The Cradle of Humankind and Herodotus
On our way to the Danakil Depression. At first, they just seem austere, the mountains. Here and there, human beings are living in primitive huts consisting of skeletons of sticks covered with plastic. The jeep roars along as part of a fairly large convoy. An armed guard accompanies us.
“Why is he here?”
“We are approaching the Eritrean border. The rebels are running around out there.”
“What rebels are those?”
“The Afar rebels.”
“The Danakil tribes?”
“The Afar rebels.”
The English sentences that are produced by the guide Abdom seem to be ones he has learned by rote and is producing without having understood what has been asked. He reels off sentences that later turn out not to have been connected to anything else. In the beginning, you don’t notice it; later, you realize that this is how it is.
“The rebels are wandering around out in Danakil, yes, the Afar rebels, but what do they want?”
“The Afar rebels.”
“Yes, I’ve understood that, but why?”
“They want to destroy tourism and Ethiopia.”
“There was a thing recently—this was two weeks ago—a German tourist and his guide were shot out at Erta Ale. What happened there?”
“The Afar rebels.”
“Yes, we’ve heard that.”
“The Afar rebels want to destroy tourism. They are from Eritrea. They want to destroy Ethiopia.”
“We’ve heard about that. There’s also a different version of the story according to which it was the group’s own armed guards that shot the German, by accident, but if it was an accident, then how could things have gone so wrong that they also shot the guide?”
“The Afar rebels.”
“What are we even doing out there?”
The Danakil Depression is a vision. I have the black deserts inside me like vast mental states into which I can see myself drifting. But I don’t know what the black deserts are. I don’t know what the white plains are. I can’t quite take in what it means that a piece of this Ethiopian land lies one hundred twenty meters below the surface of the sea, that it is one of the hottest places on earth. It is an earthly reality onto which I will have to step, into which I will have to stick a finger. I do know I must experience it. The harsh lava mountains are getting darker and darker. The temperature is rising.
Boris and Henry are with us in our jeep. They are an entertaining pair. Henry is extremely feminine. He has a rock-and-roll shock of hair that either stands straight up or falls down over his forehead. He is wearing a big pair of pop-star glasses with blue frames and tight low-riding jeans with ripped knees like the ones young people wear, but young, he’s not. He’s previously worked in the fashion industry. Now he’s traveling with Boris, a masculine Russian who’s lived in France for many years. Henry and Boris. They’ve been all over the world together. Boris is heavy-set, with short-trimmed hair and a bald spot and a dense, well-trimmed beard, a camera with an unbelievably long lens around his neck. Henry is always talking about where they’ve been. He never seems to be where he is. He shows us his pictures from Oromoland, the plate tribes, the villages with the naked inhabitants and their customs, tells us about how you travel to the neighboring village and buy yourself a wife. “It’s all so adventurous. And they are happy and sweet. If you just pay them a little money in advance, you can take as many pictures of them as you like. Yes, and even the animals are sweet, they have the most magnificent monkeys, and they have rodents and other funny animals on leashes,” Henry hums.
“It’s a human zoo,” someone says.
“No, it’s so charming and authentic,” Henry responds.
He displays these photographs endlessly. It’s hard to take your eyes off them and look out the window so you can quietly watch this bizarre landscape shifting from Moon to Mars, how it becomes more and more barren, how the avian life gradually disappears, how there still appear to be human beings living between the dry black formations of stone, graveled and dusty, on this rainless land suddenly darkened by clouds that entirely unexpectedly release a wind of drops that fall on a place where there is hardly a plant growing. But there it stops. Now the sun has broken through again. Now the landscape is white and brown. Now it is almost black. Basalt.
We drive across the cradle of humankind. Seen from God’s window, a little cradle in a dry garden. Seen from ours, an endless desert. But God’s window is empty. He’s not sitting there any longer, looking thoughtfully at his work. Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy or Dinkinish, “you are marvelous” in Amharic, rises on her uncertain legs and takes her first steps in the morning sun out there. She holds her child in one arm, holding herself up off the earth with the other, then she lifts her child up on her back and walks on. That was three point two million years ago. Three point two drops in the sea of the stars.
Once, we emigrated to find our way. We emigrate to find our way to a life. A temporary home. But the world is round. Our feet have experienced that. The world is also life, which sees the prison and death in every nail, every wheel, every corner, every stone, every street, every look. The sun roaring in with its drought. And even if we leave each other, we meet again. That’s the hope, anyway. That’s how it is all the time. The time. There’s not enough time. Before the departure, it appears impossible to get an overview of the future. Later, the future is already the past, already something that has stored itself in a little bubble in the time that passed. That’s when our stories begin.
Already in the ancient world, Ethiopia was seen as the cradle of humankind. The earliest human beings were black because of the heat, wrote Herodotus, going on as follows.
Where the south leans to the setting sun lies Ethiopia, which is the last inhabited land in that direction. There is a great deal of gold. There are enormous elephants everywhere, there are all kinds of trees and ebony, and the men are taller and more beautiful and live longer than anywhere else in the world. Ethiopians were dressed in the skins of leopards and lions, and they had long bows made of palm leaf fibers and no less than four ells in length. On these they laid short arrows made of reeds, and the arrowhead was not of iron but of polished stone of the kind one uses to engrave seals. They also carried spears whose point was a sharpened antelope horn, and in addition, they had knotted whips. When they went to war, they had painted their bodies, half with chalk, half with cinnabar …. From Egypt, after forty days’ journey along the Nile and then twelve days’ sailing across a sea, one reaches Meroë, the capital of Ethiopia, where people worship Zeus and Dionysus.
Despite her scientific reality, Lucy is one of the myths that contribute to obscuring the reality of the real Ethiopia, the conflicting Ethiopia of the real world. Myths that attract the traveling fantasizer and romantic prevent the panorama of reality from appearing as it is. But I say: Take a day-long bus journey in Ethiopia, and reality will not bluff you.
The Mill of History
Theis and I have been schoolteachers most of the time. It doesn’t work well to present yourself as a writer in a country where surveillance is used everywhere, where local spies show up in the strangest places, but now that we are sitting together with Boris and Henry, we tell them that we write. This doesn’t impress Boris, but Henry loves literature. Everything that’s exotic, romantic, and grand.
“You know that it was the ancient Greeks that called Ethiopia Aethiopia, the land of burnt faces, right?”
For a moment, Henry forgets his experiences in Oromoland and in Indonesia, South America, and Borneo. Henry loves drama and big feelings. “Oh, read The Abyssinian by Jean-Christophe Rufin, a great, dramatic historical novel.” Henry’s eyes are enthusiasm and emotion. “And poems, oh, I love poems.”
Henry speaks English without an accent despite being French; it’s Oxford English because he once lived and studied in England.
“Poetry,” he sighs. He quotes Verlaine. “And Verlaine, he was the one who drifted around with the teenager Rimbaud.”
Henry has gotten excited. “The Rimbaud that Verlaine later called L’homme aux semelles de vent, the man with soles of wind, a modern Hermes.”
“The man with soles of wind was here, out there. Out there, he traveled with his camels across the Danakil Depression to sell his weapons to King Menelik II, straight across the desert. That’s always fascinated me,” Henry sighs, casting a longing look out the window.
“Oh, how beautiful was that man, that poet. That life! Oh.”
Meanwhile, the jeep grinds across the lumpy, the bumpy black landscape, and Boris has strapped his enormous camera to his face. He, too, thus grinds along together with his sweet, sensitive Henry like a horny cyclops.
