I've spent the past couple days in and around Harar, whose walled old city dates back to the 16th century, when it was the launching point for Muslim warlord Ahmed Gragn's destructive assaults on the Christian empire to the west (actually, the old city is five centuries or more older than that, but the walls and its rise to prominence come thanks to Ahmed Gragn). To this day, old Harar is said to hold more mosques per square kilometre than anywhere else in the world--some of them tiny little one-room buildings that you'd scarcely notice if it weren't for the little crescent moon above the whitewashed stone wall--and is considered by some (mostly African and certainly not Shi'a) Muslims to be the fourth holiest city of Islam after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. Islam entered sub-Saharan Africa from Arabia via the Horn of Africa, and Harar is one of Islam's earliest footholds on the African continent. For all that, it's a wonderfully open and relaxed city, where major churches and a significant Christian population live alongside their Muslim neighbours, and for the most part you wouldn't guess which were which. I'm told that, in a spirit of solidarity, many Christians fast during Ramadan and many Muslims fast during Lent.
But really, Harar is the opposite of a sacred city. It's long been a major trading post, and to this day maintains strong trade links with the Somali region in eastern Ethiopia, as well as the breakaway state of Somaliland with its strategic (by virtue of slipping under the customs radar) seaport in Berbera. This means that a lot of contraband passes both ways through Harar, and its thronging markets have a harmless but scruffy black market feel to them. Adding to the port city feel, Harar is ethnically mixed: indigenous Harari mingle with Amharic Ethiopians from the west, Somali from the east, and Oromo from the south. The Oromo are much more stereotypically African in their appearance, with darker skin, rounder faces, and broader, flatter noses.
Even though Harar is one of Ethiopia's main centres of coffee production, its main cash crop is chat, the mild narcotic leaf that's eagerly imported by lowland Djibouti and Somalia to the north and east. Chat is absolutely everywhere in Harar, and by midday it seems half the city is stoned on the stuff. So, applying the "when in Rome" principle, I hired a young guide called Sisay who'd come recommended from a couple sources to chew some chat with me yesterday afternoon. Best job he's ever had, I'm sure.
Sisay and I picked up 20 birr worth of chat at the market and then took a tuk-tuk out to his place. The whole thing had a delightfully college dorm seedy feel to it. I entered Sisay's cheap digs, where we were joined by his girlfriend and a couple guys who didn't bother to introduce themselves. Everyone reclining on cushions, we chewed chat, smoked apple-flavoured tobacco from a shisha, and sipped water and chewed peanuts. Canada's travel advisory warns me that chat is illegal in Canada and mustn't be imported, but as far as I can tell, its main danger to public health and order is that it would induce general idleness in the population. A couple hours of chewing gave me nothing more than a mild buzz and a very pleasant lethargy. My mind was perfectly alert--it has a similar effect to caffeine, and I had trouble getting to sleep last night--but I just didn't much feel like getting up or doing anything. Which might explain the general disposition of most people in Harar. And much of Ethiopia, I suppose. I don't know the unemployment figures here, but I'm sure they're pretty awful. And if you've got nothing else to do all day, you might as well enjoy not having anything to do.
Sisay was a curious figure. Unlike all the other guides in Harar, he wasn't pushy or eager to please, and had a very serious demeanour despite being quite young. Our conversation didn't go very deep, but I got the impression that he was unusually intelligent. It occurred to me that it must be tough being very intelligent when that intelligence--as distinct from business savvy--is of pretty much no value. All Sisay can hope for is some work as a guide entertaining cheerfully wealthy Westerners or maybe getting a driver's license and driving a minibus, and his outsize intellect only makes him smart enough not to be content with this lot. It made me profoundly grateful to be from a part of the world where intelligence in itself--if I may arrogate so far--can open doors rather than just make one more aware of their shutness.
