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(This episode is marked as explicit because of discussion of sex.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Enjoy Sex (How, when and IF you want to) A Practical And Inclusive Guide by Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock, published in 2017 by Icon Books Ltd; cover design by Mecob; Image © Shutterstock.com/MariyaF.
Joining Charles Adrian for the 130th Second Hand Book Factory is a slightly coldy Moses Woldetsadik. They talk passionate love, consensual sex and thoughtful kingship.
You can find a song by Teddy Afro based on Fikir Eske Mekabir by Hadis Alemayehu on YouTube here.
You can watch a video about Meg-John and Justin’s three handshake model of consent on YouTube here and read more about it here. To support Meg-John and Justin’s work, you can contribute to their Patreon here. Other books by Meg-John Barker mentioned here (and also highly recommended) are Rewriting The Rules and How To Understand Your Gender (written with Alex Iantaffi).
You can read about King Tewodros II on Wikipedia here.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 28th December, 2019.
Episode released: 7th April, 2020.
Book listing:
Fikir Eske Mekabir (Love Unto Crypt) by Hadis Alemayehu (trans. Sisay Ayenew)
Enjoy Sex (How, when and IF you want to) A Practical And Inclusive Guide by Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock
Stories of King Tewodros as told to Moses by his mother
Links:
Mar eske Tuwaf (Fikir Eske Meqabir) by Teddy Afro on YouTube
Three handshake video on YouTube
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 156th Page One. This is the 130th Second Hand Book Factory. My name is Charles Adrian and, joining me today in our flat, the flat we share in West London, is Moses Woldetsadik [/wɔːldətsædɪk/].
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah, that's correct.
Charles Adrian
Thank you. You always say it slightly differently when you say it. How do you say it?
Moses and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Moses Woldetsadik
I say it like Moses Woldetsadik [/wəʊldetsædɪk/].
Charles Adrian
Okay. It's not so different.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah, it's not so different. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Okay.
Moses and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
How do you describe yourself Moses?
Moses Woldetsadik
Err...
Charles Adrian
Hello, by the way. Sorry. Hello. Welcome to the podcast.
Moses Woldetsadik
Hello. Hi.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Thank you for joining me today.
Moses Woldetsadik
Thank you for having me.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
Well, I'm a pretty chilled person... [who] loves movies and listening to music and just learning, you know, new things every day.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Moses Woldetsadik
That's all about me.
Moses and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
Cool. Cool.
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
Okay. What's the first book that you've brought? The book that you... that you like.
Moses Woldetsadik
The book that I like... The book that I... the book that I brought today is a book that was written when I was a teenager and [is] still famous. It's about love that happened between, I think, a teacher and a student. So it's called Fikir Eske Mekabir. This is the native language of, like, Ethiopian people. So it goes, like... the title of the book is Fikir Eske Mekabir.
Charles Adrian
So that's the Amharic title?
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. So if I translate it in a weird, like, direct way, it would be Love Until Grave.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Okay. Love... So you could say Love Until The Grave. That would be a good title.
Moses Woldetsadik
[speaking over] Until The Grave. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Cool. So that... does that pretty much tell us what the book is about?
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. And, you know, there is this... The culture and the religion aspects in Ethiopia is a bit tight and hard to ever find yourself in this kind of, like, open relationships in public. So it's all about that. Having... yeah.
Charles Adrian
So is it a kind of forbidden love that they have?
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Do they get married or anything?
Moses Woldetsadik
No, I don't think so. I don't... I don't think that happened because one of... one of them died at the end...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
... which isn't really a good thing. [laughs] Okay. But they had a really good time throughout the book. So I'm going to read the first page of the book. It goes like:
Her handwriting was generally good... The main reason was he wanted to sit close to her and touch and hold on to her hand whenever she made a mistake... She was trying to reach for her items stretching her fingers out [and] touching the wall where they were hung. Bezabeh...
which is a typical male name in Ethiopia…
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Uh huh.
