Erik Stattin

Jan Morris "Hav"

Jag kände till Jan Morris som en författare av resor och platser (en travel writer) och har läst hennes böcker om Trieste och Venedig. Men så lärde jag mig att hon skrev ett par fiktiva berättelser också, någon slags science fiction, eller i alla fall spekulativ historia, i form av Last Letters from Hav och Hav of the Myrmidons (samlade i en volym som bara heter Hav). Så här beskrivs den numera sömniga staden Hav av berättaren och besökaren:

Hav days pass swiftly, but somehow hazily. I know of nowhere in the world where the purpose of life seems so ill-defined. It is perfectly true that in the past Hav has played an exceedingly important role in history — has sometimes seemed indeed, as Magda would claim, the very centre of affairs, a crux, a junction of great traffic, not just the run-down terminal of the preposterously anachronistic Mediterranean Express. Especially down at the harbour, I can often imagine the days when the dhows and galleys lay alongside in a clamour of commerce, and the camel caravans from remotest Central Asia, all bales, and straw, and buckets, and ropes, and arguing Turcomans in long robes, assembled sprawled and grunting on the quays beside the warehouses!

But those purposes have long gone, and more than any other city I know Hav seems to live in a hazy vacuum. They used to say of Beirut that, just as aerodynamically a bumble-bee has no right to fly, so Beirut had no logical claim to survival. Even more is it true of contemporary Hav, which has no visible resources but the salt and the fish, which makes virtually nothing, which offers no flag of convenience, but yet manages to stagger on if not richly, at least without destitution.

History has left Hav behind, and our own times too, like Professor Braudel, have wilfully ignored the place. Its modern reputation is murky. Its political situation, vague enough even when you are in the city, is a blur indeed to the world at large. There is no airport, no proper highway into the peninsula, no harbour deep enough for big ships, and only a trickle of tourists ever bothers to make the long and extremely inconvenient journey on the train. Not one foreign news agency or newspaper maintains a correspondent in Hav. Only the British have a consul here, though the Turks possess their own Delegation Office in the Serai, and Hav has no missions abroad.