Allah's Children

 

 

I am now reading a book called Allah's Children by Agnes Newton Keith. I am enchanted by the book, but perhaps even more enchanted by the woman who wrote it. She has a way of reminding me of the women that were around me when I was a child - and why not - she wrote the book in 1962 when she was 48 years old. Let me tell you a bit about her. Born an American, she was attending the University of California when she met Harry Keith, an Englishman born in New Zealand who was getting a degree in Forestry. In 1934 he was assigned by the British government to North Borneo. Agnes told him he wasn't leaving without her, and they were married the day before they sailed for North Borneo. It was here that she wrote her first book, "Land Below The Wind", and had her first child ,George. She was exuberantly happy, and although I have not read that first book it is also described as exuberant. The Japanese terminated this happiness in 1942 when they invaded North Borneo, made prisoners of Harry and George and Agnes and sent them off to prison camp. George was five years old when captured, and the Keith's spent a little over three years in Jap POW compounds. After the war and their release Agnes wrote her second book called "Three Came Home" which I have read. It is not a happy book. The Japanese had been quite abusive. After a short time in the U.S. Harry was assigned to the Philippines where Agnes wrote her third book, "Barefoot in the Palace", which I have also read. In the book I am reading now Harry has been sent to Libya (a forester in Libya? Of course. You need a forester most where there are no forests but where you want them to be.), and Agnes gets to make friends with the Libyans whom she calls "Children of Allah" - bit of a change from North Borneo and the Philippines. In the first chapter she says that everyone tells her that "Land Below the Wind" is the best book that she ever wrote and the happiest to read. She writes:

"I, also, would like to write another Land Below The Wind, but I shall never be a bride again in Borneo! One cannot go on indefinitely being young, carefree, just married, astonished by many things and delighted by all, and seeing the great wide world for the first time. I now approach life with a little more caution, despite Harry's view of me. I am a little less certain of the ultimate triumph of right, being less sure now what is right. But all in all I live the life I like best with the person whom I love most."

I think that paragraph says a whole lot about Agnes Newton Keith. And despite the disclaimer above, she still writes a very happy book. More about the book another time, but right now she is teaching her Arab houseboy (who speaks pretty good English) not to use certain words he learned from the American airmen at the air base in her presence or the presence of her women visitors. She doesn't specifically say what words in the book, but it is easy to imagine if he learned them from American soldiers. And she is telling him that, "no decent man of honor would use such words before a woman." How old fashioned can you get?

They spent nine years in Libya. George is now a U. S. Marine.

It is a good book.

LOVE

dad,granpa,ami