The most famous trader ever to set up shop in Harar (Richard Burton also passed through here in 1855--the first European to enter the walled city--but he wasn't a trader) was the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, known in these parts, it seems, as "Rambo." Using the free wi-fi at the Ghion Hotel in Bahir Dar a week ago, I downloaded onto my Kindle the Penguin edition of Rimbaud's selected poems and letters, and blazed through the book in a week. It's always a bit tricky judging poetry in a language that isn't my own, even with facing text translation (facing text translation isn't the Kindle's strong suit), but the poetry of this adolescent genius struck me as a bit, well, adolescent. Rimbaud seems to have shared that assessment: having revolutionized French poetry by the time he turned 20, he abandoned his art altogether and sought out work in various commercial endeavours in various corners of the world. He spent the 1880's moving between Aden in Yemen and Harar, trading in hides, ivory, coffee, and arms. By 37, in 1891, he was dead of a cancer that started in his right leg.
Despite occasionally striking passages, and a staggering precociousness, I found the person more intriguing than the poems. What kind of self-confidence do you need to wander around France, Belgium, and Britain as a teenager, drinking yourself into oblivion, insulting everyone you know, and justifiably proclaiming that you're going to transform poetry? And what kind of a tortured soul abandons this self entirely and becomes a hard-nosed trader in some of the most remote places European commerce had touched at that time? Reading the letters were fascinating, not only to see this Wunderkind transform into a practical businessman, but also because it provided an intimate view of a place and time that I find interesting in its own right. Rimbaud was in Harar around the time that King Menelik of Showa expanded into the area, and shortly before he became emperor of all Ethiopia. Rimbaud's letters discuss various frustrations in his dealings with Menelik, as well as Menelik's governor of Harar, Ras Mekonnen, father of the future emperor Haile Selassie.
Rimbaud's time in Harar is commemorated by a small museum in a beautiful old house, which I visited this morning (having only finished reading the letters last night). Along with a bunch of information about Rimbaud's life, both before and during his Harar years (all only in French, and clearly put together by someone who has some experience with European standards of curation), the museum also collected a number of fascinating photographs of late nineteenth century Harar. Rimbaud was the first, but by no means the only, person to bring a camera to Harar.
I hired a guide called Girma to wander the streets of the old city with me. Strictly speaking, I didn't need a guide, but Girma was great in that he's the kind of guy who knows everything and everyone. I didn't learn a whole lot about Harar that I couldn't have learned on my own, but wandering the narrow streets, I was made to feel a part of the place as we stopped and greeted various friends and acquaintances. Unlike the dusty dirt roads and corrugated metal roofs that blight most Ethiopian towns, old Harar is paved in cobblestones and the buildings are walled with thick whitewashed (and occasionally colourfully painted) stone.
As well as wandering the streets of the old city with Girma, I also had an outing with him yesterday to Babile's camel market and the slightly overbilled "Valley of Marvels." The valley is full of bizarre rock formations, not unlike--but not as spectacular as--Capadoccia in Turkey. The camel market was great fun. Never have I seen so many camels in one place (although I suppose that's not saying much). The whole place had a terrific bustle about it, with Somali and Oromo women in their colourful clothing squatting and gossiping in groups, while the menfolk bartered and haggled over camels. I decided not to make a purchase when I learned that a good-sized camel can fetch upward of $1000.
The strangest sight in Harar, if not in Ethiopia as a whole, is the hyena man. For no one quite knows how many years, there's been a hyena man who posts himself just outside the old city walls every evening (this guy is the son of the previous guy who may well be the son of the previous guy and so on back), and feeds the hyenas who skulk out of the shadows at his summons. For 50 birr (the best 50 birr I've spent in Ethiopia) you can watch, or join in the action. It truly is amazing to behold. With a series of whistles and gestures he signals to these animals, and even calls each one forward by name. He'll hold a stick of maybe a foot in length between his teeth, and suspend a piece of fresh meat from the end. A hyena will stalk forward, snatch the meat, and then retreat quickly. For show, he'll even toy with the hyenas, lifting the meat away so that the hyena will be reaching over his lap almost like a pet dog. Truly, in my list of bizarre tourist attractions, this ranks up with the Hair Museum in Avanos in Cappadocia, where a deranged Turk has collected locks of thousands of women's (and only women's) hair and attached them to the ceiling of his cave, each one indexed with name, nationality, and harvesting date. The whole cave looks like those medical pictures of the throat with its thousands of cilia.
