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collecting stop
the five collecting journeys
principal roads, modern alignment
◌position approximate
the five collecting journeys
principal roads, modern alignment
◌position approximate
Wax and Gold
A first visit to Bahir Dar, a scholar’s wordplay, and the frightening story that became a lesson against the evil eye.
Written by Elizabeth Laird and adapted from The Lure of the Honey Bird (Polygon 2013).
You might have thought that the capital of the Amhara region would be Gondar, where the ghosts of past emperors seem to inhabit the magnificent remains of castles and palaces, built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But in fact the administrative capital of Amhara is the much newer city of Bahir Dar.
The Solomonic dynasty ruled Ethiopia from the late thirteenth century until Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974, though its authority and the extent of the empire changed greatly across those centuries. It held sway over a hugely varied patchwork of peoples. The feudal lords, government officials and soldiers were largely Amharas, and — in their homeland — so were the farmers. Traditionally, in many parts of Ethiopia farmers have held themselves aloof from skilled artisans, such as weavers, potters and metalworkers, who even today are often thought to possess the evil eye. This is not just an Ethiopian belief. Craftspeople in many parts of the world are still accused of having sinister powers. In Scotland not so long ago travelling itinerant metalworkers known as “tinkers” (a name now considered derogatory) were thought to be linked with the fairies. The Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) in the Amhara region, who were skilled potters, suffered especially from this superstition, and were falsely accused if a person fell unexpectedly ill.
Bahir Dar was the first place I visited in my quest for stories, and I was nervous when Daniel, from the Amhara Education Bureau, took me to meet Ato Shimelash Bequele, my first storyteller.
It took a while for us to be admitted. As we waited in a neat room lined with chairs, I was screwed up with embarrassment. What a cheek to march into someone’s house in the middle of the morning, and demand that they tell me stories!
“Ato Shimelash was a diplomat in the time of His Majesty,” Daniel hissed in my ear. “He suffered very much under the Derg.”
Then I understood why we were being kept waiting. Ato Shimelash belonged to the generation which had suffered unspeakably at the hands of the Derg, which overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and established a Stalinist tyranny, only to be ousted in its turn in 1991. Tens of thousands of people had died in the terror “purges”. A sudden knock on the door and the appearance of strangers must have been unnerving.
When at last we entered Ato Shimelash’s study, he was standing behind his desk. He had the fair skin of a high-born Amhara and his neat white beard gave him a resemblance to the old emperor, who is now revered by many Ethiopians, and is referred to simply as “Majesty”.
The room was lined with books in Amharic and English. A collection of antique Ethiopian jewellery hung from a frame near the window. Behind the large desk, on which stood ivory ornaments, was a bed covered in a handsome woven cloth. It was the room of a scholar.
Ato Shimelash greeted us in perfect English. He had lived in London, he said, in the 1950s. He probed me gently about myself. I’d known one of his former colleagues. My stock rose. I explained my mission. Could he tell us any stories? He wasn’t sure.
“There are some books you should consult,” he said. “I will find some for you.”
Daniel, frisking about on his chair, explained again that we wanted folktales, not literary stories, and urged him to tell a story himself.
After fiddling with his pen for a while, Ato Shimelash at last cleared his throat. Filled with excitement, I switched on my tape recorder.
“It must be in Amharic,” Ato Shimelash warned.
“No problem,” said Daniel. “I will translate later for Mrs Elizabeth.”
And so the first storytelling session began.
Later, as Daniel and I sat in the garden of our hotel, the waters of Lake Tana glinting beside us, I couldn't wait to hear the translations of Ato Shimelash’s stories. What a disappointment! There were only a few fragments of wit, poems and snatches of anecdote.
“Here is one,” Daniel said, his ear to the tape recorder. He wrinkled his brow with the effort of teasing out the convoluted meaning in English. “Her chest looks like the orange of Shenno. And he said, ‘She is mad, let me also be mad.’ There is a double meaning. Mad. It is associated with sex. This is wax and gold, you see. Wax and gold!”
This was getting us nowhere. Ethiopian poetry delights in “wax and gold”,* in riddles, cryptic meanings and subtle interpretations. Ato Shimelash had done his best, but it was clear that folktales were beneath him.
Fortunately, folktales were not beneath the other storytellers I was to meet in Bahir Dar, and the day after I'd said goodbye to Ato Shimelash, I heard one of the most terrifying tales in the whole Ethiopian collection. A man with the evil eye turns people into zombies and makes them his slaves. He is finally caught and driven out of his village. The young storyteller narrated this tale in a low voice and assured me, repeatedly, that it was true.
After he'd fallen silent, I asked him where he'd heard it.
“My mother told it to me.”
“Where were you at the time?” I wanted him to paint a picture for me. He did so, with some prompting.
“At night, when we sat by the fire. She would make sure that the door was shut, because of the hyenas, and pull her shamma over us because we were frightened, and tell us this story to make us beware of people with the evil eye.”
That evening, I met the head of the Amhara Educational Bureau and told him about the zombie man who had been driven out of his village.
“Put it in your book for children,” he said, “but place it in a context where you can show what harm it has done to people, and how false it is. This will be doing everyone a service.”
And so I did.
Read the story as preserved in the original collection: Evil Eyed Man, and in simplified English: The Man with the Evil Eye.
* “Wax and gold” describes a form of double meaning, much admired in Amhara literary culture, which delights in ambiguity, riddles, puns, cryptic meanings and subtle interpretations. The hidden meaning (the gold) can only be understood when the wax concealing it has been melted away.
