Sir Richard Francis Burton, who travelled to Mecca in 1853 disguised as a Muslim pilgrim

Who was the greatest traveller of the Victorian era? Amongst the usual top contenders you will find the name of Sir Richard Francis Burton. Best known for translating The Thousand and One Nights from Arabic and for visiting Mecca in 1853 disguised as a Muslim pilgrim, Burton wandered for years throughout the Middle East, Far East and Africa. He had an extraordinary talent for languages – he could speak twenty-nine of them – and was a master of assimilating himself into local cultures. Just after his death in 1890 he was described as ‘a Mohammedan among Mohammedans, a Mormon among Mormons, a Sufi among the Shazlis, and a Catholic among the Catholics.’

But for all Burton’s camel rides through the desert and exposure to different customs, he never shook off the racial prejudices of an upper-class Victorian gentleman. In an account of a trip to West Africa, he writes of the ‘pollution’ of Medeiran blood by ‘extensive miscegenation with the negro’. When he needs people to carry his luggage into the jungle, he buys himself some slaves without a second thought. Burton’s experiential adventuring failed to turn him into an empathist.

That is the problem with travel. There is no guarantee that it will result in an outrospective awakening in which you come to see the world through the eyes of others. Too often we venture abroad, guide books in hand, without learning much about the lives of the locals, who we stare at from the outside as if they were exotic animals behind a glass pane. This is precisely what occurs in the case of ‘poverty tourism’ today, where you might visit Soweto or Rio looking briefly at the slums from the comfort of an air-conditioned jeep.

My vote for the top Victorian traveller would not go to Richard Burton. Instead I would award it to Mary Kingsley, niece of the writer Charles Kingsley. Born in London in 1862, Kingsley received no formal education, yet by raiding her father’s library managed to teach herself chemistry, mechanics and ethnography. She also immersed herself in the memoirs of explorers, and in 1893, filled with enthusiasm for foreign travel, embarked on her first trip to West Africa.

She was a rare woman in a man’s world, travelling alone most of the time, climbing the mountain peak of Great Cameroon and canoeing down the rapids of the Ogowé River. She is remembered by ichthyologists for discovering three species of small fish, which are duly named after her, and for being one of the most intrepid early female explorers, happy to stare a leopard in the eye. ‘Being human, she must have been afraid of something,’ Rudyard Kipling wrote of her, ‘but one never found out what it was’. What made her truly remarkable, however, was her attitude to the so-called ‘African races’.

Mary Kingsley, of whom Rudyard Kipling wrote, ‘Being human, she must have been afraid of something, but one never found out what it was’.

A notorious letter Kingsley wrote to the Spectator newspaper in 1895 began with the accepted Victorian belief that ‘the African races are inferior to the English, French, German, and Latin races’. But following this admission, she broke the taboos of her age by arguing that the natives were far from being immoral savages. ‘I have lived among and attempted to understand the Africans,’ she pointed out, and in mental and moral affairs ‘he has both a sense of justice and honour’, while ‘in rhetoric he excels, and for good temper and patience compares favourably with any set of human beings’. Africans are no more cruel than any other race, and although their funeral rites might appear strange, they are little different from those of the ancient Greeks. Unlike Burton, Kingsley was ahead of her time in realising there was no such thing as the ‘negro’, noting that ‘there is as much difference in the manners of life between say, an Ingalwa and a Bubi of Fernando Po, as there is between a Londoner and a Laplander’. While the gentlemen readers of the Spectator considered her views a shameless defence of barbarians and cannibals, she caused further uproar by comparing Africans favourably to Protestant missionaries, suggesting that the natives’ good qualities ‘are very easily eliminated by a course of Christian teaching’.

The example of Mary Kingsley suggests we should rethink the meaning of being an explorer. The greatest explorers have not been those who pushed back the geographic frontiers, but rather those who have travelled beyond the frontiers of their own prejudices and assumptions – whether those are based on race, class, gender, religion or some other category. A successful expedition is one which challenges and alters our worldview, liberating us from the narrowness of deeply ingrained beliefs that we have often unconsciously inherited from culture, education and family. Mary Kingsley’s experiences of travel did just this, exploding the racial prejudices about Africans that were the stuff of the Victorian drawing room.

