By mid-morning it is a nonstop, no-rules sea of humanity, where anything can be had if you know the right person, and a few extra dirham might bring forth a hidden treasure from under a vendor’s table. If you don’t have a connection, money takes their place. It is the romance of the Kasbah meets Barnum & Bailey; where Alice’s rabbit hole has come to life and people watching in Marrakesh makes Times Square seem lifeless.
So, it was from my corner table each morning that I would nurse my coffee and jot notes for future stories. Ideas fell as hail in a storm as the endless parade of costumes, smells, and even personalities could easily overload the senses. In the afternoons I would take a wide, meandering stroll through the maze of vendor’s stalls, passing street musicians with their swinging hat tassels twirling in time to their playing and marveling at the endless colors and embroidery patterns that gave life to normally drab burkas. I followed my nose to burlap sacks full of saffron and turmeric offered by toothless old women smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and avoided eye contact with the young boys decked out in hennaed eyes that suggested unthinkable acts.
One could not help but be bowled over by the sheer spectrum of items offered. Endless rows of tables held watches that told no time, bowls of animal teeth, pirated CDs, decades old cigarette packs, knockoff designer jewelry, and endless knick-knacks culled from endangered species. If you can dream it, you can buy it in the medina, and so, it was in this cornucopia of the bizarre that I spotted the train.
It was an ingenious little toy. A white turbaned Osama Bin Laden sat on a skateboard on a circular red-and-blue plastic track no larger than a hand towel. Behind him, George W. Bush, clad in military fatigues and sitting astride a double barreled gun, pursued him in an armored vehicle straight out of a Mad Max movie. Both figures were about an inch tall. George’s “tank” held a single AA battery that drives the tank, and a magnet on each vehicle repels the other as Bush chases Bin Laden in a never-ending circle; the epitome of tourist kitsch imitating life. It was so tackily cool, so current, so…MARAKESH! As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it.
Now that was a couple of years post 9/11, and much of the world was still leery of travel. By my reckoning, there were not that many Westerners in the medina at that time and our presence did not go unnoticed. While on the road, I try to maintain a low profile, but I am continually told that I “look American,” whatever that means, and being large with a California accent usually gives me away. Perhaps that day it was my Leonard Cohen T-shirt and wrap-around shades that gave me up, but eyes turned my way when I walked by. Still, I was blindsided by how quickly my wonderful discovery segued into a bad B movie.
My first reaction at seeing the train was one of those nervous, split-second laughs that come from deep inside of their own volition to embarrass us at inappropriate moments; like giggling when you slice a finger open. It was more of a startled exclamation, and yet it was enough to stop the conversation of four vendors who were sharing a morning’s cup of tea from a communal samovar and whose eyes turned as one in the direction of my verbal faux pas, fixing me with a stare of utter contempt; a stare so vicious it carried the physical weight of a slap. They were hard men, men of the desert, used to settling disputes at the point of a knife and whose faces carried scars that spoke to that fact. I was on unsteady ground.
I picked up one of the pre-packaged trains and held it up with a polite smile to suggest that I wanted to buy it. The smallest of the four men, his head wrapped in a dirty kufiyah, with that perpetual look of always needing a shave, stepped forward to snatch the package from my hands while spitting out an Arabic invective along with his saliva. He was livid, glaring so intensely I could taste the hatred. His message was clear; no infidel was going to buy his plastic Bin Laden.
With a polite nod I turned to walk away but the little man came after me, waving his arms and announcing my evil deed to all within earshot. My momentary lapse of cultural sensitivity began to snowball.
Now, I have always tried to consider both sides of every issue, especially while on the road, and was quite aware that I was in a Berber, Muslim country, while my own homeland was actively fighting other Muslims, but, in my experience, most people make a distinction between benign travelers and their war-mongering governments. The bottom line was that I had done nothing intentionally wrong. I was simply a Westerner and the toy train raised a touchy subject at that time and place. Still, I should have tread more lightly.
