Hard-Bitten Heritage

Before the millennium, Abdullahi Ali Sherif and his family lived a musty, hard-bitten life. The musty part, Sherif admits, was a matter of choice. As an amateur historian, he spent much of the ‘90s wandering the city of Harar, Ethiopia, recording folk songs, collecting moldering manuscripts, and scratching through the mud after heavy rains in search of ancient coins buried alongside clay pots containing circumcised foreskins as part of an old Harari ceremony.