by Tahir Shah
A boy of about seven wearing pink Rubber boots and an outsize T-shirt was standing by the road playing in a deep puddle. I went up and asked him if there were any Jews left. He kicked his foot towards a thatched hut, partly hidden in a grove of banana trees.
“She is in there,” he said.
As Samson and I walked over to the hut, a woman spotted us and began to lay out a series of crude fired-clay figurines. Then she smacked her palm against mine, and welcomed us to her house.
“We have come to meet the Beta Israel,” I said.
The woman looked at the figurines and then at me.
“They have gone to Israel,” she said, “and they have left me behind.”
“Are you the only Jew here?”
She nodded, her eyes drooping sorrowfully.
“They left me alone.”
“But there was plenty of warning. Why didn’t you get evacuated?”
“I was sick, so they wouldn’t take me. They said they would come back. So I am waiting here, and selling these figures which I make.”
The figures were all very similar. A third of them represented a man, another third a woman, and the rest a man in bed with a woman.
“These are Solomon,” she said, “and these are Makeda, and those ones there are Makeda visiting Solomon.”
After we had admired her work and Samson had bought a figure for his girlfriend, the woman, who was called Rachel, took us to see the synagogue. It was a plain circular building and above it rose a large Star of David. Rachel said she never went into the synagogue now that she was alone. She stayed by the roadside most of the time, waiting for tourists or, better still, for the Israeli officials to come and get her. Then she led us to her tukul.
We took off our shoes and went in. The walls were papered with old newspapers printed in Chinese characters. The floor was made from dried mud, and the only piece of furniture was a long, rickety bed. So the three of us sat in a line on it.
“The Israeli Embassy people came to meet me,” said Rachel, “but they told me I was too late to come to their country. I would have to wait here until the next evacuation.”
“When will that be?”
Rachel coughed into her hand.
“I don’t know, but they said they would come and get me when it happened. They promised.”
Samson asked her about Solomon.
“King Solomon and Makeda had a son,” she said softly, “and he is our ancestor. He was Menelik.”
“Can you read the Talmud?”
“No, we don’t have it. We have never had it. But we have a book of prayers in Ge’ez.”
I told Rachel that I had been to Jerusalem, to the place where Solomon’s Temple had once stood. I said that I’d met some Ethiopian Jews, and that they were still adjusting to the great change in their lives. Many of the Ethiopian men were in the army, and others were living in very poor conditions despite handouts from the state. Every Israeli, it seemed, knew of their plight.
Rachel got off the bed and looked me straight in the eye.
“These Beta Israel you met in Jerusalem,” she said, “did they speak of me?”
Halfway between Gondar and Bahir Dar, which nestles on the banks of Lake Tana, Bahru charged through a vast sea of gray vultures. Within seconds there was carnage on the road. Most people avoid vultures, but not Bahru. As the wheels sliced through the vultures’ ranks, crushing wings and breaking beaks, I prayed that the slaughter wouldn’t have ominous consequences later on. Samson said vultures were the messengers of the Devil. Killing them was a virtuous act, though diabolic retribution would probably follow.
As the road ran along the eastern bank of Lake Tana, we caught our first glimpse of the water. The late afternoon sun reflected on it, transforming the surface into a dazzling sheet of gold. Lake Tana is the kind of place where you could easily spend a lifetime navigating the inlets and visiting the monasteries on its banks and on the islands which lie scattered across its waters. Samson begged me to let him make a pilgrimage to some of the churches. He wanted to ask for God’s protection now that we’d spilt vulturine blood. I would have loved to stop as well, to journey to the island of Dega Estefanos where the Church of Saint Stephanos contains the mummified remains of five former Emperors of Ethiopia in glass-sided coffins.
Samson wasn’t thinking about sightseeing so much as survival. He predicted a catastrophe if we didn’t stop and pray. The vultures were already beginning to take their revenge, he said. To take his mind off the matter, I pulled out the map and went over the route. We didn’t have time to stop. We had to go further west, to Beni Shangul, and then head south to Tullu Wallel. There would be plenty of opportunities to pray later, I said.
