The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  In London, I had snapped up all the books I could find on King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, biblical history, Ophir, Ethiopia and gold. Most were still unread and lay wrapped in newspapers and packed in a wooden tea-chest in my hotel room. The background reading would have to be done en route.

  I looked at the map again.

  Ethiopia is a reddish-brown anvil of mountains, nestling in the Horn of Africa. Everything about it hints at remoteness, and for three thousand years its name has been synonymous with mystery Herodotus was the first to tell of its strange beasts, its ebony trees and its exotic inhabitants, “the tallest, handsomest and longest lived of men”. Cosmos wrote of the emporia of frankincense and myrrh. Then there were the great explorers who risked life and limb to penetrate the country — men like Juan de Bermúdez, Cristóvão da Gama, James Bruce and Henry Salt.

  A well-known geologist in London had suggested I look for gold in the Afar region, near the Red Sea coast. The ferocious Danakil people who live there have, until recently, judged a warrior’s standing by the number of testicles hanging around his neck. Someone else told me to seek out the hyenas of Harar which, a legend says, guard Solomon’s golden treasure. Another friend pointed to the north. Deep in the mountains there was, he said, a monastery which kept safe the secrets of the wise king. Another acquaintance told of a church in Lalibela, said to have the “Gold of Sheba” in its treasury.

  Almost fifty years before, my father had also searched for King Solomon’s mines. He’d unfurled a great map of the Middle East and, taking a handful of stones, had placed them on key points. He had put one stone on the Sudan, another on Petra, others on the holy city of Mecca, on Damascus, Cyprus and Beirut, and on our ancestral home of Paghman, in Afghanistan. His journey had eventually led him to deep caverns north of Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Thirty years before my father set out for the mines, his father, Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, had spent months criss-crossing southern Arabia on the same quest. The search for King Solomon’s mines was a family obsession.

  Sitting on the hotel lawn, I took out of my pocket seven pebbles of my own. I placed the first on Afar, where the testicle-hunters once roamed. The next I put on Harar, home of the hyenas. I dropped the third pebble on the northern border with Eritrea, and the fourth on Lalibela. Then I placed another on Gondar, once Ethiopia’s seat of imperial power, and home to the Ethiopian Jews. That was five. Where else?

  The sound of guide-dogs mauling a newly arrived traveler distracted me for a moment. I glanced at the map again. Herodotus had said of western Ethiopia “there is gold obtained in great plenty”. So I placed a pebble due west. I had one left. That morning’s newspaper had spoken of a legal gold-mining operation in the south of Ethiopia. So I put the last pebble there.

  Uncertain of where to begin my search, I decided to go for a walk. For two days I’d been cooped up in the hotel, tormented by insomnia and savage West African guide-dogs. It was time to get to grips with Addis Ababa.

  Leaving the grounds of the Hotel Ghion, I headed north-west. The red clay-like soil, the morning dampness after heavy night rain, the bitter green oranges and roasted maize laid out on makeshift stalls, and the grinding gears of battered blue Peugeots brought back memories of other journeys in Africa. The sky was gray, low clouds threatening more rain, and the air was thick with diesel fumes and the noxious stench of old plastic bottles being burned on open fires. Taxis honked as they swerved to miss each other. Roadside hawkers whistled through their front teeth at passers-by. A flock of sheep bound for market ambled along the road, their bells ringing as they walked.

  Addis Ababa, the “New Flower”, is not as new and fresh as its name suggests. In the years since 1975, when Haile Selassie, the last Emperor, was smothered with a pillow in the bedroom of his palace, the capital has dwindled. The street-lamps are broken and birds now make their nests in them. The concrete office blocks are crumbling, and the sidewalks are full of people who seem to have nowhere else to go. Cars are held together with bits of string, their bodywork patched with makeshift repairs, and the roads are pocked with craters. Every detail of daily life reflects the confusion of the country’s recent history.

