In Ethiopia with a Mule (25 page)

Then we left, with our ‘bag’ of seven prisoners – my quartet, the fence’s mother and two other ‘wanted’ men who had been captured incidentally at this
shifta
headquarters. On our way to the shore I asked Lieutenant Woldie a question that had been puzzling me for hours – why these
shifta
neither carried rifles nor had them in their
tukuls
. He replied that the men of this region are professional cattle-thieves, who operate over a wide area of Begemdir and Gojjam provinces, and when most of them are ‘away on business’ – as at present – they take all the available arms with them, having no reason to fear police raids in their absence. Several other questions were also bothering me – why the
shifta
risked robbing me when I was then let loose to inform the police, why certain things were stolen and others not, and why the quartet remained in their settlement when there was danger of a police raid. However, Lieutenant Woldie was vague about all these points, so I can only assume that the naïve
shifta
thought it unlikely that I would survive the shores of Lake Tana, or didn’t realise that an English-speaking
faranj
could communicate effectively with Ethiopian police officers, or miscalculated the impetus that the robbery of a
faranj
would give to police activity. Tonight I feel flickers of ridiculous sympathy for the quartet – their capture was so obviously a victory of sophistication over simplicity.

We reached the lakeside at sunset – when the water was a rippling expanse of copper, lemon and blue-green. As I was being rowed out the sky flared briefly to blood-red and the masts of the launch formed a black cross against it. Pulling myself aboard I sat in the stern, with the fence’s mother sobbing on my shoulder, and watched the light being swiftly absorbed behind the ridge beyond the swamp.

By 7.45 everyone was aboard and, as the engine quickened, our celebration party began. With their valuable cargo of prisoners securely roped together on deck, all the police were in good humour – and before long they were in high good humour. A mysterious flask of
araki
soon appeared, to supplement the Governor’s generous supply of
talla
and
tej
, and as we swished through the starlit water we mixed our drinks recklessly. Towards the end of the voyage a group of policemen began to quarrel among themselves about rifles and in the cramped cabin I found it a sobering experience to have four drunken
highlanders
disputing possession of as many loaded weapons. Lieutenant Woldie was sitting beside me, asking progressively less intelligent questions about European history, and now he blinked benevolently and remarked that really these peasant lads were like children – which was precisely what was worrying me. But luckily we slackened speed then, and were soon beside the jetty.

By torchlight, we climbed a rough path to the local gaol – a solid mud building, with clean straw on its floors. Here the six men were locked into one room – manacled in pairs – and the wretched woman was left alone; but at least
they all have more comfortable accommodation than they are accustomed to at home.

When the lieutenant, the sergeant and myself came to this doss-house – where I spent my last night in Gorgora – we heard that Colonel Aziz had had to return to Gondar during the afternoon, but already he has been told of our victory and tomorrow he will come to collect us.

It is now 11 p.m. and I have just returned from a party at the Police Officers’ Club. Indeed the whole of today has felt like one long party, starting from the moment when a beaming Colonel Aziz arrived at Gorgora this morning and we had
tej
for breakfast. When we got to Gondar I was somewhat disconcerted to find myself the Local Heroine. Apparently yesterday’s excursion was reported on the Addis news bulletin this morning, and the citizens of Gondar are behaving as though I had captured the
shifta
single-handed. This afternoon I was invited to have tea at the Palace with the Governor-General’s wife (a cousin of Leilt Aida) who has just returned from Addis. She speaks fluent English and once the initial
shifta
embarrassment had been overcome we enjoyed a long talk about the more cheerful aspects of highland life.

Today my books, insecticide and medicines were recovered, but the camera and money are still missing and I must remain in Gondar until they have been found. Then I will be required to give evidence in court when the quartet are being tried for this particular robbery.

There were no police developments today and I’m getting restive. I long to be with Jock again, on the track to Labibela – though Jock himself doubtless prefers inactivity and barley in Bahar Dar. I telephoned the Ras Hotel just now and the manager assured me that my
buccolo
is receiving full VIP treatment. And so he should.

