The Sign and the Seal. A quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant

At five that evening we were driven to a huge, open, dusty expanse of ground littered with the bones of slaughtered quadrupeds. Swarms of blowflies buzzed around and here and there, amongst the mouldering vertebrae and the fusty shoulder-blades, lay little piles of stinking human faeces. To my right, thoughtfully arranging itself between Kassala's great granite butte and the town itself, the sun descended the sky in a surreal extravaganza of tangerine and magenta. The whole collage, I thought, looked like some existentialist vision of the end of all flesh. 'Where exactly are we?' I asked Hagos. 'Oh . . . this is where the convoy assembles before crossing the border,' explained the TPLF official. 'We will wait maybe half an hour, maybe an hour. Then we will go.' Ed immediately climbed down out of the Landcruiser and went off with his tripod and video camera to find a vantage point from which to film the lorries arriving. His story for Channel 4 would focus not only on religious issues, as I had told the TPLF, but also on the burgeoning famine in Tigray. While he was making his preparations I wandered pensively about, warding off flies and looking for somewhere to sit down and complete my notes for the day. The charnel house atmosphere, however, had thoroughly disconcerted me. Besides, with the sun now resting on the horizon, the gloaming was already too deep to write in. A coolness also had filled the air, an unexpected chill after the heat of the afternoon, and a keen wind sang amongst the derelict buildings that ringed the marshalling ground. People walked to and fro shadowy figures of men and women who seemed to have come here from nowhere with nowhere to go. Meanwhile small groups of ragged children had gathered to play amidst the rubbish and the bones, their high-pitched giggles mingled with the lowing of a passing herd of cattle. And then I heard the rumble of approaching vehicles accompanied by a crashing of gears. Looking back in the direction from which these sounds were coming I saw a glimmer of headlights, then a dazzling beam. Finally, out of the murk, the mammoth shapes of perhaps twenty Mercedes lorries materialized. As they rolled past me I could see that each one was loaded up with hundreds of sacks of grain, loaded so heavily that the suspension sagged and the chassis groaned. The trucks pulled to a halt in parallel files in the centre of the open ground and there, in twos and threes, their number was augmented by others snaking out from town. Soon the evening air was filled with billowing clouds of dust and the sounds of revving engines. And then, as though on a signal though none was given the whole convoy started to move. I ran back to the Landcruiser where Ed, helped by Hagos, was hurriedly stowing his camera equipment. Then we all jumped into the vehicle and set off in pursuit of the lorries' tail-lights. The trail that we were following, I could see, was deeply rutted and grooved and I wondered how many convoys over how many years had passed this way bearing food for people made hungry by the folly and wickedness of their own government. In our faster car we soon overtook the last of the trucks, and we passed perhaps a dozen more before Tesfaye who was clearly enjoying the role of safari-rally driver slotted us into position in the middle of the convoy. All around us now the dust and sand that the vehicles were throwing up created a wild and turbulent agitation, sometimes reducing the visibility to just a few feet. Straining my eyes to peer out of the windows at the night as it rushed by, I experienced a sensation of tremendous momentum coupled with a feeling of inevitability. I was on my way, going wherever I would go, to get whatever Fate would send. And I thought: this is where I want to be; this is what I want to do. Shortly before seven we arrived at the border and halted at a Sudanese army check-point just a collection of mud huts in the middle of a bleak and furrowed plain. Carrying hurricane lanterns, a few uniformed men emerged out of the darkness and began to check documents and identities. Then, one by one, the lorries ahead of us were waved through. When our turn came Hagos was ordered out of the car by an officer who questioned him closely, making frequent gestures towards the back seat where Ed and I were doing our best not to look conspicuous. At one point our passports were produced and minutely examined under the headlights. Then suddenly the officer seemed to lose interest in us and walked off to harass the occupants of the next lorry in the queue. Hagos climbed back into the Landcruiser and slammed the door. 'Any problems?' I asked nervously. 