  Once he’d dispatched the Emperor and buried him standing upright under his lavatory bowl, President Mengistu set to work on pacifying the tribes whose leader he’d become. For seventeen years his torture-rooms worked overtime, taming a proud people. He managed to achieve notoriety even in a continent where despots are commonplace. Few Ethiopians will talk of those terrible Mengistu years. Perhaps they are trying to forget, or perhaps they are still in shock. When at last Mengistu’s Marxist government collapsed in May 1991, the streets ran with blood once more. Promises were made and then broken, and the cycle of hardship has persisted. People live from one day to the next, keeping their heads down, making do as best they can. Many fear the present and most have little hope for the future. As for the country’s 3,000-year-old history, that is a taboo subject. The government’s greatest worry seems to be that Ethiopians will remember the exiled imperial family and demand their return. Ask anyone about the glorious legacy of the past and they will place a finger to their lips.

  I walked on as if in a daydream. Hundreds of men and women were swarming down the road, their heads veiled in white cotton shawls with embroidered borders, their feet squashed into ill-fitting shoes. Some of them were singing, their voices high-pitched yet solemn. Others were chanting verses softly to themselves. Many more were clutching Bibles to their chests. One woman was carrying a gaudy painting of the Virgin Mary and another was crawling on her knees, with a silver cross cupped in her hands. At the centre of the crowd a plain pine coffin was being carried at shoulder height. A posy of violet-colored flowers had been placed on top, along with a scruffy straw hat.

  Across from the mourners a man without legs dipped his head in respect. He seemed numbed by pain, his eyes welling with tears. Like veterans from a secret war, he and his countrymen had seen too much, had endured the unendurable. Worst of all was the thought that the world had forgotten them.

  As I stood watching in silence, a dilapidated turquoise taxi pulled to a halt beside me. I assumed the driver was looking for a fare, but I was wrong. Instead, he climbed out of his cab, strode over to the solemn procession and said a prayer. He looked as if he was in his late twenties. His back was ramrod straight, his hands clenched together over the buckle of his belt, and his head bent towards the ground. When the cortège had moved on, the taxi-driver returned to his vehicle. Curious, I asked him if he knew the deceased.

  “No, sir,” he replied courteously in English, “but when an elder dies our entire nation must mourn...”

  Before he could finish his sentence the first drops of late morning rain splattered down. I leapt into the taxi. A second later the shower became a torrent. In the distance the funeral procession moved forward, the white cotton shawls now soaked and clinging to frail bodies.

  The driver was waiting for the name of a destination. He said his trusty Lada would take me to the ends of the earth if I wished. Ducking his head humbly, he smiled broadly and introduced himself. His name was Samson, son of Yohannes.

  I had heard that Haile Selassie’s body, now retrieved from beneath the presidential lavatory, was being kept at the tomb of Emperor Menelik II until a fitting burial could be arranged. Since Ethiopia’s imperial family claim descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the tomb seemed an obvious place to visit, so I asked Samson to drive me there.

  “There’s no money to pay for the Emperor’s funeral,” he said as we drove along. “The government won’t give any money, and Haile Selassie’s own family are too miserly. They don’t want Ethiopians to know how rich they are. As for the Rastafarians, they could easily afford to pay, but they won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Rastas named themselves after Ras Tafari, the title of the Emperor Haile Selassie. They say he is God, and since God cannot die, they won’t pay for his funeral. It’s not right, there’s n
o dignity for the man.”

  In a country where the study of history is frowned upon, I was impressed by my driver’s knowledge.

  “I only drive a taxi because I have to,” he said. “I support my brothers and sister, my mother, my father and so many others. They all rely on me.”

  The tradition of one man supporting a whole host of relatives is known in the Middle East as “living off Abdul’s job”. As soon as one man gets work, the rest of his family give up their own jobs and sponge off him. Samson tapped me on the knee with his thumb.

  “I long to have a real job with respect and honor,” he said. “Then my girlfriend’s father will think I’m a worthy man. But secretly I have an even greater wish.”

  What is it?”

  “To know every detail of our history.”

  “Can you buy history books?”

  “The government’s bought them all up,” he said. “They burn them or tear out the subversive pages. It’s much easier to forget about the old days and keep quiet. That’s the best way to stay alive.”