This morning the Governor-General returned from Addis and this afternoon I was summoned to the Presence. Though he has only been here eighteen months he gives the impression of taking an exceptionally intelligent interest in the province and he was eager to discuss with me the little-known area between the Takazze and Buahit. In his general approach to regional problems he seems wise, kindly and considerably more than just a figurehead representing the Emperor.

My patience-test continues. Luckily for me Joanne is stranded here too, awaiting a permit to dig in Begemdir province. She is the only
faranj
I have met in Ethiopia who sleeps in
tukuls
, drinks
tukul
talla
and eats
tukul
food. She also speaks Amharinya, swims in Lake Tana, rides unbroken horses through the Semiens and is oblivious to the multitude of infected insect bites at present covering her legs. We like each other.

Today’s diversion was a visit to a barber who gave me a
barbaric
haircut. The operation took thirty-five minutes and I had the sensation of being scalped rather than barbered. My Gondar boy-friends are shocked and saddened – they say that now my virtue will certainly be safe on the way to Addis.

Morale is low this evening. Two of the six septic cuts on my legs have turned into inflamed, suppurating messes from which arrows of pain are shooting up my thigh and making me feel queasy. This is the logical consequence of having neglected them completely, amidst all the other alarms and excursions, and on Nancy O’Brien’s advice I’ve started a course of antibiotics.

I had a grim night with my throbbing leg, which was accompanied by the throbbing of wedding drums in a compound just behind the hotel and by incessant chanting, hand-clapping and dog-barking. Today was spent lying on my bed, dozing and reading. Colonel Aziz says that the Court won’t sit tomorrow, but perhaps on Tuesday. … Or perhaps not.

Today the robbers were told that if my camera had not been found by noon they would be given fifty-five lashes in the market-place tomorrow morning. The police expected me to rejoice at the prospect of my enemies receiving a public whipping – which I was cordially invited to attend – and Colonel Aziz announced the decision to inflict it in self-satisfied tones, as though he were displaying some extraordinary virtue of the Ethiopian police. His astonishment was considerable when I turned pale green and begged him not to do any such thing on my behalf. Then, recovering himself, he looked at me scornfully and exclaimed, ‘
This
is why you have so much crime in European countries!’
Mercifully
the threat of a whipping was sufficient. My camera is now at Police
Headquarters
and the Court will sit at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.

At 11.30 a.m. I was summoned to the Courthouse and led along filthy corridors between rows of men who were squatting on their haunches with their backs to the walls, arguing quietly. The high-ceilinged courtroom was about sixty feet long and twenty feet wide. On a dais at one end three judges, robed in rusty black silk, sat behind a table covered with a green plastic cloth. The ‘witness-box’ was a small wooden table in the centre of the floor, behind which I sat with my ‘recovered goods’ and an Amharic Bible before me and a teacher as interpreter beside me. The ‘dock’ was a waist-high corrugated-iron pen on a dais to the right of the door as one entered. There was no jury, but the public – about fifty men – occupied benches behind the witness-box. Some of these men were waiting for their own cases to come up, others were indulging in one of the favourite pastimes of these litigation-loving highlanders.

The proceedings were orderly and subdued. When I had sat down the Public Prosecutor – also robed in black silk – took the chair on my right and read to the Court an Amharic translation of my statement. (No one present spoke English, except the teacher and Lieutenant Woldie.) Then the teacher read my original statement, and I stood up, laid a hand on the Bible, swore that it was a true statement and identified both my property and the prisoners. Next Lieutenant Woldie described the arrests and the finding of the stolen articles, and finally three of the four spoke in their own defence, only Kas Makonnen remaining silent. No one interrupted or hurried the accused. But they didn’t speak for long, being obviously without hope, and the
cross-questioning
was brief.