Poor Arthur Rimbaud, who had to travel back to France in extreme pain in order to have his cancerous leg amputated. He did not escape the millstone of history. In his poetry, he was the wild man. Shouts, drumming, dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing. Dancing. Drumming. Dancing. In the reality that followed, he was the merchant who had to negotiate with “the wild man,” the merchant who fired up the war with the weapons he sold to King Menelik, who cheated him anyway. The great Menelik, who was at least as clever and cynical as his European contemporaries, who negotiated with him regarding land and borders in the Scramble for Africa, Menelik, who beat the Italians and sent them home. But the guns Rimbaud sold could be ones the French army had discarded. Who, then, was cheating whom? Shouts, drumming, dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing. Go, go, go. Gold, gold, gold. Gold. The burdensome gold belt. The painful knee. The constantly heavier belt straining the constantly more painful knee. The burning sun. The swollen knee. The gold belt pressing the knee down into the hell of pain. Step by step. The pointless labor of existence. The long valley of suffering, hunger, thirst, and the final journey, when he departed it on a stretcher while people died around him until he himself expired at a hospital in Marseille, in the Europe he had left eleven years earlier.
And the mill of history goes on like that.
We drive into a refugee camp. More jeeps arrive. Tourists tumble out into the dust. There are people living here, refugees from South Sudan and Eritrea. They are fleeing the civil war in Sudan. They are fleeing from oppression and forced military service in Eritrea. Some will attempt to get to Europe, some—most—to Yemen, from where they can travel to Saudi Arabia under cover of the horrifying proxy war if they get a chance, if they can get out of Danakil, but how do you get out of the Danakil Depression? They can’t just stroll away. And can people live here? I take a picture with my battered iPhone. A boy waves me away. The bulging black lips. He bares his teeth.
“No photo,” he hisses. He is ten years old.
“No, no,” he keeps saying.
He has black grooves of bitterness and malnutrition in his face.
“No, no,” he shouts, waving his thin arms.
We’re going to go into a stick hut and eat. There are plastic chairs set up in a row. We’ve brought the food with us. Big pots. A young woman works in the kitchen together with the cook. Big curly hair, full body, eyes full of life. A body that holds the dance. I cough in the dust. The refugee camp here and the ten jeeps with tourists there. Perverse cocktail of voyeurism and need. An Israeli woman dances to the music pumping out of a jeep. A young Dutch couple stand closely entwined. They caress each other. One of his hands on one of her buttocks. Hand and buttock. Dust and music. Stones and shattered teeth. The children appear. The dancing Israeli now plays soccer with the children, the ball a torn sphere of brown fabric. She finds it pleasant and beautiful for the ten minutes it retains her interest, and the children whine. The queasiness pounds in my throat. Thin adults stand at a bit of a remove, watching with weakened eyes. Their dusty, bony black bodies partly covered by rags. A few of the tourists dare to move away from the meal hut and the cars a little and click away with their cameras.
We get back in and continue to a military post. We’re out of the dry Martian mountains. Now it’s flat. Now the heat is hammering us. Now death is the dusty absence of life. We drive out over a flat plain of brown stones and crusts of salt, out there at the military post, where there’s also a bar for soldiers. That’s where we’re to stay overnight. A lot of wicker beds out there. We choose our spot with nervous, if not oversensitive care. On one side, behind one of the stick huts, there is a building of an industrial type where a great yellow quivering light streams from a blinding eye. Theis and I pull our beds over to the other side and avoid the industrial light, which looks like a lost psychotic moon in the middle of the gray-black bumpy lava plain. And the night falls silently down into our skulls. And we lie down on the beds and look up at the stars. Until perhaps we fall asleep. Until perhaps we dream a dream of a guide who leads us into an ambush so the Danakil rebels can slit our throats. Theis is nervous. He’s told me to keep my fantasies to myself. I’ve said no one is going to tell me to keep anything to myself. I’m glowering with rage. I try to keep it down in my belly. All the humiliating stomps—I can hear them, how they’re moving down in my belly. Why does it become so clear out here? Why does my childhood become so clear, so sharp out here? I suck the shadows down into my belly and shit them out in salt and basalt.
“I got scared. I didn’t mean to criticize you,” says Theis.
That took my brain off the boil. He took a pill that made him once again feel like what most other people call “a human being.”
You shouldn’t lock up the demons in your belly.
“It’s okay,” I say to Theis. “I apologize for that rage.”
A Goat Horn
A tall, athletic Dutch woman has accompanied us to an improvised bar in the military camp. She hangs around us most of the evening. Her boyfriend is in another group. He sneaks glances at us. He is big and muscular. We write, we’ve told her. She finds that interesting. She’s a doctor herself.
“What do you write about?”
Theis takes out his cell phone, shows us a picture. He’s in doubt about the cover of his forthcoming novel.
“Should it be the fiery red one or this other one?”
The Dutch woman looks down at the screen. “The fiery red one,” she says.
“The fiery red one,” I say.
We drink some beers at the improvised bar in the military camp. The Dutch woman’s boyfriend finds us. He sits down on the periphery. She wants to know what it’s like to write, what we write. She is a shining hungry sun in the Danakil night of the military camp.
“The last sentences,” Theis explains, “they’re running around in my brain like the cover dilemma.”
“It’s a monstrous, often impenetrable system of compulsive thoughts, writing a book,” I say. “You get out of it temporarily with alcohol. Then you’ve had it because the price is self-hatred and vomiting up slimy, bad sentences. In reality, you never get time off.”
Theis’s novel is everything right now. Sometimes it’s stuck in the window so he can hardly see anything else. When it’s possible, he opens the document to look the sentences over. It’s an endgame.
I’m in a different place. I have to suck everything into myself as though the face of my senses were the mouth of a monstrous vacuum cleaner tube. Later you register at the stylistic institution, the luminescent neurosis factory. There you lock yourself in until one day you let yourself out and stand completely alone in the wilderness with nothing to hang on to.
In the evening, the bar closes, the bottles are collected. We move toward the camp and the wicker beds in the open. The Dutch boyfriend drifts on the perimeter while she keeps questioning us about the writing process.
The next morning, that guy, the Dutch boyfriend, comes over to me. He’s holding a dirty goat horn.
“Look at this,” he says. “It’s a goat horn.”
I don’t say anything.
“I found it near the camp here.”
“Okay,” I say.
“It’s yours,” he says.
“No, thanks,” I say.
We stand there facing each other for a little while without saying anything, without knowing what is to happen next.
“Have a good morning,” I say, and I turn around and leave.
The Darkness of the Soul
“What I think,” says Theis, “is that there is a little bit more evil than good in the universe, that creating something beautiful can momentarily balance the cosmic account. If that were not the case, there would be no reason at all to write.”
“Was your childhood evil, then?”
“No, not at all, but I’ve suffered from anxiety since I was nine … and as a thirteen-year-old I was involved in a traffic accident ….”
“What happened? Well, I mean, of course, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s not like that. I can tell you. I was in seventh grade. It was in the middle of January, dark and cold. It was raining. I had been at work in Ry, at a dry cleaner, and in the evening, I was biking homeward, toward the village we lived in. Alling, it’s called. There was a lonely country road between Ry and Alling. Suddenly I was hurled down into a deep ditch. I lay there thinking, ‘You can’t hear anything. You were hit by a vehicle, but why isn’t there anybody here?’ I figured out that the person in question, the person who had hit me, had kept going. I couldn’t move my lower body. I remember it was raining on me. I was three or four meters down in a ditch. Once in a while I could sense a car passing up on the road. I thought, ‘The rain that’s falling is completely indifferent to the fact that I’m lying here. I have no feeling in my lower body, and I can’t get up.’ Eventually, I thought, ‘I’m going to sleep.’ I doze off. There’s a brief period when I’m out, but then I open my eyes. I drag myself out of the ditch with my arms. There’s a car stopped at the edge of the road. A man gets out. ‘What’s happened to you?’ ‘I got run down,’ I reply. ‘How old are you?’ he asks. ‘And can you remember your telephone number?’ I can see he’s standing there making a call. He waves the next car over to the side. The person who stops is a nurse. She has an infusion pump in her glove compartment (I am told about this later). They spend a while getting the infusion pump to work, but they can’t find a pulse. They eventually realize that I’m bleeding from my back. Now they call an ambulance. I lie in there for a long time, they’ve packed me in an anti-shock-type blanket that looked like aluminum foil. Fragments, I remember only fragments. I’m lying inside the ambulance. My mother’s face is looking at me from above. A doctor is sitting there, and I think they don’t they have the type of blood I need. Now I’m lying on a gurney and being pushed through the corridors at Silkeborg Hospital. I see my big sister and my father’s face. A nurse says, ‘Remember to breathe’; then they put me under general anesthetic. I’m in intensive care for seventy-two hours. They move me to a room where I have to lie still on my back until the wound heals. I lie there like that for three weeks, and after that, there are a few months during which I am on crutches. The sick part of this story is that the hit-and-run driver turns out to be the father of a boy with whom I start the eighth grade the following school year.”
