In Ethiopia with a Mule by Dervla Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

fourteen miles, so both Jock and I were fresh enough to cope with the remaining four miles to the next village. But Leilt Aida forbade me to continue – ostensibly because hyenas might attack Jock after dark, though I suspect that her real fear was of shifta attacking me. She then sent the driver to reconnoitre a steep, uncultivated mountainside that rose directly from the track on our right; there was no trace of an upward path and it would never have occurred to me to look for shelter in such an apparently unpopulated area.
    By now it was dark and as we sat waiting, on a low stone wall, Leilt Aida repeated that I must telephone her whenever possible and not hesitate to ask for help if in need. I thought then of the words spoken by one of her ancestors to the 1841 British trade mission. His Majesty Sahela Salassie, seventh King ofShoa, had said, ‘My children, all my gun-people shall accompany you; may you enter into safety. Whatsoever your hearts think or wish, that send word unto me. Saving myself, ye have no relative in this distant land.’ The difference here was that no gun-people were accompanying me, and it was obvious that Leilt Aida had already begun to reproach herself for not insisting on an escort.
    Fifteen minutes later a favourable report was shouted from the hilltop and, waving goodbye to Leilt Aida and Christopher, I began to lead Jock up the steep slope, scrambling blindly over or around rough rocks and through excruciatingly prickly scrub. We were guided by the driver above and Leilt Aida below. He would yell down in Amharic, ‘More to the right,’ or ‘A little left there!’ and she would yell the translation up to me. Reaching the top, I saw by starlight that we were on a level, scrub-covered plateau. Here the driver produced as my guide an awe-stricken, speechless youth – whose name I later discovered to be Marcos – and then he bounded down to the track, while Leilt Aida and I yelled final goodbyes.
    Ten minutes later, as we were being led along a narrow path, I saw the car jolting slowly away towards Makalle, which was visible as a cluster of dim lights on a plateau level with this. Across all the intervening countryside no other lights glimmered, though there must be many settlements among these hills, and the dwindling headlights of the Mercedes seemed pleasingly symbolic.
    When we reached this compound it, too, was in darkness – apart from the flicker of a dying wood-fire in the smallest of the three stone huts – and it took me fifteen minutes to unload Jock. (It was the measure of today’s disorganisation that my torch lay at the bottom of a sack and could only be got at after the untying of countless complicated knots.) Marcos must be used to unloading mules, but he seemed to have been mentally numbed by astonishment – or else he believes that there is some special mystique connected with faranj -owned pack-animals. He made no attempt to help until I had somehow induced everything to come to pieces; then, while I fumbled through the sacks for food, torch, insecticide-powder and notebook, he led Jock to a shelter, before carrying my load into the smallest hut. This was round and solidly built, with a pointed grass roof and two-foot thick walls. A quarter of the floor space was taken up by a mud ‘stove’, some eighteen inches high, another quarter by two six-foot mud- and-wicker grain storage bins, and the rest by an uneven mud couch, covered with a stiff cow-hide and raised two feet above the floor. Marcos dumped my load on this bed, bent down to blow the embers and, when a handful of twigs had begun to blaze, gave me an uneasy, sideways glance. I grinned cheerfully inreply – without saying anything, since my earlier attempts at communication had seemed only to scare him. He was a handsome youth, with a broad brow, a straight nose, slightly prominent cheek-bones and fine eyes. Beneath his unease I sensed a nice nature and now he responded to my grin with a quick, shy smile,