The little man continued to follow me, yelling and gesturing like an Italian traffic cop, and he was beginning to attract a crowd. I picked up my pace, hoping to lose him in the general crush of people. I passed several other toy trains for sale but did not stop for any of them. It was time to get out of Dodge.
By now, there were five or six curious onlookers joining the posse and the little agitator who was now on a roll, had them whipped into an anti-tourist, no-plastic-train-buying mob. They looked like giant chess pieces ready to do battle, lined up in their robes and turbans, some fingering curved daggers in their sashes, talking as much with their hands as their voices. It was a gathering of testosterone looking for trouble.
I turned a corner to lose myself in the maze of the souk but paused only a brief second to look behind me, and at the sight of the robed posse I broke into a cold sweat. I was now prey, being hunted on the enemies’ home ground. I could make out the word “American,” being floated about and it did not sound flattering. I had to flee.
The adrenalin was pumping as I beat a hasty retreat, doubling back in alleys and ducking into small shops to see if the lynch mob was still on my trail. For a while, it seemed that I had lost them.
I turned into a hole-in-the-wall bakery with heart racing and added the caffeine of another cup of coffee to think things through. After years of travel in remote places, even those where I might have expected hostility, it was the first time I had been confronted by it based solely on my nationality and it was unnerving.
My mind was sorting through all of this when I looked up to see a small man in a checkered kufiyah staring at me through the café window freezing me in a moment of fear. I did not recognize this fellow from the medina. He wore glasses and his robe was finely embroidered which set him apart from the rest of my trackers. He was obviously zeroed in on me, or was I just paranoid? Wondering if I had been cornered by the mob, I rose to find the back door when the little man broke into a lop-sided smile and raised his palm for me to sit. He walked into the bakery, shuffling his slippered feet like a young child who had been caught stealing, and pulled one of the packaged trains out from under his robe, placing it on the table in front of me behind a shy grin.
When I managed to close my mouth, I fumbled for some bills to pay him but he held up his hands to say no. We had no common language but there really was no need. I could see the embarrassment in his eyes. His simple act was an apology for his countrymen’s actions.
I don’t think he could have followed me, so apparently he had simply wandered through the souk until he found me because he thought it the right thing to do. That realization caused guilt, fear, and bewilderment all to collide within me—guilt for my cultural insensitivity, fear of the crowd still following me, and bewilderment at hostility being suddenly replaced by simple kindness. This jumble of feelings was mixed with gratitude for the finest expression of humanity my travels have ever gifted me.
I offered him a chair and he asked the waiter for juice while I ordered a third coffee. For a moment we sat in silence, eyes locked in understanding, our unspoken words needing no translation. I can still remember his tobacco-stained smile that trailed off south toward his jaw that said more than any words could.
Since that day I have often reflected on that afternoon and the little man who brought me the train. I think of him every time I look at it on the shelf in my garage. Every so often I set it up on my dining room table and watch the endless pursuit go round and round.
In April of 2011, a militant cell claiming a connection
to Al Qaeda blew up the Argana Café in the medina killing 17 and wounding 25. The same people that passed my table at the café and entered my notebook to give me this story were likely the same people that fell victim on that terrible day, and as I sat there writing I was unaware that at the time the silent forces that launched the Arab Spring were already in motion, ready to sweep across north Africa and the Middle East in a cultural tsunami.
Now when I prepare for a journey, my friends ask how I can travel when it is so dangerous, and I always tell them that travel is necessary if we are ever to have a lasting peace. Only by continuing to meet new people in new places can we ever reach mutual understanding. Only by traveling can we attain the realization of how much more difficult it is to strike someone you know personally than it is to hate someone you know only from electronic sound bites.
Anyone who passed by our table that day and saw an American in a Leonard Cohen T-shirt sharing a drink with an Arab Muslim in a kufiyah would not know that it was a simple child’s toy that brought us together. They would not know that two thousand years of suspicion and mistrust were melting away over coffee and a juice drink.
