Groundhog Night

There is no escape. You may as well try and enjoy it...

In 1994 I was travelling overland through Ethiopia, hoping to reach a port on the Red Sea coast and sail across to Yemen where a civil war was raging. I had a magazine commission from Esquire to write about it. When I told people this they sneered. I got comments like, ‘What are the fighters wearing this season?’ I said this was unfair. Esquire under new editor Rosie Boycott, had taken a more serious tone, and besides I’d write about military haircuts.

I’d been told in Addis that there were no flights to Eritrea and, since the war between the two countries had only recently ended, I believed it. An overland route seemed the only option. I took a bus east. It is a part of the world, and a journey, that I have mentioned in previous posts, ‘Drugs, Secrets and the Circling Hyenas’ and ‘Tennis and the Dictators’, but the evening described here came when I reached the town of Dire Dowa on July 17, the night of the World Cup Final.

In the qat market I get talking to Alem, or at least we exchange words that are comprehensible as individual sounds. He claims to be a teacher and has clearly learned his English from a dictionery. Conversation darts uncontrollably in peculiar directions. “Thailand is very trenchant, isn’t it? To some extent, are they formidable in Rwanda?”

Later, we sit in a bar, hoping that the big match will appear on the television. There’s a large crowd of expectant fans waiting for it. Italy against Brazil. The town seems febrile, a little crazed, but I don’t notice, not yet.

“Let us draught,”  says Alem. That means beer. I watch the people. He watches me. “The ceremonies are very interesting for you? Life is a shadow. Am I right? Isn’t it?”

A madwoman dashes inside and attacks the crowd with the broken branch of a tree. A drunken sailor rolls over to me. “So you want to get to Aseb?” Word travels fast. I’ve been asking everywhere about how to get to Aseb on the coast. He has a slight American accent, picked up on ships. “I went once. Oh my God! When the snap comes, you vomit. You need to talk to Samson… Come. He’s next door.”

I promise Alem that I will be back soon, but next door proves to be several hundreds of yards down dark alleyways and streets. I’m quickly disoriented and also tense, waiting for a robbery. The sailor opens a gate into a yard and we enter a house. Samson is inside. The place is run by a woman called Aster and is clearly a brothel. “There are house ladies and bar ladies,” says Samson when we find him, lounging on a sofa. “The house ladies have HIV.” He says this as though it’s a special bonus. The burgundy-coloured walls are covered in religious slogans and there’s a huge doll hanging from the ceiling with a dead white face. One of the girls asks me if she should send $39 to an address that has promised her a job on cruise ships. Aster squeezes in next to me on the sofa and starts plucking qat sprigs from long stems then feeding them to me. Coffee and tea are served. Clouds of incense and sandalwood obscure the darker passageways that lead off, but I can see movement and hear mutterings. The girl regains my attention by leaning over from behind and brushing my face with a peacock feather whispering, “Life is love.” Samson waves her away. She flounces off and puts on some music, a Hana Shenkute song that I’ve been hearing everywhere. Alem had translated the lyrics for me, in his own inimitable style: ‘I will feed you fish from the Blue Nile – that is my home. Do you want some chicken soup?’

A year ago, Samson tells me, he went to Aseb and caught a sambuk, a traditional wooden boat, across to Yemen. “I went with this beautiful girl, Madonna. Do you know that Ethiopia has 73% of the world’s most beautiful women?”

“I expect you’re right.”

When Samson and his 80 fellow passengers landed at night, they ran into the bush to escape the police. “We came to hut and there was food laid out – lots of it, like a huge wedding feast. We were so hungry that we went in and ate everything. Then we all fell asleep.”

When he woke up, Madonna was having sex with the man who owned the hut. She had made a deal with him and the police came and arrested everyone except her. Samson was deported back to Ethiopia, but doesn’t seem to bear a grudge. Madonna had done what was necessary and escaped the nightmare. I wonder if Samson has invented the entire story: it sounds suspiciously like a children’s fairy tale, except for the bit about Madonna having sex.

My own nightmare, on the other hand, is just beginning. Across the room a man in sunglasses with a sickly yellow complexion stares at me without smiling. “He’s a secret policeman,” Samson tells me, then shouts over the music, “Hey you! Am I right? You are a secret policeman?”

The man does not react in any way.

It turns out that I am paying for everyone’s qat and coffee, including that of the secret policeman, so I hand Aster some notes and use the excuse of going to the bathroom to escape into the street. Once outside I run. Someone shouts, ‘Firengi!’ but I keep going. I turn a corner and come across a  hotel where the lights are on and the bar is busy with people waiting for the football. It still hasn’t started although it feels to me like hours have passed. Waiters in green housecoats and bow ties wander around like absent-minded groundsmen inspecting the pitch. I sit down and order a draught beer and njera, the Ethiopian flatbread, with beef. The place is an Italian colonial leftover complete with Gaggia coffee machine and beer fountain.

A man called Theodosius sits down next to me. “Do you wish to sex one of these girls? For two draughts you may sex them maximally.”

“I was just going to watch the football.”

He is surprised, “Oh! You receive football?”

I seem to be attracting a particular strain of linguistically challenged alien. My njera comes, with a plentiful helping of beef.

“Did you inform the waiter that the beef should be cooked?” He takes command, sending my food back to the kitchen with instructions to cook the beef. “It is our custom to eat beef raw. Fortunately I am conversant.”