“The hit-and-run driver … what about him?”
“A description was published in the local media. A van belonging to a mason. The mirror hit my shoulder. He had spray-painted it orange himself, and because of the fragments in the ditch, a local resident recognized his vehicle. I went to court to testify against him. I clearly remember his white sneakers. The evening he ran me down, he had been under the influence of amphetamines and alcohol. He had been a nightmare figure for me, but one day when he stuck his head into the classroom to say something to his son, he was demystified. I remember that the son had said about his father that he was going on a long trip, but in reality, he was to serve time in prison. The accident was a great trauma for me. It destroyed my trust in the world.”
The Danakil Depression
Today is the day we drive out into the salt desert. First bumpy stone-brown-gray; then it gets lighter; now white, white; now yellowish; now again white, then dry gray. It’s in all the gray that we see the salt workers among their camels and their donkeys. The animals stand right out in the sun, in a daze. Many of the workers stand around in a daze. Others are slaving in the sun with picks and pry bars. They force blocks out of the gray salt layers. You can see precisely how much salt they have hacked loose recently, for the plain behind them is still perfectly gray and smooth, pretty much like ice. With great effort and much groaning, four thin men lift up a long, thick flake, which they subsequently chop into blocks. The camels are loaded. The donkeys are loaded. A block is worth thirty birr, or seven to eight kroner. A camel can carry twenty blocks. It will take the camel two weeks to get from here to Mekele, where the salt is sold. The sweat pours down the bodies of the salt workers. Some of them are boys. Now a truck arrives filled with workers who jump out and join the work team. The American is out here. He’s sweating so the drops splash on the ground. He seems dizzy. Nevertheless, he can’t keep his mouth shut. He has to say something very loudly. He’s looking for it. It plagues him that he can’t find the right American sentence right here and right now. An exhausted boy in a ripped T-shirt is standing in front of him. The American bends over just a little, pointing down. At what is he pointing? It’s hard to say. The boy doesn’t understand it. Now the American expresses himself more precisely. He says out loud what’s on his mind.
“US. US. You know US? Do you want to go there?”
Yes, it says “US” on the boy’s socks. But the boy still doesn’t understand it; shaking his head, he turns and walks away.
“Jovial psychopath,” says Theis.
“Pig,” I say.
We’re all pigs, I think. What the hell kind of scene is this? I question Abdom. How can it be going on? Is there a reality with a minimum of dignity at all? This salt transport has been going on for hundreds of years. But without tourism, it would not continue to exist; Abdom tries to explain this. The tourism out here exists because the salt trade exists; the salt trade exists because the tourism exists. It’s a story that turns around in itself like a snake biting its tail. But two weeks to Mekele? Through these grotesque badlands? Dead deserts. White cuts in the landscape. Black slag fields in which nothing living exists? Only flies, but they are there because there are human beings. Human beings and shit out at the military post. The area around the wicker beds and the tents and the little refugee camp and the black volcanic stone is a damned toilet. Dry shit and toilet paper are blowing around. We see how they get the caravan ready. There are perhaps a hundred camels and at least as many donkeys. The camels in a row, the donkeys in a packed herd. Slowly the caravan starts moving. The swaying animals, the little down-bent donkeys. The camel drivers and the salt workers in a slow procession onward. This is the melancholiest vision I have experienced. But it is not an inner vision. It is a vision the earth bears. This long row of animals and human beings, the caravan through the Danakil Depression, which wanders out through our sleep and beyond the incandescent horizon. It is melancholy and beautiful and repellent at one and the same time. Why am I standing here in this gigantic absurdity? So beautiful and cruel? We are herded into the jeep, our group, the other groups into their jeeps with their guides.
Now we have come to the sulfur springs. These are the bubbling ponds of sulfur and iron and phosphorus and salt. One pond sputters with oil and magnesium, potassium and salt. “Smear it on your arms, your body. It’s good. It’s healing,” says Abdom. I stick a hand down into the bubbling pot of oil and smear it on my face, my arms, which are now running with the greasy stuff. My face, which now burns and boils in the falling rays of the Danakil sun. The sulfur springs and the surrounding landscape are poisonous yellow and piss-orange twisting towers of coagulated lymph from an earthly hell in which the sun is pounding away, and the stench is so pervasive that we are told to put our gas masks on.
Gas masks?
Who in the hell has said anything about gas masks? Who is talking about gas masks?
There are no gas masks in our baggage. Why is it only now that they begin raving about gas masks? Only a group of middle-aged Japanese with punk haircuts are wearing gas masks. They look like shift workers from hell. They look like they have been here for a long time. They know how to behave in hell. They have learned this in school. They have had a subject called Survival in Hell.
We who have just arrived don’t understand it, of course. We cough and bend over. We tie scarves over our mouths and wander around in this poisonous yellow doughy inferno among twisted sulfur towers, and the deeper we penetrate into it, the stranger it becomes. After the yellow springs and the spewing greasy slime from the earth’s coughing innards, we move out into a gray-black city of ash towers. Ash, ash, ash and jagged mountains of slag that have created black gorges and small barren valleys. A warning of a barren primal landscape because the earth contains the answers we desire to all of the questions we aren’t actually going to have time to ask.
They drive us even farther out or deeper in, however you would describe it. There is a salt lake, Lake Assal, one hundred fifty-five meters below sea level. You can jump from salt flake to salt flake. You can stand out there under a quivering sun which is reflected in the fat, salty water, in the white salt flakes. You can try to regain your sight, like Orion. Look straight into the infernal sun. As if it were ice, cosmic inland ice at fifty degrees Celsius.
It gets to be late in the afternoon. A jeep rolls in and parks near ours. The music pounds through. The Israelis dance. It’s a Danakil salt desert rave. Abdom has brought wine. We sit on small plastic chairs in a circle and drink to each other’s health. The twilight is white and blue. Everything flows together out here. There are no living creatures other than human beings—us—who blast across and through everything.
The wine is gone, and now it’s time to move on to the military post and the wicker beds. We stop at a very long fencelike structure connected to a pump in a viscous salt liquid pond. The salt is pumped into pipes and out and hangs like stalagmites from the fence, which is several hundred meters long. Salt for the cities.
And there we see the caravan slowly pass. The one hundred camels loaded with blocks of salt, the one hundred donkeys loaded with blocks of salt, and the drivers and the workers among the animals. I walk away from the salt fence a little, toward the caravan.
Two drivers are standing next to a camel. The camel falls to its knees. It cannot keep going. I know that—how do I know it? But I know it is dying, and the drivers know what is happening, even though they do not say anything, do not try to get it to stand up because they know what is happening, that the camel is dying. I feel a sorrow spreading through each one of them. Or is it only a sorrow that I feel so easily, as an easy rider, so that I feel sorry for that animal, for them? It is heartbreakingly melancholy, the silent kneeling camel death in the Danakil Depression. After a little while, the drivers gather and move on with the caravan. They leave the dying camel there, kneeling.
