by Tahir Shah
The smell changed too. There was the scent of wild garlic, and the musty aroma of moss and leaf mold. There was lemon mint as well, which grew wild. I chewed it and found it helped stave off thirst. We moved in a single file, stumbling over roots and low branches, and slipping and sliding in the mud. The track wound round trees and up and down gullies, zigzagging back and forth. The four local men said they had never come into the forest before. Only the most courageous honey-gatherers ventured there. In some of the taller trees we saw more honey baskets trussed high in the branches. There was little time to think of the diabolic danger ahead. Our first worry was the mules.
Tadesse kept telling me to ride, but I dismounted early on after almost being garrotted by a low branch. Somehow Samson managed to stay on his mule most of the time. He had hidden talents as a horseman. Thankfully, the tree canopy high above us gave us some protection from the torrential rain, but the mud was appalling. Mules are always the butt of man s humour, but the hours we spent battling through the muddy floor of the forest proved to me their extraordinary worth, and I found myself appreciating the writings of Dervla Murphy more than ever. An old hand with mules, she has trekked over mountain ranges and through forests with them, but to read her you would never guess just how difficult such a feat is.
The mud had been up to our thighs for a couple of hours but we soldiered on. I noticed that the mules had an uncanny ability to find the best route, and Tadesse’s sons encouraged me to let Clarissa find her own way. But by late morning, even Clarissa was finding the mud tough going.
I suggested that we unpack the animals and carry some of the equipment ourselves. Tadesse balked at the idea. He seemed to thrive on the mules’ discomfort.
“People will not be able to say that my animals are weak now!” he shouted.
Leading pack mules through thigh-deep mud is a slow business. I wanted to try another route, but the local men said there was no other track leading to Tullu Wallel. Their certainty surprised me, especially as none of them had actually been to the mountain before. I was also worried about the ermoli tick. De Prorok had written that it worms its way under a mule’s skin and lays its eggs there. If not extracted, it can cause a terrible infection.
In the middle of the day we stopped at a stream. Samson opened one of the packs of food and passed it around. I drank some water but didn’t eat anything. Tadesse and his sons were beginning to regard me with wonder. They asked Samson in whispers how I could keep going day after day without eating. Samson said that God filled my belly and gave me strength, so I had no need for food.
A few miles on we hit a patch of bog. Tadesse was at the head of the line, leading a large male mule. Suddenly the animal began to sink into the mud and it started to bay, fighting to keep its muzzle from going under. The local men knew what to do. They yanked the animal sideways by the bridle and the girth straps, and the mule crashed on to its side on firmer ground, its legs kicking furiously. One of Tadesse’s sons stabbed it with his stick to make it get up. I swiped the boy on the back of the neck and told him to give the animal a minute to regain its strength.
Then, quite suddenly, the forest came to an end. Though we now got wetter than ever, having left the protection of the tree canopy, morale began to rise. In the late afternoon we reached a hamlet. At first it looked uninhabited, but we soon discovered that a group of honey-gatherers lived there along with their herd of goats.
The head of the hamlet came out to greet us. Straight-backed and wrapped in an emerald blanket, he invited us to spend the night. Our exhausted mules were unpacked and fed, and the rest of us, cold, wet and hungry, slumped down on the ground outside the huts.
At my prompting Samson asked the headman about the mountain.
“We don’t go up there,” he said, “not even to get honey.”
“Why not?”
“The danger.”
“You mean the Devil?”
The headman didn’t reply.
“We’re missionaries,” I said boastfully, “and we’ve come to kick him back to Hell.”
