Henri de Monfreid was born in France in 1879, the son of a painter and art dealer who was friends with Gauguin and Matisse. After schooling, de Monfreid was judged unfit for military service and spent ten years working variously as a chauffeur, chemist and milkman.
In 1911 aged 32 he settled in Djibouti (then a French possession) where he became a trader in coffee and hides. Tiring of the petit-bourgeois colonial life, he travelled into the Ethiopian interior, becoming friends with the Danakil tribe, and learning their language. He also converted to Islam, adopting the name Abd-al-Hai (“slave of life”). After his travels he built himself a dhow, the “Altair”, and between 1912 and 1940 he earned a raffish living on the Red Sea diving for pearls and sea-slugs, gun-running, and smuggling hashish. Needless to say, he also had several spells in prison. During the World War I he also spied for the French, his knowledge of the various anchorages in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa proving invaluable.
In the 1930s, de Monfreid began writing about his adventures, publishing several books such as Secrets of the Red Sea and Adventures on the Sea. His book Towards the Hostile Lands of Ethiopia incurred the displeasure of Emperor Haile Selassie, who expelled him from Ethiopia in 1933, although he later returned after Mussolini’s conquest. During World War II he worked for the Italians until he was captured by the British, who deported him to Kenya. After the war he retired to France where he quietly raised a plantation of opium poppies until this was discovered by the authorities. He narrowly escaped prosecution, and settled down to a life of writing, turning out over 70 books over the next 30 years. His books reflect his peripatetic life and thirst for action and violent adventure. As well as travel books, he also wrote several novels such as The Slave of the Golden Boat, and Abdi, the Man With the Severed Hand.
His
most famous and best book is the non-fictional Hashish: Smuggling Under Sail
in the Red Sea (1935), a classic yarn about a smuggling trip. He makes the acquaintance of a Greek sailor in Marseille who seems to
regard the buying of hashish as a perfectly normal activity, and gives him the
address of his family in Greece who happen to own a farm in the mountains. With
the help of a local bishop, he avoids the Greek customs, and sails via Djibouti
to Suez with his narcotic cargo. On the way he is attacked by Eritrean soldiers
who he scares away by letting off dynamite, and is chased by the Italian navy.
On arrival in Suez, he contacts some Bedouin who help him smuggle the hashish
into the desert.
During barren periods, when writing was not bringing in enough money, he sold off his father’s collection of Gaughin’s paintings. Only after de Monfreid’s death in 1974 were these discovered to be fakes…
(A version of this post first appeared in The Chap magazine.)
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