Erta Ale
In the jeep, we sit with Boris and Henry. We pass the dead camel. It’s lying on its side. There is not a single carrion eater—there are no vultures or hyenas—there is nothing living anymore. For hours, the jeep beats its way across this coal-black landscape, which eventually becomes a kind of bushland mixed with small spots of gray lava where there are huts and half-naked children who run after us, hooting and shouting. Out there, we also see ostriches. They stalk along with their large upper bodies, their long throats, and their tiny little heads with the much too large eyes. Then there is again a shift, to hard, barren, black lava. No living things. It is dark when we get to the place where we are to spend the night. A camp built of stones with small enclosures of stones, as if for sheep. There we can unroll our sleeping bags. More jeeps arrive. Many groups pile out. There are guards, thin young men in camouflage uniforms with machine pistols. Tourists wander around the camp. They’re in a mood to take selfies with machine-pistol-bearing guards.
“Stand there,” says a woman. She takes a picture. She asks him to stay where he is so she can take a picture with herself in it.
Lava desert, soldier, machine pistol.
After dinner, which consists of spaghetti and soup—there’s always soup, but it’s also always good—we get ready to leave, in groups.
We’re going to walk in the dark for the three hours it will take to get up to the active volcano Erta Ale, one of the three volcanoes on earth where the inner magma is exposed and visible. An orange light in a giant fan shape rises up from the crater, a constantly roaring fire. This is uneven terrain, the porous and sharp volcanic slag waste that rises like walls farther out to the sides. I’ve made it this far. The patched talus has held all the way here. The closer we get, the more intense is the deep roaring of the volcano and the smoke drifting on the wind.
We make our way up to a plateau from which we have to descend a slope that consists of this porous volcanic material, where you have to focus intensely to avoid slipping. And when we’ve gotten back down, we walk across flakes of volcanic slag as light as Styrofoam that crack and split so your feet sink. The smoke is now dense. The sound of the fire from the crater a loud roaring. I can feel it in my heart, an unfamiliar tension. I can feel it in my temples, an alluring dread. I look around for Theis. Can’t see him. I know he is on his way to one of the things to which he has most been looking forward: looking down into a volcano. The surface is fragile; your feet go through it. How do they know you can’t fall all the way through? The orange light sweeps up and across the black sky, which is intermittently completely covered by black sulfur smoke that forces you to fold up completely, that drives my damned coughing completely out of my body, as though I were going to cough out all of my innards. I tie the scarf, the one Yohannes gave me, over my mouth and walk to the edge. I catch sight of Theis. He points to a human form standing very close to the abyss.
“It’s Boris, on his way into insanity,” Theis exclaims.
We shout to him. Others shout to him. He has his provocative long lens dipped into the void. He’s going to photograph the eternal.
Now there’s also a Chinese woman standing dangerously close to the abyss. Several of us shout to her; two tourists grab her and yank her back.
“Last year,” says Abdom, “a different Chinese woman threw herself into the pit. She had felt that she had been bullied by her Chinese traveling companions. She hit not the bubbling lava but a ledge protruding from the cliff wall. They sent a helicopter to extract the body.”
I stand at the edge. I look down into the abyss. The smoke is dense and intense; a strong gust of wind and it disperses. A broad river of orange and red glowing lava cascades in an orange glowing Victoria Falls. I can see orange columns of lava spraying straight up into the air. A guy who is a guide for a different group standing next to us says that we’re lucky, that last week he had a group out here, but the tourists couldn’t see anything. The smoke was too thick.
“They wanted their money back.”
“I don’t think you can make a volcano do what you want it to,” I say.
“No, I can’t, but they didn’t want to hear me say that.”
“This is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life,” says Theis.
The sulfur smoke is choking me with coughing. I just have time to take a last look down into this original hell of creation before we turn around to go back. We stagger across the thin porous layers of black shining lava flakes.
Menneskets vugge og Herodot
På vej mod Danakil Depression. Først virker de bare barske, bjergene. Her og der bor der mennesker i primitive pindeskelethytter overtrukket med plastik. Jeepen buldrer af sted som en del af en større kortege. En bevæbnet vagt er med.
Hvorfor er han med?
Vi nærmer os Eritreas grænse, rebellerne løber rundt derude.
Hvilke rebeller.
Afar-rebellerne.
Danakil-stammerne?
Afar-rebellerne.
Guiden Abdoms engelske sætninger virker indstuderede. Han lirer sætninger af sig, som det senere viser sig ikke har nogen sammenhæng med noget andet. I begyndelsen mærker man det ikke, så går det op for en, at det er sådan, det er.
Rebellerne flakker om ude i Danakil, Afar-rebellerne, ja, men hvad vil de?
Afar-rebellerne.
Ja, det er forstået, men hvorfor?
De vil ødelægge turismen og Etiopien.
Der var en sag for nylig, det er to uger siden, en tysk turist og hans guide blev skudt ude ved Erta Ale. Hvad skete der?
Afar-rebellerne.
Ja, det har vi hørt.
Afar-rebellerne vil ødelægge turismen, de er fra Eritrea, de vil ødelægge Etiopien.
Det har vi hørt, der er også en anden historie, der siger at det var gruppens egne bevæbnede vagter, der ved et uheld skød tyskeren, men hvordan kunne det gå så galt, at også guiden blev skudt, hvis det var et uheld?
Afar-rebellerne.
Hvad skal vi overhovedet derude?
Danakil Depression er en forestilling. Jeg har de sorte ørkener inden i mig, som udstrakte mentale tilstande, jeg kan se mig selv på vej ud i. Men jeg ved ikke, hvad de sorte ørkener er for noget. Jeg ved ikke, hvad de hvide sletter er for noget. Jeg kan ikke helt rumme, hvad det vil sige, at et stykke af dette etiopiske land ligger 120 meter under havets overflade, at det er et af de varmeste steder på kloden. Det er en jordisk virkelighed jeg er nødt til at betræde og stikke en finger i. Men jeg ved, jeg må erfare det. De barske lavabjerge bliver mørkere og mørkere, temperaturen stiger.
Boris og Henry, de er med i vores jeep. De er et underholdende par. Henry er i udpræget grad feminin, han har en rock’n’roll hårtot, der enten står lige op i vejret eller falder ned over panden. Han har et par store poppede briller med blå stel på, stramme jeans med hængerøv og flænset bukseknæ, som ungdommen, men ung er han ikke. Tidligere arbejdede han i modebranchen. For tiden rejser han med Boris, en maskulin russer, der har boet i Frankrig i mange år. Henry og Boris. De har været over hele kloden sammen. Boris er kraftig med kortklippet hår og måne og et tæt veltrimmet skæg, et kamera om halsen med en utrolig lang linse. Henry taler hele tiden om, hvor de har været. Han synes aldrig at være der, hvor han er. Han viser sine billeder fra Oromoland, tallerkenstammerne, landsbyerne med de nøgne indvånere og deres skikke, fortæller, hvordan man rejser til nabobyen og køber sig en kone. Det er så eventyrligt det hele. Og de er glade og søde. Man skal bare betale lidt til dem i forvejen, så kan man tage så mange billeder af dem, man har lyst til. Ja, og selv dyrene er søde, de mest pragtfulde aber har de, og sjove gnavere og andre dyr i snor, nynner Henry.
Det er human zoo, siger nogen.
Nej, det er så charmerende og autentisk, svarer Henry.