Still the headman remained silent. I sensed that he was regretting ever having invited us to stay in his home, but hospitality is of paramount importance in Ethiopia. Still ignoring Samson’s questions, he told his wife to prepare food for the guests and then he led us into the hut which he shared with his goats. We huddled round the fire and tried to dry our clothes. The problem with army issue kit bags is that they are made of canvas and everything in them gets soaked through when it rains. I emptied out one of the sacks and looked for clean underwear. The local men and Tadesse’s sons watched in disbelief as I sorted through my belongings. They hadn’t brought along any extra gear, not even a toothbrush. I found myself apologizing, but then I remembered the pressure lantern, which still hadn’t been used. I gave it to Tadesse along with the kerosene and told him to get it working. His eyes lit up with glee.
While the food was being prepared, I stuffed an uns’ ed tin down my pants and said I had to go to the loo. Then I trotted out into the rain and found a quiet spot to open it with my penknife. The tin was full of sweetened prunes.
Back in the hut the lamp’s instructions had been trodden under foot. God knows who ever came up with the design for pressure lanterns, but you need a Nobel prize in physics to work them out. Tadesse took the entire thing to pieces and laid the component parts out on my damp sleeping-bag. We all clustered round and marvelled at just how many pieces there were. When the puzzle was finally put back together the muleteer was left with a handful of odds and ends. Declaring them to be surplus to requirements, he tossed them into a corner. Next he filled the fuel tank to the top with kerosene and pressured the unit by pumping the handle. He pumped and pumped until his shoulder ached. Then he primed the lamp with alcohol and, his eyes glinting, struck a match and put it to the wick.
What happened next took us all by surprise. The lantern shot flames high into the thatch and then exploded. The headman emitted a shriek as he realized that his hut was on fire. It was an awkward moment. We were burning down our host’s house, a situation which any guest seeks to avoid.
Fortunately the rain had drenched the roof so the fire was slow to take hold, and Tadesse’s sons managed to put out the flames quite quickly. The second problem was Tadesse’s burns. He held his hands to his face, whimpering. I prized his fingers away. To my relief his injuries weren’t serious. Of more concern was the fact that we now had to sit in almost total darkness.
After dinner Samson lit a candle, took out his Bible and read us a passage from the Book of Chronicles. We were all huddled around the smoldering fire, with the goats pressed together in a single wooly mass. In the background I could hear an infant crying, and outside the rain continued to fall. Samson chose the passage in which Solomon welcomes the Queen of Sheba as his guest. I snuggled up in my soaking sleeping-bag and thought how fortunate I was to have found Samson. He had a knack of reinventing himself. He’d been a prospector, a gold miner, a taxi-driver, a guide and a fixer extraordinaire. And now he’d become a missionary, albeit in disguise. I thanked God for sending me Samson and then, lulled by his reading, I fell asleep.
An English childhood introduces you to heavy rain, but even that doesn’t prepare you for the monsoon of East Africa. We set out at five in the morning having thanked the headman. I left some supplies in payment for the damage done to his hut. The mules were laden and the men readied, but an early start in pouring rain had dampened our spirits. Samson was particularly miserable. He had had only a thin nylon blanket to sleep under, and it was soon drenched. He hadn’t slept at all and his stomach hurt. I suspected that the intestinal worms had returned to haunt him. To make matters worse, his bin-liner raincoat had melted when the thatch caught fire, so now he had no protection against the rain.
It was still very dark when we left the hamlet. I tried to raise morale by suggesting that the end was nearly in sight. Tadesse and his sons said they’d have to be getting back to Begi soon – they had important affai
rs to attend to at home. Even the local men were reluctant to continue. Soon Samson was clutching his stomach and complaining about the rain. Tadesse began to bark angrily at his sons, and the local men lagged behind at the back of the procession, their heads down. It was time for a little magic.
I halted the caravan and unpacked one of my kit bags. From the bottom I took out a medium-sized glass jar, with a sprinkler built into the top. The men didn’t say anything, but they were clearly wondering what was going on. I asked them to line up and stick their tongues out. It was an unpopular command, largely because of the heavy rain. I ordered them to trust me. Samson went first. I sprinkled a few grains of the white powder on his tongue and told him to swallow.
