முப்பது ஆண்டு காலத் தனிமையின் சோக வரலாறு
செயிண்ட் ஹெலினா தீவைப் பற்றி கேள்விப்பட்டு இருப்பீர்கள். தென் அட்லாண்டிக் பெருங்கடலில் ஒரு சின்னஞ் சிறிய தீவு. இந்தத் தீவில் தான் மாவீரன் நெப்போலியன் தனிமைச் சிறையில் வைக்கப் பட்டார். 1821-ஆம் ஆண்டு தன்னுடைய 51-ஆவது வயதில் காலமானார்.
அவருக்கு முன்னர் அதே தீவில் 30 ஆண்டு காலம் ஒருவர் தன்னந்தனியாகத் தனிமை வாழ்க்கை வாழ்ந்து இருக்கிறார். நெப்போலியனுக்கு முன்னர் 300 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னதாக அந்த நிகழ்ச்சி நடந்து இருக்கிறது. அது ஒரு பெரிய அதிசய நிகழ்ச்சி.
ஒரு கை துண்டிக்கப்பட்டு; மூக்கு அறுக்கப்பட்டு; காதுகள் அறுக்கப்பட்டு; இடது கரத்தின் கட்டை விரல் நறுக்கப்பட்ட நிலையில் அனாதையாக வாழ்ந்து சாதனை படைத்து இருக்கிறார். அவருடைய கதையைக் கேட்டால் உள்ளம் கசியும். உடல் நசியும்.
The first known inhabitant of St Helena - long before Napoleon - was a 16th-century Portuguese renegade. In 1506 Fernao Lopes a member of his country's minor nobility, travelled to Goa in search of honour and wealth.
There he converted to Islam; married a Muslim; fought his former countrymen and was eventually captured - his nose and hands publicly cut off for treachery.
Eventually sailing for home he jumped ship at St. Helena becoming the island's first inhabitant, with only a black cockerel for company.
News of Lopes reached the King of Portugal. Picked up by a ship sent especially for him. Lopes so impressed the King and the Pope in Rome that he was granted one wish.
He requested his return to St Helena. Based on brand new research by A R Azzam, author of the acclaimed Saladin (Longman, 2007); The Other Exile is at once a historical adventure story and a meditation on solitude.
It is a story about redemption in one of the darkest periods in Europe and the tale of the haunting relationship between man and wild nature.
Full story
Fernão Lopes (died 1545) was the first known permanent inhabitant of the remote Island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, an island that later became famous as the site of Napoleon's exile and death.
Lopes was a 16th-century Portuguese soldier in India. He was tortured and disfigured in punishment for siding with Rasul Khan in a rebellion against Portuguese rule in Goa.
On his way home to Portugal after these events, Lopes chose voluntary exile on Saint Helena, where he lived in almost complete solitude for more than 30 years.
In Portuguese service
In 1503 Lopes, a minor nobleman and soldier, accompanied the Portuguese naval general Afonso de Albuquerque on his first voyage to Goa on the west coast of India.
Shortly after his arrival, Albuquerque returned to Portugal for reinforcements, leaving Lopes behind in charge of a garrison, with orders to keep the peace and rule over the local population.
When Albuquerque returned two years later, he found the garrison was no longer in Portuguese possession. Some of the men had married local women, and some, including Lopes himself, had converted to Islam.
Lopes' troops also sided with the Muslim resistance against Portuguese occupation.
Albuquerque's men regained possession of the territory and Lopes and the other Portuguese renegades were turned over to the Portuguese on condition that their lives be spared.
Instead they were tortured so savagely that half of them died within three days. Lopes, as the leader of the group, received the harshest punishment.
He was bound with ropes to two wooden posts, and Albuquerque's men severed his nose, ears, right arm, and left thumb (according to others, his index and middle fingers as well). His hair and beard were scraped off with clam shells.
The survivors were then released, and fled to the jungle where they could hide their deformities and be left alone.
Lopes stayed in India until the death of Albuquerque in 1515, when he set sail for Portugal, allegedly as a stowaway on a Portuguese vessel bound for Lisbon. The ship stopped at Saint Helena for food and water.
Saint Helena was discovered by the Portuguese João da Nova in 1502 and with its abundance of fresh water and fat, it became a regular port of call for Portuguese ships en route between the East Indies and Europe via the Cape of Good Hope.
According to one source, Lopes went on land secretly and became utterly alone; according to another source he was landed with a boat and stayed on the island with a number of slaves. According to all sources, Lopes was granted a few supplies from the ship's stores.
Nearly a year passed before another ship docked at Saint Helena. Lopes acclimated himself to his new home, a 122 square kilometres (47 sq mi) volcanic island almost 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) off the coast of Africa.
The climate was tropical and mild, tempered by trade winds. At the time Saint Helena's original ecosystem was almost intact and goats introduced by the Portuguese thrived in the island's untouched environment (no mammals or reptiles inhabited Saint Helena before introduction by explorers).
The interior of Saint Helena was a thick old-growth forest of ancient gumwood trees and other native plants that had colonized the island as many as 10 million years ago.
The island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
The following is from a contemporary account of the first ship to encounter Lopes after he had been left on Saint Helena, found in a Hakluyt Society journal:
The crew was amazed when they saw the grotto and the straw bed on which he slept...and when they saw the clothing they agreed it must be a Portuguese man.
So they took in their water and did not meddle with anything, but left biscuits and cheeses and things to eat and a letter telling him not to hide himself the next time a ship came to the Rooster for no one would harm him.
Then the ship set off, and as she was spreading her sails a cockerel fell overboard and the waves carried it to the shore and Lopes caught it and fed it with some rice which they had left behind for him.
The cockerel that Lopes saved from the ship became his only friend on Saint Helena. During the night, it roosted above his head and during the day it followed behind him, and would come if he called to it.
As time went on, Lopes began to be less and less afraid of people. When a ship would lay anchor in what would later be known as Jamestown harbour, Lopes would greet the sailors, talking to them as they came ashore.
Lopes began to be considered something of a saint, because of his deformities and the fact that he would not leave Saint Helena for any reason. Many people thought him to be the embodiment of human suffering and alienation, and they took pity on him.
The travelers who stopped at the island gave Lopes many things, including livestock and seeds. Eventually, Lopes became a gardener and a keeper of livestock, working the soil, planting fruit trees, grasses and many other forms of vegetation.
Lopes visits Portugal and Rome
After 10 years on the island, Lopes agreed to return to Portugal to see his family, visited King João III and then traveled to Rome, where Pope Clement VII absolved him of the sin of apostasy.
The absolution occurred at Easter, 1530, in public (In those days, only the Pope could absolve the sin of apostasy, and he always did so in public, at Easter). The Pope was very impressed with Lopes, and decided to grant him a wish.
Lopes had one desire, and that was to return to his home on the Island of Saint Helena. The Pope sent Lopes back to Portugal with a letter for João III, requesting that Lopes be transported back to Saint Helena.
Lopes returned to the island and died there in 1545, after another 20 years of almost complete solitude.
Bibliography
Correia, Gaspar (1860).Lendas de India, 2: p.196-197. Lisbon: Academia R. das Siencias.
Clifford, H: The Earliest Exile of St Helena. Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. 173; May 1903: p. 625-633.
Gosse, P: St Helena 1502-1938, p. 4-10.
Beau W Rowlands, "Fernão Lopes - A South Atlantic 'Robinson Crusoe'"
