Rope Burn
by Henry Louis Gates
The link between the sacred and the profane is a tenuous one, but never more so than at
Debra Damo, the oldest monastery in black Africa. The monastery sits at the edge of a fifty-foot
cliff, right on top of a mountain in the Ethiopian highlands. For the past fifteen hundred years,
the only thing that has connected it to the secular world below is a couple of leather ropes that
dangle from its gatehouse. (paragraph 1)
Not long ago, I found myself at the base of the cliff, peering up and asking myself just
how badly I wanted to make it up there. I'd had a lifelong fascination with Africa -- I had spent a
year in rural Tanzania when I was a college student, had studied African cultures as an adult, and
had recently begun making a series of documentaries about the continent. This time, I thought I'd
explore some of Africa's less visited corners, and that's how I ended up contemplating the
doubtful integrity of an extremely elderly piece of leather. (2)
According to legend, the monastery was founded by Za-Mikael, one of the Nine Saints
who spread the doctrine of Christianity through the region. Since there was no way to scale the
mountain, he decided that its top would be a perfect place for worship, meditation, prayer, and
penitence. But how to get there? God conveniently commanded a snake to coil its tail around ZaMikael and lift him to the pinnacle. God also commanded the Archangel Gabriel to stand guard
with a drawn sword as Za-Mikael ascended and insure that the snake would do him no harm,
because-well, you never know with snakes. The monk shouted "Hallelujah!" when he arrived at
the mountaintop, and thus the monastery gained one of its bynames, Debra Hallelujah. (3)
Za-Mikael's miracle soon attracted the attention of a great king of the region, who granted
the saint's request that a church be built on the site where the serpent had deposited him. In order
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to build the church, the king first had a ramp constructed. Then, once the church was completed,
Za-Mikael uttered the word dahmemo, which means "take it off," and the ramp was destroyed.
Dahmemo was eventually shortened to "damo," thereby giving the monastery its most common
name. (4)
As I stood at the base of the cliff -- and just to get that far had taken a twenty-minute
climb past huge boulders and gnarled, ancient-looking tree roots -- all I could see at the top was a
doorlike frame. Before me were the two ropes, one made of plaited leather and the other of
sewn-together strips of cowhide, swaying gently in the breeze. What I wanted was a little chair,
strapped securely to a failsafe rope-and-pulley mechanism, and a few robust, youthful monks at
the top, pulling me smoothly up the face of the mountain. But there was no chair; no harness; no
system of pulleys; no robust monks at the top waiting to welcome the pilgrim home to Mother
Africa. There was only one old monk, about my father's age, pretending that he could pull me up
by that cowhide strap, which was so frayed and discolored that it might have dated back to the
sixth century. He looked like a bronzed elf as he peered over the edge of the cliff, his snow-white
goatee framed by what I imagined was the door to eternity. (5)
The end of the strap was formed into a loop, and it slipped easily over my head and
settled around my chest. Suddenly, I felt it go taut. My instructions now were to grasp hold of the
plaited leather rope and, hand over hand, to walk my way up the precipice, my body parallel to
the ground. My feet found their way into crevices worn into the cliff, and I began to scale it, like
the human fly, or a cat burglar, or, anyway, someone who knew his way around the Ethiopian
highlands. Then, when I was about halfway up, my feet lost their grip and, as the craggy, nearly
vertical incline gave way to a sheer, smooth rockface, slipped off the side of the mountain. I was
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now dangling from the line, unanchored, like a side of beef. The strap constricted my chest like a
noose, and I could scarcely breathe. (6)
My abject terror settled on a question: Which vista would be less sickening -- the view
down or the view up? Should I contemplate the twenty-five-foot drop to the rocks below or the
equivalently daunting distance that separated me from the sanctuary in the sky? It was onward
and upward for me, and, with considerable difficulty, I summoned my breath to urge on the
wizened monk: "Pull ... pull ... pull!" I couldn't swear he'd heard me, but I could see his face, and
the strain of my dead weight was showing. (7)
In Ethiopia, a monk has the legal status of a dead man. Monks pay no taxes, do not
appear in censuses, and cannot vote. They are, in fact, known as "the Living Dead." They read
scripture in the ancient ecclesiastical language of Geez. They dedicate their lives to preparing for
Heaven. All in all, I wasn't convinced that this monk would handle what I now considered my
lifeline in entirely the right spirit. If the rope snapped and I fell to my death, he might think I'd
been done a favor. That wasn't the kind of salvation I was hoping for. Besides, the holy geezer
scarcely seemed strong enough to raise me, and my body hung uselessly in midair, legs pumping
like Wile E. Coyote's just before he realizes that he has overshot the cliff. (8)
Then I noticed that I'd begun to move -- slowly, inch by inch, but steadily, until the
wooden stump to which the rope was tied came into my view. I reached out and grabbed it, and
soon found myself dragged through the open door to safety. Hallelujah. (9)
"You saved my life," I gasped pathetically. I was winded by the grip of the leather around
my chest, marks from which would be visible for several days. For a brief while, I lay there on
the sacred earth, promising God and myself that I would try to be a better person, and wondering
what grand act of charity I could embark upon to make things right with the order of the
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universe. Only then did I realize that within a few hours I would have to go through it all over
again: there was no other way down. What if I stayed where I was -- dedicating myself to the
hereafter, taking a vow of poverty, joining the Living Dead in an existence of communal
holiness? That prospect was, just at that moment, more pleasing than the alternative. My beard
would grow snowy, my skin leathery from the highland rays, and my arms sinewy and strong.
My eyes would acquire the faraway serenity of the truly sanctified. I wondered how long it
would take me to become fluent in Geez. (10)
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