Lalibela carries with it a weighty cargo of symbolism—not a place for the literal-minded. It made me think of Robert Southey’s comment after once visiting William Blake: ‘Blake showed me a perfectly mad poem called Jerusalem,’ he reported. ‘Jerusalem is in Oxford street!’
It was a lovely morning. A few high clouds drifted in a clear blue sky. I passed the fresh grave of Colonel Melaku, where a mound of stones covered his body. An olive-wood cross rose at one end, and on it was nailed a crude plaque: Colonel Melaku Fetem born 1935 EC died at 61. The wreath of marigolds and mimosa was already wilting in the heat.
I was on my way to see a bahtawi. A churchman in Addis had given me the name of Abba Gabre-Meskal. ‘He may be there or—’ the churchman dropped his voice—‘he may have already vanished.’
I was in luck. I found him up a dusty alley, sitting outside his own lean-to. He was stitching a patch into his qamis, his anchorite’s shawl, dyed yellow (the Ethiopian monks use for this yellow the native plant Carthamus tinctorius, or ‘bastard saffron’). I sat on a stool opposite him and, as I tried to read the wrinkles of his cheek, asked if he knew anything about the dead colonel.
‘Colonel Melaku? He was my neighbour. Very religious man. He came to Lalibela for his death. He was a Derg colonel.’
‘But the Derg were against the Church?’
‘The Derg were devils! Some of the top ones, they just kept it hidden—they prayed in private.’
Abba Gabre-Meskal was pleased by the thought, and a smile spread across his weathered face. The smile became a chuckle, and the chuckle became a cough—and the cough bent him in two. During the last rains, pneumonia had forced him down from the mossy cave where he had lived for ten years. I offered him water. He drank it in short sips. I didn’t want him vanishing on me.
He was a tall man. He had deep-set eyes and skin like oxhide. His expression swung between comic innocence and holy rage. He raised the yellow qamis to his face to examine his stitching.
‘You a Christian?’
‘Of sorts,’ I said.
‘Protestant?’
I nodded.
‘Luther, Luther!’ He was sewing with quick, even stitches, even though he could hardly see. ‘Tourist?’
‘Yes. I’m going to Aksum. On foot,’ I added, for effect.
He wasn’t impressed. ‘Tell me, have you ever heard of a place called Jerusalem?’
I told him I had lived for a time in a monastery in the Old City.
Leaning down to gnaw through the thread, he looked at me properly for the first time. He folded the qamis and put it to one side. He laid his hands together in his lap, drew a big breath and, for an hour or more, captured me with a long and beautiful story about his own attempt to reach Jerusalem.
Abba Gabre-Meskal had begun his career at a religious school in the Gondar region. One day a fellow student died. The memhir called everyone together and said: ‘One of our brothers has died suddenly. Something is not right.’
They agreed that it was a punishment from God. It made them uneasy because they did not know what they had done wrong, and they couldn’t tell what would happen next.
‘We must make a pilgrimage,’ the memhir said. ‘Someone must go to Jerusalem, without shoes.’
A senior monk was chosen as leader and two others appointed to go with him. Young Abba Gabre-Meskal was one of them. They took with them the Psalms of David, a Book of Hours and gourds for water.
‘We set off with our faith. We put our trust in the will of God.’
They had no shoes.
In Tigray they came to the palace of Ras Seyoum. At the gates were many people—the sick, the poor and the needy. But the pilgrims’ leader was a well-known monk and Ras Seyoum himself came down to see him.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘We are going on a pilgrimage. One of our brothers died.’
The ras asked the monks to say a prayer for him at the church of the Holy Sepulchre. He gave them thirteen silver Maria Teresa thalers. The monks went on their way. They reached the border to the Sudan, and on the other side, the soldiers arrested them.
‘You are spies!’ they said.
‘We are not spies,’ explained the monks. ‘We are pilgrims on our way to Jerusalem. Look, we have no shoes.’
But the soldiers put them in the prison. They stayed there for a month and then the monks heard the soldiers say: ‘Perhaps these men are not spies. They have no shoes.’
So the monks were released. They carried on through the desert. It was a very difficult time. They found only salty water and the ground was hard and stony. One day a stranger came up to them and said: ‘Why do you walk without shoes?’
‘We are pilgrims. We are going to Jerusalem.’
‘Look,’ he said, pointing to the distance. ‘There is a train. I can ask it to stop and then you can travel easily to your destination.’
They looked at the train. They saw the long line of carriages and the white trail of smoke above it. They saw its round spinning feet and they realised the man beside them was Satan, sent to tempt them.
‘Go away!’ they shouted, and he disappeared.
Sometimes they followed the Nile and sometimes they were in the desert. They reached the border to Egypt and on the other side of the border the soldiers arrested them.
‘You are spies,’ they said.
‘We are not. We are holy men. We have no shoes.’
The soldiers saw that it was true. But then one of the soldiers said: ’Be careful—they may be extreme believers!’
So the soldiers put them in prison for being extreme believers. They spent months in that Egyptian prison. Abba Gabre-Meskal said the prison wasn’t too bad. It reminded him of the monastery. He did not mind being locked up, the poor food, the crowding. What he did not like were the rats. In the end the Egyptians released them and they carried on. They came to a famous place. It was, said Abba Gabre-Meskal, a great piece of water between Egypt and Lebanon. They stood by the water and they realised they could not cross it. They were very sad, but thought: It is not the will of God that we reach Jerusalem.
‘Our leader said he would stay. He would wait to try and cross the water. But we decided to go home. It was the end of the journey.’
Abba Gabre-Meskal rose to his feet. He fetched a bowl of kolo, roasted corn.
‘There is one more interesting thing.’ He stood high above me, the sun behind his head and one finger pointing at the sky.
On the way home, he said, the two of them reached a place where they’d been warned there was a great