Han viser disse fotos i en uendelighed. Det er svært at slippe blikket ud ad vinduet, så man i stilhed kan se, hvordan det her bizarre landskab skifter fra Måne til Mars, hvordan
det bliver mere og mere goldt, hvordan fuglelivet langsomt forsvinder, hvordan der stadig synes at bo mennesker mellem de tørre sorte stenformationer, gruset og støvet, dette regnløse land, som pludselig fordunkles af skyer, og helt uventet slipper en vind af dråber, et sted, hvor der knap vokser en plante. Men derfra holder det også op. Solen er brudt igennem igen. Nu er det hvidt og brunt. Nu er det næsten sort. Basalt.
Vi kører hen over menneskets vugge. Set fra Guds vindue, en lille vugge i en tør have. Set fra vores en endeløs ørken. Men Guds vindue er tomt. Han sidder der ikke længere og stirrer
eftertænksomt ud på sit værk. Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy eller Dinkinish,“du er vidunderlig“ på amharisk, rejser sig på sine usikre ben og tager de første skridt i morgensolen derude. Hun holder sit barn i den ene arm, den anden støtter hun mod jorden, så løfter hun barnet op på sin ryg og fortsætter. Det er 3,2 millioner år siden. 3,2 dråber i stjernehavet.
Engang udvandrede vi for at finde frem. Vi udvandrer for at finde hen til et liv. Et midlertidigt hjem. Men verden er rund, det har fødderne erfaret. Verden er også livet, der ser fængslet og døden i hvert et søm, hvert et hjul, hvert et hjørne, hver en sten, hver en gade, hvert et blik. Solen, der buldrer ind med sin tørke. Og selvom vi forlader hinanden, mødes vi igen. Det er jo håbet. Sådan er det hele tiden. Tiden. Der er ikke tid nok. Før opbruddet forekommer fremtiden uoverskuelig. Senere er fremtid allerede fortid, allerede noget, der har lejret sig i en lille boble i den tid der gik. Der begynder vores historier.
Allerede i oldtiden betragtede man Etiopien som menneskehedens vugge. Menneskene var sorte på grund af heden skrev Herodot og videre:
„Hvor syden hælder mod den nedgående sol ligger landet kaldet Etiopien, det er det sidste beboede land i den retning. Der er masser af guld. Det vrimler med enorme elefanter, der er
alle slags træer og ibenholt; og mændene er højere og smukkere og lever længere end noget andet sted i verden. Etiopiere var klædt i skindet fra leoparder og løver og de havde lange buer gjort af palmebladsstængel og ikke mindre end fire alen i længde. På disse lagde de korte pile gjort af rørstængel, og spidsen var ikke jern, men et stykke sten slebet til som den slags man bruger til at indgravere segl. De bar også spyd, hvis spids var et hvæsset antilopehorn; og dertil havde de knudeknipler. Når de gik i krig havde de malet deres kroppe, halvt med kalk, halvt med cinnober … Fra Egypten efter fyrre dages rejse langs Nilen og derefter tolv dages sejlads over en sø når man til Meroe, Etiopiernes hovedstad, hvor man tilbeder Zeus og Dionysos.“
Lucy er, trods sin videnskabelige realitet, en af de etiopiske myter, som er med til at sløre blikket for det reelle Etiopien, virkelighedens (mod)stridende Etiopien. Myter som tiltrækker
den rejsende fantast og romantiker, forhindrer virkelighedens panorama i at træde frem, som det er. Men jeg siger: Kør en døgnlang tur i bus i Etiopien, og virkeligheden vil ikke
bluffe dig.
Historiens kværn
Theis og jeg har været skolelærere det meste af tiden. Det er ikke heldigt at føre sig frem som skrivende i et land, der betjener sig af overvågning overalt, hvor lokale spioner dukker op de særeste steder, men nu hvor vi sidder i selskab med Boris og Henry, fortæller vi at vi skriver. Det er ikke noget, der kan gøre indtryk på Boris, men Henry elsker litteratur. Alt det
eksotiske, det romantiske og storslåede.
Du ved godt, at det var de gamle grækere, som kaldte Etiopien for Aethiopia, de brændte ansigters land.
Henry glemmer et øjeblik oplevelserne i Oromoland og i Indonesien, Sydamerika og Borneo. Henry elsker drama og de store følelser. Oh, læs The Abyssinian af Jean-Christophe
Rufin, et vældigt historisk romandrama, Henrys øjne er begejstring og følelse. Og digt, ah, jeg elsker digte.
Henry taler uden accent, skønt han er fransk, det er Oxfordengelsk, det skyldes, at han har boet og studeret i England engang.
Poetry, sukker han og citerer Verlaine. Og Verlaine, det var ham, der rakkede rundt med teenageren Rimbaud.
Henry er oppe at køre, den Rimbaud som Verlaine senere kaldte L’homme aux semelles de vent, Manden med såler af vind, en moderne Hermes.
Manden med såler af vind var her, derude, der rejste han med sin kamelkaravaner over Danakil Depression for at sælge sine våben til Kong Menelek II, tværs over ødelandet, det har altid fascineret mig, sukker Henry og kaster et længselsfuldt blik ud ad vinduet.
Åh, så smuk den mand, den digter. Det liv! Åh.
Imens tæsker jeepen ud over det knoldede, det bumpede sorte landskab og Boris har surret sit enorme kamera fast til ansigtet. Således tæsker også han af sted i selskab med sin
søde, følsomme Henry, som en sprøjtegal kyklop.
Stakkels Arthur Rimbaud, der i største smerte måtte rejse tilbage til Frankrig kun for at få skåret sit cancerben af. Han undslap ikke historiens stenkværn. I digtet var han den vilde.
Råb, trommer, dans, dans, dans, dans. DANS. TROMMER. DANS. I virkeligheden, der fulgte, var han handelsmanden, der måtte forhandle med „den vilde“, handelsmanden, der
fyrede op under krigen med de våben han solgte til kong Menelek, som alligevel snød ham. Den store Menelek, der var mindst lige så snu og kynisk som sine europæiske samtidige,
der forhandlede med ham om land og grænser i The scramble for Africa, Menelek, der bankede italienerne ud af landet. Men de våben, Rimbaud solgte kunne også være af den slags den franske hær havde kasseret. Så hvem snyder hvem? Råb, trommer, dans, dans, dans, dans. Gå, gå, gå. Guld, guld, guld. GULD. Det tyngende guldbælte. Det smertende knæ. Det stadig tungere bælte, der belastede det stadig mere smertende knæ. Den brændende sol. Det opsvulmede knæ. Guldbæltet, der pressede knæet ned i smertehelvedet. Skridt for skridt. Tilværelsens nyttesløse slid. Den lange jammerdal, sult, tørst, og den sidste rejse ud af den på en båre, hvor folk også døde omkring ham, til han selv kreperede på et hospital i Marseille, i det Europa han elleve år tidligere havde forladt.
Og sådan fortsætter historiens kværn.
Vi kører ind i en flygtningelejr, flere jeeps kommer til. Turister tumler ud i støvet. Der bor folk her, flygtninge fra Sydsudan og Eritrea. De flygter fra borgerkrigen i Sudan. De flygter fra
undertrykkelse og tvangsmilitærtjeneste i Eritrea. Nogle vil forsøge at komme til Europa, andre, de fleste til Yemen, hvor de i ly af den modbydelige stedfortræderkrig kan rejse ind i
Saudi, hvis de får mulighed for det, hvis de kan slippe ud af Danakil, men hvordan slipper man ud af Danakil Depression? Du kan ikke bare spadsere væk. Og kan man bo her? Jeg tager et billede med min skrantende iPhone. En dreng vinker afværgende. De sorte udkrængede læber. Han blotter tænderne.
No photo, hvæser han. Han er ti år gammel.
NO NO, bliver han ved.
Han har sorte furer af bitterhed og underernæring i ansigtet.
