by Tahir Shah
In the morning, after a good night’s sleep, we went down to the reception desk. I wanted to send someone to find Bahru and the Jeep. The doorman said something had been left for me during the night. It was a package wrapped in sacking, about the size of a brick. I opened it. Inside was a neatly cut piece of gray salt.
After a long search we found Bahru in the back of the Emperor’s Jeep parked in a lane off the main roundabout. He was fast asleep, and the front of his shirt was encrusted with dried vomit. I banged on the door and he sat up like a zombie woken from death. Four days of debauchery had taken its toll. I wondered how he had funded it all. Despite his hangover, however, he seemed pleased to see us and said he’d been doing some research. He had heard that the Italians had dug a series of test trenches for gold about fifty miles north of Mekele. I was so surprised at Bahru’s initiative that I gave him a handful of tattered birr notes almost without thinking. That seemed to cure his hangover instantly, and within minutes our bags were loaded aboard the Jeep and we were jolting along a rutted country road. The dust churned up by our wheels was like talcum powder and it got into everything, but the surrounding landscape made up for it.
The President was right to be proud of his homeland. The highlands of Ethiopia are beautiful, and I found myself staring in amazement at a vast sweep of land covered in lush vegetation. Never before in Africa had I seen such astonishing fertility.
Tigray’s people seemed as fertile as their land. Wherever we looked there were children herding sheep and cows with long horns, old men whipping their donkeys forward, women working in the fields and more children foraging for kindling. The Tigrayan people look quite different from the other Ethiopian tribes. They are fine-boned and svelte, and they stride about as if they are walking on air.
The road sliced through passes walled by great granite bluffs, so perfectly formed that they looked as if they had been carved by man. Then the granite cliffs gave way to sandstone and to open fields where crops of teff rustled in the breeze.
An hour out of Mekele it started to pour with rain. The water turned the dust into a thick soup, and the Jeep began to skid about. Bahru said his informant had given him directions to the gold trenches. Even though he was quite sure where he was going, I forced him to stop and get directions from a young boy who was out in the rain hurling stones with a sling shot. His teeth were chattering with cold, and his arms and legs were covered in goose-bumps. I asked if he knew about the trenches. He said he did and would show us the way. They were at a place called Werkamba.
“That’s good news,” said Samson. “It means ‘The Place of Gold’.”
Before we reached Werkamba, the mud became too deep for the Emperor’s Jeep to continue, so Samson and I decided to leave Bahru in the Jeep and walk with the boy through the downpour. The mud was the color of oxtail soup and as thick as porridge, and in places it came up to our knees. I had brought along a camouflage green army poncho and so kept reasonably dry, but Samson had no waterproof clothing and was soaked within minutes.
Werkamba was a village of about ten houses built of stone, each with a finely woven thatched roof. The boy said that a big mining company had been looking for gold in the area. (I found out later that it was Midroc, the company that also operated the Lega Dembi mine.) Villagers dread the discovery of gold on their land because then the government nationalizes it and they are forced to leave. Samson said that farmers do all they can to pretend that their land has no gold, though some of them mine illegally, digging narrow tunnels to reach the seam. I even heard of a farmer who built a hut over the entrance to his mine-shaft. He managed to keep the shaft secret for more than a year, but word eventually got out. The government seized the land and he was thrown off it.
In the village we were given freshly roasted coffee by the boy’s mother and she told us what had happened. Engineers had come the month before and taken soil samples. A foreigner had also come. She was worried, she said. They were all worried. I asked if they did any mining themselves. The woman held her son’s head to her chest and looked at the ground, but she didn’t reply.
The new test trenches were set alongside the old ones made by the Italians, a couple of miles east of the village. They were no more than a yard deep, suggesting that the gold was close to the surface. Samson pointed to the veins of marble-like quartz that ran through the rock. Where you find those, he said, you find gold. It was unclear whether the Italians had actually mined the area. When I looked the place up later at the Geological Survey in Addis Ababa, I could find no record, but I knew that significant mining was taking place across the border in Eritrea.