It soon returns and Theodosius rips a section of njera off. I assume he is helping himself, but instead he tries to push the food into my mouth. I start laughing. The night is just getting too surreal. Theo explains, “It is girsha, our custom to feed someone we like. You are the one who wants to go to Aseb, aren’t you?”

He is against the idea. “Better to travel for Massawa. Aseb is hell. Excuse me, I have a great urine and must drop it.”

While he is away, I wolf down the food, gulp my beer, then leave. Out in the street, there are a lot of people around, ragged people. A toothless woman is slumped on a pile of rags on the pavement trying to feed two naked children from her empty breasts. Her eyes are all gummed up. Her husband is standing over her, raving at the street, “Is this destruction? What is this destruction?” I give his wife some money and he grabs at me. “Hey you! Firengi!”

A cart pulled by a scrawny horse blocks my retreat from him, then another man gets in front of me and jabs an elbow into my belly. I twist round and catch sight of his face, glistening with sweat and frightened. Then I feel the hand sliding into my pocket. I grab the wrist. It is attached to a youth in rags who has crept up. Now he slashes at me with a knife in his other hand, but I dodge, letting him go. He backs off, hand still raised. The knife looks home-made. I shout, “Harami! Thief!” But no one even looks. Three well-dressed youths stroll past and I hurriedly attach myself to them. “This is a dangerous place for you,” they say, “No one will help you.”

I find a shop open and go inside to discover the owner, Mohamed Salem, is a Yemeni. I breathe a sigh of relief. In fact, he tells me, he is officially British as his father managed to wangle a passport out of the colonialists back in 1924 when he left Aden. He introduces me to his assistant, Hassan, an old man with a long beard reddened with henna and a green skullcap. Separating these two vivid colours is the withered chestnut of his face. He looks like the drooping flag of some long lost republic. “Why did you Britishers abandon us Adenis?” he asks. “We were friends for 120 years.”

“That is politics,” I say, “There are no friends in politics.”

“When will you become a Muslim?”

“When God wills it.”

That makes Mohamed laugh, “Aha! He’s got you there. When God wills it – very funny.”

I ask about boats across to Yemen and Mohamed confirms that Aseb is the best choice of port. He is a trader and has up-to-date knowledge. “Boats are going to Mokha from Aseb in a few hours. Don’t go to Djibouti, they all go to Aden and there’s a lot of fighting there. And Massawa is not good.” He talks about the old days: when he would bring camel caravans across the desert from the coast, laden with cloth from India and Yemen. On the return he’d take coffee, leather and baskets.

I am relieved. At last I’ve found someone who understands what I want to do. However, Mohamed has some bad news. “The land borders are closed. You can’t get to Eritrea overland. The only way at this time is to go back to Addis and fly from there.”

“I was there. They told me there were no flights.”

Mohamed chuckled. “They tell you that, but it’s not true.”

At that moment things get worse. The secret policeman sidles in and sits down. His yellow face is shiny with sweat. He says nothing. Mohamed’s eyes slide across to him and then away. “This is our great friend, one of our best friends.”

Mohamed and I both know that our discussion of ports is over. He is about to close the shop anyway and offers me a lift in a taxi. The secret policeman, still silent, simply follows us from the shop and gets in the taxi with us. Mohamed keeps up a ridiculous patter of praise. “Such a great friend, yes, one of the best!” I feel for him. Born here, but still an outsider, still a target.

I had planned to get dropped at my hotel, but now decide against this. I don’t want the sinister policeman to know where I’m staying. When I see another hotel, I ask to get out.

The secret policeman, I am surprised to note, stays in the taxi. In the hotel, the bar is full as the football has finally started. The girls here are wrapped in chiffon scarves, their skin the colour of honey. The lights are all UV tubes and the girls teeth flash like lightning when they smile. And here, improbably, is Alem who I’d met earlier, “Oh happy chance!” His English seems to have become even stranger. “Branco is polluted,” he tells me, “But affection for Romario supercedes.”

I order beer and write down his words as he speaks, knowing I will never remember such random utterances later. He does not appear to notice. “I have an idea in my pocket,” he announces. “What is apple?”

I cannot explain apple. I have lost the power of coherent speech. I have become a linguistically challenged alien.

“Is it a species of banana?” asks Alem.

Romario has missed an open goal. “Yes, a type of banana.”

He nods. “Approximately. Everybody is for Brazil.”

This, at least, is obviously true. The crowd scream in delight at every touch by a Brazilian and hoot in derision whenever Italy get the ball. It comes to a penalty shootout and when Italy miss, the place goes wild: glasses are smashed, people dance with chairs and in dark corners there is an electrical storm of teeth flashing as the girls are tickled. When Roberto Baggio misses his penalty, Brazil have won and the glasses start flying. I run outside in a crouch.

Somehow I find the railway station and from there I make it to my hotel, the Continental, the worst hotel in town but the nearest to the railway station. The place is full of shouts, breaking glass and the sound of things being kicked. Once I am in my room, people hammer on the door and I shout at them. Later, I hear them creep back and the handle slowly turns. Will the lock hold? There is only one available piece of furniture, a cabinet, but when I move it the top rips off. I somehow jam it under the door handle and lie down. As a last precaution before sleep engulfs me, I shove my passport and money into my underpants.

In the morning the secret policeman is in the hotel reception. I shout a cheery good morning at him as I stride past, with my bag. I am determined to get to the airport and take the first available plane out, swearing I will never return to Dire Dowa as long as I live, wrongly as it turns out.