What they would know is that one of us had to travel to get there, and because of that, we had found common ground.
Moussa and his rifle
To Live or Die in the Danakil
The six gunmen arrived at sunset, bought and paid for, and all we had to do was choose who would go with whom. Moussa was quite small as Afar tribesmen go and yet, everything about his manner suggested he was a predator. He squatted in the sand, chin to his knees, his opal eyes darting back and forth, missing nothing. Slowly producing a bone-handled blade, he began to sharpen it on a stone next to him, gently, methodically, running it back and forth, and as I watched his movements with interest, I remember wondering as I chose him whether he would protect me or kill me.
I had received the call only two weeks prior from our friend, a volcanologist for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. She was leading a group of planetary scientists to study a rare shield volcano in the northern Ethiopian desert and wanted me to write about the journey. My wife, Irene, never one to be left behind, signed on immediately. We were going to the Danakil Depression, home of the Afar people. I also naively assumed that with all the doctorates on board for this journey, NASA would be monitoring our every move by hovering satellite, ready to pluck us from the jaws of danger. I was wrong.
The Afar are Sunni Muslims and hereditary nomads who number about 1,500,000 spread throughout Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Djibouti. Their history can be traced back at least to the 13th century when they first appear in the writings of the noted Moroccan historian Ibn Sa’id. They are sometimes referred to as the Danakil as they are closely associated with the great desert of the same name.
They were introduced to the general public in Arabian Sands, an epic travel book by Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed their land in 1935, calling them murderous thugs among other non-mentionable titles. By the mid-20th century, there were numerous reports of them castrating trespassers on their land. This frightening reputation aside, they were also known for their exceptionally kind treatment of animals, especially their camels that they consider to be family members. The African Ass, extinct throughout the rest of the continent, thrives in their desert due to their protection, and while they might dis-embowel a trespasser, they would never intentionally step on a plant or flower.
Their homeland, in the Danakil Depression, is arguably the hottest and most barren wilderness on Earth where temperatures hover around 120 degrees, (48.8 Celsius) and they pay homage to local caliphs while recognizing no other government. Our destination, the Erta Ale volcano, vents its wrath in the center of that land of endless salt flats and brown blowing sand. It is sacred to the Afar in ways not easily understood by outsiders.
The Afar stayed pretty much off the international grid until 1998 when Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a stalemated war on their land, and since that time they have had almost complete autonomy as a buffer between the two uneasy nations due to their violent nature. They are single-handedly credited with keeping Al Qaeda from crossing the Red Sea from Yemen into this part of Africa. All of that aside, the Danakil has experienced numerous kidnappings for ransom over the past few decades, the credits for which have been claimed by just as many splinter terrorist groups.
Only a handful of Afar have assimilated into city life while even fewer make their living by cutting salt blocks from the desert floor under a relentless sun that they sell to the camel caravans. Each block brings them a rough equivalent of one U.S. dollar. Only recently have the clans that live near the Erta Ale volcano begun to admit trekkers, realizing this natural inferno to be a cash cow tourist draw. Their reputation and social skills aside, as it is in many cultures with no written language, their word is their bond, even unto death, and it was their word that saved my life.
Only after we arrived did we learn that NASA had refused funding and logistical support, labeling the journey “too dangerous,” and so we were on our own. At that point I considered backing out, but logic came in third after curiosity and adventure. The Afar offered us access to the volcano provided we each hire one of them to act as security. So what could go wrong?
This is a situation most explorers have to confront at one time or another, to trust a man with a gun who says he will protect you for a price. It is a roll of the dice and the bet is one’s life. Who knows why we do such things? It seems an inbred human flaw that our curiosity often results in our demise and yet many of us return to possible danger like moths to a flame. Such questions butt up against the meaning of life itself, a pursuit so far that seems to elude mortal man. I have no death wish, but I prefer to meet it doing what I love rather than lying in a hospital bed one day wondering why I never chased the dream. And so we went to Ethiopia.