As soon as his tongue retracted, his face lit up. He smiled and then he burst out laughing, and begged for more. The others grew jealous and wanted some too. I sprinkled a little of the miracle powder on Tadesse’s tongue, then on those of his sons, before giving a dose to the other four men. They loved it.
“It tastes all meaty,” said Tadesse.
“It’s delicious!” exclaimed Samson. “What is it?”
I didn’t tell them, except to say that it was magic from Peru. That was partly true. I had been sold the powder by a man in the small town of Nazca in the Peruvian desert. It was monosodium glutamate.
Morale rose sharply after that. I enticed the men on by promising them more of the magic powder. They couldn’t get enough of it. Samson said it tasted like the kai wot that his mother made back in Kebra Mengist.
An hour later we reached the eastern slope of Tullu Wallel. At the next magic powder break I made an announcement. I told the men to be brave, declaring that we would vanquish the Devil and drive him from his cave. But they were changed men already. They no longer had any fear. Their blood had been fortified by the mysterious effects of monosodium glutamate.
We started climbing. Hayter had said that the cave lay at the foot of the eastern slope. So when we were a little way up I gave the order to fan out in pairs and search for the mine-shafts. Earlier that morning the men wouldn’t have dreamed of looking by themselves. But now they were buoyant. We left the mules with one of the local men and began the search.
For six hours we combed the mountain. With the muleteers’ spirits bolstered I felt that at last we were within reach of Frank Hayter’s mine-shafts. I had promised a sack of magic powder to the first man who set eyes upon the cave. But with time the team’s enthusiasm levelled off and then died away completely. No amount of monosodium glutamate could compensate for the wretched conditions. The rain was torrential and didn’t let up for a minute. It hampered the search, as did the bushes armed with barbed thorns, and the area’s infestation of ticks. The men would have stormed away, but there was nowhere to storm off to. Instead, they took every opportunity to make the extent of their discomfort known.
At 5.14 p.m. Tadesse screamed louder than I have ever heard a grown man scream. Samson and I ran towards his voice, stumbling over rocks and roots.
“The cave! The cave!” he shouted.
“Where?”
Over there! The entrance to a cave!”
I congratulated the muleteer and rewarded him with an extra dose of monosodium glutamate. He licked his lips and said it had been a communal effort. We examined the cave entrance, while Tadesse’s sons fetched the mules. It was far larger than anything I had imagined. I whooped loudly and slapped Samson’s hand in a high five. We had found it. We had found the entrance to Solomon’s mines.
I thought fast. We would need ropes, flashlights and the Gold Bug. Once the mules had been brought over, I unpacked the kit bags and pulled out a red nylon rope. Attaching it to myself and Samson, I said that we would go in alone while the others paid out the rope. The order went down very well with the men who clearly didn’t envy us our task. Tadesse asked what the metal detector was for. I told him it was a special machine for detecting the Devil. Then Samson said that the flashlights had run out of batteries, and the pressure lantern was too dangerous to risk using again. I racked my brains and asked myself what Henry Morton Stanley would have done.
“Cut down bamboo staves,” I shouted. “Rip up the blankets and make fiery torches.”
The men set to work. Samson was less than happy at having his blanket shredded, but it was in a good cause. We wound the cloth round the sticks, dipped them in kerosene, and set them alight. Then I gave Samson a last sprinkling of magic powder and together we entered the cave.
The smoke from the torches set the place alive with bats. There were thousands of them, just like the ones we had encountered in Dire Dawa. Our torches gave off more fumes than they did light, and it was impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. I led the way, with Samson’s hand on my shoulder. At last, I thought, we were entering the ancient mine-shafts. But then, after twenty feet, we hit a rock wall and the cave came to an abrupt end. With the bats still swooping and diving around us, we searched for a passageway or a brick wall or a door. But there was no way forward.
FIFTEEN
Return to the Accursed Mountain
“There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretchedness.”
