Shortly after seven, we left and headed east, following a stony path between rows of euphorbia and agave. The low sun flickered between their spiky limbs. I had grown to love these early mornings, waving goodbye, setting off into crisp highland air with shreds of mist and an unknown day before us. And I was fit now, with that physical confidence that comes with fitness. In the town of Amda Worq—another Amda Worq, another ‘golden pillar’—we collected water from a pump and found two papaya. We pushed south towards the mountains.
Two hours later we entered a long, high valley. The first sight of the monastery of Abba Salama was innocent enough—a flash of corrugated iron roof at the far end of the valley. But as we drew closer, so the land between fell away, until we were standing on the edge of a dizzying chasm. The monastery was an island of rock connected to the main plateau by a broken isthmus. Even after weeks in the highlands, the scale of those cliffs was overwhelming.
In Ruth Plant’s Architecture of the Tigre, the relevant entry says this:
The monastery of Abba Salama must be one of the most inaccessible in the world…it is necessary to follow an extremely narrow ledge, invisible from a distance and lacking handholds of any kind which cuts across a tremendous precipice…the visitor must then ascend a chimney, then clutch a bundle of chains which enable him to surmount the final cliff-face…on this last lap the unseen monks above assist the climber by hauling at a thong around his middle.
The entry for Abba Salama is not written by Ruth but by David Buxton, who comments drily: ‘Women, happily for them, are debarred.’
The monk who could allow us up was judging a dispute in a neighbouring village. So we unloaded the donkeys and settled in the shade to wait. The monastery cliffs rose across the gap like the gates of another world.
I took out a knife and divided the papaya into slices. I handed one to Gabre-Mariam. He was the elder of the donkeymen. He was in his early forties and had a kind, devout face. His eyes flashed with a boyish enthusiasm as he spoke.
He was talking about his ploughing. Tigrinya has four words for ploughing. In one of his fields he had done the first ploughing (tsigi), the other he had ploughed twice and that was aymi. Third and fourth ploughing were tselas and raba.
I asked if he had been to Abba Salama before.
‘Yes, I know this place.’ He tossed the papaya rind over the cliff and wiped his mouth.
One day during the time of the Derg, he had developed a sickness. A terrible sickness! His limbs grew heavy, his head beat like a church drum, his eyes went strange and he could not work. (As he said this he dropped his head and made his body sag.) He prayed to Abba Yohannis. Nothing. He prayed to Mikhael and Giorgis and Urael—but the sickness became worse. He went to the debtara and they gave him herbs but the herbs did no good. He was told that the right medicine for his sickness could be found only in Makelle.
He set out for Makelle. It was very difficult walking because of the sickness and because there was little food in the country at that time. After a week, though, he reached the hospital in Makelle.
‘Where is your ID card?’ they asked.
‘I don’t have an ID card; I’m a peasant.’
They told him that if he did not have an ID card the Derg would say he was a rebel. Then they would make trouble for the hospital and they would throw him in prison. Anyway, they did not have the right medicine. So Gabre-Mariam began the long walk back. The sickness now felt as if there was a big rock on his shoulder and big rocks on his feet. As well as that he was now worried the Derg would arrest him. Whenever he saw soldiers he pretended he was just working on the land. Then he met a group of men. They were three men and they had such a nice look in their faces that he asked them: Where are you going?
‘We are pilgrims,’ they said, ‘and we are going to Abba Salama.’
‘Where is that?’
‘It is on the holy mountain of Debra Medhanit.’
Well, because of the name of the mountain (it means ‘mountain of medicine’) and because of the nice look in their faces, Gabre-Mariam joined the men. They came to this place. He looked up at the cliffs and thought: I cannot climb it. But they tied a rope around his waist and the strange thing was that by the time he reached the top he already felt a little better. He drank the holy water and the sickness rose from him and opened its wings and flew away. Now Abba Salama was always part of his prayers.
Across the gorge, a monk was walking around the flat rim of the cliff. Beneath him the rock was in shadow and fell hundreds of feet to the scree below. It took him a long time before
he was standing before us. The wind flicked at the frosty tufts of hair behind his ears. He had settled his dispute. He could take us up.
This is what it entailed, reaching the monastery of Abba Salama. (Looking at my notes now brings it all back: the writing is rushed and angular, the pages smudged with dust and sweat.)
The monk led us down a ladder, across the narrow saddle of rock to the main cliff. A ledge ran around one side. There were no handholds but the ledge was a couple of feet wide. What made it perilous, what made you place each foot so carefully and press your hand to the cliff on one side was an awareness of the vast space on the other side.
After thirty yards, there was a gap in the rock above and a short scramble up a ladder. You were now in a narrow chimney—a cliff behind and a cliff in front, and on either side a bird’s-eye view of the gorge below. The wind funnelled between the rocks. A ladder rose in front of you and you craned your neck and looked up. It was two ladders welded together, made from rust-brown iron. It began at a slight angle to the vertical but flexed until it was flush and sheer with the rock face.
The monk was talking about the bottle of water he dropped the other day. It bounced on the rock and did not roll on over the precipice. It did not even break! Because it was holy water!
You did not want to hear that; you did not want to hear about things falling. You began to climb, one rung at a time. There was no sign of the waist-rope mentioned by Buxton and by Gabre-Mariam. You were now halfway up the ladder and it was straight up and down. It was secured at the top with a wire and had a couple of inches’ play. It came away from the rock as you climbed—but that was OK because it had dug itself into the soft sandstone and you needed to pull it out from the cliff to get a toe- or hand-hold. You looked along the cliff-face. A couple of ravens hung in the wind. Their wings were flexed against the updraughts, their feathers back-blown. You envied them their wings. You did not want to look up; you did not want to look down. You examined the bloodless white of your fingers as they gripped the ladder. Reaching these places, you thought, these clifftop monasteries, is a rite in itself.
