Author: Rosita Forbes (edited with an introduction by Margaret Bald)
Publisher: Axios Press, Mount Jackson, VA
ISBN: 978-1-60419-030-4
Click Here To Purchase From the Sahara to Samarkand: Selected Travel Writings of Rosita Forbes 1919-1937It
is somewhat ironical that Rosita Forbes is proudly and reproachfully
informed by a daughter of the Hadramauti in Madi, that “I was born in
this room [of the harem] and I have never left it! Women should be taken
care of and given all that they can desire, but of what use is
freedom?” Forbes was the archetypical adventurer in an age in which
followers of the suffragette movement were still having militantly to
assert their rights to female emancipation.
Often taking
on the guise of a local or Muslim woman, she travelled extensively
through Arabic/Islamic lands stretching from the legendary lost city of
Kufara in the Sahara to Samarkand, the capital of Tamerlane in Central
Asia. From the Sahara to Samarkand: Selected Travel Writings of Rosita
Forbes, 1919–1937 also includes some of her travel writings from Java
and Sumatra, as well as China. Her incredible courage, with her apparent
implacability in the face of often daunting odds, including horrendous
weather conditions and what often threatened to be the insurmountable
curiosity, if not the blatant animosity, of the locals among whom she
traveled has one spellbound from start to finish of this remarkable
anthology.
Forbes’ writing is remarkably fluent for the
era in which she wrote, with the major difference from that of
contemporary writing being the exceptional length of her sentences,
which, however, in no way obscures the clarity of her meaning and the
vividness of her descriptions. The sumptuousness of the settings into
which she so often interjected herself evokes the exotic nature of her
surrounds so lusciously that one can often imagine oneself immersed in a
painting depicting the utmost luxury of finery and fabric. Her complete
lack of pretentiousness is clearly evident in the way in which she
occasionally admits being at a loss for the right word in one of the
many languages which she mastered in her way across those areas of the
world into which few women, at that stage in or history, were willing to
venture. She also avoids name-dropping to such a degree that she puts
other writers to shame, and is quite up to poking quiet fun at those
westerners who were more biased in their colonial outlook on those races
over whom they arrogantly thought that they reigned supreme at the
time. One example of such is her encounter with Colonel Lawrence when
she was dressed in traditional garb, who, being unaware that she was a
Briton, stated to a companion that, despite her pleasing appearance, she
was probably diseased, as were many tribal women.
The
text is supplemented by a photographic album of a range of well-produced
black-and-white photographs depicting Rosita Forbes and some of the
vast array of characters whom she encountered on her travels, in
settings ranging from that of a gate of Angkor-Thom in Cambodia to
outside Buckingham Palace, after an audience with the royal couple in
1921.
An inspiring volume for modern-day travelers,
whether of the armchair variety or of the more adventurous kind, this
book is not to be missed. If you have a yen to explore foreign lands in a
way that is hard to come by these days, do read these travel writings
of a most remarkable woman, who was able to approach other cultures with
an openness that is exceptional even for the modern day. She is a
lesson to all of us who think that whatever is foreign to us is
inevitably inferior.
Click Here To Purchase From the Sahara to Samarkand: Selected Travel Writings of Rosita Forbes 1919-1937