The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  “People like Ethiopians in America,” I said, reassuringly. “I’ve met many Ethiopians there who have a good wage, but they were not frightened of starting in a simple job.”

  “Like gold mining in a pit?” called another.

  “Not exactly... more like working in a restaurant. But it’s important to study hard and to learn English. If you have a qualification you can earn a lot of money.”

  The audience looked worried. None of them had any qualifications.

  “Tell them the best way to get into America,” prompted Dawit.

  I thought for a moment.

  “It’s a big country,” I said, “with many ports of entry. Some people cross over from Mexico, but that’s getting harder; and others come in by sea. But the best way is to get a friend or a relative to sponsor you, or to have a job waiting for you. You see, if you’re “uniquely qualified”, they can easily bring you from overseas to do the job.”

  Dawit struggled to translate the concept into Amharic.

  One of the Tigrayan girls had a question. She rose to her feet, thrust her chest out towards me and asked: “Do American men need us?”

  I was taken aback by this question, but rather than discourage her, I replied with enthusiasm.

  “Yes, I’m sure they do!”

  I carried on, padding the talk out with information about life in America, saying it wasn’t all like the movies, and that the streets weren’t paved with gold. Some of my metaphors must have suffered in translation.

  Then, winding up, I said jokingly that they could push me down one of the mine-shafts and steal my passport. That would give one of them at least an easy entry into America. The miners looked at me and then at each other. Then they stared at the ground and giggled nervously.

  SIX

  Breakfast with Idi Amin

  “In Africa think big.”

  Cecil Rhodes

  The morning after my talk, one of the miners came to Noah’s hut and presented me with a gift. His name was Solomon. I would have asked how he came by the livid scar that ran from his eye to the base of his neck but, reading my thoughts, Samson suggested in a whisper that it was none of my business. Solomon said he’d enjoyed my talk very much and that he knew the details would come in useful when he arrived in America. He had heard about a city where a ferocious wind blew, rarely ceasing for a moment. He couldn’t remember its name.

  “Chicago?” I suggested. “It’s called the Windy City.”

  He smiled broadly.

  “You really know a lot about America.”

  “There’s no need to give me anything,” I said.

  But Solomon insisted.

  The gift was wrapped in fresh banana leaves, and there were flies swarming all over it. Dreading what I would find inside, I unfurled the leaves. There lay a pair of very bloody and very dead hares, their long bodies rigid with rigor mortis. The very sight of the creatures so early in the morning made me feel nauseous. I gagged at the stench, and asked Noah to dispose of them immediately. He thought I was mad. To him, their smell was like the scent of freshly cut flowers. He rambled on about how roasted hare was one of life’s true luxuries. One taste and, he assured me, I would become addicted to the meat.

  He hurried off and gave the hares to one of the Tigrayan girls called Taitu, named after Menelik II’s consort. She said she’d stew them for us. Hares are a delicacy in Tigray. The Amhara, she said, had no idea how to cook them. Taitu was so beautiful that no one dared look her in the eye, not even Noah when he asked her to cook the hares. Her skin was the color of burnished brass, rolled over a frame of bones of extraordinary delicacy, and her voice was as soft as a siren”s. Noah said she’d been married but had run away from Tigray after being found in another man’s bed. Unable to face her husband or her family, she had fled to the south and eventually ended up as a whore.

  Taitu cooked the animals and brought them to me for lunch, served in a thick gravy. I invited her to join us and, as we ate, I asked her about her homeland of Tigray.

  “In the north,” she said, “people are so proud that a father will kill his daughter if she brings shame on the family. Then if anyone asks him about his dead daughter he will pretend to forget her name.”

  Taitu nibbled at a bone with her front teeth. Her eyes were bright, but I sensed great sadness.

  “We all have dreams,” she went on. “Most of the men here dream of going to America. They don’t know what they will do once they’re there, or even why they want to go. But,” she said, looking me squarely in the eye, “they all know that whatever America is like, it must be better than Bedakaysa.”

  “What are your dreams?”

  She fiddled with her braids for a moment before answering.

  “I dream of going home,” she said.

  That night the first real rains of the monsoon fell. There is no smell in the world as intoxicating as African rain on the red sub-Saharan soil. All the miners’ children ran outside and danced in the downpour, laughing and shouting with glee. Samson and I pulled off our shirts, rolled up our pants and splashed our way to the panning pool. Awed by the power of nature, Samson looked up at the sky, the rain cascading over his face and down his body.

  “This is my God talking to me!” he cried.

  For once I knew he was right.

  By morning all the water had long since been absorbed into the earth. The footprints leading to the mine were a little deeper, the mud a little thicker, the panning pool a few inches higher.

  Noah had been down the shaft for two hours by the time we got there. Rather than being exhilarated by the break in the weather, he looked worried.

  “Another death,” he said.

  “A cave-in?”

  “No, another kind of accident.”

  The body was lying a few yards from the shafts, covered by a thin white shawl with delicate embroidery around the border. It was the body of an adult miner, a man universally despised. According to Noah he was a well-known thief and was suspected of being one of the official’s spies. Unlike the death of the child, there was no display of emotion at this death. Most of the miners didn’t even bother to look at the corpse, which had been found early that morning.