I had brought the Gold Bug metal detector along with me. At last there was no danger of being arrested by officials or being mobbed by excited hordes of illegal miners. We assembled the unit and swept the test trenches once the rain had started to ease off. The machine squealed piercingly wherever the head was pointed. Samson raised his eyebrows. Then he knelt down in one of the trenches, probed with his fingers and selected a lump of soil.
“Look at this,” he said, crumbling it with his fingertips, “it’s got gold in it.”
He suggested we spend a couple of days at the trenches looking for nuggets. Gold is one of the hardest metals to find with a conventional detector, largely because the machine picks up nodules of iron, known as “hot rocks”, but specialized detectors such as the Gold Bug can compensate for iron in the soil. The metal detector has come a long way since it was invented by Gerhard Fisher in the early 1930s. Fisher was a German émigré and a close friend of Albert Einstein. When he showed his first model of a detector — the “Metallascope” – to Einstein, the great scientist reputedly forecast that it would be a commercial failure.
Though I was tempted by Samson’s suggestion that we look for nuggets I knew I couldn’t. Before setting out in search of Solomon’s mines, I had privately sworn an oath that I would not try to make a profit from the gold business. Instead we took a few soil samples to satisfy our curiosity and then we hurried back through the rain to the Jeep.
That evening in the town of Adigrat, perched on the border with Eritrea, I planned the next stage of the journey. I was keen to get to Tullu Wallel, to locate Frank Hayter’s mine-shafts. We took out the map and had a good look at the route. There was quite a distance to cover down the western flank of Ethiopia. But before we could find out the truth behind Hayter’s claims, there was one more place to visit. A friend had told me about a monastery called Debra Damo. In its vaults there were said to be secret texts that told of King Solomon. I was happy to give the place a miss and head straight for Tullu Wallel, but Samson said that visiting a monastery was an act of piety, and that it would bring us luck. I found Debra Damo on the map, right on the Eritrean border. It wasn’t far from Adigrat.
We set off soon after dawn. The rain clouds which had brought such discomfort the day before had vanished and now the landscape was bathed in sunlight. Bahru put his foot on the accelerator and the Emperor’s Jeep hurtled along, swerving round potholes and bouncing over ruts. We were on the main road to Axum, but there was very little traffic. Instead the road was full of cows and sheep grazing the verges. After an hour of driving Bahru misjudged a turn and hit a sheep head on. The poor animal was trapped under the Jeep. Despite this, Bahru refused to stop immediately for fear of encountering a furious farmer. Only once we were some distance from the herd did he pull over and get out to cut the mangled carcass from the chassis.
Another hour passed, with similar near misses. Bahru seemed exhilarated by his recent kill and refused to slow down, smiling evilly when I shouted at him. Then we came to a village where the road was full of people and animals heading for the morning market. Bahru seemed to accelerate deliberately, and people and animals leapt for safety. One sheep was too slow and there was a sickening thud as our wheels caught it. The animal’s owner managed to jump in front of the Jeep — a brave act in a country like Ethiopia where most vehicles have unreliable brakes – and we were all catapulted forw
ard as Bahru slammed into first gear. Thankfully, the farmer wasn’t injured, but before we knew it, the entire village was pressed around the car. They wanted blood.
I told Bahru that he was on his own. He would have to get out and face the mob. His perpetual grin wavered and his lower lip began to tremble. The crowd peered in through the windows. Some of them were arming themselves with stones. Others were trying to rock the Jeep from side to side. I yelled again for Bahru to get out. Gathering his courage he climbed out of the window and up on to the bonnet. Then he bowed his head and pleaded with the farmer. I could not hear what he was saying, but his body language was eloquent. He was begging for mercy.