  “Do you have any history books, though?”

  My questions were making Samson uneasy. In Ethiopia, as I was fast finding out, you couldn’t be too careful. But he was well aware that the government had no funds to hire foreign spies.

  “Yes, I have a history book,” he confided. “It tells an astonishing story. It has taught me about the Emperor and his ancestors – about Menelik and Mekonnen, King Tewodros, and the great battles they all fought. I have learned, too, about the British explorers James Bruce and Nathaniel Pearce, about the kings of Harar, Queen Makeda and Solomon.”

  “What if the book was discovered?”

  “It’s well-hidden,” he replied. “I bring it out only at night when my prying neighbours have gone to bed. I lock the door and bolt the window of my room. Sometimes I pretend to snore loudly even though I’m awake. Then, still snoring, I light the candle, hold its flame close to the pages, and read.”

  As he spoke Samson span the wheel through his hands and we turned off the road. Then he revved the engine as hard as he could and drove up a steep path that led into a copse of eucalyptus trees. A sentry in grubby fatigues was standing guard and he raised his Kalashnikov as a cloud of oily exhaust engulfed him.

  “Follow me,” said Samson, leading the way towards an octagonal Orthodox church.

  Rain was still falling, rustling through the eucalyptus like a shamanic rattle. A handful of pilgrims were clustered at each of the church’s doors. Most had shuffled up the steps on their knees and were now pressing their lips to the door-frames. We mounted the steps, removed our shoes and sought refuge inside.

  In Jerusalem I had visited the Ethiopian church tucked away behind a wall on Etyopya Street. This one was laid out in the same way. The main hall was covered in threadbare carpets and lit by dozens of crackling neon strip lights. Dotted around it were tremendous drums and makwamya, ritualistic prayer sticks. The air was pungent with the smell of frankincense. The walls were decorated with murals and hung with bright paintings of biblical scenes, and in the middle of the chamber there stood a grand cube-shaped structure, shrouded by curtains. Here, hidden from the eyes of common men, was the “Holy of Holies” in which lay the tabot, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant.

  Hearing our voices, a deacon appeared. He was muffled in a blue shawl, and in one hand he carried a collection tin. Voices hinted at visitors, and visitors suggested donations. I asked politely if I could look inside the Holy of Holies, as I was eager to see the Ark. The deacon recoiled in horror and shrieked. Not even he, he said, was permitted to set eyes on the mystical Ark. So I asked about the murals. They showed Makeda and her entourage making the journey across desert sands to Jerusalem, where the queen presented Solomon with golden treasures. A trainee priest, who could not have been more than thirteen, was dusting the paintings with a rag tied to a long bamboo pole. The deacon looked at his collection tin and then at me. I asked where the tomb of Emperor Menelik could be found. The deacon snapped his fingers, and the young trainee priest struggled to lift a flagstone in the floor, revealing the entrance to a crypt.

  Time spent in Cairo’s great cemetery – known locally as “the City of the Dead” — had introduced me to the delights of subterranean mausolea. In one fabulous Cairene tomb, an ancestral guardian had once brought me a pasha’s head. I’d never seen such a fine set of teeth but, anxious to avoid the wrath of the dead nobleman’s family, I’d ordered the warden to put the head back as quickly as he could. Now, the former Emperor’s mausoleum brought back those days and nights spent in Cairo’s cemetery.

  The crypt housed three colossal marble tombs, belonging to Menelik II, his consort the Empress Taitu and their daughter Zawditu. My interest in Menelik, the modernizing Emperor, had begun years before when I’d read a book on the history of execution. In it I came across a tale about Menelik. The Emperor was told by his advisers that in far-away America a new and ingenious technique for dispatching criminals had been devised. The victim was strapped into a wooden chair and subjected to a strange and dangerous substance called “electricity”. The Emperor was told that the process was excruciating and that death followed only when the prisoner’s eyes had popped like ripe grapes, and his head had sizzled. Menelik liked what he heard and, so the story goes, he placed an order for a pair of chairs. It took months to transport the chairs to the Ethiopian kingdom. When at last they arrived they were assembled and taken to the palace where the Emperor surveyed them. He was impressed by their craftsmanship and asked for a demonstration. Only then did the courtiers realize that the devices were useless — electricity had not yet reached Ethiopia. Undeterred by this setback, Menelik ordered that the electric chairs be used as imperial thrones.

