By Tony Hickey
Since John Graham has told this story at the remembrance service for Anthony, I thought I should add some more detail, and supply a photo.
It was April 2005, the obelisk was coming back, but the Italians kept postponing its departure from Rome. Rumours were flying around, some people felt that the delays were deliberate, to sabotage the celebrations by ensuring there was no media coverage – international journalists couldn’t afford to hang around in Axum, great place though it is, indefinitely.
The “it’s on it’s off” carry on meant that we – the media, the obelisk committee, various officials and others – were up and down to Axum like the proverbial “hoor’s knickers”.
Finally it seemed that the great day had arrived – we’d heard the plane had taken off and was due in at around 0530 the following morning.
The night before it’s arrival, Anthony, Tefera Ghedamu and myself went out on a pub crawl of Axum’s night clubs. There were a number of things I remember about that night. There was the guy who tried to dip into Anthony’s bag in one bar. We were warned by someone else, and then Anthony tried to set me up to fight the pick pocket. There was Anthony holding a 3 foot model of the obelisk positioned in a certain way, which scandalised the bar girls and others. And then there was the incident, captured on film by Tefera, in which Anthony led the bar in a soccer hooligans’ chant of “I stole the obelisk!” He’d told the people in the bar he was Antonio Mussolini, and that he personally had stolen the obelisk. They had no idea what they were saying, but you can see Anthony in the background with a great grin on his face, egging them on, and me about to piss myself laughing.
We left Anthony to walk back to his hotel at about 2.00 am, a few hours later we were all out at the airport to welcome the obelisk back.
Anthony had an irreverent sense of humour, so irreverent that I won’t be posting up some his jokes on this website, but I enjoyed them all.
We talked several times in March, he was calling me about the kidnapping incident in the Afar Region. We joked about that, as we did about most things.
Anthony was a great piss taker, he was scathing about everybody, aid workers, politicians, journalists and the media, me, and himself for that matter. The aid workers at least must have forgiven him, judging by the number of aid organisation vehicles at the memorial service.
The full and unexpurgated version of My Memories of Anthony Mitchell will be prepared for Catherine and family.
That so many people have memories is a measure of the kind of guy he was.
No Comments Yet