In the Oromo culture of western Ethiopia, the coffee bean’s resemblance to a woman’s sexual organs has given birth to another bun-qalle ceremony with such heavy sexual significance that it is preceded by a night of abstinence, according to the work of anthropologist Lambert Bartel. Oromo elder Gam-machu Magarsa told Bartel that “we compare this biting open of the coffee fruits with the first sexual intercourse on the wedding day, when the man has to force the girl to open her thighs in order to get access to her vagina.”
After the beans are husked, they are stirred in the butter with a stick called dannaba, the word for penis. Some people replace the stick with bundles of living grass because a dead piece of wood cannot “impart life” or impregnate the beans. As the beans are stirred, another prayer is recited until finally the coffee fruits burst open from the heat, making the sound Tass! This bursting of the fruit is likened to both childbirth and the last cry of the dying man. The person stirring the beans now recites:
Ashama, my coffee, burst open to bring peace
there you opened your mouth
please wish me peace
keep far from me all evil tongues.
In being eaten the coffee bean “dies,” blessing new thought and life, a tradition the Oromo say goes back as far as anyone can remember. After the bean has spoken, the assembly moves on to the matter at hand, such as a circumcision, marriage, land dispute, or the undertaking of a dangerous journey.
One important point about the bun-qalle. The beans are simply added whole to the milk, not pulverized. True infusion, where crushed beans are added to a neutral liquid like water, thus completely releasing the bean’s power, is reserved for the darker acts such as laying a curse or, as in tonight’s ceremony, the exorcism of an evil spirit.
“SOUNDS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN RIPPED OFF,” SAID AARON.
Aaron was an American health-care expert I met while waiting for Abera to take me to the Zar ceremony.
“Forty birra,” he said, referring to what I’d given Abera for the present. “Lot of money. I hope I’m wrong.”
Aaron had a particularly low opinion of Ethiopians and, like any good bureaucrat, had found some studies to back up his point of view. According to these, the massive influx of international aid during the famines had made begging from foreigners the social norm. It was as natural as breathing, according to Aaron. True or not, there was no denying that urban Ethiopia was filled with a type of begging I’d only previously encountered in America—that is, people obviously in no real need striking up mock friendships merely to cadge a few birra.
“No, you’ll never see your friend again,” Aaron assured me. “Why don’t you come up to my room and check out these baskets I bought? They were only seventy dollars each.”
Abera appeared, right on time. Everything was arranged. I could attend.
“But don’t give them any more presents!” he instructed again. “It is enough. And don’t drink anything they give you at the ceremony.”
The only disappointment was that he would not be going. He had a test to cram for. Instead his friend, a devout Catholic, had agreed to take me.
“Catholic? Will he show up?” I asked.
“He promised.” Abera sounded uncertain. “Stewart, I have to ask you something. Will you be wearing your hat?”
Abera was referring to my old straw hat, the one that the first kati lady in Jiga-Jiga had found so amusing. You know how it is when you get so attached to a particular article of clothing that you just can’t bear to throw it away? Well, I’d become very fond of this hat, a K-mart Australian-style number, and over the last year of travel it had suffered considerable trauma. By the time I arrived in Ethiopia, it was little more than a crumpled piece of straw held together with half a dozen black patches. And dirty— I didn’t dare wash it lest it dissolve. I loved it all the same. People in every nation reacted in a different but characteristic way. Nepalese facetiously offered large sums of money for it. Indians laughed and praised its “unique quality.” The Ethiopians merely thought it unhygenic.
“You cannot wear that hat,” said Abera. “Not tonight. It would be disrespectful.” He pulled out an Islamic-style scarf. “Wear this. I will tie it on for you.”
“Okay.” I knew he was right. Besides, the scarf, white with blue and red fleur-de-lis patterns, was rather stylish. Abera tied it on, turban style.
“It looks good,” he said. “You look like a Muslim.”
“So I’m in disguise?”
“Maybe. Not a bad idea when you walk in Harrar late at night.”
We chatted for a while. He refused my offer of dinner and, after a final exhortation to send him copies of Cosmopolitan Magazine (he rewrote the articles for the university paper), he departed. I sat down to wait in the hotel lobby.
Eight o’clock came and went. Then nine. Ten too. The hotel guard was spreading out his sleeping roll when there came a knock on the front door. It was Abera’s friend. I thanked him for coming but asked if he thought the ceremony might be over, since we were running two hours late. No problem, he said. Nonetheless, we hurried through Harrar’s darkened alleys. Squatting men called out greetings. The women, more diffident, smiled hello.
“They think you are Muslim,” my friend commented, pointing to my headpiece.
As we moved out of the town’s center it grew quiet. My companion fell silent. Harrar’s streets are said to be haunted by spirits from all the tribes that have been enslaved here. Its hyenas, traditionally believed to be hermaphroditic, are said by some to be spirits of the poor boys castrated and sold as eunuchs. According to the eighteenth-century French traveler Antoine d’Abladie, hyenas were thought to be a type of werewolf called buda that attacked and ate Zar spirits.
As we approached the house where the Zar ceremony was to be held, I heard singing. The exorcism was already in progress. My companion indicated silence, and we slipped into a long, narrow room lit by a single lamp. A crowd of perhaps twenty people squatted near the door. Halfway down the room hung a dirty white sheet through which we could see the silhouette of the sheykah reclining on a huge brass bed. Before the sheet stood the first patient. Since we had arrived late, I was never quite clear as to the nature of this man’s ailment. But the sheykah had already identified the possessing spirit and convinced it to leave the man in peace if he sacrificed three cocks with certain colored feathers about their necks.
A glass of pale liquor was passed around the room. People chatted in low voices. I was pleasantly surprised to be ignored. Apparently my “disguise” was working and I was being taken for some sort of foreign Muslim. Some of the people crouching by the wall began to rock slowly back and forth and sing a curious syncopated melody over and over. Incense was thrown on a brazier.
The traditional way to begin these exorcisms may include sacrificing a pair of doves or the taking of ganja or alcohol. All involve the roasting of green coffee beans, which are then chewed and brewed, thus “opening the box” and releasing the power of the sheykah so he can communicate with the Zar spirits, described as being toeless and having holes in their hands that, if you look through them, reveal another world. They are also said to be beautiful and come in a range of racial archetypes like Arab, white, and Chinese. The word Zar is thought by some to be a corruption of Jar, which in the Cushitic language of the Agaw tribe is the name for Waaq, the sky god.1 Ethiopian Zar priests traditionally come from a tribe called Wato or Wallo, the name of the lake where tonight’s priest was trained and Ethiopia’s most ancient