We spent the night in Bahir Dar. The town was one of unexpected beauty, quite unlike anywhere else I had been in Ethiopia. Palm trees lined the wide avenues, which were brushed by cleaners sweeping with long palm fronds. There were little boutiques selling knick-knacks and banks offering foreign exchange, basket-sellers hawking their wares, and policemen in immaculate uniforms. Samson took a deep breath.
“I think this is the most beautiful place in the world,” he said, “I will bring my girlfriend here when we are married.”
Samson was still a long way from his honeymoon. The subject of marriage was one which preoccupied him. He spoke of wedded bliss continually. A man who was married, he said, was a man who had been touched by angels. Samson was the kind of person who would make a good husband. He was considerate and generally good-natured, and he didn’t smoke, drink, gamble, chew qat or swear. But his girlfriend came from a different social class. Her family had a big house in a good suburb of Addis Ababa. They even owned a car. Samson was a taxi-driver who had lived in a shack until it had been burned to the ground. He had never met the girl’s parents during the three years they had known each other. Worse still, he and his girlfriend were so fearful of being found out that they had to avoid being seen together in public. This need for secrecy put a great strain on Samson.
Bahru dropped me at the Ghion Hotel in Bahir Dar, and my bags were unloaded and ferried to the room by a porter with a club foot. Samson said he wouldn’t need a bed for the night. He was going to seek out the nearest church.
“There is much to pray for,” he said.
“Are you still thinking about the vultures?”
“Yes, the vultures,” he replied, “but I am thinking of angels as well. If I pray very hard, all night, maybe they will fly down and touch me with their wings.”
TWELVE
The Mad Sultan
“The trail led up a wild valley in which we were astonished to find hundreds of slaves at work riddling gold in the riverbed under brutish foremen armed with whips of hippopotamus hide.”
Count Byron de Prorok, In Quest of Lost Worlds
The yellow and white line which ran westward to Beni Shangul looked harmless enough. Michelin’s map-makers sitting in their cosy offices in Paris could have had no idea of the true condition of the road. I made a note in my journal to write to them as soon as I returned home. Then I reminded myself that it was the rainy season, a time when inoffensive tracks become surging rivers of mud. Bahru clenched his teeth and accelerated at full speed. The wheels span furiously, propelling the wretched Emperor’s Jeep through the slime. Neither he nor Samson said very much. I could feel them ganging up on me, bound by their common nationality and by their reluctance to continue the journey Both men were eager to return to the capital, and they knew instinctively that the road was about to get even worse. A glance at the route into Beni Shangul confirmed it. The yellow and white streak would soon be replaced by a narrow pencil line, indicating an unmarked track. I ripped the legend off the map and stuffed it down behind the back seat.
Despite the dreadful driving conditions, Samson was feeling better. Since leaving Bahir Dar two days before, I had let him stop at any church we passed for a quick bout of prayer. Sometimes even the harshest employer has to veer towards lenience.
De Prorok’s book, Dead M
en Do Tell Tales, had been written decades before, but it spoke of a wild, untamed people living in a hostile land. The countryside hadn’t changed since de Prorok’s time, but I hoped the indigenous tribes had grown more friendly. However, everyone I’d asked en route had said that only a madman would dare to make the journey to Beni Shangul, and eventually I’d stopped asking for people’s opinions because they didn’t do much for general morale.
The only comfort was that the Mad Sultan Ghogoli must surely be dead by now. De Prorok went into every chilling detail of the despotic ruler’s regime. Ghogoli governed Beni Shangul as a semi-independent kingdom, paying only lip service to Haile Selassie, and he retained complete control over the gold mines in his territory. His rule was absolute. The lightest form of punishment was castration, in which he clearly delighted. If any of his slaves were found swallowing gold, they were buried up to their necks in ant hills with their noses and ears cut off, or they were hung from posts until they were dead. When Ghogoli was feeling benevolent he permitted a wrong-doer to be executed by his nearest male relative, with the rest of the family looking on. The walls of his palace were said to be festooned with the dried “body parts” of his enemies. De Prorok was too polite to say it, but I knew he was talking about genitalia.