But hyenas are emphatically not pet dogs. First of all, these are wild animals, and they're no more tame than the bears back home that have become dangerously habituated to human settlements and food scraps. Second, they're big. Much bigger than I'd imagined. After lions and ahead of leopards, spotted hyenas are Africa's second largest land predator (although this anthropocentric count naturally excludes the world's most deadly predator). Much bigger than all but the biggest dogs, and very heavy-set with powerful haunches. I was also interested to see that they're much more cat-like than dog-like (and apparently more closely related to cats than to dogs): they have round heads and short muzzles, and move about with a feline slinkiness.
But you might still be wondering what I meant in the paragraph before this last one when I said "join in the action." I meant join in the action. I was invited to hold a foot-long stick between my teeth, the hyena man suspended a bit of meat from it, and I got a from-twenty-centimetres-away close-up view of a spotted hyena grabbing a piece of meat. Strangely, this wasn't particularly frightening. The thing is, despite their habituation, the hyenas were clearly more uneasy about this whole operation than we were. They'd pace back and forth nervously, and when it came to snatching the meat, they'd approach quickly and retreat even more quickly. I can understand them not being aggressive toward their feeders, but I was genuinely surprised by their clear nerviness surrounding a nightly activity. All to the good, though: I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel feeding a hyena who was more comfortable about the procedure than I was.
Last night as I tried to drown my chat-induced sleeplessness with beer at my hotel, I was joined by Nebil, who I'd briefly met twice the previous day, once when he was urging me to buy his brother's wares, and once at the hyena feeding place. I don't know what possessed him to sit down with me, but he was utterly distraught: two close friends had died on the same day. One had been ill for a while, but the other had died quite suddenly, and neither of them was much over 40. I did my best to listen and ask the right questions and say the right things, quickly learning that compassion doesn't require linguistic complexity. Much as this whole country is exotic to me, I suppose I'm exotic to everyone in this country. Maybe sometimes the person you need to speak to in your grief is the one who's furthest removed from you.
Later that night, in bed, I was treated to the howling of hyenas. I was told they laugh. Maybe they do that as well, but what I heard were bullhorn-loud deep-throated moans, as if the nearby football pitch was haunted by hungry ghosts.
But really, Harar is the opposite of a sacred city. It's long been a major trading post, and to this day maintains strong trade links with the Somali region in eastern Ethiopia, as well as the breakaway state of Somaliland with its strategic (by virtue of slipping under the customs radar) seaport in Berbera. This means that a lot of contraband passes both ways through Harar, and its thronging markets have a harmless but scruffy black market feel to them. Adding to the port city feel, Harar is ethnically mixed: indigenous Harari mingle with Amharic Ethiopians from the west, Somali from the east, and Oromo from the south. The Oromo are much more stereotypically African in their appearance, with darker skin, rounder faces, and broader, flatter noses.
Even though Harar is one of Ethiopia's main centres of coffee production, its main cash crop is chat, the mild narcotic leaf that's eagerly imported by lowland Djibouti and Somalia to the north and east. Chat is absolutely everywhere in Harar, and by midday it seems half the city is stoned on the stuff. So, applying the "when in Rome" principle, I hired a young guide called Sisay who'd come recommended from a couple sources to chew some chat with me yesterday afternoon. Best job he's ever had, I'm sure.
