The Woman

We were on a romantic trip.

Not to the usual places; but to a little known place in Ethiopia – Bahir Dar.

Bahir Dar is home to Lake Tana- a huge lake, which, to the novice, appears more like a sea. This lake is the source of the Blue Nile, which travels on to meet with the White Nile to become the Great Nile. It was, I must confess, not a place I had heard of before I came to Ethiopia.

I had been in Ethiopia for a couple of months for a project. Towards the end of my stay, my wife joined me in Addis Ababa. We heard about Bahir Dar from friends and one weekend we decided to make the trip.

It was an hour-long flight and a welcome relief from Addis which had been cold and rainy the last few days. The sun was warm but not hot and the place had a tropical feel. Our hotel was like millions of other hotels with the same aloof atmosphere that hotel rooms manage to acquire.

Comfortable enough, and close to the lakeside, the standout feature of the hotel was the lovely paintings in the lobby, which lent character to the place. Most hotels will have paintings in the lobby and depending on the quality of the hotel, the paintings range from drab to ornate.

But the paintings in our hotel were different. The subjects seemed to have a life I have not usually found in art that I have come across. The subjects were things we could see locally - birds, trees, lakeside, and…..people. Not unique subjects by any stretch of the imagination but the mastery of the artist made them come to life.

I am no art connoisseur but even to my untrained eye, there was a quality about the paintings which made them stand out. My wife, who has a more discerning eye for such things, was completely mesmerized. Maybe an Art expert would have found a million flaws in the paintings, but to us they were ……………well! By far the most extraordinary ones, we had come across.

We took the usual boat trip to the seven islands in the lake - some with Ethiopian Churches, saw the hippos and generally went walking along the promenade having a leisurely day out. The next day we had planned to go to the Nile Falls, which we had heard a lot about and we were looking forward to the visit.

In the evening, my wife asked the man on duty at the reception desk about the paintings. Seeing our interest, he informed us that it was all the work of a local artist and that we could see his work in his workshop if we so desired.

This unexpected piece of news was lovely and we informed him that we would very much like to visit his workshop and maybe buy a couple of paintings if we could. He assured us that he would arrange for the artist to be present at the workshop the next afternoon so that we could visit after we returned from our trip to the Nile Falls.

The trip to the Nile Falls the next day was indeed lovely because it also involved a pretty long trek which took the best part of four hours. It was quite an adventure, when I lost my footing on the slippery stones near the edge and nearly went over.

However, there was someone up there looking out for me, and a mishap averted. By the time, we returned to Bahir Dar we were tired, sweaty, and muddy. After a bath and lunch, we were ready to go to the artist’s workshop.

The hotel guy was as good as his word and we set off on foot on our quest. Bahir Dar is a town where you can walk to most places. Not very big, the bars along the road are always ready to provide succor to the thirsty pedestrian.

In about ten minutes we were standing in front of a small tin shed. There was no one around and the shed was locked. The hotel person called up a number on his cell phone and spoke in Amharic, which we did not understand, but we caught the general drift of the conversation. Apologetically, he informed us that the artist had forgotten all about our appointment, but he would be along shortly.

Therefore, we waited.

It was a while before he showed up. He was quite a surprise. He did not look like an artist at all. More than an artist, he had the appearance of a rough looking fisherman.

Maybe that is what he did for a living. Judging by his workshop, he was not very prosperous. Unshaven, with day-old stubble on his chin, his clothes were threadbare and he had a rather grumpy look.

However, he unlocked the door to the shed and led us inside. There were sketches and paintings all over the place. Some hung on the walls, some stacked up together in unorganized lots. There were many paintings, which looked good but nothing, which really took our fancy.

He kept showing us one painting after another but nothing of the quality we had seen in the hotel. Our first thought was that the hotel person was trying to pass off the work of a common local artist and that he was not the real creator of the work in the hotel.

Then he brought out a painting which dispelled our doubts once and for all. The painting was a portrait of a toothless old man looking up at the sky and smiling. His smile was so infectious that it brightened up the dreary surroundings and brought a smile to all our faces too.

This was of a rare quality and we were so taken in by the painting that we kept staring at it. Both the Ethiopians could see our delight and were smiling broadly too.

 Now a sale seemed certain. We had also decided on buying it but kept looking through the stacks.

After a few minutes of rummaging, I almost gave up looking when my wife called me over to the other corner. I turned and saw her looking intently at a painting, which I could not see. I strolled over and then I saw her.

She was a slim, young woman, of working stock, sitting on the ground with her back against a pole, an empty wicker basket near her knees. Her right hand was on her head and her tiredness seemed to project from the sketch.

