6

We spent a couple of days in Amda Worq. Bisrat and Makonnen drank a lot of tella, the mules ate a lot of hay, Hiluf had his shoes fixed and I found some bananas. We all relaxed in our own way. And from the height of Amda Worq, with the peaks and ridges spread out below, with my legs a little stronger, the path to Aksum appeared suddenly more manageable.

Look in the index of Ethiopian histories and you will find Amba Alagi, battle of; Amda Seyon, King (1314-44), glorious victories of; amda worq (part of a church); and American Peace Corps, Amhara, Amharic and Amharisation. But no Amda Worq, town of.

For centuries Amda Worq, in the Ethiopian way, has gone about its business in splendid isolation. Rulers have sometimes managed to place a garrison up here, but never for very long. The people have always been wild and independent, quick to arms, knowing that the world is a distant place they could resist with impunity. They have also been very devout.

This rocky region helps to solve the riddle at the heart of Ethiopia’s history: how has it sustained its sovereignty? Why did it not, like its neighbours, become Muslim? Why was it the only African country to resist the European colonial adventure? The glib answer is mountains—and perhaps it really is as simple as that. Landscape has translated its spirit to produce a deeply religious and bellicose people. Its sons have veered towards being either monks or warriors, proving that in this case spiritual devotion and militancy are just two cuts of the same cloth. Each sacrifices his physical life for an abstract cause. The rebel is as opposed to foreign or central rule as the contemplative is to the material world. Each has helped make Ethiopia what it is.

Perhaps it is no coincidence then that the most successful of all the anti-Derg rebel movements, the one that currently rules Ethiopia, was also the one that was most ascetic in its discipline and its ideology. The TPLF made its fighters, men and women, take a strict vow of celibacy, and anyone caught breaking it was killed.

On our first morning, Hiluf and I went to call on an old man named Ababew Tesema. In his yard, a boy was watching a loose-legged calf stumble over some rocks.

‘Ababew? He is my grandfather.’

Ababew himself was inside, facing the wall of his room and praying. In his dirty grey undershirt, he stood with head bowed and hands clasped together in front of his waist. A shotgun hung on the wall above him.

We waited. The fly-buzz of his prayers droned around the room. They rose in volume. They flew back and forth among the rafters. They became a half-shout. ‘Mother of God, you say let them insult us, you say it increases our account in heaven but if they go on insulting us FOREVER, what then? Should we not rid the world of such DEVILS? Mary, Mother of Light, grant your blessing.’

He coughed. He yawned and rubbed his beard.

‘Grandfather—’

‘Yes?’

‘A foreigner has come to see you.’

‘A foreigner?’ Ababew unhooked the shotgun. ‘Where is he?’

The barrel swung round with him. The boy reached out and pushed it up to point at the roof.

‘Where is he!’

Ababew’s eyes glowed like pale moons. He had advanced trachoma. I leaned forward and gripped his elbow. ‘I’m here.’

He blinked at my touch. His face opened in a wide smile. ‘I wasn’t going to shoot, signor! We don’t shoot foreigners, not any more. Look—I bought this gun from a dejmach. It’s Italian.’

He took my arm and we all went outside. The early sun was not yet hot. Ababew sat straight-backed on a stool, talking of his life in a strong, mellifluous voice. The gun stood between his knees while he tinkered with a cartridge belt.

In his seventy-eight years, Ababew had seen it all. As a boy he had stood by the road and watched the Italians march into Amda Worq; he had watched them being driven out a few weeks later; he had watched them return, then run away again. He had watched the Derg march in, seen them driven out, come back, leave, come back and leave for good.

Ababew loved all things Italian—even though the Italians had come to Amda Worq and occupied it by force, even though it was for an Eritrean working for the Italians that his mother abandoned him when he was just two years old. ‘Those cursed farenji!’

‘Ababew,’ I said, ‘you’ve seen all these different people coming to Amda Worq. Who is best?’

He fingered the barrel of his gun. His lips quivered. Behind his sightless gaze paraded a lifetime of governors, occupiers, liberators, ideologues and rebels.

‘None of them is good, signor. They all insult us, those devils—and we chase them out.’

‘What about the Wagshum?’

‘The Washkum?’

‘Yes—the Wagshum.’

