peace of her reign was in its fullest flower. The lyrics seem to reflect a certain appreciation for the diversity of the earth, or at least the seam at which Russian Orthodox and Islamic tradition collided.
I could be wrong, though.
Perhaps Percy was just profiling, and should be reviled.
But I will never forget them, uttered not under the pale polar moon, but by a young man who had the world by the tail and the endless road ahead, centered right down the hood of his shiny station wagon.
I was interested to learn that a London publisher ripped off the ditty from Mr. French, and printed copies with no citation. If you come across it with it attributed to “unknown,” you will know why.
Few people take this song seriously, though I think my Dad seemed to. I thank Mr. Bill Steele for this version of the lyrics, for which I am grateful. Dad always substituted a “pale Polish Moon” in the last stanza of his version, which has caused me great confusion down through the years.
It helps me understand. Bill suggests that you look carefully for the truths behind the jest, and he is quite correct. I could sing it for you right now, and imagine I am riding along through the pines in Georgia, or north Florida headed for the ocean in 1962:
Abdul Abulbul Amir
The sons of the Prophet were hardy and bold,
And quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest of these was a man, I am told
Named Abdul Abulbul Amir.
This son of the desert, in battle aroused,
Could spit twenty men on his spear.
A terrible creature, both sober and soused
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.
When they needed a man to encourage the van,
Or to harass the foe from the rear,
Or to storm a redoubt, they had only to shout
For Abdul Abulbul Amir.
There are heroes aplenty and men known to fame
In the troops that were led by the Czar;
But the bravest of these was a man by the name
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
He could imitate Irving, play Euchre and pool
And perform on the Spanish Guitar.
In fact, quite the cream of the Muscovite team
Was Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
The ladies all loved him, his rivals were few;
He could drink them all under the bar.
As gallant or tank, there was no one to rank
With Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
One day this bold Russian had shouldered his gun
And donned his most truculent sneer
Downtown he did go, where he trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir
"Young man" quoth Bulbul, "has life grown so dull,
That you're anxious to end your career?
Vile infidel! Know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir."
"So take your last look at the sunshine and brook
And send your regrets to the Czar;
By this I imply you are going to die,
Mr. Ivan Skavinsky Skivar."
Quoth Ivan, "My friend, your remarks, in the end,
Will avail you but little, I fear,
For you ne'er will survive to repeat them alive,
Mr. Abdul Abulbul Amir!"
Then this bold mameluke drew his trusty chibouque
With a cry of "Allah Akbar!"
And with murderous intent, he ferociously went
For Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
Then they parried and thrust and they side-stepped and
cussed
'Till their blood would have filled a great pot.
The philologist blokes, who seldom crack jokes,
Say that hash was first made on that spot.
They fought all that night, 'neath the pale yellow moon;
The din, it was heard from afar;
And great multitudes came, so great was the fame
of Abdul and Ivan Skivar.
As Abdul's long knife was extracting the life -
In fact, he was shouting "Huzzah!" - -
He felt himself struck by that wily Kalmuck,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
The sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly,
Expecting the victor to cheer;
But he only drew nigh to hear the last sigh
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
Czar Petrovich, too, in his spectacles blue
Rode up in his new crested car.
He arrived just in time to exchange a last line
With Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
A loud-sounding splash from the Danube was heard
Resounding o'er meadows afar;
It came from the sack fitting close to the back
Of Ivan Skavinsky Skovar.
There's a tomb rises up where the blue Danube flows;
Engraved there in characters clear;
"Ah stranger, when passing, please pray for the soul
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir."
A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps,
"Neath the light of the pale polar star;
And the name that she murmurs as oft as she weeps
Is Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.
Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com