'No. None at all,' replied the TPLF official. He turned and gave me a broad smile: 'Don't worry. They are not going to arrest Ed again. Everything is in order. We can go.' He said something in Tigrigna to Tesfaye who happily released the handbrake and gunned the engine. Then we rolled forward across the border and on into Ethiopia though not yet into Tigray. Our route, I knew, would take us first through territory controlled by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, a guerilla movement older than the TPLF which had been fighting for the independence of Eritrea for almost thirty years and which now, in early 1991, was nearer than ever before to achieving its objective. As we drove I asked Hagos about the links between the two rebel groups. 'We co-operate closely,' he explained. 'But the EPLF is campaigning to create a separate Eritrean state whereas we in the TPLF do not seek to secede but only to make it possible for a democratic government to be elected in Ethiopia.' 'And to do that you have to overthrow Mengistu?' 'Certainly. He and his Workers' Party are the main obstacles to freedom in our country.' We drove on for about half an hour, during which we saw no sign of the rest of the convoy. Then suddenly lights appeared in front of us and we pulled to a halt amongst parked lorries in what seemed to be a broad valley surrounded by low hills. 'Why are we stopping?' I asked Hagos. 'We will wait for the other vehicles behind us to catch up. Also we will collect some TPLF fighters who will travel with us as guards for the convoy.' Without further explanation Hagos then got out of the Landcruiser and disappeared. Ed grabbed his camera and a hand-held light and walked off too. A moment later I decided that I might as well stretch my legs and have a look around. Stepping down into the velvety coolness of the night, I stood for a while quite close to the vehicle gazing up at the sky. I was aware of the faint effulgence shed by the clusters of stars and the crescent moon above me, and I could just make out the silhouettes of the nearby trucks, their headlights now extinguished. Off to my right, almost lost in deep shadow, was a grove of acacia thorn trees. Further away a white rock at the top of a hill reflected a delicate incandescence. Gradually my eyes adjusted and I was able to see more and more of what was going on around me. Groups of fierce and brigandish-looking men stood here and there or crouched down on the ground talking in low voices. And whereas there had been no guns in evidence while we were still inside the Sudan, everyone now appeared to be armed with automatic weapons. Feeling slightly apprehensive, I walked amongst the parked lorries and, after a few moments, came across Hagos, who was conversing with several TPLF fighters dressed in battle fatigues. As I approached I was startled to hear the harsh metallic clunk of an AK47 assault rifle being cocked and I thought: I'm going to get shot and it's going to be now. But instead Hagos welcomed me and introduced me to the other men. I had even been wrong about the noise I had heard which turned out to have been produced by a weapon being expertly stripped and cleaned. Not for the first time I experienced a sense of shame at the self-inflicted terrors that I had endured in the months before setting out on this trip. And I resolved that henceforward I would trust the rebels who, after all, had also been obliged to trust me. It was quite some time before we were back on the road: one of the lorries that had passed through the border post behind us had punctured a tyre and it seemed to be a matter of policy to keep the convoy together. Eventually, however, we set off and drove for perhaps another two hours. Then and I don't think it was later than eleven p.m. we stopped again. We seemed, though I could not be sure, to be in the middle of a vast plain. Here all the vehicles arranged themselves side by side into a straight rank and doused their headlights. 'We won't be going any further tonight,' Hagos announced after a moment's silence. 'Why not?' I asked. 'There is shelter nearby and we will have to spend tomorrow there. The next safe place is too far ahead for us to reach before sunrise.' And with that, cradling an AK47 that he had somehow acquired, the TPLF official fell asleep. Breakfast at Tessenei I slept, too though rather badly with my feet and shins stuck out of the open side-window of the Landcruiser. Then, after a few hours of troubled dreams and restless discomfort, I was awakened by the asthmatic sounds of engines turning over and the smell of diesel smoke. We did not drive far. Less than a kilometre away there was a copse of tall, thickly leaved trees under which the entire convoy proceeded to conceal itself. I watched with amazement as canvas tarpaulins were produced and draped over all the vehicles, including our own. 