‘Well, he was like a king! When he rode through the countryside everyone threw down their tools and ran along behind him.’

From somewhere deep in Ababew’s chest rose a volcanic eruption of laughter, but whether it was mocking or respectful, I doubt even he knew.

For centuries this province of Wag was ruled by hereditary Wagshums (shum being ‘chief ‘ in Amharic). Claiming direct descent from the Zagwe rulers, the Wagshums represented—in their own eyes at least—a kind of parallel Ethiopian royal family. Whenever they visited court, they exercised rights denied to the other nobility. They approached the emperor without rolling their robes from their chest; they washed in the same gold basin as him, were seated at table before the food was served and sat in a chair beside the imperial throne. They were also allowed to beat their nagarits, the silver drums of rank, right up to the palace gates.

In Addis Ababa a few weeks earlier, I had been given the name of Tafari Wossen. He lived in a house wrapped in imperial-purple bougainvillea. He ran a media company called Waag Communications, had been educated at a British private school and spoke English with a certain fruity charm. Tafari’s father had been the last Wagshum.

‘Yes, he was the last one. But he didn’t spend a lot of time in Wag. The emperor made him ambassador in Greece.’

Tafari had been born in a small village somewhere near Amda Worq. When I asked him where, he said: ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. It was during the Italian occupation and we were constantly moving. Everything was a little bit chaotic.’

The Italians were not keen on Tafari’s family, and in particular his great-uncle, the famous resistance leader Dejazmach Hailu Kebede. Tafari had a photograph of him in the hall. He was an impressive figure. He had a squarish face, both authoritative and humorous, and a distinctive moustache.

‘The Italians did rather go after him,’ said Tafari proudly.

In Italy, the humiliation of the 1896 battle of Adwa proved momentous. Early in 1935, with the other European powers basking in their African dominions, Mussolini stood before the crowd in the Piazza Venezia. ‘We have been patient for forty years,’ he boomed. ‘Now we too want our place in the sun!’

His forces marched into Ethiopia. For a week they met no resistance. The first setback was Makelle. The Tigrayan capital was, thanks to a duplicitous governor, supposed to fall into their hands without a fight. But before the Italians arrived, seven thousand Wag men sacked Makelle and sent the traitor fleeing to the Italian lines. The men were under the command of Tafari’s uncle, Dejazmach Hailu Kebede.

Largely brought up by his own uncle, the hero of Adwa, Wagshum Gwangul, Hailu had learned the traditional skills of fighting and command. His men were driven by the zeal of mountain-dwellers—a zeal that helps blur the distinction between the love of freedom and the love of killing outsiders. But in 1935 they discovered that warfare had moved on a little since the battle of Adwa.

The Italo-Abyssinian war of the mid-1930s was a clash of two divergent worlds. It was a conflict in which tanks were swarmed over by Ethiopians, who beheaded the crews with home-forged swords; in which twenty-five thousand highlanders could march six hundred miles in a matter of weeks, only to be scattered in minutes by a few planes dropping canisters of mustard gas. In his palace in Addis Ababa, Emperor Haile Selassie hosted feasts for several thousand warriors in lion skins, feeding them entire herds of raw beef, while recommending (for their own security) that all foreigners in the city decamp to its fringes.

Dejazmach Hailu and his army did not hold Makelle. He was forced to retreat to Tembien. Near Abi Addi, he managed a successful counter-attack. He and his men were poised to break through the Italian lines. In doing so, they would leave the whole of Tigray exposed. But the order came to halt. The Italians reinforced and the moment was lost. Soon the army from Wag, depleted by the day, was falling back towards Sekota.

Dejazmach Hailu sensed then that the conventional war was lost. When a last rallying call came from the emperor, he sent only a deputy. But word spread that Haile Selassie himself, the Conquering Lion of Judah, Elect of God, had come to the front to take command. Even for the men of Wag, that made it less a case of loyalty to the crown than a matter of divine obligation. They flocked to the south-east to join him. Hailu was forced to lead them.

Haile Selassie was always adept at exploiting the theatre of his office. Surrounded by his nobility, he took up position in a large cave. On a throne of skins and rugs, he looked out over the plain of Lake Ashangi, across to the Italian lines. Morale in the Ethiopian camp was high—parallels with Adwa were too many to suggest that God had chosen anything other than triumph for Ethiopia. The day for the attack too was auspicious—the feast of Ethiopia’s patron saint, Giorgis. Victory was written in the sky.