The marketplace was nearing the end of the day’s activity and most vendors were in the process of winding up. We could see her from the side so that her left profile was barely visible behind her loose locks of hair. We felt, rather than saw her wistful, tired smile.

Her clothes were tattered and patched but there was a vitality and strength about the woman, which was plain to see. The details of the market were rather blurred and fuzzy with the entire focus of the sketch on the woman.

The beauty of the woman could only be felt, rather than be seen. There was no doubt about the beauty. Her entire demeanor was telling us a story.

 Perhaps her day had started early. Finishing her chores at her small but tidy home, she gathered her rather frugal wares for sale and left home after depositing her small kid with the neighbor.

Having walked a few miles to the market, she would have taken her place among the hundreds of men and women, all trying to sell whatever little they could to ensure that there would be food in the kitchen and milk for the baby at night. The bargaining would be long and hard and as the minutes went by without a sale, the desperation would rise.

The buyers in this small rural setting were not rich folk and their needs were few. They were also trying to save every penny that they could and the sellers were all trying to balance the price so that their meager needs could be met at the end of the day.

It would have taken the better part of the day to be able to sell her wares and the effort would have sapped her energy. By evening, with her wicker basket empty and a few coins in the fold of her skirt, she would be dead tired. Before she started her long walk back home to start with the cooking of food and feeding her child, she was snatching this brief private moment to rest and reflect.

The artist had caught her at this exact moment. Not with a camera but with his paper and charcoal. Maybe she did not actually exist, for the expression on her face would be fleeting – too short to capture on paper. Maybe she was the result of the imagination of the artist.

But I believe that she did exist. It would be impossible for a mere mortal to create such beauty in his imagination. Perhaps the fleeting moment had cast such a strong impression on the mind of the artist that he could not get rid of it.

When he wanted to put it on paper, the fingers were guided not by his mind but by his heart. The image in his mind flowed on to paper through the charcoal in his hand.

I could imagine the artist working feverishly to capture the moment on paper before the image deserted him. It would be work, which he would not be capable of abandoning and her spirit would demand that it be recorded for posterity. He would have no control over his actions for the subject had become the driver.

I did not realize how long it was before we were able to drag our eyes away from the sketch. The hotel person was smiling but the artist looked worried. They both understood that the sketch would be ours. The artist was perhaps dreading that he would have to let her go. For us there was nothing more to look for.

We asked the man to quote the price. He hesitated, but the need for money was too strong. He quoted what he believed was a high price in the faint hope that we would not agree. He hoped against hope. It was in vain. The argument that probably convinced him was that his work would be displayed in India, a land far from his own.

He rolled up the two paintings in a hard cardboard cylinder so that we could carry it back with us. We paid and thanked him and went our way.

My wife, from that moment on, clutched the painting to her bosom and would not let go of it when we travelled back to Addis. This left poor me with the task of hauling the luggage.

The woman had become part of us. We could relive her life through the workings of our imagination. We saw our own struggles, our own little pleasures, our dismays, and our happiness through her eyes.

While we were reliving her life, she was perhaps living ours. We shared her hopes, her frustrations, her anger, her joy, her energy, her exhaustion, her fears……….. She became us as we became her. There was nothing separating us, but space and time. `

A couple of weeks later, it was time to leave Ethiopia but we planned to visit Masai Mara in Kenya next door before returning to India. The trip to Masai was a long cherished dream and it lived up to our expectations.

Our flight back to India involved a few hours layover in Addis. As we boarded the flight in Nairobi for Addis, the airhostess came up and requested us to place the cardboard cylinder in the overhead locker. Without a thought, I complied.

We arrived in Addis a couple of hours later and made ourselves comfortable in the lovely lounge at the airport for the seven-hour layover. Finally, it was time to board the flight back to India. After a long time away from home, I was happy to be starting the return journey. As the flight took off, an expression of horror came over my wife’s face.

“The paintings……we did not bring them with us!!!!!”

I racked my brains, and at long last I realized that we had not taken the cylinder off the Kenya flight. The painting was by now, God knew, in which country!!!!! The cylinder was too thin to be noticed in a cursory search lying as it was at the rear of the overhead bin.

To sum it up, the painting was gone. We never could get it back.

Perhaps it is fitting. A woman like that was not meant to be held captive at one place. She had flown from a small village in Ethiopia to Bahir Dar, to Addis, to Nairobi, and then on to wherever life would take her. She was too strong, too free to be held at one place. The sketch is gone, but the woman remains with us in our heart, in our mind and above all in our spirit.

Many years have gone by. It is only now that I realized why she was so alive, so captivating, and so lovely.

 She represented not herself but the entire womankind. Strong, sensitive, lovely, caring, human, loving …….all that a woman truly is!