NO NO, råber han og fægter med de tynde arme.
Vi skal ind i en pindehytte og spise. Plastikstole sat op på række. Maden er medbragt. Store gryder. En ung kvinde står for køkkenet sammen med kokken. Stort kruset hår, fyldig krop, øjne fulde af liv. En krop, der holder dansen. Jeg hoster i støvet. Flygtningelejren her og de ti jeeps med turister der. Pervers cocktail af fornøjelsesvoyeurisme og nød. En israelsk kvinde danser til musikken, der strømmer ud fra en jeep. Et ungt hollandsk par står tæt sammenslynget. De kærtegner hinanden. Hans ene hånd på hendes ene balle. Hånd og balle. Støv og musik. Sten og knuste tænder. Børnene dukker frem. Den dansende israeler spiller nu fodbold med børnene, en laset kugle af brunt stof. Hun synes det er skønt og smukt, de to minutter hun gider, og børnene hviner. Kvalmen dunker i halsen. Tynde voksne står lidt på afstand og kigger med tomme afkræftede øjne. Deres sorte støvede knoklede kroppe delvist dækket af pjalter. Et par af turisterne vover sig lidt væk fra spisehytten og bilerne og knipser løs.
Vi sætter os ind igen og fortsætter til en militærpost. Vi er ude af de tørre Marsbjerge, nu er her fladt, nu er heden bragende, nu er døden støvet fravær af liv. Vi kører ud over en flad slette af brune sten og skorper af salt, derude ved militærposten, hvor der også er en soldaterbar. Der skal vi overnatte. En masse fletsenge derude. Vi vælger vores leje med nervøs, hvis ikke overfølsom omhu. Til den ene side, bag en af pindehytterne, ligger der en industrilignende bygning, hvorfra et stort gult sitrende lys strømmer fra et blindende øje. Theis og jeg rykker sengene om på den anden side og undgår industrilyset, der ligner en forvildet psykotisk måne midt ude på den sortgrå knoldede lavaslette. Og natten dratter lydløst ned i skallen. Og vi lægger os på de senge og kigger op i stjernerne. Til vi måske falder i søvn. Til vi måske drømmer en drøm om en guide, der fører os i baghold, så Danakil-rebellerne kan skære struben over på os. Theis er nervøs, han har bedt mig om at holde mine indtryk for mig selv. Jeg har sagt, at ingen skal bede mig om at holde noget for mig selv. Jeg skumler af raseri. Jeg prøver at holde det nede i maven. Alle de ydmygende
tramp, jeg kan høre dem, hvordan de bevæger sig nede i maven. Hvorfor bliver det så tydeligt herude? Hvorfor bliver min barndom så tydelig, så skarp herude? Jeg suger skyggerne ned i maven, og skider dem ud i salt og basalt.
Jeg fik angst, jeg ville ikke kritisere dig, siger Theis.
Det mildnede min kogende hjerne. Han tog en pille, som igen fik ham til at føle sig som det de fleste andre kalder for „et menneske“.
Man skal ikke spærre dæmonerne inde i maven.
Det er ok, siger jeg til Theis, jeg undskylder for den vrede.
Et gedehorn
En høj, atletisk hollandsk kvinde har slået følge med os på vej til en improviseret bar i militærlejren. Hun bliver hængende omkring os det meste af aftenen. Hendes kæreste befinder sig i en anden gruppe, han kaster stjålne blikke mod os. Han er stor og muskuløs. Vi skriver, har vi fortalt, det finder hun spændende, hun er selv læge.
Hvad skriver I om?
Theis tager sin mobil frem, viser et billede, han er i tvivl om forsiden til sin kommende roman.
Skal det være det ildrøde eller det her andet?
Den hollandske kvinde ser ned i skærmen, det ildrøde, siger
hun.
Det ildrøde, siger jeg.
Vi drikker nogle øl ved den improviserede bar i militærlejren. Den hollandske kvindes kæreste finder os, han sætter sig i udkanten. Hun vil vide, hvordan det er at skrive, hvad
vi skriver. Hun er en lysende begærlig sol i Danakil-nattens militærlejr.
De sidste sætninger, forklarer Theis, de kører rundt i hjernen ligesom forsidedilemmaet.
Det er et uhyrligt ofte uigennemskueligt system af tvangstanker at skrive en bog, siger jeg, man slipper midlertidigt ud med alkohol, så er man på den, for prisen er selvhad og opkast af slimede dårlige sætninger, i virkeligheden har man aldrig fri.
Theis’ roman er alt lige nu, den sidder indimellem fast i vinduet, så han knap kan se andet end den. Når det er muligt, åbner han dokumentet for at kigge sætningerne efter. Det er en slutfase.
Jeg er et andet sted. Jeg skal suge alt op i mig, som om mine sansers ansigt havde været munden i et monstrøst støvsugerrør.
Senere melder man sig på den stilistiske anstalt, den selvlysende neurosefabrik, der lukker man sig inde til man en dag lukker sig ud og står helt alene på ødemarken uden noget
holdepunkt.
Ud på aftenen lukker baren, flaskerne bliver samlet sammen, vi bevæger os mod lejren og fletsengene i det åbne. Den hollandske kæreste driver i udkanten, mens hun bliver ved med at forhøre sig om skriveprocessen.
Næste morgen kommer ham den hollandske kæreste hen til mig. Han har et beskidt horn i hånden.
Se det her, siger han, det er et gedehorn.
Jeg siger ikke noget.
Jeg fandt det her ved lejren.
Okay, siger jeg.
Det er dit, siger han.
Ellers tak, siger jeg.
Vi står lidt over for hinanden uden at sige noget, uden at
vide, hvad der nu skal ske.
Godmorgen, siger jeg, og vender mig og går.
Sjælens mørke
Min tanke, siger Theis, er at der er lidt mere ondt i universet end godt, at skabe noget smukt kan for et øjeblik bringe balance i det kosmiske regnskab. Hvis ikke det forholdt sig sådan ville der slet ikke være nogen grund til at skrive.
Var din barndom da ond?
Nej, på ingen måde, men jeg har lidt af angst siden jeg var ni år … og som trettenårig var jeg ude for et trafikuheld …
Hvad skete der … nå nej, du skal sgu ikke snakke om det, hvis du ikke vil.
Nej, det er ikke det, jeg kan godt fortælle. Jeg gik i syvende klasse, det var i midten af januar, mørkt og koldt, det regnede, jeg havde været på arbejde inde i Ry, på et jakkerenseri, og om aftenen cyklede jeg hjemad mod den landsby, vi boede i, Alling hedder den. Der var en øde landevej mellem Ry og Alling, pludselig blev jeg slynget ned i en dyb grøft. Jeg lå der og tænkte, du kan ikke høre noget, du er blevet kørt ned, men hvorfor er her ikke nogen? Jeg regnede ud at vedkommende, som havde kørt mig ned, var fortsat. Jeg kunne ikke bevæge underkroppen. Jeg husker det regnede over mig, jeg lå tre-fire meter nede i en grøft, af og til fornemmede jeg en bil suse forbi oppe på landevejen. Jeg tænkte, regnen der falder er fuldstændig ligeglad med, at jeg ligger der, underkroppen er følelsesløs,
og jeg kan ikke komme op. På et tidspunkt tænkte jeg, jeg skal sove. Jeg døser hen, der er et slip, hvor jeg er væk, men så slår jeg øjnene op. Jeg hiver mig op fra grøften med armene,
en bil holder ind til siden, en mand kommer ud, hvad er der sket med dig? Jeg er blevet kørt ned, svarer jeg. Hvor gammel er du? spørger han, og kan du huske dit telefonnummer? Jeg
ser han står og ringer. Han vinker den næste bil ind til siden. Den person der stopper er sygeplejerske, hun har et drop liggende i handskerummet (det får jeg at vide senere), det næste stykke tid bruger de til at få droppet til at virke, men de kan ikke finde nogen puls. Da går det op for dem, at jeg bløder fra ryggen. Nu ringer de efter en ambulance, jeg ligger der i lang tid, man har pakket mig ind i noget sølvpapirsantichokagtigt papir. Fragmenter, jeg husker kun fragmenter. Jeg ligger inde i ambulancen, min mors ansigt ser på mig ovenfra, der sidder en læge, og jeg tror ikke, de har den blodtype, jeg har brug for. Jeg ligger nu på en båre og bliver kørt gennem gangene på Silkeborg sygehus. Jeg ser min storesøster og min fars ansigt, en sygeplejerske siger: Du skal huske at trække vejret, derefter lægger de mig i narkose. Jeg er på intensiv afdeling i tre døgn, de flytter mig på en stue, hvor jeg skal ligge stille på ryggen til såret heler. Sådan lå jeg i tre uger, og derefter var der et par måneder med krykker. Det syge ved historien er, at flugtbilisten viser sig at være far til en dreng, som jeg starter i ottende klasse med året efter.