The memory of Adwa had also shaped Italian preparations. Their lines were well-built, protected by the natural barbed wire of thorn. All day the Ethiopians charged it, but they failed to break through. Dejazmach Hailu was badly wounded. He was carried back by his men into the mountains of Wag. The emperor retreated. He did the natural thing. He went to Lalibela for three days and sat in prayer and contemplation. But within a month the Italians were in Addis. Haile Selassie had fled the country, leaving the fight to guerrilla leaders like Dejazmach Hailu.

‘So that was Hailu,’ mused Tafari.

‘What happened to him?’

‘In the end?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not very nice,’ he sighed. ‘Why don’t we go and talk to my aunt. After all, she’s his daughter.’

It was a lovely, fresh Addis afternoon. Scribbles of high cloud were etched above the Entoto hills. Woyzero Tsehayenesh Hailu lived in the Kechene district, on a large triangle of ground once granted to the Wagshum by the emperor. Her spare rooms were always free to citizens from Wag. If they needed food or the fare home she would dip into her own purse. But her largesse now outstripped her means. Shanties pressed at the fences of her compound and her own quarters showed the signs of penniless nobility.

Like that of any elderly widow, Woyzero Tsehayenesh’s living room was a gallery of family portraits. Beside framed pictures of her daughter, son and grandchildren was one of her father, Dejazmach Hailu. It was the same photo that had hung in Tafari’s hall.

‘And that also is him.’

She pointed over my shoulder. I turned. It was a photograph of three Italian soldiers. They wore well-pressed uniforms, their shirtsleeves neatly rolled above the elbow. On one pale forearm was a wristwatch. One of the men was holding a severed head by the hair. The eyes were closed, but it was the same moustache.

By the rainy season of 1937, the Italians had consolidated their territory. The emperor was in exile in Bath and his people were becoming used to the occupation. Resistance had been reduced to small areas, mere tickles on the leathery hide of Il Duce’s Africa Orientale Italiana. But then, in the Ethiopian new year, a sudden series of attacks reminded the Italians that even 650,000 European troops could not control such a barbarous country.

In retaliation they set out after the one leader whose name they knew, who had harried them since the first days of the invasion. The order went out to hunt down Dejazmach Hailu.

‘They came after us first,’ Woyzero Tsehayenesh began quite matter-of-factly. ‘I was with my mother and sister in a village near Amda Worq. They sent one hundred soldiers to get us. But the people of the town were good to us. They killed all but ten.’

As soon as her father heard he came up from his camp near the Meri river. He destroyed the Italian garrison at Amda Worq, then took to the bush to continue his guerrilla campaign. For some time he moved around Wag, engaging with the Italians, retreating, travelling on. But the forces against him were growing. The Italians recruited men from the Galla tribes. At about five one afternoon, some way to the east of Sekota, Dejazmach Hailu was pressed to the edge of a cliff and surrounded.

Woyzero Tsehayenesh paused. ‘It was a Thursday. They burned the church. When it became dark my father hid among the trees. His men slept while he prayed…’

Her voice fell away. In the dim light I could see tears on her cheeks. The story was showing strange parallels with the Passion.

‘At daybreak on the Friday they came for him again. At ten he was hit and he fell…’

Dejazmach Hailu lay dying. He called a priest to his side. ‘Abba, I have no visible sin. I have been loyal to my wife. I have killed only in battle.’

At midday the Italians found his corpse. They cut off the head and threw the body over the cliff.

‘It landed near the village of Kulamat. The people there knew whose it was. They covered it with a gabbi and hid it until the evening. Then they buried it.’

Woyzero Tsehayenesh took a handkerchief from under her shamma. ‘He was always a wonderful father.’ She dried her eyes. She blew her nose. ‘When I think of his death, it is as though it was yesterday. It never grows any further away.’

A woman brought in a tray of coffee. Woyzero Tsehayenesh drank it quickly. She looked again at the picture.

‘They weren’t sure it was him at first. But some people came and when they saw the head they burst into tears. Then the Italians knew it was him.

