What am I doing here?

Welcome to Cosmographia — histories of the earth and the stars. For the full map of posts, see here.

There is in the blue hills of Ethiopia an ancient and storied city named Harar. It was once home to the legendary saint, Abadir Umar ar-Rida; later it became the capital of a now long-forgotten sultanate; some still claim it as the fourth most important city in Islam.

It is said that in a tradition harking back centuries Harar still employs a man to feed the hyenas that gather outside the city gates each night at dusk, gathering for the fetid beasts the bones and surplus meat from the city’s abattoirs and butchers. In the 19th century, the explorer Richard Burton wrote of the place (and drew the above sketch) when it was still a forbidden city, closed to outsiders. A few years later so did the French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, who lived upon that far-flung plateau while running guns and coffee all over the Horn of Africa. In a letter home while stricken with ennui, he wrote: what am I doing here?