Flugtbilisten … hvad med ham?
Han blev efterlyst i lokalmedierne, en murerbil, spejlet ramte min skulder, han havde selv orangesprayet det, og stumperne i grøften førte til at en borger genkendte hans bil. Jeg
var inde at vidne mod ham, jeg husker tydeligt hans hvide kondisko. Den aften han kørte mig ned havde han været på amfetamin og alkohol. Han havde været en mareridtsfigur for
mig, men en dag da han stak hovedet ind i klasseværelset for at sige noget til sønnen, blev han afmystificeret. Jeg husker, at sønnen havde sagt om sin far, at han skulle på en lang ferie, men i virkeligheden skulle han afsone i fængslet. Ulykken blev et stort traume for mig, den ødelagde min tillid til verden.
Danakil Depression
Det er dagen, hvor vi kører ud i saltørkenen. Først bumlet stenbrungrå, så bliver den lysere, nu hvid, hvid, nu gullig, nu atter hvid, derefter tør grå. Det er i alt det grå vi ser saltarbejderne blandt deres kameler og deres æsler. Dyrene står midt i solen og stener. Mange af arbejderne stener. Andre knokler under solen med hakker og løftekæppe. De tvinger blokke ud af det grå saltlag. Man kan se, præcis hvor meget salt de har hakket
løs i den sidste tid, for sletten bag dem er endnu perfekt grå og glat, omtrent som is. Fire tynde mænd løfter under stort slid og støn en lang tyk flage op, som de derefter hugger til blokke. Kamelerne lastes. Æslerne lastes. En blok er 30 birr værd eller syv-otte kroner. En kamel kan bære 20 blokke. Herfra vil det tage kamelen to uger at nå til Mekele, hvor saltet afsættes. Sveden hagler ned ad saltarbejdernes kroppe, nogle af dem er drenge. Nu kommer der er en lastvogn fyldt med arbejdere, som springer ud og føjer sig til arbejdsflokken. Amerikaneren er herude, han sveder så det plasker. Han virker svimmel. Han kan alligevel ikke holde sin kæft, han må sige noget meget højt, han leder efter det. Det er en pine for ham, at han ikke kan finde den rette amerikanske sætning lige her og nu. Der står en udkørt dreng i en sønderrevet T-shirt foran ham. Amerikaneren bøjer sig ganske let forover, idet han peger ned. Hvad peger han på? Det er svært at sige, drengen forstår det ikke. Nu udtrykker amerikaneren sig mere præcist, han siger højt.
U.S. U.S. You know U.S.? Do you want to go there?
Jo, der står US på drengens sokker. Men drengen forstår det stadig ikke, hovedrystende vender han sig og går væk.
Jovial psykopat, siger Theis.
Svin, siger jeg.
Vi er alle nogle svin, tænker jeg. Hvad fanden er det her for en scene? Jeg forhører mig hos Abdom. Hvordan kan det foregå? Er det overhovedet en virkelighed med et mindstemål af værdighed? I hundredvis af år har denne salttransport gået for sig. Men uden turismen ville den ikke bestå, det prøver Abdom at forklare. Turismen herude findes fordi salthandlen findes, salthandlen findes fordi turismen findes. Det er en historie, der snurrer rundt i sig selv som en slange, der bider sig i halen. Men to uger til Mekele? Gennem disse groteske badlands? Døde ørkener. Hvide snit i landskabet. Sorte slaggemarker, hvor intet levende findes? Kun fluerne, men det er fordi, der er mennesker. Mennesker og lort ude ved militærposten. Området omkring fletsengene og teltene og den lille flygtningelejr og de sorte lavasten er et skide lokum. Det blæser rundt med tør lort og lokumspapir. Vi ser nu, hvordan de gør karavanen klar, der er måske 100 kameler, og mindst lige så mange æsler. Kamelerne på række, æslerne i en pakket flok. Langsomt sætter karavanen i gang. De duvende dyr, de små nedtrykte æsler. Kameldriverne og saltarbejderne i langsom bevægelse videre. Det er det mest melankolske syn, jeg har haft. Men det er ikke et indre syn. Det er et syn, som kloden bærer. Denne lange række af dyr og mennesker, karavanen gennem Danakil Depression, der vandrer ud gennem søvnen og hinsides den
hvidglødende horisont. Det er melankolsk og smukt og modbydeligt på en og samme tid. Hvorfor står jeg i denne gigantiske dumhed? Så skøn og grum? Vi gennes ind i jeepen, vores
hold, de andre hold i deres jeeps med deres guider.
Nu er vi nået til svovlkilderne. Det er de boblende damme af svovl og jern og fosfor og salt. En dam sprutter af olie og magnesium, kalium og salt.
Smør det ud over armene, kroppen, det er godt, det er helende, siger Abdom.
Jeg stikker en hånd ned i den boblende oliegryde, og smører det ud over ansigt, mine arme, som nu driver af det fedtede stads. Ansigtet som nu brænder og koger i Danakilsolens
strålefald. Svovlkilderne og det omgivende landskab er giftig gult og pisorange snoede tårne af koaguleret lymfevæske fra et eller andet jordisk helvede, hvor solen banker løs, og stanken er så gennemtrængende, at man bliver bedt om at tage sin gasmaske på.
Gasmaske?
Hvem fanden har snakket om gasmaske, hvem snakker om gasmasker?
Der er ingen gasmasker med i pakken. Hvorfor begynder de først nu at vrøvle om gasmasker? Kun en gruppe af midaldrende punkklippede japanere har gasmasker på. De ligner akkordarbejdere fra helvede. De ser ud som om, de har været her længe. De ved, hvordan man skal gebærde sig i helvedet. De har lært det i skolen. De har haft et fag, der hedder: Hvordan overleve i helvedet.
Vi, der lige er ankommet, forstår det naturligvis ikke. Vi hoster og krummer os sammen. Vi binder tørklæder op om munden, og vandrer rundt i dette giftiggule infernoælte mellem snoede svovl-tårne, og jo længere vi kommer ud i det, desto
mærkeligere bliver det. Efter de gule kilder og det fedtede slimopkast fra klodens harkende indre bevæger vi os ud i en gråsort asketårnsby. Aske, aske, aske og kantede slaggebjerge,
der danner sorte slugter og små golde dale. En advarsel af et goldt urlandskab, fordi kloden rummer alle de svar, vi ønsker på de spørgsmål, vi alligevel ikke når at stille.
