    Sunday in Gondor

    By Israel Shamir

    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 4th 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, Czestochowa 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.