sereshka

Читаю King Leopold's Ghost (замечательно написанная книга с потрясающим ироничным стилем изложения истории, рекоммендую), и не могу не процитировать. Речь идет о событиях в Африке конца девятнадцатого века, когда европейские державы изо всех сил накладывали себе куски африканского колониального пирога.

The governor [of a province in English-owned Sudan], Emin Pasha, asked for help from Europe [to defend from Muslim fundamentalist rebels]. The Times said it would be an "errand of mercy and of peril - to rescue Emin Pasha who is surrounded by savage and hostile tribes". Now the British had not only Muslim villains, but, in Emin, a white hero. For despite his title (emin means "the faithful one"), the beleaguered pasha was a slight, short German Jew, originally named Eduard Schnitzer. A physician by training, the pasha was a brilliant linguist and an eccentric; besides trying to govern his province, heal the sick, and hold out against the Mahdist rebels, he was painstakingly  gathering specimens of plant and animal life for the British Museum.

The rescue expedition was headed by none other than Stanley, [the famous explorer]. Most embarrassing of all to the bedraggled vanguard of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, the rebel threat had eased since Emin's letters of several years earlier, and he turned out not to be eager for relief. [At a banquet in his honor,] the nearsighted Emin, who had been moving up and down the banquet table, chatting with the guests and drinking champaign, stepped through a second-floor window that he apparently thought opened on a veranda. It didn't. He fell to the street and was knocked unconscious.   

Эта история напомнила о Ричарде Кандте, немецком первопроходце, основателе столицы Руанды (бывшей тогда частью немецкой восточной Африки) и Резиденте (колониальный управляющий). В его доме-музее мне довелось побывать в Кигали. С фотографий грустно смотрел человечек с большим носом. Подпись сообщала настоящее имя первооткрывателя истоков Нила -- Канторович. Вернувшись из Африки, он угодил в котел первой мировой, где отравился газом и умер в госпитале от туберкулеза.