Thomas Cook, a lay Baptist preacher who was the founder of package holidays in the nineteenth century, wrote that the ultimate purpose of travel was ‘to dispel the mists of fable and clear the mind of prejudice taught from babyhood, and facilitate perfectness of seeing eye to eye.’ Mary Kingsley succeeded in this endeavour. Richard Burton did not.

You can read Mary Kingsley’s letter to the Spectator here. Her views on race are discussed in Sven Lindqvist’s The Skull Measurer’s Mistake, a great book of mini biographies of  historical figures who spoke out against racism.

I think novelists, who spend so much time attempting to understand the mental worlds of their protagonists, have a peculiar ability to appreciate the meaning and significance of empathy. One of the best examples of this is an article that Ian McEwan wrote in The Guardian, published just a few days after the September 11 attacks. It is, in effect, a meditation on empathy. ‘Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity,’ he writes. ‘It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.‘ Here is the article in full.

ONLY LOVE AND THEN OBLIVION by Ian McEwan

First published in The Guardian, 15th September, 2001

Emotions have their narrative; after the shock we move inevitably to the grief, and the sense that we are doing it more or less together is one tiny scrap of consolation.

Initially, the visual impact of the scenes – those towers collapsing with malign majesty – extended our state of fevered astonishment. Even on Wednesday, fresh video footage froze us in this stupefied condition, and denied us our profounder feelings: the first plane disappearing into the side of the tower as cleanly as a posted letter; the couple jumping into the void, hand in hand; a solitary figure falling with a strangely extended arm (was it an umbrella serving as a hopeful parachute?); the rescue workers crawling about at the foot of a vast mountain of rubble.

In our delirium, most of us wanted to talk. We babbled, by email, on the phone, around kitchen tables. We knew there was a greater reckoning ahead, but we could not quite feel it yet. Sheer amazement kept getting in the way.

The reckoning, of course, was with the personal. By Thursday I noticed among friends, and in TV and radio commentaries, a new mood of exhaustion and despair. People spoke of being depressed. No other public event had cut so deeply. The spectacle was over. Now we were hearing from the bereaved. Each individual death is an explosion in itself, wrecking the lives of those nearest. We were beginning to grasp the human cost. This was what it was always really about.

The silent relatives grouped around the entrances to hospitals or wandering the streets with their photographs was a terrible sight. It reminded us of other tragedies, of wars and natural disasters around the world. But Manhattan is one of the most sophisticated cities in the world, and there were some uniquely modern elements to this nightmare that bound us closer to it.

The mobile phone has inserted itself into every crevice of our daily lives. Now, in catastrophe, if there is time enough, it is there in our dying moments. All through Thursday we heard from the bereaved how they took those last calls. Whatever the immediate circumstances, what was striking was what they had in common. A new technology has shown us an ancient, human universal.

A San Francisco husband slept through his wife’s call from the World Trade Centre. The tower was burning around her, and she was speaking on her mobile phone. She left her last message to him on the answering machine. A TV station played it to us, while it showed the husband standing there listening. Somehow, he was able to bear hearing it again.We heard her tell him through her sobbing that there was no escape for her. The building was on fire and there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs and movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen. I love you.

She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones, from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There is only love, and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.

Last words placed in the public domain were once the prerogative of the mighty and venerable – Henry James, Nelson, Goethe – recorded, and perhaps sometimes edited for posterity, by relatives at the bedside. The effect was often consolatory, showing acceptance, or even transcendence in the face of death. They set us an example. But these last words spoken down mobile phones, reported to us by the bereaved, are both more haunting and true.

They compel us to imagine ourselves into that moment. What would we say? Now we know.

Most of us have had no active role to play in these terrible events. We simply watch the television, read the papers, turn on the radio again. Listening to the analysts and pundits is soothing to some extent. Expertise is reassuring. And the derided profession of journalism can rise quite nobly, and with immense resource, to public tragedy.

However, I suspect that in between times, when we are not consuming news, the majority of us are not meditating on recent foreign policy failures, or geopolitical strategy, or the operational range of helicopter gunships.

