Two, Three, Many Havanas

Abstract

The ancient city of Wagadu as it emerges from the tale “Gassire’s Lute” is less a domain of conviviality than a backdrop for the human passions and frailties that cause it to vanish and later reappear. Fundamentally, while Wagadu’s existence as metaphor defines each of its successive incarnations in terms of a specific discovery or achievement, its utopian content is only gestured toward without ever being described, since its fullest realization can only occur in an indeterminate future and within the individual body-soul, where “every man will have Wagadu in his heart and every woman a Wagadu in her womb.” There is, however, another Wagadu tale in which the great city is described as a place of surpassing material and intellectual wealth:

Its fields produced rich harvests, and traders came to that city from all directions to deal in cloth, gold and wares from distant lands. In Wagadu were great markets, and portions of the city were set aside for blacksmiths, goldsmiths, leatherworkers and craftsmen of all kinds. Many languages were heard in the streets—Manding, Fula, Hausa, Arabic and others. There were scholars, Muslim teachers of the Koran, and practitioners of the mystic sciences. The name Wagadu signified “infinitely deep,” and it was in fact such a city, complex and profound in its variety and wonders. Whatever men sought after, they went to Wagadu to find.¹