Isabelle Eberhardt - Travelling To Africa

Travelling To Africa

In 1888 her half-brother Augustin joined the French Foreign Legion and was assigned to Algeria. This sparked Isabelle's interest in the orient and she started to learn Arabic. Her first trip to North Africa was with her mother in May, 1897, whereby her mother was hoping to meet up with Augustin. They were also considering setting up a new life there. While there they both converted to Islam, fulfilling a long-standing interest. However, her mother died suddenly in Annaba and was buried there under the name of Fatma Mannoubia. Shortly after her mother's death, Isabelle took the side of local Muslims in violent fighting against colonial rule by the French.

Two years later Trophimowsky died of throat cancer in 1899 in Geneva, nursed by Isabelle. Following the suicide of her half-brother, Vladimir, and the marriage of Augustin to a French woman she had nothing in common with (she wrote: "Augustin is once and for all headed for life's beaten tracks"), Isabelle's ties to her former life were all but severed. From then on, as recorded in her journals, Isabelle Eberhardt spent most of the rest of her life in Africa, making northern Algeria her home and exploring the desert.