‘They killed those people. Then they put wire round my father’s head. On Saturday they took it to Alamata and displayed it in the marketplace. On Monday they took it to K’obo and displayed it.’ With each day, with each place, she struck the table in front of her with the flat of her hand. ‘On Thursday they displayed it in Korem. On the next Monday they displayed it in Makelle…and from there to Asmara.’

‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

‘We were still children. My mother looked after us. She took over my father’s command until the emperor came back.’ She smiled. A sheen of tears still covered her cheeks. ‘The Italians came to Amda Worq looking for us, so we were sent down to the Takazze. Terrible place—lowlands! I got malaria.’

In Amda Worq we met a man who, for several years during the Derg period, had been the town’s administrator. Amsalu was an affable giant with an attractive line in self-deprecating humour. We sat on the edge of the cliff. It was evening. We looked down over the tangle of hills and ridges towards the Takazze river. The low sun dissolved everything in its dusty yellow light.

‘You worked for the Derg, Amsalu?’

He nodded.

‘Did you approve of them?’

‘I was stupid. I saw just in front of my face.’ He waved one hand before his nose.

‘When I worked for the emperor’s people, I found them corrupt. The Derg came and said: Now everyone will be equal. And I thought: that sounds a good idea. So I worked with the Derg for a few years. But one day they captured eighty rebels. They chained them together and shot them. So when the EPDM took the town and said everyone should elect their own leaders, I thought: that sounds a good idea, I’ll go with you.’ Amsalu chuckled at his own capriciousness.

When someone stops believing in God, it is said, he will believe in anything; and when a people ditch an absolute ruler, they will follow anyone.

So with the fall of Haile Selassie, factions multiplied. Even within the Derg there were factions but Mengistu made sure he killed his rivals so those around him could focus on the job in hand. Elsewhere, the country became a jumble of liberation fronts, revolutionary parties, democratic unions, people’s revolutionary parties, democratic liberation fronts and revolutionary people’s liberation unions.

First were the Eritreans, already veterans of a long struggle against the emperor. But they were divided. There was the largely Muslim ELF and the newer, Christian EPLF. The ELF and the EPLF frequently fought each other. When the Derg came to power, replacing the AFCC with the PMAC, the ELF encouraged Tigrayan dissent through the TLF, but the TLF had to contend too with the TPLF which had grown out of the TNO which set them against the TLF because of the TLF’s sympathies with the reactionary EDU. The TPLF were Marxists, even though like the EDU they drew much of their leadership from offspring of the nobility. But after the TPLF had executed the TLF leader, the TPLF incorporated the TLF and its members. But because of the ELF’s alliance with the now defunct TLF, the TPLF used the ELF’s rivals the EPLF to marginalise the ELF. Meanwhile the EPRP had taken a battering from the Derg during the Red Terror, itself a campaign against the counter-revolutionary forces not only of the EPRP, but also the EDU, MEISON, the OLF and the Ogadenis. The EPRP had fallen out with the TPLF and the EDU and themselves fractured into three groups, one of which, with TPLF support, became the EPDM. The rump EPRP continued to fight the TPLF. The TPLF continued to fight the ELF and the EDU. And all of them, whenever they could spare the time, fought against the Derg.

That was in the late 1970s. A decade later, with the Derg still in power, a meeting took place near Amda Worq. By then most of the capital letters had been scattered like so many pebbles in the riverbed. The rebel movements had consolidated into the TPLF, the EPDM and the EPLF. The meeting was held in the badlands around the Takazze river, in a big cave.

Amsalu was at that meeting.

‘What did we talk about first at this great democratic meeting? We talked about flags. Outside the cave hung the TPLF flag next to the Amhara flag. The TPLF flag was higher because they were stronger and the Amhara said, That is not right! So someone went and dropped the TPLF flag to the same level. But the Tigrayans said, No that is still not right. So he raised them both to the original level and everyone agreed that that was how the flags should be.’

Then they found other things to argue about. The arguments went on for days until someone said: Unity is strength! That was the first point everyone could agree on. And the strange thing was that they then found they could agree on other points too. Eritrea should have independence from Ethiopia. The other parties should unite. They would divide command, combine operations, pool resources. They would take over the rest of the country!

‘The meeting took two months. Afterwards there was a big feast. We killed twelve cows.’

From then on, the fall of the Derg was simply a matter of time.