Moses Woldetsadik
Bezabeh was studying her with his mouth and eyes opened. For a person who is in love each and every ordinary thing on the loved person has a secret of happiness... That will never be finished or satisfied with no matter how much spoken about or heard of. Bringing her instruments over to him she sat down beside him. As she sat down, Bezabeh was getting more frightened. Seeing how he was feeling Sebele's feelings also started to change. She tried to write de [/də/] and se [/sə/] but they became messier than ever been before. As usual he took her hand and had her write with him. He sat close to her. Since it is more efficient to hold with his naked hand he rolled up his sleeves warmth that was suppressed by the clothing due to the fire that was burning inside him was exposed and passed it through her dress... It was like special warmth... It was like an electric wave flooding in all direction through her entire body and making her to glow. That verdant body, that beautiful body, as if it was made from unpurified wax and as if it feared warmth, began to melt down. Without thinking and suddenly, her head straightened up, and her face turned towards his face, and being opened when her mouth went to look for his mouth they met on the way. They got lost together. The two virgins, the immaculate virgins, left this dirty world leaving the world that was stained with wicked things... How good this new world was.
Charles Adrian
Wow. Okay, I can see why... I can see why this book was so famous in Ethiopia.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
It's full of passion.
Moses Woldetsadik
Passion, yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] I already have a sense of... yeah. I feel like, from that first page, I already have a sense of what the whole book is going to be like.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yes. Like this.
Charles Adrian
And let's... Like, full disclosure: You haven't actually read this book.
Moses Woldetsadik
No.
Charles Adrian
So why did you want to bring it to the podcast today?
Moses Woldetsadik
It's really... Well... When I was in 8th grade, 9th grade and 10th grade, our teachers used to read it for us sometimes... my Amharik teachers, so it's always like, you know, in my to-do list. It's like, I have to read that book but not now because I keep hearing it from many people. They just keeps telling me bits of the story. “Oh this happens in that book.” “That happened.” So I always thought “Okay, I know the end so what good would it be to read that book?” But...
Charles Adrian
[laughs] You already know that one of them dies.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. So. It's not like I don't, like, know anything about it but I just want to know: how did she die? what... what was their journey? That's...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah.
Moses Woldetsadik
...all that I want to find. But it took me a while now. [laughs] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
But I'll do it. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And what's the name of the author?
Moses Woldetsadik
His name is Alemayehu... I don't remember his surname. But his name is Alemayehu.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Moses Woldetsadik
I've never read any of his books but this book of his was so famous.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Moses Woldetsadik
It was just... you just hear about it even if you don't want to hear... it's all about... it's on the radio, it's on the TV...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right.
Moses Woldetsadik
it's on everywhere. So. There is also a song about it. So...
Charles Adrian
Right.
Moses Woldetsadik
... you can't help but hear about it. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Yeah. It's really a phenomenon.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Cool. Oh, thank you so much.
Moses Woldetsadik
[laughs]
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
Okay, so the book that I've brought for you, that I think you should have...
Moses Woldetsadik
[affirmative] Uh huh.
Charles Adrian
... is not going to be a huge surprise for you because I've already given you this book...
Moses Woldetsadik
Oh yeah.
Charles Adrian
... and you lost it.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yup.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
[laughing] The sex thing. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
The sex thing.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And I don't think you're going to read it.
Moses Woldetsadik
[laughing] Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
Not. I'm not.
Charles Adrian
But I just... I wanted to bring it because I feel like, if you're... if you're going to understand where I am in my life right now, this book is quite an important clue, as it were. I read this when it came out in 2017 and it's not that it completely changed my life but it made a huge difference to the way that I was thinking about a lot of things. Not just sex but also, like, really fundamental questions about what... what do I... what do I like in general? What d... what do I want? What do I like? What is enjoyable, pleasurable for me? That's where this book starts. It's called Enjoy Sex How, When And If You Want To. It's by Meg-John Barker and Justin Hancock, who I like enormously. I don't know them but I feel very warm towards them. I listen to their podcast, The Meg-John and Justin Podcast, and they always call their listeners ear pals. And I feel like an ear pal of Meg-John and Justin. [laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
Aww.
