Author : Barbara Adair
Year : 2010
‘I left my life behind to catch a glimpse of life’ Arthur Rimbaud
The road to Harar is green, along the way there are lush fields, terraced farms on slopes, high growing shrubs; the road winds upwards and it winds downwards. Children dance in its middle, they paint the white line that is not there, they own it, it is their road, they wave at the car as we weave around them. “Faranji, faranji,” they call, “you want, you want …, faranji, ten birr, ten birr …yooo, yooo yooo.” They wave branches of green leaves, they sell khat, the biggest cash crop that grows in the region, fresh, delirious. My excitement grows as we move up the slopes of the mountains, organic gold, I am going to the city of a poet, the city of an outcast who gave up poetry and turned to guns, the city of Rimbaud.