The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  Samson looked up at the sun blazing overhead.

  “The Lord is wonderful and mysterious,” he said.

  We trekked over parched ground, heading north-west. There was no tree cover and only a smattering of cacti and scrub. Whenever the camels spotted any vegetation, they would stop and graze. They were roped together like mountaineers and didn’t seem in the least affected by the great weight of their loads.

  The salt they carried had been carved from the dry bed of Lake Karum and from the salt flats around it in Afar. Long wooden poles are used to prize the blocks loose, and then the blocks are sawn into smaller pieces of a uniform size.

  Kefla called us to the front and offered us some cooked meat and water from his bottle. He was eager to tell us about his life. Fortunately, like Adugna, he spoke some Amharic, and so Samson could translate.

  “I have walked this route a thousand times,” he said, “since I was a child. Before me, my father walked with the camels, as his own father did before him.”

  “What of the dangers, the fear of shiftas?”

  “These days there’s no danger,” he said, “except from scorpions and snakes. Our people used to enjoy killing foreigners but now we have come to trust them.”

  Kefla glanced over at me as we walked. I knew what he was thinking. He was wondering if I’d heard of the Danakil’s preoccupation with testicles.

  “I have read of the proud traditions of the Danakil,” I said. “It is sad that they have disappeared.”

  “We are still proud,” he replied. “We are Danakil. But we no longer kill every man whose face is unknown to us. That was the old way. It was a good way, but now it has passed.”

  Most of the men in the party were related to Kefla, brothers or sons, nephews or cousins. They formed a strong unit, he said, each man trusting the others with his life. The salt caravan was no place for women. Kefla’s wife, his third, was with the clan in the Danakil desert. They had been married the previous year, after his second wife had died in childbirth.

  “What about your first wife?”

  The leader thrust his stick in the sand, his gaze fixed on the ground.

  “She died as well,” he said, “of malaria.”

  I changed the subject and asked about the legend of the gold.

  “Ah, yes, the gold,” he said, almost as if he had anticipated my question. “It has been turned into salt by God.”

  “Do you think He will ever turn it back into gold again?”

  “Perhaps,” said Kefla, “and that would be good, as you can sell gold for a lot at Mekele. But I get angry when I hear my friends and clansmen cursing that the gold has gone. You see, God changed a useless metal into salt — and no man or camel can live without salt, but we can all live without gold.”

  Nesbitt had warned of the danger of trekking with camels. He had written of the constant worry that they would catch a foot in a crack in the ground. Kefla and the others were alert for such clefts and, if there was any doubt, they would halt the caravan and probe the earth with their sticks before carrying on. Another problem was the stifling heat. I found myself drinking water incessantly. Kefla told me to be careful. Too much water, he said, was as bad as none at all. I doused a shirt in water and wrapped it around my head like a turban, and Samson did the same.

  From time to time a block of salt was unstrapped from one of the camels and given to them to lick. At other times, Kefla would feel the sand with his hand. If it were too hot, the camels’ feet would burn. Nothing was as important as the well-being of the camels.

  Nesbitt wrote that he preferred to travel with human porters rather than with pack animals. Humans, he said, can take short cuts, negotiate precipitous slopes and cross torrents by jumping from rock to rock. More to the point, fresh porters can be hired when necessary. But then again, no man could heave blocks of salt such a great distance.

  In the late afternoon, camp was pitched near a thicket of thorn trees. Samson had been keen to spread the Word of God to the Danakil, most of whom were Muslims. But now that he had a captive audience, he hadn’t the strength. We sat in a heap on the ground: I was too exhausted to write my journal, and he was too tired to preach. Around us, the camels were being unloaded and watered, a fire was built and some scraps of meat were roasted. I asked Samson to find out how much further we had to go.

  “Please do not make me ask that question,” he said. “I cannot bear to hear the answer.”

  So we lay there, waiting for the night, and I thought longingly of the Emperor’s Jeep. I even began to think of Bahru with some affection.

  Kefla told his eldest son to keep guard. He was a boy of about twelve.