Charles Adrian
But this book... already... it's very conversational. It's aimed at younger people. It's aimed at teenagers, I would say. Justin Hancock has a website where he answers questions for teenagers called Bish. I think it's Bish UK if you Google it. I'll put the link in the description to the podcast. And Meg-John Barker is an... a therapist and an academic... or an ex-therapist and an ex-academic. And a writer. I've also written... I've also read other books by them: Rewriting The Rules and How To Understand Your Gender, which they wrote with Alex Iantaffi. And all the way through these books and the podcast there's the same kind of... It's really hard for me to put into words but... that's partly the point. They don't... they don't give advice very much. What they do is try to explain that we've all received messages about the way that we feel like we should be in the world...
Moses Woldetsadik
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... and those messages are worth interrogating. And whenever we try to define ourselves, that can be... it can be very useful to define ourselves but it can also be a really imprisoning thing.
Moses Woldetsadik
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
As soon as you say, you know, “I'm a man,” for example, what does that mean? What does that come with? What expectations do we have about what a man is? And does that really fit how I feel, for example? And the same with sex and sexuality. I think... You know, I spent a lot of my life, in relation to sex, worrying about what other people wanted or would like and very little time thinking about what I liked. Not that I didn't know what I liked but that I didn't think it was... I didn't think it was something that I should give any value to. And I really... I found... I found that message from this book very powerful, that they... they, kind of, say “Start with you, what is good... what feels good for you, what do you enjoy, what do you like?” and then “How do you communicate with somebody else about what you like and they like...
Moses Woldetsadik
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
... and how can you go forward from there?” And there's a lot about consent, which I did not receive in my own education. How to navigate consent. You know, I had a very simplistic understanding of what consent might be. And I think they have a much... They have a way of explaining the... the giving and receiving of consent, as it were, which is... Yeah, it became a lot clearer to me what it means to be consensual with myself and what it means to try to be consensual with other people.
Moses Woldetsadik
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Yeah, I found that really important. So here's... I'm going to read you the preface.
Moses Woldetsadik
Okay.
Charles Adrian
So...
Charles Adrian
Hello, and welcome to our sex advice book. Our idea with this book was to give you a practical guide through the confusing, and sometimes daunting, world of sex and sexuality. We wanted to put your experience at the heart of the book, and to invite you to explore what might really be enjoyable to you.
For many people even the idea that sex is something we could enjoy is quite radical. In the past, many cultures have tended to be quite sex negative - people weren't supposed to enjoy sex but it was more of an obligation or duty linked to having children. These ideas are still very much around, but in recent years and more sex positive culture has also come in where we're all supposed to love sex, to be really experimental, and to have incredible orgasms. That can actually put us under just as much pressure and prevent us from really tuning into what we want to do because we're so busy trying to demonstrate how good we are at sex or how much we're enjoying it. We're bombarded by so many messages that we should be having sex of a certain kind that we can struggle to even think about what we'd really like to do, let alone communicate that to another person.
In this book we're trying to get away from the sex negative and sex positive messages to find a kinder way in which we can all approach sex, and enjoy it if we want to.
And that “if”, I think, is really... It's quite new for me, the idea that a sex advice book would also talk about whether or not you want to have sex because all the sex advice I've ever come across before assumes that we do all want to have sex all the time with other people and that there are specific kinds of sex that we're going to want to know about. And I think they do a much better job of exploring the idea that we're not all sexual, we're not all sexual all of the time. It changes. It might change over our lifetimes, it might change over the course of a relationship or over the course of even a week or a day. And these are things that we can come to terms with and get to know about ourselves. So, yeah, that's why... that's why I find it a very important book.
Moses Woldetsadik
Good.
Charles Adrian
So even if you're not going to read this book, I think you will... you will already have heard a lot of the stuff that's in it because of the conversations that we've had. [laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. But still there are many things to be find out.
Charles Adrian
Yes, exactly. And as you're the kind of person who likes to find out new stuff...