While the judges were deciding on the sentence the prisoners were taken to the corridor and I went to an adjacent room with my interpreter and Lieutenant Woldie. Twenty minutes later we were recalled, and the Chief Justice stood up and made a long speech about the loathsome iniquity of robbing
faranjs
. He then sentenced the four to two years imprisonment each and thirty lashes of the whip in the market-place at nine o’clock on next Saturday morning – this being the hour at which the greatest crowd is assembled for the biggest market of the week. Immediately I stood up and pleaded for the whipping to be reprieved – whereupon the whole Court, including the judges, rocked with mirth at this exhibition of quaint
faranj
squeamishness. The Chief Justice told me to sit down and stop being silly, or words to that effect; but later I learned that had an Ethiopian made a similar plea he would have been promptly sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for contempt of Court.

At two o’clock I was back in my room, sombrely swigging
tej
and plunged in remorseful gloom. The judges had implied that the sentences were so severe because by robbing a
faranj
the prisoners had sullied Ethiopia’s fair name, and it is shattering to feel responsible for three men being punished out of all
proportion
to their crime. (My compassion does not extend to Kas Makonnen, who presumably will soon be receiving a far more severe sentence at the Central Criminal Court.)

These broodings were interrupted by a telephone call from the Palace,
announcing
that the Provincial Government had decided to replace my missing E.$120. I protested strongly, for all my expenses during this Gondar delay are being paid by the Government – most unnecessarily, since no Ethiopian asked me to go wandering alone amongst nests of
shifta
. However, my protests were ignored: and putting down the receiver I reflected that anyway the making of this generous gesture would lessen the locals’ shame.

Just then Lieutenant Woldie walked into the bar, so I told him of the
Governor
’s kindness and grovelled slightly about being an expensive nuisance to Ethiopia. But he only laughed – and by way of cheering me up explained that the E.$120 would be taken from the prisoners’ families.

Now I was flung into the uttermost depths of guilty depression. Almost certainly these families got none of the money, so this system involves
penalising
a number of innocent people to whom E.$120 mean as much as E.$1200 would mean to me. Leaving the bar, I went to cosset my depression in the Royal Compound – where I’ve spent a lot of time during this past week.

Sitting outside the shell of Iyasu the Great’s castle I eventually got things in perspective by dwelling on the deeds done within this very compound, and reasoning that my contribution to the history of cruelty in Ethiopia is not
significant
. I also began to see that it is impertinent for a
faranj
to criticise Ethiopian police methods in general, though obviously one should criticise particular excesses. In a country where the rural population cannot be communicated with through newspapers, or by radio, public floggings are the only effective method of publicising the fact that criminals have been caught, and of instilling respect for law and order. Nor does it do to forget that a century ago public executions were among the more popular entertainments of our own civilisation.

On my way back to the hotel I concentrated on silver linings. The sergeant at Gorgora is at last being promoted, as a reward for the efficiency and secrecy with which he organised things at his end, and the Ethiopians are now unique in my experience for no other police force has ever found what I have lost. When
I was robbed at home the Irish police showed not one-tenth of the intelligence, efficiency and energy of Colonel Aziz and his men: but perhaps they would have exerted themselves a little more had I been an Ethiopian.

My plans to leave for Bahar Dar tomorrow morning were abruptly changed this evening. At the Itegue Menen Hotel I found John Bromley sitting in the lounge – newly arrived from Asmara – and half-an-hour later Peter rang, heard of my tribulations and commanded me to come to Asmara for a rest, before rejoining Jock. The idea of relaxing for two days in ‘a little bit of England’ seemed not unattractive, so I have booked seats on tomorrow’s early bus to Asmara and on Sunday’s flight from Asmara to Bahar Dar.

The large, comfortable Addis–Asmara bus left Gondar at 7.10 a.m. and arrived here at 5 p.m. It was only slightly overcrowded and had a cautious Eritrean driver whose caution was fully extended as we zigzagged through the western extremity of the Semiens. I detest bus-travel, yet I am glad to have seen this road: even in the Himalayan foothills there is nothing comparable, for the terrain there makes no such outrageous demands. To cross the Takazze Gorge we descended steeply for eight miles in a series of tight hairpin bends and then climbed north in a twin series. Those passengers from Addis who had never before seen the Gorge thought this wildly exciting; yet to me it was an anticlimax, since the road naturally crosses the Takazze at its tamest point.