From the capital of Addis Ababa we flew northeast to the city of Mekele, still reeling from Eritrean artillery with cratered streets and shop windows covered by hastily nailed plywood boards. Tuk-tuks plied the streets carrying women wrapped in long shawls with hennaed eyes to shops riddled with bullet holes and shell hits whose shelves mostly sat empty of goods. Those we passed walking had the thousand-yard stare of combat veterans. In a surreal encounter, I chanced upon a desert tortoise wandering down the main road, his shell heavily dented, probably due to a shrapnel hit. The tortoise seemed an appropriate metaphor for the city itself, slowly moving forward, damaged but recovering.
From Mekele, an eight-hour drive by Land Rover took us past countless artillery craters, burned-out armored vehicles, and towering sand dunes that dwarfed us like rogue waves, deep into the Danakil. There is nothing like vast desert to make one realize personal insignificance. Our two small vehicles raised such a cloud of dust as to announce our presence long before our arrival.
In the late afternoon, we pulled into the Afar outpost of Dodom, a rambling shanty town of homemade huts populated by sarong-wearing young men with Kalashnikov rifles slung lazily across their shoulders. A handful of women, wrapped in long shawls, watched us with hennaed eyes, warily from the shadows. All we needed to do a scene from Arabian Nights was a film crew. Money changed hands, loyalty oaths were sworn, and we were escorted to stone huts to await our night ascent of the volcano. It was supposed to be a three-hour trek to the summit.
It was too hot to sleep or eat and I could not force down hot water without retching, so my personal stage was set early for disaster to come. Our intrepid group lay in a row inside the hut, panting like lizards and willing the temperature to fall, knowing it would not.
Irene had one good eye and the trail, such as it is, being razor-sharp basaltic andesite lava, made us decide that she would ride a camel while the rest of us would go on foot. Our escorts arrived at sunset, and that is when I chose Moussa.
Feral as he was, he oozed an undefinable quality that shown through his eyes and moved my gut to pick him. His black hair was a mass of curly ringl
ets that stuck out like a weed bursting through concrete in search of sunlight and his skin carried the hue of dark chocolate. He had that African look of a protein-starved diet but his arms and legs were taught as bowstrings. His conglomerate costume of rags approached nakedness and where he got the purple crocs for his feet is anybody’s guess. And yet, something told me if I was going to be in a gunfight, I’d want Moussa next to me.
Irene mounted her camel and was led off by her gunman as the rest of us fell into a single file to negotiate the uneven terrain under a moonless night. Our headlamps, bouncing off volcanic boulders, cast dancing shadows all about like a macabre puppet show, accentuating the eerie ambiance of the evening. It was viciously hot and the earth trembled as we walked up the volcano’s flank, a mere 600 feet in altitude gain over six miles to reach the churning cauldron of the lake at the summit. The deep indigo sky slowly revealed pinpricks of light as the Milky Way began to arch over us like a hazy silver rainbow.
The Afar, in their ragtag attire, cast off from previous trekkers, walked noiselessly over boot-lacerating ground in their plastic sandals and rubber flip-flops. Their bodies carry no fat. They are burnt and dried by the sun until they resemble walking mummies, drained of all moisture; some faces etched by tribal scarring. Their rifles were extensions of their arms, rarely set down and never out of their reach. Every noise and each peripheral movement brought a reaction that only those who live in a war zone can give. Some had grenades hung from their belts that if exploded near the hardened magma would intensify the shrapnel a hundred fold. All of them had a dagger tucked in their belt. Up close, most are a mass of scars and more than a few have a milky eye from blowing sand. They are warriors from another era; first and foremost, warriors for whom tempered steel is how differences are settled, and they are always at war with someone or something.
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