Sunday in Gondor
 While
the world was treated to another sham performance of peace process
in Palestine, and just before the next stage of Middle East war, I
paid a visit to the Ethiopians, much loved by Poseidon, the Sea
God – probably because these landlocked people do not disturb the
seas but inhabit high plateau which also gives birth to Nile. ‘The
farthest outposts of the Race of Man’, as Homer called them,
Ethiops, poor as they are, preserved many things we have lost.
There, one can see women reaping high stalks of wheat with the
sharp sickle, and four ferocious black bulls tearing along and
thumping shoulder-to-shoulder threshing wheat in a narrow circle
of hay, and a man with a spade winnowing the chaff off corn, girls
filling jars at the side of a spring, and the result of their
labours, the vast congregation of men and women clothed in white
who sit like seagulls in the church yard on Sunday morning
listening to the preacher, receiving blessings from their priests
and sharing the blessed bread. For in the world we lost, seeding
and reaping and winnowing and baking bread are completed in this
blessing and sharing.
The Ethiopians
have much of their ancient tradition intact as they received the
Light of Christ from St Anastasias the Great in Byzantine
Alexandria in 4 th century. Their dogma is at variance
with ours, but they venerate the Virgin as the Mother of God, as
the apostolic churches do. Never colonised, and not for lack of
trying, they were not ushered by Western missionaries towards a
Protestant sect like other Africans. The Jesuits equally failed to
subjugate them to Rome. Thus the church unites, not divides them.
If this ancient and authentic church were to evangelise the Black
Continent, its fate could be different. It is still valid for
those seeking an African Christian identity, more than its
Rastafarian offshoot. Like other Eastern Churches, the Ethiopian
Christians prefer Muslims to Westerners and live with the large
Muslim community (some 30%) in perfect amity.
In their holy city
of Gondor (not far from Shire, to utter delight of Tolkien lovers)
a pilgrim finds Orthodox Christianity, as African as their black
skin and as rooted as the enormous banyan tree in the main square.
 On
Sunday I prayed with them in their 17th century Trinity
Church of Gondor, built along the lines of the Temple of Solomon.
Waist-high drums broke the dead quiet of an African night,
accompanied by ringing silver of rattle-boxes; hundreds of angel
faces looked at us from the high beams. The church was illuminated
like an ancient manuscript; every inch of a wall covered with
exquisite paintings explained by the Ge’ez captions: a Saint rides
on lion back, climbs by a snake as by a rope to his hermitage or
stands on one foot being fed by birds; a swarm of angry bees
defends the church from the invader; a cannibal King repents and
receives pardon through the Mediatrix; and pictures that require
no caption, such as The Holy Trinity presented by three almost
identical grey-bearded men, the story of Passion of Christ
suspended on ropes from, rather than nailed to his cross, or the
Coronation of the big-eyed dark-skinned Queen of Heaven. She did
not look strange to my eyes, though, for we are familiar with her
sisters, Black Virgins of Loreto in Italy, Częstochowa in Poland,
Montserrat in Catalonia. ‘I am black and beautiful’ – this line is
not from the Negritude poet Sengor, but from the Song of Songs.
And the people
were beautiful, with chiselled features, smooth skin, warm and
compassionate eyes; their looks exuded brotherly love to each
other and to this pilgrim from Jerusalem. We clapped hands
together in the rhythm of the drums under constant stare of the
angels. It was quite different from your ordinary Sunday service,
but essentially the same: unity of people in God. It is great to
be a Christian for one can feel this uniting brotherhood-in-God
with the native people in so many lands and places, be it among
prosperous English folk of Reverend Stephen Sizer in the low
church of Virginia Waters, or with the monks of Mount Athos in
their candle-lit medieval chambers, with Jerusalemites in the
small Palestinian Arab church of Father Attalla Hanna, or among
throngs of jolly Italians in the vastness of St Peter in Rome, or
among the unique mixture of Russian writers and peasants in the
village church of Peredelkino near Moscow, - and among the
Ethiopians in far-away Gondor.