The villagers worked to free the sheep from the wheel arch. Then they daubed the Jeep’s filthy white bodywork with the animal’s blood. The farmer was shouting at the top of his voice. Samson said he was demanding compensation. He wanted cash, lots of it. Still standing on the bonnet, Bahru tried to talk his way out of the situation. He was the kind of man who could talk his way out of anything. Samson translated. First Bahru blamed the sheep for its stupidity. Then he blamed the Jeep’s brakes. After that he blamed the poor condition of the road.
The villagers said they were sick of dangerous drivers. The dead sheep was no more stupid than any other sheep, and the road was bad because of the government. They were, they said, going to make an example of Bahru. They’d make sure he never injured another helpless animal again.
I prodded Samson in the back. He stopped translating and, with great reluctance, climbed on to the bonnet as well. I watched them through the windscreen: two grown men, throwing themselves at the mercy of the crowd. Every so often they would turn and point to me. Instead of lessening the villagers’ rage, this seemed to anger them even more. I began to wonder if my companions were offering my head in exchange for the dead sheep.
Then Bahru fished out his wallet from his back pocket. Like a conjurer performing a trick, he demonstrated that the wallet contained no money. The only thing inside it was a driving licence. He offered it to the farmer, promising to leave it as collateral until he next returned to the village. The villagers talked among themselves, debating whether to take the licence. At length they agreed. The farmer put it in his top pocket and shouted a string of insults. Samson and Bahru clambered back into the Jeep. They looked very relieved. Bahru threw the Jeep in gear, waved to the crowd, and sped off. Then he burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“Those people are as stupid as their sheep!” he exclaimed. “I’ve got lots of fake licences for times like this.”
A few miles from Debra Damo a withered old man hailed us for a lift. He was so frail that I feared he might die in the back seat. His curly hair was as white as bleached whale bones, and all his teeth were missing. He said he was eighty-five years old, and he had been to the monastery a thousand times.
“What about its treasures, the books about Solomon?”
The man ran a thumbnail down the ridge of his nose.
“Yes, there are books,” he said. “They are written in Ge’ez, the old language. They are very precious and they are guarded by the monks.”
“Will they show them to me?”
“Of course, but first you must get to the monastery.”
I had heard that no women were permitted to set foot in Debra Damo, and that the ascent kept a lot of men out too.
Shortly before we reached the mountain Bahru stopped to wash the sheep’s blood from the bonnet. He said that if it hadn’t been for me, he would have killed a lot more animals. It took his mind off the tedium of the drive. Like a Danakil warrior forbidden to hunt for testicles, he felt that his rights had been curbed by political correctness.
Debra Damo is perched on top of an amba, a flat-topped mountain, that rises 8,400 feet above the surrounding land. The track that leads to it is hideously rough, and when the Emperor’s Jeep refused to negotiate a giant pile of boulders, we were forced to abandon it. The last stretch entailed crawling on our hands and knees up an enormous rockfall.
We eventually reached the foot of the mountain in the early afternoon but I could see no way up it. There was no path, and the cliffs towering above us offered no footholds. I told Samson to ask our fragile passenger which was the best route. The man put his hands over his ears and laughed a great toothless laugh, which echoed around the rocks like the ripple of distant thunder.
When he could laugh no more, he sat down in the shade and fell asleep. I feared he was another madman and was about to give Samson more orders when a strange thing happened. Someone whistled from halfway up the cliff. We looked up, blinking into the light. A hand was waving and pointing downwards. We shouted up questions, but before they were answered the man up the cliff threw down a plaited leather rope. It was as thick as my wrist, and it stank of rotting meat.
Telling Samson that he was more athletic than me, I made him go first. He wound the rope around his waist, but before he could start to climb, he was lifted from the ground. I could only marvel at the strength of the men who were hauling him up. Samson rose higher and higher with jolting movements, his hands frantically clawing at the rock face as his head was battered against its walls. At first he whimpered with fear, but then, as the height increased, the whimpering turned to groans and then to a chilling scream. I called up to him, telling him to be brave. Then suddenly Samson vanished.
