Word: danakil
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...splendour of Abyssinia" had been fading. The Emperor's bodyguard wore khaki; the palace secretaries were in tailcoats. Thesiger met the celebrated author of Vile Bodies and found him foppish and petulant. He refused Waugh's request to accompany him on an expedition among the touchy Danakil. "Had he come," he adds menacingly, "I suspect only one of us would have returned...
...returning to the scenes of his childhood. A break came in 1930 when Emperor Haile Selassie invited him to attend his coronation in Addis Ababa. After ten days of festivities, the impatient guest slipped off on his first caravan. It took him through the unadministered territory of the Danakil, "Slender figures in short loincloths, their mops of hair dressed with melted butter, they had open, attractive faces, but each of them wore across his stomach a large, curved dagger from which hung leather thongs, one for each man that he had killed and castrated...