  Noah took me over and lifted the corner of the shawl. There was a hideous wound on one side of the man’s face — a gash from the left ear down to the base of the neck. The jugular was clearly severed.

  “A bad accident,” said Noah.

  “What do you mean “accident”? The man’s obviously been murdered. That’s a clean cut made with a knife.”

  Noah tapped me on the shoulder.

  “No, it’s an accident,” he said firmly, “he slipped in the rain and cut his neck. The others are going to bury him right away.”

  Two days later we heard the sound of the official’s vehicle skidding through the mud. Another spy had no doubt informed him of the murder. A second downpour had turned the track into a thick reddish-brown soup, but the rain was good for the miners. It softened the earth and made the panning easier. An adequate supply of water is always a problem for gold prospectors. In many parts of the country small-scale mine-shafts shut down in the dry season. Samson had said that the main dangers in the heavy rains were from cave-ins or flash-floods in the narrow tunnels where children and the bravest men worked.

  As we watched the vehicle lurching up the trail, Noah told me to go to his hut and wait there, as I’d done before. Finding a foreigner in the village at such a time would only complicate matters.

  I did as he requested, but then peeped through a hole in the hut’s back wall. I had a good view of the official and his assistant as they got out of the car.

  They were an odd couple. The assistant’s nose had been broken, and he had small ears that lay flat against his shaven head. He was dressed in a grubby beige coat with oversized lapels; the garment’s right shoulder was torn, exposing the lining. His boss wore a checkered overcoat, purple pants and a felt hat, but despite his eccentric outfit he looked formidable. His
thick-framed glasses and cold efficient features hinted at a man who liked to get to the bottom of things. Both men’s shoes and ankles were caked in mud. They’d obviously had to push the vehicle en route. The official seemed very angry.

  In any other part of the country a local administrator, however lowly, would command respect, but not here. The miners were brash and self-confident. They were used to danger, and though their daily work broke the law, they made ten times more than the officials from Shakiso.

  No one bothered to meet the car, so the visitors tramped over to the mine itself. I waited in Noah’s thatched hut. A few minutes later I heard shouting and a high-pitched whistling. Samson hurried in and said there was trouble. He looked very worried and told me to pack up my stuff at once.

  “Is it about the murder?”

  “No, no,” he replied, “they don’t even know about that, or they don’t care.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s you.”

  I bundled up my sleeping-bag and stuffed it with odd bits of clothing into my kit bags while Samson laid his precious Bible flat in his tartan case. The case, I noticed, was already splitting at the seams.

  “What shall we do? They’ll see us if we leave.”

  Before Samson could reply, the hut’s door swung open and the official and his assistant stood in the doorway. I could sense their delight at finding a foreigner. Noah was behind them, trying to get their attention. I knew from that moment that any efforts to talk our way out of the situation would be futile. The official asked for our papers. I pulled out a photocopy of my passport and handed it to him — I had learned years ago never to give original documents to anyone if I could help it. Samson fumbled in his case for his identity card and passed it to the official. Much conversation in Amharic followed.

  As the debate grew more heated, I became worried. In the Indian subcontinent a few crumpled notes slipped surreptitiously into a sweaty palm would have effected our release. But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I’m not the one being arrested.

  The murderer had got away with it, but Samson and I were bundled into the back of the official’s car and driven off. There had hardly been time to thank Noah and say farewell to the miners and the Tigrayan girls. Samson was generally talkative, but as we slip-slided through the soupy mud, he said nothing. The officials were also quiet, but I sensed an air of triumph.

  We were driven to Shakiso and taken to the police station. Once inside we were told to stand in a corner. A notebook was taken down from a shelf, a pencil licked, and the interrogation began.

  Neither the official nor his lackey spoke English, so Samson had to translate. I didn’t really know what to say but I decided to tell the truth, though I knew it wouldn’t be easy – the reasons behind my journeys are never straightforward. As we stood there, my hands sweating, Samson’s brow knotted with anxiety, I attempted to explain.

  “I have come from London to search for King Solomon’s gold mines,” I said. “It is known that the Israelites, and before them the ancient Egyptians, mined gold in Ethiopia. That is why I am here. Unlike others before me, I see it as my duty to visit all kinds of mines — legal and informal.”

  Samson struggled to translate my words into Amharic. The official didn’t look at me — his eyes were on the wide-spaced lines of his notebook — but he scribbled madly. When his pencil had stopped moving I started to talk again.

  “The last thing I want,” I said, “is to acquire any gold. You see, I’m interested in Ethiopian history.”

  Samson paused and stared at me in alarm. Had I forgotten that the word “history” was taboo?

  The official put down his pencil and cracked his knuckles one by one. Then he looked at me, glanced at the photocopy of my passport and asked Samson a question.

  “He wants to know who you’re spying for,” he said.

  I sighed. Then Samson sighed.

  The man spoke again.

  “He wants your film.”