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. Yes.
Charles Adrian
... maybe you will dip into it.
Moses Woldetsadik
[laughing] Dip in. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] But I don't mind if you [indistinct]. I'm just going to put it back on the shelf and you can...
Moses Woldetsadik
Okay.
Charles Adrian
... pick it out if you feel like it.
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
What's the book that you've brought that you think I should have?
Moses Woldetsadik
That book that I wanted to give to you was... It's... it's about this king who just goes out wearing some random clothes and he just goes into the neighbourhoods and try to find out what's wrong in the society...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Aha. Yeah.
Moses Woldetsadik
... who's talking, who's tell... who's talking? I mean... you know? He goes to the shepherds, he goes to the wine-makers, he just goes everywhere and finds about everything. He just asks and just try to see what's the cause of, you know, some problems that... that might exist in the society. So, yeah. After he find out everything, he would go back to the palace, asking his servants to go to this neighbourhood to give this, you know, sack of... what? rice or sack of this from this. You know? Just trying to solve... not everybody's problem, but at least he... he let... he lets them know that he knows what's the problem in the society and he tried... he tries his best to solve those problems. So, this story was... first my mother used to tell us. On the day of Christmas, she will tell us about him... about... Actually the King actually existed. But this is... was just, you know, a story that might be just created for kids' fantasy, or...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm. What was his name?
Moses Woldetsadik
Tewodros.
Charles Adrian
Tewodros. Aha.
Moses Woldetsadik
King Tewodros.
Charles Adrian
Is he a famous Ethiopian King?
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah, he was a...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah.
Moses Woldetsadik
... famous Ethiopian King. Yeah, it was really [indistinct].
Charles Adrian
So was this a story that she would make up for you or would she read it from a book?
Moses Woldetsadik
[speaking over] I think... No, she didn't read it. I think she heard it...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Or she knew it?
Moses Woldetsadik
She knew it before. Yeah. She knew it before. So. She had a book about him. I mean, the real book. What he achieved in his lifetime when he was a King. He was the actual King, well, before this federal state and this kind of system came in.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Was he the last King?
Moses Woldetsadik
No...
Charles Adrian
No.
Moses Woldetsadik
... he was the second King.
Charles Adrian
The second King of Ethiopia?
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Ah. Okay.
Moses Woldetsadik
He was the second King of Ethiopia so yeah. How he had... Well, she used to tell us his relationship with the... with the current Queen of England.
Charles Adrian
[musing] Mmm.
Moses Woldetsadik
So. Many things about him. And how he's... After he died, one of his sons were taken by the... Well, she's... Since he's the royal family, she took... Not... I don't think she took him but he was raised... I think he was in the palace for some quite time until he died of some kind of sickness after...
Charles Adrian
He was in the palace in England?
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah,
Charles Adrian
In London.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Or Windsor or wherever. Uh huh.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but we just loved hearing about Tewodros, how... how heroic or, you know, manly he used to be. Yep. That's the... all about that. And the way she told us about his hairstyle because he used to have a unique hairstyle.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Moses Woldetsadik
Well, where he... where he lets his wife braid his hair. So, yeah, many stories about him. But this particular story about him going out in the society...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Moses Woldetsadik
... in the neighborhoods, helping people out. I think she was just trying to tell us to be good to people... you know, just to be always, you know, positive... to sometimes, you know, try to, like, just find out what's really in the other side of the world. So...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah, so that's all about it. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Well, it sounds like I'm not going to be able to read that one...
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah, because... [indistinct]
Charles Adrian
... either, but you can maybe tell me some of those stories.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Moses Woldetsadik
I'd love to. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
That would be good.
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Moses. This has been wonderful.
Moses Woldetsadik
[laughs] Thank you for having me.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I'm so pleased we did this. [laughs]
Moses Woldetsadik
Yeah. Thank you for having me. It was really fun.
Charles Adrian
Cool. Thanks.
Jingle
Thank you for listening to Page One. For more information about the podcast, please go to pageonepodcast.com.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]