CIVILISATION COMES TO IIARRAR
By LAWRENCE ATHILL
FROM the roof-garden of my house you could look down on Harrar where it lay, a toy city, straddling a low-spur and flanked on three sides by a fruitful valley green .with plantations of " Bath " and coffee and the gardens -of the well-to-do. Around and within its walls there was • incessant• movement. Now it was a petty official- with his white-clad following who entered its gates, and now a little troop of donkeys half hidden by giant loads of grass or firewood, or a long string of camels with their burden of hides or coffee that shuffled in stately progress along the dusty road towards the North ; while always a stream of water-carriers climbed or descended the steep pathways to the river bed below the..walls. Dominating the town rose the tin roofs of the Dedjazmatch's " gibbye " and the minaret of the tiny. mosque, and on Sundays a touch of alien colour was. •lent -by the flag, disproportionately large among its miniature surroundings, which flapped lazily above the Italian Consulate. Seen in the glare of the midday sunor in the gentler light of evening, it was at all times a picture in which peace and activity were strangely mingled.
It was a cosmopolitan city. Harraris and Ethiopians, Arabs, Indians and Somalis, Armenians and Levantines —all-shared its life and commerce, while the Consulates, the. Post Office, the Mission and the Hospital contributed their quota, small enough to be counted on the fingers of two hands, of European residents; and of every race and religion, on one pretext or another, some would find their way to my house and garden with its shady pepper trees, its beds of violets and nicotiana and its chattering colony of weaver birds. Debtors and creditors, bankrupts and applicants for passports, came on business. On State occasions the whole community of British subjects sat at long tables spread beneath the trees to drink their ceremonial cup of tea. and later disported themselves variously upon the lawn. Portly merchants from distant Gujarat lolled in chairs and talked of trade and prices. Grave Arabs from the Yemen fingered their beards contemplatively with courteous eructations. Somalis, .lithe and supercilious, watched with ill-veiled contempt the rather futile games of catch-ball indulged in by the •younger Indians. Such were my official guests.
Other guests I had, who, though officials, visited my garden in private guise. There was the Dedjazmatch, small frail man of great but unassuming dignity. Most of his life was- spent in tedious business, long sessions of the -Chilot and urgent matters of administration. • But when he -came to my garden -he came for peace, leaving the cares of State with his bodyguard outside its Walls. He and 'his wife, a shy lady, would sit by my lily-pond • and display to my inexpert admiration their baby whom,- in deference to Western civilisation, they had adorned with striped socks and a hideous white and magenta woollen cap. They spoke little, but were charming and contented guests. The Dedjazmatch is now a Has, commanding one of the armies of the North. I shall always remember him as a very gentle man.
Then there was the Alaqa. He was a dignitary of the church, tall, bearded and monkish. He came to read my copy of The Contendings of the Apostt,s, a facsimile of a famous Ethiopic manuscript. But he would talk of many things, having written a history of the world illustrated with diagrams and cabalistic signs. I could understand little of his conversation, but I loved to watch him bending his tired eyes upon the pages of my book or leaning back to discourse gravely on subjects far beyond my ken. Then there was another monkish visitor, Pere Charles from the L6proseric. Pere Charles was the most French of Frenchmen, short, muscular and perspiring. He was a great musician, and we would climb to the room on the housetop which housed a small American organ ; and there the Father would play Gregorian music and chant in a deep booming voice. in striking contrast to the nasal droning of the postulants in the courtyard of Saint Mikail's Church which lay just beyond my garden wall.
Or again, it was the Cavaliere who came to see me, but always on compulsion. For the Cavaliere was a retiring man and hated to intrude. When I invited him he would say " Is it an order, mon Commandant ? " and I would say " Yes, it is an order " ; and then he would come and drink Chianti with me and talk about his beloved Italy which he would never see again. He had married a Galla woman and raised a great troop of children whom he would on no account desert, and for this reason he felt himself exiled and degraded. But I thought that a man who could bear so faithfully the burden of a youthful indiscretion and who, through all those years of exile, could still remain so sturdily Italian, was a very great gentleman indeed. The Cavalicre is dead now.
But I, too, had visits to pay, and for these I had to penetrate the town. I would ride through the gateway, past the guard, the courtesy of whose salutation would, I fear, depend a little on how near it was to customary day for distributing baksheesh. Up the narrow winding streets, so narrow that my knees would brush the passers- by, Abyssinian squireens on mule back, with long curved swords, who would dismount to give a courteous reverence, bending from the waist with drawn back foot, or bold gipsy-faced Harrari women. Through the market-place, the Faras Magalla, where the beggars clustered and the kath-addicts sat propped against the walls oblivious of the flies that crawed upon their faces and smiling vacuously. at the visions which clouded their drugged senses. Perhaps I would find Monsieur Bex.sasse of the Post Office sipping his aperitif outside the Café Imperial (or was it the Cafe de la France ?) ; for is it not one of the most amazing characteristics of the French that where two or three are gathered together there a cafe will inevitably spring into existence? So I would come to the Hospital, and to that gallant Breton who so soon after gave his life in unsparing devotion to the victims of the influenza plague which as it swept the world took nowhere heavier toll than in the towns and villages of Ethiopia. And from him I would pass to Monseigneur Jarrousseau in his Mission. I can see him now, with his long straggling beard, his stooping shoulders and his burning eyes. For him there flamed two bright abiding stars, the spreading of the Gospel and the glory of France ; and I know that he felt that in following the guidance of the first he best served the purpose of the second.
So, my visits paid, I would ride back through the gathering dusk, while from a side-alley there would fall- upon my ears the music of a two-stringed lute thrummed by some idle Ethiopian minstrel. That is Harrar as I remember it.
But that is not Harrar of today, for on March 29th, 1936, sixteen aeroplanes flew over Harrar and left their civilising message. They did not quite achieve their task, for on that evening only half the town was in flames. The Ethiopian Cathedral had gone. So had the hospital. We have no news of how Pere Charles and his lepers fared, but we hear that only part of the Catholic Mission is in ruins. The lute player, if not already mobilised, has doubtless fled to the hills, but Monseigneur Jarrousseau, the seventy-year-old vicar- apostolic, refused to leave his Mission and is said to have escaped unharmed. Perhaps tomorrow the aeroplanes will return, and then the civilising of Harrar will be complete.
Previous page