'To cut out reflections,' Hagos explained. 'From the air we will be almost invisible unless any shining metal attracts the MiGs.' He then added that even the most careful attempts at camouflage could not guarantee our safety: 'Sometimes the pilots just bomb and strafe woodland like this on the off-chance that relief trucks will be taking cover there.' The sun had risen while the convoy was being hidden and, in the pale light of the early morning, like a salutary lesson, I could see the blackened and burnt-out hulks of three Mercedes lorries. 'They hit those a few weeks ago,' said Hagos. 'It was just bad luck.' He then broke a leaf-covered branch from one of the trees and walked out onto the sandy plain behind us. There he joined Tesfaye and several of the other drivers who were methodically engaged in brushing over the criss-crossed network of tyre tracks leading to the copse. At around eight in the morning all was done and Hagos proposed that we walk into the nearby Eritrean town of Tessenei. 'How far is that?' I asked. 'Not far. Half an hour or so. We should be quite safe. The MiGs are mainly interested in high-value targets like trucks. They don't usually shoot up small groups of people out in the open.' 'And what about the towns?' 'Sometimes they attack the towns if they see any vehicles or any large public gathering. Tessenei has been bombed many times.' The walk was a pleasant one, along an earth path through little clumps of scrub vegetation amidst which brightly coloured birds darted prettily to and fro. Looking around I could see that we were in rising country and, in the far distance, I thought that I could just make out the hazy silhouettes of lofty mountains. Tessenei itself was surrounded by eroded granite hills in a boulder-strewn valley. Not a single car moved on the largely unpaved streets but there were people everywhere: children playing, an old woman leading a heavily laden donkey, three attractive teenage girls who covered their faces and fled giggling as we approached, and large numbers of armed men all of whom greeted us with warm smiles and cheerful waves. The town, frankly, was a mess. Most of the poor, flat-roofed buildings showed signs of house-to-house fighting gaping holes blown through walls, fa es cratered by machine-gun bullets, collapsed masonry. Above us, to our right, was the hospital, completely gutted. Underfoot, everywhere we walked, were countless spent shell cases that formed a glittering, clinking carpet. I asked Hagos: 'What happened here?' 'A few years ago, when the government seemed to be winning the war, Tessenei was one of the last strongholds of the EPLF. In fact the Ethiopian army seized the town, several times, but the EPLF always got it back again. There was a great deal of heavy fighting very brutal, very bloody. But now the front line is far away and it is peaceful here except for the bombing.' A few minutes later Hagos led us into a small hotel which consisted of perhaps twenty rooms arranged in a square around an earthen courtyard. Here, under a canopy of camouflage netting, several groups of Eritreans were sitting at tables drinking cups of coffee and conversing light-heartedly. A waitress bustled to and fro and a promising aroma of cooking filled the air. There was, I decided, a rather d ntract boulevard atmosphere about this little scene which contrasted remarkably with the devastation outside. People, clearly, could adapt to almost any circumstances no matter how grim and find a way to make life bearable. As though reading my thoughts, Hagos said to me as we sat down: 'They don't have much, but at least they are free now. And conditions are getting better every day.' Evidence that this was indeed so soon arrived in the form of a breakfast of fried eggs and a six-pack of Dutch beer. 'Where on earth did they get this from?' I spluttered as I opened my first can. 'Since the EPLF took back the port of Massawa from the government last year there has been beer in Eritrea,' explained Hagos with a smile. He opened a can for himself and took a long swig, then added: 'It is a great luxury after Khartoum, is it not?' In this fashion, drinking beer and chatting with half the population of Tessenei who had by now trooped into the hotel to see the foreigners we whiled away most of the morning. At noon we tuned in to Ed's short-wave radio and listened to the increasingly gloomy news from the Arabian Gulf. It was now Monday 4 January and the UN deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops from occupied Kuwait was due to expire at midnight on the 15th. We then slept for a few hours, awoke at four p.m., and walked out to rejoin the convoy in time for its scheduled departure at six.