  “He’s as wise as Suleiman,” he said, “like his grandfather. Many girls already want to marry him. But there is time for that.”

  “You know of Suleiman?”

  “Of course,” responded the leader, “all Danakil know how he came here himself searching for ivory and gold.”

  “Did he find them?”

  “Yes, yes, he did. I told you, there used to be gold here. There was much gold in the time of Suleiman.”

  “Did he mine it?”

  Kefla stoked the fire with his stick.

  “His men cut the gold from the ground in slabs,” he said. “Then it was loaded on to ships and taken back to the land of Suleiman.”

  “How did they carry the gold to the ships?”

  “Suleiman’s army of jinn carried it, of course.”

  The camels had been fed and were now sitting, chewing the cud. The sky was lit by a crescent moon and speckled with stars, and the air was cool, chilled by a light breeze from the east. Kefla’s eldest son was called Yehia. He patrolled the camp with a Lee Enfield .303. He was close to puberty, the time when his forebears would have started to prepare for their first kill. The boy’s finger never left the trigger; he was clearly itching to pull back the curved sliver of steel. But he had been born too late. Deaths are still a frequent occurrence among the Danakil, but now they are put down to self-defence rather than cold-blooded murder. These days when they kill, the Danakil don’t bother to rip off testicles. Although Kefla and the others didn’t say so, it was quite clear that they thought killing wasn’t the same if you couldn’t hack off your enemy’s private parts.

  When he passed me, Yehia clenched his jaw and swung the rifle to his shoulder in a practised movement. As a foreigner my kind had been fair game since the beginning of time. Only now had the rules changed, and the young warrior felt cheated. I smiled at him, but his mask of rage didn’t break. His uncle Abdullah invited us to sit with him on a coarse goat-hair mat. He was taller than the others, with a slim neck, and he wore a pair of bandoliers strapped across his chest. He cut a piece of dried meat from a carcass in his lap and held it to my lips.

  I was about to ask how much further we had to travel, but I knew Samson would be reluctant to translate the question. Instead I asked Abdullah about Mekele.

  He frowned so hard that his brow rippled like corrugated iron.

  “It is a very big city,” he said. “Too many men, too many cars, too much noise!”

  “So you don’t like it?”

  “Ah!” he said. “Walk in the city and you see the worst side of man. People forget where they have come from when they reach such a place. They grow lazy and drink beer, and they waste their money. That is not the real world.”

  “Then what is the real world?”

  Abdullah loosened the bandoliers and then slapped his hands together and held them out like scales.

  “This is the real world,” he said. “Look at it! Smell it! Taste it! Listen to it!”

  Kefla came over to where we were sitting and crouched on the ground. It was dark, but I could see he was tired. He said that Yehia would protect us in the night. If there was any trouble the camels would be sure to sound the alarm. They could smell a thief from a great distance.

  “I hope we are left alone,” I said feebly.

  Kefla smiled, and leant back on his he
els.

  “You may be wishing that,” he said, “but Yehia is praying that we will be disturbed. He is ready to pull the trigger, to prove himself a man.”

  All of the next day we marched, one foot ahead of the next, as the sun rose from a faint pink glimmer of light to a raging ball of fire above the desert. I found the going hard. By early afternoon it was so hot that my spit sizzled on a rock. My mind kept flashing back to the jungle. The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest. As I staggered on, I thanked God that we were far from the jungle. We had seen no insects or reptiles, and we could walk freely, unhindered by low vines, fallen tree trunks and the press of undergrowth. Samson had never been in the jungle, so he didn’t know how lucky he was. He started moaning about missing Addis Ababa, saying that his girlfriend would be longing for him, and that he had to get back to urgent commitments. His misery gave me new strength. I found myself sympathizing with Henry Stanley and his habit of throwing men in irons at the slightest whisper of dissent.