It is quite
dissimilar from the Jewish experience which, though equally
globe-embracing, - there are synagogues in Venice and Cochin, New
York and Curacao, - is basically the experience of expatriates
meeting together wherever they go – the people are quite the same,
like in different British Officers Clubs in various corners of the
Empire, from Hong Kong to Vancouver. It is not a question of race
but of doctrine – there was in Ethiopia a long-established Judaic
community, whose members were not distinguishable from the rest of
Ethiopians by their looks, blood, language or customs; but they
received the call from Jerusalem and went there, to guard Tel Aviv
cafes and man checkpoints in Palestine, humbly accepting their
third-rate status in the new land. Thus they joined the members of
other once-well-rooted communities from Germany and Russia, from
Yemen and Morocco, for Jewishness unavoidably leads to separation
from the native population and to exile. But let us return to the
Gondor church.
A wall with two
open arched doors separated the commoners’ part from the priestly
inner sanctum which, in its turn, led to the Holy of Holies where
a replica of the Arc of Covenant was resting obscured from our
sight. The Trinity Cathedral of Gondor was built for the real
thing, brought from troubled Jerusalem to remote Axum by Menelik,
son of Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, according to their
tradition. However, the Arc refused to be moved and has remained
to this very day in St Mary of Zion in dusty and deserted Axum. A
strange obstinacy: Gondor is much more attractive with its vast
black basalt castle built by Ethiopian Emperors with the advice of
their Portuguese masons and bombed, centuries later, by the
ubiquitous British Air Force. If you, my reader, know of a country
that has never been bombed by the Anglo-Americans, please share
this knowledge with us.
While we looked at
the pictures, the drums gave place to the beautiful singing of the
Psalms and the priests came out and blessed the devout. By this
time it was already eight o’clock, and ordinary folk had begun to
congregate outside. By local custom one can’t enter or leave the
church during the long service, so the vast majority of
worshippers stay outside at ease, walking around the church,
kissing its posts and stones. People who have not observed the
strict fasting rules (which prohibit not only meat but sexual
union as well) also have to remain outside. The doors were opened,
and we sat in the yard in pleasant morning chill, while children
went around with baskets of freshly baked bread, the dark bread of
Ethiopia.
The church is a
peaceful oasis in this troubled land. Outside, tanks roamed – the
new conflict between Ethiopia and its breakaway province of
Eritrea was about to flare up. Paupers and homeless children
swarmed the streets. Though Ethiopia is not dead as I learnt that
night, it is seriously ill. Since 1950, its population has grown
six-fold, and such an increase has overstretched its meagre
recourses. In the same period of time, the US and its allies have
supplied weapons to all parties in the region, promoting strife
and dissent, and supporting every separatist movement. They
undermined the hugely popular socialist government of Mengistu who
is still remembered with nostalgia by many Ethiopians. His fall
was caused by the US support of separatists – people got tired of
endless war. Now Ethiopians have ‘democracy’, though this word
means mainly ‘corruption’ in this huge country of 60 million
people, dozens of tribes, nationalities and languages, social gaps
and dreadful poverty.
Noam Chomsky wrote
about this American strategy: they do not have to win; they need
just to undermine, destroy and push the rebellious nations back
into the Stone Age. Afterwards, they will blame it on socialism,
like in Vietnam or Ethiopia, on Islam like in Palestine or
Afghanistan, on nationalism like in Serbia, and never on their own
intervention. “The US never provide aid for people, but are always
ready to give arms for us to kill each other”, Ethiopians told me.
The role of the
Church is also steadily diminishing. Its lands were confiscated
and redistributed by the government and it has lost its ability to
protect the people. The rural communities get uprooted by
ceaseless fighting and a lack of water, its members drift into
towns where they are reduced to begging. The younger generation of
city dwellers does not go to church any more. The onslaught of
Modernity is relentless everywhere, even in far-away Ethiopia. Not
much is left; who knows maybe the Ethiopian priests count years
better than we do: according to their calendar it is now AD 1997,
with only three years to the millennium and the end of days.
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