THE MAGIC AND THE MARVELS

That night's journey seemed to go on for ever, although in reality it only lasted for eleven hours. Full darkness had fallen by the time we left Tessenei. Tesfaye manoeuvred us into his favourite spot in the middle of the convoy and then, amidst the now familiar clouds of dust, we began an epic drive through the western foothills of Ethiopia's great central escarpment and then up into the mountains beyond. Around one in the morning we stopped to refill the Land-cruiser's tank from the reeking jerry-cans that we had brought with us. Stiff and cramped, bruised from the pounding I had taken on the bumpy and rutted tracks, I stepped down from the vehicle while this operation was under way and watched the lorries that had been behind us roll by one by one, their headlights blazing, air brakes hissing. When the last of them had gone past and disappeared I took a deep breath, and gazed up at the constellations overhead and felt grateful to whatever good fortune it was that had allowed me to be here. Then we were back on the road, back amongst the potholes and the gullies, lurching forward to catch up with the convoy. Soon I became aware, as I had not been before, that we were ascending increasingly precipitous gradients, winding around hairpin bends that seemed to hang suspended over empty space, powering forward across bleak stretches of plateau, and then climbing again. And I had the sense of great distances being covered and of profound changes in the terrain. I knew that at some point in the past few hours we had crossed over the border from Eritrea into Tigray. And gradually, though my body ached from the unremitting pummelling that it was taking, I found myself slipping into a dream-like state in which everything that had happened to me during the past two years, the strange twists and turns of my quest, the dead-ends, and the moments of discovery, seemed to merge into a single continuous and coherent form. And I understood, all at once and with boundless clarity, that the search which had obsessed me for so long would amount to just a poor and meaningless adventure if it had been motivated only by avarice and ambition. Lying in the remote darkness of its sanctuary, the Ark of God might glitter with ancient gold, but its real value did not lie in that. Neither did it matter that it was an archaeological treasure beyond price. Indeed nothing about it that could be measured, or calculated, or evaluated, or costed out had the slightest significance, and if I had ever set my eyes on these things (and I knew in my heart that I had) then the error that I had committed verged on desecration not of the object sought, but of the seeker, not of the the Holy Ark, but of myself. And where, if not in the material world, did the true value of the relic lie? Why . . . in its mystery, of course, and in its enchantment, and in the hold that it had exercised upon human imaginations in many different lands across all the long and weary centuries. These were the enduring things the magic and the marvels, the inspiration and the hope. Better to hold fast to them than to ephemeral prizes; better to aspire with a certain nobility and to win nothing than to succeed and later be ashamed.

LONELY ROAD

Just before dawn, exhausted, grey from head to toe with the fine, powdery grime of the road, we pulled into a small town where not a single light flickered, not a single person stirred. Here Hagos beat unmercifully on a locked door until it was opened. Then we unloaded Ed's camera equipment and other luggage that we might need during the day and went inside while Tesfaye drove off to hide the Landcruiser somewhere. We found ourselves in a half-covered, half-open courtyard where people lay sleeping on rudimentary beds. Some of these beds, fortunately, were empty and Ed, Hagos and I quickly acquired three of them. I then wrapped myself in a sheet, closed my eyes and fell instantly asleep. A few hours later, when I awoke in full daylight, my two companions had disappeared and a dozen Tigrayans were sitting around staring at me with keen interest. I said good morning to them, got up with as much dignity as I could muster, washed my face in a dribble of water from a tap attached to a metal barrel, and then sat down to write my notes. Soon Ed and Hagos came back they had been filming the distribution of some of the food brought by the convoy. I asked where we were. 'This is Cherero,' Hagos replied. 'It's an important town in this part of Tigray. Also it is the destination of the convoy. All the trucks have unloaded here.' 'How far is it to Axum?' 'One more night of driving. But it is somewhat unsafe for us to proceed alone. It may be advisable for us to wait here until another convoy assembles.' I looked at the date indicator on my watch. It was Tuesday 15 January just three days away from the start of Timkat. 'Do you think we'll have to wait long?' I asked. 'Two, three days maybe. Or maybe we will be lucky and have the chance to leave tonight.' 'Why do you say that it's unsafe for us to proceed on our own?' 'Because the government sends saboteurs into Tigray from their garrison at Asmara. They send out small teams to ambush vehicles moving on the roads. A Landcruiser like ours with just a few people in it would make a good target for such an attack.' 'What about the convoys? Aren't they subject to attack too?' 'No. Almost never. Too many lorries. Too many guards.' The day passed long and slow, hot, boring and sticky. Then, as evening came down, Hagos, who had been out and about for several hours, announced that no convoy would be leaving that night. 'I advise', he said, 'that we stay at least until tomorrow.' Seeing the look of horror that this remark had induced on our faces he then added: 'But of course, it is up to you.' Ed and I had already made up our minds on this point, which we had discussed between ourselves at some length during the afternoon. We therefore told the TPLF official that we would like to press on unless he thought it completely foolhardy for us to do so. 