The Sultan’s favourite punishment was the so-called “human candle”. This was reserved for those who questioned his authority. I’d heard that Haile Selassie had frowned on the practice but had been powerless to stop it. One reason for its persistence was that it was popular with the locals. No one could see enough human candles, just as bull-fighting aficionados can’t get enough of their sport.
The punishment began with Ghogoli’s guards lighting a slow fire beneath a cauldron filled with tallow. The prisoner was then stripped naked and his hands were tied behind his back. Next the guards dipped thin cotton bandages in the tallow and wound them around the unfortunate victim. De Prorok likened the process to Egyptian mummification. When the prisoner had been completely swathed in lengths of cloth, from the chin down to the backs of his knees, a thicker strip of tallow-soaked cotton was woven through the layers across his back, and left to hang down like a wick.
On the Mad Sultan’s command, the wick was ignited. With the crowd cheering enthusiastically, the bandages smoldered, smoked, broke into flames and then blazed. As he burned, the victim ran about, screaming. If he tried to run away, the guards would lash him with their swords. De Prorok was intrigued by the punishment: “Gradually, the smell of burning flesh increases, but there is a limit to human endurance. The victim goes mad. In the intensity of the suffering, he does not know what he is doing. The pungent odour of roasting meat is unmistakable. At last his suffering is ended, from insanity he goes into unconsciousness and then into his death throes.”
I decided to keep all mention of the Mad Sultan to myself, for fear of inciting a mutiny. With every hour that slipped by, Samson and Bahru questioned the wisdom of our expedition. I, too, queried my line of work. Why, I asked myself, couldn’t I have a more normal career like most of my friends? But before I could give it any more thought, Samson pointed to the road. Ahead of us lay a stretch of water. Bahru eased the vehicle to a stop, like a rider pulling up his horse before an especially high fence.
It was impossible to tell how deep the water was, but it looked very muddy, and every so often a bubble of methane would rise to the surface and burst. Samson got out, took off his pants and waded in. When the water was up to his waist he leaned out and dipped a long bamboo stave into the middle of the ooze. It disappeared without trace. All around the edges of the bog there were discarded rocks and splintered pieces of wood, indicating that other vehicles had got stuck here. Bahru wrung his hands together and bit his lip. Then a look of determination stole over his face.
“He’s not seriously going to try and drive through it, is he?” I asked Samson.
“For Bahru this is a matter of honor,” replied Samson wearily.
The driver got back into the Jeep and reversed about fifty feet. A second later he was charging at full speed towards the water. It was nothing short of suicide. Samson and I yelled for him to stop as we waved our arms. But it was too late. The vehicle was grounded in the middle of the bog, with Bahru slouched behind the wheel, a broken man.
For three hours, we struggled to free the Emperor’s Jeep. Bahru stripped off all his clothes — even his underwear — and swam down to wedge stones under the wheels. Samson and I cut bamboo and razor grass, and put them in place. But it was no good. Every attempt at escape failed and settled the vehicle still deeper in the bog. By the end the Jeep had sunk to its bonnet, our hands were lacerated and we were all covered from head to foot in thick, noisome mud.
Eventually I gave up and sat down by the edge of the quagmire in despair. A few minutes later we heard three children in the distance. They were chewing sticks and giggling. They sat down beside me and stared at the Jeep. Then some more children turned up, followed by a pair of women, and after them half a dozen men. Before we knew it an entire village had surrounded the bog. They were laughing and pointing, but none of them offered to help.
“These are bad people,” said Samson under his breath.
“Ask them to give us a hand.”
He rattled off a sentence in Amharic. The crowd jeered and gesticulated and shook their heads.
“They want money,” he replied.
“How much?”
“Two hundred birr!
“That’s nearly twenty pounds!”
Samson looked at the bog and then at the crowd.