Sisay and I picked up 20 birr worth of chat at the market and then took a tuk-tuk out to his place. The whole thing had a delightfully college dorm seedy feel to it. I entered Sisay's cheap digs, where we were joined by his girlfriend and a couple guys who didn't bother to introduce themselves. Everyone reclining on cushions, we chewed chat, smoked apple-flavoured tobacco from a shisha, and sipped water and chewed peanuts. Canada's travel advisory warns me that chat is illegal in Canada and mustn't be imported, but as far as I can tell, its main danger to public health and order is that it would induce general idleness in the population. A couple hours of chewing gave me nothing more than a mild buzz and a very pleasant lethargy. My mind was perfectly alert--it has a similar effect to caffeine, and I had trouble getting to sleep last night--but I just didn't much feel like getting up or doing anything. Which might explain the general disposition of most people in Harar. And much of Ethiopia, I suppose. I don't know the unemployment figures here, but I'm sure they're pretty awful. And if you've got nothing else to do all day, you might as well enjoy not having anything to do.
Sisay was a curious figure. Unlike all the other guides in Harar, he wasn't pushy or eager to please, and had a very serious demeanour despite being quite young. Our conversation didn't go very deep, but I got the impression that he was unusually intelligent. It occurred to me that it must be tough being very intelligent when that intelligence--as distinct from business savvy--is of pretty much no value. All Sisay can hope for is some work as a guide entertaining cheerfully wealthy Westerners or maybe getting a driver's license and driving a minibus, and his outsize intellect only makes him smart enough not to be content with this lot. It made me profoundly grateful to be from a part of the world where intelligence in itself--if I may arrogate so far--can open doors rather than just make one more aware of their shutness.
The most famous trader ever to set up shop in Harar (Richard Burton also passed through here in 1855--the first European to enter the walled city--but he wasn't a trader) was the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, known in these parts, it seems, as "Rambo." Using the free wi-fi at the Ghion Hotel in Bahir Dar a week ago, I downloaded onto my Kindle the Penguin edition of Rimbaud's selected poems and letters, and blazed through the book in a week. It's always a bit tricky judging poetry in a language that isn't my own, even with facing text translation (facing text translation isn't the Kindle's strong suit), but the poetry of this adolescent genius struck me as a bit, well, adolescent. Rimbaud seems to have shared that assessment: having revolutionized French poetry by the time he turned 20, he abandoned his art altogether and sought out work in various commercial endeavours in various corners of the world. He spent the 1880's moving between Aden in Yemen and Harar, trading in hides, ivory, coffee, and arms. By 37, in 1891, he was dead of a cancer that started in his right leg.
Despite occasionally striking passages, and a staggering precociousness, I found the person more intriguing than the poems. What kind of self-confidence do you need to wander around France, Belgium, and Britain as a teenager, drinking yourself into oblivion, insulting everyone you know, and justifiably proclaiming that you're going to transform poetry? And what kind of a tortured soul abandons this self entirely and becomes a hard-nosed trader in some of the most remote places European commerce had touched at that time? Reading the letters were fascinating, not only to see this Wunderkind transform into a practical businessman, but also because it provided an intimate view of a place and time that I find interesting in its own right. Rimbaud was in Harar around the time that King Menelik of Showa expanded into the area, and shortly before he became emperor of all Ethiopia. Rimbaud's letters discuss various frustrations in his dealings with Menelik, as well as Menelik's governor of Harar, Ras Mekonnen, father of the future emperor Haile Selassie.
Rimbaud's time in Harar is commemorated by a small museum in a beautiful old house, which I visited this morning (having only finished reading the letters last night). Along with a bunch of information about Rimbaud's life, both before and during his Harar years (all only in French, and clearly put together by someone who has some experience with European standards of curation), the museum also collected a number of fascinating photographs of late nineteenth century Harar. Rimbaud was the first, but by no means the only, person to bring a camera to Harar.
I hired a guide called Girma to wander the streets of the old city with me. Strictly speaking, I didn't need a guide, but Girma was great in that he's the kind of guy who knows everything and everyone. I didn't learn a whole lot about Harar that I couldn't have learned on my own, but wandering the narrow streets, I was made to feel a part of the place as we stopped and greeted various friends and acquaintances. Unlike the dusty dirt roads and corrugated metal roofs that blight most Ethiopian towns, old Harar is paved in cobblestones and the buildings are walled with thick whitewashed (and occasionally colourfully painted) stone.