Dante, Inferno
Seven months later I was back in Ethiopia. Tullu Wallel had haunted me ever since I’d left its accursed twin peaks. Although I’d tried to get on with new projects, resuming normal life was impossible. I had to complete the search. I knew that somewhere on the mountain’s slopes lay the answer to the riddle of King Solomon’s mines. As before, there was only one way to find out. I was going to have to return to Tullu Wallel.
Usually, there is nothing more pleasing than returning to a place where you have endured hardship. But as the plane taxied towards Addis Ababa’s airport terminal, I felt a lump in my throat. My toes curled up in my shoes, and my heart raced. I was mad to have come back and I knew it. The only certainty was that there would be much more hardship ahead before I flew home to Europe.
A familiar figure was waiting at the arrivals gate. He was dressed in some of my old clothes, his hair was cropped short, and he looked despondent. It was Samson. When our eyes met neither of us smiled. The journey ahead was about unfinished business. This was not a time for pleasantries. Samson took my bags and led the way to his taxi. He didn’t say whether he’d been surprised to get my message. In fact he didn’t say anything at all.
As the taxi neared my hotel, I muttered my first words.
“I had to come back,” I said.
“The mountain?” whispered Samson.
“The mine-shafts, I can’t stop thinking about them. I know that I can find them.”
Samson ran the wheel through his hands before applying the brakes gently. The taxi glided to a halt.
“Tullu Wallel will kill you,” he said. “Take my advice. Go back to Europe and stop thinking about Solomon’s gold.”
The words echoed advice given to Hayter when he ventured back to Ethiopia to search once more for the mountain’s mine-shafts. That was sixty-five years before my own journeys. On his death-bed, Hayter’s old companion “Black” Martin whispered to him: “Leave Tullu Wallel and Abyssinian gold alone, or you will live to regret it, as I have done.” Black Martin, who was afflicted by an Ethiopian curse, died a few days later.
Perhaps I should have taken the advice, but I didn’t. Instead I made a beeline for the accursed mountain, dragging Samson with me. I was struck with a strong case of deja vu, for we tracked down Bahru and roped him and the Emperor’s Jeep in as well. Bahru’s luck had eventually returned and he had made his way back to Addis Ababa. We found him lying in a daze in the back of the Jeep, his eyes bloodshot, his mouth packed with qat.
The days that followed were far harsher than any other journey I have ever undertaken. We struggled through mud, sleet and torrential rain. The mules and muleteers battled on despite the dreadful conditions. Our clothes, blankets and supplies were drenched early on and never dried out. The skin on my feet began to rot away, and my shins felt as if th
ey had been flayed with whips. Samson was in no better condition. His intestinal worms had returned with a vengeance.
My obsession with Frank Hayter’s mine-shafts was destroying not only me but those with me. Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?
On the last morning, after a truly wretched night, we sat crouched in the lee of a hardwood tree dreaming of being far from Tullu Wallel. Our spirits were broken. I took stock of the situation. The rain was coming down in sheets. Most of the food was gone and the batteries were dead. The kerosene was finished, and the last of the drinking water had been consumed. Samson was clutching his belly and moaning. I had fallen into an ants’ nest and my back was badly bitten. Being eaten alive by soldier ants is indescribably painful. The mules had started to buck whenever anyone went near them. The muleteers’ faces were drawn, the palms of their hands raw and bleeding. I wondered if things could get any worse, and at that moment the rain turned to hail. I knew then that my search for Hayter’s mine-shafts was at an end.
Taking a deep breath, I staggered to my feet and ordered the retreat. As we turned on our heels and began the long, miserable trek back towards the main road, I smiled wryly to myself. Frank Hayter’s secret was still safe, as was the exact whereabouts of King Solomon’s mines.
The End
Glossary
Abyssinia: former name for Ethiopia
amba: a flat-topped mountain
Amharic: the language of the Amhara tribe, widely spoken in Ethiopia and often regarded as the national language
amole: a uniform block of salt, once used as currency in Ethiopia