One rung at a time, one at a time…
Then the ladder stopped. The summit was still some way up, still out of sight. To one side was the chain. It was three or four arms’ lengths away. Even by leaning you could not get close to it. You now had to leave the ladder. The wind was pressing at your ears. You had to traverse the cliff-face and make a grab for the chain. You stepped away from the firm hold of the ladder. You pressed your fingers into cracks in the rock. You reached the chain and gripped it. But then you had to remove your hands, one at a time, because they were so sweaty they were slipping down the links. You leaned back and pulled yourself up the last twenty feet of cliff. And that was the worst part. Because this last section was overhanging.
‘That chain gives me so much pleasure!’
Abbaminata Gabre-Mariam Gabre-Mikhael was the monastery’s abbot and he was waiting at the top. His face wore a look of ageless calm.
‘Look at you—sweating so much! When I climb I just put my faith in God.’
We were back on the flat. We followed a path beside a shabby plot of biscuit-coloured stalks. ‘That’s where we tried to grow barley, but the monkeys ate it all.’
He pointed out the huts of the dozen other monks, the grass shelters of his seminarians, the papyrus-rimmed well. He bent to run his fingers over the back of the monastery cat. And I could think only of the strange sensation of coming on land after being at sea, with your legs weak beneath you and the impression of having landed in an alien element.
On the eastern edge of the cliff, the Abbaminata led us to that mountain’s holiest site, the reason for coming here. We scrabbled down a gully and came to a ledge. Far below, the boulder-bed of the river wound between rocky slopes. Beside us was a small hut and in the hut were the remains of the man who in the year 330 first brought the faith to Ethiopia, who became the first bishop of Aksum, Abba Salama himself.
In the Ethiopian Synaxarium, each day has its saints. The entry for Hamle 26 (3 August) reads: ‘On this day also died
Abba Salama the Revealer of the Light. And he arrived in the country of Ethiopia during the reign of Abreha and Atsbeha and he preached the peace of Christ in all the regions thereof and because of this he was called Father of Peace, Abba Salama. And after he had saluted the men of Ethiopia, he died in peace. Salutation, salutation, I say with joyful voice to Abba Salama!’
Abbaminata Gabre-Mariam looked out into space. ‘When Abba Salama arrived here he was already one hundred years old. He had been among the people of Gojjam when God appeared to him and said, You must seek out a place to suffer alone. He chose this place. He lived here another fifty years.’
The abbot himself had been a monk here for only forty years. He wore the butter-yellow robe of a hermit.
‘What has kept me here?’ He gave a beatific smile. ‘It is the chain.’
The chain, he said, was less a chain than a thread between one level of being and the next. By this thread he had been coming and going all these years. He was never afraid.
I asked him if anyone was ever hurt.
‘No.’ He was toying in the dirt with some barley-stalks. ‘Well, last year one man died. But he worked for the electricity company.’
Once a long time ago, a boy fell from the chain. By God’s will the boy was caught on a ledge and survived. In time he left the region. Years later a team of builders arrived at the monastery. They said they had been paid to restore the church and to build a rest-house on the cliff for pilgrims. Who paid you? asked the abbot. We don’t know! A man in Canada sent the money! All they knew was that when he was a boy the man had lived near here and one day he had fallen on the cliff and been saved.
‘That is how he works, that is how Abba Salama works.’
We lingered up there. I was reluctant to leave—or reluctant to deal again with the chain. It was late afternoon when we stepped out onto the overhang and began the descent. Below the cliff we took a steep path down into the gorge below. High above, Abbaminata Gabre-Mariam stood on the ledge and watched us go. The wind was inflating his yellow robe, and as dusk flattened the shadows he appeared to be hovering against the cliff like some brimstone angel.
That evening our small party became separated. We had sent Gabre-Mariam and Solomon on ahead with the donkeys. They had to take a slower route, a donkey-friendly track down the cliffs. We came later, taking the steeper way. We had arranged to meet at the bend in the river visible from above.
But the rule applies in the fastness of Ethiopia as it does everywhere else: if meeting arrangements can go wrong, they do. Because we had lingered at the monastery, when we reached the spot they were not there. The light was failing. Were they also late, or had they gone on ahead?
‘There are wild animals.’ Hiluf was nervous. ‘The monk said there’s a leopard here. I think they would want to get the donkeys out before dark.’
So we set off down the gorge. It became darker. The slopes above us closed in. Sometimes we were on the bank among squat spreading salix. At other times the cliffs narrowed and we followed the dry river itself through pebble-fields, squeezing around house-sized boulders. There was no sign of habitation. We searched the sandy places for signs of donkey tracks. There were none. We walked for an hour, two hours. Our pace quickened to a half-run. Then the cliffs opened out and the star-thick sky dropped to the horizon. We stopped and caught our breath.
In the darkness was a distant dot of firelight. We stumbled across rocky ground to get there. They turned us away. Others did the same. In the end we found a family in a stone hut. We had no food, no coats and no bedding. All night we shivered on a calf-skin.
We rose early. We called in at several homesteads but no one had seen Gabre-Mariam and Solomon and the donkeys. We reached a small dam and waded its irrigation channels. Then, high up on a rock, was a figure waving. It was Gabre-Mariam.
It had taken them four hours to climb down. Several times they had had to unload the donkeys and pass down the loads.
‘We were worried,’ I said.
‘We were behind you! We thought you…something had happened. Oh-oh!’ Gabre-Mariam took my hand and gripped it and a great tide of relief flooded between us.
‘Thanks be to Abba Salama!’
The sun was just rising behind him.