“They are bad people,” he said again.
We tried to negotiate the price down but they were well aware that we had no other choice. When, eventually, we settled on a price only a little lower than the original demand, it became apparent that they were professionals. They worked together, each taking a job. The men found stones and the women cut down more bamboo poles, while their children opened a sluice to drain away the water. Twenty minutes later the road was clear.
I handed over the money.
“They will feast tonight,” said Samson.
We drove on through the twilight and then the darkness. The moon rose high above us, a vanilla disc of light. If the track was bad during the day, it was ten times worse at night. We still had no headlights, and the sides of the track were lined with impenetrable thickets of bamboo. In some places the potholes were as deep as plague pits. We begged Bahru to stop, declaring that we could camp in the Jeep for the night. But he refused. His pride had been dented.
A few minutes before midnight we reached a hamlet that was little more than a cluster of thatched huts. Samson went to find us somewhere to sleep. The villagers had been woken by the sound of our engine and soon they were crowding around the car. Samson got out and spoke to them.
“They are miners,” he said, “working a gold seam two miles to the north. They have invited us to stay the night here.”
We were welcomed by a lantern swinging in the cool nocturnal air. I could smell tobacco burning and see the whites of eyes illuminated in the pastel yellow light. When they saw my face, the miners ducked their heads and shook my hand vigorously. A pot of meaty stew with macaroni was prepared, and a short-wave radio was fished out of a box and switched on with the volume turned up. It sounded like Radio Moscow.
The leader of the miners, Lucas, sat beside me in his hut. The lantern was hung above his head, drawing moths to it. We flailed our arms to knock the insects away from the food, but Lucas and the others didn’t seem to care that a number of them had flapped into their stew One of the men stirred the dish with a goat’s thigh bone, and then everyone started to eat from the communal dish. Lucas urged me to take the best pieces of meat and then reached into the stew and selected a bone for me to chew, holding it to my lips.
I slept more deeply that night than I think I have ever slept before. The miners could easily have slit our throats, pilfered our equipment and run off into the hills. But they had a greater source
of prosperity, gold.
Dawn was accompanied by the sound of chickens scratching and children playing, and was followed by another communal dish of macaroni, high on moths and low on meat. Lucas said he would take us to where they were mining gold.
We left the Jeep at the camp and set out into the undergrowth. Rain during the night had lowered the temperature but had brought out horseflies and mosquitoes. Lucas explained that the area close to the hamlet had already been mined out. So now the men were working a stretch across the river. The operation was quite different from the mine near Shakiso. For a start it was much smaller, involving no more than about twenty men and their families. Unlike Bedakaysa, the miners worked as a group, each man and each woman looking out for the next. An unknown visitor turning up at the Bedakaysa mine in the middle of the night would have been courting death.
Soon the bamboo thickets gave way to wild mango and thorn trees. I followed close behind Lucas, anxious not to fall down an old mine-shaft. There were dozens of them pitting the ground, each about three feet in diameter with passages that linked them to others.
Though he wore only a frayed tweed herringbone coat with turned-up cuffs, Lucas was an impressive figure and stood well over six feet tall. As I struggled to keep up with him I asked if they were finding gold.
“There’s plenty for all of us,” he said, “but we find it hard to get a fair price. Addis Ababa is a long way away, so usually we sell it to dealers who take it across the border and up to Khartoum.”
“What’s the quality like?”
Lucas grinned, then wiped the sweat from his neck with his hand.
“It’s the best gold in Ethiopia,” he said, “ninety-nine per cent best quality. Ever since men have lived here they have mined the gold.”
“How long is that?”
Lucas thought for a moment.
“Since time began,” he said.
Half an hour later we came to a series of freshly dug tunnels. There must have been more than fifty of them, stretching over about an acre of ground. Lucas slipped off his coat. Three or four of the tunnels were being worked, with young boys standing at ground level and catching the wicker baskets of earth as they were sent up. Another group of boys, younger than the first, ferried the soil down to the river where the women panned it. The operation was small in scale but efficient.