One black woman for one kilo of purple dates
• Angie Eng
Harar’s ethnic diversity, simple provincial life and spiritual ambience, makes her one of the most attractive destinations in the Horn of Africa.

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December 2001 Harar,Ethiopia Walled cities have allure, which provoke mysteriousness, much like the veil’s covering the heads of women practicing purdah. The sense of forbidden prompts illicit curiosity. Richard Burton, disguised as a Muslim merchant, must have certainly experienced a rush of explorer’s deceit when he entered the gates of Harar, the fourth holiest city of Islam, once restricted to the White Man and Christians alike. 1855 was to mark the date of the first known Christian to penetrate the walls of an ancient enclave. Arabs across the Red Sea founded Harar, also know as Adare in the 12th century.

Today hundreds of foreign tourists, Muslim pilgrims, Somali caravans, Adari merchants and ethnic Galla farmers flock to the eastern desert of Ethiopia to live, trade and experience mystical Harar. When Burton arrived here in Absynnia, the city was at its peak as an important center of commerce and a way station for caravan routes, particularly in gun-running and the slave trade. (Up until the mid-19th century Western Arabs exported women and men even for the small price of rice and dates.) The city had been encircled by 6-meter high stonewalls to keep out migrating Oromo tribes to the South and the Christian invaders from all sides.

Originally, the city architecture consisted of cylindrical tukuls or one-story mud houses with thatched roofs. Cobbled stone narrow alleys led you to a mosque, a vegetable market, a bookbinder’s shop, a blacksmith, a basket weaver or a tailor sewing together a muslin shema. Not much has changed since then. Like most ancient cities, the walls have crumbled, her gates have been demolished by centuries of invaders, modern transport has relocated merchants and sent traders elsewhere. Regardless of inevitable change, Harar’s ethnic diversity, simple provincial life and spiritual ambience, makes her one of the most attractive destinations in the Horn of Africa. Getting lost in the winding alleys amongst whitewashed buildings, I was reminded of the fortressed cities of Rajasthan.

Groups of Somali women in red, orange and blue patterned dresses with gourds and baskets balanced on their heads disappeared in and out of wooden doorways. Farmers on donkey carts transported bundles of coal wrapped in straw. Goats and cattle vied for space with dalala sellers and their strewn out piles of bira bira, onions and cabbage. Barefoot Kuth Gallic men donned reddened hair glazed with ghee. Their erect posture, solemn gaze and graceful walk distinguished them from the rest of the crowd. At their waist inevitable hung their curved jile knife.
They held their arms raised with wrists resting on a wooden farm tool slung across their shoulders.

Harar sits between the Ogaden and Danakil Depression. Needless to say, it was always hot and dry. Eucalyptus, Juniper, Cypress and golden Acacia grow in abundance. But the addictive substances- kat and the cocoa bean were the two primary cash crops. On every corner, Galla girls sold kat. In the morning most of the locals had already purchased their daily dose. By the afternoon, men, women and even children sat hunched over on the street playing cards while chomping on kat’s leafy branches.

Gradually kat’s sedative effects kicked in leaving addicts useless for the rest of the day. Kat chew had been recognized as a growing problem for the Horn. Long-term use resulted in paranoia and nervous behavior from habitual users. Perhaps this could explain the schizophrenia roaming the streets. Harar at the time of writing housed numerous village idiots. One could compare the city with Berkeley post-Reagan era, whose policy displaced hundreds of mentally ill onto the street. One woman wrapped in tattered bags sewn together stood in the middle of the intersection hurling rocks and cursed at pedestrians. Another eccentric character charged down the street swinging a wooden staff while flapping his cape above his shoulder like Count Dracula before take off. It took me hours to lose a Galla man running behind me. Whenever I turned around he would go catatonic. Their rebellious behavior was comical to witness amongst the serious order of the sophisticated merchants. Harar’s mercantile class has declined from the days of Burton.

Development had come to a halt since the building of the Addis-Djibouti railway. Modernity was absent save for the occasional satellite dish protruding from the stone derbi-gar houses. In the eyes of the developed world, she was a step back a few hundred centuries. Timelessness is a charm, which forgives signs of poverty, beggars, homelessness and the ill. I headed to the Rimbaud Museum into an alley lined with tailors and their machines revving full speed. The museum was located in a teak house built by a wealthy Indian. Rimbaud had once lived around this location, however no proof has validated this claim. Nonetheless, in the library you could read about Kebir Ali Shek, the last master bookbinder. Or you could peruse Rimbaud’s diary excerpts revealing his involvement in the trafficking of slaves. Two French scholars were researching Harar’s depressed occupational shanni class of weavers and blacksmiths.

At dusk the city reached its peak of activity. Evening rush hour prompted a heightened scramble to complete the last task with the remaining minutes of sunlight. Merchants closed their kelly green painted doors. Market ladies attempted their last sale of tomatoes and oranges. Mothers rushed home to prepare injera. Street beggars tucked under gunnysack bags claimed their spot for the night.

"The evening star stands like a diamond upon the still horizon. Around the moon a pink zone of light mists, shading off into turquoise blue and a delicate chrysoprase green…Behind me, purpling in the night air and silvered by the radiance from above, lie the wild and mountains inhabited by the forest of savages…Sweet as the harp of David, the night breeze and the music of water come up from the seas; but the rippling and the rustling sound alternate with the hyena’s laugh and the jackals cry and the howl of the wild dog.’ -Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

© Angie Eng 2002

email: angie_eng@hotmail.com

Golden Fat On The Irawaddy
• Angie Eng
India is infamous for her 4 P's: Poverty, Politics, Poop, and Pus.  Add Pagoda and you have Myanmar, formerly Burma.

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