'No. It is OK. I understand that you want to get to Axum before Timkat. The danger is not very great. But I will see if we can bring one other TPLF fighter with us in case there is any trouble.' At dusk we set off again. On the front bench beside Hagos was the guard he had promised a teenage boy with startlingly white teeth, an extravagant Afro, an AK47, and three or four magazines of spare ammunition. He was a cheerful sort of fellow who laughed a great deal and insisted on playing Tigrayan war songs at maximum volume on the Landcruiser's stereo as we drove through the night. But I couldn't help feeling that all his energy and bravado would not be sufficient to keep the bullets at bay if anyone decided to shoot us up from the cover, say, of that bush over there, or of that clump of trees, or from behind that boulder even. I was amazed at how different it felt to be travelling alone like this, unescorted, with no great rumbling lorries in front of us and none behind. Before we had seemed part of some prodigious and invincible army relentlessly beating down the barriers of darkness, driving away the shadows with a barrage of light. Now we were small, vulnerable, forsaken. And as we wound our way amongst the withered trees of the mountain slopes I was conscious of the immensity of these wild lands and of their bleak and implacable hostility. We climbed for several hours, the engine labouring under the stress, the outside air temperature dropping steadily. Then suddenly we emerged at the top of a narrow pass to find armed men blocking our path. I muttered some expletive but Hagos reassured me: 'Nothing to worry about. There is a TPLF camp here, guarding the road. These are our people.' Opening his door, he exchanged words and handshakes with the rebels who had now surrounded the Landcruiser. Then we were waved through an improvised barrier and emerged moments later on to a windswept plateau where campfires flickered amongst wooden huts. We paused for half an hour to drink tea and then we were on the move again, edging forward through the lonely night. Behind us, one by one, the lights of the camp disappeared and were replaced by shadows. Time passed. I dozed, then awoke again to find that we were skirting the lip of an immense valley: to our left the mountainside, stony and close, to our right a plunging abyss defined by the road's ragged edge. And then, out of the inky blackness that filled the chasm's floor, a brilliant firefly soared up towards us, a speck of pure energy pulling behind it a ghostly, luminescent trail. In a fraction of a second this glowing apparition had reached us. It streaked directly across our path, narrowly missing the front windscreen of the car, and then extinguished itself against the embankment. As this happened Tesfaye jammed on the brakes and switched off all the Landcruiser's lights. Meanwhile Hagos and the guard whom we had brought with us from Cherero leaped out and rushed to the rim of the precipice clutching their AK47s. The two men, I thought, looked lithe and dangerous, businesslike and unafraid. They seemed to move in harmony together, as though they were completing some manoeuvre for which they had been well trained. 'What on earth's going on?' asked Ed, who had been awakened from a deep sleep by the dramatic, skidding stop of the vehicle. 'I'm not sure,' I replied, 'but I rather think we've just been shot at. I was about to suggest that it might be in our interests to get out of the car when Hagos and his companion came running back towards us. They clambered up on to the front bench, slammed the door behind them and ordered Tesfaye to proceed. 'I assume that was a tracer bullet we saw,' I remarked a few moments later. 'Yes,' replied Hagos matter-of-factly. 'Someone down in the valley fired off a few rounds at us.' 'But there was only one.' 'No, no. We only saw one. Several shots would have been fired a short burst. The normal practice is to load a round or two of tracer at the top of each magazine to enable the gunner to correct his aim. The rest of the bullets are of the ordinary type.' 'Charming,' remarked Ed. We drove on in silence for a while, then I asked Hagos: 'Who do you think shot at us?' 'It would have been government agents. As I told you, they are constantly sending such people into Tigray to cause trouble. At night they cannot bomb us from the air so they make use of these sabotage squads in order to disrupt the traffic moving on the roads. Sometimes they succeed . . Another question had occurred to me: 'Why didn't they carry on firing? We were sitting ducks up there.' 'Too dangerous for them. Since they missed us with the first burst and since they were not very close to us, they would have been unwise to continue with the attack. There are a lot of TPLF fighters in this area. A prolonged exchange of fire would have attracted attention.' 'Oh . . . I see.' I rested my head wearily against the side window of the Landcruiser and thought how easily life could be stolen by a mindless bullet and how fragile we all were beneath our bluster and conceit. At around three that morning, picking up speed on a metalled road, we drove by a field in which a tank lay derelict, its turret blown askew, its gun-barrel drooping impotently. Then, to our left, I saw the hulking ruins of an ancient building bathed in starlight. I was overtaken by an acute, almost poignant, sense of d vu and I asked: 'Where are we?' 'We are coming into Axum,' answered Hagos. 'We have just passed the Queen of Sheba's palace.' A few minutes later we entered the small town, turned right and left through the narrow streets, and then pulled to a halt in front of a walled enclosure draped with creeping vines and tropical flowers. While the others knocked on the gate to gain admission, I slipped unnoticed around the side of the Land-cruiser, dropped to my knees and kissed the ground. It was, I knew, an extravagant and sentimental gesture. But somehow it felt right.

STRATEGY