Shading my eyes, I tried to work out where he’d gone. There was no sign of life. I shouted to the old man asleep in the shade but he didn’t wake up. So I called up to the rock face. A moment later the plaited rope reappeared. I’d brought far too much baggage as usual. How was I going to get it and myself up? As if in answer to my question, a second rope appeared, thinner than the first but also made of sinewy leather. I tied it round my bags’ straps and then they too began to rise.
When the bags were no more than a speck in the sky, the voice called down again. Then the hand pointed at me and at the thick rope. I wound it around my waist, securing it in a reef knot. But before I could adjust it comfortably, I found myself being pulled upwards. As I rose higher and higher, the rope cut into my sides, squeezing me like a boa constrictor crushing its prey. I breathed out, gasping, and found I couldn’t breathe in again. Then I began scrabbling desperately for finger-holds in the cliff. But every time I found a fragile purchase in a crevice, the rope tore me away, jolting me upwards. It was as if a group of enormous fiendish jinn were at work.
The walls of the cliff were polished and grooved where the rope had rubbed across them over the centuries. A few more minutes and I was nearing the top. I could hear voices now, a young child and a cluster of men. Then there was the sound of Samson urging me on. The last twenty feet were so terrifying that my hands still sweat at the memory. I felt as if I was being cut in half, and the sight of the ground far beneath me made me feel sick with vertigo. A minute more and it was all over. I was pulled into a doorway and lay there on my belly, shaking and whimpering.
A skinny figure was looming over me. He was wearing dark green pants and a royal blue overcoat, darned in places with white thread. On his feet were sandals made from rubber tires, and on his head was a white cotton cap. His nose was long, his ears were pointed, and his mouth was hidden by a tuft of white beard. He looked like Asterix the Gaul, and like Asterix he obviously had a magic potion.
Samson introduced me to Asnake. His modest appearance belied his extraordinary strength. When I commented on his muscles, he roared with laughter.
“God gives me strength,” he said.
“He gives us all strength,” added Samson piously.
“Doesn’t anyone ever fall down the precipice?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” he replied airily, “people die all the time.”
A child priest appeared. He was huddled in a white shawl and his feet were bare. He said his name was Eyba and that he would escort us to the monastery. A narrow path led round the edge of the cliff and up to the plateau above. Still shaking, Samson and I be
gan to worry about getting back down the cliff face, but Eyba simply smiled and told us to look at the view. We could see for many miles in every direction. The afternoon light played on the hills, bringing them alive. Beneath us there were dry riverbeds, copses of trees and farmsteads, and in the distance we could see a mountain range veiled in mist. I could even make out Bahru asleep on the roof of the Jeep. Eyba pointed to a crest of hills in the foreground. He said they were in Eritrea.
Up on the plateau, a herd of fifty oxen were grazing in long grass. I was about to ask Eyba how they’d got there but Eyba had more important things on his mind. Had I been to America? he asked. I replied that I had.
“I am going to America,” he said earnestly.
“But aren’t you a monk? Surely you’ll spend your life here.”
The boy sniffed, then wiped his nose on his arm.
“In America there are Christians, aren’t there?”
Samson answered for me.
“Many, many Christians, and many, many churches!” he exclaimed.
Eyba led the way through a maze of wattle and daub walls. As he walked, he foraged under his shamma and brought out a familiar sheet of paper. It was a Diversity Visa form for the United States. I rolled my eyes.
“I think they will need me in America,” he said.
Debra Damo was supposedly founded by Abba Aregawi, one of the famous Nine Saints of Syria who fled persecution and arrived in Ethiopia in about ad 451. A legend says that Abba Aregawi stood at the base of the mountain, wondering how he could ever climb it. But God called to a serpent which lived on the top of the mountain and told the creature to lower its tail and pull the priest up.