  Fortunately I’d learned a trick from the veteran cameraman and war photographer Mohamed Amin. Mo, as he was known, was the man who filmed the original television footage of Ethiopia’s famine in the mid-i98os. It was his powerful images that galvanized action which culminated in the Live Aid pop concert. When confronted by officials intent on confiscating his films, Mo would quickly wind in the tapers of unexposed rolls and pass them off as exposed films.

  Before we’d left Noah’s hut I had hidden my exposed films in a pair of filthy hiking boots at the bottom of one kitbag. Now I whipped out a couple of blank films, slid in the tapers, and ranted on about how valuable they were.

  The official looked delighted and demanded I hand them over. Theatrically I tossed them on to the desk. The official passed them to his assistant, who stamped on them. Then he barked a string of orders and we were taken away. Samson was still trying to negotiate us out of our predicament and had become desperately upset. I dared not tell him that I was rather enjoying the experience.

  We were taken to a cell and locked inside, though “cell” is a misnomer. The floor consisted of baked mud, and the walls were merely wooden planks with gaps between them. The roof was built of rusting corrugated iron which let in a draught and leaked when it rained. In the wide gap between the floor and the walls lay shards of broken glass, presumably intended to discourage inmates from sliding out on their stomachs. Five other men were already inside, three of them asleep, the other two playing cards.

  Samson was miserable. He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was regretting ever having met me. I had become his tormentor and was dragging him further and further away from his objective of getting to America. I told him that I’d double his pay for every day we were incarcerated, but he didn’t respond. Instead he sat on his haunches and chewed his knuckles.

  After an hour there was the sound of a key turning in the lock and the jailer arrived carrying a lunch of zill-zill tibs, shredded beef strips. He said that if we were still hungry afterwards we could have some more, and if there was anything else we needed we were to let him know. The jailer had been miscast by life. He was one of the most gentle and compassionate men I think I’ve ever met. Samson and I treated him with due courtesy, but the others took advantage of his kindness. They had him washing their clothes, fetching them water and darning their shirts.

  I remarked on the jailer’s kindness to Samson.

  Of course he’s kind,” he said, “he’s an Amhara.”

  The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I’d never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience. I urged Samson to introduce me to the other felons. Befriending them might lower our chances of getting our throats slit in the night. The two card-players turned out to be Amhara as well, which raised their standing in Samson’s estimation. One of them had small shifty eyes. He reported proudly that he’d beaten his wife with a stick for having run off with a neighbour. The second card-player said he was there because he’d stolen a chicken. He had no money to live anywhere better and so preferred to stay in the jail.

  The other three convicts only woke up when it was getting dark and then they shouted at the jailer, ordering him to bring them some food. He did as he was told. One of the men, whom I discovered later was a miner accused of killing a prostitute, drew a line in the dirt with his thumb and then glared at me. If Samson or I crossed the line, he said, he’d break our necks.

  The jailer declared that anyone wanting to go and pee could do so in the bushes outside the police station. The five men trooped out unsupervised. I was surprised that they didn’t break free and run off. When they came back a few minutes later they seemed to sense my surprise because they looked rather sheepish. Meanwhile the jailer told Samson that the official had gone home and that he wouldn’t be back until noon the next day.

  That night I lay on my back and thought about earlier narrow escapes. A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested yo
u. You can stay at home and read of others’ experiences, but it’s not the same as getting out of trouble yourself. Whenever I’m in a tight spot, I think of Mohamed Amin. He was an expert in getting out of tight spots in Africa and, in particular, in Ethiopia.

  As well as filming news, Mo ran a small publishing company. In my early twenties, when no one else would give me work, Mo hired me to write books. By then he had already lost one arm, blown off in Addis Ababa, during the fall of Mengistu’s regime. During our travels together in many African and Asian countries, Mo passed on some of his knowledge. He taught me to take my own fuel into war zones, preferably high-octane aviation fuel — most petrol engines can run on it as long as their timing is altered. He also showed me how to hide a roll of 35-millimeter film in the heel of my shoe, and he taught me that when dealing with African bureaucracy you should remain respectful and calm.

  Mo Amin died during the hijacking of an Ethiopian Airlines plane off the Comoros Islands in November 1996. I remember the day clearly because it was the same day that my father died. A week before his death I’d met Mo in Nairobi. He’d asked me to write the text for a book on Saudi Arabia. He knew I wanted to spend time there. But, as always, he drove a hard bargain.

  “I’ll give you a thousand pounds,” he said.

  Even for Mo this was a pitiful sum, but he was a shrewd negotiator, and was never one to start high.

  “That’s not enough,” I said.

  “Well, double it.”

  From past experience I knew to ask for payment in kind as well as in cash.

  “What about some transport?”

  “I’ll give you two club class tickets on Ethiopian, anywhere they go,” he said. Mo had an inexhaustible supply of tickets on Ethiopian Airlines.

  “What else?”

  He leant back in his chair and thought for a moment. His bionic artificial arm was laid out on the desk before him like a trophy, a reminder of his bravery.

  “I’ll give you a Somali passport,” he said.