As well as wandering the streets of the old city with Girma, I also had an outing with him yesterday to Babile's camel market and the slightly overbilled "Valley of Marvels." The valley is full of bizarre rock formations, not unlike--but not as spectacular as--Capadoccia in Turkey. The camel market was great fun. Never have I seen so many camels in one place (although I suppose that's not saying much). The whole place had a terrific bustle about it, with Somali and Oromo women in their colourful clothing squatting and gossiping in groups, while the menfolk bartered and haggled over camels. I decided not to make a purchase when I learned that a good-sized camel can fetch upward of $1000.
The strangest sight in Harar, if not in Ethiopia as a whole, is the hyena man. For no one quite knows how many years, there's been a hyena man who posts himself just outside the old city walls every evening (this guy is the son of the previous guy who may well be the son of the previous guy and so on back), and feeds the hyenas who skulk out of the shadows at his summons. For 50 birr (the best 50 birr I've spent in Ethiopia) you can watch, or join in the action. It truly is amazing to behold. With a series of whistles and gestures he signals to these animals, and even calls each one forward by name. He'll hold a stick of maybe a foot in length between his teeth, and suspend a piece of fresh meat from the end. A hyena will stalk forward, snatch the meat, and then retreat quickly. For show, he'll even toy with the hyenas, lifting the meat away so that the hyena will be reaching over his lap almost like a pet dog. Truly, in my list of bizarre tourist attractions, this ranks up with the Hair Museum in Avanos in Cappadocia, where a deranged Turk has collected locks of thousands of women's (and only women's) hair and attached them to the ceiling of his cave, each one indexed with name, nationality, and harvesting date. The whole cave looks like those medical pictures of the throat with its thousands of cilia.
But hyenas are emphatically not pet dogs. First of all, these are wild animals, and they're no more tame than the bears back home that have become dangerously habituated to human settlements and food scraps. Second, they're big. Much bigger than I'd imagined. After lions and ahead of leopards, spotted hyenas are Africa's second largest land predator (although this anthropocentric count naturally excludes the world's most deadly predator). Much bigger than all but the biggest dogs, and very heavy-set with powerful haunches. I was also interested to see that they're much more cat-like than dog-like (and apparently more closely related to cats than to dogs): they have round heads and short muzzles, and move about with a feline slinkiness.
But you might still be wondering what I meant in the paragraph before this last one when I said "join in the action." I meant join in the action. I was invited to hold a foot-long stick between my teeth, the hyena man suspended a bit of meat from it, and I got a from-twenty-centimetres-away close-up view of a spotted hyena grabbing a piece of meat. Strangely, this wasn't particularly frightening. The thing is, despite their habituation, the hyenas were clearly more uneasy about this whole operation than we were. They'd pace back and forth nervously, and when it came to snatching the meat, they'd approach quickly and retreat even more quickly. I can understand them not being aggressive toward their feeders, but I was genuinely surprised by their clear nerviness surrounding a nightly activity. All to the good, though: I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel feeding a hyena who was more comfortable about the procedure than I was.
Last night as I tried to drown my chat-induced sleeplessness with beer at my hotel, I was joined by Nebil, who I'd briefly met twice the previous day, once when he was urging me to buy his brother's wares, and once at the hyena feeding place. I don't know what possessed him to sit down with me, but he was utterly distraught: two close friends had died on the same day. One had been ill for a while, but the other had died quite suddenly, and neither of them was much over 40. I did my best to listen and ask the right questions and say the right things, quickly learning that compassion doesn't require linguistic complexity. Much as this whole country is exotic to me, I suppose I'm exotic to everyone in this country. Maybe sometimes the person you need to speak to in your grief is the one who's furthest removed from you.
Later that night, in bed, I was treated to the howling of hyenas. I was told they laugh. Maybe they do that as well, but what I heard were bullhorn-loud deep-throated moans, as if the nearby football pitch was haunted by hungry ghosts.
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