  The camels were unloaded every three hours and their bindings were constantly checked. Rubbing would lead to sores. The only journey I had ever made with camels was in India’s Thar Desert years before. On that trip we had actually ridden the camels, rather than walking alongside. But I’d soon come to appreciate the unique relationship between man and camel. The animals look at their masters with loathing. But the men in a caravan regard the camels with silent wonder. They would never admit it, but you can see that they value the beasts as highly as their closest friends. This was never more apparent than when one of Kefla’s camels went lame.

  It was the late afternoon of the third day and Kefla was leading the caravan through a series of low barren hills. We were all exhausted. The camels were about to rest and be watered. We had grown used to being blinded by light so dazzling that it scorched our retinal nerves and made our eyes stream with tears. Somehow, the Danakil coped with the brightness and remained alert to the camels’ every move. They needed to: a single misplaced step could spell disaster. Then, suddenly, one of the smaller she-camels plunged to the ground and let out a truly terrible bellow of pain.

  Without wasting a second, Kefla took a knife from beneath his shawl and sliced away the straps which held the slabs of salt. The animal thrashed in agony and her bellows turned to a high-pitched shriek. With the others struggling to keep her still, Kefla made a quick inspection. It was obvious that her right foreleg had shattered. Then the caravan’s leader picked up his knife and pressed it against the camel’s neck. “Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim, In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,” he cried.

  With a whack of the blade, the animal’s jugular was severed. Blood gushed out of the wound as the camel kicked in a last frenzied gallop, her eyes rolling, her mouth wide open. A few moments later she was dead.

  Kefla stood over the carcass, his knife still wet with blood. There were tears in his eyes. He covered his face with his hand and then wiped it with the edge of his shawl. I was not surprised that a Danakil was weeping. His friend was dead. While the other men unloaded the rest of the camels, Kefla walked away into the distance to be alone.

  TEN

  The Place of Gold

  “The Desert of the Danakil is a part of the world that the Creator must have fashioned when he was in a bad mood.”

  Ladislas Faragó, Abyssinia Stop Press

  It took all evening to dismember the dead she-camel. The men worked together, cutting the flesh from the carcass, draining the hump of its liquid, removing the entrails and cooking the bones for their marrow. For once Kefla stood back and let the others do the work. The dead camel was his favourite. He had bought her as a calf and they must have traveled the route together hundreds of times. The rest of the party were sensitive to their leader’s loss. One of them put out a mat for him to sleep. He crouched on it but refused to lie down. The air was heavy with the smell of his beloved camel roasting.

  The last time I’d eaten camel was in the Jordanian desert where it was made into mensaf, cooked in milk and served in a rich pilau. The Bedu had prepared the dish during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting. Each evening when the fast breaks, a feast is held. Then the meat had been succulent and tender. The she-camel’s flesh in Afar couldn’t have been more different. It was tough and sinewy, as if the long treks across the desert laden with salt had drained it of all moisture.

  We did not sleep until late that night. All the meat and the entrails were cooked, and much was eaten. What was left over was packed up in sackcloth next morning and stowed on the back of the last camel. The blocks of salt were then redistributed, all the animals sharing the load of their dead sister.

  Samson rose early that morning to read the Bible. Like me, he’d been touched by the camel’s death and its effect on Kefla Mohammed. I watched from a distance as he tied two sticks together and planted them in the cleft where the camel had caught her foot. It was a marker to warn others of the danger, as well as a tribute to the dead animal.

  The morning’s departure was delayed, and we didn’t start walking until some time after eight. Sensing a slackening of the pace, I asked Samson if he thought we were nearing our destination. He was reluctant to find out, but he winked at me. He could smell civilization, he said.

  Four hours later, after crossing a ridge of hills, we saw a cluster of houses on the horizon. As we drew nearer we made out people, goats and a few cars. Kefla pointed to the distant settlement.

  “That is Kwiha. We will be in Mekele this evening.”

  Inside I was jumping for joy. The novelty of trekking through Afar had long since worn off. I slapped Samson on the back and promised to treat him to the softest bed and the biggest meal the Tigrayan capital had to offer. He smiled, his cheeks dimpling, but before he could reply, Kefla came over.

  “We will sell some of the salt in Kwiha,” he said. “The market there is good.”