Instead, we remember what we have seen, and we daydream helplessly. Lately, most of us have inhabited the space between the terrible actuality and these daydreams. Waking before dawn, going about our business during the day, we fantasize ourselves into the events. What if it was me?

This is the nature of empathy, to think oneself into the minds of others. These are the mechanics of compassion: you are under the bedclothes, unable to sleep, and you are crouching in the brushed-steel lavatory at the rear of the plane, whispering a final message to your loved one. There is only that one thing to say, and you say it. All else is pointless. You have very little time before some holy fool, who believes in his place in eternity, kicks in the door, slaps your head and orders you back to your seat. 23C. Here is your seat belt. There is the magazine you were reading before it all began.

The banality of these details might overwhelm you. If you are not already panicking, you are clinging to a shred of hope that the captain, who spoke with such authority as the plane pushed back from the stand, will rise from the floor, his throat uncut, to take the controls…

If the hijackers had been able to imagine themselves into the thoughts and feelings of the passengers, they would have been unable to proceed. It is hard to be cruel once you permit yourself to enter the mind of your victim. Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.

The hijackers used fanatical certainty, misplaced religious faith, and dehumanising hatred to purge themselves of the human instinct for empathy. Among their crimes was a failure of the imagination. As for their victims in the planes and in the towers, in their terror they would not have felt it at the time, but those snatched and anguished assertions of love were their defiance.

© Ian McEwan, 2001

Jo Berry (right) standing next to Pat Magee, the man who killed her father.

One of the greatest challenges of leading an empathetic life is trying to step into the shoes of people who we consider to be ‘enemies’ or whose views and values are very different from our own. If you’re on the receiving end of a racist comment from someone at the pub or a torrent of unfair verbal abuse from your boss, the idea of trying to empathise with them would probably be the last thing on your mind. If you came face to face with the person who had recently burgled your house, could you overcome your anger to see the crime from their perspective, and understand the circumstances that may have driven them to it?

Empathising in such instances might seem like wishful thinking. But consider the case of Jo Berry. In 1984 her father, Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry, was killed by an IRA bomb at the Party Conference in Brighton. In 1999, one of the IRA members responsible, Pat Magee, was released from prison under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Jo’s response was a desire to meet him. She felt that trying to create a relationship with the man who had murdered her father was the best way of overcoming her anguish and anger. Since then they have met over fifty times, gradually – and often painstakingly – developing an understanding of one another’s perspectives on the bombing. Twenty-five years after the event, Jo has now launched a charity, Building Bridges for Peace, which aims to use dialogue and non-violence to promote peaceful resolutions to violent conflicts.

Jo is often asked whether she forgives Pat. Her answer is that forgiveness is not the right word or concept. What really matters, she says, is empathy. She has come to empathise with her father’s killer: ‘I’ve realised that no matter which side of the conflict you’re on, had we all lived each other’s lives, we could all have done what the other did.’

Their unlikely and remarkable friendship reveals that empathy is not only possible in the most extreme circumstances, but that it can transform individual lives and is a route towards social change. Below they tell their story in the own words. First in an interview broadcast on the BBC World Service, and then in a profile for The Forgiveness Project. If Jo Berry can find a way to empathise with Pat Magee, couldn’t we all discover new possibilities for empathy in our lives?

Jo Berry

An inner shift is required to hear the story of the enemy. For me the question is always about whether I can let go of my need to blame, and open my heart enough to hear Pat’s story and understand his motivations. The truth is that sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. It’s a journey and it’s a choice, which means it’s not all sorted and put away in a box.

It felt as if a part of me died in that bomb. I was totally out of my depth but somehow I held on to a small hope that something positive would come out of the trauma. So I went to Ireland and listened to the stories of many remarkable and courageous people who’d been caught up in the violence. For the first time I felt that my pain was being heard.

In those early years I probably used the word ‘forgiveness’ too liberally – I didn’t really understand it. When I used the word on television, I was shocked to receive a death threat from a man who said I had betrayed both my father and my country.

Now I don’t talk about forgiveness. To say “I forgive you” is almost condescending – it locks you into an ‘us and them’ scenario keeping me right and you wrong. That attitude won’t change anything. But I can experience empathy, and in that moment there is no judgement. Sometimes when I’ve met with Pat, I’ve had such a clear understanding of his life that there’s nothing to forgive.