De kører os endnu længere ud eller dybere ind, hvordan man nu skal beskrive det. Der er en saltsø, Assalesøen 155 meter under havets overflade. Man kan hoppe fra saltflage
til saltflage. Man kan stå derude under en sitrende sol, der genskinner i det fede, salte vand, i de hvide saltflager. Man kan prøve at få synet igen ligesom Orion. Kigge lige ind i infernosolen. Som om det havde været is, kosmisk indlandsis i 50 graders celsius.
Det bliver sen eftermiddag. En jeep ruller ind og parkerer nær vores. Musikken dunker igennem. Israelerne danser. Det er et Danakil saltørken rave. Abdom har vin med. Vi sidder på små plastikstole i en kreds og skåler. Skumringen er hvid og blå. Alt går i et herude. Der er ingen levende væsener ud over mennesker, os, der brager udover og igennem alt.
Vinen er væk, og nu er det videre mod militærposten og fletsengene. Vi stopper ved en meget lang hegnlignende konstruktionforbundet til en pumpe i en tyktflydende saltvæskedam. Saltet pumpes op i rør og ud og dingler som stalagmitter fra det flere hundrede meter lange hegn. Salt til byerne.
Og der ser vi karavanen langsomt drage forbi. De 100 kameler lastet med saltblokke, de 100 æsler lastet med saltblokke og driverne og arbejderne mellem dyrene. Jeg går lidt væk fra salthegnet og henimod karavanen.
To drivere står ved en kamel. Kamelen går i knæ, den kan ikke følge med længere. Jeg ved det, hvor ved jeg det fra? Men jeg ved, den er ved at dø, og driverne ved, hvad der er i færd med at ske, selvom de ikke siger noget, ikke forsøger at få den på benene, fordi de ved, hvad der er ved at ske, at kamelen er ved at dø, så fornemmer jeg en sorg brede sig ud
i hver af dem. Eller er det bare en sorg, jeg føler så let, som gratis kigger, at jeg synes det er synd for det dyr, for dem? Det er hjerteskærende melankolsk, den tavse knælende kameldød i Danakil Depression. Lidt efter samler driverne sig sammen og fortsætter med karavanen. Den døende kamel lader de stå der i knælende position.
Erta Ale
I jeepen sidder vi med Boris og Henry. Vi passerer den nu døde kamel, den ligger på siden. Ikke en ådselæder, ingen gribbe eller hyæner, intet levende mere. Jeepen knokler sig i
timevis hen over dette kulsorte landskab, som på et tidspunkt bliver til en slags buskland iblandet små pletter af grå lava med hytter og halvnøgne børn, der løber hujende og råbende efter os. Derude ser vi også strudse, de spæner af sted, de store overkroppe, de lange halse og de bitte små hoveder med de alt for store øjne. Så skifter det igen til hård, gold, sort lava. Ingen levende væsener. Det er mørkt da vi når til det sted, hvor vi skal overnatte. En lejr bygget af sten med små indhegninger af sten, som til får. Der kan vi folde vores soveposer ud. Der kommer flere jeeps til. Mange hold tumler ud. Der er vagter, nogle tynde unge mænd i camouflagetøj og med maskinpistoler. Turisterne driver omkring i lejren, der er selfiestemning med maskinpistolvagt.
Stil dig der, siger en kvinde, hun knipser, hun beder ham blive stående, så hun selv kan være med. Lavaørken, soldat, maskinpistol.
Efter aftensmaden, spaghetti og suppe, altid suppe, men det er også altid godt, gør vi os klar til at tage af sted, i hold.
Vi skal gå i mørket de tre timer, det vil tage at nå op til den aktive vulkan Erta Ale, én af de tre vulkaner på kloden, hvor den indre magma er blottet og synlig. Et orange lys i en
gigantisk vifte står op fra krateret, en evigt buldrende ild. Det er ujævnt terræn, det porøse og skarpe vulkanske slaggeaffald, der rejser sig som vægge længere ude til siden. Jeg har klaret den så længe, den sammenflikkede ankelknogle har holdt hele vejen hertil. Jo nærmere vi kommer, jo mere intens vulkanens dybe buldren og røgen, der driver for vinden.
Vi når op til et plateau, hvorfra vi igen må kravle ned ad en skrænt, der består af det her porøse vulkanske materiale, og hvor det gælder om at fokusere intenst for ikke at glide. Og dernede igen går vi hen over flager af vulkansk slagge let som flamenco, der sprækker og flækker så fødderne synker. Røgen er nu tæt. Lyden af ilden fra krateret højt buldrende. Jeg kan mærke det i hjertet, en ukendt spænding. Jeg kan mærke det i tindingerne, en dragende uhygge. Jeg kigger mig om efter Theis. Kan ikke se ham. Jeg ved, han er på vej til noget af det, han har set mest frem til: At kaste et blik ned i en vulkan.
Overfladen er skrøbelig, fødderne træder igennem. Hvor ved de fra, at man ikke kan styrte hele vejen ned? Det orange lys fejer op og hen over den sorte himmel, med mellemrum helt dækket af intens svovlrøg, som tvinger en til at krumme sig sammen, som driver min forbandede hoste helt ud af kroppen, som om jeg skal hoste hele mit indre op. Jeg binder tørklædet, det som Yohannes forærede mig, om munden og går hen til kanten. Jeg får øje på Theis. Han peger på en skikkelse, der står meget tæt på styrtet.
Det er Boris på vej ud i sindssygen, udbryder Theis.
Vi råber til ham, andre råber til ham, han har sin provokerende lange linse dyppet ned i afgrunden, han skal fotografere det tidløse.
Nu står også en kinesisk kvinde faretruende tæt på afgrunden. Vi er flere der råber op, to turister griber fat i hende og hiver hende tilbage. Sidste år, siger Abdom, kastede en helt anden kinesisk kvinde sig i dybet, hun havde følt sig mobbet af sine kinesiske rejsefæller. Hun ramte ikke den boblende lava, men et klippeafsats. De sendte en helikopter for at bjerge liget.
Jeg står ved kanten. Jeg kigger ned i dybet. Røgen er tæt og intens, et kraftigt vindstød, så diffunderer den. En bred flod af orange og rødglødende lava styrter i et orangeglødende Victoria Falls. Jeg kan se lavaen stå i orange søjler spruttende lige op i luften. En fyr, der er guide for et andet hold, som står lige ved, siger, at vi er heldige, sidste uge havde han et hold med herude, men turisterne kunne ikke se noget, røgen var for tyk.
De ville have pengene tilbage.
Du kan nok ikke diktere en vulkan, siger jeg.
Nej, det kan jeg ikke, men den slags ville de ikke høre på.
Det er det smukkeste jeg har set i mit liv, siger Theis.
Svovlrøgen er ved at kvæle mig i hoste. Jeg når lige at få et sidste kig ned i dette oprindelige skabelseshelvede, før vi vender os væk for at gå tilbage. Vi vakler hen over det tynde porøse lag af sortskinnende lavaflager.
The Dane THOMAS BOBERG is the author of more than thirty published books including collections of poetry, a volume of short fiction, and several volumes of travel memoirs. He has spent a total of eighteen years living outside Denmark. Thomas Boberg has twice been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize and received the Grand Prize of the Danish Academy in 2012. In 2018 he became a member of the Danish Academy. He lives in Copenhagen.
PETER SEAN WOLTEMADE holds a Ph. D. in medieval German literature from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the translator of twenty-two published books, including translations from Swedish of Martin Österdahl’s first two novels. His translation of Anna Ullman’s history of Roskilde Festival, The Last Dreamers, was published by Gads Forlag last fall. His work has appeared in Asymptote Journal, B O D Y, Border Crossing, Columbia Journal, Exchanges, K1N, MAYDAY, Newfound, Pusteblume, Storm Cellar, The Brooklyn Rail, The Cossack Review, The Literary Review, The Missing Slate, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He lives in Copenhagen.