  Soon the caravan was making its way through the dusty lanes of the small town. The camels seemed awkward now that we’d escaped the desert. They did not belong in a town, just as cars don’t belong in the desert of the Danakil.

  We made a beeline for the market which was in full swing. There was the usual assortment of green plastic buckets, piles of dirty bottles, polythene bags, old clothes, worn-out tools, grain and butchered meat on sale. Women haggled for food, and their children rummaged through the heaps of old clothes in the local equivalent of window-shopping.

  The camels were led to one side and relieved of their loads. About a third of the salt was taken off to be sold, and what was left was then redistributed.

  Danakil traders such as Kefla sell their salt to a central dealer. He in turn sells slabs to middlemen who saw it up into smaller blocks. Individual customers buy only a small block, a few inches square.

  These days salt is brought from Afar to be eaten. But in more ancient times the salt bars, called amole, were also used as currency. The Egyptian monk Cosmos recorded their use in about ad $2$, and a thousand years later the Portuguese priest Francisco Álvares said he saw salt being used as money throughout Ethiopia: “He who carries salt finds all that he requires.” Even as late as the 1960s travelers to Tigray reported seeing salt being used for trade.

  As I stood there in the market, listening to the rhythmic sound of salt slabs being sawn, it began to rain in great splattering drops. Rain is generally welcomed in the north of Ethiopia, but it is the curse of the salt business. The sellers scurried away to borrow plastic sheets from their neighbours to protect their precious inventory.

  Within an hour we were ready to press on to Mekele. Somehow the camels knew we were close to our destination and the pace quickened. Kefla was pleased with the money he’d made from the sale at Kwiha and he stuffed a great wad of bills under his shawl. Before we started the last leg to Mekele, he had ordered Yehia to untie all the camel meat which was still uneaten. He had then approached a group of beggars dressed in rags, and offered them the food. Samson was touch
ed by his generosity.

  “Kefla is a good man,” he said. “He may not be a Christian yet, but I think he will go to Heaven.”

  From the moment we crossed Mekele’s city line, it was obvious that the place was going to be different. Not just different from the desert, but different from every other town and city in Ethiopia. Mekele was inexplicably modern. The tarmac under the camels’ feet was newly laid and as smooth as patted butter, with cats’ eyes in the middle, and gutters along the sides of the road. The houses were large and imposing, with imported tiles on their roofs and satellite dishes the size of fish ponds in their backyards. There were large hotels and restaurants, and petrol stations where fuel was actually on sale. All the vehicles were brand-new, running on flawless tires.

  Samson looked astonished at his first sight of Mekele.

  “I have heard of this place,” he said. “People talk about it in the bars in Addis. They are usually laughed at, though, because no one believes them.”

  “Why is it so prosperous?”

  “The President,” said Samson. “The President’s from here.”

  Kefla said he and the others would spend the night in Mekele but that they would leave at dawn. They felt uncomfortable in the town and they were anxious to get back to their families with the proceeds from the trip. Since Mekele had grown in size and sophistication, there wasn’t the same demand for salt as there had once been. These days, explained Kefla, the people of Mekele want refined salt, and they can afford to have it imported.

  “It’s not good for us,” he said. “One day, everyone will want it. That will put us all out of business and we’ll probably starve to death.” He paused and then, looking me squarely in the eye, he grinned. “Maybe that’s when God will have mercy on us and turn all the salt back into gold.”

  That evening Samson and I invited Kefla and the others to a meal at a small restaurant. We had endured hardship and were ready to taste luxury. I ordered just about everything on the menu for my guests and made quite sure that they didn’t catch sight of the bill. It came to far more than they had earned from the entire journey. That night Samson and I slept on soft mattresses and showered in hot water. I had thought of asking Kefla and the rest of the team to join us in the hotel, but Samson had insisted they’d be embarrassed. Instead I’d offered them some money, but they’d refused to take it, even when it was handed over by Samson. They were too proud. So, in the end, I’d presented each of them with clothing and pieces of equipment from my kit bags.