I wanted to meet Pat to put a face to the enemy, and see him as a real human being. At our first meeting I was terrified, but I wanted to acknowledge the courage it had taken him to meet me. We talked with an extraordinary intensity. I shared a lot about my father, while Pat told me some of his story.

Over the past two and a half years of getting to know Pat, I feel I’ve been recovering some of the humanity I lost when that bomb went off. Pat is also on a journey to recover his humanity. I know that he sometimes finds it hard to live with the knowledge that he cares for the daughter of someone he killed through his terrorist actions.

Perhaps more than anything I’ve realised that no matter which side of the conflict you’re on, had we all lived each others lives, we could all have done what the other did. In other words, had I come from a Republican background, I could easily have made the same choices Pat made.

Pat Magee

Some day I may be able to forgive myself. Although I still stand by my actions, I will always carry the burden that I harmed other human beings. But I’m not seeking forgiveness. If Jo could just understand why someone like me could get involved in the armed struggle then something has been achieved. The point is that Jo set out with that intent in mind – she wanted to know why.

I decided to meet Jo because, apart from addressing a personal obligation, I felt obligated as a Republican to explain what led someone like me to participate in the action. I told her that I’d got involved in the armed struggle at the age of 19, after witnessing how a small nationalist community were being mistreated by the British. Those people had to respond. For 28 years I was active in the Republican Movement. Even in jail I was still a volunteer.

Between Jo and I, the big issue is the use of violence. I can’t claim to have renounced violence, though I don’t believe I’m a violent person and have spoken out against it. I am 100% in favour of the peace process, but I am not a pacifist and I could never say to future generations, anywhere in the world, who felt themselves oppressed, “Take it, just lie down and take it.”

Jo told me that her daughter had said after one of our meetings, “Does that mean that Grandad Tony can come back now?” It stuck with me, because of course nothing has fundamentally changed. No matter what we can achieve as two human beings meeting after a terrible event, the loss remains and forgiveness can’t embrace that loss. The hope lies in the fact that we are prepared to carry on. The dialogue has continued.

It’s rare to meet someone as gracious and open as Jo. She’s come a long way in her journey to understanding; in fact, she’s come more than half way to meet me. That’s a very humbling experience.

Thich Nhat Hanh: 'You are, therefore I am.' Another of his sayings is, 'Don't just do something; sit there.'

A recent report by Human Rights Watch has highlighted the persecution in Vietnam of followers of the Zen Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. Now in his eighties and author of books that have sold over a million copies, Thich Nhat Hanh is known as one of the founders of ‘engaged Buddhism’, which seeks to apply Buddhist ideas to help tackle social, economic and environmental injustice. He first came to public attention in the 1960s when nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King for his opposition to the Vietnam War. He has now been making headlines for criticising the Vietnamese government for its failure to ensure religious freedom.

One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s most important ideas is ‘interbeing’, which concerns the mutual interconnectedness of all living things. As he describes it in his book Being Peace: ‘I am, therefore you are. You are, therefore I am. That is the meaning of the word “interbeing”’.

Interbeing contains a very clear empathetic element, which is that we become more compassionate when we imagine ourselves in someone else’s place and understand their suffering. The challenge he raises is that we need to empathise with everybody – not just people we know and care about, but strangers and those who we might despise. This is nowhere better illustrated than in his extraordinary prayer-poem ‘Please Call Me By My True Names’.

He wrote this poem after receiving a letter telling of a young girl who, as a refugee crossing the Gulf of Siam in a small boat, was raped by a Thai sea pirate. She was only twelve years old, and jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.

We must show compassion even for the sea pirate, he says, because each one of us, growing up in his circumstances, may have become a sea pirate ourselves.

Nhat Hanh writes: ‘After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the poem is “Please Call Me by My True Names,” because I have so many names. When I hear one of these names, I have to say, “Yes.”’

Please Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

It is a poem that raises some difficult questions. Is Thich Nhat Hanh asking too much when he calls on us to empathise with a Thai sea pirate? More generally, should we be trying to step into the shoes of those whose beliefs or actions we object to – from a dinner guest who tells a racist joke to a suicide bomber? How far, ultimately, should we take our empathetic imaginations?