Through the Maze

You meet girls at the market of Lalibela. You want to go there on Saturdays; they wait all week, they dress well and walk around that irregular space amongst spices, logs, cereals and fabrics. All the boys know it and go there to buy lemons as an excuse. First they walk and take time, then you want to say something to surprise them and catch their attention. It’s not like being ferengi (1), but it’s the only chance they have to meet them.

You hang in the balance at the market, just like when you travel. You sift memories out, you separate them from the present. One thing lost, one kept. You walk through it in the only way you can, without rhyme or reason. Following this rule, you will only have exceptions. Used watches, rusty glasses, chicken tied by their paws. Pyramids of polished tomatoes on a rag in the middle of the mud.

The light teff (2) is for the rich, the dark one for all the others. The price of salt is not bad but you want to haggle, then you buy it in blocks or minced, measured with glasses. Wood comes in bundles, carried for tens of miles from the mountains: twenty birr (3) to get a burning fire for coffee and incense, a custom that happens three times a day.

You feel clumsy in that ordered chaos they only know the secret of, but somehow you never feel like a stranger: whoever you happen to meet, it will always be someone.
At noon the market is a horizon of plastic sandals and dark umbrellas against the sun. In the heart of a dry and rocky valley, lemons are an excuse for girls and girls are a gift from every Saturday. A beauty that only belongs where it happens. You can’t take it back home, you can’t reproduce it. It wouldn’t have the same taste, nor the same dignity.

Api tells it to me from behind a cold Sprite, under a poster of Britney Spears, even though he prefers Beyoncé. The mud on the walls keeps the room cool and the fridge is noisy. He’s my age, he crosses his legs showing his flip-flops full of dust and points at the voting posters: a bee for the government and a flower for the opposition. He wants to keep on studying politics and he needs money for that. But he likes to be a guide and today he still has work to do. However next Saturday he’ll go alone to the market to buy lemons.


(1) ferengi: Ahmaric word used for every white individual
(2) teff: typical Ethiopian cereal
(3) birr: Ethiopian national currency