An Interview with Adam Reta

DESSALEGN:

For you injera is not only food, but a model for a literary style in your works and a source of inspiration to philosophize about Ethiopia and its people. Can you share with me a glimpse of your philosophy?

RETA:

It is more than a model. It is a metaphor. Injera is round. It is three dimensional yet flat. It has holes and yet consistent. It is between solid and non-solid. At first the injera holes/precisely eyes/ seem to be monads, and yet they are all interconnected through a maze of miniature tunnels. It has a contrasting structure signified by opposites and yet all contributing to its whole physical “survival.”

We are used to hearing about traditional fiction as linear or circular. I find the linear story not as realistic as is usually perceived. If one is not sure of the representational honesty of linear stories, one has to look for a different geometric metaphor. The 1974 Ethiopian revolution initiated the beginning of the death of the linear story. The fragmenting elements unleashed then are still working their way through all aspects of life. A society in chaos/disharmony cannot give you individuals that are comfortable in linearity. I have to look for ways to represent such realities and processes. The conceptual image or geometric metaphor we acquire from such disorder is a labyrinth or a maze. What is more pertinent than injera in representing this?

Injera has an interesting form. We can mark its genesis from pagan times when the sun was worshipped. In antiquity, the sun was represented by a circle. Our alphabet tse ({) is a representation of the sun, or the aynu A (;), as the sun was the eye in the sky. I do not think it is an accident we call the holes in injera “eyes.” The circle was and is an ancient and universal symbol of unity, wholeness, and infinity. There is also what is called a circumpunct circle with a dot/hole at the middle. It represents the sun and a sun god (called Ra in Egypt . . . what if the “ra” in inje-ra has to do with this?) and the creative spark of divine consciousness within people linking everyone to the creative mind (also to everyone) of a universal “god” thus making each persona “co-creator.” The circle and the dot symbolize the spiritual merging of male and female forces. (Ref) This is a universal/cosmic sensibility.

The meaning of the injera form becomes more complex and its meaning certain when the eyes are numerous and the concept and geometry of connectivity is reinforced and radicalized. This model is an ideology about connectivity (visible and invisible) I assume of the ancients who had the habit of planting mistir (“mystery”) in every lived action, including what we eat and the manner we eat. When the ancients discovered/invented this form they not only bequeathed to us the injera as a font of sustenance, but also a transporter of the deep and necessary understanding of the concept of connectivity in the universe, the nation, and the self. If we take a closer look at the injera the geometric shape of the eyes are hexagonal. We know that this type of shape is duplicated by human skin cells, bloods cells, wood, metals, soils, etc.

This and such universality of form gives injera a serious symbolic power and a sense of planned purpose. The realization of the ancients about the interconnection of the universe as coded in the injera can be an instrument in designing a fictional form. Taking injera as a model/metaphor also brings us to chaos theory, fractals (for instance the short-short story keremeloch in the collection kesemy ye wrede firfir was a fractal story), percolation theory (hydrology and hydraulics), and topology. There can even be an opportunity to systematize or mathematize such fiction.

I mentioned earlier about the injera as having a labyrinthine internal structure. Actually the labyrinth imagery is represented in two forms. The first is the unicursal labyrinth, which is the classical form. This represents traditional...