  Next to Menelik’s gray marble sarcophagus stood a long glass-fronted cupboard set into the wall. Inside was a delicate, finely tooled coffin. The deacon bowed his head, and Samson the taxi-driver looked glum.

  “Here is our former Emperor, Haile Selassie,” said the priest. “We are waiting to bury him according to the ancient rites. But there are problems...”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “The Rastafarians!” he exclaimed, rolling his eyes. “They come in their hundreds to see him, but they say that he’s still alive. He is in their hearts. That’s what they say. So they don’t give any money for the burial.”

  The deacon rubbed a hand across his face and stared longingly at the empty collection tin. I dropped a folded note into it and stepped aside, as a throng of Rastafarians entered the crypt, their dreadlocks hidden under crocheted hats, their Jamaican accents echoing through the shadows.

  Samson led the way back to his taxi. He told me that Haile Selassie had striven to bring Ethiopia into the modern world, just as Menelik had done before him. Both men had also recognized the great natural wealth of the country and had hoped to exploit its treasure.

  “What treasure?”

  Samson narrowed his eyes.

  “Gold,” he said.

  From the mausoleum we drove on through rain-soaked streets to the National Museum. Tourists are few and far between in Ethiopia these days. Rastafarians may visit the coffin of their deity, but they rarely bother with the dilapidated state museum. Some of the former Emperor’s ceremonial robes were on show, along with tribal crafts and a jumble of bones s’ ed “Lucy, the oldest Humanoid in the world”. Samson said they’d been found in the Danakil region in 1974 and had been named after the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.

  “Lucy has made us famous. There’s even a ballet about her in America. It’s all about her life.” He glanced down through the cracked glass case at the assortment of bones. “Lucy’s made us famous, but she hasn’t made us rich.”

  Unable to resist, I asked him about Ethiopia’s gold.

  “The Bible speaks of Ophir,” he said, “a great golden treasure, hidden, but waiting to be dug up. A little hard work, a little sweat, and we’d all be rich like they are in America. Gold is th
e future of Ethiopia.”

  Samson told me that he was from Kebra Mengist, a small town far to the south of Addis Ababa. His father, a schoolteacher, had instilled in him a love of the Bible and a thirst for knowledge. But at an early age he had strayed.

  “My parents told me that history was a good thing,” he said. “After all, the Bible is a kind of history and that is the best thing of all. They told me to study, but my friends tempted me with riches.”

  “Were they thieves, stealing from the wealthy?”

  “No, no, they were prospectors,” he replied, “digging gold from the giant open mines.”

  I felt my pulse begin to race. A possible source of Solomon’s gold suddenly seemed within reach. Anxious not to appear too enthusiastic, lest he take advantage of me, I asked Samson why he had abandoned mining and become a badly paid taxi-driver instead.

  “For three years I dug gold from the ground,” he replied. “Stripped bare to my waist, I worked like a rat in tunnels below the surface. It was infernal down there: hot, stinking, dangerous beyond words. The men who labored there used to say that they had died and gone to Hell. The Devil was our employer. There was no escape. Yes, I earned good money but, like all the others, I spent it on liquor and bad women. If there was any cash left we gambled it away. The more money we earned through mining, the more we drank, and the more desperate we became.”

  We moved on through the museum, past cases filled with imperial crowns, carved gourds, baskets in every color of the rainbow, and manuscripts written in Ge’ez, the ancient language of Ethiopia. As we walked, Samson continued his story.

  “There were dangers everywhere. Sometimes a tunnel would collapse and the miners would be buried alive. I lost many friends that way. Others were killed for their pouches of gold dust, their throats slit with a razor-blade during the night.